Schalke 04 has been heavily in debt, but this season has been good to the Blues. Overall turnover at the clubs was up almost 20%, to 224 million euros. This allowed the club to reduce the debt from 217 million to 185 million euros. Still a large chunk is the stadium costs, still around 59 million at the end of 2011. The plan is to have the stadium completely paid off by 2018. Personnel costs had risen from 83 million to 100 million, largely a result of ex-coach Felix Magath spending like a drunken sailor (which he repeated at Wolfsburg in the winterbreak).

Schalke’s high attendance and Champions League run all last season all contributed to the improvement. This year figures to be fairly decent as well, since they had a great Europa-liga performance and will be playing Champions League again.