2021/22 National League Financial Results

Most National League clubs from the 2021/22 season have now filed their financial results, so I thought I’d take a look at how Town compared to our rivals during our brief stay in non-league last year. I’m not an accountant so I’m not going to try to interpret anything technical - this is not a scientific assessment of every club’s financial health, I’m just a sad bástard who finds this sort of stuff quite interesting.

The first thing to note is that most clubs at this level take advantage of an exemption for small companies which allows them to avoid providing detailed accounts. Some clubs have pretty much only submitted a balance sheet and little else. Apart from Town, Chesterfield and Wrexham, no one else has submitted detailed breakdowns of turnover, expenditure, etc. This makes it difficult to accurately compare things like wage budgets, but an educated guess is possible. FC Halifax Town and Solihull Moors haven't published their accounts yet, so they aren't included here.

Rankings

Operating loss

	Club	Amount (£m)
1.	Stockport County	4.862
2.	Wrexham	2.914
3.	Chesterfield	2.371
4.	Dagenham & Redbridge	1.746
5.	Notts County	1.692
6.	Torquay United	1.190
7.	Grimsby Town	0.931
8.	Bromley	0.851

Player additions (transfer fees)

	Club	Amount (£'000)
1.	Wrexham	1,175 (National League record)
2.	Chesterfield	483
3.	Stockport County	368
4.	Notts County	227
5.	Grimsby Town	0

Wages

	Club	Amount (£m)
1.	Wrexham	3.940
2.	Chesterfield	3.416
3.	Grimsby Town	3.070

Turnover

	Club	Amount (£m)
1.	Wrexham	5.972
2.	Stockport County	4.800
3.	Grimsby Town	4.445
4.	Chesterfield	3.928
5.	Bromley	1.739

And a more in-depth look at each club (top 7 finishers):

1st     Stockport County
Owner: Mark Stott

Investments before or during 2021/22
No new shares were issued during the season, however, £7.7m of debt to Stott was cleared in June 2022 in exchange for equity.

Infrastructure improvements
During the 2021/22 accounting period, the club made £985,756 worth of improvements to property and other fixed assets. Since 2017, £3m has been invested into improvements and additions. This includes “improvements to the pitch, upgraded conference and events facilities, new seating, and training facilities.” In September 2022, the club agreed terms with Stockport Council on a 250-year lease for Edgeley Park and launched a public consultation on its vision for the expansion and improvement of the stadium. The plans include the replacement of two stands, new food and drink offerings and hospitality areas as well as in the region of 30,000 sq ft of flexible workspace in the new East Stand. The total capacity would increase to approximately 20,000.

Financial results

£	2022	2021
Turnover	4.8m	2.1m
Wages	Unknown	Unknown
Player additions	368k	293k
Creditors (<1 year)	2.7m	1.8m
Operating loss	4.9m	2.6m

2nd     Wrexham
Owner: The R.R McReynolds Company

Investments before or during 2021/22
Immediately after acquiring the club in February 2021, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney invested £2m through a share purchase. They also loaned the club £3.7m during the season. These loans are accruing interest at 3% over the Bank of England base rate, so currently 7.25%. After the season concluded, the owners acquired more shares for £1.2m.

Infrastructure improvements
The £3.7m loan from the owners primarily funded the purchase of the freehold for the Racecourse Ground. This, together with some improvements to the stadium, resulted in a total infrastructure spend for the year of £4.4m.
In November 2022, Wrexham Council approved plans to replace the old Kop stand at the Racecourse Ground. The development will raise the capacity of the stadium to 15,500.

Financial results
Note #1:      Income from the Welcome to Wrexham documentary will be reflected in next year’s statement.
Note #2:     The figure given for wages is described as "football costs" in Wrexham's press statement. It is unclear if this includes admin staff, so it might not be possible to make an apples to apples comparison with other clubs here.

£	2022	2021
Turnover	6m	1.5m
-->  Matchday	2.7m
-->  Retail	1.3m
-->  Sponsorships	1.1m
Wages	3.9m	1.3m
Player additions	1.2m	0
Creditors (<1 year)	4m	380k
Operating loss	2.9m	1.2m

5th     Notts County
Owner: Alexander & Christoffer Reedtz

Investments before or during 2021/22
The club borrowed £2m from the owners during the season, taking the total debt to £11.9m.

Financial results

£	2022	2021
Turnover	Unknown	Unknown
Wages	Unknown	Unknown
Player additions	227k	3,606
Creditors (<1 year)	13.7m	11.3m
Operating loss	1.7m	2.2m

6th     Grimsby Town
Owner: 1878 Partners

Investments before or during 2021/22
The owners loaned the club £1.5m interest-free during the season, mainly to pay off the previous owner's loans.

Infrastructure improvements
The club made several long overdue investments over the season, which included "pitch improvements (including an enhanced sprinkler system at Blundell Park) and new gym equipment and building at the training ground. A new glass barrier was installed in the Upper Youngs stand to improve the supporters' views." The owners are planning to develop a new £6m training facility in the coming years.

Financial results

£	2022	2021
Turnover	4.4m	3.5m
-->  Matchday	1.5m
-->  Commercial	1.3m
-->  Broadcasting	725k
Wages	3.1m	2.8m
Player additions	0	0
Creditors (<1 year)	865k	1.2m
Operating loss	931k	196k (profit)

Note: Pay attention to the difference between the Mariners' broadcasting revenue and Chesterfield's below. This shows the benefit of parachute payments Town enjoyed in their first (and only) season back in the National League.

7th     Chesterfield
Owner: Chesterfield FC Community Trust

Investments before or during 2021/22
After the season had concluded, £10.8m of loans were exchanged for £5m of shares. Remaining amounts owed to the Trust total just over £1m.

Infrastructure improvements
Chesterfield FC are planning to build a new training facility. In July 2022, they tabled a bid for some land "across town" and hope to move forward "pretty quickly".

Financial results

£	2022	2021
Turnover	3.9m	2m
-->  Matchday	2m
-->  Commercial	1.3m
-->  Broadcasting	258k
Wages	3.4m	2.1m
Player additions	483k	10k
Creditors (<1 year)	2.7m	12.6m
Operating loss	2.4m	413k

Interesting that just shows how key it was us getting out the National so quickly, even more so if the TV deals are getting improved over next couple of seasons for EFL teams.. expensive hobby running a football club..

Winning promotion with no fees on players and 3rd in the wages table is a decent achievement I reckon.

Quoted from HertsGTFC

Winning promotion with no fees on players and 3rd in the wages table is a decent achievement I reckon.

Reflects well on the manager.

Surely there were more bigger spenders in the league than us, Notts County?

Quoted from ginnywings

Reflects well on the manager.

100%

Quoted from TheRealJohnLewis

Surely there were more bigger spenders in the league than us, Notts County?

Yeah notts county for sure and potentially Solihull who as he says havent released their accounts yet .

Cant imagine anyone else

What stands out to me there is that Chesterfield had £500k more matchday revenue than us, which shows the limitation of Blundell Park compared to a new stadium. Our matchday revenue can hardly grow at all, home seats are nearly all sold whether filled or not, and as shown on the Away Attendances thread, we have one of the lowest number of visiting fans in the league and our hospitality offer at BP is very limited and also sold out for most League games.

This is really interesting to read and to me identifies some well worn out threads!

A quick look at FFP and the SCMP [url]https://www.financialfairplay.co.uk/scmp.php[/url] show that with £3.1m wages “extra income” needs to do a lot of heavy lifting. If we take into account transfer income [fave thread 3  ] then this will help bring the wages into 55% or less as required.

Whilst the wages for SCMP only include player wages it highlights why we may not be able to break the bank for paying players’ wages [fave thread 2].

Taking these into account, a quick back of the envelope calculation shows that 7500 x 23 games needs an average of ~£415 per season to cover the £3.1m so unless we can move or increase capacity [fave thread 1a and 1b] then we need a lot of commercial interest or equity release (loans, benign or otherwise, cannot be included as income). An extra £1 per match per seat increases income by net gross (edit!) £175000 give or take so that’s one player on £3k per week and a 5% increase in seat prices… that’ll go down well!

So who’d sponsor the ground in its current state? I know they’re sponsoring the club in doing so but would anybody really want their name associated with a dilapidated Main Stand leaking water and money? I would also hazard a guess that this is why money is being “diverted” elsewhere currently where it does not come under the scrutiny of SCMP, e.g. training, pitch, ground improvements?

Quoted from LN8Mariner

This is really interesting to read and to me identifies some well worn out threads!

A quick look at FFP and the SCMP [url]https://www.financialfairplay.co.uk/scmp.php[/url] show that with £3.1m wages “extra income” needs to do a lot of heavy lifting. If we take into account transfer income [fave thread 3  ] then this will help bring the wages into 55% or less as required.

Whilst the wages for SCMP only include player wages it highlights why we may not be able to break the bank for paying players’ wages [fave thread 2].

Taking these into account, a quick back of the envelope calculation shows that 7500 x 23 games needs an average of ~£415 per season to cover the £3.1m so unless we can move or increase capacity [fave thread 1a and 1b] then we need a lot of commercial interest or equity release (loans, benign or otherwise, cannot be included as income). An extra £1 per match per seat increases income by net £175000 give or take so that’s one player on £3k per week and a 5% increase in seat prices… that’ll go down well!

So who’d sponsor the ground in its current state? I know they’re sponsoring the club in doing so but would anybody really want their name associated with a dilapidated Main Stand leaking water and money? I would also hazard a guess that this is why money is being “diverted” elsewhere currently where it does not come under the scrutiny of SCMP, e.g. training, pitch, ground improvements?

You’ve managed to steer some good top line analysis in the direction of moving to a new ground, not an incorrect observation as we all know. The complete picture would be to include the capex required and the ROI on a move at this current time.