Wolves bank £5.8m profit as club boosted by Benik Afobe sale and final parachute payment
Wolves made a £5.8million profit last season, the club have announced.
The figure was boosted by the £10m sale of Benik Afobe to Bournemouth, while Wolves also received their final parachute payment of £10.8m after relegation from the Premier League in 2012.
The season was the last overseen by previous owner Steve Morgan before he sold the club to Fosun for £30m. He surprisingly put the club up for sale in September 2015 and the sale was completed 10 months later. The club's profit has risen from the 2014/15 season in which they made £730,000. Richard Stearman was sold to Fulham for £2m as Wolves made a £9.9m profit from their transfer activities, also selling Michael Jacobs to Wigan and Scott Golbourne to Bristol City.
Money was spent on signing Joe Mason, Conor Coady, Michal Zyro, Jed Wallace, Mike Williamson and Nathan Byrne. Gate receipts were £5.3m – down from £5.6m – with Molineux's average attendance having dropped to 20,157, but this was offset by an increase in commercial income of £200,000.
And the wage bill of the whole club increased from £17.7m to £18.2m. Turnover rose almost £1m to £27.25m, mostly due to more television money and an increase in 'match facility fees', while the club's net assets total £55m. Wolves are expected to make a much bigger loss for the current season, to be revealed in a year's time. Fosun have spent an estimated £27m on transfer fees alone, while there have been no big player sales and Wolves will have no Premier League parachute payment to fall back on.
Wolves said in a statement: "The new owners, Fosun Group, stated their aim to establish the club in the Premier League and they invested in new players at the beginning of the 2016/17 season whilst continuing to encourage the work of the club's academy. The development of the facilities at the club's Compton Park training ground continued... floodlights were installed and pitch improvements made."
