Terrible financial news for Saints

[Dunbar]

16 hours ago, whatmichaelsays said:

Office space in the East Stand that is being rented out. These were previously university classrooms for Leeds Met/Carnegie/Beckett.

Did the rugby club own this space when it was university classrooms - £60k to £400k is a good increase in rental income.

As a wider point, this is what we should be looking at when we talk about running these clubs as a business - not the playing side, but looking at ways to generate incremental revenue streams.

[whatmichaelsays]

2 minutes ago, Dunbar said:

Did the rugby club own this space when it was university classrooms

Not sure. At the time that the East Stand was built, a big thing was made about the partnership with Carnegie, so I suspect there may have been a contribution to some of the costs made by Leeds Met in exchange use of the facilities. The university was deeply embedded with the club at that time. 

[Click]

15 hours ago, Pete Grady said:

OK, will the 3 Jokers who laughed at the idea of a part-time professional game, please give us their plan for a sustainable British game?

We await............

Ah.. so you were being serious when you suggested that.

It is a joke of an idea that would only see the game be completely killed off from Super League level down. 

[RayCee]

The nature of modern sport is to overspend in achieving success. All sports do it and St Helens is nothing unusual. Football has proved that more money simply enables more spending. 

[burke]

18 hours ago, Wollo Wollo Wayoo said:

His strategy was merely don't spend more than we have coming in. Unfortunately as the Sky money diminished there were no alternative significant income streams to replace it.  Things just got tighter and tighter. That's what caught up.

In the wrong place at the wrong time 10 years after being in the right place at the right time.

What about the £ 900,000 Covid Loan, The £ 200,000 RL loan and the £ 3.5 million loan from council for the purchase of the ground. How the pre Ellis regime thought they were going to start repaying that lot I have no idea. Dont think the club would have survived until Christmas 2023 with Ellis 

[Chrispmartha]

3 hours ago, Dunbar said:

Did the rugby club own this space when it was university classrooms - £60k to £400k is a good increase in rental income.

As a wider point, this is what we should be looking at when we talk about running these clubs as a business - not the playing side, but looking at ways to generate incremental revenue streams.

Haven’t we (Leeds) also had a few events (boxing and concerts) that may have got some rental income?

[whatmichaelsays]

2 hours ago, Chrispmartha said:

Haven’t we (Leeds) also had a few events (boxing and concerts) that may have got some rental income?

The Josh Warrington fight was in 2021, so would have been in the 2022 accounts. I suspect that the Leeds 2023 concert wouldn't have brought in that much, given local authority budgets. 

[RigbyLuger]

Saints have beaten Man United 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c07e42ryd0po

[Moe syszlak]

Moran will be able to wipe off any Warrington debt with what he'll rake in on the Oasis reunion!

[Fly-By-TheWire]

1 hour ago, Moe syszlak said:

Moran will be able to wipe off any Warrington debt with what he'll rake in on the Oasis reunion!

At the prices he’s charging for tickets, he’ll be able to buy the entire NRL playing roster

[JohnM]

It sticks in my craw to be fair to Saints, but here goes. The thread title really should be

 "St Helens announce dissapointing financial performance."

[up the robins]

The reality is  no one invests in any sport to make money, all sports clubs rely on money men or women to keep the clubs operating.

The clubs that stand the best chance of washing their faces are clubs which own their own grounds where all match day profit from food, drinks and hospitality go to the club as well as income from events held at the stadium.

My club Hkr have done a great job of making the most of owning our stadium with Craven street which gets plenty of ppl in 2 hours before game time spending money in the stadium rather than elsewhere they have also had some big music concerts and fire work displays and rented the car park out to circuses and fairs.

How clubs who rent off football clubs can afford to compete when they have limited income streams has got to be very tough with out a wealthy benefactor.

[northamptoncougar]

I'm a little lost on this but don't Wigan now have a ridiculously wealthy owner in which losing 1 million a year would be change to him?

 

[M j M]

50 minutes ago, northamptoncougar said:

I'm a little lost on this but don't Wigan now have a ridiculously wealthy owner in which losing 1 million a year would be change to him?

 

It's important to bear in mind. If Danson at Wigan, Coleman-McManus at Saints, Moran at Warrington and even Caddick at Leeds are content (not necessarily happy) to plug the financial holes then this doesn't really matter.

[RigbyLuger]

57 minutes ago, M j M said:

It's important to bear in mind. If Danson at Wigan, Coleman-McManus at Saints, Moran at Warrington and even Caddick at Leeds are content (not necessarily happy) to plug the financial holes then this doesn't really matter.

Something people seem to forget for some reason. Only an issue if they aren't or someone isn't willing to next.

[bobbruce]

6 hours ago, M j M said:

It's important to bear in mind. If Danson at Wigan, Coleman-McManus at Saints, Moran at Warrington and even Caddick at Leeds are content (not necessarily happy) to plug the financial holes then this doesn't really matter.

I don’t think they are but I also wouldn’t be surprised if this is all going to be part of the negotiation with Sky. First part we’ve provided the content not only games but also highlights which very often hits close to or above 40hrs a weekend on Sky then you can add the Sky + games on top of that. You then see the top clubs losing money and you can throw that back at Sky and tell them we can’t keep providing this quality of content on what you are giving us. We used to say they give us just enough to keep going but what they give now isn’t enough. 

Edited September 12 by bobbruce

[Fly-By-TheWire]

1 hour ago, M j M said:

It's important to bear in mind. If Danson at Wigan, Coleman-McManus at Saints, Moran at Warrington and even Caddick at Leeds are content (not necessarily happy) to plug the financial holes then this doesn't really matter.

I think it's McManus' words that are raising eyebrows though, not the figures (which are nothing exceptional).   The other Big4 clubs aren't talking about changing things or insisting that they'll still be spending full cap value.   Even I thought it was a strange thing to do, and I'm normally a 'meh' person when things like this come out.

[sweaty craiq]

Leigh’s accounts posted a few weeks ago show total Net assets moving from a negative £1m to a positive £1.26m for year ending 30/11/23, with cash in bank moving from 68k to 760k. 

[JohnM]

5 hours ago, northamptoncougar said:

I'm a little lost on this but don't Wigan now have a ridiculously wealthy owner in which losing 1 million a year would be change to him?

 

I think wealthy owners remain wealthy by not dishing out millions that easily, though.  

[Dunbar]

3 hours ago, JohnM said:

I think wealthy owners remain wealthy by not dishing out millions that easily, though.  

Of course you are right that wealthy people didn't get and stay wealthy by throwing away money.

But there is enough evidence from enough sports that people will put money into professional sports clubs with zero chance of getting a return.

Wealthy people reach a point where they want a plaything, a pro sports club is often the choice.

[Click]

4 hours ago, JohnM said:

I think wealthy owners remain wealthy by not dishing out millions that easily, though.  

If they had that much sense for their money, they wouldn't "invest" in sports whatsoever.

[Harry Stottle]

On 10/09/2024 at 18:12, Hopie said:

What stood out for me from the article was this quote:
"However, real progress can only be made if central distributions in time revert to higher levels."

I think what we need to do as a game is move away from this model, the game seems to be moving towards ring fencing all the money to support an increasingly small number of "top" clubs. This feels backwards to me, any success at the top should be used to ensure that the foundations of the game are strong. Super League clubs should basically be looking at what they get from central funding as a maximum, and preparing for it to fall. A club that gets a top grading should basically be sustainable by itself and be looking to grow its non central distribution income to do so (or paid for by rich owners who are happy to lose their money). Even if that means writing off the short term, there is the chance that the pro game in this country will be gone if we don't plan for the future.

Any central distributions should proportionally be weighted more and more to development at grass roots level and maintaining different levels of the game. Development officers and regional academies are important, semi pro clubs are needed to bridge the gap between amateur and super league and without funding these will continue to die off and the whole structure will collapse.

This,

Perfectly well put Hopie and it can be put in conjunction with a discussion on another thread about what I said that any investment should be aimed totally at the heartlands "To make it the best if can be", which includes investment in the infrastructure of the game in all its forms below SL as you state. It needs a good dose of looking at, carry on as we are without investment in these areas at our peril and as you say the whole structure will collapse.

[Harry Stottle]

On 10/09/2024 at 18:50, Damien said:

Do you think Sky will pay the same for a part time game?

I doubt very much that Sky will maintain the low level value it puts on Rugby League that it has decreased to, the next contract discussions will be another 'take it or leave it' lower offer.

[Tommygilf]

1 hour ago, Harry Stottle said:

I doubt very much that Sky will maintain the low level value it puts on Rugby League that it has decreased to, the next contract discussions will be another 'take it or leave it' lower offer.

And why is that?

[dkw]

9 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

And why is that?

I tell you what, seeing as though the value of these contracts keep dropping maybe we as a sport should try and get some experts on board to help raise the value....