By David Owen
May 3 – AFC Bournemouth’s remarkable promotion to the English Premier League will assure the south-coast club of at least £130 million of extra revenue, according to Deloitte, the business advisory firm.
What is more, this figure would rise to around £230 million, nearly a quarter of a billion pounds, should the Cherries – who secured the second-tier Championship title on Saturday with a thumping 3-0 win over Charlton Athletic – maintain their new-found status among the likes of Chelsea and Manchester United by avoiding relegation next year.
The figures are truly staggering if you consider that the club’s total turnover as recently as the 2012-13 financial year was just £5.18 million.
The guaranteed one-year uplift represents a combination of the extra income the club will earn as a consequence of manager Eddie Howe’s men playing in the Premier League next season and the parachute payments they would receive to ease the financial transition back to the second tier should they be relegated after just one year.
Extend their stay for a second season and the club, whose first-choice strip of red and black stripes is more readily associated with AC Milan, could look forward to an additional bonanza as a consequence of the Premier League’s astonishingly lucrative new broadcasting deal, which clicks in from 2016-17.
According to Adam Bull, senior consultant in Deloitte’s sports business group: “The prize becomes around £230 million if the promoted club can survive its first season in the Premier League and benefit from the new and improved broadcast deals in the 2016-17 season.”
Of course, Howe – a notably level-headed young English manager whose clenched fist pose in east London with the famous old football league championship trophy represented one of the weekend’s most arresting sporting images – will need to invest some of this dividend in strengthening an exciting squad that averaged more than two goals a game in Championship football if Bournemouth’s stay among the elite is to prove anything other than fleeting.
But these figures underline the magnitude of what he and his team have already achieved; 44 years on and striker Ted MacDougall’s feat of notching nine goals in a single FA Cup tie against Margate is no longer the most noteworthy footballing accomplishment associated with the 125-year-old club from a resort-town that used to be better-known for hosting political party conferences.
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