Liverpool published their financial results for the 2020/21 season on Friday.
A period that included almost a full season behind closed doors due to the pandemic, save for 10,000 fans who were admitted to the final game of the 2020/21 campaign against Crystal Palace at Anfield, the Reds posted a loss and the results, if arriving during normal times, would have been viewed with some disappointment.
But, of course, they weren't normal times and the impact of the pandemic has sent shockwaves through European football these past two years.
A £4.8m loss before tax, with commercial revenues rising slightly and overall revenue remaining pretty static with just a £3m reduction, Liverpool have been one of the continent's most resilient clubs when it comes to managing their way through the chaos and uncertainty of COVID-19.
That £4.8m loss arrives on the back of a £46m pre-tax loss that was posted for 2019/20, taking the overall loss during the pandemic to £50.8m.
Liverpool's more focused approach to running a sustainable business to prop up success on the field under owners Fenway Sports Group has meant that the heavy losses that have occurred elsewhere in the Premier League and across Europe have not been felt so keenly at Anfield.
The combined losses, so far, of the Premier League's 'big six', the clubs who were agitating to form a new European Super League last year, stands at £775m over the two pandemic-affected seasons. That figure comes after Arsenal posted their financial results for 2020/21 on Monday, their losses leaping from £54m in 2019/20 to £124m for 2020/21.
Of that £775m figure Liverpool equate for just 6.5 per cent of the losses over the last two years from the clubs who had been involved in the ESL plot. That period also covers a time when Liverpool won the Premier League, finished third in the League and made the last eight of the Champions League.
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Champions League football has never been more lucrative to Liverpool and their rivals, and with the next cycle of media rights for European football's most prominent knockout competition, including rights for the Europa League and Europa Conference League, of £12.5bn, as well as the 2024 'Swiss Model' reform to the competition that will change the format and increase the number of games, that reliance is only set to increase.
Like Liverpool, Arsenal are under US ownership, with Stan Kroenke having held a majority stake in the Gunners since 2011.
Like FSG, the Kroenke Group has sporting interests on both sides of the pond, with Kroenke owning the Los Angeles Rams NFL team, the Denver Nuggets NBA franchise and the Colorado Rapids MLS team, among others. FSG have the Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Penguins and RFK Racing among their sporting empire.
And while the value of Kroenke's empire places him second in the world's biggest sporting empires, with FSG just behind in third, how the Liverpool owners have managed their way through the pandemic has helped increase the value of the Reds and maintain their success on the pitch.
For Arsenal they remain stuck on a hamster wheel that they have been on for some time, having not made an appearance in the Champions League since 2016/17 and having burned through a lot of transfer funds for precious little reward.
The lack of Champions League football for the past five years has hurt Arsenal badly. That, allied with investment into the first team in a bid to close that gap that hasn't worked has meant that the club were not in the best of places to deal with the impact of the pandemic, with the losses suffered reflecting that.
Liverpool have earned, through prize money, TV revenues and market pool, just over £300m from European football in the past five financial years. Arsenal, by comparison, have made £157.5m, some 52 per cent of the revenues that the Reds have raised.
The latest figures show that revenue growth over the past five years has been another factor in the widening gap between Liverpool and Arsenal, with the Reds having seen the biggest leap of all the Premier League clubs since 2016, with an increase of £185m (61 per cent) in revenues, while Arsenal have actually seen theirs shrink when compared with 2016, from £351m to £328 in 2021, a drop of £23m (seven per cent).
Liverpool's accounts saw them manage to hold steady with commercial revenues, making a modest £0.2m uplift on the previous year that had seen a £29m rise from 2019, to take them to £217.6m, but Arsenal's commercial revenues slumped £6m during the last financial year, falling to £136m for 2020/21.
With bonuses included for the Champions League success in 2019 seeing the wage bill inflated, Liverpool's wage bill dropped £11m for 2020/21 despite Premier League bonuses, new signings Diogo Jota and Thiago Alcantara and new deals for Virgil van Dijk, Fabinho and Trent Alexander-Arnold and others. In contrast, Arsenal's wage bill rose £13m to £238m.
That, in line with the reduction in turnover saw Arsenal pass UEFA's recommended 70 per cent wages to turnover threshold, standing at 73 per cent having previously been at 66 per cent for the previous financial year. Liverpool's wages to turnover ration stands at 64 per cent after the latest set of financials.
As with Liverpool, Arsenal's matchday revenue fell off a cliff with no fans in stadiums for the most part. The Gunners saw a £75m drop year on the year, a fall of 95 per cent, that gave them revenues of £4m compared to Liverpool's £3m.
Arsenal, who attributed £85m of their losses for 2020/21 directly to the pandemic's impact, have responded to their poor set of results by increasing season ticket prices by four per cent, a move that has not been welcomed but one that the club say is important to set them on a new path of sustainability, despite the fact it will raise a fairly meagre £3.8m through 2022/23.
In announcing the rise, a statement from the club said: "We recognise that no one welcomes price increases, and this decision has not been taken lightly.
"Ultimately in the face of continued rising costs, we need to continue to drive growth in all our revenue streams – including matchday – as part of our aim to return our finances to a break-even position in the medium term."
For FSG and Liverpool, they find themselves in a stronger position than most emerging from the pandemic, and at a time when they have picked up their first piece of silverware of the season and Jurgen Klopp's side are operating at the peak of their powers on the pitch.
