Although the country’s top-flight football league, the Bhutan Premier League is increasingly becoming popular with some of the top-ranked clubs boasting their own fan base, it is not smooth sailing in terms of sustaining the clubs. Most of the clubs are run out of sheer passion by the owners without any substantial profit. Due to the financial challenges, some of the clubs in the country’s top-tier league were also disbanded in the last few years.
There are around 20 registered clubs with the Bhutan Football Federation as of now. Football club owners say that their investments in the clubs outperform their returns, relying largely on revenue from coaching classes and corporate donations.
Clubs struggle to meet the financial requirements while operating in an ever-changing sport scene.
Last season’s champion, Paro FC said it spends over Nu 1 M each month on players’ diet, uniforms, and allowances. Besides, the club also has to pay a monthly salary of Nu 20,000 to 25,000 for the club’s 20 players apart from managers and coaches. Most of these expenses are sourced from renting out their football ground, grants and donations. The club said the revenue they generate from ground fees is not even able to meet players and coaches’ salaries.
Likewise, runners-up Thimphu City FC partially meet their expenses through a variety of revenue streams, including renting out their futsal ground, collecting training fees from academies, selling their jerseys, and through fund raising campaigns.
“All the senior players are on a monthly payroll as well as the coaches, then some of the office bearers like general managers, team manager and kid manager. So it is quite a huge task to manage a football club. On the average, I think most of the top clubs spend about Nu 9 M a year just to run the club,” said Hishey Tshering, President of Thimphu City FC.
Meanwhile, Transport United FC depends mostly on the donations made by some companies and through its academy. It said it spends more than Nu 13 M annually to run the club.
“Transport United has a grassroots level academy. We collect fees from the children and that is a source of income for us,” said Tshering Dendup, Manager-Assistant Coach of Transport United FC.
Namlha FC, a relatively new team in the league is also facing financial difficulties when sponsorships fall short, forcing the club president to personally spend to meet expenses.
“One of our challenges is, we don’t have a home ground. We have to depend on Bhutan Football Federation. When it comes to expenditure, we spend about Nu 2 to 3 M for staff and player’s salary,” said Phurpa Namgyel, President of Namlha FC.
In recent years, a few clubs such as High Quality United and Druk Lhayul FC, including former champions, Yeedzin FC were disbanded due to financial constraints.
Meanwhile, the Bhutan Football Federation (BFF) said it is doing everything in its capacity to ensure sustainability of the Clubs.
According to the BFF, it is one of the few federations in the world directly providing clubs with monetary support.
The federation added that apart from giving annual club subsidy and travel subsidy, it supports the clubs with coaches salary, gate collection, and trainings besides giving clubs soft loan without interest to construct artificial ground so that they can generate revenue.
According to the federation, despite receiving limited funding from FIFA and AFC to conduct tournaments and support clubs, it is supporting the clubs in its utmost capacity.
The federation said it is challenging as the clubs’ sustainability mainly depends on club sponsors, revenue generating avenues and broadcast rights which is very much limited in the country.
Last season, league winners Paro FC were awarded a cash prize of Nu 2.4 M while runners-up Thimphu City FC were given Nu 1 M.
Intern (Tsheyang Tshogyal)
Edited by Kipchu
