Gloucester Rugby chief executive: "We are going to have our most successful ...

SUCCESS on the field continues to elude Gloucester Rugby but the famous club is about to unveil its best ever set of results, according to its chief executive.

Stephen Vaughan made the revelation to a room full of Gloucestershire’s business leaders – many of who are already club sponsors or partners and helping drive its commercial success.

It was great news for the business side of Gloucester Rugby, said Mr Vaughan, stressing how acutely aware he was that results on the field were how most of its loyal customers would be judging the club’s performance.

He said: “As a business we are going to have our most successful year ever in the history of the club. As a club it has been a tough season on the field and we have had to make some tough decisions off it too. But they are difficult decisions that have to be made to take the business forward.”

Mr Vaughan, a former Walsall FC footballer, was formerly the managing director of Thomas Cook London 2012, where he led the travel company’s involvement with the Olympic Games.

The season ended for Gloucester with a disappointing loss to arch rivals and bottom of the table Worcester which saw the team finish ninth in the Aviva Premiership standings, having won just eight of its 22 games. The Worcester result saw director of rugby Nigel Davies sacked with immediate effect.

It is a decision Gloucester hope will draw a line under a season which promised so much, as outlined in last year’s annual report which stated the 2012/13 squad “has the potential to compete very strongly in the premiership”.

When this year’s results are revealed in the summer, it will see the club achieve four years of straight profit growth.

The news comes as the club prepared to unveil new signing James Hook in Wales today. Bringing in the right replacement for Mr Davies and the right signings was now vital, said Mr Vaughan.

“We are covering some considerable ground and having some exciting conversations,” he said.

He added: “The core revenue has not grown – that is season tickets, bar sales, merchandise. We have bought in a new sponsor – ADEY Professional Heating Solutions – and on the back of that 11 new commercial partners. They are helping us not just financially but also in engaging with the community.

“They are adding to our bottom line and enabling us to invest in the playing department. What we all want is a successful team. I know and appreciate championing good financial results will not sit well with all supporters, but if we are to compete as a top four side – which is our mission statement –we need to achieve this.

“We are not a Bath or a Saracens who have a rich sugar daddy willing to lose £4million or £6million a year. We have the best supporters in rugby. I know people say to that ‘what about Leicester – they get 20,000 a game’. They have had a sustained level of success, and you have to say we have not – yet.

“The senior management is not about short-term fix. It is about long-term leadership structure, about the academy developing plays, about the whole ‘fix’. It is important for us to get that right.”

(Saracens declared an operating loss of £5.9m for season 2012/13. Bath’s balance sheet shows the club lost £3.8m in 2012/13 – 35 per cent up from a deficit of £2.8m the previous year).

While the club was essentially just a “venue for hire operation” for next year’s Rugby World Cup it hoped to benefit – not least in terms of its improvements to its facilities – from meeting the expectations demanded by its role.

Plans were afoot, he said, to add a “kids engagement area” in front of the famous Shed stand and extra children’s capacity elsewhere in the ground.

The 2013 Top 100 supplement, produced by the Gloucester Citizen and Gloucester Echo, showed the club employed 223 staff. Last year’s results, released in September and covering the period to June 30, 2013, showed profit growth with pre-tax levels rising from £302,635 to £305,336 and turnover climbing year on year, from £11.3m to £11.6m.

Article source: http://www.givemesport.com/412572-why-south-africa-should-host-the-2017-rugby-league-world-cup

Gloucester Rugby chief executive: "We are going to have our most successful ...