“kicker” had an article on the recent financial review of Borussia Dortmund, and as one might expect, the Neons did fairly well. Of course, doing the double and playing in the CL certainly helped. The numbers are nothing like what you might see from EPL clubs, but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.
Overall, net profit was some 34.3 million euros (compared with last year’s 9.5 million). Overall income was up 42% to 215.2 million euros. Also impressive was a reduction in the long term debt from 56 million to only 11.4 million. Considering how Dortmund was on the verge of collapse a few years ago, this is quite good.
Overall, the annual cost for players rose about 10 million, to 60 million. Another 15 million went to administrative overhead (some 560 club employees).
The biggest gain in income was due to TV, some 60 million, almost 100% over last year. Obviously, a lot of this was Champions League money. They also had a 16% increase in sponsorship, raising the total to 57.8 million. Ticket sales were up as well, almost 4 million up to 31.4 million euros.
As result, for the first time since 2000, BVB will pay stockholders a dividend. (There is a limited flotation on the stockmarket. Not sure how it works, but I believe stockholders don’t have any voting rights – but I could be wrong. You have to join the club and become a member, so it’s still “one-man, one-vote”. Which is why you don’t see any jackass with their embezzeled funds taking over the club. Take that EPL…)
Things will continue to look rosy as the club gets a new TV contract in 2013, which should add at least 10-12 million.
You seem to be right, in that shareholders don’t have a say in how the football club (i.e. its soccer division) is run.
http://aktie.bvb.de/BVB-auf-einen-Blick/Unternehmensportrait
Members elect the board, but the actual executive body seems to be a separate management firm (“Geschaeftsfuehrungs-GmbH”), wholly owned by the club (whatever that means), but whose staff is not under the direct control of the club members either. It looks like lots of layers of insulation between popular will (members’ votes) and executive power (currently Mr. Watzke), but there is still a connection between the two and it’s not (directly) based on the number of shares.
Incidentally, the biggest BVB shareholder (a fellow by the name of Bernd Geske) ‘only’ holds about 10% of the shares, the rest being distributed widely…
Thanks for the clarifications. It’s definitely not like the “old days” when clubs were completely run by the members. Most clubs have spun off their professional soccer squad as a semi-seperate division. But the main take-away is that the members still ultimately have a strong say in how things are run, unlike England or many other countries. That makes for a better environment. Certainly German football fans don’t worry very much about some crook taking over the club and running it into the ground, or treating it as his personal play toy. It explains a lot of the common fan revulsion at Hoffenheim and Dietmar Hopp, although really Hopp is simply a benefactor rather than an “owner”. Contrast that with the British clubs that are constantly bought up by wankers (domestic and foreign). Or the American system in professional sports. I’d much rather have the German system…