Yorkshire CCC in plea to members for financial help amid coronavirus pandemic

The club says it would cost more than £600,000 to refund all its qualified members in a season in which they have so far been unable to watch live cricket.

It is hoped that at least 70 per cent of members will agree to the move, which would save the club upwards of £400,000 and help them better steer a course through the present crisis.

Mark Arthur, the Yorkshire chief executive, said: “At the moment we’re staring at a loss of income of up to £2m for the year.

“Over the last few months we’ve undertaken a number of measures in order to reduce our liabilities, be it furloughing of staff, cost reductions of the Emerald Headingley stadium, and obviously we haven’t had some of the costs that would be associated with running the cricket teams over that period of time.

“Added to that, the staff all volunteered up to 20 per cent reductions in their salary for June, July and August, and that’s made a significant impact on that side of things.

“We have done as much as we can with regard to mitigating some of that loss.

“Now we’ve written to our members to ask for their support, and the big unknown is how many will decide to donate their membership (which ranges between £100 and £245) for the year.We hope the more people that keep their money in the club, that will have a positive effect for next year when we are once again hoping to challenge with as strong a squad as possible. It’s a members’ club – the members own Yorkshire County Cricket Club – and they are very proud to be members.”

Yorkshire may need to make further cuts – including redundancies – in the coming weeks.

“We’re looking at all aspects of the business going forward, which includes redundancies,” added Arthur. “One of the advantages we have is that we run a very lean operation.

“If you compare the headcount that we have to a number of other counties of our size, we are quite lean. Any cuts would therefore be minimal, and we’ll be going through that process in the next couple of months.”

Yorkshire’s plea for members’ help comes at a time of uncertainty regarding how much they will receive through central distribution. This guarantees roughly £3.5m per year.

Arthur said: “We are aware that the England and Wales Cricket Board have themselves lost between £100m-£180m due to the current situation, and while they’ve guaranteed a certain amount of money until February 2021, they are looking to make reductions themselves, and we don’t know where those will be and we won’t find out until mid-September.

“It could be a 20 per cent reduction for the counties for a couple of years, who knows. We have no idea at this stage. But it does mean that members donating their money is even more important.”

Yorkshire are planning to offer additional benefits to those members who help them in their hour of need, and they will display their names on a special honours board at Headingley.

Should crowds be allowed later in the season, those who retain their membership will be admitted free and receive priority in terms of tickets.

It was partly for members’ benefit that Yorkshire felt it important to get some sort of cricket on this season, even if that is behind closed doors.

“Putting county cricket on has actually cost money,” said Arthur.

“But we felt we had a responsibility to the game to get cricket going again, to bring some continuity, to build on the huge success that the nation had in 2019, and you’ve also got the health and welfare of the players to think about. For county players to go 18 months without playing cricket, that can cause issues; you’ve got lads in the prime of their lives, and they want to play cricket.

“We also want cricket for our loyal members to watch.”

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