Manchester United announced record revenues for the second quarter of the 2013-14 financial year, thanks to large increases in the amounts they have earned from broadcasting and commercial deals.
United’s on the pitch woes have not impacted the clubs ability to make money as United announced that revenue for the last three months of 2013 rose 11.6% on last year to £122.9 million.
The club is forecasting revenue for the current season of between £420 million and £430 million, up from £363 million last season.
The big driver again was United’s commercial revenue which was £42.3 million, up 18.8% for the quarter and 30% for the year after they began six new sponsorship partnerships.
Broadcasting revenue went up to £46.9 million, an increase of 18.7%, with Premier League rights commanding larger sums in both the British and the international markets as a result of rights deals which began this season. However, the bottom line showed that net profit plummeted 49 percent to 18.7 million pounds.
The Manchester United executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, said he is not “concerned” that failure to qualify for the Champions League for a prolonged period would affect commercial and financial strategy.
When asked how long the club’s financial strategy could continue without Champions League football, Woodward said:
“The first thing I would say is our starting point [for] long-term strategy is to focus on building a competitive squad that challenges for trophies. Part of the financial strength we have and we have presented in the results today demonstrates that we have the ability to do that. We have the ability to buy players, to churn players, to make sure we are competing at the top level, which is what we should be doing.
“The second thing I’d say is that I think it takes a long time to build up a huge fan base, to have, if you like, the equity values of what we are as a business and a club projected out there so people can understand from a commercial perspective why it make sense to partner with us. And I don’t think that will go away for a long time.
“Some of our competitors haven’t won the Premier League for a long time but still sell a huge number of shirts – out there globally, some just down the road from us. So that’s not something I’m sitting here concerned about. What I am focused on is that long-term strategy.”
