Leicester City accounts reveal £20m loss

Leicester city has ramped up investment in its bid to be one of the biggest teams in English football - declaring a £20m pre-tax loss as a result.

The club, currently third in the league, five points clear of chasers Chelsea, has revealed the extent of the money it is ploughing into its playing squad, its management, the new training ground near Loughborough – and the plans to add thousands more seats to the King Power Stadium.

Newly published accounts show club revenues were up £20 million last season, reaching £178.4 million.

Leicester made a pre-tax loss of £20 million for the year though – which compares to the £92.5 million profit it made two years earlier when reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League generated £70 million.
The multi-million pound loss was put down to factors such as the £8.8 million it spent bringing Brendan Rodgers and his backroom staff to the club from Celtic in February 2019, and paying off outgoing manager Claude Puel.

Leicester also reported a £30.5 million increase in staff costs for the year – due to investment in the squad and management team.
On top of that, the club put more than £13 million into the cost of the new training ground at Seagrave, near Loughborough, during the period.

The new £100 million training ground facility – designed and built by the same people who put up the new Spurs training ground – is expected to be ready for pre-season training in four month's time.

And since May, the club has invested a further £41 million in the new training ground – backed by a six-year loan from parent company King Power lnternational – as well as £2.6 million on drawing up its plans to expand the King Power Stadium from its 32,000 capacity to more than 40,000 seats.

Despite the losses, Leicestershire Live has been told LCFC are not in danger of breaching UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules, designed to ensure clubs don’t overspend on players.

And should City – currently third in the league, five points clear of Chelsea – qualify to play in the Champions League next season, they will get at least £15 million, which could be up to £50 million if they were to make the quarter finals.

Revenues from reaching the Europa League would be a lot less