Exclusive:Interim Sunderland CEO Tom Burwell explains club plans after shock David Bruce exit and makes fan pledge

Tom Burwell says that Sunderland’s ongoing restructure is about ‘evolution, not revolution’ and that the club is determined to maintain its connection with the fanbase as it transitions to being a Premier League business.

Burwell was appointed interim CEO last month following the surprise announcement that Chief Business Officer David Bruce would leave his role at the end of the campaign. Bruce, a lifelong Sunderland fan, was behind many hugely popular initiatives with fans such as the return of hummel as kit provider.

Burwell has served as non-executive director since late last year and has been involved with the club for a longer period in his role as CEO of Bia Sports Group, the company through which Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and Juan Sartori run their sporting portfolio.

The club’s restructure will lead to the appointment of a permanent CEO, who will have responsibility for the day-to-day running of all aspects of the football club and business. Previously, the football and business operations have largely been kept separate. Burwell said it was vital to structure the business appropriately to cope with the growth of the club, and also in order to attract the highest-calibre candidates to key roles including the CEO position.

“I think that it's really important to recognise where we've come from before plotting where we're going and this is absolutely evolution, not revolution,” Burwell told The Echo.

“What's taken place in this football club in the past few years has been led by some exemplary individuals. We're a business that was fit for purpose for what it was operating as at that point in time.

“As a board we’re now of the view that being back in the Premier League, we recognise that we need to be on solid Premier League foundations and that the club needs to be structured appropriately. There have been times that football and business have sat alongside one another rather than being totally integrated, and driving that integration between the football and the business to be truly representative of Sunderland AFC is really important.

“So I wouldn't say this has been about people, they were the right people at the right time and we're now moving into another stage of evolution. It’s about ensuring that we are structured appropriately to compete in the Premier League both on and off the field, and [also] the ability to attract the right people within those structures has been an important part of the changes that you've seen.”

Burwell, who has met with prospective candidates for the CEO vacancy, is charged with leading the transition to the new structure.

The restructure is also part of wider bid from the club to drive up their revenues ahead of the Premier League’s Squad Cost Ratio rules coming into force this summer. As part of those rules, clubs will be limited to spending 85% of their revenues on their first-team costs.

Sunderland believe they are well placed within the new rules, but need to grow their revenues if they are to increase their playing budget and compete on the pitch in the long run.

Burwell said the club and the board understood the importance of not placing too much of this cost on the club’s loyal fanbase at a time where the cost of living continues to rise, and in maintaining the connection that has powered those promotions back to the top tier.

“Driving revenues in today's Premier League has to be the single most important thing for the business so that you can invest back into the team,” Burwell said.

“The ownership and the board recognise the connection that is currently in place with the fans and putting those fans first and foremost will always remain the same.

"These decisions and these evolutions are not reactive, they are conversations that have been taking place about, 'how do we ensure that this football club that has all of the foundations that we know it has is best set to be competitive in the Premier League for years and years to come?'

“This season has been representative of that first step, which has given us the opportunity to make some decisions from positions of strength. It's an incredibly exciting time, we've just beaten two teams that were in the Champions League over the last two games. This club is in a position now where we can really begin to kick on and be the performance club that we'd always hoped and wanted it to be - that has to be underpinned by revenues because of the way that the regulations play. For us to be successful in driving our revenues around the world, we need to continue to be representative of this fanbase in this city.”

Burwell said that in order to capitalise on opportunities to grow revenues nationally and internationally, which the club believe they have an opportunity to do as a result of the increased attention from the Sunderland ‘Til I Die documentary and its recent success, maintaining the connection between club and fans was as key as success on the pitch.

“I think maintaining our identity has almost been number one [in our discussions about the future],” Burwell said.

“I think there's probably 1a and 1b. 1a has to be performance on the field, as it dictates the success of the relationship that we have with commercial partners and fans in every way, shape and form.

“1b is, what’s the next special sauce of Sunderland? It is the fact that the Stadium of Light when full is a vociferous, incredible relationship. It is the connection that the players and the club currently have with that fanbase. We wouldn't be where we are today without that fanbase and we need to put that fanbase at the heart of every decision that we make because as I say, if we lose that connection we'll lose the ability to be authentic globally. We're not Paris, we're not Milan, we're not London. What we are is representative of a community and a region that has real authenticity because of the city that we represent.

"And that authenticity is that point of difference that gives us the ability to communicate internationally. We can't communicate internationally without that connection.”

The club predict they will sit mid-table in the division for revenue this season, and so believe they have a strong platform from which to grow in the coming years. Having boasted the highest turnover of a Championship club not in receipt of parachute payments last season, Sunderland believe they have a strong local platform from which to build and that will be a key focus for Burwell and his eventual successor.

The club are in talks over a number of new commercial partnerships, with Burwell and the board of the belief that they have opportunities to grow revenue without significantly increasing financial pressures on the club’s core fans who have seen their season card prices rise again this year.

“We've gone through an exercise over the last 12 months of restructuring our commercial business so that it is fit for purpose to sell to partners who want to engage with the club,” Burwell said.

“We've got a number of live conversations at the moment with what I would say of national businesses that have regional relevance, that are not looking for any of our major kit assets but are coming in at two or three times on what a category sponsor would traditionally look like, so our commercial programme will be night and day compared to where we’ve come from. A lot of the credit needs to go to the connection of the fans that David [Bruce] and the team created over the last two years to be able to go to market and do that. The ability to have a North American tour, where we'll be playing against the three sides that we are in the cities that we are, comes from the work that's taken place over the last two years, as does the ability to be speaking to premium international brands. It all comes from ‘Til The End and all of those things.

“We recognise that of the 37,000 season ticket holders, many of them have been coming here for over 20 years. Many of them have been coming to Roker Park beforehand and I have to ensure that when I go and spend time with those people, that the experiences that they've had over those 20 and 30 years are not misrepresented and not unconsidered because we recognise as an ownership group and as a group of executives, the people that might not be here in the future is us, the people who will definitely be here in the future is them and if we lose that connection as the club has done previously then we've got a problem. Our fan experience on a weekend needs to be representative of who we are.”

The Echo has launched a new WhatsApp SAFC Channel to bring the latest news, analysis and team & injury updates direct to your phone. Simply click this link to join our SAFC WhatsApp channel.

Burwell is one of a number of key figures at Sunderland who have broader roles in the Bia Sports Group, including interim Chief Revenue Officer Scott McCubbin and Chief Financial Officer Mike Papadimitriou.

The interim CEO insisted that Sunderland was the overriding priority for all of them, and also of the ownership group: “The reality is that the executives that sit in BSG are not as integrated into those other portfolio businesses in the same way that they are in Sunderland. We in effect sit as an advisory board that supports the executives that deliver those individual businesses so in its current format, can we continue to operate a portfolio and basically be an executive board to those businesses? Absolutely. Is the most important business that sits within the company and sits within the portfolio of businesses that Juan and Kyril own, Sunderland Football Club? Absolutely it is and we recognise that not only from its relevance nationally, locally and globally but it's also its revenue, its valuation and also its opportunity.”

Burwell declined to comment on reports that Nigel Farage had been offered an invite to the club’s Stadium of Light ground. The leader of the Reform UK party told ITV News last month that he had been talking to one of the club’s directors, understood to be Juan Sartori, who had extended the invitation. Burwell echoed the club’s stance in declining to comment on the report.

Farage was speaking at the launch of Reform UK’s local election campaign in Sunderland. Almost 4,000 people have signed an online petition stating their opposition to any visit, while the Red and White Army supporter group issued a statement on social media saying they had been contacted by many members as a result of the report.

Your next Sunderland read: Why Sunderland have sold their women's team - and why it's not about the Premier League's financial rules