As many of you know, I've been away for a few weeks and just catching up with things.

I've seen a lot of comments about "... if I win the lottery I would save the Bulls". The sentiment is laudable but I am not sure what that actually means in practice! So, if I won £5m on the lottery and wanted to invest this amount in the Bulls, realistically:-

1) what needs to be done immediately to save the Club and put it onto a firm financial footing and how much of the £5m will it take?

2) what skills/experience is actually needed to run a SL club? Whilst I could stump up the dosh, I have no idea how to run a successful club!

3) where do you find these people with the spare time and inclination to do this? Fans agreeing to "help out" does not seem suffice in my mind!

If you won the lottery you could afford to pay the right people to do things whatever way you wanted. You'd therefore only need to put in place (a) a financial business expert of your choice whom you trusted to be in overall charge of the finances at the club; and (b) a top marketing person who could maximise income from whatever sources.

I don't think with those funds you could make a top-4 club, to do that your marketing person would need to somehow find and sign up serious-money sponsors, which are conspicuous by their absence round here; and probably you'd also need some sort of ongoing business connections whereby certain people could be paid certain substantial wages that were nothing to do with Bradford Bulls, but had the odd and unconnected effect of making it more likely that top players would be prepared to sign on relatively low deals.

But yes, you'd certainly have more than enough moolah to take charge. Just cancel the order for your yacht

Unfortunately this just shows the size of the problem - assuming your luck holds and you do win £5m on the lottery which you then selflessly then devote in its entirety to the Bulls worthy cause.

First to get our friends at Red Hall on side and it least be allowed to remain in SL for the rest of the current license period - £1.25m to buy back the lease.

Then if you don't make any significant changes to the existing set up your remaining cash will have been used up in 2 or 3 seasons.

So would you really want to cancel the order for the yacht?

I think this is what I am struggling with! Even if you are prepared to put £5m into the pot, is this enough? Even if it is enough (to buy back the lease, pay the players/staff etc, payoff HMRC and other debtors), what do you do then? Its all well and good saying you need to employ this and that but where do you start to find someone who is competent to do this. It is this part I'm struggling with.

I am pretty certain £5m would be much better than any of the current bids - heck there would even be enough to pay BG's fees, and you could stabilise the current postion and with luck keep the core of the team and coaching staff. But then you would have to address the issue that in the last few seasons we seem to have been spending about £100k a month more than we have been bringing in.

I am guessing but maybe £2m to £2.5m would get you the club - and a photo opportunity with one or more of our MP's! - but you would then have to find the £1m+ a year

Divide that figure by ten or more. You'd get the club for sod all in real terms, given the employee liabilities and other responsibilities you would be taking on. All that bollox about a £3m offer was precsiely that. Bollox.

And if you were prepared to keep on paying rent, you'd not need to buy back the lease.

What you WOULD need is at least £1/2m a year, more right now before you slash the first team playing squad at the end of the season, to cover the shortfall between income and costs. I do not think you would need £1m a year once you cut the squad - unless the supporters deseted in droves, in which cas shut the doors and go home anyway.

I think if you offered £1 for the club and to pay all creditors [iin full[/i BG would have to take that seriously.

This £1m loss is only for this year (and probably last) - which corresponded with the 2 ticket pledges.

ST's back to "normal" rates and accept that we would spend £200k less than the SC and a lot of the shortfall would be gone.

With hindsight, the first ticket pledge was a loss-leading piece of marketing genius which would only work with making the playoffs last year. Huge gamble. Eggs all in 1 basket with Awford. Everything which could go wrong - did so.

Complete folly to continue it this year. Unless they thought they had enough financial guarantees (bank, sponsors, RFL) lined up to get us through to Sept. One domino fell then the others all followed.

In practice, I suggest no-one is likely to offer to pay the creditors in full? We are talking nearly £600k to HMRC alone, as far as I can make out.

Any less that 100% would require a CVA, and I suspect that unless the offer was a substantial % of the amount due ,then HMRC would refuse that on principle. The more the creditors were paid, the less the administrator could sell the assets for to get the same net return to the creditors. Except, of course, payments direct to creditors don't pay his own bills... but yes conceivably you could do a £1 asset sale with a CVA.

The former directors know that the year 2 pledge was, with hindsight, a mistake - notwithstanding another even worse year on the park meaning retaining the non-hard core fans was an even bigger ask than the previous year. If we speculate that say 7,000 adult pledge-price tickets might become say 4,500 full priced tickets at say 75% higher prices (insert any variables you want) then you end up with a 12,5% increase in total revenue. Maybe at best an extra £100k? And then deduct the gameday and merchandise and raffle tickets and other ancillary income you would lose. So you'd need to somehow keep most of the pledge price paying fans to make serious inroads into the annual income shortfall?

I suspect, too, that you would be looking at a lot more than £200k off the SC spend.

I'd factored into my £1/2m shortfall guess the assumption that both of the above would happen. Yet still a shortfall.

Seems to me that you could probably get close to eliminating that shortfall if every fan who bought a pledge price season ticket in 2012 bought a full-price one (less normal season ticket and early bird etc discounts) in 2013? The question is, how many actually would? With a much weaker squad, almost certainly a new head coach probably on rather less than Potter, and continuing savage squeeze on any spending? What do people think?

Its not so much the "price" but how much cash you need to put in -as an example pay £1 for the club, and £999,999 to clear off the creditors - so it requires £1m cash to "get the club" even though the sales ticket said £1.

But the problem any new owner would have that unless they pump in more than just the asking price and enough to pacify the creditors, is that the "Bulls brand" and the reputation of the club has been trashed, and the risk premium gone through the roof. So if you wanted to recruit player X you would have to pay him more to compensate for being associated with a tarnished brand and more because at the back of his mind he's thinking what happens if they run out of cash again.

You would hope good management could narrow the funding gap by setting a realistic ticket price and gradually weeding out the players who don't give value ( not that I think there are that many now) but as Adey said you would still need to find maybe another £0.5m a year if you wanted to meet the fans apsirations - or bite the bullet and admit this is what you can realistically expect for the clubs income.

I have often had the same thoughts as the OP, and have concluded that your primary concern (as the owner) would be to turn around the business into an organisation that AT LEAST breaks even per season.

Above, many have stated that you need to fund a club that is losing 100k per month, but that's only because of the previous owners/directors allowed the club to do this (spending to the cap, employing the people they did etc.)

An individual/team of individuals with innovative marketing ideas, which the club can make money from would be my first priority. Get the city of Bradford interested in RL again. I have been surprised at how little has been offered to children over the past few years. As a result, we haven't seen these youngsters attend games as we did in previous years. It's almost like the club has moved away from the fans. The only positive from our current situation is that the current fans now seem much more patriotic about the bulls. This needs to not only continue, but have new individuals investing into this same patriotism.

Coral stand - either needs to bring in more income or one would have to consider removing to then open opportunities of further income (speedway etc).

Saying it and doing it..... Not an easy task!

The only other variable is that the (hypothetical) 2,500 non season ticket speccies would probably revert back to being walk-up fans, picking & choosing 2-3 games per year to attend. The pledge prices did wipe out these guys as they all just bought £60 tickets. This would spread a bit more income through out the year as well.

At least two of the people I go with wouldnt, no matter how good the squad. One works abroad the other has family commitments that mean they can only get to a few matches each season. They've been happy to buy a pledge price ticket but would lose out big time on a full priced ticket.

But reverting back to realistic prices would provide a firmer base to grow the club. At the moment virtually the only people that go are season ticket holders. Casual fans dont go because psychologically they are paying a huge premium on the "going rate".

Just an idea - currently you either pay on the gate or get a season ticket or the one which is harder for the club - sit at home and watch it on telly.

I get a season ticket because I try to get to as many home games as normal but maybe you could attract more people by offering a "carnet" ticket which admits you to say 5 games - would work if it brings in more walk ins or people from the sofa - but the risk is people currently buying season tickets but don't actually go to more than half the games trade down

There were actually some decent mix and match offers available this year, the ticket I got was 7 games for £70, there's always a tough call to mantain a balance between a fair price for season tickets and a fair price for matchday admission - one group or another are always likely to include elements who'll feel hard done by.

Well, I won £8.60 on the Euromillion so if it's a £1 price I could buy the Bulls 8 times over, and still have change!

Yippee!! Where do I sign?