Shamrock Rovers triples profits as academy pays off

Shamrock Rovers, the Republic’s most successful football club, more than tripled its profits last year as it continued to reap the rewards of its academy.

Its latest set of accounts filed with the Companies Registration Office show it made a profit after tax of €1.6 million in the year ended December 31st, 2022. That was a marked improvement on the year before when it generated a profit of €409,753.

Shamrock Rovers was founded in Ringsend in 1899, but has been based in Tallaght since 2009. It boasts a record 20 League of Ireland titles and 25 FAI Cups. It won the league title last year and could win its fourth successive title with a win against St Patrick’s Athletic on Friday.

The club, reached the group stages of the Europa Conference League last year, netting a significant cheque from Uefa.

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The club said 2022 was “another excellent year” for the Shamrock Rovers Academy, with “significant progress” on all key performance indicators.

“The depth of young talent coming through was best illustrated by league and cup doubles for both our under-14 and under-15 teams,” it said in a note attached to the accounts.

“Several of our under-17 and under-19 made the step up to the senior squad during the year and four of them made their first team debuts in 2022, including Justin Ferizaj and Gideon Tetteh, who featured in our successful European campaign.”

The club also noted that it saw increasing numbers of its younger players selected to represent Ireland at under-age international level, as 23 boys and 10 girls from the academy were selected for Ireland over the course of 2022.

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Two academy players moved abroad with “significant compensation fees earned” and the potential for “further performance based payments” to be received in the future.

“Such performance based add-ons yielded a strong revenue stream for the academy in 2022 as Kevin Zefi, who moved to Inter Milan in 2021, continued to feature regularly for their under-18s,” the club said.

“Of note also was the contribution to the football club’s financial performance of the follow-on payments received for academy graduate Gavin Bazunu.”

Mr Bazunu had transferred from Manchester City to Southampton in the middle of 2022 for a reported £12 million, having left Rovers in 2019.

The club had €2.9 million in cash at the bank and in hand at the end of the year. That figure was up from €1.9 million the year before.

The club employed an average of 62 people throughout the year, which was up from 55 the year before. This included 38 players.