Brisbane have confirmed a loss of almost $1.9 million at the end of a tough year for the AFL club. The Lions managed a trading profit of $498,185, but depreciation and interest costs meant a net operating loss of $1,855,926.
“While the loss was in line with expectations, it is certainly not what this club wants nor should accept as we build a sustainable business model engineered to achieve long-term success,” chairman Angus Johnson said.
The Lions fell from 13th to 15th on the ladder this year, winning only four games, and also sacked key forward Brendan Fevola in February.
Johnson said their poor on-field performance had a direct impact on the club’s financial result.
November 23rd 2011 @ 8:26am
JAJI said | November 23rd 2011 @ 8:26am | ! Report
So its just not A League clubs that are losing millions?
November 23rd 2011 @ 8:38am
The Cattery said | November 23rd 2011 @ 8:38am | ! Report
Jaji
Like every season, the news is always mixed, clubs on the up, clubs on the down, some treading water.
So far Collingwood, Hawthorn and Essendon have announced profits for 2011 of around the $2 mill mark.
Melbourne and the Bulldogs have alse announced profits despite having poor seasons. I would expect the West Coast and Geelong to also announce decent profits, and probably Carlton, maybe Freo.
Brisbane, North, Port and Adelaide have announced losses so far, and Brisbane’s is probably at the upper range, but I don’t think anyone involved in footy would be surprised by the size of the loss, indeed, it’s probably a decent result given Brisbanes consistently poor on-field results over the last few years and the introduction of the Suns.
An important point to note is that there is a big difference bertween a $1.8 million loss on $32 million of revenue, and a $1.8 million loss on revenue of around $5 million.
November 23rd 2011 @ 9:34am
The Cattery said | November 23rd 2011 @ 9:34am | ! Report
My error: that $1.8 million loss is actually on the back of $42.3 million in revenue, or 4.25% of revenue. In other words, with that sort of revenue, it doesn’t take a lot to turnaround such a loss.
But if you are making a $1.8 million loss on the back of $5 mill in revenue, or 36% of revenue, that’s a totally different story.
November 23rd 2011 @ 2:27pm
Ian Whitchurch said | November 23rd 2011 @ 2:27pm | ! Report
Nothing to see here. Just incompetant subediting by The Roar.
“Brisbane Lions announce trading profit of $500k and $2m of depreciation on $42m of revenue” just doesnt have that code-war snap to it.
November 23rd 2011 @ 3:14pm
Tristan Rayner said | November 23rd 2011 @ 3:14pm | ! Report
This is from AAP Ian. The breakdown is pretty clearly stated.
November 23rd 2011 @ 5:52pm
Ian Whitchurch said | November 23rd 2011 @ 5:52pm | ! Report
I withdraw the comment, your honour.
It’s incompetant subediting by AAP.
November 23rd 2011 @ 9:16am
Pillock said | November 23rd 2011 @ 9:16am | ! Report
Wonder how much of the loss was due to there bad call on Fevola?
November 23rd 2011 @ 9:21am
stabpass said | November 23rd 2011 @ 9:21am | ! Report
Plenty of money, and all the bad publicity that came with it …….. who knows, turned out to be a bad call by crazy Vossy !.
November 24th 2011 @ 1:21am
amazonfan said | November 24th 2011 @ 1:21am | ! Report
He’s just one player. If Brisbane’s ill fortune of recent times can all be blamed upon him, then they are massively fragile, and it doesn’t speak well of the Lions.
November 23rd 2011 @ 9:19am
stabpass said | November 23rd 2011 @ 9:19am | ! Report
Sounds to me like the Lions are paying off their social club at Springfield, and they are planning a 30 million investment in player facilities.
Turnover 42 million …. biggest of all QLD sporting clubs.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/afl/brisbane-flying-high-despite-loss/story-e6frepj6-1226202974275
Not all bad news.
November 23rd 2011 @ 9:36am
The Cattery said | November 23rd 2011 @ 9:36am | ! Report
When you read the full story, it’s a far more promising picture.
In relation to those players going to Arizona for altitude training, there’s a hilarious comment from a Courier reader, who asks: ” Is there any sort of training Merrett can do to stop him arriving too late every time his opponent takes a mark? Also is there a way he can be taught to stop slipping over in the Goal square 5 times a week? ”
I’m not sure any amount of altitude training will fix that particular problem!
November 23rd 2011 @ 10:30am
The_Wookie said | November 23rd 2011 @ 10:30am | ! Report
that social club singlehandedly raised them 12 million this year. id say they’ve done well out of it.
November 23rd 2011 @ 11:35am
The_Wookie said | November 23rd 2011 @ 11:35am | ! Report
It should also be noted that the brisbane rugbly league club and the broncos leagues club are two separate entities (the leagues club last year earning 23 million on its own). As such it could be construed that the broncos combined entities mae more than the Lions by 6 million – on last years figures. the reality is that last year the broncos made 26 million, with a 400k sponsorship from their associated leagues club. they have separate governance and are separate bodies.
November 23rd 2011 @ 11:10am
The Cattery said | November 23rd 2011 @ 11:10am | ! Report
GWS aiming for a membership base of 17,000 next year:
http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/giants-take-great-steps-to-lock-in-membership-base-20111122-1nsz0.html
November 23rd 2011 @ 11:34am
Punter said | November 23rd 2011 @ 11:34am | ! Report
That’s a pretty impressive number, I wonder how many of those are actually from Western Sydney. There is alot of publicity around in the news & the papers on the GWS team, so the AFL are true to their word on spending big to make it work, definately a long term project & a lot of hard work ahead.
November 23rd 2011 @ 12:27pm
The Cattery said | November 23rd 2011 @ 12:27pm | ! Report
Of the 12,100 foundation members this year, the breakdown was a bit of an eye-opener:
* a tick over 5,000 were from the ACT (or 42%)
* a tick over 3,000 were from councils that could be described as being part of metropolitan Western Sydney (or 25%)
* the remainder, or about one-third, were from the remainder of Australia, mostly regional NSW, but there was a sizeable 700 from Victoria.
On the face of it, 3,000 looks small (I think it is small), but the GWS response is positive in that it’s one year ahead of the team actually playing games and it’s an area that doesn’t have a strong membership culture.
Personally, I think the memberships will be back around the 12,000 mark, maybe reaching 13k, with the ACT component matching the Western Sydney component.
November 23rd 2011 @ 2:10pm
The_Wookie said | November 23rd 2011 @ 2:10pm | ! Report
Its quite impressive when you consider that Gold Coast met the 10k target members around the same time, and went on to 14k members for their first year. While one suspects 17k is optimistic, I wouldnt be surprised to see them hit somewhere between 12 and 15k
November 23rd 2011 @ 2:18pm
stabpass said | November 23rd 2011 @ 2:18pm | ! Report
Call me outrageous, call me very optomystic, cal me unrealistic, but i think GWS will have around 17,000, 18,000 members, i think Western Sydney will embrace GWS far more than many people imagine.
There is no membership culture at all in WS, i could be wrong but dont Penrith RL club have only around 4,000 members. ( not the poker machine club)
I think as the season comes around, a hell of a lot more WS people will get on board, last years members are not entirely representative of the type of fan that the club will have when they actually play a game in the AFL.
ACT may well have more than 5,000 members next year.
November 23rd 2011 @ 2:27pm
The Cattery said | November 23rd 2011 @ 2:27pm | ! Report
stabpass
I hope you’re right, but we have to keep in mind that the Gold Coast was a far more AFL friendly place than WS, balanced against that, WS is a pretty big place, so hard to tell.
November 23rd 2011 @ 8:06pm
Punter said | November 23rd 2011 @ 8:06pm | ! Report
IF it’s long term the AFL may benifit, also there is huge amount of publicity in Sydney with Eddie Mcquire & Kevin Sheedy. I suppose most people in Sydney still equate Mcquire with ‘who wants to a millionare’ & to me Kevin Sheedy is the Everton footballer, but he too is not really well known in this country’s no 1 city..
It would help with a few well known players, I think only Gary Ablett, Chris Judd & that Buddy Franklin guy are about the only well known Aussie rules players outside of the Swans that Sydney people would recognise.
November 23rd 2011 @ 8:16pm
NF said | November 23rd 2011 @ 8:16pm | ! Report
They should just rename GWS to GWSC Giants (Greater West Sydney & Canberra) Giants considering the majority of there membership is from the ACT 42%, plus the memberships in Victoria & Perth I feel are just those supporting for the sake of supporting the new team to help the ’cause’. So in reality in West Sydney only they got a long way to go and I wish them the best in carving there niche there, the NRL clubs there got nothing to worry about.
November 23rd 2011 @ 8:40pm
The Cattery said | November 23rd 2011 @ 8:40pm | ! Report
Don’t forget Izzy! I mean, that’s the real reason he was signed up, he’s a face people recognise, plus he is quite popular (he might yet come good out on the footy field, but not next year). The GWS signings so far, they are known by AFL fans, but they don’t have any currency at all out of AFL circles.
November 25th 2011 @ 4:01pm
warren said | November 25th 2011 @ 4:01pm | ! Report
What is the definition of a member. My understanding for the NRL you must pay so that you attend games. I find it hard to believe that the Giants would have more members than Penrith RL club. Not sure but I heard somewhere that if you attend one of their clinics you automatically become a junior member. Numbers sound great but they need to be real supporters not casual observers
November 25th 2011 @ 4:32pm
The Cattery said | November 25th 2011 @ 4:32pm | ! Report
warren
this year The Giants sold around 12,100 “foundation” memberships at $50 a pop (family memberships of 2 adults and 2 children were $100 a pop).
This was nothing more than to guage interest in the club – it didn’t really entitle you to anything except you get first dibs at purchasing the best seats in the house (both at Skoda Stadium and at Manuka for the Canberra members). The Giants will subtract your $50 or $100 from the cost of your membership for 2012.
Nothing more can be read into it, it’s just a bit of marketing exercise at the end of the day – and in starting up a new club, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing any of that – you have to start somewhere.
I believe they will end up with between 12,000 to 14,000 memberships in their first season, and about 40% to 50% of those will be Canberra based.
This necessarily means that the average value of the memberships will be quite low.
No point in anyone getting excited either way – it’s a new club feeling it’s way, it’s going to try things, yes, it will probably give away stacks of junior memberships, and why not?
GWS might still be struggling along in 20 years time, around the same size of the Suns, or it might have outgrown the Swans by then – no one really knows.
November 23rd 2011 @ 7:51pm
Bend it like Barassi said | November 23rd 2011 @ 7:51pm | ! Report
Club revenues in the AFL were in the low $20M only 3 or 4 years ago, and now a few clubs are posting $40M turnovers. I expect the Blues to hit the $50M next year, still way behind Collingwood or Hawthorn but quite respectable. Most clubs in the AFL have been investing in new income streams over the last 2 to 3 years (like Brisbane) and the results will be start to show up in the next few years.