Unfortunately the town doesn't appreciate the club and team as it should.

If Saints went under there would be 100,000 people out marching in the street. If 5,000 of them made their way over to the ground every other week with the rest of us (I use the term "us" broadly as I don't go as much now I'm based down south), we'd be in very nice shape.

If we can't get 13/14k average MINIMUM at the new stadum, frankly the town doesn't deserve the club and the directors should spend their money on their families instead of propping up a club for a town that, largely, doesn't care.

You will not get 13 or 14k average gate no chance.

I haven't seen our latest profit / loss figures but I am guessing that the Take That tour has helped us turn in a tasty profit.

Oh and off course winning back to back trophies always helps

It would be a smaller % increase than Wire got with a new stadium. We were averaging 11k at KR the last couple of years before Widnes.

IIRC Wire went from about 7,000 to about 11,000 (over 50% up). 13k would be 18% up for Saints on the KR crowds.

Perfectly realistic.

Not really, at KR you won trophy after trophy so your crowds will be close to the best they can get, couple that with the fact when you were winning things in the 2000's the economy was good and people were in jobs but now the economy is knackered and probably will be for a good few years.

We were poop year after year at Wilderspool and moving to the HJ opened up our potential.

There is a difference between your move and ours.

Your arguement doesn't ring true.
If that were the case your attendances would have carried on increasing over the last 7 years as your team has got better and better.

The club has turned a corner in terms of facilities, opening up chances for new income and reducing costly maintainance bills. We should also increase our income from crowds.

If we're still ing money away after we're settled in the new place, then I'd be worried, but all those figures quoted are in the past, and we're still here.

Our crowds in 2009 and 2010 when we won nothing were higher than in 2006 when we won everything.

Remember these accounts are for 2010! and it seems a lot more income was expected from the last season at Knowsley Road, but it is quite clear that all clubs can't continue spending more on wages than they bring in through gate receipts. One time clubs could top up with their own lottery but how do you compare with prizes of the UK National Lottery & Euro/

A loss of £1.384,706 is a lot! even the turnover £58,000 down on the previous year 2009.

I would not like to question the attendance figures claim of FearTheVee but I find it difficult to understand that this season 2011 as he quotes at Widnes are higher than 2006? or are you making reference to season 2010/2011?

This year I have never know such low attendances last Friday again lower than the average 7,000. The accounts for this present season are going to be interesting with hire of Widnes costs, not sure if there will be a loss of bar figures, but then no costs for running such as Knowsley Road and council taxes ground rents etc

As a game we can't carry on spending the money we are doing, union only have to stage a friendly international and they can bring in 70,000, our survival is all on Sky.

Yeah, I meant 2009 and 2010 - the last 2 seasons at KR.

Eamonn McManus criticises the club’s management for its commercial failings, writing “it was particularly disappointing that full advantage was not taken of the commercial opportunities availed to the club from its last year at its historic Knowsley Road home.”

i couldnt agree more with that sentiment. They had a long time to produce a season of events and ended up doing very little.

A shirt, A book, a couple of marquee events on the pitch.

What happened to a Final Game at Knowsley road for a start. Wire must have had three or four goes at wilderspool before they left.

But you also have to look at the loss over over a million in the land deal which was renegotiated. Sale price of Knowsley Road to Taylor Wimpey was renegotiated down by £1.625m

I would imagine that is why we are a year later than planned in moving into our stadium. The credit crunch popped up from nowhere and almost destroyed everything. Having to renegotiate downward by that amount is bound to be significant and it may be that our new place isn't as classy as was originally planned or it could be that the directors decided to take a bigger hit than originally planned.

However, having read about this in the RL press this week, McManus also says that once we have the keys in October we have an asset which will produce benefits.

It already has of course. I'm not sure we would have pulled off a two year deal with Typhoo at Knowsley Road or secured our own brand of beer thanks to a local brewery (Saints Gold). Christmas parties are already being booked for the new stadium and apparently ten of the twelve boxes have been 'sold'.

The biggest point in all this is that whether the club can afford these losses, will the board members debenture the losses again, and they almost certainly will.

The losses need to be stopped, but as long as we can fund them from the top then as i've learnt over the years it's not overly worrysome.

There is a lot of money at the head of the club at the moment and a the new stadium is probably in everyone's eye's, losses at KR where often passed off on the stadium, will they dissapear at the new stadium? only time will tell.

How much would the rebranding of the club have cost? and now it's being changed again. Why didn't they wait till the first season in the new stadium.

I've not read the whole thread o read anything about saints latest financial mess but could the losses be a exaggeration for some unknown reason like, say the tax man?

I run my own business and pay my accountant a lot of money a year to help me pay less tax ( all legal ) and their are certain ways to reduce your tax bill.

Just a thought, I'm not into the financial side of my business, that's what I have a very good accountant for.

havent you got any other sites to troll on!!!
you are becoming more and more boring as time goes on.

If only this was the case.
The losses are down simply to high costs (wages) without high enough income/sales.
The only solution is to increase sales dramatically at the new stadium by a massive increase in the crowds.

Bizarre, I citicise a team I was in charge of for poor performance - go figure?!

I've said this on the Wigan board, and I'll say it here - sporting teams are almost without exception dreadful investments. The owners may hope to make profits, but realistically almost every team you look at will probably be continually subsidised by the owners. The issue isn't so much if/when Sts ever make a profit, as whether the levels of losses are sustainable - i.e. whether the owners are willing/able to continue to put more money into the club. I would be willing to bet money that not one owner of any SL side seriously expects to make consistent profits from owning a team.

Sometimes people ought to take that last point on board when criticising the owners of clubs - they are quite literally putting their money where their mouth is (although there can be tax benefits depending on the consolidation of profits and losses from all sources apart from the club itself).

The same is true in the NRL - IIRC the Broncos are one of only two sides to regularly make a profit. The difference financially is that most clubs (especially in NSW) are supported by their leagues clubs, which in turn are generally 'non-profit' organisations who make most of their money from pubs, and particularly poker machines (hence the outcry here over the aim to make it more difficult for problem gamblers to p*ss their lives away).

The thing that really es me off is the Sky contract. Although we would be lost without it, rugby league is a very important brand for Sky.

1) there are a hell of a lot of sky subs in the north that would think twice about paying for sky if super league was not on it.

2) It is a great filler for them when the footy season is not on

3) i am sure I also read somewhere that apart from Premiership football RL gets the highest viewing figures

We need them but they need us too. I think somebody needs to show a bit of guts and stand up for us more in these negotiations

Exactly the reason I was calling for Richard Lewis' head after the last Sky contract was signed. He hasn't brought any benefits to the sport at all and we roll over so quickly.

But to be fair to Sky there isn't a competitive market. There is no opportunity to market the product to different providers, in the UK there is only SKY who invest in sport.

What gets me is the wages?

Who are we paying these ever increasing wages too?

It's not the players, they are capped. We've paid pretty much the same on players for the last 10 years, the league does not allow for anything else.

Do we have too many highly paid hangers on? What real benefits do these paid people bring to the club?

Everyone is saying we need to increase revenue, but there is actually an alternate method, which is to cut costs. £1.6 million on players, our sky revenue and gate receipts even now cover that. So it's not the players weighing us down.

It's not a rebrand as such this time, all they've done is change the Saints RL in the badge to St. Helens RFC

I doubt that's the case given the corporate backgrounds of several members of the management team. I'm not saying there aren't areas that could be improved but I'm sure they look very closely at labour costs because I've yet to work in an organisation that doesn't.

Well, its good to see that the Directors do not take any salary or other benefits.
However, 93 players and coaching staff does seem OTT to me as does 62 "other staff" for a business with a turnover of less than £5M.

Looking at wages, we have 34 tier one and two players and assuming that the SC is used to its full £1.65M thats an average of £48,250 p.a. which gives the remaining staff an average £15K p.a.
so it doesn't look like the club is overpaying people or "hangers on" it just looks like we have too many of rthe buggers!

I'd assume the 62 'other staff' would include the likes of stewards and turnstyle staff.