by Matt Riley
4th September, 2014
For Bangkok-based clubs, football revenue is often seen as shirts, tickets and beer. Other spending tends to be lumped in with the general hubbub of capital city spending. But, for provincial clubs, the increasing spending power of their teams generate new and life-changing opportunities for the local economy. Often living strictly budgeted lives, football's glamour helps leverage provincial families into parting with more money on a match day than they would during the week. These few hours of relative recklessness, if folded back into the local economy, make football a driver for improved local businesses.
Just this morning we have visited a sick member of staff in the local hospital. Of course he would rather not be there, but his bill paid by the club, the food bought for him at a local shop and a new set of device rechargers all add to the previously sleepy sales of the neighbouring shopping centre. As we go around the town we pay flower bills for a recent event, buy bedding from a local family firm for our new addition and settle the bill for a set of posters promoting a recent cycling event at our stadium. Each figure is relatively small, but for family-run businesses they represent a huge boost.
Match day often seems the be-all-and-end-all of revenue: merchandising and match tickets get the most attention. But we also invite local businesses to sell their food outside the stadium to our fans and guests. With the extra space a provincial club has, we can also combine concerts with match days that satisfy our sponsors and extends the chance to free fans from their funds. So many people concentrated in one place (our average home attendance tops ten thousand) provides a huge bi-monthly boost for local businesses. They often have to travel to their customers or fight for prime locations outside schools or strategic places on roads where eighty percent of the day is waiting for a busy twenty.
The next step for a club with enough foresight is to make their stadium a hub of local business. Creating office space for small local companies within their ground would develop daily income for tertiary services and keep the club front and centre of people's minds every day of the week. Plenty of Thai clubs, like Chiang Rai, have built in huge potential office space inside their grandstands but, like many others, these areas are destined to gather dust. By building a stadium-based hotel like Chelsea, apartments a stone's throw from Arsenal's Emirates Stadium or the (failed) attempt by Newcastle United to build a casino (if it were legal here) behind the Gallowgate End clubs can reap rich rewards. Buriram's opening of a Formula 2 racing track and Amari Hotel metres from the ground is the Thai benchmark, but with the amount of profile and profit available to a club and its community, there is a plenty more yet to do...
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