oh yes they do, the NRL has far more serious issues, take out the pokes there is no NRL, no clubsRaiderdave wrote:but but butXman wrote:34 million divided by 18 clubs is less than 2 million per club. Given the average AFL club has a revenue of around 40m per year you think this is an issue?AFLcrap1 wrote:NOT BULL XMAN.
RD was right.
THE AFL is providing $34 million of bank guarantees on behalf of its clubs, in some cases to enable cash-stricken operations to pay their bills and convince auditors they remain commercially viable.
As Australia’s richest football competition prepares to enter fresh negotiations on what it hopes will be another $1 billion broadcast rights deal, its underclass of working-poor clubs are increasingly reliant on the goodwill of the AFL and banks to survive.
An examination of club finances by The Australian has found the AFL club in the most dire financial position is Brisbane, which remains technically insolvent with a deficiency in net assets of $4.7m and a deficiency in current assets of $12.8m.
The club is bleeding cash, with last year’s cash profit of nearly $400,000 a quirk of accounting masking a true loss of $538,872. The club’s 2013 season balance sheet prompted a stern warning from KPMG auditor Scott Guse, who said there was a “material uncertainty which may cast doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern”.
To secure an $8 million bill facility, the club relied on an AFL guarantee and presented Westpac with a separate letter of support from the league setting out “a range of financial assistance packages that can be used to assist the company to meet its obligations if necessary”. St Kilda relied on an AFL guarantee to extend its commercial bill facility from $4.75m to $6.75 million. The Western Bulldogs, North Melbourne and Melbourne, who all failed to make last year’s finals series, also depend on AFL-guaranteed credit.
Carlton and Richmond continue to operate with AFL-backed credit facilities, although both clubs are steadily reducing the amount they owe and ended the last trading year with healthy cash surpluses.
Even one of the competition’s most powerful clubs, Essendon, finds itself drained of cash after having to fork out nearly $4m to cover fines and legal expenses from the supplements scandal and a further estimated $1m to pay suspended coach James Hird his entire 2014 salary in advance.
Essendon president Paul Little said the club always expected to end last season depleted of cash reserves after investing heavily in the club’s new training centre. However, he said the club had forecast a trading profit this season and expected to be debt-free in three years.
The AFL guarantees enable clubs to secure a line of credit at a cheaper interest rate than banks would otherwise offer, if at all, to businesses facing similar financial difficulties.
Last year’s figure of $34m has risen from total guarantees worth a little over $30m in 2012.
St Kilda president Peter Summers said an additional $2m in AFL-guaranteed credit secured since the end of the 2013 season was be used as working capital. Put another way, the extended credit is being used to keep the lights on.
Bulldogs president Peter Gordon said the problem confronting the competition’s perennially cash-strapped clubs was simple. “We don’t make enough money at the moment,” he said. “We have to address that.”
Summers, whose club recorded the lowest revenue figure in the competition last year, said the club had not spent itself into trouble.
“We are not a high-spending club,” he said. “This is about increasing our revenue.”
The Saints are off to a shaky start, with the club last week confirming a 10 per cent drop-off in membership from this time last year. Summers told members at the club’s annual general meeting last Friday that it was “complete nonsense” to suggest smaller clubs were poorly managed.
Although the AFL’s salary cap and draft has helped keep the national competition even, a growing mountain of cash separates the rich clubs from the poor.
Where the Saints failed to earn $30m last year, Collingwood declared revenues in excess of $75m. Collingwood ended last season with $21m cash on hand, the Saints were left with $80,418. The Bulldogs’ cash balance was boosted by a $1m, interest-free loan from Gordon.
Collingwood last year spent $6.3m managing its swollen membership base - more than the Bulldogs earned from theirs.
The Bulldogs’ 2013 accounts lodged with the Australian Securities & Investments Commission carry an auditor’s warning citing “significant uncertainty” about club continuing as a going concern. The directors of the St Kilda, Melbourne and North Melbourne also address going concern issues in their financial statements.
Gordon, a founding partner of legal firm Slater & Gordon who now runs Gordon Legal, and Summers, chief executive of property group AVJennings, are optimistic about this season.
Summers said the Saints had budgeted for an operating surplus for 2014 and would soon unveil a five-year plan to build a sustainable revenue base. Gordon said in contrast to his previous time as Bulldogs president 25 years ago, when a less paternalistic AFL was prepared to see the Dogs go broke, he no longer felt like the sword of Damocles was hanging over the club.
However, both are pushing for substantial reform to how the proceeds of football are shared.
Summers wants urgent action by the AFL to address the discrepancy in the financial returns clubs receive under their respective stadium deals. Gordon wants the AFL’s complex system of financial distributions scrapped and replaced by equal allocations to the clubs to cover all player payments and a set amount on other expenses. Under the Gordon model, the rich clubs would be free to spend more on their football operations but the poorer clubs would have guaranteed, long-term revenue and no longer be year-to-year propositions.
“Had the AFL introduced the sort of revenue sharing which the NFL has and Major League Baseball did and the NBA did 10 years ago, it is likely that our balance sheets and a lot of other balance sheets would be a lot healthier now,” Gordon said.
A chartered accountant with a leading insolvency specialist examined Brisbane’s financials and provided a bleak assessment of the club’s outlook.
“They are currently loss making, are churning through their available cash reserves, and have a significant current asset deficiency,” the accountant said. “They also have significant levels of debt. The letter of support from the AFL is obviously critical to the operations of the business in its current form.”
Representatives from the Brisbane Lions did not respond to requests for comment.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/a ... 6822011769#
Essendon is discussed in that article as if theyre in financial trouble. How laughable
but but but
but but
remove your head from your arse for just a second & join us in reality dickhead
9 VFL clubs are essentially running on fumes
teetering on the edge
your codes governing body is being sucked dry by them
the NRL simply doesn't have these issues
failure dave that article is from August 30 2013
http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 2swhv.html
on the Essendon issue for the first time in their 140 year history they have gone in to debt, it is because they have just built a 35 million dollar facility.
considering your little raiders cant raise more than 8 million with out the need for pokes
> 
