Skip to main content

Ipswich are low spenders

Ipswich Town have now filed their full accounts with Companies House. Ipswich had losses before player sales (£3.83m profit) of £160,000 a week in 2017/18, compared to the average in the division of £390,000 as owners chase the Premier League TV gold at the end of the rainbow.

Turnover decreased by £116k to £17.1m, mainly due to lower gate receipts which were offset by an increase in media revenue. Commercial revenue remained at the same level as in 2016/17 (£4.35m). Average home league gates decreased from 16,980 to 16,272. The operating loss was £8.4m, up from £7.8m.

Distributions from the Premier League and EFL, along with televised matches, accounted for 50 per cent of revenue. These revenues would be substantially reduced in League One.

In four years out of the last five Ipswich have spent less than £1m on new players in a division where the median spend is £7.1 million by clubs in the Championship. Ipswich spent the lowest of any club in the Championship (who have reported to date) on new players in 2017/18, the legacy of that strategy perhaps being felt this season?

In 2017/18 the two clubs with the lowest wage bills were relegated (Sunderland haven't published yet but their demise was due to other reasons). Ipswich consistently in the bottom six wage payers, so would expect to be in a relegation fight each season.

Marcus Evans lent Ipswich £6.2 million last season. The total due to him is tricky to calculate as funnelled through many companies, some in offshore tax havens .

Kieran Maguire of the PriceofFootball commented: 'The problem for Evans (and other club owners) is that wages usually exceed income, even for clubs deemed unambitious by fans, so it's a case of setting a ceiling on the amount of weekly losses which are deemed to be acceptable to the owner.'

Labels:

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