By David Owen
May 4 – Just as Gareth Bale propelled Tottenham Hotspur to the top of the Premier League’s profit pile last time around, so Luís Suárez is responsible for Liverpool’s position of pre-eminence in the latest table.
The Uruguayan’s transfer to Barcelona in July 2014 provided the impetus to make the Merseyside club the most profitable in England’s top tier – at the pre-tax level – in 2014-15, although the £60 million profit posted by the Reds could not quite match Spurs’s £80 million a year earlier, the highest pre-tax profit ever recorded in the division.
Having surged up from 16th place in the 2013-14 profits table, Liverpool may expect to be riding high again next time, with another lucrative transfer – that of England’s Raheem Sterling – set to be taken into account.
Overall, this was another good year for Premier League club finances. The aggregate pre-tax profit across the 20 clubs – at £126.9 million – could not match the remarkable £187 million attained last time, as the benefits of a new television deal combined with cost-side restraint encouraged by Financial Fair Play. But this is still the second-best year on record. While the upward momentum of wage bills did increase, the situation remained, for the most part, under reasonable control.
A total of 14 clubs reported pre-tax profits, with six in loss, of which the biggest – £45.7 million – was run up by west London club Queens Park Rangers, who were relegated to the Championship.
Little correlation is discernible between financial and on-field performance – except at the very bottom of the table, where the two biggest loss-makers in 2014-15, QPR and Aston Villa, are set to be the clubs bringing up the rear in the league in 2014-15 and 2015-16 respectively. Moreover, Sunderland – 18th in the 2014-15 profits table – are currently also 18th in the Premier League, with three matches of the club’s 2015-16 season remaining.
The position of the two Manchester clubs is worth mentioning, with City in the black and United the red. The Old Trafford club, with its remarkable marketing machine continuing to crank out deals around the world, looks set to return to a position at or near the top of the profits table in 2015-16, however.
Newcastle United fans, who have endured another difficult season on the pitch, may have mixed feelings about seeing the north-east club occupying a Champions League spot for profitability, just behind Liverpool. However, the Magpies have been consistently profitable in recent times.
The Top Four is rounded out by Burnley, who profited from what turned out to be an all too brief return to the Premier League, but who will be back in 2016-17, and the astonishing Leicester City.
The Foxes’ mind-boggling success in lifting the Premier League title this season, is set to leave its mark on the profits table in years ahead. By achieving such a stupendous feat without splashing heavily on transfer fees or, as far as we can tell, wages, the East Midlands club can look forward to a sustained period of strong profitability – whether or not it opts to cash in some of its newly-coveted playing assets.
By contrast, the relatively disappointing seasons endured by some of the Big Guns suggest that a summer of change is on the way. Unless they can match Leicester’s eye for a bargain, this may take its toll, in future, on some clubs’ bottom lines.
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