Fulham Finances - are we skint this summer?

[dweiss]

It would be great to be able to bring everything back to normal levels and true enough, there will be more things that would be used and abused by others that would leave quite a huge lot of things left out.

I just hope that things would end up better and in good terms with how finances would be handled.  I am keen to know what is going to be the next major step to put everything together.

[mullers]

None of this matters as apparently the world ends in December...

If the world does end in December then I'd like to think we'll be comfortably placed in the league, out of the League Cup and looking forward to the F.A.Cup.It would be awful to go out worried by relegation and in the semi-finals of the L C dreaming of Wembley.

[b+w geezer]

On our last filing at companies house for accounts ending June '11, our salaries totalled £ 50,329,000 with an additional £ 822,000 for Directors. Where did you get the figures of £ 58 million from B & W?

David Conn in the Guardian, url given above. If you are looking at the original source, then it sounds like he has made a mistake. If so, then deduct another maybe 7k per week from the author's guesstimated average for our top 20 earners, reducing it (net of N.I.) to below 30k per week. Poor lambs.

Whatever, the broad picture is that we could at the latest count compete on wages with a good half of the other clubs and couldn't remotely compete with the obvious suspects, plus at least one that was less obvious but is probably retrenching now: Villa. (And of course we still bettered them on the pitch.)

[ImperialWhite]

As soon as I read the first paragraph, where the writer states that he earns his living by analysing the finances of listed companies, and that football clubs are not very different, I found myself saying "yes they are" and doubting that the piece would be very informative.

About a year ago one of the large accountancy firms produced a report on football club finances, and concluded that, unlike businesses in general, financial prudence was a phrase completely foreign to the managements of most clubs!  

Just because football clubs aren't typically very financially prudent doesn't mean that they don't operate like businesses. It just means they operate like not very financially prudent businesses.

[b+w geezer]

On our last filing at companies house for accounts ending June '11, our salaries totalled £ 50,329,000 with an additional £ 822,000 for Directors. Where did you get the figures of £ 58 million from B & W?

Additional possibilities (i.e. additional to David Conn in The Guardian having blundered!) are that the `salaries' figure you quote excludes national insurance and/or excludes payments to non-salaried staff (catering, stewards etc.) i.e. `wages.' At any rate, the usual basis for comparison is all of those things (plus directors pay) grand totalled.

Whether 58 or 51 to the nearest million, it doesn't make a world of difference to our position relative to others, which is that we can compete on wages with half or more, but not the rest.

[Burt]

None of this matters as apparently the world ends in December...

We should be just climbing towards mid-table by then.

[NorthernWhite]

On our last filing at companies house for accounts ending June '11, our salaries totalled £ 50,329,000 with an additional £ 822,000 for Directors. Where did you get the figures of £ 58 million from B & W?

David Conn in the Guardian, url given above. If you are looking at the original source, then it sounds like he has made a mistake. If so, then deduct another maybe 7k per week from the author's guesstimated average for our top 20 earners, reducing it (net of N.I.) to below 30k per week. Poor lambs.

Whatever, the broad picture is that we could at the latest count compete on wages with a good half of the other clubs and couldn't remotely compete with the obvious suspects, plus at least one that was less obvious but is probably retrenching now: Villa. (And of course we still bettered them on the pitch.)

Thanks and you're right, not a great deal of difference between in the grand scheme of things.

What's more interesting about our salaries over the last couple of years is the very large increases which would explain the need to remove some of the older players, on (presumably) higher salaries out of the club. Below are the last few years overall salaries for Fulham:-

2011   £ 50,320,000
2010   £ 43,788,000
2009   £ 41,376,000
2008   £ 35,193,000
2007   £ 31,502,000

I know there's been a large increase in Sky money during that time and agents would not be afraid in the slightest to let clubs know that but since 2008, our salaries have increased by  £ 15,000,000 per annum or 43%. That's a pretty huge increase.

[b+w geezer]

I know there's been a large increase in Sky money during that time and agents would not be afraid in the slightest to let clubs know that but since 2008, our salaries have increased by  £ 15,000,000 per annum or 43%. That's a pretty huge increase.

As you say, though probably in line with clubs in general. I again wonder though if the upcoming hike in TV revenues need *necessarily* be matched quite so mercilessly by increases in wages. If only half of the extra income were applied to higher wages, that would still increase one's existing advantage over what most clubs in the world can pay -- an advantage already on the high side of sizeable. So most players bar the top cream that we'd not attract anyway (for non-wage-related reasons) would still be interested in joining us -- even more than now.

Whether clubs like ours dare to take that view is of course the question.

[b+w geezer]

The point I've just made above chimes in with White Noise's point 4, which covers some other aspects too. He's put it well -- recommended reading!

White Noise's point #1 is doubtful on the wage front, but most of his others seem good'uns, with #2, #6 and #8 particularly interesting IMO.

When, in #10, White Noise says "The new Riverside will give Fulham's revenue a shot in the arm but overall people turning up at Craven Cottage will matter, in monetary terms at least, less and less" he is obviously spot on. Even now, it's notable that Sunderland and Fulham had identical seasonal revenues from sources other than broadcasting (split identically between matchday and other), implying that the raw numbers of stadium and fanbase sizes only count for so much -- and (as White Noise says) of declining significance unless you are a ManU or Arsenal type.

[NogoodBoyo]

Very good content to the thread here, boys and girls; you've all done very well.  Having said that, the title is a tad sensationalist if not misleading.  Still, it got everybody talking which should please young Baldrick.
Nogood "being borasik with Baldrick, isit" Boyo