The Albion posts losses of £14.7m

[The Brighton Buzz]

If Tony Bloom paid for the stadium on an interest free loan, then when is he expecting the money back, is it possible that the loss includes some repayment of the loan. I cannot see TB not wanting to see any return in the next ten years etc. If I had loaned the club an excessive amount of money, I would have wanted to see some return, as a businessman It will be interesting to see the accounts.

 

[El Presidente]

If Tony Bloom paid for the stadium on an interest free loan, then when is he expecting the money back, is it possible that the loss includes some repayment of the loan. I cannot see TB not wanting to see any return in the next ten years etc. If I had loaned the club an excessive amount of money, I would have wanted to see some return, as a businessman It will be interesting to see the accounts.

You're wrong.

 

[Bozza]

If Tony Bloom paid for the stadium on an interest free loan, then when is he expecting the money back, is it possible that the loss includes some repayment of the loan. I cannot see TB not wanting to see any return in the next ten years etc. If I had loaned the club an excessive amount of money, I would have wanted to see some return, as a businessman It will be interesting to see the accounts.

There'll be no repayments. The flow of money between the Albion and Tony Bloom is only going in one direction.

 

[The Brighton Buzz]

You're wrong.

Just a thought I stand corrected

 

[Jim in the West]

If Tony Bloom paid for the stadium on an interest free loan, then when is he expecting the money back, is it possible that the loss includes some repayment of the loan. I cannot see TB not wanting to see any return in the next ten years etc. If I had loaned the club an excessive amount of money, I would have wanted to see some return, as a businessman It will be interesting to see the accounts.

Repayments of the loan wouldn't appear in the P&L account anyway, even if the club had paid him back £100m.

 

[WeTheSouthStand]

I don't want to have a moan about the club (and yes I realise we have still got money to pay off for the stadium) but a loss of £14.7m seems an awful lot for the gates we get at home etc. And especially when we haven't spent a lot of money on signings in the transfer window. I'd love to know where all the money goes, but correct me if I'm mistaken.

 

[The Brighton Buzz]

There'll be no repayments. The flow of money between the Albion and Tony Bloom is only going in one direction.

We are Doomed. Thank god for TB.

 

[AZ Gull]

I thought the cost of things like new training grounds were excluded from FFP.

They are. These are accounts prior to any adjustment for FFP. And they probably reflect little or no impact from the training ground anyway, seeing as they are for 2012-13.

 

[Jim in the West]

The infrastructure we have in place now has massive admin costs and these + the salaries we need to pay players to be remotely competitive in the Championship means the only place we can survive financially is the Premier League. FFP will more than likely stop us getting there unless we ignore FFP and even if we did get there it's debatable whether we could be competitive in a sustainable way on crowds of 28-30,000. All this unless ticket prices go through the roof.

Hence the long term plan, which is to develop the academy and bring players through the Development Squad.

 

[Seagulltonian]

With the loss from the financial year being reported, what will next season hold?

I'm thinking we seemed to have spent a vast fortune on merchandise, which is now being sold for some majorly bargain prices!!
I know the shop is closing in Brighton, but how much saving does that bring to the accounts? Not much I should think! And how big is the loss on merchandise?

I think we should have invested heavily in the playing side of things and try and get to the premiership this season, as this would make a very major difference to the money coming into the club.

 

[Lifelong Supporter]

I don't want to have a moan about the club (and yes I realise we have still got money to pay off for the stadium) but a loss of £14.7m seems an awful lot for the gates we get at home etc. And especially when we haven't spent a lot of money on signings in the transfer window. I'd love to know where all the money goes, but correct me if I'm mistaken.

Players wages, agents fees, loan fees, transfer fees written off for accounting purposes over the period of a player's contract eg CMS and costs of running the stadium.

 

[eaglejez]

We made £3m profit and got promoted, mostly due to player sales.

This will be taken the wrong way (coming from a Palace fan), but how have you not managed to turn those record attendances into reduced loses? Something doesn't add up to me.

the biggest most important throbbing question for Brighton fans will relate to the 'other costs' that no one could answer what they were last year. If they really are annual costs related to the new stadium then there are going to be real problems.

As others have said (i) P&L is weird with regard to football finance since eg players contracts are amortised etc which skews the results. Cashflow is the key (ii) proves that even with that level of income football is just not sustainable outside of the Premiership due to the ridiculous wages that have filtered down and hence why every club has to rely on some rich sugar daddy to underwrite them. Luckily for Brighton and Palace they both have true fans for Owners which means heart ultimately has to rule the head (iii) shows how bad football finance is that these figures will include the income from the stadium but not all of the costs ie the interest cost is effectively gifted by TB

in summary as others have mentioned football is screwed financially and its generally a case of fire fighting to keep going. We have had a massive cash injection but if we stay up then the pressure will be on for a big chunk of that to go on wages.Madness

 

[Lord Bracknell]

... However I've been reviewing some Football MBA submissions as part of the day job, and one is an analysis of Bolton, and it showed that Bolton (who still made a humungous loss) have £5.07 of TV money for every £1 of gate receipts, whereas the Albion had only 50-55 pence of TV money for every £1 of gate receipts.

I'm not sure that this is the perfect performance indicator.

If we halved our attendances, we'd double the ratio of TV money to gate receipts. If Bolton could attract crowds the size of ours, their figure would drop to something like £3 of TV money for every £1 of gate receipts.

 

[Deleted member 22389]

I don't want to have a moan about the club (and yes I realise we have still got money to pay off for the stadium) but a loss of £14.7m seems an awful lot for the gates we get at home etc. And especially when we haven't spent a lot of money on signings in the transfer window. I'd love to know where all the money goes, but correct me if I'm mistaken.

Players wages are probably the biggest expense, then there are normal staff wages, electricity bills, water bills, maintenance, marketing and other things. I can bet you player wages must be about 150 - 200k a week.

 

[GingerBeerMan]

Not exactly news.

Don't ****ing reply then.

 

[The Brighton Buzz]

Obviously the way forward is the Academy. It is easy to understand why the club is bringing in young talent that have not quite made the grade at premiership clubs. We have already seen some fruits of this without the training ground being ready. Ince FC and March. Don't know if it's true but someone mentioned on here that we were looking at 4 players released by Arsenal. With Development matches being shown on utube, interest has already been raised. Oscar will get more involved with the DS once he has settled in. The clubs in good hands and exciting times ahead.

 

[Creaky]

They are certainly not the FFP accounts.

Which makes comments about how much or how little those losses need to be reduced to comply with FFP rather pointless.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Are we the only club in the Premier League/Football League saddled with transport costs due to a council imposed mass transit strategy as part of the conditions for building a new stadium ?

Don't blame the council, blame national planning policy. Without agreeing to the transport costs inherent in running the club from a brand new stadium at Falmer, the Club would never have escaped from Withdean.

 

[Deleted member 22389]

With the loss from the financial year being reported, what will next season hold?

I'm thinking we seemed to have spent a vast fortune on merchandise, which is now being sold for some majorly bargain prices!!
I know the shop is closing in Brighton, but how much saving does that bring to the accounts? Not much I should think! And how big is the loss on merchandise?

I think we should have invested heavily in the playing side of things and try and get to the premiership this season, as this would make a very major difference to the money coming into the club.

yes but that is the gamble. what would happen if we didn't get promoted, that debt is even bigger on next years accounts. better to be cautious and have a club, than no cub.

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

I don't want to have a moan about the club (and yes I realise we have still got money to pay off for the stadium) but a loss of £14.7m seems an awful lot for the gates we get at home etc. And especially when we haven't spent a lot of money on signings in the transfer window. I'd love to know where all the money goes, but correct me if I'm mistaken.

You're mistaken. I bought a business last year. My accounts show a loss, a drastic loss I add, but in reality it's just accountants doing their number crunching. Not being an accountant some of it goes over my head but I understand enough to know I am not in debt and the business is healthy and my tax liability is zero, at the moment!