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« on: November 27, 2023, 04:33:23 PM »
It’s interesting that you say that the wage bill is far too high. The last figures I saw suggested that the 23/4 player salaries were £23.4m. They’ve taken out Livermore/ O’Shea etc and brought in Kipre/ Maja etc so it looks up to date. I doubt that they will all be accurate but with a few over and a few under, it probably balances out. Against that we have gate receipts of about £6m (£5m last year), merchandise of £3m, £6m of other commercial income and £5m of non-parachute TV money. That’s about £22m (with a bit of rounding). So our total income covers the player salaries. Of course, I’ve not considered all of the other costs of the business including non playing staff (which could include Adam Reach…), maintenance of the Hawthorns, travel, rates, tax etc but I’d be surprised if that added up to the £20m shortfall we needed to cover using MSD. What’s most shocking is that the third year parachute is about £15m I believe and if we’ve managed to spend that and still be -£20m just in operating P&L, that’s astonishing.
Yes, there will be transfers that have to go through the P&L in this period but I’d hope that the sale of OShea would roughly offset what’s still owing on Grant etc. if this is a true operating loss of that size then it’s really remarkable.