Dunfermline to get their money
By Graham Barnstaple
March 5 2012
The administrators at Rangers have agreed to pay Dunfermline the outstanding ticket money from their recent League game.
The Pars were owed £83000 by Rangers for the ticket money, and non payment was given as a reason for their players only receiving 60% of their wages last week.
This seems a strange move to me givenDunfermlineshould only be expected to be treated the same as any other creditor, so I am not sure why they are getting this preferential treatment. Particularly when there are other SPL clubs owed money by Rangers, with Dundee Utd still waiting on their share of the gate from their cup win at Ibrox.
The payment will undoubtedly helpDunfermlineto get over this sticky spell and pay the balance of the player’s wages. In recent days the non payment was given as the sole reason forDunfermline’s cash flow issues.
I would suggest there are other reasons, they appear to have lost a number of fans throughout the season, therefore cash coming in at the turnstile will have dropped. For example, when Motherwell player atEast EndParkin August the crowd was 4462, on Saturday it was 3523, a drop of 900.
The Motherwell support looked to have held up therefore since the start of the season the Pars have lost almost 1000 fans coming to watch them. At £20 per person that is £20000 per game – maybe the club needs to look at ways of getting people back into the ground.
They have already impacted the atmosphere at games by closing one home stand on a regular basis and also the home stand on occasions as well!
I am sure I read at the start of the season they were budgeting on getting an average of over 6000 people into the ground, a projection based upon a growth on their attendances in Division One. I am not sure where they thought they would get these additional people from.
Maybe it isn’t just the non payment of money from Rangers that have causedDunfermlineproblems, but the reasons are a little closer to home!
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