Galway company Clubforce helping to bail sporting clubs out of financial trouble

SPORTS clubs across the country, and beyond, are turning to a Galway company to save them from financial ruin during the current Covid-19 global pandemic.

Founded in Carna and now based on Merchants Road in the city, Clubforce, formerly known as locallotto.ie and myclubfinances.ie, has had “a flood” of sporting bodies making contact with them to avail of their services which, among other things, facilitates lotto payments online from members and supporters to clubs.

According to Galway City native and Chief Marketing Officer, Paul Madden, the Covid-19 pandemic and restrictions on gatherings and movement is already changing the way the clubs and members do business.

“The Collison brothers in Limerick, who founded the online payments company Stripe, said recently that years of people migrating to online (for business etc.) has now been achieved and compressed into weeks. And I think we are starting to see that in sport as well,” says Madden.

“If you think of our typical volunteer in your GAA club, who goes around selling lotto tickets, where does he go? He goes into the pubs. These guys may be at it for twenty-five years and they are probably at retirement age now. So, if you look to the future, when the lockdown is lifted, will people be as inclined to go into a pub selling tickets if there is still a health threat?

“Their families might be inclined to say, ‘you don’t want to be doing that anymore’, even though they are club stalwarts who have been doing it for many years. Yet, they might not want to expose themselves or their families to any kind of threat.”

As it is, Madden says there has been a significant uptake in clubs moving their lotto online in the last week. “The first thing we noticed in week one (in March) was almost a complete hibernation as clubs adopted a ‘wait and see’ approach. So, they paused their online lotto.

“Gradually, though, there was a realisation that this thing (Covid-19) isn’t going away any time soon but clubs still have bills to play, pitches to be mowed and clubhouses to be painted etc. They realised they still need the income. So, in the last two weeks, there has been a flood of clubs coming to us to move their lotto online.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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