David Gold - Football
Blues Magazine December 2004
Is there a bit mote realism creeping into football fans these days?
There's been a huge change in the opinion of fans who used to say, 'We want success.' 'Spend more money.' 'Buy more players.' What they're now saying is, 'Do your best, chairman, but don't dare put us into administration. Don't put the future of my club at risk.'
That's a quantum change. In other words, the fan is now realising that the skill of the board is to spend the right amount of money on the right manager and the right players at the right time.
The fans now know that for them to have a prudent chairman, a prudent board, a prudent financial structure at their football club is so important to them whereas 20 years ago they didn't have an understanding of it, administration wasn't an issue then.
I didn't have an understanding myself before I got involved. As a fan, I was the same. 'Spend the money, borrow it and get Malcolm MacDonald' or whoever the best striker of the day was. But there's been a big change.
The fans also now realise the importance of the commercial side of the club. Our marketing people are important to us because the corporate side of the business is vital; you need to get the best sponsors on board.
The difference between one club and another who arc in competition - let's say Aston Villa and Birmingham City -depends on a number of circumstances, including the fan base and commercial income. If our capacity is 30,000 and Villa's is considerably more, then they have an advantage. But if we have greater corporate income than them, it begins to balance out. However if they've got a greater corporate contribution than us, then they stay above us in the league of finance.
There are other issues, whether we can encourage big sponsors to come to us and not to our competitors, this gives us the edge, so the financial side of the football club is vciy, very important because if you can generate more wealth than your competitor then you have the advantage.
Charlton, for instance, will have an income probably ten million pounds less than Birmingham City Football Club, but what they have over Birmingham City at the moment is more years in the Premiership, so they're stronger in that sense. But we're all in competition with each other, both financially and on the pitch and the supporters now have a greater understanding of this.
Southampton had to move stadium to basically double their capacity to compete on a level playing field commercially. Do you see that as a way forward for Blues eventually
I think there are four options:
- One, do nothing. If you can survive at 30,000 capacity without burdening yourself with debt - and we have no debt -there's a case for that;
- Two, rebuild the main stand at a cost of £12 million to increase the capacity by five or six thousand seats, but they would be the most expensive seats to build in the Premier League.
- The third possibility would be for us to build a brand new 40,000 seater stadium on our own which I think, unless we received help, doesn't seem feasible. If you arc an Arsenal and have a 35,000 stadium, but have got 25,000 people on a...
