Friday afternoon guessing game

Chizz

Last season, Manchester United made £100.2m on matchday turnover (people tipping up and buying tickets, pies, etc), £104.8m on media turnover (Rupert Murdoch paying to televise them each week on a Tuesday morning/Thursday night/Sunday lunchtime or whenever he wants) and £81.4m on commercial turnover (sponsors paying to have their names splashed over the shirts, etc).

This means their turnover was £286.4m. That's a quarter of a billion quid, plus a few million more.

Quiz question: how much profit did they make?

JT

Mortimerician

None?

adamtheaddick

Kanu

adamtheaddick

Kanu

ValleyGary

two kanu's?

Henry Irving

£100m

Macronate

None Kanu.

Plaaayer

They made a loss didn't they?

Chizz

Answer: Minus seventy nine million six hundred thousand pounds.

In other words, every football club in the country aspires to be as much of a money magnet as the Mancs and wishes they could generate as much revenue. But they *still* make a massive loss which makes virtually every other club's losses look tiny.

Conclusion: be careful what you wish for

Henry Irving

But...

They made an £100m operating profit.

It was the cost of servicing the loan and bond debt that means they made a loss. So the Glazier continue to get the football club to fund its own purchase. Very nice for them.

Mortimerician

Making a "loss" also makes for a very tax efficient position. I'd still happily swap their position for ours, even if I did have to put up with a few cockends in Norwich scarves and replica shirts keeping it real. As Henry says the vast majority of the loss is as a result of covering equity. In as much as any top football club can operate as a profitable business, it's still them. At the end of the day football's small beer and you wouldn't go into it trying to generate cash. Their total operating profit is something like 1% of Barclays Bank's.