Woodstock Jag

My understanding is that our crowds are calculated by actual attendees not tickets sold/distributed. Fanbase's system is sophisticated enough for the Club to be able to work out how many of the promotional tickets are being used, and I understand that to be the 20% take-up figure. In other words, the initiatives are adding about 100 to the gate. Worth bearing in mind that concessionals also grows at the other end. It's not just young folk, it's also senior citizens.

I would love us to get to a position where TJF's pledge is an unbudgeted bonus for the Club. Realistically, I think that is some way off, unless we start getting into a position of strong player trading.

I hear Park's of Hamilton are putting on coach tours of the Firth of Clyde for the thousands of tourists at a loose end on Hogmanay.

It is simply false to state that "a large chunk of our losses are advised by the Board "donations" to external organisations linked to PTFC". Totally false.

I think this overstates it. I personally voted for Tranche 2. But I completely respect the view of those who don't. And the onus is on the Club Board to make either outcome work. Tranche 2 does involve trade-offs for fan-ownership. Less severe ones than some other alternatives, but still trade-offs. It isn't, in itself, a sustainability plan (though delivering one would be much harder with £500k less in the bank). What it would provide is the necessary breathing space to implement a sustainability plan while keeping at least a moderately competitive football team on the park. Others can legitimately disagree with this approach, but I think the onus is then on them to explain how they would deal with the cash crunch point that is a little over 3 months away, and to own the implications of their approach in terms of its impact on (a) on-field performance and (b) the underlying business.

Let’s put firmly to bed the idea that increased spending on the Women’s team was why Partick Thistle is making a six-figure loss. It isn’t. After a season in which Partick Thistle Women secured their first ever top six finish, the Club increased its direct funding from about £20kpa to about £30kpa. That has since been preserved. The two teams also (currently) share a first team front-of-shirt sponsor, based on a deal signed ahead of the summer 2023. The Women’s team is run on a complete shoe-string and, that aside, normally self-funds. This season they’ve been buffeted by extra costs of having to host games away from Petershill earlier in the season which has increased some one-off costs. But it’s all still small change against the backdrop of a £3 million turnover football club making well into six-figure losses. Insisting that the Women’s team “self funds” would be the equivalent of one full time equivalent salary coming off the Club’s books. Similarly, those who would close the Youth Academy should be aware of the facts. The reality is that this season it expects not to receive any direct funding from the Club, despite a sizeable five-figure sum having been budgeted for. This is because the Academy is already self-sustaining under its new and diversified funding model. In season 2023-24, the costs of the Academy were underwritten by a benefactor (this is thankfully not now needed). In season 2022-23 the Academy made a loss but was also underwriting the wage costs of the Club’s modern apprentices, to the tune of almost £100k. That no longer happens as the Club now pays for it directly. These are the employment contracts of fringe first team players. Even if you didn’t have an Academy, you would still have a handful of 16-18 year olds on contracts like these as part of your first team group.

That may well be your opinion. And time may well prove you to be right. But it is not what was said at the open meeting. Which is what you said. A completely fair criticism. But my point is that it's not just "a bit better" on disclosure than the previous arrangement. It involves these sorts of points being aired in the period immediately after a budget has been set, rather than 18 months afterwards and at least 6 months after the full financial results have played out. But it's therefore wrong to state that it is "frankly ludicrous" to point out that there is more room to cut costs in a close season, when promotion is not being proactively prioritised, than in a mid-season, when it is.

That's not what was said. The Club said it was aiming for a break-even budget in 2025-26. Before fan-ownership, you wouldn't have found out about this strategy until late 2025/early 2026, when the relevant AGM when the final accounts for season 2024-25 are published. Instead, fans were informed about this approach across (a) a summer financial update on the website (b) an open Q&A session with fans in early September and (c) in even more detail against the backdrop of the investment proposal. Almost a full year earlier than similar such "punts" were disclosed in the past. Could (a) have come slightly earlier? Yes, and we as Trustees tried to push for it to come earlier. Could (a) have been more explicit? Yes, though it's for the Club Board to make a judgment call and to own what it considers to be commercially sensitive. I personally don't think that it's practical to put the draft club budget out to the full fanbase for approval, given the obvious commercial sensitivity of that exercise. I'm not aware of any fan-owned football club that does this, and it's not what the Club-Trust Agreement provides for. Happy to be persuaded otherwise if there's a practical and compelling way it can be made to work. Season 2025-26, not season 2026-27. They did identify the expectation that playing costs would be cut drastically for future seasons. Clearly it's more difficult to cut those in the middle of a season once they're locked-in.

Totally hear your frustration. I understand the delay is simply a case of availability of relevant staff to finalise the recording and Club Board to quick review and give it green light. Expected to be out in the next day or so. Trustee side we've urged them to get it out ASAP. Considerable sympathy with this argument and have suggested we move towards something like this arrangement longer-term. There are some practical considerations to bear in mind TJF isn't (currently) a shareholder (our influence is as a co-trustee and in our members being 2/3 of the beneficiaries of the PTFC Trust). If TJF acquired its own shareholding the fan ownership shares would be split out across three different bodies - if anything good governance might point to consolidation longer-term, not fragmentation. Not a fatal argument, but comes with its own questions and admin. Donations are much easier to account for, and less administratively burdensome, than a rolling share issue - the pledge arrangement has the benefit of simplicity and was quick to put in place when the Club urgently needed cash Any cash for equity arrangement would have to be discounted from the Club's operating income - this has implications in accounting terms for calculating the Club's profit/loss ledger, making it harder (on paper) to break-even - this is the least persuasive argument to my mind though, as the Club gets the cash either way, it's just accounted for differently. The more fundamental consideration to bear in mind is that, given the fans are making donations through TJF, and the Club is losing money, the pledge is effectively functioning as a form of "negative dividend" - the price of fan ownership, if you like, is to have a duty to contribute to help the Club stay solvent. Donald has indicated repeatedly (and publicly) that he will (at least) match whatever the fans contribute in TJF fundraising (pro rata to his own shareholding relative to that of the PTFC Trust's). So far, it is worth recognising, he has very comfortably exceeded this.

Going to invoke the butterfly effect here. If we'd won the balls wouldn't have been drawn like that.

"Effeminate" Really? Away and have a lie down.

Monikie is looking forward to assuming his rightful position on the Football Committee should Tranche 2 go ahead. Cost controls of kibble cannot be guaranteed.

As the Club has clarified elsewhere, Donald’s wife is unwell, which is why he will be joining remotely instead of flying across from California. I’m sure almost all folk will understand, are grateful that Donald will still be able to participate, wish his wife well, and accept this wasn’t something either the Club or he would particularly have wanted to discuss or state publicly (it’s none of our business). Alas last night the Club felt they had little choice after certain bad faith actors (not anyone who has posted about it on here, I hasten to add) decided to go in two-footed on social media, insinuating impropriety with zero evidence whatsoever.

The Trustees have made clear that budgets from season 2025-26 onwards must be prepared on a break-even basis. It follows that any budget presented to us with a forecast of “losses continuing at a smaller level” in 2025-26 wouldn’t pass that test and would not secure Trustee approval. The budget for 2024-25 was only presented to the Trustees in April 2024. We haven’t been presented with a budget for 2025-26 yet. So I’m unable to say one way or the other whether any forecast is a credible one for break even or not.

Yes Recent history would suggest this, yes. Yes. I haven't said this.

That depends on what you count as making a profit. Once debt interest was taken into account the season 2013-14, the first back in the Premiership, saw a (very) small loss posted. A neat illustration of how using an overdraft facility or other bank lending makes it harder to break even. And why therefore a share issue is probably a better way of dealing with cashflow challenges in the longer run. But again, this neatly explains why it’s not easy to break even as a football club. Mistakes in income forecasts are principally down to things that aren’t entirely in your control, and there is very substantial variation based on very minor differences in footballing performance (especially). And yet despite wages going up drastically in seasons 2015-16 and 2016-17 compared with 2014-15, a profit was made in those two subsequent years. Which neatly illustrates that the correlation between wage spend and profitability hasn’t been very strong. And that it’s far from clear that big cuts would realise reduced losses on the scale you think they would. Indeed the reverse may well be true.

I was confining my remarks to the period in which the Club was playing in the Premiership, since JJ also did so.

In the interests of accuracy... In season 2014-15 Partick Thistle Football Club Limited lost £292k. Colin Weir's near 7-figure injection of capital into the Football Club, which enabled it to become debt-free, materialised in December 2015. So the most recent set of accounts to be put to shareholders, shortly before that investment happened, was a bigger loss than the one forecast for this season. It is absolutely correct to say that the Club subsequently would turn a profit in seasons 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18. But this was achieved in part through spending more money on wages and delivering returns on player trading.

Fascinating how Jim is just casually ignoring, when comparing the 2022-23 financial outcomes with the 2023-24 financial outcomes, the fact that the former saw £280k of unbudgeted revenue from an Old Firm tie and the latter didn’t. So, on a like-for-like basis, the effect on the structural deficit was to reduce it by roughly three quarters. TJF’s money explains a significant part of that reduction, but less than half of it. Not the whole kit and caboodle.

If we're struggling to pay our debtors we really are in trouble.

As I've just shown you, the actuals for revenue have, in the last three seasons, varied by £700k. In this division. Agreed. That's why we instructed the Club to assume more pessimistic footballing outcomes than the budget they originally prepared. That's not the argument. The point is that it is more difficult, in football than in many other businesses, to make significant in-year downward changes to wages if budgeted revenue does not materialise, and there is high volatility in the primary revenue sources. You are (broadly speaking) committing to a figure in July/August, which you then have very limited capacity to alter except briefly in January, for the full financial year. In other businesses it is much easier to adjust downwards wage-spend in response to other developments, at any time of year. So if you're going to adopt a more "conservative" set of assumptions about turnover when setting a wage budget to hit 60%, that's going to restrict, quite drastically, your ability to hire people. That will have consequences for footballing performance (thus prize money, the single largest component of a successful football team's revenue in Championship football), and off-field revenue generation. It's a vicious cycle.

His point is an obvious one. The vast majority of Partick Thistle's wages are spent on football players and coaching staff. So if you are arguing that significant cuts need to be made to wages, on the scale that would need to be made, in order to meet a 60% wages to turnover ratio, at least some of that, and in practice probably most of it, is likely to fall on the playing budget. That is likely to have a negative impact on expected prize-money and gate receipts. Suppressing turnover by potentially very large six figure sums. Requiring you to make more cuts to wages to meet your 60% wages to turnover ratio. It is therefore unclear how simply "making cuts" and "spending less on wages" makes the Club more sustainable. It could in fact just lead to the Club losing the same amount of money, or more, and with worse footballing outcomes.

No. I'm asking you to explain how the turnover figure - for the purposes of preparing the season 2024-25 budget (or indeed any future budget) - which is premised on volatile future revenues - should, in your view, be calculated for the purposes of deciding to spend only 60% of revenue on wages. In 2018-19 Partick Thistle had a turnover of £3.04 million. In 2019-20 Partick Thistle had a turnover of £2.66 million. In 2020-21 Partick Thistle had a turnover of £1.48 million. In 2021-22 Partick Thistle had a turnover of £2.47 million. In 2022-23 Partick Thistle had a turnover of £2.82 million. In 2023-24 Partick Thistle had a turnover of over £3.1 million. What turnover figure should Partick Thistle use for the purposes of the 2024-25 budget? Give me a number and a margin of error. I'll allow you, for the sake of argument, ±£150k. Tell us what it should be based on. Without that number, we cannot meaningfully say what "60%" looks like for the purposes of deciding what the Club has available to spend on hiring people. 60% of the lowest of these figures is less than £900k. For the Club's entire staff. A figure broadly equivalent to Greenock Morton's playing budget. 60% of the highest of these figures is almost £1.9 million. More than double. And within £100k of what the Club's staffing budget was in season 2022-23. What turnover figure should we be using, and why? Jim likes calling TJF The West Wing of Partick Thistle. Well in the words of Jed Bartlett: show me [turnover] numbers, Mrs Landingham!

But your turnover isn’t a fixed known figure in advance. It varies by several hundreds of thousands of pounds based how well your income sources perform, and several of them are very unpredictable (for example, football prize money and gate income). Thistle has varied between having a turnover of anything between £2 million and £3.1 million in this division in relatively recent history. If we are taking the lower of those two figures, you are suggesting that the total wage bill for the entire football club should be cut by more than £800k as against 2022-23 levels. Without in any way compromising footballing outcomes or off-field revenue generating operations. If we are talking the higher of those two figures, that means only roughly a £100-150k cut in wages/social security/pensions. A very different, much more manageable, proposition. Which figure should Thistle be using? How should those cuts be achieved? Specifics. Pounds and pence. You are literally telling us that we should be trying to achieve a wage to turnover improvement akin to what Aberdeen achieved between 2022-23 and 2023-24. You are calling on Thistle to do that! We are talking about Aberdeen’s situation where they (a) made £1.1 million profit in 2022-23 with a 74% wage to turnover ratio and (b) in 2023-24 made a £900k loss with a 54% wage to turnover ratio. So either you: (a) accept that the wage to turnover ratio isn’t everything, and that you have to take other things into account when assessing sustainability or (b) are saying we should cut the wages to turnover ratio even if it increases our operating losses! Which is it? When it doesn’t lead to the required footballing outcomes? Yes. Absolutely. But in Aberdeen’s case, it’s been a resounding success, as they’ve slashed their wages to turnover ratio by spending more on their squad, using that as the means to generate revenue from gate income, prize money and player sales, and have improved their bottom line. Despite their £900k loss last season they have almost £7 million from the Miovski transfer in place for this year, and they’re right up at the top of the league. All Clubs are taking some element of risk with what they spend. The question is what the sensible amount of risk to take is. Capped at 60% of what turnover figure? Turnover calculated at what point? The previous season’s actual result? The average of the last 3 seasons? A forward looking forecast? Based on what revenue assumptions? The Club’s turnover has varied between (slightly below) £2.5 million and (slightly above) £3.1 million in this division between seasons 2021-22 and seasons 2023-24. Your 60% wages to turnover target has a more than £300k discrepancy depending on whether you take the lower or the higher of those figures. So which figure does the Club pick? A Club’s wage budget, once set, has relatively little flexibility to be reduced in-season in response to changes in revenue expectations. You can try to save money in the January transfer window. You can try to reduce staffing levels (though savings are always likely to be small given lay-offs involve severance payments). But it’s basically 80-90% baked in from August until May. So what’s the approach here? Be specific. Do you take the most pessimistic possible turnover assumption (relegation prize money, low 2000s crowds, a £2 million turnover football club), and give yourself the task of cutting more than the entire non-footballing staff budget and more? Or do you set the expected turnover figure higher, and keep on more of your playing and administrative staff, on the basis that this will generate additional income, with a successful football team and people being paid to deliver better commercial income for the Club, but in the knowledge that, worst case scenario, it might not? Thats your dilemma. This is about trade-offs. It’s not “simple”.