Leaderboard

I can't believe we're all still discussiing this. the facts are that, despite several windfalls over the past few years (cup runs/glory, player sales, good league position), ICT have only just broken even financially. The truth, therefore, is that the club requires windfalls/player sales to survive financially and to maintain its current level of footballing prosperity. My guess is that, in a poor year with no player sales, we could expect a deficit of ~£250k and I think others on this forum have suggested the same. That is clearly unsustainable: I think Kilmarnock will testify to that as they try to service a £750k debt this year on the back of falling crowds. So, there's no mystery as to where the money has gone - it is subsidising the current playing squad and (in the case of last year) was used to bring in players to patch up an injury-ridden squad. Given our small home support, there must be a realisation that it will always be this way and a recognition that we have the financial clout of Stevenage in English league 2.

The more kids we attract the better. It makes up for the thousands lost post-merger.

I tend to agree with the argument that the club is punching above it's weight financially, but that doesn't necessarily answer the question where the Christie, Mckay, Scottish Cup money has all gone. These were substantial windfalls, and undoubtedly some of it was used to plug the funding gap, but there must be something left over...? Unless the strategy is very much to save it for a 'rainy day fund', which I'd be OK with personally if it allows the club to remain competitive and not require the windfalls year on year. What I wouldn't be OK with would be had it been taken out of club in the form of shareholder dividends and such like, although there is no suggestion that this has happened. Where I do worry about the future is that the brick and mortar assets have now all been sold. As such the club cannot incur debts year on year and must break even over a 3/5 year period to keep the bank manager happy. It's achievable when things are going well, but is it sustainable long term? How important are losses, like the Alloa one, when you consider the missed revenue opportunity of a quarter or semi final in a National Cup? That is 50% of our additional earning opportunities over for the season, and it's only August! How much are we relying on these windfalls? How large is the disparity between operational costs and budgeted income? There are now no fixed assets upon which borrowing can be secured, should it ever be required. I don't intend this to be a criticism of those behind the scenes at the club, who are undoubtedly doing their very best, but there does appear to be a lack of a real professional who can energise the operation and start tapping into other revenue streams. I've floated a couple ideas (10 game season tickets & a fans players fund) which have been knocked down on here with the 'tried it 10 years ago, didn't work then' reason. That may well be so, and I'm certainly not suggesting that either of these ideas would be major money spinners, but everything in life has moved on from 10 years ago, why not try it again? Is there anyone inside the club who's job it is to offer ideas, contacts, initiatives etc.? Do we have a marketing/promotional department, at any level, with the remit to drive sales? One small example - I bought tickets for a Scotland U21 game at St Mirren through their website years ago and almost every other week I have an email arrive promoting community/tickets/merchandise/etc. I have no interest in any of it but I am aware of it going on and it's always struck me how you hear nothing like this from ICT, so another opportunity for customer engagement is missed. Stick on the annual delay on replica kit (it's absolutely unforgivable to miss the school holiday market, every bloody time) and, to me, it starts to look a bit substandard... We do some things great, social media and audio video content being two that things spring to mind, so it's not all negative by any stretch. There is just a lot of room for improvement IMO.

I have had a season ticket the last 2 seasons, but due to being at sea for 6 months out of the year I get limited games. But I still see it as supporting the club.Next April I retire from rolling around the North Sea and am looking foward to getting to every game. Someone said about not hearing snecky voices at games, does it matter that much. I have a 70 mile round trip for home games and guys in my place always take the rag with me saying they hear more sneckies at Old Firm games or the Sheep shed, so I believe let the young anes in for free, they are the future for ICT

No it's not. It's living in cloud cuckoo land. How often does it need to be explained that the money simply isn't there - and if it was, it would indeed be prudently spent on the playing squad? You can't spend money you don't have and if you try to do so, you will soon go the way of Dundee, Motherwell, Rangers, Livingston etc. For the last 16 years the directors of Caley Thistle have - mercifully - been very aware of The Micawber Principle (as stated in Dickens' David Copperfield) and have at least ALMOST been able to put it into practice. "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery." But for the board's long term efforts to live by that principle, Caley Thistle would have long since gone the way it very nearly did in 1999-2000. I just don't understand how some fail to grasp the concept that you just can't go into the player market with closed eyes and open cheque book. You need to live within your means and if you don't you will soon head for the lower leagues or worse. It's a minor miracle that, with the income streams that have been available, Caley Thistle has been able to field a team which has done what it has. To have maintained an almost unbroken SPL/Premiership presence since 2004 on the kind of resources we are talking about is an incredible feat and you just have to laugh at these suggestions that they should just go and spend their way out of any problem. Look at it an alternative way - if you want to be entertained by better players than the club's finances can currently afford, how much more would you be prepared to pay for tickets in order to obtain the improved product? I've already said elsewhere that the cost of running the club under its present, prudent regime is around £44 per bum on seat. Tuesday night the worst result ever? I don't think so. Off the top of my head I could think of a League Cup defeat - at home - by Queens Park, a 5-1 defeat - at home - by Ross County, a 4-0 humiliation - at home - by Forfar at the end of D3 championship season and a complete stinker off the back of the Ballistic night, the details of which I forget. There are doubtless more. Finally... those who have swung from the "Foran is Messiah" euphoria of the Dundee United and Arbroath outcomes and performances to the "Foran is the Devil Incarnate" doom and despair of Partick Thistle and Alloa should either acquire a sense of balance and proportion or a source of lithium!

Which doesn't help the family who might have been able to take their kids to half a dozen games in past seasons who might only be able to afford half of those games this. The kids who have season tickets are already on the way to being committed fans. It's the ones who are taken along for only a few games per seasons we need to attract along on a more regular basis but the new pricing structure makes that less likely especially for families on limited budgets.

This idea reminds me of this.... http://www.igf.org/ ... and even that seems to be changing its title to retain any credibility at all. The Society for the Relief of Indigent Gentlewomen of Scotland was basically set up to subsidise posh women of the upper classes who hadn't found a man to support them but who also considered it below their status to get a job. Believe it or not, people of lesser means actually paid money into this fund so that daughters of chinless wonders, many of whose ancestors had acquired their status by cheating, stabbing and fornicating their way into positions of wealth and influence, didn't have to get off their backsides and get a job. The notion is absolutely obscene! On yer bike darlin'! However it is being replicated in uncanny fashion here where ordinary working people are being asked to fork out money - which could otherwise be used to buy books, sports centre memberships or a new bike for their kids - to subsidise the wages of footballers whose salary expectations vastly exceed their crowd pulling ability. And even when folk do have genuinely spare money, would that not be much better pointed in the direction of genuine charities helping people in need. To be honest, it seems even more bizarre that the targeted group in the football context should be people who don't actually attend matches and who therefore stand to gain even less from their generosity. Let's be realistic. The 10,000 who attended the 2015 Cup Final over and above relatively regular ICT fans only had a passing interest in this club. Consequently they are looking for no more than their single day of glory so strike me as less likely than most to part with money for nothing in order to subsidise the wages of players who earn far more than they do themselves for a much shorter working week. I know this sounds a bit Thatcherite, but it's maybe time that a bit of financial Darwinism descended on football.

I am putting £25 on a 0-0 draw.

Free season tickets for u12's are a great idea, but clearly this doesn't meet the demands of fans like Cakeytiltheend. Not everyone can commit to a season ticket, either financially or just planning wise. Why not just extend it to u12's go free for all pre bought tickets, including match day sales? More chance of on the day/last minute decisions to go, parents taking a kids friend along as well, and so on.

Wait for it- what 's happened to the ofw money from the euro 's? I cant believe all this money pish is coming out the woodwork again! We operate at a loss. Windfall's plug the holes. How many times does it need to be said?

Harry, I see what you are trying to say, but what I have been responding to is your reference to "the club's refusal to put money into the team". What I have been saying is that the money has simply not been there to do this. That is indisputable and you cannot "refuse" to put in money you don't have. You, meanwhile, are offering a possible reason for the lack of money relating to contract lengths which is a different issue. While what you say may or may not be the case, it doesn't describe a situation of "refusal" to put money into the team. One important concern here is that we don't know in any detail what factors the board have had to take into account in the process of establishing financial and signing strategies. Even the club accounts aren't required to reveal very much at all and don't, for instance, give a separate figure for the global player wage bill. (On mention of "global"... I see that reports today begin to lift the lid on the magnitude of Ross County's financial backing.) Returning to ICT, yes there is a need for more productive income streams and the one that I hear most frequently mentioned - amid concerns that the Kingsmills Suite is hugely under employed Saturday pre-match - is hospitality. Anyway... I digress. One fairly recurring feature of football seems to be criticism of decisions taken on the basis of very limited knowledge of the real situation and certainly much less than those who made the decisions. In the case in point, financial strategies are being criticised despite virtually no knowledge of the prevailing conditions. Similarly managers' tactics, substitutions, team selections etc come equally under fire despite the critics having no knowledge whatsoever of a whole raft of behind the scenes factors. And then there's the absolute incompetence of any referee compared with any fan in the back row of the stand 80 yards away. But to return to matters financial, I think it's unlikely that Inverness Caledonian Thistle would have done what it has since 1994 on very limited resources if it had been such a victim of financial mismanagement.

Haven't spotted any ex ICT scorers tonight (10 Aug) But, I have just noticed that our old friend, Tarmo Kink, left SJK (Finland) about 3 weeks ago and moved to Mezokovesd-Zsory in Hungary. He has already played 3 games for them and got his debut goal in his second outing (31 Jul).

I am quite sure Richie is hurting enough without all the **** being thrown at him on here. He is already encountering one of the frustrations ( getting the right players in) that J H had to suffer now this from ICTFC '' loyal supporters '' The team is still in the transitory stage learning a vastly different form of football from what was drummed into them in their recent history. Every new manager experienced or not has to win over the dressing room, that isn't done overnight especially when there is a mixture of ex-mates and newbies which can breed new problems. that is just two of his problems. We are only two defeats, one in cup and one in league into his career. The potential is there in the players we already have, the manager has got spirit and determination, he will I'm sure get over the hurdles and have the team running smoothly and scoring goals before much longer. Thinking back to early ICTFC days we seldom started seasons well but look where we are now so don't despair. Get behind the team and the manager, It's the bad times that support is needed most so give it now and let's help win on Saturday.

I remember being in the Highland League. Fear fecks sake - it was practically pre season - it was away from home - playing on a tight pitch and stadium - against arguably the form team of the Cup so far who had already knocked out the holders and stuffed an equally vibrant Putridheid - it was their Cup Final - we have several new players gelling - we have a new manager looking at a new style of play backed by many, many fans - Cups always produce shocks and this was NOT really a big one. Snuff said

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.

CB seldom lets the truth get in the way of what he considers a bon mot.

No point. It's been sold out for years.

Season ticket sales is a figure which tends not to be very readily available!

Yes. As I said somewhere else, what you get for your £30 (or less in other ticket categories) actually costs around £44 to produce - mainly because of the nonsensical football wages market. Unfortunately there seems to be an assumption in paid football that much of it should be very well remunerated. Why? On what basis? If the play you produce only creates revenue to pay you £450 a week, why should you expect - and indeed get - £800? Many other sports do not have the finances to pay participants at all so don't. As a result many world class performers - who by any measurement are vastly superior performers to footballers, say, in the SPFL Premiership, actually lose money out of what they do. Footballers, on the other hand, often get paid well above even what the privileged economics of their game would otherwise dictate.