The property arm of Luton Town Football Club will be ‘relatively unchallenged’ by the Coronavirus shutdown of the game, according to chief executive Gary Sweet, though work on their new stadium is temporarily on hold.
The pandemic has seen football suspended for the last three weekends and until at least April 30 at the earliest, though many, including the Hatters chief, expect that to be extended further, with the EFL due to meet again this week.
With schools and many businesses closed and the whole country advised to stay at home and practise social distancing to help slow the spread of Covid-19, it means work on Town’s 17,500-seat stadium and Power Court and the supporting development at Newlands Park, is on hold.
But Sweet, who is also a director the club’s property arm, 2020 Developments Ltd, said: It’s only on hold while we go through this particular period. The good news is we are through the difficult bit. We have land ownership. We have freehold ownership of that land. We have got an uncontended planning permission, so I’m not saying it’s easy, but when we do come out of this, the world cannot stop revolving.
“The wheels of commerce will still continue, and whilst there was cash available to spend in these markets beforehand, I’m sure there is going to be cash available to spend in those markets afterwards.
“That, of course, we might have to have a review of one or two of those things, but I can assure people that actually the property side of the business, because there is only a very small fixed cost in that, is going to be relatively unchallenged by the problem. Until we can come back and start to push forward.”
After the safety of players, staff and fans, the immediate concern is bridging the gap until football resumes, with no match-day revenue coming in.
The EFL has announced a £50million support package, but that is largely an advance of money that clubs were owed.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a £350billion pound package to help businesses, though there are reports that the airline industry will call on the government for a bailout of hundreds of millions of pounds to help them survive.
Asked if the football industry could take that route, Sweet said: “Yeah. “There is some help coming from the government which we should be included in, we don’t really know at the moment because the announcements made last week from the government, the details of that haven’t quite yet been released and trying to get hold of somebody to help is really quite difficult.
“I think that’s the challenge for us at the moment is trying to understand what kind of positive impact that might have on us, in terms of some of the tax relief, we get through PAYE and some of those lower salaries.
“I think it was certainly the right thing to have done, because otherwise we would be seeing mass unemployment come out of this in three months’ time, four months’ time and none of us want to see that.
“So, there are some routes to assistance, but the longer this goes on then the more we’re going to need, clearly.
“I think there’s a little bit of time to reflect and see what those first lines of assistance will provide us, and our objective then is to see with all of these advances of support, whether that can get us through to next season when that starts, at which point, some central funding and broadcast funding, will become available to us and hopefully enable us to survive going forward.”
