ANN Budge, the Hearts chairman, has warned the SPFL voting system is holding back Scottish football and expressed her frustration at the failure to settle the long-running stand-off between Rangers and league sponsors cinch.
Hearts were one of five Premiership clubs – Aberdeen, Dundee, Dundee United and Hibernian were the others - which commissioned the Deloitte’s Sports Business Group to carry out a strategic review of how the governing body operates last year.
Deloitte recommended a “realignment from a largely administrative function to a more dynamic commercial structure” and a five year plan has been put in place which aims to increase revenue from just under £30m to £50m by 2029.
Budge, a successful businesswoman who specialised in making bespoke software and IT systems and who is a former Entrepreneur of the Year, believes the changes were vital and expressed optimism they will bear dividends in future.
However, she is still concerned that any resolution which is tabled in the Premiership needs to receive 90 per cent backing – or the support 11 of the 12 clubs – in order to be passed and believes that is preventing “meaningful change”.
"Things definitely did have to change,” she said. “All the people involved in commissioning that strategic review were in essence all new, all business people who had come into football. So Ron (Gordon) from Hibs, Dave (Cormack) from (Aberdeen), Mark (Ogren) from Dundee United and John (Nelms) from Dundee.
“We shared frustrations around the commercialisation, the negotiating of big contracts. These sort of things were a source of frustration for some more than others.
“A lot of it is going to come down to people as we all know. Getting the right people in the right positions, and I'm not saying we haven't, is important.
“It really depends on the right people and then working as a team. Historically, the SFA and the SPFL didn't work closely at all. It wasn't good for either organisation.”
Budge added: “But I still think the whole voting mechanism is wrong, and until and unless they can change that there's a limit to what can be changed. I don't know how it would ever change to be frank. I'm afraid I'm a bit negative with that.
“Whenever there's a crucial vote, there's a lot of lobbying goes on between the clubs. I don't think the voting model is sensible because, as we know, two clubs can just kill the best commercial idea or organisational change or whatever.
“It just needs two people to vote against it and it's gone and that's it gone for another two years. Then people say: 'There's no point bringing it back again, we're going to fail'. That still in my view doesn't work well. It prevents meaningful change.
“Now you could argue, it stops certain things happening which might not be good for the game. You are always going to get two sides to that argument.
“But in the normal business world you identify a problem, you would look at what you should do about it, maybe do some research, come up with a couple of solutions and hopefully you would get to a decent outcome. It doesn't happen in football, it gets cut off too early.”
Fears have been expressed that Rangers’ decision to opt out of the multi-million pound league sponsorship deal with car manufacturer cinch due to a contractual conflict of interest with Park’s of Hamilton – the company owned by Ibrox chairman Douglas Park – will make potential commercial backers wary of investing in Scottish football.
Budge believes all the top flight clubs need to work together to maximise the financial opportunities available to them and admitted she was exasperated at the inability of the Premiership clubs to even hold a joint discussion on the stand-off.
“I do think it's important the clubs stand together,” she said. “It's a symptom of what's wrong with Scottish football that this has been going on for how long? And we still can't have a meeting where all the clubs can discuss the issue. How do you solve that?”
