BFC Accounts 2021

Biggest loss in the history of Barnsley Football Club.

 

That's lockdown for you.

 

Unsurprising.

 

In the year the club had its highest revenue this millennia when combining turnover, grants and insurance claims.

Now that is surprising.

 

You're genuinely surprised?

 

This is all good news isn’t it?

The financial situation is pretty dire, but that is expected because of the (in)competency of the owners. More pressure is being applied on sponsors to withdraw their support. And, most importantly, every fan that refuses to renew their ST for next season is doing so knowing that action puts even more financial pressure on the Club and it’s current owners.

is their any other way that the fans can bring that pressure to bare?

 

I am surprised. Just stop for a moment and look at the headline numbers. The club posts its highest revenue, still makes a modest profit on transfers and manages to post the biggest loss in it’s history.

This record is unlikely to last long.

 

Ill be renewing RRplus first day I can Thankyou.

 

Pretty sure on the price of football podcast KM said loan payments of Wages and loan fees were all just the same.

 

Same. At the end of the day we support the 11 on the pitch.

 

Looks to me like we should actually be very concerned about relegation….

would love to see a breakdown of the exec salaries

 

If we were alone in posting sh it numbers then I'd be worried.

I don't get why anyone is acting surprised? As far as several sectors were concerned it was the year from hell, and yes, the next accounts will probably be worse. Again, unsurprisingly.

 

If my house is falling down, it's no comfort to know that my neighbour's houses are also collapsing. Especially if I know that their houses are insured with Sugardaddy Bailouts Unlimited and mine is insured with Grabbit & Scarper.

 

But the question remains, is anyone genuinely surprised?

 

The surprise is the scale of the losses at a time we knew they were coming.

As Archerfield has said, we've posted record revenue. That includes £2.8m furlough receipts or any contribution from business continuity insurance. Our headline revenue fell by £1.74m.

So we've actually profited by nearly £1.1m from fall in revenue compared with monies received from HMRC and insurance.

Undoubtedly, we've missed the opportunity to generate additional monies from gate receipts, merchandise and anything on a matchday which may derive profit. Away day followings too. We have benefitted from an increase in TV monies and central distribution. But these monies were known in advance. We have benefitted by reducing costs of anything associated with matchdays, policing, stewarding etc.

If we go back to the beginning of the 2020/21 season, we'd just luckily escaped relegation by the skin of our teeth. We'd had a break in the previous season and fans didn't know if they'd get in the ground to see the team play. So as a business, we knew it would be challenging.

So with this knowledge, we went out and bought more players and added more wages. Then in January, we did the same. I can understand the punt to a degree, but we've purposefully increased wages by 22% knowing that the backdrop was difficult and uncertain.

In any business, that is incompetence. I know plenty of businesses who cut their cloth accordingly during covid and none of them purposefully increased their wage bill by millions of pounds or 22%, quite the opposite.

I can understand the sentiment in comparing with other clubs, but as I've touched on before, many of those clubs at least have a benefactor putting money in by choice (though the party will stop at some point).

The other thing to consider too. The cash position is hugely inflated because of an EFL loan of £3.6m and prepaid season tickets for the 2021-22 season equating to circa £5.3m.

That EFL loan has to be paid back and when we look at next years accounts, season tickets will be nowhere near last seasons level. If season tickets halve (looking quite likely at present), we could have a cash movement and deficit of around £2.6m on top of the EFL repayment terms.

We operate at a sizeable operating loss as can be seen in the accounts prior to covid (2020 showed an operating loss before player sales of £3.3m).

You add all those things up for next season and we are likely to need to generate surplus cash to the tune of £7-8m to cover the operating loss, movement in prepaid season tickets and repayment of EFL loan (likely in part).

On top of that, we could also be relegated.

 

Let me try to explain as I don't see myself as a sensationalist.

The owners of Barnsley FC aim to run a self-sustainable approach to funding the football club. This is in contrast to many clubs who have funding from their owners and run with significant levels of reliance on the owners.

Despite playing behind closed doors Barnsley FC actually generated the highest amount of operating revenue in its history. The combination of benevolent fans (paying for season tickets and not attending), Government grants and insurance gave total revenue of £15.3m. The percentage of revenue spent on wages increased substantially and the asset base of the club has now fallen by circa £8m. Covid may have impacted the prospect of transfer values but the operational position, mainly driven by wage increases, is looking precarious.

The current owners have a big dilemma as to how to fund the club as their self sustaining approach has not been self sustaining.

 

Conway will just get some un suspecting Yanks with more money than sense to buy some of his Barnsley F.C premium bonds.