In the past few years Atalanta has been anointed as one of the best run clubs in Europe. From savvy transfer deals to dishing out youth prospects for quantities of cash that would make some of the giants of Italy blush – the eye test would suggest that Atalanta has created a sustainable financial model that can continue to let the club thrive despite its modest spending. The eye-test, unfortunately, can at times be extremely deceiving and create a false notion of success (or failure) that people latch onto as a trendy narrative either in a positive or negative sense.
I know I’ve fallen victim to it, albeit in arenas that carries much less weight. The most recent example I can think of is Pierluigi Gollini’s ballplaying ability – when in reality he’s just serviceable and ultimately probably just a slightly better ballplayer than Sportiello. It happens, we’re humans, and we often give ourselves way too much credit to quickly analyze pretty complex data with just a passing glance.
Data is good and bad, but in the right hands with the right perspective, it can be extremely useful.
Case in point: two months ago KPMG came out with a deep dive into Atalanta’s financials over the past five years fortunately confirming what most of us already assumed – the Percassi’s and Atalanta know how to run a club. The analysis is very eye opening, and I highly urge you to read it, but of course here’s a overview with a splash of commentary for the curious reader.
La Dea’s Operating Revenue and Expenses
*A quick note. Atalanta’s fiscal year ends in December, so all figures are on a calendar year basis. No income from 2021 is included in this study.
Unsurprising to anyone is Atalanta’s meteoric rise in revenue earned. Champion’s League football will do that. Although, it is a surprise to see Atalanta’s 2020 income be 40% attributed to money earned from Champion’s League participation. It’s obviously a fountain of wealth that smaller budget teams crave, and has given Atalanta much more leeway to continually push for top places in the league – rather than, say, Udinese in the early 2010s. It does open the question to what happens when Atalanta fails to qualify for Champion’s League one year – which will be inevitable. Will they have cash in the coffers to weather the storm, or will it signal a needed sell-off? This is a harder question to answer.
So let’s look at the other side of the profitability equation – expenses. Atalanta has had the ability to spend more over the past five years, but the club’s revenue still outpaces it growth in expenses (displayed in the cost to revenue ratio which has fallen to less than 50% an excellent ratio among clubs in Europe). This signals two things to me:
- Even without player sales and Champion’s League cash, Atalanta can still comfortably pay its staff, from players, to coaches, to physios, to ticket takers when stadiums open back up. Having on hand cash for the most basic necessity of a business – paying your employees – is surprisingly hard in European football, so having that covered purely with a solid revenue and cost balance, excluding UEFA earnings, is encouraging.
- Atalanta is able to show strong liquidity even without its astute business on the transfer market, which offers additional buffer. More to come….
Transfer Market Success
As far as I know, cash earned from transfers is not displayed in the above revenue table – which just adds more money to the coffers for Atalanta to spend in the transfer market. I think we’re finally seeing the culmination of all the club’s recent savvy deals with calculated splurges to supplement the team with the positive transfer value its been able to recently keep.
By December of 2020, Atalanta was sitting on a positive 68M euro balance based off transfers alone! That’s what happens when you can find the likes of Castagne, Kulusevski, Bastoni and company either for dirt cheap or nurture them through the academy. Diallo’s transfer didn’t even go through until January, so Atalanta may have another 35M+ euros to add on top of this (well maybe 20M after subtracting the transfers of Maehle and Kovalenko), giving the club remarkable flexibility to strengthen the club, and simultaneously cash in on clubs that have severely struggled during the COVID pandemic.
This chart, I believe, is the reason we’re finally seeing Atalanta linked to so many different quality players. La Dea could sign, Musso; Koopmeiners; Tomiyasu; and de Ketelaere (for example) for let’s say 90M euros. Adding in Diallo’s transfer fee (20M), plus the cash obtained from the sales of Barrow, Cornelius, and another name slipping mind (30M), and any cash La Dea can get for Gollini and Ilicic (let’s say 15M), Atalanta still barely eats into it’s positive transfer balance – and sits pretty to make big splashes come January when larger holes in the club become noticeable.
Outpacing Its Serie A Rivals
More from a place of pettiness (no one’s perfect!), Atalanta has continually served humble pie to the rest of Serie A’s elites. Only three clubs have maintained an accumulated profit over the past five years, with Atalanta’s profit being nearly double that of its closet rival Napoli.
I threw this chart in more to ask the rhetorical question of how lenders and holding companies can see football as a profitable enterprise! Milan losing 615M in five years would have most senior leadership fired instantly in any other field… But hey 129M has allowed Atalanta to renovate its stadium (which the club owns by the way). And while gameday revenues are negligible, creating an enjoyable fan experience should still be a top priority for a club.
What Does This All Mean?
I cannot deny that all these charts paint a very rosy picture of Atalanta – not just from a sporting standpoint but obviously a financial one. Ultimately Atalanta is as financially independent as a club can be these days- no need for handouts from nations, or on a smaller scale hedge funs. While the Percassi’s are obviously rich, there is nothing suggesting that they need to dip into their pockets in the near future to keep the club liquid. And when the date comes that Atalanta sadly but inevitably misses out on the Champion’s League one year, there is enough cash in the bank to still remain competitive and continually create contingency plans so the club is never caught off guard and thrusted rapidly into the red.
In the end football is about winning, but there is something to be said about winning (for lack of a better term) without handouts. Every aspect of the club looks to be so efficiently run that it all culminates in an emphatic financial and sporting success. Hopefully this headstart in cash finally gives Atalanta the ammunition it needs to finally get an elusive Scudetto! One can dream! Because at the end of the day, turning a profit is great, but winning is just as fun! If you can do both, gravy!
