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Mike Ashley

Christmas Tree

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Kanji

Kanji

Posted
Posted

If you want to win the league it's basically the only viable option

 

Lord knows we've all practically wasted a lifetime waiting for this club (in total) to give us back what we put into it. Since Keegan saved the club and up until he left and when SBR became our manager are the only times the club have truly "given" us what we put into it - and then you could further argue that Freddie hung SBR out to dry after 01/02 (Robert + Bellamy season).

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mickthemagpie

mickthemagpie

Posted
Posted

It's warming up nicely at Rangers.  :lol:

 

 

Why can our downtrodden lot not give Ashley the same kind of treatment?  :embarrassed:

 

Mike will be lapping this up man as he lies on his bed watching it playing on a loop on the giant TV screen on his bedroom ceiling while tossing himself off.

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BONTEMPI

BONTEMPI

Posted
Posted

 

Malcolm Murray,former Rangers chairman attended the Rangers Agm today and stated it was the most arrogant agm he had attended in 30 odd years. total disregard for shareholders and fans. He says, they said they would just operate without fans.

 

LOL couldn't happen to a better club

 

It already did.

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Stifler

Stifler

Posted
Posted

I'd take the Qatari's taking over us. They are an investment group and in the long run will be wanting the club making a profit, like the owners of Man City are.

 

We won't be garaunteed success either with both Man City and Chelsea being able to match us in terms of spending, and other clubs not being far off.

Time has come to say fuck it, if the Qatari's ar going to offer us being competitive then I'm all for it.

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UV

UV

Posted
Posted

I have previously written about the large drops in Commercial and Matchday revenue at Newcastle United under Mike Ashley.  Clubs around the world are compared by the likes of Deloitte and the measure they use to gauge the size of a club is revenue, not profit.  A club that wants to be considered amongst the biggest is always looking to maximise revenue, but this is not something that concerns Mike Ashley.  Ashley follows the maxim from the business world that "Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity".  Though it's rarely one used in top class sports where clubs almost always look to re-invest any profits to maintain a challenge at the highest level.

 

Many times I have been taken to task for highlighting the dwindling non-TV revenues at the club because Mike Ashley has purposely outsourced some of the costliest enterprises in order to cut expenses.  It makes sense to sell off an area of the club that is either not profitable, or offers low margins, if another company can make it more profitable and will pay the club a higher amount for the contract than the club were able to generate for themselves.

 

However, this defense of Ashley's approach only deserves credence if it improves the overall profitability of the club.  Newcastle have sacrificed profitable streams of business to other companies, and the unanswered question is to what extent that has helped or harmed the clubs finances?  Are those deals more beneficial to the outsourcer or the outsourcee?  I don't think it's possible to determine this accurately from the figures reported in the accounts, but I want to get an idea.

 

http://i57.tinypic.com/6xtd2e.png

 

Non-TV revenue streams and non-wage related expenses all peaked around 2007/2008.  After staff wages the club has reduced outgoing expenses by £8.9m from the peak.  Whether by selling off catering departments, selling (giving?) the retail wing to Sports Direct or refusing Steve Stone any free tickets for his cousin.

 

In similar timescales the combined reduction in matchday and Commercial income has been £16.3m (£5.8m and £10.5m respectively).  Notably the biggest drop of those two has not been from ticket sales, somewhat debunking the argument that people have made about cheaper tickets impacting the bottom line, the drop in commercial income is almost twice as much.  That's the area that free advertising and outsourcing retail would have impacted.

 

The "profitability" column is the one that’s my attempt to get an idea of the cost of Ashley's business model for the club.  It's the only column not taken directly from the accounts, but is instead a calculation from the other values (Matchday and Commercial Income minus Other Expenses).  This figure reduced every year under Mike Ashley from a peak of £38.7m when he took over to a low of £12.6m after relegation, a 67% reduction.  It's most recently recovered to a current value of £25.6m, which is only 34% down, on the peak value.

 

There’s a big caveat to remember when looking at this figure.  The biggest expense in any outsourced department will likely have been the staff and not accounting for that leads to inaccuracy.  The wage figure includes players and non-players across the club.  In my view the catering and retail staff would be only a small fraction of the total, but it does mean that the profitability figure quoted for 2006 has a higher margin of error than the figure for 2013, player wages becoming a higher proportion of the overall figure as business units are outsourced.  If anyone has any idea of the figures for off-field wages I’d love to get the extra accuracy.  However I think the amounts are indicative of not only reduced revenue but also of reduced profitability at the club outside of TV income.  I don’t believe catering and retail staff earned enough to make up the £13m difference from 2006, a quarter of the overall wage bill at the club at that time (£52m).

 

In my view this, confirms that profitable areas of the club have been handed to Sports Direct (among others) at a cost to Newcastle United.

 

 

Can people pick holes in this?

 

Good work. Not checked all the numbers, but I'd point out the following:

 

Starting from the 2008 accounts, temporary matchday staff (stewards, catering, etc) were not counted in the staff numbers, prior to that they were. In the 2008 accounts the payroll costs were restated for 2007 (down £2.7m to £59.8m). It's not explicitly said, but I'm guessing the restated figure is without those part time staff whose costs were moved into other operating expenses. This ties in with the restated op ex figure in the 2008 accounts (it is reduced by £3.5m, but £6.2m of exceptional items are not included in it).

 

So if this is the case, and you use the restated 2007 amounts, then only the 2006 wage figure would include the staff which were later outsourced. It also gives you cost of those staff at that time.

 

Also, it looks like you're adding up everything except wages & amortisation in operating costs in section 3 of the accounts to get your other costs figure. This ignores exceptional items (mostly sacked manager payouts which we never have to worry about again) in post-Ashley accounts, but these were included in the 2006 & 2007 wage & op-ex figures you are using. For consistency you should either add them in the 08 & 09 numbers or remove them from 06 & 07.

 

The 2006 numbers are also only for 11 months as the accounting period was changed & the other costs figure doesn’t look right?

 

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Slim

Slim

Posted
Posted

Wish the fans would decide who is to blame !!

 

Frank Pingels hairdresser

about 6 hours ago

 

Ashley isnt the problem, he's supplying good players, Sissoko, Anita, Colback, Perez, Janmaat, Anita, De Jong and Cabella are all very good footballers, its the inept manager who is unable to get them all playing to their great potential

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