Expenditures

I am currently managing Port Vale in 2016 playing in PL and in the Euro Cup. I am making loads of money, but my expenditures are very high as well. What is frustrating me is the amount of money being spent on "Others" and "Non-football costs". Together I spend £2m on this every month. This is ridiculous amounts I think, especially as these were very low while playing in other leagues.

I did a comparision with my brother playing as Swansea in PL in 2012. His costs are much lower than mine. I would love to know the differences between these teams, because its really frustrating to see money going away and not being able to understand where they are going. Its not like getting promoted to PL means a 400% increase in Non-football wages. These wages are almost as high as the football/staff wages. Not very realistic I guess?

Could someone please explain to me what these costs are linked to? Would love it if SI could comment as well.

Other costs are traveling maybe, especially if you play in Europe normally it takes lots of money for a 30+ people to travel, stay in hotels, eat, etc

Not to mention that footballers are sometimes ballerinas they want better and better treatment.

It is still way to high, even before playing in Europe I spent way to much. The insane increase when I got promoted is not easy to understand I think.

Do you get in the red from this?

I lose money in the PL with 300k wage budget and 23000 big stadium. Should not be losing due to TV money, but I am. It is just really frustrating because I do my best to stay healthy economically and my board/execs are ruining my plan. I know it it not my job to control these, but these costs are just way to high. £1m in wages for non-football staff every month! Greedy execs!

What were the exact figures you spent on player wages, staff wages and non-footballing costs last month?

£1m in wages for non-football staff every month! Greedy execs!

You mean coaches, scouts. If you need them than probably you have to keep paying them hefty money.

My advice if you don't want to sell players is to stick with your game and try to catch Champions League there you'll get more money that you can spend

Those costs are irritating as you have no control over them.

I've just added manager to Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, and Liverpool in my current game. It's currently March 2016 and they paid out a lot more then you did in the 2014/2015 season.

Chelsea

Non Footballing Costs: £35.5m

Other: £4.6m

Man Utd

Non Footballing Costs: £35.0m

Other: £6.6m

Arsenal

Non Footballing Costs: £39.0m

Other: £8.6m

Liverpool

Non Footballing Costs: £32.4m

Other: £6.2m

Looking at a random team, they were only paying £6m for each. So I'm not sure what exactly causes the Non Footballing costs to sky rocket but it effects all the top teams.

It's for all the carers for the non footballing staff that Port Vale employ.

Now this is getting ridiculous! £3,5m a month in "Non-footballing costs". Please SI, could you expand on this. Im spending the same amount on player wages. Dont think its realistic...

I agree, a bit more clarification on just what is incorporated in non football costs would be great. there is a demand for an explanation as this has been mentioned several times before.

Good to hear Im not the only one frustrated by this. With 22500 big stadium I'm not exactly making loads of money even though I'm doing really well

Can someone please elaborate on this...

Im paying 4.5 million a month in non footballing costs. In 1 season it went up from 1.5 million to 4.5 million. I havent got a clue what on at all. My staff wages are less then a million a month so where is it all going??? Its really crippling my club.

Welcome to the club guys. I had a finance thread made not too long ago and was wondering the same thing about the non-football costs. I managed to take West Brom to 4 consecutive CL titles and 3 consecutive EPL titles only to find that my club had become financially unstable. This was not due to player or staff wages, nor was it due to too much activity in the transfer market, but it was because of these mysterious non-football costs.

I know! At this rate I'm never gonna get enough money to build the new stadium my club really needs to progress. These bloody "non-footballing staff wages" at £40m a year is just silly. This just cant be right?

What I do at Rangers, is sell players for installments over 48 months. As much as possible, obviously. That way, I am bringing in extra per month than normal and it seems to calm my fluctuating finances down. If you sell a few players this way, you're creating yourself a new monthly income to try and combat the expenses.

I don't want to be a selling club but spending £1m a month on matchday expenses alone forces my hand until we can afford a new stadium to hopefully be more efficient than our very old Ibrox.

What I do at Rangers, is sell players for installments over 48 months. As much as possible, obviously. That way, I am bringing in extra per month than normal and it seems to calm my fluctuating finances down. If you sell a few players this way, you're creating yourself a new monthly income to try and combat the expenses.

I don't want to be a selling club but spending £1m a month on matchday expenses alone forces my hand until we can afford a new stadium to hopefully be more efficient than our very old Ibrox.

This along with TV Money and income from the Champions League is what keeps my head above water at the moment. Even if I get over 5 mill from players sales every month due to monthly payments it's still a balancing act to make a profit each month due to the non-football costs.

In October 2022 I lost almost £8 mill, and half of that comes from Non-football costs. (Granted I only made 2 mill on players sales that month.)

So far this season (22/23) I've spent £19 mill on non-football cost (I'm in November.)

Last season I spent £34 mill.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that and it's probably accurate. But I would like to know what I'm actually spending money on?

Non footballing costs are things such as office staff payments, programme printing, travelling and accommodation.

You may notice that bigger clubs (Chelsea, Utd etc), have a much larger non-football expenditure than say the likes of Hull and Wolves.

This is down to the fact that -

They probably need more office staff, thus increasing the amount they spend on their wages.

They get bigger attendances, therefore needing to print more programmes and thereby increasing expenditure.

They tend to travel via plane and stay in hotels the night before a game which means that it costs them more to travel, and because their players expect high standards of accommodation they have to pay out for better hotels.

I think anyway

The "other" cost is supposed to cover travel and "other" costs. If you keep you mouse over "non-footballing costs" it says: Non-player wages. And it would anyway be way to high. It is definately linked to your wage for players and staff which I think is wrong. £40m a year....why!!

The "other" cost is supposed to cover travel and "other" costs. If you keep you mouse over "non-footballing costs" it says: Non-player wages. And it would anyway be way to high. It is definately linked to your wage for players and staff which I think is wrong. £40m a year....why!!

'cause your directors, secretary, washing personel and so on are some greedy bastards...

I'm sure that scouting costs come under that heading. Sending 13+ scouts out around the world is damn expensive in travel and hotel costs. It's why clubs in general employ scouts that live in South America or Asia rather then the way FM does it.

I wanna decide myself if my scouts are gonna stay at 5* hotels or at hostels (I would choose this option)

I'm sure that scouting costs come under that heading. Sending 13+ scouts out around the world is damn expensive in travel and hotel costs. It's why clubs in general employ scouts that live in South America or Asia rather then the way FM does it.

You can build small hotels all around the world with that money there must be a better explanation.

Manchester United had to sell Ronaldo for 90m, you think they are willing to spend half of it back in a year just for scouting.

I wonder why SI does not give insight on these kind of obvious questions

Well it's not all scouting costs, a certain amount is. The only real problem is that there is no breakdown of the expenditure so you can't see if it is something you can do anything about. There are probably a hundred different things included in that category and most you can't do anything about so they didn't think it was important giving you the exact info.

I would doubt any of it is scouting costs. On my West Brom save I mentioned above I have a lackluster scouting network (only 2 out and about iirc) and my NFC are still through the roof. The programmes printed out for match day, you'd think the gate receipts would far outweigh this expenditure.

As for traveling accommodations, I could see this costing a fairly high amount of money but I just don't see it costing £35-40m a season when coupled with other expenses. On top of that my West Brom team's non-football costs was relatively low in my first season qualifying for the Champs. League, which means I was playing all the same competitions as the other top Prem. clubs, but my costs were most likely much less.

I would love to know what the costs are. At least that way it's not playing on my mind that I might be able to bring them down.

maybe its some dodgy expense's claim forms

No wonder my chairman "Loves the club". In it for the money I think!

No wonder my chairman "Loves the club". In it for the money I think!

LOL... yeah... and when there is no money... it will change to "Leave the club" LOL...

currently at valencia, champs league every year, scouts literally everywhere, 4.5 million player wages and 1 million staff wages a month but only 900,000 non-football costs per month, not sure how i've kept them low but it sounds like the EPL may be the problem.

thought letting you know this might help decipher what is causing the high costs

I am losing on average 5m a month mostly due to non-footballing costs of 4m a month and the fact my stadium is only 25,000.

i totally agree that SI needs to specify these non-footballing costs. So we can prevent/save in certain areas, being Arsenal winning almost every game it is still very tough to balance the economy looking at month to month.