stuartcraig

Not really. Celtic paid about 1.5 million for Fernandez and 30K for Broto. Those debts amount to £760K for six months of operation. Fernandez and Broto joined Airdrie is 2000 and moved to Celtic in 2003. Uneducated guess, Archibald would have had to sell a Fernandez every season in order to break even.

Not nothing. I believe the legal phrase is "motive and means".

Other than the fact that it's Budge who has facilitated the introduction between this guy and the SPFL. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52881608

Steve Archibald: Scottish football 'land of opportunity' for investors

Maybe he could be the new Archibald. No idea whether that’s a good thing.

Why is it a better offer for fans? There’s no return for their money other than knowing it’s helping to cover the club’s running costs. So, in effect, exactly the same as a donation. The only difference is the running costs are significantly greater if the club is in hibernation. I severely doubt that Falkirk will lose more money while in hibernation than playing closed door games, so have to ask why they’re doing it. The only realistic answer I can think of is still that they see it as way of guaranteed and early promotion.

You’ll possibly go down the tubes a bit quicker if you don’t have the government paying your wage bill, or at least a significant share of it, while opening for business 5 months before your main source of revenue comes back online. Unless a team like Falkirk can find some other way of generating revenue while no one is paying to spectate, then I can’t see any other benefit in starting back before January except the prospect of buying early promotion to the Championship. I honestly don’t see why asking fans to pay for season tickets for games they don’t get to watch is any more attractive an offer than asking them to donate toward the running costs of a hibernating club.

I don’t have any confidence at all that it would be a viable solution but, in fairness, I can’t say it definitely wouldn’t work either.

For a second I was thinking that you were just being your usual delusional self but, having thought about it, maybe clubs could live stream their home games and the season ticket would offset or cover the cost of that streaming access for subscribers. I doubt it would come anywhere near covering running costs but maybe it's an option.

I suppose it’ll depend heavily on whether it suits your argument.

So, coming back to my original proposition, since sporting integrity “went out the window” it shouldn’t be too much of a personal sacrifice for you to promise to not complain about its absence in future SPFL decisions, even the ones that don’t offer Falkirk an advantage.

But there is sporting integrity in promoting teams just because they are rich enough that they can afford to play on a closed door basis. Thanks for clearing that up. I was a bit confused there. I thought sporting integrity meant being promoted after actually winning something.

And if that league is the Championship you’ll promise to never ever again keep banging on about sporting integrity. Sounds like a fair trade.

Correct me if I’m wrong but don’t you want to be promoted to the Championship in order to play the other clubs who want to play a full season?

I miss the time on here when Falkirk fans were all about sporting integrity.

Nice strawman.

Why is a discussion about a more equitable distribution of TV revenue within the Scottish game “petty”? Why does it have to be tied to reconstruction talks rather than an emergency interim measure based on the needs of all clubs? Why would Premiership clubs have to continue to sustain full outgoings rather than reduce them by furloughing non essential staff? This would certainly make sense if, as you say, they stand to run at significant loss if they are relying on TV revenue. Why do you presume that lower league clubs have no ongoings? They have ground maintenance, business rates, utility bills, debts to service etc. Pretty much the same as big clubs. Why is it unfair for football players to be furloughed when employees of other businesses don’t get a similar exemption?

Catch up. Nobody is currently saying that.

You lost me 1st. No one was currently suggesting that the revenue from the TV deal should be sacrificed by stopping clubs from playing. As for viewing the current proposal as an act of altruism by Premiership clubs which is as much about supporting Scottish Football in general as it is about securing their own commercial interests, colour me unconvinced.

You're sure of that are you? Anyway, how did we get from increasing support for poorer teams to taking all the TV revenue they're currently entitled to and handing it to richer teams. If you were captain on the Titanic, would you be shouting "women and children last"? Which team are we talking about here? I'm guessing the combined league one and two share is currently about 6% - 1.8 million split between the other 22 teams is not going to be anything close to 1 million per team. More like 90K per team.

We're definitely not a big club but we have a number of players (9 I think) with 12 months to run on their contracts.

I don't buy the "selling them on" bit. I thought that stopped being a thing in Scottish football in the 90s. What prevents the bigger clubs from furloughing their players?

That's an assumption. Even if the government is paying the wages of every single person on the payroll (which won't last indefinitely) clubs will still have costs they can't avoid and next to no source of income other than what the SPFL provides. If the former amount exceeds the latter and they don't have access to credit then they're in trouble.

Somewhere between “My need is greater than yours” and “Tough Titty”.

Replace “necessarily need” with “want” and you’re probably there. Taking the Rangers basket case out of the equation.... ... is there any evidence that the Premiership clubs “need” the revenue they’d hypothetically cede than the lower league clubs who would benefit. Is a Forfar or East Fife more or less likely to go bust under the current arrangement than Hamilton or Livi under a revised arrangement. I don’t know the answer to that but I’d at least like the question to be asked before we decide that restarting the Premiership while leaving the rest of Scottish football to weather the lockdown until January with only the current share on the TV revenue for cash flow is “problem solved”.