Bradford Bulls owner Omar Khan has put £900,000 of his own money into the Bradford Bulls to cover a recent cash shortage according to the Telegraph and Argus.
Bradford Bulls players had not been payed last months wages. At first the club said it was a very short term issue caused by an administrative error, however they later came out and said that players would not be paid until August the 8th. This of course sparked fears that the club was about to go into administration once again.
I’ll be honest, I’m still concerned about the Bulls.
It is great that the owner stepped up and put more money into the club, but why did it take for players to now get paid for that to happen? Either he wasn’t aware there was a funding issue or he hoped it would all get sorted out before he needed to do anything about it. In short, things should have got to this point in the first place.
While owning a Rugby League club isn’t the sort of investment an owner should expect to get any money out of, you do want it to be run as a self sustaining business. An owners job isn’t to dump money into the fire any time it looks like the club is about to go belly up. An owners job isn’t to be paying player salaries, the club itself should be generating enough money to do that.
Obviously there is an issue with the business that is the Bradford Bulls. There is a shortfall somewhere that has been filled for now, but that will no doubt become an issue again unless they start running things a little better.
Not getting all the TV money is probably not helping them this year, which is a problem resulting from the past owners. Then again, the current owners knew the situation so should have covered that. Crowds have been fairly poor too. At a guess, I’d say probably lowest in the Super League era down at Odsal.