When a player leaves Celtic the club may make a profit on the deal. If the player is sold for more than their book value it is a profit, for less a loss.
The graph below shows that recently there is hardly any profit or loss made. There were some big profits made in 2001 when Viduka was sold, and 98 when there were a few sales including Di Canio.
Teams like Hibs live off nurturing and selling on young players which makes them instant profits. Celtic have not generally sold off young players, and have also kept players to the end of their contracts and got little when selling them on.
The club put the huge figure in 2007 down the financial strength of clubs in England and specifically the sales of Petrov, Maloney, Pearson, Varga and Wallace.
