Liverpool FC posts £50m loss
LIVERPOOL Football Club will post losses of around £50m for the year to the end of July 2011, according to its manging director Ian Ayre.
In an interview on the official club website Mr Ayre said the losses were mostly attributable to one-off costs related to plans for a new 70,000 seat stadium drawn up, at great cost, by former owners Bill Hicks and George Gillett.
The accounts, for what Mr Ayre said was a “transitional period” between the Hicks and Gillett era and that of the Fenway Sports Group, will show one-off costs of £59m – of which some £35m relates to the stadium plans and £8m to paying off former manager Roy Hodgson, who was axed after just six months, and othter directors.
Mr Ayre said commercial revenues showed “excellent growth” of 25%, but overall revenues of £184m were flat as a result of the club missing out on Champions League qualification – which is worth at least £40m to the top line.
“We have created a great commercial platform which underpins our business, and we now have a stable base on which to build and move forward,”Mr Ayre said.
He said much of the £200m of debt on the club’s balance sheet had been paid off by the new owners and interest payments had consequently fallen from £80m to around £3m.
The surge in commercial revenues includes the first tranche of the new kit sponsorship deal with international bank Standard Chartered, which is worth £80m.
Coffers will be boosted further next year, when a new kit supply deal with American sportswear firms Warrior, worth £25m a year to the club, kicks in.
