Capital Football suffer massive loss with $1 million turnaround

It's potentially put the Throsby Home of Football at risk after wiping out almost a third of their cash reserves.

Both new chief executive Ivan Slavich and chairman Angelo Konstantinou told The Canberra Times they were shocked by the loss, which saw a turnaround of almost $1 million from 2021 - where Capital Football recorded a $116,000 profit.

It occurred during former interim chief executive Chris Gardiner's tenure.

While total revenue went up from $4 million to $4.4 million - and registrations went up as well - expenses skyrocketed from about $4 million to $5.3 million.

It's believed that's largely due to the increasing costs of running A-League Women team Canberra United, which was rumoured to have lost up to $600,000 last year.

Slavich declined to confirm that figure, which he said hadn't been disclosed in the annual report and was just conjecture.

But whatever the actual loss was it effectively meant parents and players were heavily subsidising Canberra United.

Capital Football and Football Australia charged premier league players a combined registration of $255 this year.

On top of that clubs also have to charge players for referees ($500) and ground hire ($600), meaning it can cost in excess of $2000 to play once other costs like uniforms were taken into account.

Slavich said the costs of running an ALW team had increased through higher minimum wages, as well as increased minimum standards for travel and accommodation.

But part of the reason he was hired at the start of this year was to use his corporate IQ to attract greater sponsorship, which he's already done.

Slavich vowed there was no way there would be a repeat of the big loss under his watch, which started in February.

"To be honest it was quite a big shock to me as well that on a relatively small turnover there was such a substantial loss," he said.

"There just seemed to be a degree of spending that was not really required.

"Just spending too much money, but also still recovering from COVID was a factor.

"Another major factor was the cost of running an elite A-league Women's team has gone up quite substantially.

"As a CEO I can tell you that there's no way that result's going to be repeated in 2023 under my watch. That ain't happening."

Slavich said the Australian Sports Commission's risk assessment matrix still rated Capital Football as "low risk" - due to their cash reserves of $2.1 million.

That's meant to be going towards their $4-5 million contribution for Throsby, which already had a significant shortfall due to escalating building costs.

The ACT government has committed $29 million to the project, but the overall cost has blown out to $48 million.

Slavich said this year's loss made it harder to build Throsby, while Konstantinou said it could put it at risk.

Konstantinou was also shocked by the loss, which he put down to "excessive, unbudgeted expenditure facilitated by a lack of daily financial management and planning" in the annual report.

But he said they were already in "much better shape" less than halfway through Slavich's first year in charge.

He said they had the right people in place to ensure there wasn't a repeat.

The chairman also said Capital Football's bottom line would be helped when Canberra's new A-League Men's team came into existence.

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They're expected to take the running of Canberra United off Capital Football's hands.

"It can [put Throsby at risk]. If an entity's lost a lot of money and we're obviously going to throw some money to cover our component [of the Throsby funding]," Konstantinou said.

"But we've been working with the ACT government and they've been really good, and they understand the picture.

"They've been very helpful for us in terms of Throsby. We're obviously keen and going ahead, but we can't predict what the future holds.

"We've still got over $2 million in the bank so it's not like we don't have money.

"We're not poor of money, but we will need to spend a majority of it for Throsby."

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