Scottish Premiership side Celtic’s "historic second successive domestic treble-winning season" helped the club post the highest financial revenue it has ever achieved, according to Greig Cameron of the LONDON TIMES. Results sent to the London Stock Exchange showed that the club brought in £101.6M ($135M) of revenue in the 12-month period to the end of June, a 12% increase on the previous financial year. Within that, football and stadium operations were up 16% to £43.6M ($57.8M), commercial and multimedia grew 11% to £40.3M ($53.5M) and merchandising increased by 7% to £17.7M ($23.5M). A gain of £16.5M ($21.2M) on player sales, compared with £2.3M the previous year, helped to lift pre-tax profit 151% to £17.3M ($23M). Celtic Chair Ian Bankier said that the "bumper" financial results reflected a "year in which everything went well." Bankier pointed to Celtic's £27M ($35.8M) of cash reserves as evidence of a "self-sustaining" financial model that would allow the board to manage the "disappointment" of having failed to make the Champions League group phase this season (LONDON TIMES, 9/20). The BBC reported player acquisitions of £16.6M ($22M) -- including the club's record purchase of Odsonne Edouard -- were offset by sales of £16.5M. That figure included the departures of Stuart Armstrong and Erik Sviatchenko and the receipt of a 10% sell-on fee after Virgil van Dijk's £75M ($99.6M) move from EPL side Southampton to Liverpool in January (BBC, 9/19).
