arsenal Reveals Significant Financial Losses
Premier League football club Arsenal FC has revealed its latest financial results which showed a loss of £45.5m.
The Premier League-leaders announced the figures on Friday 2nd December, stating that ‘Arsenal Holdings Limited has now signed off the consolidated accounts for the Arsenal Group for the year ended 31 May 2022.’
The loss for the year after taxation was £45.5m, with £107.3m loss across the 2021 calendar year which the club largely attributed to Arsenal’s men’s first team failing to qualify for a UEFA European competition for the first time in 25 years.
The return of supporters to home matches, that saw the restrictions associated with the Covid pandemic eased, meant that the result for the year was considerably improved against the prior period, which had been adversely impacted by £85m of Covid attributable losses.
Matchday revenue was £79.4m compared to just £3.8 million in the pandemic impacted prior year.
However, broadcasting revenues fell to £146.0m (2021 – £184.4m) due to the lack of UEFA broadcasting revenue and the fact the prior year had included TV revenue for more than just a single season, due to the Covid delayed completion of the 2019/20 campaign.
The Gunners’ commercial revenues slightly improved to £141.7m (2021 – £136.4m).
There were also overall reduced wage costs of £212.3m (2021 – £244.4m) with the club noting ‘a process of restructuring the men’s first-team squad to improve the efficiency of spend’ as a key contributor.
The total profit on sale of player registrations was £22.2m (2021 – £11.8m) and player loans amounted to £2.0m (2020 – £3.1m).
The club announced its year-end cash position was £30m (2021 – £18.8m) with the season ticket renewal figures for the 2022/23 season mainly deferred until June.
Arsenal is mainly funded by its ultimate parent company, KSE UK Inc., which is wholly owned by the ultimate controlling party, Stan Kroenke. The club also revealed that it worked with British bank Barclays, for working capital purposes.
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