Skip to main content

Blades sharpen their finances

For the first time since 2008, the 2019/20 accounts of Sheffield United show a working profit.. It is not some minuscule sum, either, with the surplus for the club’s first season back in the Premier League for a dozen years standing at £17.5 million.

The huge increase in turnover that accompanies a place in the world’s richest league helps explain how United have made some money for a change.  Revenue increased by more than sevenfold to £143.1 million in a season that saw Chris Wilder’s side finish ninth, in the process earning a larger chunk of the top flight’s prize money pot.

Outgoings also increased significantly at Bramall Lane in 2019-20, with transfer expenditure up to record levels along with the wage bill.

Broadcast revenue shot up, from £8.3 million in the Championship to £116.8 million. Included in this is Premier League prize money awarded dependent on league position.  Sponsorship, including shirts and ground advertising, also rose sharply to £14.8 million from £2.9 million the previous year, while match-day income also went up.

United’s total transfer spend since winning promotion stands just shy of £130 million. Staff wages also soared to £77.8 million in the first year back in the Premier League. This was almost double the previous year’s salary expenditure (£40.9 million), which had been boosted significantly by promotion bonuses.

Income will be down next year. Not just due to COVID-19 but also United’s lowly league position. On the premise that each place in the league is still worth around £3 million extra in prize money, a fall from ninth in the table to 19th or 20th will be very costly indeed.

What does, though, offer hope is United’s wage-to-turnover ratio. This is usually a good benchmark figure for how sustainable a club is. Anything below 70 per cent is considered fine for a Premier League club, while United’s stands at around 54 per cent.

It is also understood Premier League relegation clauses, whereby salaries will fall substantially next season, are commonplace among the squad.

Kieran Maguire, a lecturer on football finance at the University of Liverpool and the man behind the Price of Football blog, told The Athletic: “These are a really solid set of results. And had it not been for COVID, they would have been spectacularly good.  A near £30 million profit.’


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