Skip to main content

Leicester revenue takes near £50m hit from Covid

The authoritative Swiss Ramble reviews the latest accounts of Leicester City from his base in Zurich.

The loss before tax widened from £20m to £67m, as the pandemic led to revenue dropping £28m (16%) from £178m to £150m, though profit on player sales rose £5m to £63m. Expenses rose £23m (9%), mainly due to investment in the squad. Loss after tax was £60m.

Revenue was significantly impacted by COVID, the main driver of the club’s revenue decrease was broadcasting income, which dropped £20m (16%) from £128m to £108m, while commercial fell £7m (18%) from £36m to £29m and match day was down £2m (11%) from £15m to £13m.

Of course, all clubs have been adversely impacted by COVID, so Leicester’s £67m loss is far from unusual with no fewer than seven clubs posting losses above £50m.  Without COVID, Foxes revenue would have been £46m higher at £196m (10% more than 2019).

£150m revenue is still £21m (16%) more than 2016, when they were crowned Premier League champions. However, much lower than the extraordinary £233m in 2017, which was boosted by £70m Champions League TV money.

Commercial income fell £7m (18%) from £36m to £29m, mainly due to deferral of £5m sponsorship to 2020/21. Second highest ever for the club, though a long way behind the Big Six, e.g. around £113m less than Arsenal £142m.

The figures significantly benefited from £63m profit on player sales, up from £58m, almost entirely due to Harry Maguire’s big money move to Manchester United. This is second highest in the Premier League to date, only surpassed by Chelsea.   The Foxes made hardly any money from player sales up to 2016, but profits from this activity have surged to an impressive average of £50m in the past four years. Next year‘s accounts will benefit from Ben Chilwell’s £50m sale.

Following promotion to the Premier League, the club had delivered four years of profits, amounting to £137m, before the last two years’ losses worth £87m in total. This was obviously boosted by the amazing £92m surplus in 2017, which is actually the 3rd highest profit in PL history.

The wage bill rose £8m (5%) from £149m to £157m, due to further investment in the playing squad, including contract extensions. Increase would have been even more if some bonuses had not been deferred to 2020/21. Wages virtually doubled in four years.  As a result of the revenue fall, the wages to turnover ratio increased (worsened) from 84% to 105%, the highest in Premier League to date in 2019/20.

The club have plans to expand the King Power stadium, increasing the capacity to around 40,000. The club has acquired land next to the ground and spent a further £1.8m since these accounts closed on detailed design and feasibility work.

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

Reports about Charlton sale exaggerated

Reports have appeared in The Guardian and elsewhere that Charlton has been put up for sale. Richard Cawley is an authoritative local journalist who runs a South London Sport substack site.  He reached out to the club yesterday evening to ask for comment on The Guardian’s article. Early indications from the club have been that nothing has changed since the story about them seeking investment, except that it is now a different company doing it. Charlton have since managed to consolidate their place in the Championship, avoiding an instant return to League One, with their women’s side promoted to the WSL, returning to the top flight for the first time since 2007, although staying there is likely to be costly. It would be counter-intuitive for owners Global Football Partners not to progress the club when looking for investment, that the focus remains on driving it forward, that their spend this summer is in line with long-term planning and will see an increase in wages spent on players...
Post a Comment
Read more

Levy's anomalous status at Spurs

It is now nearly a year since Daniel Levy was dismissed as Tottenham Hotspur chairman by the Lewis family.  It has been 12 months of dramatic twists and turns, with Spurs avoiding relegation on the final day of the Premier League season, and then spending unprecedented sums this summer to try to make sure such a scare never happens again. But while most fans focus on the football — and a dubbing by Brentford   — another set of issues have been bubbling away separately. These relate to Levy’s continued position as a minority shareholder in the club. This has been in the news for much of this summer, even as we approach the first anniversary of Levy’s dismissal, and specifically this month, after he missed the opportunity last week to participate in the Lewis family’s latest equity injection into the club. On Thursday morning the club confirmed that his shareholding has been diluted, down by roughly two per cent, after the creation of new ENIC shares. Levy’s dism...
Post a Comment
Read more