Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack insists any money generated from the AberDNA scheme will continue to go to the club’s football operation.
The shutdown of the football season has left many clubs chasing their tails in search of funding, with the Dons forecasting a £5 million shortfall in income with no games.
However Cormack estimates the £600,000 out of the £1 million currently raised by the club membership scheme can still be allocated to manager Derek McInnes.
Speaking to RedTV, Cormack said: “One of the things we’re doing now is a big picture – we’ve already announced before the crisis, so it kind of got diluted, but our goal is to have an umbrella membership for the football club.
“Season tickets generate just over £2 million to the club. The income we get from AberDNA is £1 mllion; that is not insignificant.
“If we lost that money, if everyone quit tomorrow, it would be a major issue for the club. We are setting about, in the next couple of weeks, doing some fan group sessions where we’re talking to people about this umbrella group, getting the right balance between AberDNA and season tickets.
“The reality is there isn’t one game that we can think of where this is going to be an issue. We’re going to take a step back, get some feedback to see how we get this right balance. Make no mistake, if we bring in £1 million income from AberDNA, after we pay for shirts and season ticket discounts, very little in the way of overheads, we have about £600,000. I can guarantee you that goes straight into the football operations.
“Without that, we would not have the ability to make some of the investments we’ve made. If we lost that £600,000 is lost from the football budget. If we were to double it, can you imagine what that would do for us as a club, to do more as we try to level the playing field with the likes of a Celtic or Rangers.
“We set out this year to invest in our football operation. Cormack Park is wonderful and has thousands through from the community. It costs £750,000 a year to run, which is added to what we’ve paid for.
“We will announce this year, most likely, that we will make a loss but we planned to make that loss. All our numbers are audited and every penny of that goes into the football operation.”
The club announced earlier this year they were looking at an over-arching membership scheme, that allowed subscribers to access AberDNA, season-ticket and RedTV details under one unique login.
Cormack added: “Our goals for this coming season, is to have 10,000 paid season-ticket holders and grow the DNA base from 5,700 active members to 7,000.
“We are indebted to our fanbase and I hope the fans feel we’re being transparent and as investors, we’ve stepped up as well. These are amazingly tough times economy-wise for everybody, but we’re just delighted with the response.
“Our staff are incredible, in stepping up related to the call centre stuff we’re doing and their willingness to help.”