By David Owen
November 23 – Hull City have posted a bumper pre-tax profit of £35.7 million for the year to end-June 2017 – a period coinciding with the club’s brief return to the Premier League.
While the near £30 million profit on player sales will have been boosted by the post-season transfer of star defender Harry Maguire to Leicester City on June 15, Tigers fans could be forgiven for wondering whether the Humberside club ought not to have invested more in its unsuccessful efforts to avoid relegation.
The profit, which is likely to put them among the half-dozen or so biggest-earning English clubs of last season, was generated on turnover of £116.9 million, not far off triple the previous term’s £41.9 million. The vast majority of this, of course, was down to TV.
Staff costs doubled from £30 million to £61.3 million. However, the club underlined that it had “relegation clauses” in place with players, coaches and back room staff that it was anticipated would enable “a 40% reduction in costs to be achieved”.
It noted that the strategy was “successful two seasons ago and enabled the club to gain promotion to the Premier League in the season following relegation”. A repeat performance is already looking a tall order, though, with the club currently in the lower reaches of the Championship, English football’s second tier, and new manager Leonid Slutsky said to be under pressure.
Notes to the accounts indicated that the club, controlled since late-2010 by Assem and Ehab Allam, owed £60 million to group undertakings, down from £77 million. At year-end, it listed £21.3 million of bank loans, although £15 million was said to have been repaid by 31 August 2017. There was £4.3 million of interest payable in the period under review.
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