Speaking to BBC Radio Manchester, our Co-Chair discussed what the report means for Clubs like ourselves, the reliance on owner funding, and what the next steps should be.
“The report puts in writing, for the first time, things that the EFL, National League and Clubs like ours have been saying for quite some time,” commented Gauge.
“It’s almost impossible to run a football club at the moment and not lose money.
“The report is bleak in the harshness of it, but there are positives in it. Football clearly makes enough money that, if it gets its act together, there’s enough money to sustain the game and still have the top leagues in Europe.
“We need to look at how revenues are distributed, including parachute payments that create these big cliff edges, causing clubs to overspend trying to compete with the clubs receiving them.
“The biggest thing for me is that the redistribution of money is really important, because what happens in the past is that clubs get more money, which ends up going towards wage bills. That cycle has got to stop. We’ve got to find a way of putting money into communities and into clubs, rather than player wages, because that inflation is what causes the loss in football clubs.
“The tricky years [for Rochdale AFC] were when we didn’t have an owner that was able to invest in and subsidise the football club. At that time, we were trying to be one of these 6% of clubs that were running sustainably.
“We cut all the costs in the club and didn’t spend more than we had, but we were running out of cash and it was impossible to compete. You don’t win games of football because you’re not spending as much on players and your crowds start dwindling so your revenue starts dropping.
“You end up in this downward spiral so it was a pretty miserable existence at that time.
“But luckily, we’ve got the Ogden Family that have invested in the club and the town of Rochdale. Since then, we’ve been building steadily. We don’t try and do it in a stupid manner, but we still rely on owner funding to get to where we are.
“The majority of clubs sit in this boat of saying, everybody knows it doesn’t work, but it’s about coming together as a league and a country to find a system that works much better for everybody.
“With the introduction of the IFR [Independent Football Regulator], there is a movement towards getting this problem sorted. The State Of The Game report, over 200 pages long, is a start in recognising the problems. But it’s easy to recognise the problems, clubs have been speaking about that for quite some time, it’s finding the solutions which is the next big challenge.”
You can listen to Simon’s appearance on BBC Radio Manchester HERE, from around one hour and 19 minutes.
