Exeter Chiefs generating 500k at every home game

[tavyred]

Does Tony Rowe hate us that much that he would rather help out our closest rivals?

From reading a couple of public comments at the bottom of the Herald article, this smacks of the Herald writing a pro-Brent piece as a way of heading off some of the criticism of his development plans. I guess there's a bit of kudos and reflected glory in having Tony Rowe say nice things about you.

 

[Spoonz Red E]

Congratulations to the Chiefs but the first thing to say is the article is very loose on the maths - so I would allow for media 'licence' and an amount of talking up.

£16,988,853 (i.e almost £17m) is first quoted. Then... “I would suggest of that £16m, the Sandy Park entity of it was probably generating at least £6m of it
So there's a million pounds difference in the quoted sums already...

Tony Rowe talks of 18 home games. Admittedly some of these are warm ups so I'll only consider the professional games.

They have 16 professional games. 11 Premiership, 3 European Cup & 2 Anglo Welsh Cup.
£15,427,210 is quoted as ‘rugby income’.
£1,561,643 as Sandy Park income.
Tony says the Sandy Park income is more like £6 million because of the way finances are recorded.
So ... £1.5m is already listed as non match-day Sandy Park income leaving £4.5 million claimed from match-days at Sandy Park.
£4.5m divided by 16 professional games is not a £500k a game average - the average is at least £200 grand a game less than that.

"Now quite a lot of that is ticket sales but quite a lot is beer sales and quite a lot is corporate entertainment."

• They are national League Champions in their sport selling a lot more tickets than us at higher prices.
• Beer (and food) is on sale at the site all day and all through the match at higher prices than we could charge with pubs (and food outlets) 5 minutes down the road.
• Corporate entertainment is concentrated on fewer games in a season - demand and supply is a factor here.
• They have £11m Rugby income coming in from other sources.

The argued merits of our redevelopment have been done to death already so I'll just stress the importance of this quote from the article:
"Rowe said: “My brief to the architect was build me a banqueting and conferencing centre with a minimum of four rooms and it had to be able to adapt for rugby."
We have never had the luxury (nor indeed the money in the bank safeguard) to consider that brief on a site which has size constraints and planning considerations due to being in a residential area.

 

[rightwing]

From reading a couple of public comments at the bottom of the Herald article, this smacks of the Herald writing a pro-Brent piece as a way of heading off some of the criticism of his development plans. I guess there's a bit of kudos and reflected glory in having Tony Rowe say nice things about you.

Tavy, there’s probably some truth in what you say but at the same time I applaud Brent for seeking out best practice. When employed as an auditor I would travel to other organisations which employed best practice, extract the best elements of their systems, and incorporate them into VFM projects that I was undertaking for the organisations I worked for.

It often brought positive results!

 

[rightwing]

The houses built by club directors behind the Doble stand ruined our chances of moving the pitch and creating
A great stadium.

I totally agree Monster(except that the land was sold off by OTR). I thought OTR were very shortsighted over this.

 

[Angus]

I haven't read above, so I may not be on point, however I'd love to know how much they generate with tuck sales and alcohol.
I'm confident that as a club so close to the city we miss out on a fair amount of money being spent inside the club due to most going to a pub for lunch and a pint before the game, that's money being spent that could be spent in the club.

Now I'm way of the mark on this one but did the chiefs once offer us a ground share opportunity?

 

[Pobbop]

I haven't read above, so I may not be on point, however I'd love to know how much they generate with tuck sales and alcohol.
I'm confident that as a club so close to the city we miss out on a fair amount of money being spent inside the club due to most going to a pub for lunch and a pint before the game, that's money being spent that could be spent in the club.

Now I'm way of the mark on this one but did the chiefs once offer us a ground share opportunity?

Think they did, but it was at a prohibitive price.

 

[denzel]

I think we are comparing apples with pears here.

We have a constrained site which we use very well considering. We have three bars, all serving draught pints (unlike the pathetic offering Wycombe had yesterday), the Kenniford Farm trailer, etc. I can't see where we could house somewhere offering full meals.

Is there a similar sized inner city club who does it better than us? I've yet to see it.

 

[tavyred]

Tavy, there’s probably some truth in what you say but at the same time I applaud Brent for seeking out best practice. When employed as an auditor I would travel to other organisations which employed best practice, extract the best elements of their systems, and incorporate them into VFM projects that I was undertaking for the organisations I worked for.

It often brought positive results!

RW, I believe one of the issues with some Argyle fans is the fact that some of his development plans includes the building of facilities which he or his company will own separately from his ownership of the club. A well timed visit to SP where a fellow businessman can extol the economic benefits of the facilities he is willing to build for PAFC is probably designed to head off the criticism he's getting from some.

 

[Matt Russell]

I think we are comparing apples with pears here.

We have a constrained site which we use very well considering. We have three bars, all serving draught pints (unlike the pathetic offering Wycombe had yesterday), the Kenniford Farm trailer, etc. I can't see where we could house somewhere offering full meals.

Is there a similar sized inner city club who does it better than us? I've yet to see it.

Couldn't agree more re the offerings at Wycombe - really poor. Thank goodness it was a nice day and you could sit in the sunshine. At a price, I know, but we do offer meals in hospitality which is open to all.

 

[Antony Moxey]

Hear what you say, but can you honestly say that what we are having built is real value for money! I am a retired Q.S. dealing with many varied projects over the years up to many millions and there is always a 'Value for money' aspect. Yes there is an element of 'dead money' when dealing with demolitions to make way for the new structures, but thereafter is no different from a 'new build'. If that is being used as an excuse then the answer should have been to move to a new site!

Considering we’re getting a whole new stand, demolition and removal of an asbestos ridden old one, new changing rooms, a new away end and now floodlights all for apparently a couple of hundred grand then yes, I’d say that was value for money.

I would assume that had we insisted on a stand similar to that at Sandy Park the developer - whoever it turned out to be - would have in turn insisted on a seven figure contribution from us.