From his fastness in Zurich, the authoritative Swiss Ramble has been reviewing the 2019/20 accounts of Scottish Premiership clubs.
Most Scottish
Premiership clubs aim for break-even with five making small profits, led by
Hearts £0.5m and Motherwell £0.3m. Rangers’ £17.5m post-tax loss is the big
outlier, especially compared to Celtic’s£0.4m deficit, largely due to their
recent investment in the squad.
Celtic had the
highest revenue with £70m, though the gap to Rangers £59m has narrowed. Both
Glasgow clubs earn at least four times as much as other Scottish clubs with
closest challengers being Aberdeen £14m, Hearts £12m, Hibernian £9m and
Kilmarnock £5m.
However, it is worth noting that Celtic were boosted by £24m
profit from player sales, largely due to Kieran Tierney’s move to Arsenal,
which was significantly higher than other Scottish clubs. The next highest were
Kilmarnock £1.2m, Motherwell £1.0m.
The Old Firm had by far the largest operating losses (i.e.
excluding player sales and interest) with Celtic being highest at £24.5m then Rangers
£15.9m. Next highest was Hibernian with just £1.4m. Hearts was the only club
with an operating profit, thanks to £3.7m donations.
Revenue for most Scottish clubs fell in 2019/20, partly due
to the impact of COVID-19, but Rangers increased by £6m (11%), due to reaching
Europa League last 16. In contrast, Celtic’s revenue dropped £13m (16%) with
match day and commercial heavily affected by the pandemic.
Poor TV deal
The Scottish Premiership TV deal is very low, so Celtic only
received £3.4m for winning the title in 2020. To put this into perspective,
Premier League winners got £152m, while last place was worth £97m. Even a
Championship club (no parachute payments) got twice as much £7m.
There is a new five-year Scottish TV deal with Sky Sports
worth £30m (€34m) a year from 2020/21 (up from £25m), but this is not going to
move the needle by much. It’s still much lower than Poland Ekstraklasa €58m and
Belgium Jupiter League €83m, let alone Premier League €3.6 bn.
Reaching the Champions League group stage can make a big
difference to Scottish clubs, e.g. the last time Celtic managed this in 2018
they received £30m TV money. On top of that, a club would have higher gate
receipts and an uplift from performance bonuses in commercial deals.
Wage bills and debt
Celtic had the highest wage bill with £54m, ahead of Rangers
£43m, though the gap has narrowed to £11m from £35m in 2018. There remains an
abyss between the Old Firm and the other Scottish clubs, i.e. the next highest
are Aberdeen £10m, Hearts £9m and Hibernian £7m. Most Scottish clubs have reasonable wages
to turnover ratios, just above UEFA’s recommended upper limit of 70%, but
that’s not too bad in a COVID-impacted season.
Scottish clubs do
not often pay big money to sign players. In fact, Celtic’s gross transfer spend
of £20.7m in 2019/20 was easily more than the rest of the Scottish Premiership
combined with the next highest being Rangers £11.0m, followed by Aberdeen £1.3m
and Hearts £0.4m.
Rangers’ £19.3m gross debt is more than all the other
Scottish Premiership clubs combined (£15.7m) with the next highest being Hearts
£5.7m, Celtic £5.4m and Aberdeen £1.3m. These numbers are significantly lower
than most English clubs.
This is on e thing they can't blame on top supported teams in spl who I think could start there on channel say season book for live tv they have carried the spl but finance due to covid they have to seek there own income from tv
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