Sounds about right, though, for a club which, to the very end, banned women from entering its boardroom
Seriously, though, the points made there are bang on. If it's costing £4M to run a club, then it has to get that money from somewhere and gate receipts are an important part of this. It's quite clear that ticket prices have to be set at the point on the elasticity of demand curve which maximises income. The difficulty is that players' wage expectations are such that it's difficult for most clubs to make ends meet.
Take ICT. The ballpark attendance is maybe 3000 odd, depending on opponents, and prices probably maximises income. Drop the ticket price and attendance won't rise in proportion. Increase the price and gates will fall more than in proportion. Meanwhile the ballpark, possibly quite variable, player wage is believed to be around £1000 a week. This begs questions. Are players who can only attract 3000-odd fans worth £1000 a week? Is that wage level artificially inflated by the football environment in which it exists, thus creating a false market? I suggest that the answers there are No... and Yes.
Football is operating the economics of the madhouse where TV reveneues and billionaires with more money than sense are distorting the market at the very top and this is working right down through the system, helped on its way by benefactors such as at Dundee United, Ross County, Rangers etc who - for their own reasons - choose to donate money so that expenditure can well exceed real revenue. To be fair ICT,although quite far down that list, has also had episodes of this over the years - eg Ian Fraser, Tullochs and the more recent Muirfield Mills investment. Between one thing and another, the game has created an artificial situation where players are paid hugely above their realistic market value. For instance, that £1000 a week is well, well above the average working wage and you do have to question whether it can be justified for a 25 hour week which includes playing in front of 3000 people in the top tier of a very poor national set up. But since everybody else is offering similarly inflated sums, clubs have to stretch every financial sinew they have - which includes raising ticket prices to the very limit of the income they can generate.
One of the biggest absurdities is the Highland League where Nairn's recent, highly publicised abandonment by their sponsors has really got people talking about - and frequently criticising - HL wage levels. Let's be realistic. The HL is the fifth tier of, as I've said, a poor national set up. Skill levels are pretty low, fitness levels even lower. With all due respect to them, they are by and large not very good, and hugely inferior to many other local performers in other sports. They train - often reluctantly - just twice a week and play in front of crowds in the lower end of the three figure bracket. But there are not a few HL clubs paying signing on fees well into the thousands in addition to hundreds of pounds a week in wages. These remuneration levels are totally nonsensical - even before you consider that there are world class performers in Rio who are actually out of pocket getting where they have.