Stoke makes Premier League profit

Stoke City have released their accounts for last season’s trading and announced that they actually made a profit.

Our first season in the Premier League showed that turnover rose from just over £11m in our last year in the Championship to nearly £54m and that the £4.3m loss that the club suffered in 2007-08 has now changed into a ‘small’ £500,000 profit.

It all seems to be good news on the financial front. The club is currently investing £7m in the new training facility at Clayton Woods and also now owns the Britannia Stadium outright, on which it has spent £800,000 in refurbishing costs.

Whilst the club does have debts to its parent company, Stoke City Holdings Ltd (which is in turn owned by Bet365), it owes no money to any one outside the Coates family and that all loans have been interest free.

Peter Coates has also given assurances that the current loans totalling £24m that have been given by the holding company will be written off which will mean that the club will then be totally debt free.

This announcement conflicted sharply with today’s news that Portsmouth had finally gone into Administration with debts of up to £70m and it’s good to see that the current owners seem to be determined to ensure that the club will hopefully be able to stand on it’s own feet in the future without the need for a rich benefactor to bail it out.