rebus
On my final warning
Cliff Crown BU AGM Transcript
Here's a transcription of Cliff Crown's appearance at the Bees United AGM on Monday. It's taken from the video below and not the full set of questions.
CC: So I think the club frankly should be congratulated on posting what would have been a profit before the promotion payments in a year when we were coping with COVID. It's a remarkable achievement, frankly.
I think the key thing to understand is that when we prepare our annual budget, we take into account the likely expenditure, and we budget accordingly. But we do that on the basis of what we already believe is likely to happen in the transfer market. So when we talk about an group operating loss of over 50 million, we were comforted in knowing that whilst that was a likely outcome, we were pretty certain that we were going to make 40 odd million in player trading profits, because deals don't happen in five minutes.
They take time we know what's happening. We talked to players, we talked to the agents, so we know what is likely to happen. Sometimes as you know, we try and do our trading at the early part of the transfer window. And sometimes it drifts on towards the end of the transfer window.
But the reality is we got a pretty good idea who is staying and who is going, and so we are comfortable and we know the income that is likely to come in and so on balance, I would say that the results are quite remarkable.
Do we have money to buy top players?
CC: I mean, the simple answer to that is: yes. At what level that is subject to obviously the financial resources that we have within the club. You won't be surprised to hear that COVID affected the club quite significantly. And we have fantastic support from the fans and from our sponsors and all of our partners to help us through that period. But we did borrow money, and we've now I'm very pleased to say we paid all of that money in full. And as far as transfers are concerned, Phil Giles and Lee Dykes, who's head of recruitment, are working every day on transfer targets. And as I said earlier, deals do take time to get over the line.
So we still have 14 days left of the transfer window. Whilst I can't promise what will happen, I can say that we'll be doing everything we can to add to the squad and help us ensure that we survive and prosper in the Premier League.
Brentford has a fantastic reputation within the football world. The success that we've had over the last five or six years in developing talent means that there are lots and lots of players who want to come to Brentford, and that puts us in a really strong position to add to the squad, but we'll only do it when we think it's right.
And whilst most of our additions have been young players, you will all have known two years ago that we brought in Pontus Jansson and kind of went against the grain of what we normally do. But there was good reason for that. And we won't hesitate to do something like that again if we feel it's right for the club. So all I would say is over the last five or six years, I think we've proven that we are good custodians of the club, and we will continue to be so.
Ticketing and stadium capacity.
CC: Brentford’s reputation has been built upon the very strong relationship we have with our fan groups when we're talking off the pitch, and that continues, and I'm saying prospers and that is something that we will be addressing with the fan groups over the coming weeks and into February.
Before we make any final decision. We have considered the cost of season tickets and ticket prices generally. As you know, Matthew is very, very keen on affordable football for our fans and that will be the mainstay of how we operate the club.
However, being in the Premier League, even with the money that that produces, doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at this from all angles. We have many investments that we need to make not only in players, but in both staff on and off the pitch, and also infrastructure. For anyone who knows Jersey Road. They'll know that the training ground is not fit for purpose and we do need to allocate funds to develop that training ground in the future. So there are numerous demands on the football club for finances. And we will take everything into account before we make any final decision. But we are still 100 per cent committed to affordable football.
[Stuart Purvis] Thanks very much , that will be welcome news to many people.
Now we've got lots of questions about ticketing Cliff as you'd expect, we probably have to get through these fairly quickly.
[From] Jeff dent, what can the club do to reduce the number of home match tickets ending up on third party resale websites and thereby ensure that no more tickets go to genuine supporters in the first instance?
CC: Yeah, I think that's something that we all feel pretty unhappy about. And John Varney has written to premium season ticket holders last week on this very subject. We have a much larger team of people in our venue sales team - compared to when we were at Griffin Park and when we're in the championship, and that's one of the consequences of being in the new stadium and being in the Premier League, that these kinds of issues are now coming to the fore.
And all I can say is that we are doing everything we can to ensure that this doesn't happen. We have even gone to the point of buying tickets from a agency so that we could find out where those tickets came from, and then take appropriate action against those season ticket holders. So we actually spent money to pay to the agency in order to get the information that we needed to take action. So it's very much at the forefront of one of the many, many things that we have to do to protect the fans and the club and we will continue to do that.
Steve Redden says he's got over 1000 taps points, but his nine year old daughter's got about 100. The problem is how do they sit together? How can this how can this be changed to encourage the fan the future?
CC: And again, it's another good point and the two things I would say particularly to Steve is number one, contact the box office and talk to the venue sales team. And number two, he will be able to transfer some points to his daughter and therefore perhaps give them a more even split of the points and hopefully that will help them grow their number of TAP points.
But if anyone's got any ticketing issues; we're past the days of six months ago when we were getting 500 emails a day and probably 200 calls a day and we only had about three people - two of which were off with COVID. We're now 11 strong in the venue sales team. And I think it's largely the response to emails and phone calls is pretty much under control. Although obviously there aren't peaks and troughs around certain games and certain times of the week, etc. But we're much better staffed today than we were six months ago.
[Stuart Purvis] Can you get your point about transferring points and it will be good news to Keith McInnes who was asking about that on the ticketing site.
Andy Leach says the subject site is clearly not fit for purpose. The staff operating it share the frustration of the fans that needs to replace with a system that works. Is that issue resolved or is obviously going to look as a staffing issue, Cliff. Is there an issue with the site itself?
CC: Listen, no site is perfect. We have a contract with Secutix Tech's which is up in 18 months’ time and we will go out to tender within the next six to nine months to see what else is out there. What I would say is that it has continually improved. And one of the things that we did do back in the summer was we gave notice on the EFL of the website that we have always used which has been run by the EFL and we are building our own custom-built website.
And that will be much more interactive with Secutix and will provide a much better outcome for those using secretaries along with a website. So it is something we're very aware of it was not something we could really afford to do when we're in the championship, because it was it's a very expensive thing to set up your own website, particularly with the amount of whistles and bells that we need for it to work successfully.
We're well aware that there are limitations but there are limitations with every ticketing site and we constantly striving to improve it and we have done a lot to improve it. And we'll continue to work with Secutix to improve the customer journey. But it's something that unfortunately, will there always be people who will find difficulties and there will be occasions and your best bet is really contact the venue sales team and see if they can help resolve the issue for you.
[Stuart Purvis] We're getting some people online saying they didn't realise you could transfer points from one person to another.
CC: Only in families. So you can't do it to friends but you can do it within families.
[Stuart Purvis] Many thanks now, let's just we're not going be able to get to all the ticketing ones so but there's one a couple of we could do is quite quickly.
Are there any plans next season to increase the volume of season tickets? And are there any plans to extend the capacity of the stadium
CC: No, there are no plans to increase the volume has season tickets. It's really important that we have enough tickets available to sell to the My Bees members.
I'm absolutely staggered to say that we have 18,000 members. So these are people who don't who don't have season tickets but have paid to be members of the club, and they have the opportunity to buy tickets. And so anything we did to increase the number of season ticket holders would reduce their ability to buy tickets for matches.
And that's not something we feel is appropriate with so many My Bees members. When we were talking about this best part of probably 10 months ago, we thought we might get to 10,000 members. So to get to 18,000 it really is quite extraordinary. On top of the 10,000 season ticket holders, the 1,500 premium seat holders. So it's fantastic. As far as the stadium is concerned. This is something that we addressed some years ago and we felt that whilst not being able to increase the size of the stadium was to some extent a limiting factor.
We felt that staying within the borough, and particularly on this site so close to Griffin Park was fundamentally the most important thing we could do for our fans. And so we took the decision to proceed with this site and maximise the number of seats that we could get into this site.
It would be physically possible to add seats it would be quite complicated process it would inquire include acquiring some additional land. It would probably include building over the railway line and it would be incredibly expensive.
So in all honesty, I think it is very highly unlikely we would add to the number of seats within the current stadium. Obviously the alternative would be to move again to a stadium outside of the borough. But I don't think anyone would really want that to happen. So I think we're going to be here in the Brentford community stadium for many years to come.
[Stuart Purvis] Colleen Wong asked a question. I think Colleen may be here this evening. I won’t ask you to ask it. But I'll give you a chance to comment on what Cliff’s said. So let me get it.
So that's usually not the question, but one I've been asking everyone is why are there not more women watching football? It's fun, exciting, a great day out family friendly and never accused the toilet. So perhaps I would ask how Brentford can encourage more women to the stadium and to get involved? They have no idea what they're missing since being a beast member I've told every woman I know how amazing football is.
Just how good is that. Wonderful.
CC: What can I say? I agree wholeheartedly.
[Stuart Purvis] And you told your wife.
CC: I have indeed.
I mean, obviously we're thrilled that you've we're thrilled that you feel that way. And we also want to encourage as many women and children to come along to, to games and we are looking at a more focused programme of activity relating to women and girls at Brentford over the coming months.
Obviously, it would go along with the fact that we've got the Women's Euros coming up, and I'm absolutely delighted that we've got four games scheduled at the Brentford community stadium during the women's euros which is a fantastic coup for us as a football club.
So all I could say Colleen is if you'd like to come and join the women and girls fans focus group. We'd love to have you.
Stadium naming rights to be sold?
CC: I think it's fair to say it's probably the last jewel in the crown - not this crown - for the club to be able to sell the naming rights, but we won't do it to anybody. So we're very specific about the sort of company that we wish to keep and that won't come as a surprise to you.
We've kissed quite a few frogs in the last year or so. And naturally COVID has made it very difficult to conclude any kind of deal that would make good sense for a sponsor. But there is still interest. We are still talking to a number of companies and John Varney is quietly confident that we will get a deal in place by the end of June. But, you know, it's a tough market. There's no question about that. A lot of companies have naturally suffered as a result of COVID.
But because of the success we've had, and I suspect that picking up on what you just said, there's a real chance that they're going to wait until they know whether we're in the Premier League next season before they commit. So I think the likelihood is if we're going to do a deal, it's probably going to be around about the April-May time. Mind you if we beat Newcastle, Norwich and Burnley. Maybe that will bring it forward. So we'll see. But there's still plenty of interest. And it is the one thing we really would like to get done by the end of June.
I think from our point of view, we would love the community word to be in there. Naturally it will be up to the sponsor, if we conclude a deal, but the work that we do in the community, everything we stand for as a football club, it would make no sense for any sponsor to take out the word community. So again, I would say I'm we're quietly confident that it would be the something community stadium.
You know, Brighton is a good example. Everything around it, paper wise, it's the AMEX American Express community stadium, but actually, when people talk about Brighton they talk about the AMEX and the community kind of drops off, but it is the American Express community stadium.
CC: So I think the club frankly should be congratulated on posting what would have been a profit before the promotion payments in a year when we were coping with COVID. It's a remarkable achievement, frankly.
I think the key thing to understand is that when we prepare our annual budget, we take into account the likely expenditure, and we budget accordingly. But we do that on the basis of what we already believe is likely to happen in the transfer market. So when we talk about an group operating loss of over 50 million, we were comforted in knowing that whilst that was a likely outcome, we were pretty certain that we were going to make 40 odd million in player trading profits, because deals don't happen in five minutes.
They take time we know what's happening. We talked to players, we talked to the agents, so we know what is likely to happen. Sometimes as you know, we try and do our trading at the early part of the transfer window. And sometimes it drifts on towards the end of the transfer window.
But the reality is we got a pretty good idea who is staying and who is going, and so we are comfortable and we know the income that is likely to come in and so on balance, I would say that the results are quite remarkable.
Do we have money to buy top players?
CC: I mean, the simple answer to that is: yes. At what level that is subject to obviously the financial resources that we have within the club. You won't be surprised to hear that COVID affected the club quite significantly. And we have fantastic support from the fans and from our sponsors and all of our partners to help us through that period. But we did borrow money, and we've now I'm very pleased to say we paid all of that money in full. And as far as transfers are concerned, Phil Giles and Lee Dykes, who's head of recruitment, are working every day on transfer targets. And as I said earlier, deals do take time to get over the line.
So we still have 14 days left of the transfer window. Whilst I can't promise what will happen, I can say that we'll be doing everything we can to add to the squad and help us ensure that we survive and prosper in the Premier League.
Brentford has a fantastic reputation within the football world. The success that we've had over the last five or six years in developing talent means that there are lots and lots of players who want to come to Brentford, and that puts us in a really strong position to add to the squad, but we'll only do it when we think it's right.
And whilst most of our additions have been young players, you will all have known two years ago that we brought in Pontus Jansson and kind of went against the grain of what we normally do. But there was good reason for that. And we won't hesitate to do something like that again if we feel it's right for the club. So all I would say is over the last five or six years, I think we've proven that we are good custodians of the club, and we will continue to be so.
Ticketing and stadium capacity.
CC: Brentford’s reputation has been built upon the very strong relationship we have with our fan groups when we're talking off the pitch, and that continues, and I'm saying prospers and that is something that we will be addressing with the fan groups over the coming weeks and into February.
Before we make any final decision. We have considered the cost of season tickets and ticket prices generally. As you know, Matthew is very, very keen on affordable football for our fans and that will be the mainstay of how we operate the club.
However, being in the Premier League, even with the money that that produces, doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at this from all angles. We have many investments that we need to make not only in players, but in both staff on and off the pitch, and also infrastructure. For anyone who knows Jersey Road. They'll know that the training ground is not fit for purpose and we do need to allocate funds to develop that training ground in the future. So there are numerous demands on the football club for finances. And we will take everything into account before we make any final decision. But we are still 100 per cent committed to affordable football.
[Stuart Purvis] Thanks very much , that will be welcome news to many people.
Now we've got lots of questions about ticketing Cliff as you'd expect, we probably have to get through these fairly quickly.
[From] Jeff dent, what can the club do to reduce the number of home match tickets ending up on third party resale websites and thereby ensure that no more tickets go to genuine supporters in the first instance?
CC: Yeah, I think that's something that we all feel pretty unhappy about. And John Varney has written to premium season ticket holders last week on this very subject. We have a much larger team of people in our venue sales team - compared to when we were at Griffin Park and when we're in the championship, and that's one of the consequences of being in the new stadium and being in the Premier League, that these kinds of issues are now coming to the fore.
And all I can say is that we are doing everything we can to ensure that this doesn't happen. We have even gone to the point of buying tickets from a agency so that we could find out where those tickets came from, and then take appropriate action against those season ticket holders. So we actually spent money to pay to the agency in order to get the information that we needed to take action. So it's very much at the forefront of one of the many, many things that we have to do to protect the fans and the club and we will continue to do that.
Steve Redden says he's got over 1000 taps points, but his nine year old daughter's got about 100. The problem is how do they sit together? How can this how can this be changed to encourage the fan the future?
CC: And again, it's another good point and the two things I would say particularly to Steve is number one, contact the box office and talk to the venue sales team. And number two, he will be able to transfer some points to his daughter and therefore perhaps give them a more even split of the points and hopefully that will help them grow their number of TAP points.
But if anyone's got any ticketing issues; we're past the days of six months ago when we were getting 500 emails a day and probably 200 calls a day and we only had about three people - two of which were off with COVID. We're now 11 strong in the venue sales team. And I think it's largely the response to emails and phone calls is pretty much under control. Although obviously there aren't peaks and troughs around certain games and certain times of the week, etc. But we're much better staffed today than we were six months ago.
[Stuart Purvis] Can you get your point about transferring points and it will be good news to Keith McInnes who was asking about that on the ticketing site.
Andy Leach says the subject site is clearly not fit for purpose. The staff operating it share the frustration of the fans that needs to replace with a system that works. Is that issue resolved or is obviously going to look as a staffing issue, Cliff. Is there an issue with the site itself?
CC: Listen, no site is perfect. We have a contract with Secutix Tech's which is up in 18 months’ time and we will go out to tender within the next six to nine months to see what else is out there. What I would say is that it has continually improved. And one of the things that we did do back in the summer was we gave notice on the EFL of the website that we have always used which has been run by the EFL and we are building our own custom-built website.
And that will be much more interactive with Secutix and will provide a much better outcome for those using secretaries along with a website. So it is something we're very aware of it was not something we could really afford to do when we're in the championship, because it was it's a very expensive thing to set up your own website, particularly with the amount of whistles and bells that we need for it to work successfully.
We're well aware that there are limitations but there are limitations with every ticketing site and we constantly striving to improve it and we have done a lot to improve it. And we'll continue to work with Secutix to improve the customer journey. But it's something that unfortunately, will there always be people who will find difficulties and there will be occasions and your best bet is really contact the venue sales team and see if they can help resolve the issue for you.
[Stuart Purvis] We're getting some people online saying they didn't realise you could transfer points from one person to another.
CC: Only in families. So you can't do it to friends but you can do it within families.
[Stuart Purvis] Many thanks now, let's just we're not going be able to get to all the ticketing ones so but there's one a couple of we could do is quite quickly.
Are there any plans next season to increase the volume of season tickets? And are there any plans to extend the capacity of the stadium
CC: No, there are no plans to increase the volume has season tickets. It's really important that we have enough tickets available to sell to the My Bees members.
I'm absolutely staggered to say that we have 18,000 members. So these are people who don't who don't have season tickets but have paid to be members of the club, and they have the opportunity to buy tickets. And so anything we did to increase the number of season ticket holders would reduce their ability to buy tickets for matches.
And that's not something we feel is appropriate with so many My Bees members. When we were talking about this best part of probably 10 months ago, we thought we might get to 10,000 members. So to get to 18,000 it really is quite extraordinary. On top of the 10,000 season ticket holders, the 1,500 premium seat holders. So it's fantastic. As far as the stadium is concerned. This is something that we addressed some years ago and we felt that whilst not being able to increase the size of the stadium was to some extent a limiting factor.
We felt that staying within the borough, and particularly on this site so close to Griffin Park was fundamentally the most important thing we could do for our fans. And so we took the decision to proceed with this site and maximise the number of seats that we could get into this site.
It would be physically possible to add seats it would be quite complicated process it would inquire include acquiring some additional land. It would probably include building over the railway line and it would be incredibly expensive.
So in all honesty, I think it is very highly unlikely we would add to the number of seats within the current stadium. Obviously the alternative would be to move again to a stadium outside of the borough. But I don't think anyone would really want that to happen. So I think we're going to be here in the Brentford community stadium for many years to come.
[Stuart Purvis] Colleen Wong asked a question. I think Colleen may be here this evening. I won’t ask you to ask it. But I'll give you a chance to comment on what Cliff’s said. So let me get it.
So that's usually not the question, but one I've been asking everyone is why are there not more women watching football? It's fun, exciting, a great day out family friendly and never accused the toilet. So perhaps I would ask how Brentford can encourage more women to the stadium and to get involved? They have no idea what they're missing since being a beast member I've told every woman I know how amazing football is.
Just how good is that. Wonderful.
CC: What can I say? I agree wholeheartedly.
[Stuart Purvis] And you told your wife.
CC: I have indeed.
I mean, obviously we're thrilled that you've we're thrilled that you feel that way. And we also want to encourage as many women and children to come along to, to games and we are looking at a more focused programme of activity relating to women and girls at Brentford over the coming months.
Obviously, it would go along with the fact that we've got the Women's Euros coming up, and I'm absolutely delighted that we've got four games scheduled at the Brentford community stadium during the women's euros which is a fantastic coup for us as a football club.
So all I could say Colleen is if you'd like to come and join the women and girls fans focus group. We'd love to have you.
Stadium naming rights to be sold?
CC: I think it's fair to say it's probably the last jewel in the crown - not this crown - for the club to be able to sell the naming rights, but we won't do it to anybody. So we're very specific about the sort of company that we wish to keep and that won't come as a surprise to you.
We've kissed quite a few frogs in the last year or so. And naturally COVID has made it very difficult to conclude any kind of deal that would make good sense for a sponsor. But there is still interest. We are still talking to a number of companies and John Varney is quietly confident that we will get a deal in place by the end of June. But, you know, it's a tough market. There's no question about that. A lot of companies have naturally suffered as a result of COVID.
But because of the success we've had, and I suspect that picking up on what you just said, there's a real chance that they're going to wait until they know whether we're in the Premier League next season before they commit. So I think the likelihood is if we're going to do a deal, it's probably going to be around about the April-May time. Mind you if we beat Newcastle, Norwich and Burnley. Maybe that will bring it forward. So we'll see. But there's still plenty of interest. And it is the one thing we really would like to get done by the end of June.
I think from our point of view, we would love the community word to be in there. Naturally it will be up to the sponsor, if we conclude a deal, but the work that we do in the community, everything we stand for as a football club, it would make no sense for any sponsor to take out the word community. So again, I would say I'm we're quietly confident that it would be the something community stadium.
You know, Brighton is a good example. Everything around it, paper wise, it's the AMEX American Express community stadium, but actually, when people talk about Brighton they talk about the AMEX and the community kind of drops off, but it is the American Express community stadium.
