The Energy Crisis Never Ended for Non-League Football

The price shock that never fully reversed

In 2022, Oxford City expected annual utility costs to rise from £72,000 to £120,000. Didcot Town faced £60,000 against £14,400 previously, while Dorchester Town expected £36,000 instead of £20,000. Fair Game found 63% of smaller clubs would consider earlier kick-offs to reduce floodlight use, with potential savings then estimated at £600 to £700 a match.

Those figures belong to the 2022 crisis and should not be presented as current bills. What matters now is what happened afterwards.

Wholesale prices eventually fell sharply from their peaks, but the commercial electricity cost base did not return to where it had been before. In the first quarter of this year, average non-domestic electricity was 24.14p/kWh including the Climate Change Levy. Very small users were paying 35.02p.

The divergence is more revealing than the gap. The very-small-user rate rose from 32.85p in Q1 2025 to 35.02p this year, an increase of 6.6%, while the overall business average fell from 25.74p to 24.14p, down 6.2%. Medium users were paying 25.00p and large users 23.93p.

A football club will not automatically fall into the smallest consumption category, and its actual rate depends on consumption, meter, location and contract. But the figures expose a structural feature of the market relevant to the lower pyramid: smaller commercial users can pay materially more per unit than businesses with greater consumption and purchasing power.

Unlike households, clubs are also not generally protected by Ofgem's domestic price cap. They buy commercial energy, often on fixed contracts, which means the date on which a deal expires can materially alter the cost base of two otherwise similar clubs.

That matters again now. Broker market commentary reported that at the end of August, power contracts covering the remainder of 2026 and winter 2026/27 had risen by roughly 10% during the month to almost £140/MWh, with equivalent gas prices up about 15%; indicative pricing on 4 September put winter electricity at around £145/MWh and winter gas at around 178p/therm. These are market-participant indications rather than settled exchange data, and should be read as directional. Ofgem has separately attributed the October increase in domestic capped prices to higher wholesale gas costs caused by the Middle East conflict.

The prices are still well below the extremes of 2022. The risk for non-league clubs is not a repeat of exactly the same crisis, but another increase from a cost base that never fully normalised.

When utilities cost more than the season tickets

Eastleigh turns those market numbers into football economics.

Vice-chairman Tom Coffey said in a club statement in February that Eastleigh's utility costs had increased by more than £100,000 over five years and now exceeded the income generated from season tickets. That comparison matters because season tickets are among the most visible and dependable revenue lines a football club has — money taken in advance, banked before a ball is kicked, and traditionally the base on which a budget is built. At Eastleigh, all of it and more is now consumed by the cost of powering and heating the operation.

Dartford provides another current example. At a supporters' forum in February, the club disclosed £100,000 of utilities in 2024/25, alongside £76,000 of service contracts, tens of thousands in maintenance and £40,000 for rates and insurance. Directors said the books had been balanced without Supporters' Association money or director loans that season, but also described the underlying mismatch of operating a stadium throughout the year while the men's first team generates its principal matchday income on roughly 25 days.

Energy is not uniquely responsible for the financial pressure facing non-league clubs — wages, rates, insurance, travel, maintenance and regulatory requirements have all risen. Its importance is that it is a largely unavoidable cost attached to the physical asset from which the club operates.

And those assets are becoming more energy-intensive.

As The Pyramid examined in our analysis of 3G pitches, a growing number of lower-pyramid grounds now operate as seven-day facilities rather than twenty-odd-match-a-year stadiums. That produces valuable recurring revenue from community teams, schools, academies and pitch hire, but it also means more floodlighting, more changing-room use, more showers, longer clubhouse hours and greater demand for electricity and hot water.

The pitch can solve one financial problem while making energy management more important.

Spending capital to cut the bill

The response is increasingly visible in the infrastructure.

The Premier League has committed £9m through the Premier League Stadium Fund to help clubs replace older floodlights with LEDs, and says 280 non-league clubs have so far received funding towards new LED lighting, with support remaining available across the National League System.

The economics are straightforward. The Premier League estimates LED systems typically consume around 50% less energy than older metal-halide floodlights, while requiring less maintenance. Midland League club Ingles received a £45,000 grant for its conversion and subsequently reported that its lighting costs had fallen by around a third.

For a small football club, that is more significant than the environmental language around the programme might suggest. Grant funding allows somebody else's capital to reduce the club's recurring operating expenditure. Rather than finding additional gate receipts every year to pay a higher electricity bill, the club lowers the amount of electricity it needs to buy.

England Football and E.ON Next's Greener Game takes the same logic further. England Football reports more than 400 energy-support packs, over 100 audits and more than £2m of investment, with interventions ranging from energy controls to solar panels and battery storage.

The original pilot clubs reported combined savings of £9,700 and energy-use reductions of as much as 25%. At Shefford Sports Club, where monthly electricity bills had exceeded £2,500, subsequent savings were reported at £700 to £800 a month and almost £14,000 over nine months. Those figures come from the programme and its energy-company partner rather than independently audited club accounts, but they demonstrate the potential scale.

This is increasingly a capital-allocation story rather than an environmental one. An LED floodlight, solar array or better control system requires money today in exchange for lower operating costs tomorrow. For clubs with thin balance sheets, the decisive question is often whether grant funding is available to bridge that gap.

Why it matters

The energy crisis exposed something about non-league football that has not gone away: many clubs operate surprisingly substantial physical infrastructure on very small revenue bases.

A ground has to be lit, heated, insured, maintained and serviced regardless of whether the first team wins on Saturday. For clubs such as Eastleigh and Dartford, utilities alone can now represent a six-figure annual cost or consume the equivalent of a major football revenue stream.

At the same time, the economics of the ground are changing. 3G pitches, community programmes and longer opening hours can make clubs more financially resilient by creating recurring non-matchday income, but they also turn them into small facility businesses. The more hours the asset is used, the more important energy procurement and efficiency become.

That explains why LED floodlights, solar panels and batteries should not be treated as peripheral sustainability projects. They are investments in the cost base.

There is also a divide opening between clubs able to make that investment and those that cannot. A grant-funded LED conversion can permanently reduce electricity consumption; a club left with ageing floodlights and an inefficient clubhouse remains exposed to its next commercial renewal. The grounds with the greatest potential savings may belong to the clubs least capable of funding the work themselves.

In 2022, the emergency response was to move kick-offs forward and avoid using electricity. Four years later, the more durable response is to invest in needing less of it.

With very small business electricity costs still rising and the wholesale market heading into winter under renewed pressure, that transition is becoming part of non-league football finance rather than simply its environmental policy.

What to watch

Commercial renewals this winter. Forward prices rose sharply through August and remained elevated in early September. Clubs already fixed are insulated for now; those reaching the end of contracts are not.

The small-user divergence. Very small users saw electricity prices rise 6.6% year on year while the overall business average fell 6.2%. Whether that divergence persists may matter more to lower-pyramid clubs than movements in the headline business-energy figure.

The LED rollout. With 280 non-league clubs already funded towards new LED floodlights and support still available across the National League System, there should increasingly be enough evidence to compare the operating costs of converted and unconverted grounds.

The 3G collision. Seven-day utilisation improves revenue but increases the importance of energy. The next stage of the 3G business model is likely to be pairing high-use pitches with lower-cost energy infrastructure.