Stephen Vaughan positive about Yorkshire's future as club faces financial challenges head-on

The Yorkshire chief executive believes that the club is facing the toughest period financially in its history as it strives to keep its head above water.

The Yorkshire Post understands that the latest accounts, due to be published soon, are likely to show a loss of around £3m, pushing the club’s debt back around £20m.

But while acknowledging and empathising with people’s concerns, and on the back of a circa £800,000 loss last year, Vaughan is in positive mood as he eased any fears of impending calamity.

“Of course you hear various concerns about this, that and the other regarding the financial situation, and I totally understand that,” he said.

“I can see why people might put two and two together and get five, because you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that there is financial strain at the present time, and I certainly don’t want to paint the wrong picture.

“But can we pay our creditors as they fall due? Have we got a robust plan around the financial future of the organisation? Are we in conversations, whether it’s with banks, financing companies, refinancers, individuals, and so on, with regards to the future of Yorkshire County Cricket Club? Yes, absolutely.

“We can’t say that everything’s done and we’re laughing at the moment, but will we be a going concern going forward from these accounts, say? Yes, we will, and there are loads of positive things going on.”

The financial problems pre-date Vaughan’s arrival in November, with around £2.5m-£3m worth of exceptional costs arising from Yorkshire’s handling of, and reaction to, the racism crisis.

The various whys and wherefores of that expenditure have been well documented, and Vaughan does not shy away from the hard realities.

““Financially, is it tough at the moment? Yes,” he said. “I would suggest it’s tougher than it’s ever been at Yorkshire, without a shadow of a doubt because of what’s happened.

“If you imagine an organisation that works on small margins anyway… well, that’s how it is.

“If you’re a greengrocer, say, and suddenly your shop gets broken into, all your stock gets nicked and you don’t have any insurance, then you’re going to have a problem, and that’s kind of where we are at the minute.

“We’ve hit a big bump in the road in terms of massive costs which we’ve now got to deal with, and we’ve got various ways of doing that, but there’s no immediate issues around the club going insolvent, or anything of that sort, which people will see when they see the accounts, and we’re very much looking ahead in terms of things like negotiating the next seven years of Test match allocations, working through how we can interact better with global markets like India, and so on.”

It seems incredible to think that it was only three years ago that Yorkshire announced a record operating profit of £6.5m on the back of the 2019 Headingley Ashes Test and four World Cup games, which smashed the previous club record of £2.3m ten years earlier.

The club is grateful for all the support it now gets as it fights to put itself back together.

“The ECB and many stakeholders are very keen to support us,” said Vaughan, “and we’re in a similar situation to other counties also in that it’s been tough for everyone following Covid.

“In our case, if you then add in, quite frankly, a few million quid of exceptional costs, any county would find that difficult.

“You’ve basically got a chunk of outgoings that weren’t budgeted or forecast, but were deemed by the people here at the time to be completely necessary, so whether that was stuff around EDI, or giving free kit to people of certain demographics, whether it was bringing in new people, whistleblowing hotlines, the staggering amount of cash that was spent on legal fees and payouts - all of that is a massive chunk of cash.

“Clearly that’s problematic for the organisation, and when you add in the loan to the Graves Trust, which is due for repaying in 2024, and obviously we need to sort it all out.”

Yorkshire are in the throes of refinancing the club, with some £16m owed to that Graves Trust. Vaughan said they are making positive strides.

“We’ve got lots of conversations going on around trying to refinance the club with some working capital, which would obviously ease the burden,” he added.

“I can’t go into too much detail, but we’ve got over a dozen conversations ongoing at the moment with various parties, both in the UK and overseas, including businesses, banks, conglomerates, individuals and more, which is all very positive.”

Yorkshire are also making progress in terms of appointing a new chair, with Lord Kamlesh Patel about to stand down. Vaughan said there had been “a bucketload of interest”.

“We’ve had some very high-quality candidates,” he said. “It was an anonymised process, which is to stop the kind of jobs-for-the-boys thing, and it goes through an independent mill, so to speak, before it gets to us.

“We’ve got a shortlist now of between 10 to 20, and interviews are taking place.

"We’re hoping that come the AGM (on March 24) we’ll be able to say a lot more on this.”