Skip to main content

Promotion more difficult for 'Boro

The Swiss Ramble blogger reviews the 2019/20 accounts of Middlesbrough.

Boro’s loss of £36m is the worst reported to date in the 2019/20 Championship, though this result may well look better when other clubs publish their COVID-impacted accounts. In fact, even before the pandemic, many clubs had losses above £20m.

Excluding property sales, just three Championship clubs were profitable with only Hull City managing to make money so far in 2019/20. The sad reality is that almost all clubs in this division lose money, as they strive to remain competitive in pursuit of promotion to the top flight.

One reason for Boro’s worse financial result is they only made £3m profit from player sales, whereas the prior year’s figures were boosted by £33m, They have increased profit on player sales to an annual average of £16m over the past four years.

Revenue has fallen by £102m (84%) from £121m to £19m since relegation from the Premier League 3 years ago, very largely due to £93m decrease in broadcasting after parachute payments ended after 2 years, though also reductions in commercial £5m and gate receipts £4m.

The wage bill was cut by 23 per cent by significantly reducing the size and cost of the playing squad/ Wages down 52 per cent from the £65m peak three years ago in the Premiership.  Following the decrease, the  £31m wage bill is now in the bottom half of the Championship, making promotion even more difficult.

The wages to turnover ratio shot up from 72% to 160%, the second highest to date in the Championship in 2019/20, only behind Preston 163%. This is obviously not great, but is pretty much par for the course in the Championship, where 17 of the 24 clubs are above 100




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