CLUB ACCOUNTS: 2013/14 - Saints reveal first profit

Due to an increase in many figures, but mainly Sky money.

 

I also like this part ' However, Bick said he would like to wait and see Southampton’s fully published accounts and questioned why the club, who raised close to £100m by selling the likes of Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Luke Shaw last summer, borrowed money from owner Katharina Liebherr.'

Umm we didn't sell those players in the 2013-2014 season.

 

And Rogers also said that she wanted that money to be used for the club and put in the extra 20 million to clear the Vibac debt. This will all be cleared up in the next accounting period as you said.

 

I wouldn't trust David Bick as far as I could throw him.

A firm ally of Cortese, especially in the early days, and was not particularly popular at the club.

He was one of those who assisted Cortese's media routine in the summer of 2014.

 

Portsmouth announce operating profit
Football

League Two Portsmouth have announced an operating profit of £118,000 in its first year of trading after emerging from administration.

The published accounts cover the period straight after the club left administration and end in June 2014.

They include a turnover of £6.6 million and gate receipts of £3.4 million.

"These set of accounts give us a fantastic base on which to build on," Pompey's Chief executive, Mark Catlin, told the club website.

Oh ****! Now they'll be nicking all our best players!

 

The media types are going to have to revise their expectations a little on financial matters. The upside of the new money and FFP is that it's now increasingly difficult to lose money (well done, Sunderland!) after many years where merely breaking even was a great accomplishment. The downside is that we're likely to see a new breed of owners buying teams purely as money-making assets; before, when it was only a select few clubs with massive revenue streams that could consistently make money, those sorts were limited to buying Manchester United and the like (or buying Coventry because they didn't know any better).

Within short order, we're going to see grossly inflated sale prices for established PL clubs, and more owners similar to those in North American sports...billionaires who want to become multibillionaires, and see the year-to-year profitability as the primary draw.

 

Why is this an issue?

You can probably make good profits in slave trade, or dealing drugs. If you could make the same profit by stopping the slave trade or helping addicts, that's better. I don't see anything weird about that. It seems rather reasonable, in fact.

You don't have to actually give up profit or sacrifice yourself to help others. But if you can generate the same money from treating drug addicts or selling drugs, then why can't treating drug addicts better than selling drugs?

In a free market, you vote with your dollars-- using whatever moral criteria you wish. If you don't like the way big corporations or any other company does business, then send your dollars to someone better. If everyone only patronizes companies that pay a living wage, then they will all eventually do that. The whole point is we can supposedly shape society anyway you wish with our money. And that is more efficient than trying to do so via government and laws.

 

That's another thing the media get wrong about the club's finances. When the training ground improvements were first drawn up they were to cost around £15M or so. Then, in a BBC interview, Cortese said that they'd decided that those initial plans weren't going to satisfy the ambition, so they drew up far more extensive plans. The cost escalated to £38M for when everything is complete, including phase 2, which has yet to be started. Yet the media would have everyone believe that it is all escalating costs from the original plans. Yes, there has been an adjustment of the costs because of delays caused by Cortese/Saints wanting to get things just right, but nothing over the top.

 

It's certainly not all escalating costs. A fair portion of it is, but we must also remember there are other parts to consider - principally, there are three stages to the Staplewood development.

1) The Markus Liebherr Pavilion - COMPLETE
2) The Dome - IN PROGRESS
3) The Annexe - Application Stages

Number three in the above list is something that was only drafted up, agreed and given the green light since Katharina assumed a more active role at the club and put her own board in place - so it's not fair to level the costs for that as being due to Nicola's perfectionist approach.

However, there are numerous other costs/delays that cropped up during stage on and stage two that certainly were due to Cortese and his (sometimes unnecessary) approach to the development.

It's not as simple as black and white - as usual, I guess.

 

Indeed, thanks for putting in more detail, DTLW.

 

That's a good article

Transfers to be cash neutral is a fair policy, although I can see that coming under more scrutiny if we start to drop off on the pitch, but if we sell players in the £20m bracket and buy players in the £10m bracket along with academy players then it's an obviously workable policy

 

I see Palace made a £23m profit.

 

Jesús wept, aren't we a football club? Can't we talk about football? I long for the day when we're in a proper league instead of this circus.

 

No league exists where team finances are not important, unless you want Saints to re-form as a Sunday league side.

 

To be honest there are 539 pages of discussion on the site, the majority are football orientated, no harm in including discussion about the solvency of the Club, it is important after all.

 

I'd like to know what a proper league is. Loved the Championship, but the target was always to get out of it. And we have done well for the last few years because the owners have been willing to put money into the club with the intention of us being in this 'circus'. The news of our first profit after many years shows what has been put into the club to get us here. If we were a perennial Championship club, we could wave goodbye to having the quality of players that have made being a Saints fan such fun recently.