£73.9m profit – but what else did we learn from Brighton 2023-24 accounts?
The Brighton & Hove Albion 2023-24 season accounts are out and show a sizeable profit of £73.9 million despite increased player sales and a big repayment of debt to Tony Bloom.
It maintains the Albion’s reputation as being one of the best money-making clubs in the world, coming after 2022-23 saw record-breaking profits of £112.8 million.
The past two seasons have massively contributed to making Brighton the fourth-most profitable club in the Premier League since Sky Sports invented football in 1992.
That is some going, given the Albion have only been in the top division for eight of its 31 seasons as the Premier League. Brighton sat 41st just four years ago.
There is obviously one man to thank for that, whose initials are TB. You know who we are referring to. Todd Boehly, of course.
Chelsea have paid Brighton almost £250 million since the summer of 2022 to take 11 members of staff from the Amex to Stamford Bridge.
The Brighton accounts for 2022-23 and 2023-24 covering the same period show combined profits of £186.7 million.
It is probably quite simplistic to say that without Boehly and Chelsea having an obsession with Brighton, the Albion would not be a profitable football club… but without Boehly and Chelsea having an obsession with Brighton, the Albion Albion would not be a profitable football club. Probably.
Other than the headline £73.9 million profit figure for 2023-24, here is what else we learnt from the latest set of Brighton accounts.
Brighton 2023-24 accounts show the benefits of Europa League football
The 2023-24 Europa League campaign was fantastic fun for supporters – and good news for the Brighton accounts too. European football added around £20 million to the balance sheet, including helping drive up matchday income to a record £27.9 million.
Charging £3.50 for a bag of Starburst contributed around £2.7 million towards that matchday income figure. It also means that Brighton could in theory have allowed free entry for every game at the Amex in 2023-24 and still made at least a £46 million profit.
Which just goes to show you what a tiny contribution ticket sales make towards the club’s overall finances. Food for thought after the latest season ticket rise took the overall increase to 15 percent over the past three years.
Brighton transfer net spend 2023-24 was just £9.1 million
Brighton had a transfer net spend in their 2023-24 accounts of just £9.1 million. £113.3 million was received for players whilst £122.4 million was spent.
The bulk of that incoming money came from the sales of Moises Caicedo and Robert Sanchez to Chelsea. New signings covered by the accounts were the likes of Carlos Baleba, Bart Vebruggen, Igor, Valentin Barco and whatever loan fee was paid to Barcelona for Ansu Fati.
Also included are summer buys Yankubu Minteh and Ibrahim Osman. Everyone else brought during last summer’s spending splurge arrived after June 30th, meaning they will instead show up on the 2024-25 accounts.
Depending on what happens in the upcoming summer transfer window before June 30th, we can probably expect this season’s accounts to look different with the signings of Georginio Rutter, Mats Wieffer, Matt O’Riley, Brajan Gruda, Diego Gomez and the rest included.
The £122.4 million spent on new additions breaks the previous record of £77.9 million. Can you guess which season that happened?
Take five points if you said 2018-19, when nearly £80 million went on the likes of Alireza Jahanbakhsh, Bernardo, David Button, Martin Montoya and the Lion of Judah Percy Tau, amen!
Brighton average weekly player wage rose to £68,000
Along with player spending, wages also rose to a new-record average of £67,955 per week. When Brighton first entered the Premier League, their average weekly wage in that 2017-18 campaign was £36,049.
What would be fascinating to know at this point is how many of those are super-wages impacting on the overall average. Say, for example, the rumoured £160,000 per week the Albion were said to be contributing towards Fati.
Other costs relating to player pay include bonuses for that European campaign. In terms of wages-to-turnover ratio, Brighton remain one of the most sustainable clubs in the Premier League.
56 percent of the Albion’s turnover is used on their wage bill. The highest in English top flight football from 2023-24 accounts released so far is Aston Villa with a staggering 96 percent.
Tony Bloom is finally getting some money back
No Brighton fan needs reminding of the significant financial investment the other TB (Tony Bloom) has made in the Albion. Bloom has invested the best part of half a billion pounds in the club since becoming chairman in 2009.
2022-23 was the first time Brighton were ever in a position to pay some of that money back. Bloom received £33.2 million. 2023-24 saw an even bigger repayment of £74 million.
That reduced the total amount he is currently owed to just under £300 million. But with moves afoot to convert another £200 million into shares, it will mean the Albion owing around £99 million.
Presumably, this comes in response to Manchester City’s attempts to have shareholder loans counted towards profit and sustainability rules in future.
The change would not have been applied retrospectively. But the application of new rules may still have left Brighton in a spot of bother – especially if the amount owed remained at the £500 million mark from the summer of 2022.
Paul Barber is very well paid
Paul Barber OBE continues to be very well paid for responding to every email no matter how mundane and listening to poems about mobile ticketing performed by supporters at Fans’ Forum events.
Barber took home a cool £3.2 million in 2023-24, an increase of £800,000 from 2022-23. That gave the Albion CEO an average weekly wage of £61,638. Or £5,500 less than the average Brighton player.
If you believe the Albion’s sustained success over the past decade is more down to Bloom and Barber than players who come and ago, paying the bloke who runs the club on a day-to-day basis nearly as much as a player represents money well spent.
Warning about the Independent Football Regulator
The 2023-24 Brighton accounts carry a warning about the Independent Football Regulator, echoing what Barber told The Times recently when saying any setup costs might have to be passed onto fans via increased ticket prices or reflected in reduced investment in Albion Women and academy.
Barber later said after being criticised by Brighton supporters and the wider footballing world that his comments had been taken out-of-context.
But in the Financial Highlights section of the accounts comes the paragraph: “In addition, the costs of operating the new Independent Regulator are predicted to be significant, running into tens of millions of £’s per annum.”
“We anticipate the majority of these new costs will be funded by Premier League Clubs and will therefore likely significantly add to our Club’s cost base each year.”
“For both of these increases (the other referrenced being National Insurance Contributions), which are directly outside of the Club’s control, we will, unfortunately, have to identify methods to cover such increases in our costs.”
If indeed the costs for a regulator do indeed run into the tens of millions – say £80 million per year – that is still only £4 million per Premier League club.
Or 0.76 percent of the total income Brighton received in their 2023-24 accounts. That income can of course drop if Boehly and Chelsea are not feeling so generous in future years.
So a better figure is probably the mere 2.44 percent of the Albion’s broadcast income which would be required to contribute £4 million towards a regulator.
It therefore seems churlish to say those costs will have to be covered from somewhere when it represents such a small, small amount of the overall money Brighton bring in.
A price worth paying if the regulator helps prevent the problems seen at Bury/Reading/Birmingham/Bolton/Blackpool/Charlton/Morecambe/Coventry/Doncaster/Wrexham/Hull/Darlington/Sheffield Wednesday and er, Brighton & Hove Albion in 1990s, happening to other clubs in future.
