Parma F.C. - Ownership and Finances

Ownership and Finances

Since January 2007, the club has been majority-owned by Tommaso Ghirardi, owner of mechanics firm La Leonessa S.p.A.. Enrico Bondi had previously been put in charge of selling the club after parent company Parmalat's financial crisis and sold it to Ghirardi for less than €3M. The club is a limited liability company that is wholly owned by parent company Eventi Sportivi S.p.A.. Ghirardi owns roughly 70% of Eventi Sportivi; Alberto Rossi and Alberto Volpi each bought 5% of Eventi Sportivi on 21 July 2011 for a combined €7.5M to reduce Ghirardi's ownership to that approximate figure. Other shareholders are Vice-President Diego Penocchio (who has a 5% personal shareholding and 5% through Ormis S.p.A., another mechanics company), Banca Monte Parma (less than 5%) and Marco Ferrari (5%). Ghirardi appoints five further directors, including Pietro Leonardi, to maintain a boardroom majority (six to five). In the first five years of Ghirardi's presidency (from January 2007 to January 2012), it was estimated his investment had reached €30M, alongside a further €13M in the club's parent company. The club is one of the members of the European Club Association, which was formed after the dissolution of the G-14, a smaller international group of Europe's most elite clubs of which Parma was not a part.

On 27 February 2012, the club published its financial statement for 2010–11, the year ending 30 June 2011. It reported an improvement in gross revenue to €83.1M (from €78.4M in 2009–10), of which player sales amounted to €37.2M (€34.7M in 2009–10). Costs stood at €84.4M, up from €72.6M. Post-tax profits rose to €700k from losses of €2.4M. The losses in 2008–09, the season spent in Serie B, were €9.9m and profits of €3m were recorded in 2005–06. Liabilities grew from €108.7M to €110.3M, although bank debts decreased from €12.5M to €8.3M, and net assets had grown from €12.8M to €28.9M. In 2009–10 non-transfer revenue was around €37M, figures that were largely unexceptional and give the club the 14th highest revenue in Serie A. This revenue (€43M in 2010–11), which also excludes gate receipts and television income given to visiting clubs and revenue from player loans, will ideally be evenly divided between commercial, broadcasting and matchday activity. At Parma, this is not the case, where the sectors make up 23%, 68% and 9%, respectively. Director Pietro Leonardi noted the profit made in January 2011 on player sales was enough to finally undo the economic damage that the 2008 relegation to Serie B caused.

To improve the financial standing of the club, Parma hopes to eventually buy the Stadio Ennio Tardini from the relevant municipal authority. In September 2012, La Gazzetta dello Sport reported the club had the fourteenth highest annual salary bill in Italian football, paying €21.2M to 25 players, although these reported figures are generally underestimates, as they only include the basic salaries of the first-team squad; the club reported the figure to be €38.1M for the previous season (89% of non-transfer revenue; UEFA recommends this to be below 70%). From the 2010–11 season, Serie A clubs have collective television rights rather than individually negotiated rights for the first time since 1998–99, mimicking the world's most commercially successful league: the Premier League. The domestic rights to broadcast live matches for 2011–13 were sold for €1.748bn to Sky Italia and RAI, among others, and MP & Silva bought the worldwide rights for €181.5M for 2010–12. These figures resulted in higher broadcasting revenues for Parma, with larger clubs suffering from the centralisation of the selling of rights, although clubs do not receive an equal share and Parma's support, recent and historical results, and the city's size, count against them in the assessment of exact shares.