By David Owen
April 2 – Burnley, the Lancashire outfit whose incisive style, backed by a strong defence, looks like landing them a top-half finish in this season’s Premier League, have become the latest English side to unveil strong 2016-17 profits.
The Clarets have posted a pre-tax profit of £27.3 million for the year ended 30 June 2017, compared with a loss of £4.8 million for the previous season, which they ended as champions of the second-tier Championship under their highly-regarded manager Sean Dyche.
The club are rumoured to be the subject of takeover interest from an overseas group valuing the club at £150 million,
This result was achieved on turnover that reached £121.2 million – three times the 2015-16 figure of £40 million, underlining the financial chasm between the two leagues.
Most of this – £105 million – came, of course, from television rights, although all income sources were up strongly from year-earlier levels.
Staff costs for 2016-17 rose to £61.2 million from £27.1 million. However, the 2015-16 accounts also included a debit of £13.2 million for “exceptional promotion costs”.
Mike Garlick, chairman, said that, following Burnley’s Championship-winning season, “we felt it was essential that the club should finally retain its place in the Premier League for the 2017-18 season at what would have been the third time of asking”.
He went on: “Whilst our wage bill is still one of the lower ones in the division, it is most certainly not the lowest and, coupled with our player incentive schemes, we believe we now have a wage structure capable of attracting playing talent of a sufficient ability to vastly improve the chance of maintaining our place in the top flight, compared to our previous attempts.”
Burnley is the 16th Premier League team to report 2016-17 financial results and all 16 have managed to post a pre-tax profit.
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