Bradford goal is to “survive” after more troubles uncovered
Bradford’s board of directors says the club’s goal for 2014 is to survive, after they uncovered a host of financial issues and outstanding debts since taking over the club.
They delivered the news to season-ticket holders on Wednesday night, but insisted that the Bulls are not on the verge of entering administration for the second time in 18 months.
Chairman Mark Moore and fellow directors Andrew Calvert and Ian Watt addressed a packed Coral Stand, outlining their intentions to rebuild relations and secure the club’s long-term future.
A club spokesperson said: “The last administrative team struggled to understand the full impact of running this club and stepped away from the business with large outstanding debts, which the Bulls are now recovering from.
“Concerts staged last year ran at a financial loss, estimated to be in region of £100,000, and the costs keep on coming.
“The loans, both in terms of their size and nature, which have been made against the Bulls, have only come to light in the past four weeks.
“Poor leadership and a lack of commercial know-how, from earlier this year, has sadly turned away many traditional sponsors – and income. Again, we now have to recover.
“We have lost a lot of our suppliers due to non-payments and a lack of communication and engagement with them.”
The board also revealed that the previous administrators handed first-team head coach Francis Cummins an unrealistic playing and backroom budget, of which exact figures have only recently been fully disclosed, and, as a direct result, the board of directors must now make hard decisions and implement tough cost-cutting measures in order for the Bulls to survive.
The spokesperson added: “As a club we are left with no choice but to make difficult decisions in a bid to streamline the business.
“We believe we are working with manageable debts, but the fact that we no longer have 10,000-15,000 people turning out on our terraces means we will have retract as a business.
“Our incomings simply do not match our current outgoings, so over the next few days we have to make tough decisions on every business unit in the club.
“The goal for next year is now to survive, compete and win back the trust of supporters and previous sponsors, while looking forward to receiving our full allocation of central funding ahead of 2015.”