Concerns have been expressed about the future direction of Ipswich Town after the club recorded a loss of nearly £16m in the financial year ending June 2012. The club has found the Championship a tough competition this year with so many clubs with parachute payments or funded by wealthy owners.
Admittedly, Ipswich enjoy a benefactor in the shape of Marcus Evans who is now owed more than £72m by the club. But questions have been raised about how long his largesse can continue. There have been rumours of a £5m cut in the playing budget for next season.
Concerns have been expressed about the future direction of Ipswich Town after the club recorded a loss of nearly £16m in the financial year ending June 2012. The club has found the Championship a tough competition this year with so many clubs with parachute payments or funded by wealthy owners.
Admittedly, Ipswich enjoy a benefactor in the shape of Marcus Evans who is now owed more than £72m by the club. But questions have been raised about how long his largesse can continue. There have been rumours of a £5m cut in the playing budget for next season.
Evans owes 87.5 per cent of the shares and is not seeking repayment of any of the money he is owed. However, the report from the auditors states, ‘The directors acknowledge that there can be no certainty that this support [from Evans] will continue indefinitely.’
In the previous year the loss was just £3.17m, but in that year Town made £10.84m on player sales compared with just under quarter of a million in 2011-12. The main sales in the preceding year were those of Connor Wickham to Sunderland and Jon Walters to Stoke.
Gate receipts were down by 19 per cent from £6.63m to £5.36m. Commercial, television and radio income also declined from £10.6m to £9.64m. Despite these falls in income, the wage bill increased by £400,000 to £17.95m.