Andrea Pinchen: Leicester Tigers CEO says club 'financially safe'
- Published
Leicester Tigers start their 2023-24 Premiership season at Bristol Bears on Friday, 13 October
Leicester chief executive Andrea Pinchen says the financial fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to affect them, but stresses the club is in a "strong position" to deal with it.
Loans that Tigers took out from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) during the pandemic are due to be repaid from this month.
Four professional English clubs have gone bust in the past 12 months and cited Covid as a contributing factor.
"We are safe," Pinchen said.
"The simple answer is yes, absolutely we are."
Pinchen had previously said repayments to DCMS were due to start in March, but she told BBC Radio Leicester the first instalment will be paid in October after a two-year payment holiday.
In October 2020, Pinchen said the club was losing £1m a week and it was a year later that she said Tigers were again "financially stable" after facing the threat of going out of business during the pandemic.
"When we look across rugby, I think it applies to them all, but I'll speak for Tigers when I say we are still feeling the after-effects, quite substantially, from Covid," Pinchen said.
"Again that is putting pressure on, but it is money that we borrowed and therefore it needs to be paid back."
Tigers' financial position was given a major boost in February with Tom Scott and Peter Tom investing a combined £13m in the club.
Both Premiership side London Irish and, most recently, Jersey Reds in the Championship failed in their search for investors before going bust this year.
"We are in a really fortunate position to have our two major shareholders in Tom Scott and Peter Tom, who are very supportive both financially - which is of course amazing - but also from a board perspective," Pinchen said.
"We have a board meeting monthly, but also we have biweekly board calls as a group so we know what is happening at investor-board level at Premiership Rugby."
'Working hard to avoid heavy losses'
Leicester's most recent set of accounts from the 2021-22 season shows they made a £1.9m operating loss and were carrying debts of £18.1m.
"For us the focus is Leicester Tigers and making sure that we are a club now that we are proud of, and will be for many years to come," Pinchen said.
"Of course we need to make sure that we are not making really heavy losses and that it is sustainable. We are working on that every day."
Tigers and their remaining Premiership rivals now have to deal with a season that includes three fewer Premiership home matches.
Pinchen previously said a 10-team Premiership was seen as "the way to go" by powerbrokers in a game dealing with a financial crisis.
"From the Premiership's perspective a 10-team league was mooted, so you wouldn't have the crossover with internationals," Pinchen said.
"And whilst I see that and accept that as a really positive thing - because if a season ticket-holder is paying hard-earned cash, and someone is coming to a game, they want to see all the superstars on the pitch - so I do see and support that field of play where you don't have internationals played at the same time.
"But then that does present you with a challenge of having a stadium, and all the costs that it incurs and the cost of living that is affecting us all, that is only then used for nine games a year and Europe, and so on.
"So you need to find other avenues for us to create that funding, be it through the community, the foundation or through conferences and events, to make sure our facilities are being used and are paying for themselves."