National League club Barnet have responded to the suspension of football during the coronavirus crisis by putting all the club’s non-playing staff on immediate notice of redundancy. The club’s owner, the businessman Tony Kleanthous, told the Guardian there are approximately 60 employees being laid off, and he was holding meetings with them all on Tuesday.
Kleanthous said that as players’ contracts are protected in football and cannot be terminated early, clubs’ general employees are the ones vulnerable, and with no money coming in, he said he had no choice but to lay everybody off. He called on the Football Association to give more leadership in the crisis, and for the Premier League to set up financial assistance for clubs lower down the football pyramid.
The funding for Barnet’s academy was due to end this season, having continued under the Premier League’s EPPP system for the two seasons since the club’s relegation from the EFL in 2018. Kleanthous said the club had been budgeting to lose £100,000 per month in the hope that by spending on players’ wages they could challenge for promotion and keep the academy funding, but he was now bringing forward the redundancies of 15 remaining academy staff.
“My head is spinning with it, to be honest,” Kleanthous said. “I believe in doing these very difficult things properly and have had personal meetings with all the staff across the club and group to put them on notice.
“It has been really hard, a tough few days, since Friday [when the Premier League, EFL and Women’s Super League suspended their matches] and we could see what was coming. Apart from the players who are under contract, everybody who works here is under notice.
“Footballers are protected in the game, but my sympathies in this crisis lie with the cleaners, the receptionists, the marketing guys straight out of college, the matchday stewards who will lose their money which keeps them going in the week. These are the people nobody thinks of.”
Kleanthous, owner of Barnet for 26 years and previously a board member at the Football League and FA, said the Premier League needed to contribute some of its money to ensuring that clubs below its own 20 can survive financially during the crisis.
“I’m not looking for a handout from the Premier League, but they have a duty to football. They have enjoyed their billions for many years, so maybe for one year they need to say they are not spending their money on massive players’ wages, and are stepping in for football itself. What form that takes, I leave up to them.”
Kleanthous criticised the government’s response to the pandemic, pointing out – as other sectors have – that “business interruption” insurance is paid only when governments have ordered companies to cease trading, rather than merely advised them. The National League controversially played one more round of matches at the weekend before on Monday suspending games until 3 April. The government has still not prohibited sporting events, only advised against gatherings, so Kleanthous said the insurance, which is standard throughout the National League, did not yet apply.
“We still need a clear government instruction,” he said. “I also feel that a clear decision should have been taken now by the leagues and FA to end the season, so that we have certainty rather than kicking the can down the road. As it does not seem possible to play the remaining matches behind closed doors, we could complete the final league tables by calculating the rest of the matches on an average points so far over the season. Then we have some certainty rather than being in limbo like this.”
Jonas Baer-Hoffman, the general secretary of the international players union Fifpro, warned on Monday of potential “insolvencies and massive layoffs” for football’s employees, and called for a coordinated response in the game to the financial impact of the crisis.
