By David Owen
May 3 – AFC Bournemouth, the English south-coast club that has just secured another year of Premier League football, has reported a hefty loss for its promotion season, due partly to a financial fair play penalty.
The club, known as the Cherries, posted a pre-tax loss of £39.1 million for the year to 31 July 2015, approximately three times turnover of £12.9 million. It explained that “in accordance with the rules of the Football League”, it had incurred a financial fair play penalty of £7.6 million. “A further exceptional item shown above operating profit is a charge for £2 million in respect of a payment to former shareholders as a result of the club’s promotion to the Premier League”.
Football wages were another major factor in the scale of the club’s deficit, with the accounts showing staff costs surged to £30.4 million from £17.3 million the previous year.
Nevertheless, the club’s apparent gamble in investing heavily in its capacity to rise through the ranks of the English club game, in spite of the lakes of cherry-red ink such a strategy produced in the short term, now looks to have paid off.
Turnover will have jumped dramatically in 2015-16, as Eddie Howe’s side brought its vibrant brand of football to the Premier League for the first time. And now the club – whose ultimate parent company is British Virgin Islands-registered Fortina Enterprises Limited – has secured its share of the next TV bonanza from 2016-17.
The accounts state that the club has £34.7 million of loans “related to an unsecured non-interest-bearing loan repayable to A.FC.B Enterprises Limited, the company’s parent, and is repayable on 13 February 2018”.
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