• The first stage of the forum upgrades has now been completed but they remain in a degraded state and are still being worked on. Normal posting/reading should now be possible.
    Please read this thread for more details.
    New user registrations are currently disabled.

Tom Burwell - Interim CEO Podcast


I really enjoyed that, actually.

Probably worth noting that he's appearing on a sports business podcast and not one specifically aimed at Sunderland fans, so if people are ever so slightly uncomfortable with the way he speaks, then they just need to swallow it, really, as he's in a room with other sports business types who are pretty much all cut from the same cloth.

Burwell is only acting as the interim CEO and he was keen during that chat to point out that he was actually interviewing for the permanent role that same day, so whilst he's got a high level oversight of the running of the club, at some point soon he'll step back in his role with the sporting group that owns us and the running of SAFC will eventually be left to whoever they have in mind, which is both daunting and exciting.

The most intriguing thing that stood out to me was how far behind we are because of spending ten years in the wilderness. It's obviously been viewed that whilst we are moving quickly, we aren't moving quickly enough, and at a corporate level, we need to bring some serious experience in to help shift Sunderland into the 21st century so that we don't end up lagging behind other clubs in the top flight commercially.

The uncomfortable truth is that if we want a competitive team in the Premier League, there are going to be some unpopular decisions made. However, I trust this owner and board as they've given us no reason not to trust them.

We're a very attractive football club right now, which I imagine makes us a tasty proposition for ambitious executives who really want to get stuck into a project that could do wonders for their career, and I don't think we should fear that. It's a long way away from being seen as the biggest basket case in England, where nobody of worth would have touched us with a barge pole.
Having listened to it , I'm glad he's only the interim CEO and will take a step back soon hopefully.
 
is Burnley, Bournemouth and Brighton really totally online? Would be interesting to fact check!
Burnley and Brigton open 5 days a week,Bournemouth 7 days a week!

TICKET OFFICE​

The ticket office at Vitality Stadium is open seven days a week. Tickets sales & enquiries are serviced at the ticket windows located next to main reception.
To purchase tickets over the phone, please call 01202 726300 (option one, then option one again).
Enquires can be made by calling 01202 726300 or emailing [email protected].

Ticket office and phone line opening hours
  • Monday to Friday: 9am-5pm
  • Non-matchday Saturdays: 9.30am-4pm
  • Sundays: 10am-3pm

It is important to have your customer identification, and if appropriate season ticket number, ready when purchasing tickets.



Logon or register to see this image
 
It’s all just a massive double edged sword. To be successful in the PL you have to increase your revenues and effectively “exploit” the market, or fans. We all want the club to be successful but that effectively means being ripped off more and more and losing that feeling if a family club. Effectively they are the choices. The PL is the money go round we all knew it was, but it’s got worse than ever in the time we’ve been away.

I was a season ticket holder for many years, got to my regulation 10/12 games a year for the past 20 years, but now not being a ST holder means there will be very few games I get to. That’s the price of success as well I guess. Even when I eventually move back to the area a ST will probably not be possible due to the wait list. But I’d still rather see the club successful and the lads and lasses who go week in week out be treated well.
 
Had a quick look at match day revenues per club.

We made £13.3m last season, Villa made £38.4m - allowing for our increased attendances in the Prem and Villa's European games I reckon we've probably nearly doubled revenues this season. Let's call it £25m.

Arsenal make £5.1m per game, Spurs £4.5m, Chelsea £2.9m.

Outside of London, Man U make £4.4m per game, but it's a sharp drop off from there, e.g.

Mags - £1.5m
City - £2.7m
Liverpool - £3.1m
Brighton £1.1m
Villa - £1.3m
Everton - £1.2m (this'll increase in Bramley Park)

Based on that, we're probably just about punching our weight at £25m pa, and our ceiling is somewhere between £1.5-£2m I'd imagine.
 
We will get an annual fee from Hummel. Will be about £400k a year. We will have received a promotion bonus. I reckon it will have been about £800k / £1m and then we’ll probably get an additional £100k a year being in premier league so this summer we’ll probably get about £500k.

This is about 10% of what a top 6 team will get.

Shirt sales will be peanuts due to the deal we have. Fanatics own the result therefore they take the margin. We will get a royalty payment. Probably around 5%.

I’d estimate the following structure roughly.

Costs Hummel £15 landed into UK.
Sells to Fanatics for £30.
Fanatics sells it’s for £60.
Royalties due to club about £3 per shirt.

We’ll sell about 100k shirts this season.
So £300k royalties plus £400k annual fee. Total £700k.

Now… imagine we made the kit ourselves!!

Using the same figures as above we would make £4.5m vs £700k.

Yes it would cost us about £0.5m to set up a team to do it etc. but that would be offset with the additional revenue you make by doing other merch like training wear, generic stuff like cotton tees, polos, baby grows etc etc.

You’d made another couple of million in profit doing that sort of stuff.

There is a very strong argument to make in the club doing it themselves in my opinion.

An argument to the tune of about £6m / £7m additional profit.


Clubs can buy themselves out of the contract. Hummel won’t let this go mind easily. It’s a great deal for them. They might be persuaded next year once the novelty has worn off. You always see a decline in sales in years 4 and 5 of a 5 year deal.
Do you work in the industry?
 
He definitely wants more corporate seats he quoted how much more Everton were making in there new stadium. I can see a big extension to the east stand with something like Evertons village Street running the length of the stand were you can drink and eat and walk a few yards to your padded seats
Put the away fans back in the South Stand.
Open the North Stand Upper back up there are 3 blocks of Seats currently empty each match day which were Black Cat Bar Seats. These could be corporate again.
Or you extend the South Stand & the front blocks of seats become Corporate.
 
Put the away fans back in the South Stand.
Open the North Stand Upper back up there are 3 blocks of Seats currently empty each match day which were Black Cat Bar Seats. These could be corporate again.
Or you extend the South Stand & the front blocks of seats become Corporate.
I wouldn’t pay for corporate behind the goal I'd want to be on the halfway line. All the corporate is sold out the only ones they have trouble selling are the 76 yards behind the goal in the north stand
 
I wouldn’t pay for corporate behind the goal I'd want to be on the halfway line. All the corporate is sold out the only ones they have trouble selling are the 76 yards behind the goal in the north stand
Which isnt surprising as these werent the original seats that went with that bar.
The original seats were the one in the front blocks upstairs.
How much is a season card for the 76 Yards bar.
 
Which isnt surprising as these werent the original seats that went with that bar.
The original seats were the one in the front blocks upstairs.
How much is a season card for the 76 Yards bar.
Not sure but for a cat A match it's £300 a ticket for Forest it's about £240
 
Economies of scale could make them cheaper, hence sell more.
If they do build the one thing we can be reasonably sure of is the prices won’t be decreased because there’s more capacity. Similarly we all know they’ll be looking at concession prices and areas as well because we have a healthy % that aren’t paying full price
 
It's pretty sad that modern football has fans talking about revenue and finances. Feels like in order to know what's going on at the club you need a business and finance degree. I just want to watch the lads win as much as possible not worry about increasing corporate sales in order to have enough revenue to sign a player. Or how many pies we need to sell at half time to compete with Brighton ffs.

Football conversations are now more focused on the financial stuff rather than actual football
 
It's pretty sad that modern football has fans talking about revenue and finances. Feels like in order to know what's going on at the club you need a business and finance degree. I just want to watch the lads win as much as possible not worry about increasing corporate sales in order to have enough revenue to sign a player. Or how many pies we need to sell at half time to compete with Brighton ffs.

Football conversations are now more focused on the financial stuff rather than actual football
I might be taking your point too literally but you don’t need to follow or understand those things to support or enjoy the team on the pitch
 
Back
Top