Hamilton Accies chief executive Colin McGowan chief executive discusses financial predicament of club
| Published date | 05 February 2021 |
The financial implications have been severe upon the Lanarkshire club, like many others, and McGowan revealed intimate details of the challenges facing the club moving forward.
Hamilton Accies have engaged in significant charity work to help the local community but that has led to criticism from a minority of fans but McGowan stresses why it’s of fundamental importance to the sustainability of the club, and team....
Hamilton only generated £95,856.76 after tax from season ticket sales last season, is that indicative of the finances generated by the club through that avenue and why tickets are given away?
“We give away as many tickets to charities and comps as we have supporters. Obviously if we had more supporters on the ground, we’d have less tickets to give away to the charities.”
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“Everyone of these charities support and contribute to the club. Whether it be volunteers, those volunteers buying food and merchandise of the 50/50 tickets when they are at games.
In terms of the composition of the board, there are nine members upon it but your role isn’t focused predominantly on football operations?
“I’m not overly involved with the football side, it takes care of itself. Ronnie MacDonald, Allan Maitland, George Cairns and Brian Rice all run the football.
“I’m the chief executive, I’m the financial director and controller, I'm the head commercial salesman and I’m entrusted by the board to handle all the non-footballing roles.
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“I do a lot of different roles because we simply don’t have as big a staff as other clubs because we like to leave as much money in the player budget.
"The guys I previously mentioned have nothing to do with the stadium operational side.
“I’m one of the owners of the club who have put in place a board of directors with over 200 years of football experience. I’ve always explained that my football knowledge is limited.
“The bottom line is that when we came here with Jim Watson, the club wasn’t in a position to pay the wages.
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"I’ve got business abilities in crisis management and I assisted to sell a bit of our ground to Morrison’s to balance the books.
“At the same time, I asked Ronnie MacDonald , who in my eyes is a football genius, to help out and we now have the longest serving board in Scottish football.”
Is there any crossover between the football side of the club and the operational structure? Would they need your sign off on transfers, for example?
“We put a budget in place at the start of the season. If the player budget was a million pound budget, then if they signed one player for a million pound then only one player would run out the tunnel.
“Ronnie and Allan are geniuses in that department. We create a budget that we can afford during the season and if we can give them more than I’ll do that. If I’m able to strike a commercial deal then the money will go to them.
“We need to consider that if the wage budget is high then we need to factor in that we offer our player good bonuses for wins and draws.
“We are spending £36,000 a month in Covid testing plus we have no money coming in through season ticket sales - I believe we are the only club in the top flight to do so.”
On the season tickets, what was the thought process behind not offering season tickets to supporters? Was there moral justification to the decision?
“I just didn’t think that it would be right. Plus, if we were selling season tickets and then unable to host fans then we’d be inundated with phone calls from fans asking...
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