Zug,22.10.2014

EVZ Ice Hockey Club in the red

The annual general meeting of the EV Zug Ice Hockey Club is to take place on Monday 27 October in the Legends Club at the Bossard Arena. However, the club has already made it known that in the 2013-14 season it made a loss of CHF 122,204, compared with a CHF 140,000 profit in the previous season.
 
According to Roland Staerkle, the president of the EVZ Sport AG parent company, staffing costs rose considerably, by CHF 1.4 million in fact, as a result of taking on three foreign players,  Eero Kilpeläinen of Finland, Kyle Wellwood of Canada (photograph) and Robbie Earl of the USA. What also had a negative impact on the company's accounts was the reduced income from ticket sales. Whereas 206,655 were sold in the 2012-13 season, 36,867 fewer were sold in the 2013-14 season. This is partly explained by the fact that it played four fewer games at home last season. Nevertheless all this resulted in a loss of income of some CHF 765,000. Income from catering was also affected.
 
What is interesting is that, over the past season, income from sponsoring rose from CHF 864,386 to CHF 1,763,271, though Staerkle declined to comment on the provenance of these funds.
 
The CEO of the EVZ Sport AG company, Patrick Lengwiler, said that he sees it as his job to ensure that the financial stability of the club is as little dependant on its sporting success as possible and added that the club is continually looking to find other sources of income, not least because of "exploding wage costs" over the past decade.