With the cost of living rising Breedon Highland League clubs are expecting to feel the pinch.
In a special report, the Press and Journal spoke to chairmen from across the division to investigate the challenges clubs are facing.
As things stand, energy bills are set to soar from October 1 when the price cap rises before another predicted increase in January.
For some Highland League clubs that means using floodlights is going to become a very costly exercise.
Inverurie Locos chairman Mike Macaulay expects it to cost around £5 a minute for the Railwaymen to have all their floodlights on.
He said: “Our floodlights aren’t very modern. We are hoping to do something about them before next season, but it will be too late for this season.
“The cost from floodlights is going to be colossal – we’ll be cutting down our usage for things like warm-ups.
“They won’t be going on full blown until five minutes before kick-off and they’ll be going off five minutes after full-time.
“We’ll have one lamp working for warm-ups and things like that, because the costs are colossal.
“Five pounds a minute would probably be around the figure it will cost us to run our lights.
“When you think about it like that it’s scary and there’s no help when it comes to that.
“At a tenner a head (for a ticket to the game), you’re needing 60 or 70 folk through the gate just to pay the lights.”
Clubs staging multiple matches throughout week
It’s not only first-team matches where floodlights are required with under-21 and under-18 games played during the week.
Fraserburgh chairman Finlay Noble, a former president of the Highland League, added: “Speaking about ourselves at Fraserburgh at the moment, we’re on a fixed deal so it’s still the same as last season.
“But then next year that deal will finish and we’ll have to look at it from a different point of view.
“One of the big things are the Monday night games for U21 and U18 teams.
“As a club, we can’t stop those games because we want to try to bring young players through.”
Bus costs soaring, too
It’s not just energy bills that are increasing, as Wick Academy chairman Pat Miller explained.
“The cost of our buses has gone up 25% and we’re one of the clubs that does the most travel,” he said.
“That impinges on everything because people want to update contracts and things like that and it’s hard to do when you’re losing that cash.”
Supporters feeling the squeeze
With costs rising and people having less disposable income, clubs are also finding it difficult to sell matchday hospitality, which is an important revenue stream for many.
Some sides have also reported general attendances being down at the start of this season.
Rothes chairman Iain Paul said: “It’s a concerning time for every club. It’s two-fold at the moment because costs are rising and sign-ups to hospitality have been slow in comparison with previous years.
“On top of that, gates haven’t been great either. Having spoken to other chairman, it seems like gates are down around 30% across the board.
“With our hospitality, we usually have 25% or 30% booked at this stage, but we’ve very little this season.
“We’ve had a few pledges of commitment, but there’s not a huge amount happening.
“It’s concerning, but if it’s the choice between watching your team or feeding your children, then football has to come second.
“When it comes to supporters through the gate I’m not sure if it’s all down to cost.
It’s concerning, but if it’s the choice between watching your team or feeding your children, then football has to come second.”
“I think people finding other things to do when football was shut down due to Covid might be a factor.
“I wonder if numbers have also been down because we’re still in the summer months where we’ve had fine weather.
“As we get into autumn and winter we might find more people coming back, but it’s difficult to say.”
Lossiemouth chairman Alan McIntosh, another former Highland League president, added: “It’s difficult because everything is going up and football clubs need supporters coming through the gate.
“But if they can’t afford to put the heating on in the house, are they going to be able to go to football?
“It takes a lot of tenners from folk coming through the gate to pay everything.”
Keith installed solar panels this summer and as a result will see a reduction in their energy costs.
However, chairman Andy Troup is concerned about a potential drop-off in hospitality.
He said: “For us at Keith, having hospitality is an area that’s vital in terms of surviving.
“At this moment in time we’re doing OK and games are filling up nicely, but it is a concern moving forward.
“If the cost of living keeps rising ,people won’t have the extra money in their pocket to do hospitality and have these days out.”
Brora Rangers chairman Scott Mackay echoed those sentiments.
He said: “We’re trying to push our hospitality, but the further we get into winter people are going to have less money to do that sort of thing.
“General costs are on the rise and even doing the laundry costs more because of the price of electricity.
“We’ve pushed quite hard this season on pitchside sponsor boards and have done quite well with that.
“But does that just balance out the extra costs? We’re maybe not seeing much extra income from that.”
Highland League exploring early kick-offs to save energy
One of the measures being discussed which could cut costs would be earlier kick-offs during the winter, which would reduce floodlight use.
Noble said: “When the chips are down, Highland League clubs tend to stick together and come to some sort of common agreement.
“We’ve managed in the past and I’m sure we’ll manage again. Folk of my generation will remember when not everyone had lights and it was quite common to kick-off at 1.30pm in the winter and everyone accepted it.
“But now it’s 3pm and you can say will it affect the crowd? Maybe it will, maybe hospitality will struggle with having to come earlier.
“It’s something new for us to look at.”
Wick chief Miller can see the merits of early kick-offs, but, with the Scorries being the most northerly club in the Highland League, he says starting earlier may not be feasible for all their games.
He said: “I can see why people would want early kick-offs, for us the geography is an issue.
“Realistically for ourselves, it would only really be games against the likes of Brora, Clach, Nairn and probably Forres and Rothes that would be feasible in terms of kicking off early.
“But at some points in the winter I think you’ll still have to stick the lights on – even if it’s just for a half.
“But there is the potential there to cut costs for clubs.”
At Keith, Troup would prefer to stick to 3pm kick-offs for home games, but says the Maroons would be open to starting earlier for away games if that suited other clubs.
He said: “For us Keith it would probably be quite difficult for us to do something, because we rely heavily on the trains for our hospitality guests.
“The train times work well for a 3pm kick-off, but not so well for a 2pm kick-off.
“Each club will have to look at it individually and see what’s best, but Highland League clubs work well together and there is always flexibility.
“If some clubs want a 2pm kick-off, I’m sure other clubs, including ourselves, won’t have an issue with that if it’s feasible.”
Rothes’ Paul believes early kick-offs are worth investigating, but added that there are a range of issues to consider, including player availability.
“If you need to use the floodlights, even if it was for the last 20 minutes, I think they’ve effectively got to be on from the start,” he said.
“So in that case we’d need to kick-off really early, because if you start at 2pm you’d probably need the lights by half-time.
“Some days if you were wanting to get away with using no lights, 12.30pm would probably need to be the kick-off time.
“The other issue is how it impacts the players, because there are a lot of Highland League players in the building trade who work on a Saturday morning.
“If they’re faced with a situation where it’s not worth going to work for two hours, but it is worth going for four hours, then they might say work wins over football.
“The other thing with early kick-offs is hospitality availability because folk might not want to have it earlier or be able to get there on time.
“There are a lot of factors to consider, but it’s good that we are looking at it and trying to find ways of reducing costs.”
The choice between floodlight use and hospitality income
Macaulay has similar concerns about the impact on hospitality.
He added: “I know 3pm is the recognised time, but things change and we have to change with them.
“There is scope to have early kick-offs, but then how does that impact hospitality?
“Do people really want to come at 10am for kick-off at 12? Maybe it would be preferable to have the hospitality after the game.”
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