“I hope you are all keeping well during these very difficult and unprecedented times. I feel that you should all be made aware of the current situation.
Over the last 2 years the club has lost £45K. During lockdown, we have continued to have expenditure without any income. Looking at the future our main source of income comes from function income and events such as the Beer and Gin Festival, hiring our ground to caravans and our Firework & Funfair Night which historically has provided us with over 50% of our bar turnover.
In the short term, we may not have any functions or events, so how will we survive?
We need support and ideas from yourselves, what can we do? How do we do it?
Price increases and reducing the clubs opening hours are not the answer, they may well help but they are not going to be enough.
We have started cutting overheads and will continue to do so as much as possible, and we will maximise income where possible but the committee need support from the membership.
We envisage that without functions, our bar turnover based on past sales will be in the region of £3K per week, giving a profit of approximately £1500 per week which based on present income and expenditure will mean we are losing approximately £1200 per week.
Cricket may well be starting shortly and the club may still be closed, we don’t know. Although we have no income we still have to pay for umpires, scorers, balls, equipment , groundsman, maybe the professional. The only income we will have had is membership income and players membership fees, which will nowhere near cover the costs.
This is a very worrying situation and obviously any ideas will be welcomed and considered.
Sorry to be the bearer of more bad news, but they are the facts. So when we’re open, if you are going to go for a drink please support the cricket club, otherwise without your support it won’t survive.”
John Cotton
St Annes Cricket Club Chairman