Southampton: The amount of money Saints could lose if season is voided

Southampton are one of the teams waiting to see whether they will be able to play out the remainder of the 2019/20 season.

Ralph Hasenhuttl and his side are still staying away from Saints’ Staplewood training ground in a bid to stop the spread of the Coronavirus, which has affected so many countries across the world.

One option that the Premier League could take is to void the campaign and make all the results to date completely meaningless. The safety of everyone involved in football is the most important, but this move could cause problems for many teams involved in promotion and relegation battles.

It has also emerged that a voided season could mean a lot of lost income for teams.

According to the Sun, Saints would lose £32.1m through loss of TV, commercial and matchday income.

Costs break down as £25.8m in TV revenues, £3.2m in matchday revenue and £3.1m in commercial revenue for Saints.

This is nowhere near the £116.4m that their table predicts Manchester United to go without but could be even more costly.

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United are a global brand and have enough to overcome this, but Saints are very much trying to build their business in other parts of the world.

This was outlined by a £34m loss from the club’s 2018/19 accounts – the first year of Jisheng Gao’s majority ownership and a significant move into the Chinese market.

BT and Sky, who provide English TV coverage of the Premier League, would want to be repaid for product that they would not get to screen and this is where the main losses of income come from.

It is good to see that Saints are supporting their staff and the community around the football club first though.

Staff have not been furloughed and the Saints players have agreed to take a 10% pay cut for the next three months, whilst many are also part of the Players Together movement that will see donations made to the NHS.

The kitchen facilities that Saints have on offer are also still being used to provide meals to those in need around the city of Southampton.

Saints Foundation also received help from club legends Matt Le Tissier and James Beattie to distribute these meals last week.