PORT ADELAIDE chief executive Matthew Richardson says the club is on track to be debt free ahead of its five-year goal and aiming to be “financially powerful”, and has its members and partners to thank.
The club declared on Tuesday that it had posted a record operating profit of $4,209,451 for the financial year ending 31 October 2021.
This result highlights the strength of the club’s current position and the positive momentum that continues to build on the back of the Chasing Greatness strategic agenda.
Part of that strategic agenda released last year was for the club to be debt free within five years.
During a press conference after announcing the financial result, Mr Richardson explained the club was tracking well to achieve that particular goal.
“If we can continue to perform as we are performing at the moment, we’ll exceed that expectation,” Mr Richardson said.
“(This) is a really significant result for our club and first and foremost I’d like to thank our members, our partners and our stakeholders for the way that they’ve really got in and backed the club over the last couple of years.
“It really has been extraordinary and we can’t thank them enough.”
Port Adelaide entered 2021 with a conservative approach given the uncertainty surrounding how the global pandemic would impact its business.
Mr Richardson said its financial result came despite having the Round 19 home game against Collingwood shifted to Melbourne.
He put the strong outcome down to the club’s record membership, strong retail sales and its incredible partner network.
“The result is a really strong reflection of the position the club is in and the momentum we’re building here at Port Adelaide,” Mr Richardson explained.
“In 2022 we’ve got a lot to be excited about. We’ve got an AFL team with really high expectations, we’re entering the AFLW competition later in the year and we’re really excited about the $30m transformation that we’re undertaking here at Alberton Oval and can’t wait to, in just a couple of months, welcome our people back to their brand-new social club, which will really become the heartbeat of this precinct.
“We are absolutely hoping for 100 per-cent capacity at Adelaide Oval by the time we get back to Round 1 in a few weeks’ time and we’re certainly more bullish about the year ahead.
“We’re investing, we’re in a growth phase, we’ve got AFLW coming on board so there are new people starting, the girls will be here by the middle of the year and we’ve got significant redevelopment which will require people like 20 new staff at the new social club facility and that sort of thing.
“We went into 2021 conservatively, we did put our people under pressure but we’ve got some new roles coming on in order to ease some of that pressure and optimise the growth opportunities that we’ve got as a footy club.”
With plenty to be excited about going on around Alberton, the club is now looking beyond simply being debt free Mr Richardson said.
“We re-engineered our business a couple of years ago – we narrowed our focus – and our ambition is absolutely to build a financially powerful Port Adelaide so we’ve moved beyond being sustainable or even debt free,” he said.
“The importance of building assets that are going to generate revenue for the club going forward – the social club facility is a really good example of that as a wholly owned asset that is going to generate significant revenue for the club outside of our core business.
“Really importantly we’re going to be able to invest 100 per-cent in our core business, which is footy, and then through the ongoing support of our stakeholders – our members and our partners – our business model will be such that we’ll be able to continue to pay down debt prudently and importantly look to start investing in building a financially powerful Port Adelaide.”
Further information about the club’s financial result will be made available around the Port Adelaide Football Club’s Annual General Meeting this Friday 18 February at 6.00pm.
The Annual General Meeting will be streamed live on the club’s website and will include presentations from Chairman David Koch and CEO Matthew Richardson and interviews with Senior Coach Ken Hinkley and Head of AFLW Juliet Haslam.
