The SFA have lunched what they're calling "Saltire Saturday" - with the aim of having everyone waving a Saltire flag at the forthcoming Scotland V Macedonia game.
When traveling abroad it's often noticable that the home support all seem to be waving the same flag, wearing the same colours - which is an amazing sight to see. The SFA seem to be trying to replicate this.
The Scotland Supporters Club have announced they no longer require proof of travel in order to qualify for an away match point.
Members travelling with official match tickets for the last few years have had to produce documentation that they actually travelled in order to qualify for a point. Recently the SSC tightened this requirement that it had to be something official, with your name on it, and that actually proved you travelled. eTickets, like those supplied by Ryanair and Easyjet weren't accepted as they could be easily forged. A hotel receipt had to mention your name. Photocopies not accepted.
It seems a large number of members had great difficulty proving they travelled to Amsterdam due to these tight rules. With Norway coming up there would be even more issues as it's mainly the discount airlines that fly in.
The SSC were suggesting members ask the hotel for an official letter confirming the names of the pople that stayed in the hotel. This seems very impracticle especially for those staying in youth hostels.
Many members could see this was going to be an issue and asked to physically pick up their tickets in Norway. Unfortunately the SSC rejected this and said any member with a UK address would have to have them posted out to their home address.
Good to see the SSC have relented on this and will no longer require proof of travel.
Diadora's UK division announced on Monday that it was going in to liquidation. Current members of staff have been made redundant and a receiver has been appointed.
Diadora have been supplying Scotland shirts for the past 7 years and had one more year to run on it's £1 million a year contract. Once the company went in to liquidation the SFA terminated the contract.
The SFA have added their name to a list of creditors of Diadora in the hope of recovering part of the final year instalment.
The SFA have confirmed they've enough shirts to last them through the current qualification games later this year which includes Norway, Macedonia and the Netherlands. Some readers may remember when Fila went bust back in 2002 - the SFA had to remove strips from their own shop in the Hampden Museum in order to provide enough tops for the games.
It's believed the SFA have started negotiations with other suppliers who may be interested in supplying the Scotland national kit. Names in the hat include Umbro, Reebok, Puma and Nike.
It's also been announced that the Scotland Rugby Union (SRU) supplier Caterbury has also gone in to administration.
With all the controversy surrounding “expenses” I thought I’d look at the financing behind the Scotland Supporters Club. Are the Scottish Football Association subsidising the club or are they profiting from the club? At the start of writing I have no idea what’s way it’s going to go.
What income does the SSC receive?
SSC membership runs on a 2 year basis spanning a qualifying campaign. Membership is currently £20 per year, so £40 every 2 years.
We know the SSC membership is capped at 32,500 people and it's currently full, so that means an income of £1.2 million every 2 years (32,500 x £40).
What expenses does the club have?
We’ll assume 6 home games and 4 away games per year.
SSC co-ordinator
We’ll assume the SSC need one full time member of staff @ 25k per year. Including pension, NI etc we’ll estimate a fully loaded cost of £50k per year. Assume this person has to work overtime on match days – 10 match days, 7 hours, at £15 per hour. We’ll assume that this person isn’t required full time, so can help out at the SFA. We’ll also assume that the SFA can assign other staff at busy times to the SSC. This would be cost free.
Office
Although the office space is provided by the SFA at Hampden, we’ll assume it costs £400 to rent an office per month, or £4800 per year. This cost includes electricity, rates, maintenance, heating etc.
IT costs - Assume one PC @ £500 per 2 years, one printer at £500 per 2 years – £500 per year. We’ll assume they have three Servers – file, email and a database server at £1k each per month (including associated services) - £36,000. General IT support - £200 per month.
Internet Access - Business Broadband connection @ £50 per month - £600 per year.
SSC Website - Shared with SFA and to standard design. Again we’ll be generous and say £1,000 per month, £12k per year
Stationery - say £200 per month to cover photocopier, paper, pens etc – £2,400 per year
Telephone Costs - Probably quite expensive for the SSC, so we’ll assume £400 per month, or £4800 per year.
Membership renewal process
Membership is currently running from January 2007 – December 2009, and will run from January 2009 to December 2011. No mater when you join, the membership always runs out at the same time as everyone else. This means the SSC only needs extra staff for a brief period of time once every 2 years.
The membership renewals normally take place in January and February at the start of the 2 year period. 32,500 applications to be sent out by a third party – say 50p each - £16,500.
Say it takes 3 minutes to process an application when they’re returned to the SSC, one person could process about 140 applications a day, so it would take 232 man days to process all the applications. If it’s assumed all the applications are processed in 2 months, this will need 6 members of staff dedicated to this process. 6 Temps at £10 per hour for 40 days would be £16,800.
We’ll assume they need an additional large office @ £600 per month, so another £1,200. They’ll each need a PC and a printer – rented at £100 per month each.
Membership Packs
For the actual cards well be generous and assume they cost 50p each to make - £16,250. We’ll assume the rest of the membership pack costs £4 each including P&P, to be packaged and sent out by a third party – so £130k in total
So the total for the membership renewals – £180,100 every 2 years
Ticket Applications for Home and away Games
Ticket Applications – as most of these are now sent out by email we’ll need to make some assumptions. The leaflet might cost about £1,000 to design no mater if it’s emailed or posted. We’ll assume half of the members receive the applications by email, half by post. For the members receiving by email we’ll assume no additional costs. 16,250 Applications to be sent out by a third party – say 50p each - £8,125.
Ticket sales – Ticket sales are now run by Ticketline. We’ll assume they charge a fee per ticket sold, which is already included in the ticket price. We’ll be generous and say they charge £5k per event to the SFA for the website etc. (Information on Tiketline pricing here)
Ticket Postage – this is an added extra on the price of a ticket so we’ll assume it doesn’t cost the SSC any extra.
So total per match - £10k, £100k per year
Away games
Each time the team plays away, the SSC send at least one member of staff. They normally travel with the team on a chartered plain, travel in the team buses and stay in the team hotels. Although the travel is probably cheaper, we’ll assume a total cost on average per trip of £1,500. This would cover flights, transfers, hotels, taxi’s, food etc. The SSC member of staff is normally only there for 2 or 3 days so this figure is very over estimated. They normally stay in plush hotels though!
Total cost of SSC travel per year (4 away games per year) – £6,000
What’s not included
Corporate liability insurance, legal fees and audit fees are not included as I have no idea what they cost or if they’re required.
Because the maths is too complicated and rate of spend is to variable, we’ll exclude bank interest. It could be worth over £50k per year though.
The SSC now has a large database of names and addresses that they can sell on. It’s unknown how many members didn’t tick the “Do not contact me or pass on my details” so this won’t be included in the calculations. It might be possible to “rent” this list to 3rd parties at about 10 pence per member’s details. We know Football Football Ltd use this database to email (spam) members with offers from the Official Scotland Shop (a private company). This could be worth £10k per year depending on how many times the information was sold.
Summary
In the first year the SSC running costs would be about £402,675 (profit of £247,235). Second year costs (no membership renewal process) £221,175 (profit £428,825). Every 2 years the SSC brings in £1.2 million and has expenses of about £623,850.
This means the SFA makes £676k profit on the SSC membership every 2 years.
Rather than make this profit they could reduce the membership fees to about £10 per year. Alternatively the SSC membership could fall to 16,000 members and still not make a loss.
Conclusion
The SFA do make a substantial profit of £676k from the SSC.
At this stage it’s worth pointing out that in the last year before the SSC was launched, the membership level of the former Scotland Travel Club was about 15,000 members – this would relate to the minimum number of members to prevent the SSC running at a loss.
If you notice something I've missed, or disagree with my findings, please leave a comment below.
FIFA have finally recognised James McFadden’s goal in Iceland. FIFA had mistakenly credited Barry Robson from Celtic as scoring the goal despite TV evidence that McFadden was the last touch before the goal.
The SFA represented McFadden’s case to FIFA after providing the evidence. FIFA have finally agreed to change their records, which brings McFadden’s records to 42 appearances for Scotland, 14 goals.
Gordon Smith commented in an interview with the Sunday Mail “FIFA have rightly changed the records. We felt this was only fair”.
The SFA have lunched what they're calling "Saltire Saturday" - with the aim of having everyone waving a Saltire flag at the forthcoming Scotland V Macedonia game.
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