BFC Accounts have landed

That was sadly my first thought.

 

Certainly seems a mini Tenon. They hoovered up a lot of midtier firms quite a while back and collectively boosted their ranking to look 'big' though firms still operated in mini silos.

You had a few membership groups like AVN and RANone but they were loose and firms retained independence.

There's been a lot of merger activity in professional services for a while now, so we shouldn't be too surprised. The good thing is the people doing the accounts are the ones doing them last year.

 

Our strategy since Duff left appears to be say we're going for promotion, do very little to actually back that up, blame being in League 1 for not having the money to get promoted from League 1, rinse and repeat.

 

Good lord. That’s completely unsustainable. How is it even possible?

Edit: Out of control player wages it appears.

 

How have Neerav and JAQ allowed us to get into such a mess?

 

Neerav mentioned this 40% inflation in League One wages. Is that what we've seen over the last two years or is that just driven by Birmingham & Wrexham going nuts & spending big?

 

A couple of other relevant points that I missed initially in the bullet summary.

- The player trading profit was made on players who had cost the club £3.5m in transfer fees initially (purchased when we were a Championship club), but who's contracts had been amortised down to a value of £200k in total at the point of sale. Based on the profit we reported on their sales, that suggests total transfer fees agreed for them of just under £8m.

- Cash held on the balance sheet is down from just under £2m to £700k. I didn't comment on this initially, as this could be influenced by the change in year-end date, so it's not a direct like for like comparison. The VAT creditor is similar for each year, so the timing of outgoing VAT payments isn't a factor, which would be one obvious possible impact of a timing difference, but it's not the only relevant issue. I'd advise a little caution in looking at that number in isolation. The net current assets position is more relevant, which is down slightly from £1.5m to £1.3m, so not a huge difference overall.

- There's a long-term liability on the balance sheet, which I believe is the Covid-related loan. This has reduced from £4.2m to £2.6m, but some of this reduction could be some of it moving into the due within 1 year category, in which other creditors has increased from £0.8m to £1.6m. This is the only notable liability the club has (thinking back to the unfounded rumours of admin) and, as far as can be seen within the accounts, this looks to be being repaid in accordance with the original terms provided for this emergency funding.

- One interesting point is that there's a much reduced directors report versus last year's accounts. Last year had a section on the academy, for example, and all the players who'd made first team appearances that season. The latest one is much more 'functional' in nature.

 

By owning a football club at a time when doing so necessitates losing money, just like pretty much every other football club in England.

If you think that having different owners would cause the accounts to reflect a profit anytime soon, then you're looking at the wrong sport.

 

Ha! Actually, I have a set of BFC accounts from 1932 and another from 1926. No £9.7m loss on those!

 

So.... Based on all that lot

We are paying significantly more out, but are in a worse position.

Fair?

 

Amongst all that, is the deal with Fanatics I assume. Merchandise down. £550k. (Admitted 23/24 compared to 22/23) I don't know if its a disaster this season. The contract says long term. (I can't find a specific figure.) I would like the FAB to question whether it was a good deal. And if so, how. (Bear in mind, set up by the previous ceo).

My son looked at 2 hoodies for his kids. Only available online not in store. Postage on top. Unable obviously to try on for size. 2 sales lost.

 

Contracts still carried over from Championship. Wasn't oulare reputedly on £10kpw. £Iseka 7.5kpw. Were their contracts paid up last season
Around £8 in lost revenue from championship to league 1. Via Premier league etc handouts.
Bear in mind Neerav and JAQ didn't get hold the reins till around 2023. Lee was still majority shareholder in 2022.

 

I'd like to see a few comparisons from other teams.I bet theres loads more worse off than us.
Obviously no profit but I don't know any other club who have.We appear to be on top of somethings and others need improvement.

 

I'm very surprised that wages went up, perhaps a cost of not loaning out Styles for half the season? Still, losing Mads and Kitching should have brought the overall bill down, I can only guess Cosgrove and Watters might be on a fair whack, and improved contracts for Connell and Phillips. I'd be interested to know what the wage bill looks like ahead of this summer, with Cosgrove, Benson, Pines off the books as well as Styles, Kane, Cole, Williams & Cadden from last summer. If we have more than £7m of player salaries I'd be surprised.

Merchandise sales are shocking, but a decent rise in sponsorship and advertising revenue, hopefully Flatman has built upon that with the large number of deals we announced.

 

Neerav's interview already mentioned general player wage inflation in League One of 40%. Totally unsustainable, but a football problem, rather than a BFC-specific one.

Jon Flatman's statement on the main website references projected losses of over £6m for 2024/25, so they're being far more upfront on finances than has previously been the case.

 

The question is what are they intending to do about it? While I concur football is an utter basket case and mega losses are the norm, we also need to accept we're making losses bigger than we need to by not utilising our academy well enough, carrying a bloated unbalanced squad and failing to get any fees for the out of contract 4 last season.

Are we maintaining the same wage budget? Are we cutting the first team squad pool? Are we going to try more academy kids to offset natural attrition of the squad base as players become out of contract? Are our wage costs less for the coming financial period than the published one?

Parekh is going to have to subsidise us still, but if we can shave a few million off the operating losses, it gives us a chance to reduce that further if we can get to a position of better recruitment and better coaching and development.

Still a bleak old football landscape though.

 

Totally agree that there's considerable scope for improvement, but the general landscape is completely unsustainable, and a significant part of my disillusionment with football in general.

 

I think maybe aside from those having "success'" while massively overspending, there are probably a significant number of football fans feeling the same.

 

I hope Neerav reads this forum. Threads like this demonstrate that fans are interested in the finances and do care about the running of the club, and the majority don’t expect him to ‘buy success or do one!’. It’s just impossible to deny that things on and off the field are in a very poor state, and it’s very concerning.

 

Accounts be even worse next year with big loss in season ticket renewals