Originally Posted by
Davy500
I don,t think Hardy did to much different than many other clubs higher up the pyramid, examples given previously, just that he did not have a deep enough pocket to sustain it
it soon becomes painfully clear just why the owners of lower league teams seem so willing to bet the house on chasing promotion. Purchasing a club in one of the lower tiers is often an incredibly cheap investment – Steve Dale bought Bury FC for £1 in December 2018 as the club was already in financial difficulties – before the team managed to achieve a surprise second-place finish in League Two. Had the team have survived another promotion, revenues could have boomed to £31 million for just one season in the Championship.
Think Hardy is correct, almost impossible for a club to survive unless backed by a rich owner or owners
Gap widens between have and have-nots of English football
06 September 2019 Consultancy.uk
While revenues continue to explode in the land of milk and honey that is the Premier League, elsewhere in English football the picture is far less rosy. Beyond the top tier, fewer than 20% of clubs describe their finances as “very healthy”, as they play a high-stakes game of spending beyond their means to achieve promotion.
Beyond the lofty broadcast revenues of the English Premier League, many of English football’s oldest clubs are in a financially precarious state. To the despair of loyal fans, throughout the 2018/19 season a number of lower-tier sides have flirted with collapse: while Notts County’s beleaguered ownership endured a face-off with tax authorities, Blackpool FC entered into receivership to find a buyer.
The worrying trend has already bled into the following campaign, too. Since the end of last season, Bolton Wanderers has been desperately seeking new ownership, flirting with liquidation before administrators from David Rubin & Partners finally brokered a deal to keep the club afloat. Sadly, Bury FC did not have as much luck, and thanks to the perfect storm of a neglectful manager, a turbulent market, and a regulator seemingly asleep at the wheel, the historic club closed the doors to Gigg Lane at the end of August, having been kicked out of the English Football League (EFL) after failing to provide proof of its financial sustainability.
The news comes just months after Bury secured promotion from League Two, and according to two reports from the consulting world, they are not the only ones to have overstretched themselves while chasing glory. Indeed, Bury may be just the tip of the iceberg, thanks to the ever-growing gap between the top tiers of English football and the rest of the country.