Chelsea announce £18.4 million profit for the 2013/14 season

Chelsea FC have announced on Thursday that for the second time in the past three seasons, they've recorded an annual profit. They showed a small bit of profit after the double-winning season for 2011/12, and grew that figure to £18.4 million for the 2013/14 campaign. The club also announced a record turnover of £319.8 million.

Chairman Bruce Buck was obviously pleased with the figures, and had the following to say on the matter:

‘The club is naturally pleased to record a significant profit for 2013/14. By reaching the Champions League semi-final and maintaining a challenge in the Premier League until the final week of the season we demonstrated that, while improving our financial figures, we remained competitive in football’s toughest club competitions.'

‘We financed player purchases from sales as the squad for this current season was shaped, and our philosophy since Mr Abramovich acquired the club in 2003 has been to build upon success on the pitch. That is evident in the partnerships we signed and in our fanbase growth which contributed to the new record turnover figure and the profit made. We have done all of this at the same time as creating one of the world’s leading football community programmes through the Chelsea Foundation.'

‘Going forward, we have ambitious plans to build a pioneering global commercial programme, partnering with innovative and market-leading organisations from around the world. In the era of FFP, we must progress commercially to continue the circle of success to invest in the team and get results.’

In the very near future, Jake will take a look at the specifics of the announcement and get into enormous amounts of detail. For the moment, however, it's simply nice to know that Chelsea continue to be in no trouble at all with Financial Fair Play, and that there should be no enforced restrictions at all on their spending for the foreseeable future. Hooray!