Sta£e of the Nation - County Cricket Finances

Bm,

Of the counties I have spoken to and written about, Lancashire is the one I most respect. The club represents all the great qualities you look for in a cricket county.

Inspired by their former and popular player, Jim Cumbes, who smoothly moved into the club's marketing department, at a time when ground redevelopment was first being mooted, later becoming their CEO, no county could have wished for a better man at the helm.

The trials and tribulations faced, the challenges overcome, a film could be written about Lancashire's almighty off-field struggles to be where they are today.

Jim Cumbes - Angel of the North



Due to the vitriol and viciousness of one local billionaire businessman, Albert Gubay, whose sole purpose was to destroy Lancashire CCC and all the good things it stood for, just to win a lawsuit, in his view, over the "Local Council's unfairness" of giving Tesco planning permission at the Old Trafford ground... and with the county staring at bankruptcy, no-one but Jim Cumbes could have managed to win that case. As he said later, “In terms of achievement and satisfaction, I think sowing the seeds of the redevelopment in 2003, and then seeing it through with everyone else associated at the club, has given me the most satisfaction. At no stage was the process easy, and at times the difficulties almost overwhelmed us. But everyone stuck at it. We had no alternative, no Plan B.”
 
There was no Borough Council to buy the club; no millionaire angel to hide the debts; no City Council willing to take on the financial might of Albert Gubay; my respect for Jim Cumbes grew enormously after speaking to club representatives and realising just how close Lancashire were to going bust in 2011.

www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket/biggest-day-in-old-traffords-rich-history-as-ground-is-saved-2307018.html

Today, the club have it all. A highly profitable music concert business that attracts the biggest stars; alongside other soaring off-field revenues from hospitality and dinners to conferencing and exhibitions; and then for a club to dismantle their 'Old Trafford Lodge' which garners over £1m a year, only to be replaced by a four star Hilton Garden Inn with 150 bedrooms, shows the club's increasing confidence, financial might and belief.

Jim Cumbes retired in 2012, his off-field battles leaving their scar; but if I was Lancashire, I would name the ground after him. He truly deserves it. To hell with the 'Emirates', welcome The Jim Cumbes Old Trafford Cricket Ground.

www.espncricinfo.com/county-cricket-2016/content/story/992831.html

Much of the challenges faced by Sussex are the same as at Plumpton. With the main requirements in the next few years probably including the following:

1) Need to increase non-raceday revenue. We only race sixteen days a year and so there are 349 days where we are not racing.
2) Extra costs resulting from 34% increase in the living wage, previously the minimum wage, over the next four year and making customers aware that because of this prices need to go up as extra costs of this magnitude can't be absorbed. This is also likely to affect what our cleaning, catering and course repair subcontractors charge us.
3) Identifying new revenue streams such as developing the land on Plumpton racecourse and plans are afoot to build homes on the racecourse. There is currently a public consultation on this. By doing this it will enable us to improve the facilities at Plumpton racecourse.
4) Going through the P&L line by line and removing any unnecessary or unproductive expenditure.
5) Identifying ways to encourage more people to buy their tickets in advance by offering bigger discounts, rather than on the day due to the fact our attendances on the day are very weather dependent, and to increase attendances from 2015's figure of 32,000 to 40,000.
6) Need to increase prize money due to the fact that other courses have increased their prize money by 25% over the last three years compared to just 9% at Plumpton.

In summary there is a lot of challenges and issues to address.

A very gloomy article about the haves and have-nots in English cricket from the Telegraph's Nick Hoult here, contrasting the ever-growing returns of the ECB and the ambitions of the broadcasters to maximise revenue from a shrinking Test match market with the impoverished state of many of the counties. The backdrop of course is T20: how to realise the potential revenue from this global trend and still meet the needs of members who want four-day chapionship cricket.

www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2016/05/08/fear-and-loathing-in-county-cricket-the-grim-financial-realities/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Not surprisingly his main focus as an example of those who have not is Northants. Amongst the horror stories of reject mugs printed in the wrong colours, re-used seats not wanted by Surrey at the Oval, and players and PCA reps crossing the road to the service station to buy a sandwich, there is an interesting concept that might have wider implications. Northants are to  try to raise capital by turning themselves into a limited company, and then using shareholder capital to increase commercial income and explore the wider use of conference facilities. The members would have to vote themselves out of existence in order for their shares to be resold in this way. 

The problem with that approach is the whole concept of shareholder value. Commercial shareholders would surely insist on a duty that all financial decisions made by the company are taken on the basis of what gives the best return to its shareholders, and that certainly wouldn't be championship cricket. It might mean the continuation of Northants as a T20 playing enterprise, boosting Wantage Road as a major stadium for the catchment area from Peterborough down to the Chilterns and attracting investment to turn into a franchise-holder.

If that idea could be made to work then it could create a model for other counties outside of the major conurbations, but the cost would be that it could only exist on the basis of the T20 matches. Longer form cricket would dwindle to become an occasional series of games, perhaps as Test trials or run-outs for the elite squad of England players loaned back to the counties for the purpose, augmented by some of their concentrated professional staff. There would be no attraction for the majority of the 80, 000 remaining county club members nationwide (Hoult's reckoning) but perhaps a new kind of relationship could be built between the clubs and the fanbase brought in by the promotions and the media exposure that would be just as meaningful in its own way as the traditonal game and the traditional membership approach.

Excellent article from Nick Hoult but I am just getting so bored of the ECB appeasement towards the 18 counties. An EPL will happen; it has to happen for the survival of county cricket. Period.

Agreed, nothing can occur until the present SKY contract ends, then it's down to the ECB to find a way of seducing BT Sport interest and then we're off to £100m+... Meanwhile, it is up to Sussex and other non TMGs to work out the best compensation package. As for the 12-6 majority required, yet more appeasing... 

The public who are still to discover cricket want T20. They are not interested in other formats. County cricket must be spearheaded by a successful T20 franchise and that money can then be used to prop up the Championship and cricket in general. Surely, there is no other way unless the ECB decrease the number of counties from 18 to 12 which is about as likely as...

Such decisions, overall, may cause bad blood and create ructions amongst the traditionalists but so be it. History is strewn with tough unpopular rulings, yet the outcome invoked opportunities for future survival.

If the ECB wish to continue the 18 county route then they have no choice but to create an EPL. So, let's end the appeasement and get on with it.

Fairly obvious. Dobell has read the report and put his customary 'counties good, ECB bad'  spin on it.  Hoult has read the report and then made a few phone calls to the likes of Tom Harrison and Brian Havill and asked a few pertinent background briefing quesions.

Dobell is a lazy headline chaser who doesn't double check anything and whose over-hyped stories regularly fall down when you scratch the surface beneath the sensationalist come-on line.  Remember his 'Farbrace is favourite for Surrey job' when a simple phone call to the ECB would have told him that the bloke had actually signed a new contract with England only a week earlier? Or the changes to playing regs for 2016 which he read and then wrote up quite misleadingly (and fooled me) as a new get-tough-regime in which host counties preparing sub-standard pitches  were going to walk away with zero points  and see the game awarded to the opposition  - but which turned out to be solely about games that were abandoned because the pitch was judged to be dangerous (something that last happened in  the days of Grace or whenever) ?

I know some reckon I'm obssessed with my dislike of his writing. The truth is I hate that sort of tabloid  sensationalism and he is the worst exponent of it in cricket;  his economy with the actualite is far worse than anything from the pen of Dean Wilson at the Mirror or John Etheridge at the Sun.

Reading the Hoult article again, brought a big smile over the £300,000 "windfall" that each county will receive this year. It seems that counties are being given "windfalls" now on a regular basis from the ECB whether it is the £1m soft loan from 2013 or the previous £300,000 each back in 2011. Then, it was called "a one-off payment".

The smile is... will certain unscrupulous county CEOs play the same trick as back in 2012 when their accounts were published. Trumpet a profit for their club, backslap their county staff for all the hard work in turning around several years of losses into profits without once telling their Members and supporters that this profit was due to an ECB "windfall".

It happened in 2012, will it happen again in 2017?

www.spinoffcricket.com/county-finance-overview-2011/