Laois GAA release 2020 accounts and record smaller than expected deficit

Laois GAA have recorded a loss of 10,594 euro for 2020. They circulate the full list of accounts, audited by Mazars, to the clubs on Friday and their bottom line figure is far better than they had envisaged during the year.

There were times during the year when figures of around 200,000 were been thrown out as a potential deficit but coming in 190,000 better off is something that they will be delighted with.

However, it is still a loss of 175,000 euro when you compare it to the surplus they made in 2019 when they cleared just under 165,000 euro.

Government funding and grants along with the hugely successful streaming of their senior club championship games are the main reasons for the hole being plugged to that degree.

While Laois haven't received the 40,000 euro hurling grant from Croke Park like they did in 2019, they did receive just over 27,000 in funding from the Government and over 80,000 from Sport Ireland.

The live streaming service proved a massive success. It was a shot in the dark for them at the start of the year and while they might have started out just hoping it wouldn't cost them any money, the service took in just over 70,000 in subscriptions while having an outlay of 15,000 euro, amounting to a 55,000 euro profit.

Income and expenditure is broken down into the County Committee (day to day running) and O'Moore Park sections in the accounts.

Before depreciation is added at the end of the accounts, the County committee actually made a surplus of 36,000 euro but it was in the O'Moore Park end of things that the figure dropped.

The County Committee account shows an income of 922,995 euro with an expenditure of 886,448 euro while the O'Moore Account showed an income of 66,823 euro and a spend of 107,306 euro.

There was a big drop in the gate receipts in O'Moore Park due to the fact that there were very little games there this year, while for most of the games that were there, there were no paying patrons allowed.

Gate receipts fell from 345,000 to 146,000 euro.

When both accounts are added together, there was a total income for Laois GAA of 989,818 euro while the combined expenditure of 993,754 euro left them with a small surplus before Amortisation of Capital Grant and depreciation were added to give an overall of just over 10,000 as mentioned in the first paragraph above.

Income from Leinster and Central Council fell over 300,000 to 182,000 euro while commercial income fell the bones of 60,000 to a figure of 146,882 euro for 2020.

The preparation of County teams is always a hot topic and the figure for preparing the hurling and football inter county teams from minor to senior fell from 813,345 in 2019 to 511,942 euro for 2020.

That figure was always going to be lower than 2019 given the Covid-19 interruptions and the shortened season.

The U20 hurlers and Minor footballers are still in the championship and are expected to get back to action in December.

The total breakdown on the cost of preparing the County teams were as follows; 

Senior hurlers - 194,196 euro

Senior footballer - 206,914 euro

Minor hurlers - 21,699 euro

Minor footballers - 20,671 euro

U20 footballers - 35,295 euro

U20 Hurlers - 12,262 euro

(Note: A figure of 1,771 euro for footballs and 5,846 euro for sliothers are included in the 511,942 figure but not included in the broken down figures as there was no set amount specified for each individual team)

For full reports on the financial figures and the thoughts of Chairman Peter O'Neill, see Tuesday's Leinster Express

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