First up an apology. Man in a Barrel wrote this piece for the blog during the middle of the India v England test series and we couldn’t quite squeeze it into a proper slot pre-Christmas. Then, with all the events going on with me personally in January, it got left by the wayside. MiaB has had his say on the financial situation he sees in county cricket, and it is an interesting take. I find Yorkshire’s financial situation particularly fascinating given who the county owes its future to and the potential for conflicts of interest (if in doubt, read the notes to the ECB accounts). Anyway, MiaB’s views, updated in recent weeks are worth a read, and as always I’d like to thank him (and others) who take their valuable time to write for us. Also, although we all know MiaB can handle himself, take into account he’s a guest writer and not one of us. We want to encourage people, not put them off!!!!
I’m over the other side of the pond at the moment, so now is the time for some more articles if people think they have something to say. There’s a long time before England’s next test. Ok, enough of me, take it away MiaB:
County Cricket Finances….by Man in a Barrel
In the November 2014 issue of the cricketer, there was an article about the generally poor state of the finances of the county cricket clubs. It came as something of a revelation to me – I always assumed that cricket was a poor relation to football in the UK but that the sponsorship provided by companies such as John Player, Gillette, Benson and Hedges, Cornhill Insurance, Investec, Sky etc was sufficient to keep it in reasonable health. However, it seemed from that article that the situation was dire.
Football has always been more transparent. Some teams have tried to float on the Stock Exchange, for example. However, I think we all know that, in reality, the clubs are rather small financial entities for the most part. In the book Soccernomics, you can read an interesting selection of financial facts and figures. It seems that few football clubs are run as money-making machines – remember how Alan Sugar failed at Spurs? – but that very few actually go bust. Someone always turns up to bail them out. In practice what that tends to mean is that they are run, at one end of the scale, as shiny toys or status symbols for the very wealthy such as Chelsea, Man City or, at the other end of the scale, as glorified social clubs where the players run around between stands made from corrugated iron and scaffolding props, such as Stevenage Utd. In between, there are a mass of clubs supported by successful local businessmen or by people who are probably more intent on either developing (or stripping) any available assets.
I tried to locate sources of financial data for the county cricket clubs. Not many of them had anything available on their websites but I located data for Yorkshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. This was an interesting sample because it included 2 sides with Test match grounds and a comparative minnow. I intended to put together a blogpost on my discoveries but this coincided with the start of 2015. The general feeling of disenchantment with cricket that took me over around that time meant that I never completed it. Subsequent events suggest that my conclusions for this sample are typical of the bigger picture.
The main conclusions were that cricket is not a money-making business; it just about pays its way, if rain holds off. Most clubs are just about muddling along. However, it is likely that the clubs that host international matches have been very bold and have over-extended their balance sheets to such an extent that they are close to being insolvent. In football, many clubs have spent way too much money acquiring players and have amassed significant debts thereby; in cricket they build new pavilions. Oligarchs and sheiks buy football clubs. No one has so far come along for county cricket apart from a certain supermarket chief.
I’ll start this overview with Warwickshire in 2014.
Total turnover was £12.5 and they seemed to make an operating profit of £4.7m. Within these figures, cricket revenues were £3.8m, with a cost of sales of £4.2m. So, on its own, cricket was loss-making for this county in 2014. Thankfully, the ECB chipped in with £3.1m – some of which was probably prize money for winning The Blast.
By comparison, the Yorkshire cricket revenues for 2013 were £2.7m and for Worcestershire in 2012 £0.6m – there is a note to the effect that their results were adversely impacted by weather. For the purposes of this snapshot, it is worth noting that all 3 counties lost money on cricket pure and simple.
In terms of EBITDA – profit before tax, interest and depreciation, the figures were £1.7m for Warks, £0.2m for Yorks and £0.1m for Worcs. So, you expect the balance sheets to be pretty small-scale affairs. These are relatively small businesses.
You could not be more wrong. Warks declare fixed assets of £36.8m, totally off the scale for this size of income statement. How on earth did they amass so much in the way of fixed assets – the major single element is given as Pavilion Development at £31.1m?
A quick scan shows that they have taken on loans of £21.6m. Most of it is a loan from Birmingham City Council repayable starting from March 2017 at 5% interest. It is secured on the freehold land and buildings owned by the club. Just to cover the interest on this loan would require profits of £1.1m – which would come close to wiping out their EBITDA. As it was, they charged interest of £1.4m and depreciation of £1.4m, so there was no profit left over.
If this were a property company, as the investment in buildings would suggest it really is, you would expect the building to generate a return of, say 5%. Given all the quantitative easing that has inflated asset values and decreased yields, let’s assume 3%. This would entail getting a profit after interest and depreciation of £1.0, which is way out of sight. It is tough to see how they would get from a loss of £1.2m to a profit on that scale.
Moving on to Yorks, the figures are comparable. Fixed assets of £28.5m supported by a pre-tax loss of £0.7m. They have loans of £24.1m. However, Warks’s main creditor was the local council. Recent events show that councils can be persuaded to forgive debts. I am not sure that, if I lived in Leeds, I would be totally happy for my council to lend £7.6m to a cricket club that was basically insolvent. Surely there must be a quid pro quo in terms of out-reach efforts and community work? If there is, the club keep quiet about it. In any case, the council has a charge over the freehold land and buildings at Headingley and, as an example that the council might be worried, Mr Graves has given a shortfall guarantee.
So far so good. However, the club has also taken out a loan from HSBC for £3.3m. This is secured by a first charge over the Cricket Centre and a second charge over Headingley. HSBC also has a fixed and floating charge over all the assets of the club. Needless to say, Mr Graves has given another personal guarantee. The loan is repayable by 2020 and interest is base +4%. As a commercial institution, HSBC are putting very onerous conditions on the club that they are probably unable to comply with on the basis of their own trading activities.
However, it gets worse; various trusts in the name of the Graves family have “lent” £10.1m to the club – up from £7.1m the previous year. The increase basically seems to have paid down some of the HSBC overdraft. So the Graves family is basically bankrolling the club on a day-to-day basis by providing long-term loans. Interest is payable at base+4%. C J Graves is personally owed £4.5m and this is repayable on 12 months’ notice and secured by a 4th charge over Headingley. The 2 Graves trusts are owed £5.6m and are repayable in October 2016, secured by a 3rdcharge over Headingley.
Obviously you have to wonder just how much these charges are worth if HSBC or the council pull the plug. How much leeway does the HSBC branch have to waive interest or extend repayment terms? Could they be persuaded to classify it as, say, marketing spend in an attempt to garner local affection? Did the trusts insist on repayment in October 2016? Time will tell. However it is clear that both Warks and Yorks need to get their assets sweating a bit harder if the clubs, or Mr Graves, is not to go bust. You wonder also what impact this might have on the affairs of Costcutter. Maybe Yorks should be treated as a subsidiary of that supermarket chain. What would be the impact on the chain if the guarantees given by Graves were called in?
It was a relief to turn to Worcs. £5.1m of fixed assets supported by loans of £2.7m is at least a conceivable ratio. True, their income statement makes sorry reading in 2012 but they have a track record of making around £0.3m EBITDA and their 2012 turnover was adversely affected by rain. However, they have also leased out some land to Premier Inns for 150 years for a 120 room hotel and they are very clear about the need to build a 365 day business instead of one that depends on 50 days of cricket. This gave them a boost to profits of £0.4m in 2012.
When a football club over-extends by buying players, at least there should be some benefit for the fans in terms of trophies or the chance to see a few galacticos. Is cricket held in such affection by the fans that solutions will emerge if the counties get into difficulties – such as what happened to Glasgow Rangers or Southampton FC?
Questions that I cannot answer. But if I were running Yorks or Warks, I would not be sleeping easily at night.
Update
I downloaded the accounts for Yorkshire for the year ended December 2015. Things have moved on but they are still far from rosy. The guys are obviously pedalling vigorously so I hope that my assessment does not look as if I am dissing them. They have worked hard to increase turnover and improve profitability. Turnover has grown from £6.8m to £8.4m, which I think represents a considerable achievement. They have also moved to a position where they are making retained profits of £0.4m compared with losses of £0.3m in 2014 and £0.6m in 2013. It’s a start but nowhere near enough to service the debt mountain. Debt remains about £24m.
However, you must always beware of the sleight of hand, particularly with corporations in distress. In 2015, there is an exceptional item of £0.8m as a result of the local authority reconsidering the amount of interest due on its loan and effectively giving the club a kickback. Without that surge of generosity, the retained profit would disappear. Also, it is worth noting that the 2014 position benefited from a grant of £0.5m from the ECB, which Yorks used to repay a loan from the ECB. Smoke and mirrors? Every little helps.
The real interest is in what has been done to restructure the debt. Obviously Mr Graves is not able to bankroll the club personally anymore and they were in thrall to the vipers at HSBC. So they have found a genie, in the shape of another Graves family trust. To quote from the accounts:
“The Graves family trusts have provided loans of £18.9m which has allowed the previous loans from Colin Graves, the Graves family trusts and Leeds City Council to be repaid. As part of the refinancing we are grateful to Leeds City Council who after reviewing the actual cost of interest that the Council had incurred in servicing the debt which demonstrated that the cost to the Council of the loan has been fully met by the Club, accepted £6.5m in settlement of the £7.4m capital outstanding on the loan. This gave rise to exceptional income, net of costs, of £781,106.
As part of the refinancing HSBC agreed to return any capital payments made in 2015, lower their interest rate to 2.5% and defer full capital repayment until 1st October 2018 in return for a First Legal Charge over the Cricket Centre and a Third Legal Charge over Headingley Cricket Ground in respect of the bank loan and overdrafts. HSBC Bank plc also has a fixed and floating charge over all of the assets of the Club, subject to the Legal Charges referred to above.
To enable the repayment of the Leeds City Council debt, further debt has been incurred. CJ & J Graves Accumulation & Maintenance and J Graves Accumulation & Maintenance Trusts loans now stand at £6.7m each bearing an interest rate of 4.625% and with initial capital repayments to be made in 2019 (£2m each Trust) and during 2020 (£1.5m each Trust) with the balance at 31 December 2020. The two Trusts have been granted by the Club joint First Legal Charge over Headingley Cricket Ground and joint Second Legal Charge over the Cricket Centre.
A further £5.5m of debt has also been incurred from the CJ Graves 1999 Settlement Trust bearing an interest rate of 0%. The Club has granted Second Legal Charge over Headingley Cricket Ground and Third Legal Charge over the Cricket Centre.”
So the local authority is off their backs and has accepted less interest than was originally due – I wonder if the details of that arrangement will ever be forthcoming. It could be that the authority was borrowing at a very low rate and charging the club a higher rate and has decided to waive some of the difference. Let’s be generous. HSBC have also reduced the interest rate and granted a repayment holiday. I guess they can recognise a distressed debtor when they see one and have taken the view that taking control of a cricket ground is outside their area of expertise. It also helps when you can find someone to loan you £5.5m interest-free. I can only imagine that the terms of the trust are that it exists to ensure the survival of Yorkshire cricket club. I hope the beneficiaries are happy. So it is no longer Colin Graves who supports the club, just a bunch of trusts with £19m of his family wealth tied up in them. It seems a little bit “Maxwell” to me but at least the cricket club still exists. I guess that things down in Hampshire are not so very different. Oh and those family trusts did not get repaid in 2016 – as if we could not have guessed.
In January, David Hopps wrote an article about Warwickshire that echoes what I have been writing here but in a more easygoing way –http://www.espncricinfo.com/county-cricket-2017/content/story/1079949.html
Another point of interest is the recent revelation by Vic Marks about Cook:
“we once discussed county cricket and Cook said 14 counties would be infinitely preferable – a very sound argument but how do you get there? “Simple,” he said. “Get rid of whoever are in the bottom four of the second division at the end of the season.” At the time two of those positions were occupied by Surrey and Yorkshire. The implications of their expulsion, while briefly amusing to me, did not seem to have any impact on his thinking.”
Perhaps Cook was unaware that bankrupting 2 of the clubs who supply Test match grounds might be a self-defeating gesture?
Being Outside Cricket 
Nice article @miab. Quite obviously, cricket is not a money making proposition for the counties. Why is this? Is it because people watching county Kat he’s has dwindled? It would have been nice to hear your suggestions on how they could ramp up their revenues given the effort you have so obviously put in.
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Interesting read. Any figures on how much counties can generate from non-cricketing activities (like concerts or conferences)? One of the claims about Durham was that they’d done poorly in that area.
Meanwhile, the ECB’s latest whizz for domestic cricket:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/county-cricket-2017/content/story/1083052.html
I’m not automatically against all change, and I happily watch tennis on all surfaces, but this idea makes me feel faintly sick.
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Thanks Simon, I was worried that it might be too dry for most folks on the blog. Yorkshire earned £1.9m in 2015 (up from £1.8m in 2014) from “commercial activities” versus around £3m from cricket. I would imagine that is about the top end . It would be nice to see Surrey’s data, however, as they seem to be the market leaders among cricket clubs – sadly it is not publicly available on their web-site.
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This line…
“While long-term lovers of cricket may have reservations about artificial surfaces, the ECB’s mantra over the new competition is that it is not designed to appeal to those already watching the game: it is designed to appeal to the vast potential audience that is currently immune to its charms.”
Because pissing off the sport’s greatest advocates is just the way to grow the game. As we’ve found out!
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County cricket has not been lucrative for a long time, Sri. Back in the 1960s, things at Surrey were so bad that they started hosting rock concerts – with security provided by the Hell’s Angels! However, back then, the financial pressures were much lower.
The other thing to note is that the ECB is basically sitting on all the money they get from Sky. They really ought to distribute it around the counties.
If attendances are ever going to grow, then the counties really need to get out into their local areas, especially the schools, and they should develop activities that will appeal to youngsters. If you compare to football, the new stadia that have been built have become tourist attractions – at The Emirates, Nou Camp, and the Ajax stadium, for example, they have museums of the clubs’ history. As far as I Know, Lords is the only cricket ground with a museum. I think that many clubs host conferences these days – certainly Surrey do.
I guess that there will be more joint ventures with hotel chains. It makes no sense to spend £30m developing an asset that is used for 50 days a year. It would make more sense to combine it with an asset that can be used 365 days. That was part of the rationale for what Worcestershire have done, as described above.
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I can certainly see the value & sense of clubs expanding into 365 days a year operation, its just logical.
Trent bridge is my local ground. They don’t have room to build a hotel and the stands are about as good as they will get (bar maybe the family stand next).
They are putting a new media centre ontop of the Radcliffe Road end. It will be interesting to see once done. But I don’t see that enhancing the 365 days nature.
I don’t know how much it will cost or where the money is coming from.
It was the same with the giant screen they had to install. If memory serves they took a 1mil loan from the council to fund it because the ecb said they needed 2 screens for internal matches. Again, it does not serve the non cricket part of the year.
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Andy, I checked out Notts but was unable to find any financial information. However their website shows just how committed they are to the local community, which plays to Fred’s point below
http://mobile.trentbridge.co.uk/cricket/community/index.html
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Agreed, notts do alot and have good ties to local cricket.
They have helped local clubs (including my village) and host things like the umpiring course I did for free every year (or a pepper corn rent at most).
I would assume most clubs are active in their community to some degree.
But is it enough? The counties are struggling, local cricket is also struggling.
Your point still stands that clubs that can expand into 365 day operations will stand a better chance of survival.
Will the ecb help or hinder that though… Durham… Cough.
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So very interesting MiaB. It seems as tho a lot of County Cricket Clubs are between a rock and hard place. I might be “out there” asking this question but I hope you will forgive me for my lack of knowledge. Here goes: Does this mean that Mr Giles Clarke Intimating that selling everything to Sky was for the benefit of England & Wales Cricket was not quite true? I’ve never trusted the man of course so I find all his self-promotion iffy to say the least.
Cheers by the way. So good to see it all in the cold light of a winter’s day.
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Yes – the official story from the likes of Clarke was that the ECB had to get all the money it could from Sky so it could put that money into ‘developing grassroots cricket’. What they actually do for grassroots cricket seems pretty piecemeal, judging by the differing accounts one reads from people who work with youth teams etc. To be fair, they have developed the women’s game, and also helped disability cricket..
The sticking point seems to be that the ECB don’t see the counties as the grassroots game, but as businesses that must compete with each other in a free-marketish kind of way. Hence the horrible Durham saga. This seems daft, though not surprising.
So why does the ECB sit on all that money?
Many thanks for this, MIAB. I like these business-y articles, they give the blog an extra dimension.
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CHEERS Zephirine.
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A fascinating read. I don’t think you need much financial acumen to see that things are far from healthy – especially for over-extended larger clubs with Test match grounds.
Just as an aside on Warwickshire, when they built their new pavilion in 2010-11 with significant investment from the local authority, they expended a lot of time, money and legal effort to acquire a row of about half a dozen quite nice Edwardian houses (or rather the land on which they stood – the houses were demolished and the former owners all had to be provided with new homes) adjacent to the Edgbaston ground. This process alone must have cost some millions and was undertaken in the face of stiff opposition from within the local community (not only the homeowners). The club insisted that what it was doing was absolutely essential and would bring prosperity to the area. As I recall, their stated plan was to use the land to build a swanky new “development” (shops, restaurants, upmarket apartments – that type of thing) which would generate revenue for Warwickshire CCC and help service their debt mountain with Birmingham City Council.
Not sure what happened there, because six years on that area of land is still being utilised as… an extra car park. One that’s only ever really needed on the few days each season when Edgbaston might host international games.
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Emailed a book review for the long weeks ahead!
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Thanks. I have received it, although for some reason the internet in the US isn’t keen on me opening my hotmail account!
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Interesting post, nice to have some insight into what countes are doing to get by. However, it’s main impact on me is to query the value of financial accounting in this context.
I understand everything has to be paid for, and councils are accountable for their spending. But on the other hand, fuck all that financial stuff, sport delivers untold social, community and health benefits that would make an accountant’s head explode trying to calculate. Yorkshire is getting by only by the good grace of benefactors? I guess so, but send that cricket club down the drain and see what happens to local and national community.
What are the profits like for English National Opera? The National Trust? The Royal family?
Where I live, the park next door has an amazing garden which clearly takes alot of skilled horticulturalists to maintain it. The council doesn’t earn any revenue from it, but clearly sees it as a public benefit worth spending money on.
Great post, well researched. It suggests to me that we must avoid the current trend of seeing everything as a business, and call out the non-financial values where they need to be called out.
France subsidises its agricultural sector because for them it’s not just food production, it’s also culture, lifestyle, identity, and health. Maybe England should do the same for cricket.
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Fred, clearly there are many local authorities that do see their cricket clubs as social assets – Birmingham and Leeds in this small sample, as well as Glamorgan. Whether local authorities should subsidise professional sport is an interesting question. In football we can see that the money that comes in mostly ends up paying the players. For the moment, in cricket it has been in the form of loans to build infrastructure. But the trend of ever-increasing player wages seems to be the case in cricket. Perhaps council tax payers should be asked if they want to spend money on a professional sports team?
Although not on topic, you brought up the ENO. I regularly attend a similar but less prestigious place. 60% of their income comes from ticket sales and public subsidy, leaving the rest to come from corporate sponsorship, philanthropy, legacies etc. I imagine the dynamics are similar at ENO. Similarly, we know that Corporate sponsorship is increasingly necessary in the cricket world. These artistic establishments and the National Trust are, however, charities, so profitability is not so much of an issue. It might be worth looking at the implications of cricket clubs becoming charities. I confess I do not know the issues.
As for the French subsidising their agriculture, the CAP means that we are all subsidising French farmers but I don’t think it is necessary to go into that contentious area here.
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What is the legal status of a county? If it’s not a charity? I always assumed it was some sort of not for profit organisation, rather than an incorporated company.
As for the CAP, England will soon stop contributing to that I guess. Although the price of all that lovely Burgandy etc. will no doubt increase for the English too.
There are may examples of subsidies and market distortions; the oil and gas industry has historically been given many subsidies, just as renewables are now. Energy utility were protected as monopolies because the priority was to drive energy availability to promote growth. The free market is a myth, or at least highly exaggerated. It’s just a question of deciding which activities we wish to support and promote.
Whether the money goes to players vs facilities is a good question. Is cricket better served by Joe Root becoming a millionnaire thereby attracting talent to the game, or by improving school facilities?
Good piece by Engel in The Guardian today (and I haven’t been able to say that for a while). The removal from FTA really is a fundamental issue.
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Northants voted last year to turn themselves into a limited company:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2016/05/08/fear-and-loathing-in-county-cricket-the-grim-financial-realities/
The article was written before the vote but it carried by a large majority.
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Fred, Yorkshire comes under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act:
Simon, I note from that article that Northants County Council have loaned the club £2m at 5% interest. And the board have chipped in £475k.
An oligarch or 18 is needed.
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Over at the full toss there is an interesting post on T20 cricket. It includes the following comment on the Rose Bowl, which shows how delicate a balancing act is involved when a cricket ground tries to go for 365 day operations, and gets the local authority involved:
Just to mention a revenue stream that wasn’t there in the good old days – advertising and, for some grounds, a sponsor’s name.
I do wonder why anyone would spend limited resources on a big, shiny media centre – presumably also for occasional use. Wouldn’t a shed suffice?
Excellent work MIAB. Curious how difficult it is to obtain financial information from the counties. I believe that normal businesses are required to be transparent in such matters.
Anyone know what the ECB costs?
Finally, I wonder if carrying a burden of debt is the reason that we don’t see more effort from the counties to improve their product and facilities to make it all more attractive
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Benny, the ECB accounts are available online. Basically they are sitting on a big cashpile. The income statement shows a lot of payments on staff – administrators, coaching staff, umpires and a few players – plus a complex system of clubs paying ECB to host matches, while the ECB pays them to host matches. Sponsorship by Sky et al is the big item. Maybe I should do another post.
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My understanding is that T20, in isolation, is a significant profit making enterprise for the majority of counties – the problem is that the profits gained are entirely wiped out by the costs of putting on endless 4 day games in a huge and costly stadium in front of virtually empty stands.
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Doesn’t sound good again –
http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/story/1083177.html
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I wish him well. It looks likely that his cricketing career is over, the poor guy
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Great post – and there’s now a constant tension between top sport and business. I need to be careful in what I say but having been involved in a number of sports M&A deals you’d be amazed at the influence of the latter on the very source (i.e. the sport!).
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Hi, but, sadly, I don’t think many deals would involve cricket… Apart from a Lords Test
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Very enjoyable and interesting article.
As a Worcestershire member i am aware they have made great strides to balance the books. Sadly this hasn’t made us a viable div 1 side and so we are in the premier culling zone of div 2.
From a playing side it seems clear that we need 1 or 2 experienced names to balance the good crop of youngsters. It appears that will not happen as balancing the books is now considered the holy grail. All very admirable but that (and no fixed floodlights) means we may end up as a minor (or 3rd tier county) in the long run.
Still at least we have Olly Murs in concert this summer :0)
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I think the proper question is how viable most of the counties are. Worcs at least seem to have a future. Yorkshire and Warks are up to their necks in debt. My question would be, if the majority of counties are in such a questionable state, how long before one or more goes bust? Also, how long can the ECB pretend to be impartial when the head is bankrolling one of the clubs
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Hi MIAB.
Thank you for replying. I hear your point. I wish they would let these counties fail but i remain to be convinced that they won’t have one rule for the chosen few and another for those they want out the way.
Worcester are just sucking it up the best way they can. But the endgame is the same. If we ever have ECB funding withdrawn do the numbers say we are screwed?
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I have to say that i am not sure what the ECB does for the benefit of cricket as a whole. It stages Test matches, which grounds have to pay for. It receives massive amounts from Sky. It employs a bureaucracy, the first-class umpires, the centrally-contracted players and an entourage of coaching/medical staff, and it disburses a few small grants and loans to the counties. It is stting on a large cashpile. I suspect that the Test grounds/counties are at huge risk of financial collapse, which would leave the “minnows”, who have remained faithful to their roots and membership. A county championship without Yorks, Lancs, Surrey, Notts and Warks, plus possibly Glamorgan, Hants and Durham: does that look tenable? Or will the existing counties just get absorbed into the minor counties’ structure? Where does that leave Test cricket? I suspect, dead.
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Just to say we just passed 3/4 million hits.
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MIB
I agree with you about questioning what the ECB does? I used be of the opinion that they, and before them The Test & county Cricket board were effectively the counties. But I don’t believe that now.
They have become a lofty club which has stolen the national game for their own ends. All the money goes through them, and a lot of it seems to go into a small group of insiders salaries. They are making descions that are not in the interest of the counties. For example forcing counties to bid for test cricket. Relegating counties, forcing through this 20/20 franchise. It stinks.
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