RUFC – ‘Finances Are Tight’

Rotherham United Chairman, Denis Coleman has told The Advertiser that, although finances are tight, they are probably the best they have ever been and that Rotherham United are probably one of the only football clubs in the country that are in the black.

When Mr Coleman and the board took over the club it was losing £1.8m per year but, by the end of the financial year in May, the projections show that they will have balanced the books.

‘We are not breaking even on a weekly basis,’ the Chairman said, ‘but, you get Sponsorship deals and Football League money throughout the year. If we can get the gates up then we will be in a healthier position but the gate sizes don’t pay half of what we need in this club. We have taken a pessimistic view on the gate sizes and budgeted accordingly.

‘At the beginning of last year this club had debts of several hundred thousands racked up, was losing £140,000 per month and was days away from going into liquidation.

‘We simply had to attack it the best way we knew how which, in our case, was looking at the excess costs and trying to reduce them while working as hard as we could to try and increase the income and revenue.

‘We haven’t always got it right and there are untapped streams of income we should have got into which we haven’t but the facilities here hold us back and, due to legal reasons, we can’t make the most use of them.

‘One of the biggest issues is wages and we realised early on that football clubs lose money by gambling on players’ wages. The manager and I sat down and worked a budget out and we have stuck to it as closely as we can.

‘I am sure most of the supporters know what we inherited here and that we are working the best we can to stabilise the club.’