Sorry, the "plucky little Bournemouth" bit wasn't aimed at you, but it's a line I've seen trotted out a fair bit, for some reason a lot of people seem to be under the illusion that Bournemouth spend very little and are the "plucky underdogs" of the Prem, but it's far from true.
I agree they're fairly well run, but no moreso than the likes of Watford, Palace, Leicester, etc. imo. £40m net spend per year isn't small change by any means, nobody outside the big 6 + Everton comes close. The fact they have small sponsorship, a low kit deal, and little ticket revenue indicates they should actually be spending far less than other clubs?
I don't think they spend particularly well, either. If you scroll down on the link in my earlier post, there's a table of profit / loss on player sales in the Prem. Bournemouth are rock bottom.
The only thing they do particularly well as far as I can tell, is to keep the wage bill down, but that sort of comes back to their poor spending. You said yourself they make a minimal amount from player sales, it's because they spend big on average players, imo.
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/afc-bournemouth/alletransfers/verein/989
£80m spent last year, and of those I would say the only one they could realistically hope to make a profit on if they sold now would be David Brooks. £25m on Lerma, £20m on Solanke, £16m on Ibe are crazy amounts and they've no hope of recuperating it imo.
Their owner basically gambled on buying their way out of the Championship and got lucky, they made a £40m operating loss in the year they got promoted, which isn't a million miles away from what Wolves did. The difference is Wolves had multi-billionaire owners to fall back on if it didn't work, whereas I think Bournemouth would have been in real trouble if they weren't promoted that year.
I can see it all going pear-shaped within a few years if they're not careful, especially if they go back down. Their owner simply can't afford to pump another £50m in to try to buy promotion again.