CAST Chair Heather McKinlay, Vice Chair Heather Alderson and Board Member Sam White recently met with club Chairman Gavin Carter.

CAST asked Gavin to outline the priorities for the club within its business plan. Gavin reported that the men’s team is on track versus the new five year plan in place following promotion. He remains confident of retaining Championship status while not counting chickens and hopes securing safety will give the opportunity to Nathan Jones to feature some of our younger players before the end of the season.

The club believes it has the second lowest wage budget in the Championship. The aim is to build the squad to compete in the second quartile over the next two to three years. Player recruitment is key and this will also mean significant investment in the player wage budget while still investing in transfer fees. We underlined that spending less than the money-bags teams has long been part of the Charlton narrative and culture and that by and large our fans like that. Gavin agreed, saying it was good to see us competing well recently with Wrexham & Birmingham, who have spent significantly more.

Gavin explained that over time the club needs to achieve greater return from player trading. We have received  compensation from Premier League clubs for a few young Academy players – while initial fees received are modest, they all have substantial sell-on clauses and this should provide future income, albeit it is not guaranteed. The club received just over £300K from the sale of Lookman to Atletico Madrid.

The club do wish to achieve Category 1 status for the Academy, which also requires investment but this should pay back over two to three years. Steve Avory is helping with the lengthy application process.

Gavin and the ownership are genuinely delighted that Charlton Athletic Women are doing so well. There was a modest increase in spend this year on players and facilities at the training ground. If promotion is achieved, the owners will be looking at a substantial increase in annual investment. We’ll be unusual as a non-Premier League men’s club in the top tier of WSL. There has been good initial uptake on women’s season tickets. Growing women’s attendances is key – we are getting 1,500 watching on the stream. The sport as a whole needs a path to viability. Ted Lasso's profile in the upcoming series will help.

Investment at The Valley over the summer will likely be smaller upgrades, mainly the lounges. The club has outline plans in place to upgrade the west stand concourses as part of quite a major development but this is likely to be further in the future. Gavin had recently attended matches at Selhurst and QPR and recognises that our stadium and facilities are way better. There is no immediate plan to negotiate to buy The Valley - this will be reconsidered should we reach the Premier League.

The club aims to achieve average Championship revenue by year three across Ticketing, Hospitality, Retail & Sponsorship. Retail is going well – the club will be redoing the online shop and Bluewater has been a great success. There is more to come from the Reebok partnership. There is momentum and room to grow on ticketing revenue – while a crowd of 18.5K v Birmingham was a little disappointing, it was well ahead of recent attendances at Millwall and QPR for example. Sponsorship is the biggest area of opportunity. Gavin assured CAST that the club’s new membership scheme is not a money grab but about registration and data and that the club will be sensitive to the heritage of Valley Gold.

We touched on the World Cup and we raised the idea of watchalongs at The Valley. While this is not lucrative for the club due to the outsourced catering, Gavin acknowledged that it would be good fan engagement over the summer. CAST offered to take a quick look at the possibilities, given some challenges regarding kick-off times.

Season ticket sales have made a strong start. Gavin stated that this is important for cashflow yet believes there is more potential revenue upside from matchday tickets. We proposed help from fans eg CAST and the Advisory Board in modelling this within different scenarios over the next three years or so.

CAST raised the issue of financial stability and enhanced scrutiny from the Independent Football Regulator when a club doesn’t own its stadium. Gavin said the club were aware of this and assured us that the owners have good capitalisation.

CAST touched on the absence of a Supporter Liaison Officer (SLO) and the need for the club to upgrade its investment in fan-facing roles. We raised some dissatisfaction among fans over the handling of those impacted by seat changes in the West Stand and said that such inconvenience merited personal contact from a senior member of club staff. CAST accepts that there will be occasions where the club needs to or wishes to make changes but it should be handled sensitively and carefully out of respect for long-term loyalty - we need to avoid the negativity among fans in general stirred at the likes of Manchester United and Manchester City by this kind of issue.

We all agreed it was useful for CAST and Gavin Carter to meet on a regular eg quarterly basis. He specifically asked us to keep close to fan sentiment and to provide feedback to the club on this.