Exeter City 'will start next season solvent'

7 hours ago

Exeter City will have enough money to see out this season and start the next campaign, according to interim chairman Laurence Overend.

The League One side has had to make redundancies and needed around £600,000 in loans from owners the Exeter City Supporters' Trust to stay afloat this season.

It led to fears for the fan-owned side's future after the club overspent in the 2024-25 campaign.

"You will always face the financial pinch-point during the close season, but from the accounts I've seen, the date where it gets to be a worrying balance keeps getting further and further away," Overend told BBC Radio Devon.

"I'm as confident as I can be that we will start next season solvent, but with a reduced budget for the playing costs."

Former chairman Richard Pym told a fans forum in January that the playing budget for next season could be cut by as much as £1m to £1.5m.

But Overend is optimistic it will not be as large a reduction.

"I won't go into the figures here because they're not set in stone yet. I don't anticipate it will be as great as that," he said.

"I think if there is any comfort that can be drawn, it's that it's better to set a budget low and to ensure that you survive the season financially, comfortably and as a solvent and stable club, rather than saying 'we'll have a budget of millions' and it all goes wrong and you end up in debt."

Exeter had been held up as a model of how to run a football club sustainably and successfully - helped by an academy that had earned millions from the sale of the likes of Ollie Watkins, Jay Stansfield and Ethan Ampadu.

They were promoted from League Two in 2022 and have spent the past four years in League One despite having one of the division's lowest budgets.

So how has it got to a stage where the club is on its third chairman in less than 12 months - Nick Hawker stepped down last June while his successor Richard Pym resigned as chairman last month - and has had to go cap in hand to the fans?

"There was a sense of 'we've cracked it, this is great, we can take a foot off the pedal. We don't have to worry' and everyone just sighs and goes 'great'," said Overend.

"What happens then of course is you don't operate a governance model as you should, everyone thinks that their job's done and the thing about a football club spending money is easy.

"So I suspect what happened was there was a sense of 'it's all going fine' without looking upon actually the structures that should be in place to ensure that everything is stable for the future."

'Always had an open mind to investment'

Exeter City fans banner reading 'we own our football club'

Exeter's fan-owned model means the club is reliant on generating its own funds - it does not have a wealthy owner who can pump money into the club should it make losses.

The Grecians' wage bill of around £4m is one of the lowest in a League One where Luton Town have a £40m Premier League parachute payment and many of the top sides have a budget more than twice as large as Exeter's.

With player sales not a reliable source of income, there have been calls for the Trust to sell a stake in the club to an outside investor.

But that brings its own concerns - Exeter became the first fan-owned club in England after mismanagement by their previous owners - and many supporters fear the same could happen again if they do not remain as the club's custodians.

But Overend says there is not a long queue of investors wanting to put their money into the club.

"To keep this model going for 23 years and to play at the level we've done I think is a remarkable feat," he said.

"The position I've taken is I've always had an open mind to outside investment.

"When I was chair of the Trust, there were a lot of people saying to me, 'what you want is investment, you want an investor' and I said 'let them speak' and I was never approached once.

"I think it is a debate that would be useful to have and I would be interested in how the Trust members voted if an investor came in."

In the era of wealthy backers coming into clubs at all levels of the game, is the time of supporter-owned clubs over?

Overend says that while it is becoming more difficult to compete, results show that a club like Exeter can be successful using their ownership model.

"We have proved that we can survive in League One and League Two under the model," he added.

"The question is can we make that step up to the Championship? And I think the answer to that is 'can it be achieved under the [Supporters'] Trust model?' Yes, at a stretch.

"Can you be sustainable in the Championship under a Trust model? My best assessment is probably not.

"I'd like to think that we could prove them wrong, but the glass ceiling between League One and the Championship is huge.

"I remember when Yeovil went up to the Championship and I was chair of the Trust and everyone was saying 'look what Yeovil have done, isn't that amazing, look at Yeovil, you should do that'. Well look at Yeovil now.

"My rational self would say I think it would be very difficult, if it was possible at all, to get in and remain in the Championship under the current mode.

"Would I like to think we could? Of course I do."

Source sports