SWINDON Town Football Club bosses have ploughed tens of thousands of pounds of their own cash into the Big Summer Session concerts to ensure they go ahead.

The two pop concerts, which take place at the County Ground tonight and tomorrow, were set to be cancelled at the middle of this week due to poor ticket sales.

With just 2,000 tickets sold for tonight’s event and around 4,000 for tomorrow’s gig, promoters were forced to call upon STFC for support, or pull the plug entirely having lost thousands of pounds themselves.

Yesterday, Town chairman Jed McCrory and director of football operations Lee Power said they used their own money to pay some of the acts and suppliers so thousands of fans who had already forked out for tickets would not be disappointed.

STFC general manager Steve Murrall said: “On Thursday we were approached by the promoters of the concerts and, due to poor ticket sales for reasons that have been difficult to pinpoint, they were considering cancelling the concerts for Friday and Saturday.

“At this stage, with the club being so community orientated and wanting to ensure the people of Swindon were not disappointed, we have stepped in with Jed and Lee’s help and ensured that all the commitments have been met for both nights. We are happy to confirm that, based on this help, we are going ahead as planned with the concerts.

“We could have just sat back and said it didn’t matter to us, but we haven’t. We’ve foregone that money – not club money, it’s personal money from Jed and Lee – to ensure these concerts happen, and we are looking forward to it.

“A lot of work has been done and we want to say we’ve done this for the community, to make sure they have what they were originally told.”

Despite low ticket sales, Steve said the club was expecting several thousand people to buy tickets on the day. They are hoping that a further 1,000 people will buy tickets on the door for tonight’s concert with singers including Katy B, Tinchy Stryder and Wiley set to take to the stage, and a further 3,000 will go along to tomorrow’s event with acts including Peter Andre, Five, Blue, 911 and B*witched.

It is hoped that if the weekend concerts are a success, there will be more to follow in the future.

“We are showing our faith in the community and now we need them to come and support us,” said Steve.

“There is a long-term agreement between the promoters and the club and I think this should underline the confidence in the town that events like this will go ahead. It shows that we aren’t going to let events fail, we’ll do what we have to do as individuals, as a club, as a business, we’ll make sure they happen. It shouldn’t make people worry about buying tickets.

“There have been a number of factors that have made this difficult but as a club we will certainly learn from that and we’ll support all future efforts to bring acts to the town.”