And that's it in a nutshell. For historic reasons the council are our landlords and so we have financial interactions with them. Shame Lawn then adopts the language of the T&A comments section to make his half-.rsed case. How's that supposed to help his or anyone's cause?

I think that redaing Lawn's comments in the T&A were his way of countering his own comments in City's programme on saturday. IN that, he urges people to vote in the forthcoming election in a way that will benefit City, as much as the Bulls. his T&A comments I feel were seeing to qualify that so more people didnt kick off.

I support both teams, and I am a little disappointed at ML's comments to say the least. But in essence, BUlls and City using one stadium makes sense!

decscribing RL as a minority sport, and claiming that 11,000 people come every week into the centre of bradford as a result of city were pushing it a little. if BUlls only charged £5 a game for an adult and 3 kids (like i am paying next seaosn for city) then Odsal would not be big enough for some games!

Hood and ML should get together. there sint a lot of inward investment in Bradford and we need to make the mots of what we can. would it be a disaster to leave Richard Dunnes as it is, and use Odsal for community sports, no. would it be a disater if City went under having struggled to pay crippling rent, or BUlls to lose their SL lisence if they dont move to the Shay? YEs and Yes!!!

ML is an emotional person, but he cares about City, and the City as a whole. for mine, that gives him as much credit, if not more than Hood.

Why don't you read the entire article instead of just the headline before spouting off. Jeez! Once again.. the council aren't giving the bulls millions of pounds! We're not even getting a new stadium! The ground will be redeveloped, new covered stand thats all. the main outlay is indoor sports area and all weather pitches.

Now go away, get your facts right, then come back! I've just read all your posts, you don't read the articles and comments put in front of you and continue to say the same one sided rubbish.

Rant over.

I went along happily with that right up to the last sentence, not that I agreed with every word of it. Now I've nothing against Lawn. He's the mouthpiece of Bfd City; he's paid to promote the best interests of the club. As a director, he has a legal duty to do his utmost to ensure the shrareholders get the best return, and from me I say good luck to him (and to City, btw) but when he talks claptrap about things which have a big bearing on MY club then he's going beyond his remit. There were so many errors in what he said he's left himself looking foolish imo, with no credibility whatsoever. It seems as though he is listening too much to that buffoon from the city supporters club who seems to get a spot in the T&A every other night bellyaching constantly about squash courts, gymnastic halls and tennis courts being built for the Bulls. Idiots.

Bulliac,
I know what you mean, but both Hood and Lawn have taken over clubs at a less successful time that their predecessors, and managed to keep their heads above water. perhaps Lawn wears his heart on his sleeve too much but Hood doesnt do it at all enough. perhaps a partership would strike a happy medium in leadership? idealistic and very simplistic I know, but I am trying to look at both clubs surviving and eventually thriving sustainably.

lets go back 10 years to 2000-2001. City were in the premiership and developing the stadium and Bulls were winnig trophies for fun. why have both fallen so dramatically from grace. If you look at the whole FA pyramid and RL as a whole, they have probably fallen about the same amount! City over stretched themselves and so did the bulls, now one way or another, their homes are a millstone around their necks.

A longterm view is needed. Even in the premiership, City will need nothing bigger than VP as it is now. The spectator areas are all less than 25 years old and most of it is no more than 13 years old. Odsal is not good enough, and even some roofing would not make it brilliant.

retain Odsal as a community sports venue that houses City and Bulls reserve and youth teams, move bothe clubs as equal tennants of a VP owned by the council. use some of the 15,000,000 the council has syashed away to refurbish Richard Dunnes and use the rest of the money (which is yet to be seen anyway) to fund projects that benefit the majority of taxpayers.

I can see that the council might be reluctant to seriously invest in either VP or Odsal.
The ground at VP is privately owned and merely leased to Bfd City.
Odsal has a long term lease held by a private company.
If the Council wish to development either as a multi-sport location for the benefit of local sports, then VP is at a disadvantage in somuch that there is not the space to do so.
There is space at Odsal to do so.

Without council or other funding for development then both VP and Odsal will continue to struggle to pay their annual costs and fail progressionaly to be financially viable in their respective leagues.

There is merit in both clubs sharing the same ground, and whilst the compexities of landlord, leasing, management and game day control is at the moment a no-go between the clubs, it's becoming evident that both may see financial meltdown within the next 5 years.
It will then be little comfort for all supporters and management of both clubs to have been now intransigent.

They are investing in the [size=200 SPORTING VILLAGE.[/size

How many times does this need to be said before it sinks into the soft heads of some people in this city? The stadium will only be a small part of the over all scheme
=#FF4000[url=http://www.leighsportsvillage.co.uk/This[/url is a link to the Leigh Sport Village. THIS is the sort of thing that the council will be investing in.

Edit.

Sure they will be investing in the area surrounding the stadium, but they will also spend money on Odsal to bring it up to Super League standard as part of the plan. I will never understand why the Bulls are getting this free cash from the Council.

Can't you see what will happen? The Bulls will stay at Odsal and get some covers for the terracing at the cost of the taxpayer. City will continue to pay huge amounts of rent and struggle to maintain the VP site. We'll both just continue on struggling forever. On the other hand, Huddersfield have managed to pull it off and both Town and Giants have been benefited massively by the two teams coming together.

It's so unbelievably obvious what to do. Get the Coral Window Stadium back off Mr Gibb. Invest a million quid to strengthen pitch and make it a truly state of the art multi-purpose stadium. The remainder of the £15 million airport windfall can then go on redeveloping Richard Dunn and creating excellent training facilities for both clubs. Bingo.

You may be a troll - in which case I apologise to everyone else for troll feeding. However, to give the benefit of the doubt, I will try to be as straightforward as possible.

The Council have earmarked £15 million for sports facilities in Odsal.

If the cheapest Odsal Sporting Village plan were to go ahead, I believe that the Council will put this £15 million into a pot of a little over £20 million. In this case there would be no work on the stadium, and the Bulls will therefore not have benefitted from the Council's money. You yourself acknowledge that you have seen a couple of plans in which this is the case.

If the plan that was just rejected had gone ahead, the pot would have been £75 million, and the Bulls would have benefitted considerably. However, the Council's contribution would still have been £15 million. Hence any benefit to the Bulls would have been derived from the private element of the funding.

These are the two extremes of recent proposals - but the Council's involvement would be the same whatever. Take issue with the spending of £15 million of Council money on (non-Bulls-related) sporting facilities if you want, but please don't pretend that the council are giving "free cash" to the Bulls.

Not quite. There was a massive amount of investment took place from public sources. I seem to remember massive protest from Council tax payers elsewhere in Kirklees at the time. Alfred McAlpine ended up sticking loads more in after the council overspent. The Football club also gave up their Leeds Road ground which is now a retail park which paid for a lot.

The Odsal Sporting Village is closer to what happened in Huddersfield than buying Valley Parade and moving everyone into it.

The Galpharm Stadium wouldn't happen in today's financial climate.

The football club have recently bought shares in the ground from Davy (who's on his way out of Huddersfield Town) and the council but there's some sort of ongoing argument about the transfer of the shares? It's certainly not as clear cut as you think.

It's also a venue that's open and used every day of the week including a multiplex cinema, restaurant and bar space, a leisure centre, a hotel, a golf driving range and plans to build space for shops.

Shame all that total sense and realistic summation is wasted on a closed mind?

is it just me or has mark lawn made himself look like a numpty with of the cuff coments about bulls should share vp and that we are just a minority sport and they have more through turnstiles.

the only reason city have good crowds are dirt cheap season tickets as bet theyed be lucky to get 6,000 if full price

the other thing i cant get my head round says between 5 and 6 million to buy vp has anyone even asked if gibb would sell and how much he wants

Minority sport? The Bulls remain one of the biggest fishes in a pond second only to the antipodean pond. Whereas City are a runt of a fish in a fourth-rate puddle.

When people praise VP as a ground what they really mean is it looks to have some imposing metalwork, and colour co-ordinated seats with roofs over the top. "It looks nice innit". But that's just superficial and irrelevant to the actual standards for people attending to watch top class RL. In fact it is a pretty crap ground for RL as amongst a long list of faults, the pitch is way too small, the sectioned-off layout and das SSstewarding removes all fan interaction and indeed you might even get slung out for rising to your feet. I imagine it must be a lot like spending 2 hours in a young offenders institution. The soulless concrete caves that pass for 'bars' are truly awful - they are places nobody would ever go, under any circumstances, ever, were they not attending a match.

Sure the corporate ain't bad but then neither is the Bulls', and so that's pretty irrelevant given the main priority by far is your bread and butter hard core fans, not your prawn sandwich munchers because the latter would be equally happy in any carpeted and heated accommodation.

Also a big laugh at those numpties who despite the experience of decades of processions of struggling and failing football clubs seem to genuinely believe that all City have to do is get the Bulls into VP and suddenly they - alone in the history of the game - will become a financially thriving club with all its problems solved at a stroke.

On this minority sport stuff... It's all a long time ago now, and unlikely to be repeated any time soon, but City have been in the Premiership for two seasons on the trot. That alone means they have put the name Bradford in more people's heads than Bulls / Northern have over the combined previous 100 years.

Yeah, but closely in conjunction with words like cr.p and sh.t.

Looks like Lawn has a real axe to grind with the council.

[urlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/b/bradford_city/8634539.stm[/url

On the prospect of moving out of Bradford for training to Leeds Univesity "It would have been very nice if Bradford Council had done something, but if they don't offer anything then we have to go where we can go," he added.

Make of this what you will but to me he's someone that's done a great job steadying the ship at BCFC and is desperate to turn around the current situation. I'm not a City fan in anyway what so ever but I wouldn't like to see them go under.

That said it's down to them really and not the fault of the council or this perceived favouritism shown to the Bulls. The best bet for them would be to lump on to the Odsal Sporting Village but there are the two big obstacles in that Gibbs has them tied to a lease. And more importantly a lot of people died there not that long ago.

That said the Council and indeed all parties involved in the OSV must press ahead with the project for the good of the entire city. At least one project has to come off.

what I found particularly telling in radio interview with lawn last night was bit about season tickets. basically they've only sold 7k so far and if they dont reach their target of 10k in before deadline (may 8th I think was mentioned) then the cheap tickets will not be repeated next year and the price will rise substantially. The fact that they are no longer prepared to bankroll the cheap ticket scheme, combined with their need to spend significantly on re-laying the pitch would suggest that alls not rosy financially at city and they need us to ground share for their continued survival. So if we stick it out and wait for new feasibility study to be done we could find ourselves in situation at end of it where city are coming to us looking to groundshare. They also seem to assume that if the council did buy VP they'd drastically reduce the rent, Which I dont see the council doing as they would treat it as a business investment and charge the going rate to both city and bulls. Also a bit disingenous the way an extra 1.5mil would cover any pitch modifications and the re-laying when the fact is if we did agree to a ground share it would be as equal partners so there'd be a significant amount needed to re-brand the stadium i.e two stands worth of seating to change to bulls colours, new signage etc.

If only 7k sign up, how much does each person pay? How does their cheap season ticket deal work anyway? Has any other club taken it up?

Its subsidised by lawn and rhodes in hope that attendances will rise and bar takings etc will compensate them for amount their laying out. obviously not breaking even. Thats why I always find it a bit misleading when city fans go on about getting higher attendances than ours. Cant help but wonder what their attendances would look like without the cheap tickets.

You should do a bit of research before spouting off with your wet dreams about City being about to go bust.

The bar takings, all catering income and all income from the merchandising department is franchised out to EMC and Surridge Sports, City have a guaranteed income from that whether they average 4000 or 14000. These deals were put in place before the cheap season ticket offer.

It has been outlined in the T&A and at fans forums at Valley Parade in the past - the money City make from outsourcing these contracts, and from leasing office space covers the costs of playing at Valley Parade - the season ticket/matchday ticket income is basically the budget for the staff, Lawn loaned the club some money last season to push the boat out but McCall ed it up against a wall, he took half his loan back from a sell-on clause City made money on last summer but nothing extra was put in this season, however he and the Rhodes' have intimated they may put their hands in their pockets again for next season.

Unless anything has changed dramatically since last August/they were lying then that's the situation at VP (a stadium which exists unlike the mythical OSV).

Meanwhile up at Odsal the Bulls lose money every time they open the gates, slightly improved form doesn't really seem to have re-ignited any sort of feelgood factor in the general public and the stadium is hideously expensive to maintain, and may not even be fit for purpose in a few years time. In a time when public spending needs to be reigned in the Bulls are relying on public money magically appearing in a City that was left to rot even in the economic good times.

Try to make out that the Bulls hold all the cards in this scenario if you want, but the truth is neither club holds a particularly good hand.

And if not? What happens then?

They won't retain the manager and they'll have another team with little realistic chance of gaining promotion, crowds will drop off which will affect the income the club can expect if they want to renew the franchising deals which run out at the end of next season, then season tickets will have to be priced at a more realistic rate.

Overly simplistic I know, but 4500 punters paying £300 is, financially, better than 7000 paying the £138 that the tickets were on sale for in December and another 2000 buying them for £184 now - because of the franchise deals, negotiated when average crowds were 9000 and relegation was coming, City haven't been able to cash in on the larger attendances as much as they might have - though given the circumstances at the time I can see why a guaranteed income covering the rent etc was seen as a good idea.

I agree that the franchisee was as good idea at the time to create fixed income, especially if it was calculated to cover all stadium costs. Presumably the deal was based on estimated attendances of 9000+ by the offer of cheap pre-paid season tickets.
I see your calculations re 4,500 punters @ £300 as valid but surely this would impact on potential income from franchaisees on the next deal where income from them would not cover stadium costs.
9,000 ticket buyers, even at a lower price, would create a similar ticket income and a much greater franchise income
It must also be considered whether the franchise income was fixed as opposed to stadium costs annually rising in line with inflation.
I do have a loyalty to Bradford City and concerns about their future. The main one is about cash flow.
Lets hope they can work out a survival statedgy, cos selling next years tickets to pay for this years expenses is not a good thing.

According to what was said at previous fans forums season ticket income is/was ringfenced to be used in the season it applied to. So as long as that is the case then that isn't an issue.*

As far as I can remember the cheap tickets hadn't been mooted when the franchises were negotiated, so I don't know if the franchise holders got a good deal or not, it definitely hadn't kciked in when they were announced and I doubt City could have guaranteed a 14.5k average attendance in League 2 (which happened in the first season of the deal) when they were struggling in league one getting 9k so I can't see how City would have maximised their income, though obviously I am not privy to the exact details.

If crowds don't hold up next season then obviously that will impact on any future deals City negotiate for the catering/merchandise etc, however neither operator has proved popular with the supporters (the merchandise is horrendous) and there is a lot more expertise on the board now compared to then, so it is unclear what route the club will go down when the deals come up for re-negotiation, they may choose to take it back in-house.

IIRC, and if what we are being told by the directors is correct, City are one of the few football league clubs breaking even at the moment, they aren't generating lots of money (and won't in this division) but I don't think financial oblivion is as close as some on here like to consistently insinuate, though continuing stagnation (or even decline) on the playing side of things will have a negative impact before too long.

At the moment slow ticket sales will only impact on the budget for the players, all essentials are taken care of, but as you say obviously that income will not hold up with a significant slump in numbers.

*Of course there is also the chance that the information given out by the powers that be is a load of balls, I tend to take any statements about this sort of thing with a large pinch of salt when it comes from sports clubs nowadays.