‘Makes for grim reading’ – Two League One clubs struggling financially and needing help

‘Makes for grim reading’ – That is the fan reaction with two League One clubs struggling financially and needing help.

Exeter City fans get answers on their side’s finances while AFC Wimbledon are looking for new investors in order to be able to compete in the EFL.

Outgoing interim chair Clive Harrison revealed at Exeter City’s Supporters’ Trust AGM that there were three major breaches under former CEO Joe Gorman.

It included inaccurate financial forecasts, a contract exceeding £50,000 without approval, and late VAT payments, were investigated and resolved without penalties from HMRC, FA, or police.

The breaches accelerated a looming cash crisis, exacerbated by League One costs, with the club’s playing budget the lowest in the division at under £3.5m against a £7.6m average.

Exeter are also raising money, needing around £100,000 to help them with the cost of the stadium fire damage. Click HERE if you want to donate something.

Meanwhile, for AFC Wimbledon, they had an operating loss of £600k for 2024/25, with finances “very tight” by the season’s end.

Their playing budget is said to be 23rd of 24 in League One, but has impressed with their strong start to the season, with 25 points from 15 games.

Have a read of statements regarding both clubs below…

Exeter City fans get answers on finances – and makes for pretty grim news https://t.co/5nTa108whl

— Kieran Maguire (@KieranMaguire) November 15, 2025

Exeter’s outgoing interim chair Clive Harrison said to fans at the Supporters’ Trust AGM, as per Devon Live: “Many of the circumstances around how we got here today were going on outside the club all along and the main thing that has hit us now is that where we saw these problems coming in 18 months-two years, that is now in front of us right here, right now. We need to act quickly as a club and Trust board to look at those challenges and identify how we are going to face those.

“In early June, the club became concerned about certain operational issues and at that stage, the chief executive (Gorman) tendered his resignation at a board meeting and days later, was placed on gardening leave in line with his contract of employment.

“We didn’t let him leave straight away because we wanted him available to us to pretty much answer any questions that we had and at the time, we needed to focus in on certain areas that were of grave concern to us. Three things came up and the club board investigated those and then an external partner also investigated those and they found those themselves and a few others.

“Firstly, the financial forecasts and cash balances that the club and Trust board were presented with to make their decisions for future years were found to have been inaccurate.

“Secondly, the club and Trust have an agreement – you will know in the CTA – where contracts costing more than £50,000 require Trust board approval, although there are some exclusions to that. An investigation found one material contraction was in breach of this agreement and that limit was exceeded.

“Thirdly, and in the October 14 statement that the club issued, there was one other issue that we weren’t able to discuss at that time and there were reasons for that and it is still an ongoing issue.

“The review conducted in the summer, followed by an independent investigation, it was discovered that there had been a breach of compliance around submitting two VAT payments in HMRC. Upon identifying this breach, the club immediately reported it to HMRC and provided full disclosure including evidence provided by an outside accountancy firm. They basically produced a report on what happened and that then was our defence and sent off to HMRC.

“We also made payment and implemented correct measures to prevent any reoccurrence and the club is now not in arrears with HMRC payments, nor any other tax. Neither were the FA or were the police involved.

“The club acted properly and provided a transparent response and HMRC imposed no penalty, only requiring a VAT payment interest-wise on what we had owed for that period of time.

“Communication with our supporters is always a balance between transparency and disclosing information which could cause commercial disadvantage or, in this case, it was considered that by declaring publicly, this could have led to a substantial penalty.

“What’s happened has probably brought forward the inevitable. What it has done is reduce the amount of time that we can react to these things and that is the real damage.

“Football is changing rapidly and how transfers are conducted is changing and if we take the Jay Stansfield transfer and sell-ons as an example, Exeter City needs that money when the transfer happens, not seven years later.

“The Jay Stansfield financing to us was over seven years with the majority of that money in the last two years and what we were left with was a corporation tax bill which we had to pay right at the beginning, so Jay Stansfield – great news for the club – actually cost us money.

“Gary and his team have done outstanding things in order to try and close the gap that we face as a Supporter-owned club, but we all do need to face the reality and those are that since 2024 and today – just two years – Exeter City’s playing budget has increased by nearly £1 million – 40 per-cent in two years. The reality is that the League One average is £3.5 million. Even for us to add 40 per-cent in two years has left us £2.5 million behind everybody else’s increase.

“The average League One playing budget is £7.6 million. There are five clubs in League One with a playing budget higher than £10 million and the highest is £19 million. This season, our playing budget is likely to be the lowest in League One and if we are working on money alone, we will get relegated.

“Gary is not working on money alone, he is working in many other ways in order to close that gap – not just with one or two teams, but every other team in the league. If we were in League Two now, our playing budget would be eighth and even if we dropped down into non-League, our playing budget still wouldn’t be the largest, so you can see the difficulties.

“That’s the reality and the challenge we face in 2025/26 and in the coming months, this challenge will be at the forefront of the new board’s thinking, joined by a largely refreshed Trust board.

“We have made appointments on the club board to assist with our forward planning business-wise, which is where Richard comes in and of course Laurence Overend, who has huge experience with the Trust in the past and he will be the club board vice-chair with his responsibilities largely maintaining the communication between the two boards.”

Harrison has since even replaced as interim chair with the club appointing Richard Pym as chairman. Laurence Overend is also back on the club board as vice-chairman with Harrison admitting the last four months were far worse than he could have imagined.

“The last four months has been really difficult,” he said. “When I took on the role of interim chair, I was under no illusion how difficult it would be. It was worse – much worse – and the events have certainly taken their toll on others at the club and within the Trust.

“There have been redundancies, resignations and budget cuts and everyone’s job has become harder but even then, our staff and volunteers turn up every day full of enthusiasm for the love of Exeter City and put in an extraordinary amount of work.

“It would be no exaggeration to say that, as director of supporter engagement and engaging for the last seven years, the last four months – as director of the club – have been hard to not be able to engage. That doesn’t come naturally to me and during that time, I have had to make decisions and those decisions have always been with the legal advice we have been provided.

“I am not going to stand here and say everything was right, but what I will say is that nobody else in this club’s history has faced similar situations. We have been guided by that legal advice and we have come to the end of that process where we understand more about what happened, how we got here and what we need to do in the future.

“Now, it is easy to look back and say ‘we could have done this, perhaps we could have done that’ but in the heat of the situation when threatened with legal action pretty much all the way through, you take the decisions that you feel you need to take for the benefit of the club and those decisions must never be to further damage the club.”

‘Not sustainable’ Wimbledon in talks with investors https://t.co/teja4ao5pa

— Kieran Maguire (@KieranMaguire) November 15, 2025

AFC WIMBLEDON JOINT BOARD STATEMENT:

With a third of the season behind us, the Dons Trust board and the Club board wanted to update members and supporters on the Club’s financial position ahead of the Dons Trust SGM on Monday 17 November.

As we outlined in the report published earlier this year: The Finances of Football and AFC Wimbledon June 2025, the financial landscape across League One and League Two remains extremely tough.

The report highlighted that clubs in League One are losing an average of £5.2m a year, and those in League Two around £2.2m. For a fan-owned club like ours, that makes long-term sustainability extremely challenging.

When members voted on 50+1 last year, both boards highlighted in a report that we expected further and significant financial challenges ahead.

It was based on those expected challenges that the view of both boards was to recommend members voted in favour of the 50+1 proposal. AFC Wimbledon Finance Update – September 2024 | The Dons Trust

In short – conditions remain extremely challenging. If anything, the competitive landscape is getting harder and the vast majority of League One and League Two clubs are running at even greater operating losses.

Our current position and next steps

Despite good progress made in growing the Club’s revenues and managing costs, our outlook remains unchanged. Our finances will become very tight at the end of this season.

It is the opinion of both boards that despite the constant generosity of our fans and bond holders, competing in the EFL at Plough Lane with our current structure is not currently sustainable.

We believe that we will have to find partner investors who share our values and commitment to fan ownership to help us improve our finances and allow us to grow further.

In October we notified members we would be proactively seeking investment partners and will be returning to the 50.01 vote in the new year. October member update – Dons Trust board. Proactively seeking investors

Since then the board have been in conversations with potential investors prepared to take a minority stake in the Club and also contribute working capital to help us break even and have a more competitive playing budget. This season our playing budget ranks 23rd in League One.

Our financial results for 2024-2025 have been audited and these will be posted in full prior to our December AGM.

The headlines are an operating loss, before player sales, of £1.6m. This is reduced to £0.6m, before depreciation, when accounting for £1m of player sales. These numbers were in line with our planned budget for the year, which meant we had the 14th ranked playing budget in League Two.

There are positives. 2024-25 turnover increased by 13% to £10.2m: a record level for the Club.

Of that, the stadium team secured record revenue of £7.2m, representing a 10.6% increase year-on-year, with increases across most departments including season ticket sales, ticketing, commercial, catering and retail. Encouragingly, stadium profitability also increased as we managed costs effectively.

Debt levels have reduced by £2.0m. We have repaid £1.4m of Plough Lane Bonds and converted another £0.6m of bonds to equity and donations – a fabulous act of generosity from our bondholders.

Despite this, the increases in playing budgets and operating losses across the leagues, that we highlighted in our report above, show that stadium revenue growth is unlikely ever to be enough to achieve break-even sustainability in League One or Two.

Our underlying financial challenges have been tempered by significant player sales over the last three years, but we cannot rely on this every year.

Over the past 23 years, we’ve faced and overcome huge challenges. The current situation is another challenge, but also another opportunity to shape our future together. With the same unity and determination that have defined AFC Wimbledon since 2002, we will find the best way forward.

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the Dons Trust SGM on November 17.