TV collapse halts Plymouth's expansion

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The first direct fall-out from the collapse of ITV Digital saw Plymouth Argyle put their stadium development plans on hold yesterday. The move was especially symbolic because Plymouth this week became the first club to be guaranteed promotion in England this season.

They might reasonably have expected to see an upturn in their fortunes with the step up from the Third Division to the Second. But with little prospect of the Football League being paid the £178.5m it is owed by ITV Digital, dozens of clubs are reassessing their situations. And there seems little chance that Plymouth's annual television revenue will rise from £350,000 to £550,000 as expected, or even be paid at all.

"ITV Digital has put a block on the stadium development," Paul Stapleton, Plymouth's chairman, said yesterday. "The board thinks it's not sensible to sign a deal now with uncertainty." Stapleton said the crisis could also affect his club's ability to renegotiate contracts with its players, although others could suffer more.

As fears grew throughout the football community over how many clubs would manage to survive without television revenue, Darlington's chairman, George Reynolds, gave the most precise estimate to date of the potential number of casualties.

"I think 27 clubs will go out of business," he said. "Seventeen are in dire financial straits, and in any other company the receivers would have been called in and wound the company up. There's plenty of players and managers on the market, but there's not a lot of benefactors. It's little wonder because when somebody takes over a club they pay off the debts, move the club forward and then get a slagging-off from the fans."

Never one to steer away from controversy, Reynolds said that many clubs had been unwise in relying too heavily on television income. "The bubble has burst, and I'm pleased because there's been too much greed in the game – players asking for too much – and clubs just can't rely on TV hand-outs to survive."

Elsewhere yesterday, there were renewed calls for a boycott of future television deals between the football authorities and ITV. "There should certainly be serious consideration about whether there should be any future deals with ITV after they have pulled the plug on this one," Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, said. Carlton and Granada, ITV Digital's co-owners, claim they have no liability for the League deal. A boycott would endanger ITV's contracts for Premiership highlights, Champions' League matches and regional Nationwide League coverage.

The Football League have called a meeting in London on Tuesday to ensure that all First Division clubs are up to speed with the latest developments, the League spokesman John Nagle said yesterday. He added that there is no question, as far as the league are concerned, of any interruption to the programme of live match broadcasts while ITV Digital are in administration.