Skip to main content

Hull cut back on player spending

Hull City lost £90,000 a week in 2017/18 but sales of Clucas, Maguire and Robertson helped generate profit on player disposals of £31 million. Hull had a negative net player spend for the third year running in 2017/18

Overall income was down £60 million, most of which due to the fall in TV income after relegation. Parachute payments are a staggering eighty per cent of total income. Ticket sale income fell by one-third with many fans staying away because they were alienated by the owners. Matchday hospitality etc was down 75 per cent. The wage bill halved due to relegation clauses and player sales.

Leaving aside parachute payments, there has been a heavy reliance on broadcast income despite three of the last six years being spent in the Championship.

The club repaid a bank loan of £21 million during 2017/18, setting the club up for sale. It owes £63 million, presumably to Allamhouse. These debt burdens can be a tricky issue when a club is sold.

Since gambling on getting promoted in 2013 Hull City have shown a lot of wage restraint. Just £55 of every £100 spent on wages last season, compared to average of £101 in the Championship.

Kieran Maguire of the Price of Football comments: 'Putting numbers into our financial model values the club at £110 million, down from £220 million the previous season, but as parachute payments cease I would expect this to fall again sharply.'

I always enjoy my visits to Hull, although they are not entirely disinterested as I am a shareholder in a company based there. Hull has had its challenges and its relative geographical remoteness is always going to be an issue, but being City of Culture gave it a boost. If the club gets decent new owners and gets back to the Premier League, that will be a big morale boost.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spurs CEO attacks luxury training base

The Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has issued a withering assessment of the way the club was run under Daniel Levy, likening the state-of-the-art training centre to a five-star hotel rather than a centre of high performance.  Venkatesham was appointed to his role in April 2025, having stepped down as chief executive at Arsenal the previous summer. However, he has said that some aspects of the club were “in a significantly worse state” than he expected.  “Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world,” Venkatesham told BBC Sport. “But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer. I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”  He explained that the football side of operations was the club’s main downfall when he arrived last year. [One Spurs fan wryly observed that it was like a water company sayi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more