North celebrities willing their teams to victory

May 24 2009 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

Drop could cost clubs £35m in lost revenue

THERE are no trophies at stake, no winner’s medals to be claimed and no footballing fairytales to be written.

Yet this is the biggest day in the modern history of North East football.

Welcome to what, hopefully for two of our clubs, will be Survival Sunday.

But it’s a day that may be the death of Middlesbrough, Newcastle United or Sunderland. Or, at least, the death of one of those clubs as we know them.

Opinions vary as to the cost of relegation from the Premier League.

But with conservative estimates placing the figure at around £35 million, the North East trio could be playing for £100m-odd between them – or roughly £1.1m a minute – today.

Of our three teams, Newcastle probably have most to lose.

Even if temporary manager Alan Shearer is persuaded to stay on permanently, relegation to the Championship, with the promise of unglamorous games against the likes of Barnsley, Blackpool and Plymouth, would trigger a huge drop-off in season ticket sales.

And with the Magpies currently carrying a huge wage bill, a queue of big-name players would be lined up to depart.

With the future of owner Mike Ashley also anything but certain, an air of gloom hangs over Newcastle.

Sunderland and Middlesbrough would also be hit massively at the turnstiles.

But although key players would also inevitably quit the Stadium of Light, Sunderland have at least planned for life outside the Premier League by pre-agreeing wage cuts with earners.

And the Black Cats can also make good the promise of fresh investment from their majority shareholder, Ellis Short.

Similarly, Middlesbrough have been on an economy drive all season, and have most of their £90m-plus debt guaranteed by chairman Steve Gibson.

On the pitch, while a relegated Boro would wave goodbye to internationals like Stewart Downing and Tuncay, their success in producing homegrown young players should serve them well.

But it is off the field where the impact of the dreaded drop would perhaps hit hardest.

When Sunderland went down in 2003, they axed 83 administrative staff, and redundancies would be all but guaranteed elsewhere.

Also affected will be firms who trade with the clubs, leisure outlets and retailers who benefit from a huge influx of fans on matchdays.

Sales of club merchandise – a huge moneyspinner in the Premier League – would also be decimated.

But the single biggest cost of relegation would be a catastrophic loss of TV revenue.

Despite the start of a new deal with Sky TV and the BBC, clubs in the Championship will still be guaranteed little more than £3m a year in TV money compared with the annual £30m-plus on offer in the Premier League.

That deficit will easily swallow up the £11.2m-a-year “parachute” payments due to clubs.

What those facts and figures cannot convey is the basic but very real anguish that relegation would bring to supporters.

In an area wedded with football, divorce from the Premier League hardly bears thinking about.

For fans of at least one team, it’s an inescapable prospect.