In a week when our Chairman agrees (subject to the as yet unknown small print) to freeze season tickets, here (in a 2 part interview) are the views held by another Championship Club Chairman, Barry Kilby of Burnley, who goes as far as saying that if they get promoted next season they will give Season Ticket Holders a free Premiership Season Ticket … read on:
Burnley Supremo Barry Kilby talks free footy and the perils of parachute payments
Burnley Chairman Barry Kilby talks over-paid players, parachute payments and fans watching football free of charge. And Turf Moor’s top man tells tfs’ Jez Robinson precisely why, like the majority of his Championship counterparts, he wants Watford and Charlton Athletic to win promotion back into the Premiership this season.
Being Chairman of a football club in the cash-strapped Championship can prove a pretty unenviable task. Especially when the majority of your local rivals are reaping the rewards of the Premiership and you have to put your hand in your own pocket just to make ends meet. After too long spent watching your neighbours’ exploits in the manner of a kid peering through the window of a sweet shop which is displaying a “Closed” sign, you’re beginning to wonder exactly when the doors of wonderland will be opened.
To wonder, in truth, just whether or not they’ll ever be opened to you at all. The passing of each year renders both you and a committed, passionate support – the legacy of the club’s long and proud history rather than a productive recent past – increasingly desperate to join your near neighbours in the Premiership. As they’ve frolicked amid the plentiful revenue streams of the Promised Land, your frustrations have been compounded further by the knowledge that you’re barely even competing with them on a level playing field anymore.
But try telling that to those success-starved supporters, who it is imperative you keep attracting through the gates, despite the wall-to-wall live football on the pub telly. And the fact some of the top flight clubs on your doorstep can sometimes afford to provide their fans with Premiership football at prices lower than those you are charging your own supporters to watch second-flight games……
Fortunately though, Burnley Chairman Barry Kilby isn’t the sort of bloke to shirk a challenge. Kilby admits the financial obstacles between the Turf Moor outfit and the top division get more significant with every passing season and concedes that competing for custom with Lancashire’s five Premiership sides certainly doesn’t make life any easier for the Clarets. Luckily, Burnley isn’t the type of town where people support other teams. Manchester United may play a mere matter of miles down the road, but they don’t sell many replica shirts in the town centre of Burnley. You won’t see many Liverpool, Everton or Manchester City shirts either, not to mention Blackburn Rovers. But that doesn’t mean having successful neighbours can’t cast your own perceived shortcomings in a particularly harsh light.
As life-long, die-hard Burnley fan himself, local-lad-made-good Kilby understands that all too well. And the multi-millionaire media games mogul won’t feel he’s properly completed his task as Chairman until Burnley have emerged from the shadows and taken to the Premiership stage themselves. With Turf Moor’s loyal regulars looking on – free of charge.
“To be honest, I got a bit fed up reading about Premiership clubs in our region offering cheap tickets for their matches” Kilby told tfs. “People thought I was daft, talking about free Premiership football for the fans, but I really think it is something not beyond the realms of possibility in the future. Not just at Burnley, either. We’re in an area densely populated with football clubs, and competition is fierce for us. There are some Premiership clubs now where the money they get through the gate is less then twenty percent of their net revenues and that tells you something. To a club in the Premiership, I don’t think it’s a massive thing to be able to keep prices affordable, to be able to keep them low.”
“Whereas to us, and other clubs in the vicinity, the gate receipts are an absolutely massive factor in keeping Burnley football club alive. The situation is the same for a lot of clubs at our level. So what I said was ‘Listen, if we can get Burnley FC into the Premiership then we will be able to afford to keep prices down, and that if we do win promotion next season, then I would let our season ticket holders watch Premiership football for free.”
“For many Premiership clubs, the money which comes through in terms of gate receipts is now dwarfed by the TV money, plus all of the other financial spin-offs. So that was my pledge, and I stand by it. If we get up there, our season ticket holders can have a free season, on us. You can do these things when you have massive amounts of TV money being ploughed into the club regularly.”
Part 2 of this article will appear on our website next week
Reproduced with kind permission from: The Football Supporters’ Federation