Stirling Albion Football Club calls time on the complimentary culture

Tue 31st Aug 2010 | Money & Finance

Stirling Albion FC has announced that it is to cease providing complimentary tickets to visiting clubs and players. 

In return, the club has confirmed it will no longer seek complimentary tickets from opposing clubs.

The club, which recently became the first senior Scottish club to be owned by its Supporters’ Trust, made the decision after a financial analysis of the potential cost to the club over a full season.

Club spokesman, Paul Goodwin said: “In some cases, Stirling Albion has been asked for 75 complimentary tickets for games at Forthbank by opposition clubs.  Based on twenty home games a season we are talking about giving away over £20,000 a year. 

“We fully appreciate that we are challenging the traditional way that football clubs have operated in the past but we’ve always said that football needs to look forward and in certain situations adopt a different approach instead of continuing to do the same things ‘because that’s the way it’s always been done’. 

“Like most football clubs Stirling Albion is operating on very tight budgets and we have an obligation to the club to continue to reduce costs and look to increase revenues at every source to provide the strongest possible playing budgets to our manager while working towards a more sustainable financial position for the club.  If just half of those using our complimentary tickets were to pay at the turnstile we would increase the club’s income by £10,000 a season and, for us, that would be a huge boost.

“Official representatives of other opposition clubs will continue to be invited as guests to the Forthbank Stadium and should other clubs extend an invitation to us then representatives of our Supporters Trust will take up that kind invitation on behalf of the Club.

“We trust that those who have enjoyed watching football at Forthbank over the years by using complimentary tickets will continue to attend and appreciate that their gate money will be going straight into helping sustain Stirling Albion’s future.  We will certainly benefit from their financial support.”

In the last year the Buy Stirling Albion campaign has demonstrated creative ways of generating widespread interest in the club as well as generating significant income.  With ownership of the club a number of other income streams to bring new revenues into the club would be activated.

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