Town made an operating loss of £7.6 million in the Covid-impacted 2020/21 season, the club’s accounts have revealed.
The accounts cover the year to the end of June 2021, the final 10 months of Marcus Evans’s ownership and the first two under Gamechanger 20 Ltd.
The show the club make a £7.6 million operating loss, down from £8.6 million in the previous season.
Turnover was down from £10.6 million to £8.1 million, while revenue was down £2.5 million.
With fans only present at two matches and then in a restricted crowd of 2,000, ticket revenue was down from £3.9 million the previous year to just £68,000. Average league attendance was just 174 having been 19,549 in 2019/20.
Total losses were down from £101 million to £9 million following Evans’s write-off of £96 million of debt as part of the takeover deal.
The group balance sheet shows a positive balance of £3.5 million compared with the negative £91.5 million the previous year.
The accounts show that Town received £1.5 million in Coronavirus job retention scheme grants with a number of employees, including some players, having been put on furlough during the pandemic. The club also received a Covid insurance payment of £2.5 million.
Season ticket holders received compensation of £2.6 million, while £207,000 from season ticket sales were donated back to the club.
The wage bill was £13.9 million - it had been £12.9 million in 2019/20 - with the club paying out £166 in wages for every £100 of income.
The Blues paid £764,000 for players while making sales of £2.26 million during the period covered. The latter will include the sale of Andre Dozzell to QPR among other deals, while the fees for Wes Burns, Vaclav Hladky and Rekeem Harper will be included in the former.
Since the period covered, the accounts state that the club has made player acquisitions totalling £2.85 million. With the £764,000 paid out in fees to June 2021, the Blues paid a total of £3.6 million during last summer's spending spree, which saw 19 players come into the club, and further deals in January.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire tweeted his brief assessment of Town’s accounts.