Excellent set of results for Widnes.

Shows what can be achieved in the lower leagues with a club run professionally.

A turnover of £2.5 million with no Sky money to speak of along with almost no away support turning up at their ground shows that they must be doing a lot off the field.

Add in £1.3 million sky money along with increased gate money and sponsorships, and they would probably turnover £4 - £5 million in SL.

As for the Widnes speccies saying they would be bigger than Saints. I think he is living on cloud cookoo land. Even when Widnes had Offiah and co in the late 1980's and Saints were crap, we still had more fans.

Wire however is a different proposition. They are at present perhaps in the greatest period of their clubs history, playing in a modern stadium, yet are still getting lower crowds than Saints.

rfl will have a say still
they will give quins £££

Come on Chris , I know your going into SL next march ,but please don't turn into SL fans before you even get the nod

You are not stupid enough to believe that a club can maintain roughly the same attendances , sponsorship and turnover and yet make a 2 million turnaround in it's profits , it works out at 80 percent of it,s turnover , those would be the most incredible figures ever posted in pro sport , or even any business for that matter

last year I was defending your figures for the million loss to fans who were suggesting a problem , this now explains those figures

Clever , but ever so naughty as well , Mr O Connor is learning fast how to bull ----

I agree that it's unlikely we'll ever beat Saints and we have in fact beaten Wire on numerous occasions including the last period we were in Super League.

However, the last year we were in Super League we finished 11th with crowds of almost 7k. Saints got 3k more despite coming top of the league....

With a new ground, we wouldn't get close.

At worst it is still breaking even based on those and we still easily beat the £1m turnover.

Being debt free is the biggest bonus for mine.

Spot on Max , as I said , last year I was defending your figures on the loss , but now it all becomes clear

Widnes will turn over just over a million on their figures , and should be close to breaking even , they are the only club in the Championships in any sort of shape to move up into SL by franchise

the maths is not all that hard to believe

2008, turnover 900,000 loss of roughly 1,000,000, means in 2008 we had expenses of 1.9 million
2009 turnover 2,500,000 profit of roughly 1,000,000 means in 2009 we had expenses of 1.5 million

so we cut costs by 400k, and increased revenue by 1.6 million, this would have been helped by the nrc final win, the set up of the lottery, the opening of the club shop and o'neill deals.

takes alot of hard work but the numbers are not the sort that are out of reach

The £million pound debt was down to the massive restructuring the club went through when SOC took over. In addition, the club also paid several debts off from the old regime.

Widnes don’t just rely on their crowds. They have several new sponsorships this season, the shop is doing a roaring trade, the ‘Dream Ticket’ lottery, Viqi and club fundraisers are all getting stronger.

SOC had to hit the ground running when he took over the club. He has now had another year to fine-tune the business.

Perhaps you could put forward some sort of reasonable argument for you accusations. I’m not asking for a link, just a f*****g argument!

or you essentially borrow a million off the club in year one and then pay it
back in year two , all on paper of course

No way have you increased your turnover by 160 percent , even if you had made the Challenge cup final and doubled your attendances you wouldn't,t have done that

i'm sorry, but could you point out exactly which financial reporting standard or international reporting standard allows a company to treat borrowing as turnover? i'll give you a clue, its frs 5

or any accountant on the planet who would even consider allowing the practice given the legal implications involved?

I agree, it all looks very dubious.

there's no way a lottery scheme and a club shop has increased turnover that much.

Plus these are pre-tax profits. If SOC is fiddling the books he is robbing himself of a lot of money that will have to be handed over to the taxman from that £1million profit.

Not on its own no, but that is not all there is to increase profits.

How much are our sponsors putting in?

actually, given the losses last year, its likely that we had large taxable losses brought forward to ofset against this years profit. so tax would be less than you would expect