Dean Hoyle has bankrolled Huddersfield Town to the tune of over £37.2m in the last six years.
The Championship club lost £6.8m last year compared with £4m in the previous 12 months and the spending on football costs was £12.6m compared with £13m the year before.
This includes all player salaries, bonuses, national insurance taxes, agent fees, manager, coaching and support staff wages.
The loss does not include the £1.15m profit from the sales of Adam Clayton (to Middlesbrough) and Oliver Norwood (to Reading), which will bring in cash of £2.1m, or the £800,000 spent on Mark Hudson, Conor Coady and Jacob Butterfield.
The profit was down from £7.1m the previous season when Jordan Rhodes went to Blackburn.
Commercial profit was up by 15% and turnover of £10.8m included matchday revenue of £3.379m, TV and League income of £4.227m and commercial and advertising income of £1.276m.
With season-card sales down 3% and gates down 6%, Town would be in a sorry state were it not for the financial commitment of owner-chairman Hoyle, and Town are expected to lose another £6m this year (2014-15).
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Average cost of each ticket sold was under £10 (£9.31 not including VAT), reflecting the season-card cost at Town and the numbers of pensioners and children buying tickets in the overall total. There were 9,258 season-card holders last season compared with 8,952 the previous year, but 20% of them don’t attend at every match (because it’t cheap enough to miss).
What was worrying for the club was that walk-up income at the gates, from fans who don’t have season-cards, fell by 15%.
After the year end, Hoyle converted £3.5m of his existing loans to share capital.
During the year, he gave £6m of loans and also repaid £2m of loans to previous chairman Ken Davy, in connection with the purchase of the 40% share.
In the six seasons up to May 2014 – Hoyle joined the club in April 2008 – Town are shown to have spent £10.9m on transfer fees.
Academy costs come in at an annual £1.2m before grants and funds raised through the Blue and White Foundation and Keep it Up campaign, so the cost to Town is around £500,000 a year. This means they need to produce a £1m player every two years.
The total rent and other contributions payable to KSDL in respect of Stadium infrastructure was £936,000 (up £49,000).
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During the year to the end of May 2014, profit on player sales was £1.5m (Jack Hunt went to Crystal Palace for that amount as the first significant fee received for an Academy product since 2010-11), but the total loss shown by the club was £6.76m.
Another £700,000 was invested in the PPG Canalside training complex during the year.
Owner-chairman Hoyle is shown to have pumped in £37,236,954 in the past six years. Without his contributions, instead of having a playing budget of around £10m per year, it would be around half that.
Key is how much the club earns before the near-£1m a year stadium bill and football costs.
This determines how much the club can spend on player wages and on-field activities – standing on its own feet – before any cash provided by Hoyle.
This was £6.6m last year compared with £5.6m the year before – and less than £2m when Hoyle took over.
In order for the club to be self-sufficient, that figure needs to be closer to the £10m mark at least.
So while the club has made huge strides and is improving each year, it has lots to do before it can survive without Hoyle’s support – and that is before cash to buy players or develop the training complex.