The club is now in a position to announce a refund option available to 2019/20 season ticket holders in respect of the four home games that were not played due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The first question to address is why we have waited until now to announce these options. We have had four months of almost no income, with the loss of both gate receipts and secondary spend from the last four scheduled home games, the associated impact on our commercial income, the closure of the club shop and Goalzone and the cancellation of non-football events.
We are now in a fifth month where we would have started to generate matchday income from pre season games. Our priority during this period has been to come through it financially and to ensure that the club is in a stable sustainable financial position once the new season starts.
Like all firms and organisations it has been a daily battle to come through this period. We hope that supporters would agree that securing the future of the club into next season and beyond was the immediate priority. As we start to come out of what has been a very difficult period and again with supporters at the forefront of our thinking, we are in a position now to state the refund options available to 2019/20 season ticket holders.
There are two options for 2019/20 season ticket holders :
Option one: to request a Pro-rata refund
2019/20 season ticket holders are entitled to a pro-rata refund based on 4 home matches not played of the original 21 scheduled games, so 4/21 i.e. 19% of the amount that you paid for your 2019/20 season ticket. We are expressing this as a % rather than an absolute amount, as many of you would have paid the 2019/20 early bird price and some of you the standard season ticket price, in both cases the refund would be 19% of the amount that you paid.
Option two: Support the football club by not requesting a refund
The second option is for supporters to donate their pro-rata rebate to the football club. We make no secret of the fact that this is the preferred option of the club, given that we have seen most of our income streams fall from their normal level to virtually zero and that our priority remains ensuring that we go into next season in a stable sustainable financial position and our plans to be very competitive in 2020/21 are not put in jeopardy. For every season ticket holder that doesn’t request a refund we will donate 10% of these to the Telford United CIC charity to help fund future community projects.
Whilst we have stated above that Option 2, a donation back to the football club is very welcome, we fully acknowledge that some of you may not be in a position to do this and any requests for refunds will be dealt with promptly.
For those season ticket holders that wish to request a refund please email [email protected] by Friday 31st July.
For any supporters that don’t contact us by 31st July, we will assume Option 2 that the refund can be donated to the football club.
We will address the separate topic of 2020/21 season ticket prices and any refunds once we know the season start date and the number of home matches.
We look forward to seeing everyone back at the Bucks Head as soon as the 2020/21 season starts.
