Latest BWFC Accounts - Year ended 30th June, 2020

boltonbonce wrote:
What a piss up that must have been. I hope you still had your trousers on by the time you reached the 18th.

I can't tell a lie, Boncey. My attempts to liven up the repartee with talk of goodwill and intellectual property was about as witty as it got. 

But he is a Rag so what can you expect? Still better than playing golf with Okocha, I'd wager.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:
I can't tell a lie, Boncey. My attempts to liven up the repartee with talk of goodwill and intellectual property was about as witty as it got. 

But he is a Rag so what can you expect? Still better than playing golf with Okocha, I'd wager.

I tried golf, Bob, and I couldn't get on with it. Mark Twain had it right.

Don't mind watching it, or reading P.G Wodehouse's golf stories, but I'll leave playing to others.

I do, however, admire golfers for their stoicism.

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Ten Bobsworth wrote:Paul Holliday's departure is interesting, Sluffy, but so was his arrival. The club was borassic when he was recruited from Lancashire County Cricket Club shortly after Ken Anderson took over as chairman so why make that leap and why was he recruited?

The only reason I've ever been able to come up with was that his recruitment was to counter the incidious propaganda of the BN and Marc Iles, a longstanding problem for the Wanderers Board.

But, in stark contrast to Ken Anderson who plainly couldn't stick him at any price, Paul soon seemed to become quite pally with Iles. It was, however, Paul that is believed to have written the chairman's notes that were so derided on LOV and other social media.

The EFL need a senior media mogul too but they are in a much stronger financial position to afford one than Bolton Wanderers has ever been. 

I don't expect we'll ever get the full story but good luck to him. It's bound to be interesting working for the EFL and I've no doubt the money won't be half-bad either.

P.S. What's all this about 'family time' again? Where have Paul Holliday and Andy Gartside been spending their time during the pandemic?

Add another recruitment change to that list!

Seems they need a new Hotel Manager now - I guess the previous has left?

JOB OPPORTUNITY - HEAD OF HOTEL & EVENT OPERATIONS

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I understood the last hotel manager had been working wonders, Sluffy, but PR being PR you never know quite what to believe, do you?

I see that Biggish Dave still hasn't answered Mounts Kipper's reasonable question on WW. I think Dave might be out of his depth on this one but at least he's not playing silly beggars or clutching at straws like Worthy on The Wanderer.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:I understood the last hotel manager had been working wonders, Sluffy, but PR being PR you never know quite what to believe, do you?

I see that Biggish Dave still hasn't answered Mounts Kipper's reasonable question on WW. I think Dave might be out of his depth on this one but at least he's not playing silly beggars or clutching at straws like Worthy on The Wanderer.

Me too about the lady manager of the hotel - fulsome praise from Sharon then next moment (seemingly?) her job is being advertised - no announcement that she's retired on gone on to better things or anything?

As for the good folk over on TW, I see personal abuse is being thrown at you 'prick', 'cunt', asking for you to be banned and for what, because they believe you to patronise them?

Is being patronising a bigger sin that outright personal abuse that they happily chuck at you?

Are words on the internet implying that you might be somewhat thick deserving of a ban yet someone calling you a cunt not???

Christ I'd rather be thought of as being extremely stupid by someone on the internet - and learning something beneficial from them, rather than be seen by my peers as a genius and know the square root of fuck all (but even that being more than their knowledge!).

It's social media when all said and done, if grown men don't want to read what you post then they don't have to read it, let alone take it to heart a hurl abuse at you.

Obviously I see things different to most - as one of the posters on TW pointed out - you are not popular on there, WW, or even by many/most on here too - but what exactly is your crime that they clearly see and I don't?

Have people really lost sight than sticks and stones may break your bones but words (on the internet) will never hurt you...?

Seems they can't take 'it' but are more than happy to dish it out doubly so.

And they think that's ok???

Seems to me the retaliatory abuse (cunt. prick) is miles out of proportion to some one thinking/saying they don't think you are that smart (in their opinion).

I mean so what?

Why should I care what someone I don't know on the internet thinks about me...???

I must be missing something with folk getting so angry and abusive over what quite frankly is fuck all.

What is the matter with folks these days???

Sir, that cunt Bobsworth has just called me a twerp!

Miss, that prick Bobsworth thinks I'm a bit thick!

I mean really...???

Grown men bitching about that...

ffs!!!

You can ignore them, Sluffy, or you can parody them. They don't like parody at all. They don't like it up 'em, you know.

Worthy's lost it, Sluffy, and I don't know whether to recommend an Anger Management course or a course on Cash Flow Statements for Beginners. I still haven't figured out where the £8.1million has actually gone nor would I know without putting a bit of forensic work in. I've a few ideas, mind you, but that's not quite the same thing. 

In the meantime a bit of Solomon Burke wouldn't go amiss.

Well I was a bit surprised when you mentioned previously you thought Worthy had something about him, I never saw anything in him but bile and hatred to Anderson, rather than a professional and dispassionate precis/explanation of the clubs financial accounts.

I note he's now called you a 'bell end' to his earlier 'cunt' and all because you asked him something that he really should have had more of a 'professional' clue about than most people.

I really don't understand people - would he call you a bell end and a cunt to your face in front of a load of people - and if he did, what do you think people would think of him doing so? - yet they don't hesitate to be abusive on social media - and their mates laugh and join in at times too!

It's almost being in a parallel universe or something where people can act and behave in a way they would certainly never dream to do in real life!

And what does it actual gain them - hello darling you are home, I've got something to tell you, I've just called someone I don't know on social media a 'cunt'!!!.

I don't know him (it maybe even a 'her' for all I know) from Adam (maybe even Eve).

All my internet friends all of whom I don't know (apart from one or two I do know but avoid them like the plague in real life) had a great laugh - and one even asked that we should ban him from our social media group!!!  We don't actually know the Admin or mods either other than their user names - but they'll have a tremendous laugh too when they read the thread!!!

I've been waiting for you to come home so I could tell a 'real' person what I've done - I bet you are so proud of me...

Yeah, I'm sure she would be too...

After all these years I still can't get used to grown men acting like this...

What has happened to everyone.

It's the internet ffs!

If someone doesn't like you or what you've posted so what?

Seriously, so what???

My real life is pretty boring but by God I've not slumped so low to get myself het up over if some random bloke I don't know or will ever meet rates me or not on the internet!

Some people out there really need to give their heads a good shake imo.

They really do!

I try to be optimistic, Sluffy. Its probably a mistake. Leopards don't change their spots and all that.

But its poor, really poor, depressingly poor. They say that ostriches bury their heads in the sand.
They don't. Only humans do that.

Nothing wrong in being optimistic at all Bob - but people do continue to often disappoint us.

It is what it is.

Plan for the worst and hope for the best they say.

I don't doubt Worthy and millions of others are actually good, kind and decent people away from social media it is just that on social media they seem to take that 'head' off and replace it with that of a keyboard warrior one instead - and act and behave in a manner they would never dream of in real life.

It's all a bit 'Lords of the Flies' mentality that most people seem to display on social media to my way of thinking - in that abuse and believing utter bollocks - and acting that way - seems to replace common sense and basic human civility and respect to others - who aren't in their tribe!

The thing is though with the Lord of the Flies, things revert back to normality in the end when they are rescued - but with social media it doesn't - in the sense that people may no longer be so abusive back in their real life's but they (or should I say many of them at least) take back with them in to their daily life the hogwash what they've read from social media and now fully believe is somehow true???

You're not going to get anywhere Bob in changing peoples minds about Eddie Davies (all a tax dodge/never had so much money to start with) and Ken Anderson (raped and pillaged the club) they have that fixed in their head and have no intention of changing it - despite actual facts to the contrary being available for them to see.

They are simply not interested in hard facts and figures, they are simply focussed on what goes on, on the pitch and nothing else matters to them - even after years of the clubs financial uncertainty nearly leading to its demise like neighbouring Bury!

(I know technically Bury still exists but you know what I mean).

We've got people posting on here about industrial scale sleaze by the Tory government - the bloke who posted it clearly believes it to be so - yet not one single case as yet been proven of such.

Not a single one.

Yet because he and tens of thousands of others have read it on social media he/they utterly believe it to be true irrespective that the facts actual shows that absolutely nothing as yet been proved to be the case.

Nothing, nada - yet he/they fully believe 'industrial scale sleaze' is happing based just on nothing more than what some people say on the internet!!!

This is the world we now live in Bob and the likes of you and I will never change it no matter how much we might try.

I'm happy to post up the facts for others to see on here and at least give those who might want to be better informed a chance to check things out for themselves but as in the Lord of the Flies most of them seem happy just to follow the 'influencers' rather than the 'facts'.

As they say - we get what we deserve.

I just want to chip in briefly on 'intellectual property' since I was able to do a little digging on what it might be. Let me be clear, I am NOT saying this is definitely what it entails at BWFC but it certainly does work this way at some football clubs and other commercial enterprises.

Intellectual property tends to be a catch all phrase for things that are not tangible but are owned by the individual or company involved. For example the BWFC badge is intellectual property as are the contents of things like the match programmes and compilation videos (eg Bolton Wanderers highlights and season round up DVD's etc). There is also an argument that our kit design is intellectual property and that the club's name is in and of itself intellectual property.

I still don't fully understand where the 10 million pound figure quoted comes from as I don't see how such things could be worth so much for a League One side but perhaps they form a part of it at least. Also has the i-follow revenue been included in this number or was it mentioned separately within the accounts?

Thanks for that Peter, you've made some good points.

Just my observation on your comment about i-follow revenue though - I would have thought that if all (most of the clubs anyway) where receiving income from i-follow, then they would record it in their accounts in a similar manner to each other - wouldn't you agree?

However Bob has looked at many clubs accounts for the same financial period and none of them are showing (or have ever shown) assets of intellectual property on their accounts.

It would seem somewhat out of step for us to do so, that being the case.

If you follow this logic on, then all the rest of the items you mention above, club logo, programme contents, match video's etc, would also be shown by all the other clubs for 'their' intellectual property in the way we have on our accounts - and they haven't.

One could argue that we are a 'phoenix' club - in the same way as MK Dons are not the same company as the old Wimbledon was - and it might be a 'new' concept we have employed that all the other clubs have never thought to do - but somehow I doubt it.

I-follow income I would imagine would be seen to be 'revenue' income and such would be shown (or included) in the trading account and not part of the capital assets of the club.

I'm not an accountant though and I might well be wrong but that is how I would view things based on my professional instincts - which admittedly are a number of years out of date now.

It will be interesting to hear Bob's views on your post as I can't seem to find any poster (several of whom claim to be professional accountants themselves) on any other forums show much if any interest on the recently published clubs accounts.

I would have thought they would have myself, either to ask of others what this sum of £10m (a third of the cost of buying the club, hotel and everything else) was, or indeed tell us what it is and why it is there and how it got there - and apparently cost the club £8m to acquire it from person or persons currently unknown???

How can you be both an accountant and an ardent BWFC supporter of many years standing and not show any interest of what the accounts say on how the club is doing financially???

I suspect many HAVE looked at the accounts and don't know the answers to this and rather keep quiet than show their ignorance?

For me I rather be seen to be not knowing and asking the questions to find out from others more knowledgeable than myself than remain silent (and non the wiser) on the matter.

I welcomed Peter's interest too, Sluffy, and he is generally on the right track except that the i-follow income is a trading receipt and included in the profit and loss account, not the balance sheet.
I think the reason that there is no Intellectual Property in any other clubs probably derives from the fact that FV have acquired the old business since tax rules changed in 2019.

The effect of the amended rules is that you can only claim a tax deduction for Goodwill if you've also bought something that qualifies as Intellectual Property. If you claim that some of the Goodwill is Intellectual Property you've made a start. Justifying the figure to HMRC might be another matter but the tax allowance is only beneficial when you start to make profit anyway.

There's another issue, in that it would be pushing it to claim that Goodwill lasted more than ten years. So if you say that Intellectual Property lasts fifty years you can reduce the amortisation hit to your P&L account. I'm not criticising FV for adopting this approach btw, I'm just explaining what I think lies behind it all.

Down the road at Forest Green, Dale Vince sold the Ecotricity name to Ecotricity and pocketed £3million. I'll have to check how it was dealt with in the accounts but I doubt it was called Intellectual Property.

For the last few years Ecotricity has been paying FGR c.£2.6million p.a. to have the Ecotricity name on its shirts and to advertise at The Innocent (til proved guilty) Stadium. Its all borrowed money, of course, including some of ours as taxpayers.

I'm just playing with numbers here, trying to make things add up in my mind.

My start point is that the accounts state there is £6m goodwill at the start of FV's ownership - and my understanding is that is basically the amount more than the total assets purchased are valued at - yes?

Ok the books say fixed (tangible) assets came to £12.5m - let's leave that there for now.

The amount FV appeared to have paid in total is £29.5m (if the blurry line in the hotel Administrators report is a confirmation as such - I don't know?).

If it is (?) then £29.5m - £6m = £23.5m

This being the case then the £12.5m of tangible assets shown plus the £10m of intellectual property (which no one seems to know what exactly that is, adds up to £22.5m.

£1m short of the supposed purchase price less £6m for 'goodwill'.

Now let us pretend this 'goodwill' is in fact the cost of the clubs losses during the period of Administration.

The club accounts show that to be £7.3m (p11 of 37).

The £22.5m plus the £7.3m = £29.8m - which is more or less what the blurry line total was.

Let us for argument sake say FV are 'claiming; they've 'paid' £8m (£7.3m plus the deficit for the hotel whilst in Administration (£350k ? - p5 of 29 Bolton Whites Hotel Ltd) to 'save' the club and thus all the intellectual property that comes with it.

That would I guess explain why they've 'paid' £8m 'for' the intellectual property but there being no note of what they've actually purchased (and from whom?) for that amount - and would also explain why the Administrators don't have a further £8m pounds available to them to pay the unsecured creditors (if it had been paid to them for that reason?

If you put all that together and they actually paid something like £29.5m for everything (? the blurry line amount?).

Then what the accounts state £6m goodwill, £10m intellectual property and £12.5m tangible assets kind of makes some sense when perhaps without this (shall we call it) 'sleight of hand' with the figures one might have expected to see the accounts to have shown something like perhaps £27m of tangible assets purchased and say a further £2.5m more in excess of the 'goods' due to the trading deficit during the Administration period.

The rearranging of the numbers under the various headings to make the tax position more favourable to the business - is simply what the accountants have done - the overall total being the same whichever way you slice it.


To kind of verify this (in my own mind at least), the assets in Administration had charges on them of £5.5m (PBP), £2.5m (Warburton), £3.5m unsecured creditors and a claimed £17.5m (EDT) which amounts to - £28.5m - which the Administrators had to deal with.

Again very similar to the amount paid(?) and the total for all the assets (£16m intangible, £12.5 tangible).

(The £5m for KA and £12.5m of EDT's claim were struck out by the Administrator - but certainly EDT believed it to be real!).

I know I've not put up an irrefutable case but it does in my mind kind of like gives some explanation of things, such as the 'missing' £8.1m purchase of intellectual property and broadly how the headline numbers kind of match, whichever way you report them.

Best I've got so far and more than happy to be put straight by others about all of this.



Just to clarify a bit as I seem to be saying the £8m trading loss is both counted as intellectual property AND goodwill - which of course is double counting it.

What I'm meaning is that on one hand FV have paid more for the combined assets because they had the trading debt to settle when the club was in Administration too.

They've done that by writing down their valuation of what they bought to be £12.5m for tangible assets (the stadium/hotel is only worth - on paper at least - what someone will pay for it - and FV says they value them at £12.5m)  they believe (or at least in my model above) that the trading loss of £8m under Administration equated to the purchase of intellectual property and that the remainder of what they paid amounted to an additional £2m worth of intellectual property with the rest being set against the goodwill category (£3.5m of which would be for settling the unsecured creditors).

Furthermore I guess - in a few years time they can seek a revaluation of the ground, hotel, etc and add back a 'windfall' of several millions more to the tangible assets - if they wished to do so?

I hope people can follow my logic on all of this!

And I'm not guaranteeing it isn't all without flaws either - just me thinking aloud really.

I will come back to you on this, Sluffy, when I have gone through the Administrators statements carefully. Be careful to avoid confusing the normal administrative costs of running the club and hotel with the costs related to the appointment of the two sets of Administrators. The former are reported to be £7.3m. The latter?
A key issue is the size of the debt. £30million and growing.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:I will come back to you on this, Sluffy, when I have gone through the Administrators statements carefully. Be careful to avoid confusing the normal administrative costs of running the club and hotel with the costs related to the appointment of the two sets of Administrators. The former are reported to be £7.3m. The latter?
A key issue is the size of the debt. £30million and growing.

Thanks Bob.

I said earlier in the thread about not understanding clearly what the Admin costs were meant to represent.

I know they get paid a fee to do their work, I also know the club and hotel traded at a loss during Administration and that both those costs and the fees would need to be settled by the ultimate purchaser.

I can't imagine the £7.3m total is for the Admins 'fees' for the club, so it must be trading losses whilst under Administration - the question is whether that also includes their 'fees' as well?

As for the hotel I understand the Admin 'fees' to be just over a million being an initial charge of £500k and a further one of £510k (or something similar iirc).

There is a charge for trading losses during Administration as far as I can tell in the sum of something like £300k  - but I thought that at least the first £500k of fees and the whole £300k of trading losses were discharged at the time of sale and settlement?

I could well be wrong though!

And yes the debt must be growing - I'm not got the skills to work out what it probably is now and grateful for your steer on that (and most everything else too!).

I still have no idea what FV, master plan is - I just hope they do have one!

Surely they must have mustn't they???

FV may be playing a 'long' game in which they are planning to try and restructure the club's debts down the line, say in about two years. By then we should be completely out of all lockdown restrictions and have at least one full season where all our revenue streams including fans at matches are both fully available and known. Once that's the case FV may (just MAY) be able to put a deal in front of whatever creditors remain in order to make the club at least nominally profitable on a day to day basis.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:FV may be playing a 'long' game in which they are planning to try and restructure the club's debts down the line, say in about two years. By then we should be completely out of all lockdown restrictions and have at least one full season where all our revenue streams including fans at matches are both fully available and known. Once that's the case FV may (just MAY) be able to put a deal in front of whatever creditors remain in order to make the club at least nominally profitable on a day to day basis.

I don't think the 'old' creditors are really an issue Peter in that EDT have already done a deal, Warburton is just waiting for some land to be sold off, the unsecured creditors are due for payment next month (and we get a 15 point penalty if they aren't paid) which only leaves PBP/Mike James and I don't think they are in a rush to get their money.

The bigger issue is who is is putting their hands in their pockets to cover the clubs continuing trading deficit, until it somehow becomes financially sustainable and how they expect to get their money back on an investment that now has a debt larger than the business's entire assets?

There probably is a long term plan - its just that I can't fathom out what it is and why Sharon and others want to put any future money of theirs at risk until we get to whatever the outcome of the plan actually is?

Maybe money is no object to her?

Who knows because I certainly don't!

Sluffy wrote:

I don't think the 'old' creditors are really an issue Peter in that EDT have already done a deal, Warburton is just waiting for some land to be sold off, the unsecured creditors are due for payment next month (and we get a 15 point penalty if they aren't paid) which only leaves PBP/Mike James and I don't think they are in a rush to get their money.

The bigger issue is who is is putting their hands in their pockets to cover the clubs continuing trading deficit, until it somehow becomes financially sustainable and how they expect to get their money back on an investment that now has a debt larger than the business's entire assets?

There probably is a long term plan - its just that I can't fathom out what it is and why Sharon and others want to put any future money of theirs at risk until we get to whatever the outcome of the plan actually is?

Maybe money is no object to her?

Who knows because I certainly don't!

I think Brett Warburton has wanted his money back for a long time, Sluffy, but he's been trapped. Same with PBP to some extent. MJ's also a Wanderers fan but there's a lot of PBP cash tied up doing sod all. 

80% of it isn't MJ's and it really makes no business sense to PBP except to hang on in there in the hope of getting your money, or some of it, out at some time. FV has already indicated that PBP would forego all the interest to get the money repaid.

Sue Davies has managed to get out at a further monumental loss but at least she is out and able to plan her future with some certainty. She'd have been amongst the super rich if Eddie hadn't been a Wanderers fan.

I'll do a debt analysis in due course but its a time-consuming exercise to go through all the Administrators Reports and see how they fit in to the recently released Annual Reports of the three FV companies. 

My instinct tells me that COVID money reduced the pressure on FV earlier this year but I'm still a long way from seeing any viable business plan. FV got lucky with the extraordinary turn round in form since January which has helped season ticket sales no end. Will they get lucky again? Who knows but I'm not seeing how BWFC can survive and repay its debts on League 1 income and the Championship's an even bigger money pit despite the extra income.

I thought the possible financial implications of this might interest you Bob?

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