Charlton Athletic Women set £50k fundraising total as Covid-19 impact adds extra costs
richard@slpmedia.co.uk
Charlton Athletic Women are looking to raise £50,000 to cover a funding shortfall – with owner Stephen King admitting they might as well scrap the team if it cannot continue in the Championship.The Addicks are already potentially facing playing their 15 home games next season behind closed doors due to Covid-19 – a hit in income of around £15,000.
Other expenses include:
* a 15k medical pot for the FA
* FA mandated ground improvements that have increased their rent at VCD Athletic by an extra £5,000
* reduced sponsorship opportunities
“In an ideal world we get more than £50k because it is not much fun keeping it going at a loss anyway,” said King, who is the major shareholder. “We couldn’t really sustain an additional loss of £50k.
“What I didn’t want to do is just say, like Gillingham did, that we might as well just call it a day.
“Having got this far and established ourselves in the division, albeit we didn’t perform many wonders or rip up any trees last season, we are in a fair position in the second tier.
“The alternative to trying to find the money to stay in the division would either be to disband – which would be a disaster – or to apply to go into a lower tier. My understanding is that tier three and four are locked for next season anyway, because their seasons were expunged with no promotion or relegation.
“So if we were to look at going to a different league then we’d be looking fifth or sixth tier. If you’re going to do that you may as well pack up anyway, because it is too big a gap to try and claw back – you’d lose all your staff, players and funding.
“We grasped the nettle and said: ‘Let’s try and get this out in the public domain’.”
King and Katrien Meire, then Charlton men’s chief executive, signed an agreement three years ago which saw owner Roland Duchatelet allow the women to use the Sparrows Lane training ground for free.
“Considering we had not achieved promotion at the time there was a reasonable, small cash amount for the club,” said King. “But that was £10k a season. Before that we were paying [Charlton Athletic] Community Trust about £3.5k a year to use their pitch. Now we don’t pay for Sparrows Lane, so that’s definitely helped.
“Coupled with that was a gift of kit. They wanted the men and women to all have the same kit. They would supply it, but we wouldn’t get any money.
“Each season we’d get a top-up of £5-6k to replace anything which had worn out. But that wasn’t just for the seniors – that was all the junior teams as well. It doesn’t go anywhere and each year we’ve managed to overspend.”
When East Street Investments took control of the men’s side in January, King claims that Matt Southall and Jonathan Heller both agreed that they should support the women to the tune of £50,000.
But the pair of directors were left powerless as a bitter boardroom struggle saw Tahnoon Nimer freeze them out of the picture. King recalls: “I said to Matt Southall that the average contribution that other clubs in our division were getting from their parent clubs is about £50,000. He said that wouldn’t be a problem and he was going to commit to the £15k into the medical pot. He said not to worry, it was only a matter of time but that he needed to get it over the line.
“We came up with great plans about what we could do. But within a week the bloke had gone, so all those plans fell down the crack. Things were already financially precarious. But with what we thought was a promise of an extra £50k coming our way by the start of the new season, this was before the coronavirus pandemic, at least we had a fighting chance of getting through the following season.”
Charlton announced that Paul Elliott was the new owner in early June.
King is hoping to have a conversation with the Manchester-based businessman, who is not revealing the set-up of his consortium until their deal for the football club is approved by the EFL.
When Charlton won promotion to the Championship, the FA funding only met £60,000 of the additional £100,000 needed to play at that level. The current cost of competing is closer to £250,000 a season.
But the cost of coach travel, a cheap hotel and meals for a fixture in Durham would cost around £3,000 alone.
“Up to that point I estimate – I’ve given up adding it all up because it gets frightening really – that I’ve put £350k into the club since 2010-11,” said King.
“Since we’ve been in this division I’ve put money in by a number of ways – either share issues, which is money down the pan, but also by loans. In December I put a £12k loan in, otherwise on January 1 we wouldn’t have been able to pay December’s wages.
“I’d guess my loan to the club is not far shy of £40k but we also have another gentleman who has no interest, other than Charlton Women, and is effectively spending his pension to generously support us with the cost of away travel, physio and medical supplies.”
The Covid-19 outbreak has hit so many businesses. The Premier League have handed £1million to the Women’s FA to cover the costs of teams’ testing staff and players, but the absence of football at fixtures and struggle for sponsorship remains.
King is hoping that the strain can be eased by people making donations or committing to standing orders
What happens if they don’t hit their £50k target?
“I’m the director and there is a legal obligation – you can’t deliberately carry on a business if it is insolvent,” said King. “There are two things we can do.
“The first is to look at the sums and say it wouldn’t be possible to see that season out, so one shouldn’t enter it.
“Or we can take the view that because a lot of the funding is front-end loaded – for example the FA grant which is due to come in August or September – is say, a bit like Mr Micawber, that something will turn up. And that something would be new ownership for Charlton, who are prepared to honour what Matt Southall promised in the name of ESI, although I appreciate he doesn’t have any status there any more.
“But he wasn’t speaking in a personal capacity, he was speaking as a director of ESI. If the club’s situation is resolved over the next few months, before the end of the calendar year, and we get that money then we feel comfortable we’ve got enough to get to the end of the season.
“The line we’re taking at the moment is that with the bits of support we’re getting, that we’re hoping to get from Valley Gold and Charlton men have already honoured the agreement that was done in Roland’s era, due before we start our season, so that we can get rolling. Then we’d need to attain further funding from somewhere. Without extra funding we don’t have enough to complete the season.”
Anyone wishing to make a contribution can do so by visiting the club’s website – https://www.cafcwomen.co.uk/page-shop.php
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