Profits

The graph below shows the reported profits of Rangers.

As you can see these are actually losses, and generally huge losses. A target is to break even each year, before you took in to account the depreciation and the amortisation. The amortisation is explained here, the depreciation, shown here, can be viewed as the cost of the ground. The reason the board want to ignore these is that there's not much that can be done about them, in particular the ground costs.

The total losses over the last ten years are just over £161m. Clearly the only way the club has survived is through the amount of money pumped into it by its major shareholders.

The 2008 figures show a profit of £7.2m. This looks great. The concern must be that the profit comes purely from the sale of Alan Hutton. Rangers had a fantastic set of Cup runs, yet made no profit at all on them. If Hutton had not been sold there would have been a loss for the year. In the long run this must be a concern as there is no way the club can expect a Eufa Cup final place each year. Dropping out of Europe completely so early in the 2008-2009 season is a huge hit for the club finances. It has to be hoped that the player wages are driven by bonuses otherwise there may be some big losses reported for 2009.