Accounts for BRFC (1883) to 30 June 2023 are now available

The revamp will be commercial loans and part sell off of The Quarters for housing. The playing budget will be the usual, ticket dales, merchandising, hospitality, etc and owner's support.

Paying back the loans and interest will affect future budgets, offset (hopefully) by increased revenue as a result of the improvements.

In theory, anyway.

That's your view and your entitled to it. However I don't see how spending vast amounts of money revamping the Memorial stadium at the expense of a top 6-8 playing budget is the answer .

This season the football have been truly shocking at the Mem and I have been home watching the 5pm results. There is unconfirmed reports the playing budget could take a hit of 25% this season. Are you saying that relegation or a futher decline in footballing success will benefit us as long as the ground gets developed?.

Of course I want both. A revamped stadium and a good playing budget. I don't think we will get both. Something will have to be scraficed.

Have you seen ST sales for next season on the ground link ?. Also were is the evidence that coperate functions will generate money. Gloucestershire Cricket have got wonderful facilities but just posted a 50% increase in loses. Brilliant facilities but less than a 100 for county championship games. The model ain't worked there!.

I have just one question:

Where is this good playing budget going to come from?

I don't know the answer. All I know last season we were relegated and revenue is 50% down on the season before.

It's OK having a revamped attractive stadium. However : if the team are poor and crowds are edging down. Then this directly effects revenue .

Finally if money is no object . Then of course I would like both. I personally would want to maintain division one football with a push to the play offs in the improved ground we got than pour all the cash we have into a major revamp and end up like Bradford Swindon Vale Mk.

And if there's all this money made from 24/7 ground use . Why haven't we done it ? And have it been researched as an economic benefit ?

Lansdown uses his own money though. Banks is just spouting spurious noise.

Shire shouldn't be held up as the way to run a business at the moment, no. It's been incredibly poor post-covid for many reasons both the fault and not the fault of the club. That said it would be a lot worse without the pavilion and the funds it's raised. We can look at that element of the cricket club when it comes to non-match day revenue. The Mem like has been said isn't used for 13 out of 14 days and that's a total waste. 

I hope this gives some info for Gloucestershire County Championship attendances in 2023.
Only 8 other counties had higher total attendances for the 4-day game. They look pretty good to me.
Obviously not as good as Somerset! 😉
But Taunton and the county is a ‘cricket town’ and area. Bristol isn’t. 


www.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/1cmmt4n/county_championship_total_attendances_in_2023/?rdt=33100


UTG!

No problem oldmarket. As I read the thread I just thought information about Gloucestershire attendances would help in the discussion. 👍

UTG!

But is it sound business Topper if the focus is on the corporate at the expense of the playing budget ?. What I witnessed in 2024 at the Memorial stadium was one of the worst performances I ever seen in 40 odd years.

A record of something like W 2 D1 L9 . And I don't buy this cut backs or rationalisation will improve outcomes. If you got 10 bricklayers and 10 labourers on a building site and you cut it to 5 / 5 . How will that improve performance outcomes ?.

Whenever this time of year comes around and the accounts are published it throws up similar discussions each year.
BRFC has had a variety of owners in my time. The boards in the 60s and early 70s kept things ticking along but never invested much money in anything. They probably didn’t have it to spend. No good spending it on the stadium because Eastville wasn’t theirs but they didn’t invest it in the team either with only few significant forays into the transfer market. But well done to them they had us in the Championship for some years. But as Eastville deteriorated the inevitable happened and we had to leave. The Dunford were very good ‘problem solvers’ and had us getting value for money and saved the club in many ways. But they had no large amounts of money to compete in what was beginning to happen. Since then Higgs did his best but no great amount of money to make a real difference before he sold us to the AQs. Rich but not going to spend too much over what they did. Now the ASs ( in combo with WAQ?). Rich, but not that rich it seems. What they have all tried to do is do both the ground infrastructure stuff and improve the team. But they have lacked the money to do both so we’ve moved from season to season, from good to better back to worse.
So we keep ticking over, from one season to the next. Tbf to the owners they’ve all had plans but have lacked the money to see them through. I don’t think they had any vision for what we could be. Plans but no vision. The foreign owners we’ve had were never going to have the vision to invest in the long term for BRFC. Not in the way Tony Bloom at Brighton, Gary Sweet at Luton or Matthew Benham at Brentford have done. And I’ve used these clubs because they were our traditional rivals as I grew up.

I’m very grateful for all that the owners have done for us over the years but until we have someone who comes with a long term vision, the money to implement it and the commitment to doing it we’ll likely be having similar discussions for years. And all we can do is enjoy the ride! Enjoy the Wembley trip in 2015, enjoy the D/R match in 2016 and the Scunthorpe match in 2022 and even the Pompey match last Christmas. Compared to some we’ve been very lucky to have had all those days in the last 10 years.

As always, UTG!