General Club Finances 2023

[captainox]

OXFORD UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

OXFORD UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

PDF available to view via this link.

 

[Orkney Islands Yellow]

Imagine where we'd be without that 6million coming into the club and being used. Probably the national league staring at homelessness rather than having the potential to make the league one play-offs and a live planning application for a new stadium.

I'm not worried as it's not something I can control, no point worrying about something you can't control!

 

[OUFCGav]

Where are people getting this idea that premier league clubs are profitable from?

I think it is 9 that are. Brentford are for example.

 

[MC Yellow]

Who in their right mind would continue to plug the gap year on year?

By the time the stadium is built that p&l deficit will be closer to £50 mil at this rate (double what is was in 2022).

Unsustainable.

 

[Foley]

Who in their right mind would continue to plug the gap year on year?

By the time the stadium is built that p&l deficit will be closer to £50 mil at this rate (double what is was in 2022).

Unsustainable.

Well let's hope that they can see the benefits ( which they have to date).
If not we are F****.

 

[holdsteady]

Who in their right mind would continue to plug the gap year on year?

By the time the stadium is built that p&l deficit will be closer to £50 mil at this rate (double what is was in 2022).

Unsustainable.

Not much any of us can do about it though is there?

 

[greatunclekip]

It’s worrying, and I’ve never had less confidence in those running the club day to day to either

A) have a tangible solution
B) explain it.

It’s Jeremy and Rishis “plan” playing out in real life.

Football is absolutely fucked.

 

[unification]

Obviously I'm not billionaire businessman, so I wonder what their plan is to make money (or even break even) on the whole Oxford project is. I assume it's to get the club to the championship, build the new stadium and then a new buyer would pay off the debts + some extra.

Either way, the debt seems to me to be far greater than any of the clubs assets (er, training ground, league membership, player value).

A lot of us are questioning this. With SB, the financial return made more sense. There was ancillaries that could have generated the yield. With the Triangle, you get the stadium, hotel and a few conferencing/multi-use rooms but is that really enough to start chipping away at £150m to make a return? I struggle to see it personally.

But, wealthy people don't stay wealthy by making bad decisions and sticking by things that aren't financially viable. That Bakrie, Geicke and co are still here despite the talk of increased costs is something. Maybe I'm clinging to that now. If this wasn't viable to them, they would have packed up and left.

Who in their right mind would continue to plug the gap year on year?

By the time the stadium is built that p&l deficit will be closer to £50 mil at this rate (double what is was in 2022).

Unsustainable.

Debt is only unsustainable when even the minimum payment cannot be paid off. Like a mortgage, the thought of paying off the whole lot seems terrifying but break it down into smaller payments over a series of years (considering interest % too) and it becomes viable.

But, I take your point. The club can only carry so much debt and to think of us as a League 1 club (for that is our natural position, really) with that level of debt, you do start to wonder how that kind of debt can ever be serviced.

It is a symptom of the game though. In the constant chase for CL/EL/ECL places, titles, promotions and avoiding relegations, almost every club throws money around to get to the next step meaning that the majority of PL/EFL sides are 'technically insolvent' and reliant on sugar daddies to plug the gaps. 63 of the 92 recorded losses in the 2021-22 season (one not impacted by COVID) and I suspect even more since will have done (link).

Something needs to change and a bubble needs to burst. But I've been hearing that since the 1990s when Alan Shearer was the most expensive player in the world. Those older than me would have heard the same.

 

[Common Villager]

It won't be the club funding this.
So that argument would be irrelevant. Now I totally agree that the funding of the £150m needs to be explained ( presumably this will be part of the planning process).
There will certainly be bo logical argument that the club should stay at the Kassam ( even if it was possible)
So to me OUFC in.its current form is new stadium with a financial structure that works first the club or probably start back in the 8th tier ( would still need somewhere to play)

The club aren't directly funding it (at least not all of it).

By the time a spade is in the ground the club is going to have debts of >£30m.

We don't know what the funding structure is going to look like, but in the event of cost increases/funding withdrawals etc. the club is not going to be in a position to top up any shortfalls. Will the owners continue to be willing to do throw money at it? At some point it's got to be economically unviable, surely?

 

[tonyw]

Whilst I agree with the general gist of your post, I don't think the bit I've bolded is strictly true.
The loss for the year was £6.18m.
The debt rose by £4.18m (from £19.98m to £24.16m).
Unless I'm mistaken the difference is the £2m worth of ordinary non-redeemable shares issued 23rd June, effectively the owners giving £2m to the club.
Not that a £4m increase in debt is bad enough, just pointing out it could've been worse.

And I assume the reason that they did this was not benevolence, but the only way we could fit under League One's SCMP and therefore avoid a transfer embargo.

Strongly implies that we're running a wage bill for our playing staff that is £2m above what is allowed. On top of which, we're obviously paying transfer fees, loan fees, paying off managers and paying for them as well.

Maybe time for us to stop pointing fingers and laughing at Reading. Because we're headed down the same path, and if Bakrie ever gets bored like Yongge, we're equally ****ed.

 

[Osei Yaw]

I voted 'yes - quite a lot', but the poll is inconsistent.

None of the options give much of an indication of strength of feeling.

Perhaps it would be better for the poll to be a scale of 1 - 10 (where 1 is not at all and 10 is a lot)

That way we could get a better indication of the level of concern.

 

[Carpy]

We’ll be paying for at least some of it through rent, which is the same thing. We’re absolutely going to be paying for a chunk of this stadium one way or another, unless people think we’re being handed it as a gift. Which we’ve already been told isn’t the case.

Also, the several million pounds that have been spent on the stadium project thus far (£5million if today’s reports are to be believed) has been paid for by the club, which people will be able to see in 12 months’ time when the next set of accounts are lodged. So we are already paying for the stadium by default.

If we’re going to have to constantly pay money to play there, and are having millions put against the accounts for consultants and legal firms in relation to the planning, how can anybody say the club won’t be paying for the stadium?

This will come across as combative when it most definitely isn't meant to be, but what exactly is the alternative? We can't stay at the Kassam, and no sane owner is going to saddle the club with no debt and instead take it on themselves.

The ideal would have been a bigger piece of land to increase the revenue streams, but that isn't going to happen, even Stratfield Brake was arguably smaller than you'd have liked to provide the ongoing revenue to cover all the costs.

And the only way of reducing our ever increasing debt burden before the new stadium is here is to stop "going for it" in the league

 

[Carpy]

I voted 'yes - quite a lot', but the poll is inconsistent.

None of the options give much of an indication of strength of feeling.

Perhaps it would be better for the poll to be a scale of 1 - 10 (where 1 is not at all and 10 is a lot)

That way we could get a better indication of the level of concern.

Feedback taken

 

[Osei Yaw]

Feedback taken

Thank you Mr Carpy.

 

[GeneralLee]

This is why they didn't want to answer my question at the recent Fans Forum.

Are we really expected to believe that the Chairman and CEO did not know, only three short weeks ago, that we had lost over £6m???!!! It's why I kept pushing the point on the night.

A couple of other points to note are as follows. We now publish a shortened version of the accounts, with none of the more interesting information available, and there is 10/12 pages less information than most of our contemporaries, and no Directors' Report, which usually explains the rationale behind the numbers. At the moment the £6m is sitting on the accounts as debt, not equity, which was another point of mine that they didn't want to answer at the Fans Forum.

As I've mentioned the Fans Forum, it's worth relating that I sent Tim Williams an email the following day, as a bit of an olive branch, saying that I hadn't intended things to become as adversarial as they did. Three weeks later and I haven't had as much as an acknowledgement from him. That together with the new, slimmed down, public accounts reminds me of the great Jim Royle quote, "communication my a**e"!

Would I not be right to suggest that we have been submitting abridged accounts for some years, taking a similar view of other clubs? I'm not defending it, I think it leaves much to interpretation yet it seems to be increasingly commonplace now.

Can someone with more time (and likely knowledge of the subject) that me today check out the new charge document lodged re OUFC at Companies House. A summary would be great

The accounts for 2023 are also up.

Can't link direct to the documents, but this link is to the Oxford United FC company page and you can download the PDFs from the links in the list.

OXFORD UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

OXFORD UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

Barclays have leant the club some money which is underwritten by the football club in the event it isn't repaid. I.e. if you don't pay, 'X' is the consequence. I've *some* knowledge on this having done it myself when selling a business, though my knowledge on this isn't 100%. That would be my loose interpretation!

 

[Steve Gilbert]

As someone who is close to the stadium situation said me, without the stadium, the club is fucked.
The board know this and know that without the stadium then they wont get any money back on their investment.
At the moment, it doesn't matter if the club folds with 10 million debt or 40 million debt, the result is the same and the only losers are the owners.

That does put more pressure on the stadium deal going through because without, there is no other option.

I am also sure the owners would have been very aware of the losses when they were shelling out £400K for Goodwin.

 

[tonyw]

And the only way of reducing our ever increasing debt burden before the new stadium is here is to stop "going for it" in the league

The net result of "going for it" in the league, and running with by far the highest wage bill we ever have before, has been one narrowly avoided relegation, and one campaign where if all goes perfectly in the next month, we might sneak into 6th and get a run at the playoff lottery.

We have wasted an inordinate amount of money in the last two years - Browne, Baldock, Henry's extension, Murphy (yes, he's great now but he hasn't been value for money), Findlay, Wildschut. And those are just the worst offenses. And I'm not getting into the number of transfer fees, loan fees and manager payments we've forked out.

We never lost this kind of money under Eales & Appleton, partly because we were more disciplined in our spending, and partly because we were always on the lookout for saleable assets. And the on-pitch benefit of this massively increased spending from then until now has been minimal-to-zero.

As a club, we've been ridiculously extravagant and ill-disciplined. And we the fans are, as a whole, complicit in that.


Buuuut.....too late to change course now, so may as well roll with it. Whether the debt is £24.16m or £35m or £50m is pretty immaterial, because any which way it's vastly more than the club's assets, and we're therefore wholly reliant on our owners (or another nutter they might find to sell to) to keep us afloat.

 

[MC Yellow]

A lot of us are questioning this. With SB, the financial return made more sense. There was ancillaries that could have generated the yield. With the Triangle, you get the stadium, hotel and a few conferencing/multi-use rooms but is that really enough to start chipping away at £150m to make a return? I struggle to see it personally.

But, wealthy people don't stay wealthy by making bad decisions and sticking by things that aren't financially viable. That Bakrie, Geicke and co are still here despite the talk of increased costs is something. Maybe I'm clinging to that now. If this wasn't viable to them, they would have packed up and left.



Debt is only unsustainable when even the minimum payment cannot be paid off. Like a mortgage, the thought of paying off the whole lot seems terrifying but break it down into smaller payments over a series of years (considering interest % too) and it becomes viable.

But, I take your point. The club can only carry so much debt and to think of us as a League 1 club (for that is our natural position, really) with that level of debt, you do start to wonder how that kind of debt can ever be serviced.

It is a symptom of the game though. In the constant chase for CL/EL/ECL places, titles, promotions and avoiding relegations, almost every club throws money around to get to the next step meaning that the majority of PL/EFL sides are 'technically insolvent' and reliant on sugar daddies to plug the gaps. 63 of the 92 recorded losses in the 2021-22 season (one not impacted by COVID) and I suspect even more since will have done (link).

Something needs to change and a bubble needs to burst. But I've been hearing that since the 1990s when Alan Shearer was the most expensive player in the world. Those older than me would have heard the same.

All very true.

At the moment it is costing us nothing because it is soft debt. Any other form of debt would already be unserviceable at this level, hence the additional worries on external financing for part of the stadium, which has to seep through to OUFC in some form.

Easily wipe the slate clean with at an exchange of debt for equity. Maybe that is the long term plan once we have a stadium, go up a level, and effectively be packaged as a much more favourable option for future investors?

Either way, current levels are a huge concern but as has been said above, nothing we can do about it anyway.

 

[holdsteady]

The net result of "going for it" in the league, and running with by far the highest wage bill we ever have before, has been one narrowly avoided relegation, and one campaign where if all goes perfectly in the next month, we might sneak into 6th and get a run at the playoff lottery.

We have wasted an inordinate amount of money in the last two years - Browne, Baldock, Henry's extension, Murphy (yes, he's great now but he hasn't been value for money), Findlay, Wildschut. And those are just the worst offenses. And I'm not getting into the number of transfer fees, loan fees and manager payments we've forked out.

We never lost this kind of money under Eales & Appleton, partly because we were more disciplined in our spending, and partly because we were always on the lookout for saleable assets. And the on-pitch benefit of this massively increased spending from then until now has been minimal-to-zero.

As a club, we've been ridiculously extravagant and ill-disciplined. And we the fans are, as a whole, complicit in that.


Buuuut.....too late to change course now, so may as well roll with it. Whether the debt is £24.16m or £35m or £50m is pretty immaterial, because any which way it's vastly more than the club's assets, and we're therefore wholly reliant on our owners (or another nutter they might find to sell to) to keep us afloat.

I don’t really get the whole fans are complicit thing? What can we do?

 

[Foley]

We don't know what the funding structure is going to look like, but in the event of cost increases/funding withdrawals etc. the club is not going to be in a position to top up any shortfalls. Will the owners continue to be willing to do throw money at it? At some point it's got to be economically unviable, surely?

That is the worry .
One thing is sure though.if the owners pull out they will lose everything.

 

[Foley]

I don’t really get the whole fans are complicit thing? What can we do?

I agree.
The fans ultimately have very little say in any if this ( see the management's treatment of Oxvox)
I am sure that the supporters would have been equally supportive has the strategy been to identify young players with resale value.