Can Bounemouth continue to progress?

It's been a great season for cherries, but can Bournemouth meet their objectives?

This season will be Bournemouth’s ninth in the Premier League out of the past 11 campaigns. After two years in the second-tier Championship following relegation in 2020, they have incrementally improved, finishing 15th, then 12th and ninth. Foley wants to take them into the European competitions — a suggestion many scoffed at when he made the claim to The Athletic in May 2023 — but last season, Iraola’s team were in contention to qualify until the campaign’s final weeks.

As the team with the lowest matchday income in the Premier League, one of Bournemouth’s major challenges is to increase revenues. There are plans to increase the capacity of their Vitality Stadium from 11,379 to 20,000 seats by the 2027-28 campaign, and the club invested £32million ($42.4m) in a state-of-the-art training facility.

The costs of operating a Premier League club are high: for the 2023-24 financial year, Bournemouth’s underlying losses amounted to £55.9million from total costs of £225.5m — 60 per cent of which was spent on salaries — while income across matchday, broadcast and commercial came in at £169.6m.

Since then, they have sold players Milos Kerkez, Dean Huijsen and Dominic Solanke for a combined £155million, all huge profits on what those three cost to sign, which helped balance the books. Bournemouth are hoping their sharp eye for recruitment, such as signing Evanilson for £40.2m from Porto (£25m less than fellow striker Solanke was sold for in the same transfer window) and the coaching of Iraola, will allow for the team to continue to be successful even when talent is flipped.

Last summer, Bournemouth ventured to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara in California, including a game against Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s Wrexham. This time, they signed up to participate in the Summer Series, which has included linking up with the NFL’s Chicago Bears, with the two teams sharing minority owners in the Ryan family, led by Pat Ryan, who was the founder of insurance firm AON. Hollywood actor and director Michael B Jordan is another minority shareholder at Bournemouth.

“We are adding some more hospitality (areas),” Jim Frevola (Bournemouth’s business director) says. “We’ll still be one of the lowest in the league in the percentage of seats relative to hospitality. We’re the only club in the league that doesn’t have a paid membership programme. We will introduce that, which again might not be super-popular, but if you’re the only club in a league not doing it, you’re probably missing a lot of benefits about why that could be a good thing. Financially, it is a very small needle-mover, but it’ll help with a formalisation of a waiting list, and a process for folks to get tickets.”

Frevola says Bournemouth had previously been a “closed shop” for tickets because of the size of the stadium. “When we got there, we had an 11,000-seat stadium and we had the same 12,000 people go to every game. You can’t survive that way. We have so many people who buy one ticket because that’s all they can get. They can’t bring their partner, friends, parents or kids.

Bournemouth have owners who engage with media and fans, are investing both locally and globally, and are determined to be upwardly mobile on the pitch.

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...

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s...

A poor financial record, but new hope at Everton

I recently saw an amusing video online in which a group of Everton fans were rebuked in jest for being hopeful. Football fans in general tend to swing between excessive optimism and excessive pessimism, but for many it seems that moaning is in their bloodstream (Spurs fans probably take the trophy). However, Everton fans have had plenty to moan about on and off the pitch. Let’s hope that a new era is about to begin for this grand old club. Everton’s 2023/24 financial results covered a fairly momentous season, when they ended up 15th in the Premier League, though they would finished three places higher if they had not received an 8-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR). It was a worrying time for Everton fans, as the club faced a “perfect storm” of issues, including large financial losses, an ever increasing debt burden, a challenging stadium build and the tortuous sale of the club. There were eve...

The Political Economy of Football V2

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