Bloomin’ ’eck! Yorkshire post £7million loss

Yorkshire have reported a staggering £ 7.1million annual loss, despite hosting a lucrative Ashes Test match last year.

in his chairman’s statement, within the club’s annual accounts released yesterday, Colin Graves said while 2023 ‘should have been productive and profitable…in the event there was a huge trading loss’, and branded it ‘Yorkshire’s annus horribilis’.

in the finance report, Paul Cooke, Yorkshire’s acting finance director, wrote that a number of factors ‘including exceptional items and a writedown in the value of the stadium have contributed to an overall loss of £7.1m for the year’.

That figure incorporates a trading deficit of £2.8m plus a depreciation of £4.3m in the club’s assets — including the valuation of their headingley home and a forecast of future cashflows, including international matches allocated to Yorkshire up until the 2031 season — to £24.2m.

While england’s victory over Australia last July resulted in a surge in revenue year on year, from £14.1m in 2022 to £18.2m, and saw Yorkshire make a profit of £4.1m for a match that lasted only four of the five scheduled days, the balance sheet was pushed into the red by spiralling costs.

exceptional expenditure alone — including a compensation bill for the unlawful sacking of 16 members of staff during Lord Patel’s tenure as chair of the club — was logged at £1.9m.

A review of the club commissioned by Graves when he returned as the board’s figurehead earlier this year concluded an overspend in multiple areas of a business that is now saddled with around £23.5m of debt.

Change has already taken place within the club executive in 2024, with Darren Gough ending his £250,000 role as director of cricket last month and stephen Vaughan, the chief executive, understood to be working his notice period.

The accounts also showed Yorkshire had received some of their payments from the eCB ahead of schedule to aid cash flow, the trustees of the Graves Trusts had agreed in principle to extend the repayment date of the club’s secured loans from october 2024 to october 2025 and Graves himself had pledged £1m to cover costs for this season, with a promise to cover financial liabilities if additional funding was not obtained.