Everton, the embattled English Premier League (EPL) soccer club, has published its financial results for the 2022-23 season (ending June 2023), revealing that its losses had more than doubled year-on-year (YoY) from the previous year.
Everton posted a post-tax loss of £89.1 million ($112 million), more than double the £38.3 million loss it posted in 2021-22, indicating the growing scale of the club’s financial woes.
This doubling of loss over the period came even though overall club turnover (£172.2 million) only fell by £8.9 million against the previous year while operating expenses only increased by around £7.6 million.
The club’s financial situation is so dire that the EPL handed Everton a 10-point deduction in November for breaching its Profitability and Sustainability Rules, although that deduction was later lessened to six points.
Top-flight clubs in the EPL are only permitted to lose £105 million over three years (£35 million per season), with clubs that breach those rules risking a fine or points deduction. With Everton already having lost £89.1 million in the first year of the current three-year period, it means that the coming two years will mean increasingly stringent financial rules being imposed on the club to reduce the risk of further punishment, with only £15.9 million of allowed losses remaining over the next two years.
Much of this loss was driven by the club’s continued investment in the construction of its new Bramley Moore Dock stadium project.
The club spent £210.9 million on the project across 2022-23, a growth on the £154.4 million it spent the previous year, with costs spiraling.
Everton's new stadium was originally slated to cost at least £550 million, but that figure has increased to about £760 million. As of the end of the 2022-23 season, the club has put £449 million of funding into the stadium, indicating that the club’s financial woes may persist.
777 Partners, the prospective new owners of Everton, has already put $50 million into the club via loans earlier in 2024 purely as stadium funding. In total 777 has loaned the club as much as $180 million.
The investment group, which owns several global soccer clubs including Genoa from Italy’s top-tier Serie A, agreed a deal with current Everton owner Farhad Moshiri to purchase the club in January, however, 777 Partners is not guaranteed to pass the increasingly difficult regulatory approvals, otherwise known as the owners’ and directors’ test.
777 has supposedly recently passed the test, but it came after months of scrutiny and speculation relating to allegedly fraudulent activities conducted by the group and its members in the past.
Josh Wander, 777’s co-founder, holds a 2003 conviction for drug trafficking and questions remain about further alleged fraud and racketeering.
