Collingwood have revealed an ambitious long-term plan to build their own stadium and have already explored options for a new ground as the club announced another year of multimillion-dollar profits.
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With limits on where and how profits can be spent on their players and football department, and with the club's newly expanded home facilities on the Yarra almost complete, the Magpies are canvassing options for further investment in the club. One possibility in the long term is to copy the big European soccer clubs that buttress their financial futures by owning their own stadiums.
Building a new home ground would doubtless strike significant difficulties with the AFL and MCC for the long-term contractual commitment with the MCG where Collingwood presently plays home games.
Collingwood announced a $2 million profit for this year, which came after a write-down of more than $3 million of the new expanded Westpac Centre for administration and football and for the community facilities. The club's underlying operating profit for the year was well in excess of $5 million. This year's profit included $1.3 million from the sale of the Beach Hotel, which was sold two years ago but finally resolved this year.
Chief executive Gary Pert said the club had adopted a similar philosophy to La Liga giants Barcelona FC on how to handle their financial strength and ongoing profits once all football and administration costs were covered.
"We are strategically committed that we will use the profits to keep the costs of membership and membership services down. We had a cost freeze on membership last year and a small increase this year, but nowhere near the increase in cost to us," he said.
"It is a Barcelona model. Basically, what Barcelona does is say, 'We are going to make big money out of sponsorships and generate great revenues from all our commercial deals and that is done to keep your membership costs down'."
However, Pert said consideration had already been given to options for investing in the club once the community centre was paid off and that owning their own stadium was one option.
"I know what that [next option for investment] is and it is substantial," he said. "We can't do it now because we have money committed there, but it potentially shifts what the club is once we do it."
When asked if building and owning a stadium was among the club's plans, Pert agreed it was a serious consideration.
"We would love to have our own stadium. And, no, it is not beyond the realm of possibility; we have looked at options," he said.
"That would be our ideal - to have our own stadium - and we have explored it. It's not in the short term but it would be our ideal though. I don't think [a return to] Victoria Park works ... it wouldn't give us the land and scope. I can't say where it would be, but you don't need to buy the land, there are so many joint-venture partners, private equity and stuff. It's not pie in the sky."
One issue the AFL have confronted following the ground rationalisation of the past few decades is that clubs have struggled to demonstrate their identity at grounds and to distinguish their "match-day experience" from other matches as all games - at least for Melbourne clubs - are played at the same two grounds. Geelong remains unique among Victorian teams in having their own stadium.
Last year, Collingwood declared a $16 million profit, but that included one-off grants from the government of more than $11 million for the redevelopment of the Westpac Centre and the construction of a community centre there and further write-downs.
Pert said the AFL's experiment with the fixture this year had financially hurt the club with the large number of Sunday games a problem and, in particular, the Carlton Sunday twilight fixture that was so unpopular the low attendance had cost the club about $750,000.
The club's football expenses were down $400,000 on 2013 and Pert said the club was budgeting to be down close to the soft cap on football department spending next year but was still likely to have to pay some level of "tax".
For the first time the club listed in the annual report the revenue-sharing and equalisation payments they make to the AFL, noting outgoings of $893,000 this year.
"People think revenue sharing starts next year, but that is the $893,000 from gate receipts that we gave to the AFL this year. Last year, it was $848,000," Pert said.
