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Despite promotion to the Northern Premier League at the end of the 2021/22 season the club increased its prices by just 50p, from £7.50 to £8 ahead of the last campaign. In comparison, 15 of the leagues' 19 other clubs charged a £10 entry price for its games last season with Rovers only one of four remaining clubs charging £8 (Loughborough Dynamo, Hinckley Leicester Road and relegated Dereham being the others). Only Sporting Khalsa charged less for entry to its games at £7 per game.

Following a full review of entry prices with other step 4 clubs and discussions in recent board meetings the club had taken the decision to increase prices ahead of the new season to £10 adults, £8 concessions, £3 U16s and £2 U16’s (accompanied by a paying adult).

Explaining the decision to increase its prices Chairman Gary Norton explained to the club’s website “We were very mindful of the economic challenges everyone in the UK were facing following our promotion which is why as a board we agreed to make a nominal increase to our admission prices of just 50p following our return to step 4 last season”.

“Of course, the macroeconomics in the UK remain challenging and as a board we are ever mindful of that. However, for a variety of reasons we have taken the decision to align with the majority of the clubs and increase admission prices accordingly. This step will hopefully help us to ensure future financial sustainability at the level we are playing at moving forwards. Last season, despite the club’s best efforts and despite us having one of the lower playing budgets in relation to most other teams in our league, we struggled to balance the books and so have taken the difficult decision to align with the majority of other clubs to increase our entry prices. I’m hopeful that the vast majority of our supporters will understand the rationale behind this.”

Norton added, “79% of the other 19 clubs in our league charged £10 entry last season as those who follow us away will be able to confirm and I expect many of those will increase further from that point for the coming season. As a board our ultimate responsibility is to ensure the club runs as smoothly as possible to try and compete at step four with financial stability and as such, we have reluctantly had to make this change to admission prices ahead of the new season. I appreciate this change might not be welcomed by some of our supporters and as a board we are happy to have those discussions and explain in more detail why as a club we are making these changes”.

“All of our income streams (Sponsorship, donations and things like match day revenue from programmes, raffles, canteen and bar etc are absolutely vital to our day-to-day operation but those alone do not cover the costs associated with running a club at this level and so we have had to reluctantly make these changes.”