Finances and profit - one last question

I know these threads have been made before but I just need to ask this question so I don't waste time trying to rectify something that i can't.

Profit! Does anyone make a monthly profit in this game? Is it possible? I'm arsenal, half way through my fith season and despite a hugely improved rep (now worldwide) and despite keeping well within budgets, I still lose the same amount of money I did at the start of the game. At least 5m per month. Wages are 1.7m.

So is it actually possible to make a monthly profit or am I wasting my time worrying about it?

in general you will make a lot of money at the start and end of the season. the times in between you will find that you will lose money.

don't worry too much providing you start the next season at a reasonable level

Two things...

Firstly, Arsenal start with a fairly huge reputation. Even capping them out won't hugely increase revenue. We're one of the best known clubs in football already.

Secondly, £1.7 mil a week is a huge wage to be paying out. Try to keep it closer to 1 million a week. That way, according to your figures, you'll make a profit.

Beside all that though, how are you doing over a season? Season ticket revenue at the start of the year and prize/TV money at the end helps make up the majority of a club's profit usually.

Two things...

Firstly, Arsenal start with a fairly huge reputation. Even capping them out won't hugely increase revenue. We're one of the best known clubs in football already.

Secondly, £1.7 mil a week is a huge wage to be paying out. Try to keep it closer to 1 million a week. That way, according to your figures, you'll make a profit.

Beside all that though, how are you doing over a season? Season ticket revenue at the start of the year and prize/TV money at the end helps make up the majority of a club's profit usually.

well, I'm currently 46 games unbeaten in the league and 55 odd in all comps. I've won 4 leagues and a chmps league and various other cups. I've got two comercual feeders as well.

I'm just suprised I make the same losses as in the beggining. I expect I'm still living in the glory of fm2010 where I'd be creaming in the commercial by now.

I just wondered as I said op if people are making profit?

(also, I could reduce my wage bill but I'm loathe to get rid of anyone)

As underwater sunlight pointed out, the way the finances work mean that certain months are a lot more profitable than others, in particular end of season prize money.

I ignore monthly budgeting and pay a lot more attention to annual budgeting.

i rarely make profit during a season, but the trick is to make your money preseason and post season, either through season tickets, sales and prize money. I usually make a season profit but very rarely monthly.

I've made a monthly profit for the last 3 months of my 2nd season at Eastleigh (Oct, Nov, Dec) although it's only a few grand... will probably make a decent profit in January too as a lot of my squad are wanted by other clubs... (although I'd prefer to keep them)

Ok cheers for the feedback. I'll stop worrying bout it now I know what the crack is.

Well, I recently had a consortium take over the club and clear my debts which I was paying 1.7m for. In the last to months I've gone from losing a MINIMUM of 5m to making 500k ish profit. So I assume there must be other charges linked to the debt.

How much are the bonuses weekly? Wages of £1.7 million must come along with big bonuses.

How much are the bonuses weekly? Wages of £1.7 million must come along with big bonuses.

Oh yeah I got high bonuses and all dat. What I'm sayin now is cause the board have cleared my debt I'm making money each month even though the monthly repayments didn't amount to anywhere near what I was losing.

I think it must be an arsenal thing. I cant seem to make a profit, even keeping my wage around the £1million mark (bloody difficult)! Every time I make some savings the 'non-football' costs seem to rise and I never seem to make any more money.

It's not an arsenal thing... the financial model is weak at best.

I would actually expect Arsenal to have any issue with it being one of the big clubs. Usually smaller clubs do nothing but bleed money, the biggest reason is usually 'Other' expenses that is simply oppressive every month which leads to big losses over a season. If you can break even you are actually doing really well.

It's neither 'an Arsenal thing' nor the FM financial model. It's realism. If you read the football finance blogs and news (e.g. Guardian tends to be excellent) you'll see that not far short of 100% of football clubs run at a loss, from Barcelona to Bogwort Village Amateurs.

That's running at a loss because they buy players, facilities, etc.

I can't even keep the money on hand for my Colorado team to upgrade the training facilities, even though I'm making a profit from player deals, I'm well under the wage budget, and winning everything under the sun.

I can't do anything else to actually make money and I'm limiting my expenses as much as possible so I can try to buy the stadium and expand it, but even the months I have great income I still lose more.

So yeah they real teams are losing money because they do what I'm trying to do in-game, but I -can't- do it in-game because the financial model is terrible.

Do note that when comparing FM finances to real life, the 'profit' is different because IRL accrual accounting is used while in FM it seems to be more of a cash flow accounting approach. For example, in FM if you spend 50mil to upgrade your stadium you have an expense of 50mil and so your profit will go down by 50mil, while IRL this would not be an expense it would be an asset and so your profit will be unchanged.

Not really directly affecting the OP's post but just something for the few people who are comparing real life finances with FM finances in this thread to note.

There must be something wrong with the finances albecause as the post 2 above says, when I made more money in a month during the season I'd simply lose more so I still wouldn't make profit. One month I made 20odd mil and instead of forking out my usual 15mil I had to fork out 25mil. Thus still dropping 5!

Other and non football costs were massive that month for no good reason.

when i joined arsenal on a file i have i was burning money too, make sure you look closely at each individuals contracts as when i joined walcott was on some stupid appearance fee per game like 26k!! if we play 6 games a month thats near 150k just on him we have burnt!!! imagine with the rest too

I don't think 1.7mill is that extravagent for a club who's won 4 league titles and champions league cups in the last 5 yrs. Especially Arsenal who are now rich compared to what they were 5 years ago. Got to hand it to them, it was genius to build a new stadium and sell a player every year AND stay competitive

I think 1.7mil is extremely extravagant for any club. That is nearly as much as Man City are paying now, which is completely unsupportable without constant investment.

i am making a profit every single month. I went through the finances the old way, with pen and paper and a calculator, then worked out how much my 'actual' wage budget needs to be in order to profit each month (as wages is the thing you have most control over) My wage budget was set to 1.7k per week but i could only actually spend 1.3k to keep in profit, yes id still be in profit at the end of the year using the 1.7 but this way i profit all year and the payouts at the end are like a bonus