Assets
For most clubs the assets are made up of the ground and the like, these are known as fixed assets. There are also the players, these are known as intangible assets. The worth of a player can go up or down and is less dependable than a fixed asset of land, or a building. The assets are shown below.
Hull are in a very different position to every other team that has been looked at on this site.
Generally these other teams all own their grounds and have a big asset in their books to reflect this. Hull use the KC Stadium and it was built by the council and his owned by them. This means that Hull look to have little in the way of fixed assets, at £416k. By comparison West Ham have fixed assets of £87m.
This situation is double-edged. It is great that the council have the cost of maintaining the ground and the club therefore have reduced costs. On the flip side if the club try and borrow money they do not have a big asset to borrow against. This may have helped the club stay out of debt as they had been unable to borrow in the mad way of some other teams. The 2007 figure was £2.3m, the 2008 was £6.8m and the 2009 with £19.7m.
There is a note in the accounts regarding the value of the players. The books say £19.7m but the board thinks the players are actually worth £35m. It is not the job of this site to try an put a value on players, that is for you to do. The best place to go to get a feel for how much player fees reduce on relegation is to look at Newcastle. Other teams know you are desperate and make offers they know you can't refuse.
As well as fixed assets there are things that are called current assets.
Current assets covers money you could easily get your hands on. So this would be things like cash at the bank, or money owed to you that you expect to get in soon. On the opposite side of things is how much the club owes, its liabilities. If you take all the club assets and all the club liabilities you get another picture of how the club is doing.
In the case of Hull you can see in the graph below that if the club sold all their assets they would not have enough money to pay off all the people they owe money to. Hull's figures have not been bad, and there was clearly a step change in outlook in 2008. This was successful and Premier League football has followed. It is important that in the long run the club address this, and hopefully the PL revenue will help. The 2009 figure is better than the 2008 one, but it is still worryingly bad. At some point the 2008 gamble on promotion has to be paid for out of the extra Premiership money. In the first year only £1.5m was paid off, despite an extra £40m coming into the club. It is unlikely that the 2010 finances will be that much different. The implication is that the club will go down to the Championship with a huge financial burden on it.
