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This One-man Promotion Drive Pays Dividends

6 Feb 1973
Turf Moor, Harry Potts Way, Brunshaw Road, Burnley

This One-man Promotion Drive Pays Dividends

Mr Geoff Butterfield checks the filing system at the Development Association office. He is the commercial manager's eldest son.

From an article by Peter Higgs:
It is now more than seven years since Jack Butterfield gave up a steady job and moved into a little wooden hut to make money for Burnley Football Club. The work was completely new to him but it presented a challenge he could not ignore. Injury had forced a premature end to his playing career with Burnley more than 15 years previously but he secretly longed to return and be part of the football club again. So when Burnley chairman Mr Bob Lord asked him to run what in those days were called the "pools" he accepted. The Turf Moor Development Association was born. From those humble beginnings in a shed behind the Bee Hole end of Turf Moor it has flourished and grown.

Up to the start of this season the Development Association had handed over £350,000 to the football club. Its field of responsibility has broadened to include commercial projects ranging from helping to organise the football League's first ever "supertrain" to the provision of meat pies on match days at Turf Moor. How Mr Butterfield, Burnley FC's commercial manager, has built this "empire" can be summed up by one simple philosophy of his - "If you want things to happen you have got to help them to happen. It's no good sitting on your backside and waiting for something to happen because it never does." Now four fund raising schemes are run bringing in around £2,200 a week, collected by more than 800 agents. From just two part-time assistants the staff has grown to seven full-time and five part-time assistants plus more than 100 people who work on match days. Mr Butterfield's responsibility includes the fund-raising schemes, catering for supporters and VIPs on match days, the "Claret and Blue Shop", transport for club supporters, all social functions connected with the club, and the development of the ground itself. In an entirely different capacity he is also editor of the club magazine.

Mr Butterfield was quick to point out the important role played by his own staff in the growth of the Development Association, who put in a lot of extra work in their own time. Money raised has been spent on the development of the ground including the centrally heated stand at the cricket field end; improving the Bee Hole end; and now a new stand. He has three ambitions: to see Burnley back in the first division; the new stand completed; and to see a social club at Turf Moor (Extra steelwork is to be included in the structure of the new stand so that a social club can be added at the earliest opportunity).

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