Non-league football clubs and crowdfunded player wages
Is it right to ask supporters to help a club to punch above its weight?
When committing to a stance as a football supporter it’s important to recognise that speaking for everyone is impossible. Every opinion, no matter how fervent or righteous, will immediately find dissent upon contact with air.
I personally am wholly opposed to gambling advertising in football. I don’t want it on the front of shirts. I don’t want it on sleeves. I don’t want it in the name of a league. I don’t want it on the television or billboards or hoardings.
There’s no way that kind of zero tolerance approach will ever achieve consensus, not least because millions of football supporters like a bet – me included, once upon a time, though I do now abstain for reasons that should already be obvious – and are understandably less in favour of a blanket ban.
Nevertheless, the Premier League has made moves to outlaw future primary shirt sponsorship deals between clubs and gambling companies. It is, therefore, perceived to be on the way out.
So it was with some disappointment that we learned a few months ago that Aston Villa, the club I support (when Coventry Sphinx aren’t playing) have signed up for the bookies’ last hurrah.
The deal was confirmed and announced last week. What fun. And it’s with BK8, no less. You may remember them from such headlines as ‘Norwich City axe BK8 sponsorship deal over sexualised marketing’ and ‘the UK company which owns the BK8 trademark worldwide stands to be struck off and forcibly dissolved by the Registrar of Companies’. Classy.
Former CEO Christian Purslow departed with some credit in the bank thanks to the team’s turnaround on the pitch but last Thursday was a spectacular indictment of the apparently growing shit show he leaves behind.
BK8 was confirmed, an appalling home kit was revealed and then the new badge was walked back to interim status pending who-knows-what in a year’s time. One can only hope last week’s chaotic communication was the beginning of the new regime tidying up Purslow’s slimy, greedy mess and not an indication of more of the same.
Non-league football clubs and crowdfunded player wages
The summer is a fascinating time to be involved in non-league football. Some of us follow clubs facing an imminent, exciting stride into the unknown. For others, well, it’s another year to navigate just for the fun of it.
May, June and July are a chance to have a deserved rest for those of us behind the scenes as well as players, but the break from matches is also a time to take stock, to set expectations, to consider possibilities. The close-season is a reset and budgets are at the heart of every board conversation and committee meeting from Bodmin to Bedlington.
A recent tweet from Grantham Town caught my eye. Grantham play in the East division of the Northern Premier League (Step 4, the second tier of the NPL) and announced the return of their “Playing Fund” on 19th June. This is a supporter-led initiative but there are and have been other crowdfunding campaigns driven by the clubs themselves. Hendon’s Twelfth Man Fund is a longstanding example, albeit at a club owned by its Supporters Trust.
The premise is as simple as can be: clubs ask supporters for money to pay players. There’s not much mystery involved; the request is right out there in all its naked glory. Nobody’s getting scammed. Yet there is a lot of criticism of crowdfunding campaigns in non-league when the aim is to raise money to pay players.
The opposing argument is simple too. With the country in the hellish grip of a Cost of Living crisis, dipping into one’s meagre reserves to artificially inflate the spending power of a part-time football club – and we’re skirting mighty close to issues of misplaced emotional commitment here, if not addiction – is frivolous.
There’s plenty of truth in that but in those summer months, clubs like Grantham and Hendon and practically all the others in non-league are looking for ways to raise money. Just like clubs higher up the food chain they face financial challenges and a pressure to compete, two mighty forces grinding together waiting for our clubs to fall in between them to be chewed into insolvent mush.
It’s a perfectly cromulent opinion that crowdfunding initiatives are nothing more than another creative fundraising lever upon which clubs can pull in the desperate non-league cycle of thrive and survive. Are raffles and 50/50 draws and blackout cards problematic in the same way? Are player sponsorships?
Supporters have always embraced these ways to donate to their clubs. The ability to do so and for it to actually mean something is one of the big differences that makes non-league such a popular alternative to the Premier League and the EFL.
People have frittered away their money at non-league football for as long as non-league football has been there. While many of us are more than happy for the pennies we throw the way of our clubs to drop into the general revenue bucket, don’t we get an extra little kick knowing our hard-earned is going towards the first team playing budget?
I don’t think that’s an unreasonable assumption and it reinforces the idea that this type of crowdfunding offers something the myriad other micro-donation opportunities cannot. A sense of participation and ownership is vital when it comes to successfully running any sort of non-league fundraising programme. Many supporters like to directly contribute. My money will only be used to pay players?! How awful!
Crowdfunding isn’t especially original but it’s still a creative tool for non-league football clubs. In a world of raffles and race nights – formidable fundraising sources both – asking supporters to contribute to a fund for player wages can be considered a worthwhile marketing idea in its own right. The fact that this paragraph exists is testament to that. A gimmick it may be, but it’s a gimmick that grabs attention.
Critics argue that crowdfunding campaigns skew competition. If a club’s more natural income streams put them at a certain level of playing budget, initiatives like Grantham’s Playing Fund artificially elevates their ability to sign and pay players that might ordinarily be beyond their reach.
There’s a logic to that. But the playing field is already tilted in favour of the very same clubs that could make a good fist of crowdfunding. It always has been. They have more supporters. They have bigger attendances. If run properly, they already have an advantage.
After all, there’s nothing new in football. Another fun football favourite is clubs of all levels over-extending themselves in the name of competition and ambition. The argument against player funds isn’t just that they’re unfair, but that they can be a risk for the club in question too.
Overdoing it always feels like a good idea at the time, doesn’t it? We all like to punch above our weight, especially in sport. But crowdfunding is usually temporary. It’s not a route to sustainable expenditure over time and even in the short-term it’s an inconsistent and unpredictable funding stream. Aren’t they all?
Then there’s the great moral question where we first came in. Supporters are struggling for money and asking them to top-up their clubs’ playing budget is perhaps a little sketchy. But if they’re happy to do so and the requisite transparency of wages (lols!) is in place, what’s the harm?
Life in non-league football isn’t that simple. The vast majority of clubs are propped up if not entirely run by volunteers. Matchdays simply don’t happen without them. They’re dedicated. They’re important. And, right now, they’re skint.
They volunteer because they want to and because they believe in the importance of what they do, but it’s not hard to imagine some resistance to crowdfunding that’s explicitly geared towards growing the cake they never get to eat.
That’s hypothetical. The bottom line is that I, both as a supporter and as a volunteer, would swim through barbed wire for a quality striker.
Ultimately, there’s no right or wrong answer. Grantham, Hendon and others know much better than me. They’re looking much more closely at the pros and cons. Some people inside and outside those clubs will have a problem with it. Others will consider it a mere expansion of a club’s existing ability to fill the coffers. They’re all correct.
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“They are still here in June, completing an unyieldingly large circle. They’re well-paid, some will say – presumably those who have worked out the regenerative, restorative magic of rubbing £50 notes onto desperately aching muscles to make them heal.”
Daniel Storey and I, and other pals of ours, talk a lot about footballers and whether they’re playing too much, too frequently, not enough, whatever. Last week he reflected on the 325-day(!) season endured by some of England’s players who featured in the recent European Championships qualifiers.
Salty beef extracts
With Bellingham gone, what next for Borussia Dortmund? (The Sound of Football)
The cockroach cadre: Argentina’s tough, resilient coaches are the toast of football (The Guardian)
Andoni Iraola: master of organised chaos offers Bournemouth new identity (The Guardian)
Will Scottish football ever escape its addiction to gambling sponsors? (Nutmeg Magazine via The Guardian)
Villa enter the gambling sunset with one last 'sweet' deal (House of V)
WSL takeover: What are key decisions before next year's takeover completion? (BBC Sport)
Cheering on our own ruin (The Ugly Game)
Why are Halesowen Town nicknamed the “Yeltz”? (Benjamin Bullock)
Dessert
Aberdeen’s 2023/24 “Northern Lights” away kit is going to take some beating.
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I'm a director of a non league club. Won a league & cup double last season at Step 4, but the manager and almost the entire squad have left. A lot of it is travel, as Step 3 will be harder in that respect, but money's also a factor - we just can't match the offers the players are getting from other clubs, lower down the pyramid. It's tough, but that's how it goes.