Tonight's Evening Standard reveals West Ham's profit from the first season at the London Stadium — a whacking £43 million. Karren Brady states that the club would have made a similar profit at the Boleyn Ground, as most of it comes from the massive £32.6m rise in TV revenue. Playing at the London Stadium seems to have only generated an increase in ticket revenue of just £1.7 million (total ticket sales were up to £28.6m), despite having an extra 22,000 fans. Presumably this figure will go up as kids' £99 tickets eventually become adult prices and converting offices/shops at the stadium is now completed. To be fair to the board, having relatively cheap seats is no bad thing.
On the positive side it seems the bank debts have been cleared and the club is in a healthy financial position. There's nothing wrong with making a profit, but only if that profit makes its way back into the team rather than to the shareholders. The profit figure is inflated a little by the sale of Dimitri Payet for £25 million and is presumably before £18m was spent on Fonte and Snodgrass.
It makes business sense to have cleared the Icelandic debts. But having also made a profit in the January 2018 transfer window (and presumably another big profit on this season) the owners have to spend big next summer — if we stay up that is — to prove they want success. While the club was making this massive profit it was signing cheap players who flopped like Nordtveit, Calleri, Arbeloa, Feghouli and Tore. Last summer the net spend was only around £22 million despite Arnie's fee and big wages on Hart's loan and Zabaleta's free transfer. That's just not good enough from a club generating such revenue. The debts have more or less gone. Now let's see the money on the pitch in targeted quality signings.
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