Busy Bees

The authoritative Swiss Ramble takes a look at Brentford's accounts for 2016/17. Brentford's loss was significantly reduced from £12.6m to just £1.0m, as revenue rose £2.1m (20%) to £12.7m, though profit on player sales fell £2.7m to £12.8m. Main reason for improvement was £4.7m accounting adjustment for unwinding discount on shareholder loans in 2015/16.

The main driver for Brentford's £2.1m revenue growth was the new Premier League TV deal, resulting in a higher solidarity payment, thus increasing broadcasting income by £2.3m to £7.2m. Ticketing income also rose £0.5m to £3.5m, but commercial fell £0.7m to £2.0m (academy closure).

The club managed to cut many costs: wage bill by £2.9m (17%) to £14.7m, other expenses by £2.5m (26%) to £7.4m. As a consequence, the Bees very nearly broke-even. In fact, their £1.0m loss was only bettered by five Championship clubs, three of whom made profits below £4m.

However, the club's loss would have been much higher without a healthy £13m profit on player sales (7th highest in the Championship).

Following promotion from League One, the club's losses initially increased in the Championship (£17m in 2015 and £13m in 2016) in order to compete at the higher level, but the club has now put into place a far more sustainable structure, leading to the tiny £1m loss in 2017. Much of this improvement is due to player trading with the club's profit on player sales averaging £14m in last two seasons.

Revenue has nearly tripled since promotion from League One to Championship, rising from £4.4m in 2014 to £12.7m in 2017. The majority of the £8.3m growth has come from TV (£6.1m), but ticketing (£1.8m) and commercial (£0.4m) have also increased.

Ticketing revenue rose by 15% (£0.5m) to £3.5m, even though one less game was staged at Griffin Park, as average attendance was up from 10,327 to 10,472. This is one of the smallest match day incomes in the Championship, only above Blackburn, Rotherham, Wigan and Burton. It will presumably improve when the move to the new stadium takes place. The anticipated completion date is the end of 2019.

Commercial income of £2.0m is second lowest in Championship, only above Wigan. This is a big competitive disadvantage, e.g. local rivals QPR have four times as much with £8m.

The wage bill decreased £2.9m (17%) from £17.6m to £14.7m with the number of playing and training staff falling from 153 to 91, mainly due to the closure of the Academy. The wages to turnover ratio was cut from 166% to 116%. This is still high, although high ratios are not unusual in the Championship. No fewer than 13 clubs in this division have ratios above 100%, as they push for promotion to the lucrative Premier League.