By David Owen
April 10 – Aston Villa, the Birmingham club which has made sound on-field progress in its second season back in the Premier League big time, has become the latest English outfit to announce a substantial loss for the covid-impacted 2019-20 campaign.
Villa used a story on its website to reveal it had made a “total loss” of £99.2 million for the year to end-May 2020 – one of the biggest yet reported for the pandemic-disrupted season.
It said the suspension of the Premier League season had resulted in £36.1 million of revenue being shunted into its 2020-21 financial year. The loss came even though turnover in what was described as “the second financial year since Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens acquired Aston Villa” more than doubled from £54.3 million to £112.6 million.
Further conclusions will need to await the arrival of the accounts at Companies House. The new statement alluded to a loss of £68.9 million in 2018-19 making it likely that the corporate entity being referred to in the release is Recon Group UK Limited. Recon Group’s 2018-19 accounts state that the group “operates a professional football club and has property investments”. Recon Group UK Limited has been known since October 2019 as NSWE UK Limited.
According to the new statement, the latest “operating loss and all capital investment has been funded by shareholder equity. Aston Villa remains debt free.”
These Villa figures make it appear more likely that the collective pre-tax loss run up by the 20 Premier League clubs in the severely testing 2019-20 season could exceed a massive £1 billion.
Villa are the 16th club to report and these figures will almost certainly carry the running total to well over £800 million, even allowing for the four teams (so far) which managed to turn a profit.
To put this in some sort of context, the 2016-18 period saw Premier League clubs generate over £1 billion in collective pre-tax profits, as they cashed in on the enhanced value of the league’s media rights.
The extra matches mean that the 2020-21 financial year should be better for most clubs, and the recent NFL deal may have raised expectations insofar as future broadcasting revenue is concerned. However, the summer transfer window will warrant close scrutiny. Will there be sufficient purchasing power out there to sustain present assumptions regarding squad valuations?
Contact the writer of this story at david.owen@insideworldfootball,com