CELTIC last night revealed bumper financial results, headlined by a huge £40.7million annual profit – a remarkable 600 per-cent increase on last year.
And the Hoops were helped on their way to those figures after bringing in big fees for key stars.
Josip Juranovic and Giorgos Giakoumakis both left the club in the January transfer window, with Celtic choosing to cash-in amid stalling contract talks with both players.
And Jota’s huge move to Saudi Arabia in the summer transfer window just gone also just managed to make it into last year’s financial figures, which are up to the year ending 30 June 2023.
The fees that have been widely reported for those players totals a combined income of £36.8million.
That’s with Jota leaving for £25m, Juranovic going to Union Berlin for £7.5m and Giakouamakis’ switch to Atlanta United netting £4.3m.
Given Celtic only paid a combined £11.5m for the three players (Jota £6.5m, with Juranovic and Giakoumakis each costing £2.5m) it’s an extremely healthy return on the face of things.
However, the financial figures reveal that Celtic have announced a £14.4million profit from player sales.
That’s considerably less than the figure of £25.3m that the simple sum of total transfer fees received minus the fees paid by Celtic for those players.
Part of that is likely to do with the fee Al-Ittihad paid for Jota.
This has, as mentioned, been widely reported as £25m – but SunSport understands the fee received wasn’t as high as that.
Something else to factor in is the fact Benfica were due a 30 per-cent cut of any profit made by Celtic on Jota due to a sell-on clause.
Therefore, that’s another huge chunk to take off of the player sale profits.
It’s also been reported that VVV-Venlo were due a 15 per-cent sell-on for Giakoumakis, with Legia Warsaw due 10 per-cent of the profits from Juranovic’s sale to the Bundesliga.
Combined, those would remove around another £770,000 from the overall profit.
It wasn’t just, of course, high profile player sales at Celtic.
The manager Ange Postecoglou moved on in the summer to take over at Tottenham Hotspur.
And the Hoops have revealed that the compensation received for the treble-winning boss contributed to a £13.5million intake that also included a business interruption insurance recovery relating to Covid-19.
Those figures aren’t broken down and have been combined in the financial report due to their one-off nature.
It was reported at the time of Postecoglou‘s exit that Spurs were set to part with £5million to make him their new manager.
All in all, it’s an extremely healthy outlook for Celtic who banked an incredible amount of cash.
Their revenue of £119.9m was a massive 35.8 per-cent increase on 2022’s figures.
The numbers also don’t include the money received for Carl Starfelt, whose £4.3million switch to Celta Vigo will be included in next year’s financial figures.
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