Celtic plc annual results for year ended June 30, 2025

We are absolutely *.

I was half hoping they would acknowledge that their strategy or lack there of is not fit for purpose.

They have full conviction and belief in what they are doing.

Every commodity in the world is at a “record high”. From wages, to transfer fees, to UEFA prize money, to sirloin steaks, to your grannies gas bill. That’s inflation for you.

Every statement or point they make is completely disingenuous and can never be taken at face value.

Bragging about success over a 20 year period, over which a club like Celtic has failed to register a single European knockout victory sums it all up.

 

The 2024/25 season marked another period of progress for Celtic Football Club, both on and off the pitch. Our strategic focus on success and performance on the pitch, whilst continuing to develop the Club off the pitch, delivered strong results across the Club.


On the pitch we secured the Scottish Premiership for the 55th time and won the Premier Sports League Cup for the 22nd time, taking our total trophy count to 120. Although disappointed by narrowly losing out to Aberdeen on penalty kicks in the Scottish Cup Final, we were all delighted with the team's success over the season, and I thank Brendan, Callum and all of the management and staff. This success was further reflected in a successful Champions League campaign, marked by competitive performances where we achieved three wins and three draws and progressed to the play-off round where we suffered a narrow exit to Bayern Munich over two legs.


Elena and the Women's team started off our season with an outstanding series of performances in the qualifying rounds that led to the team's historic qualification for the first time to the UEFA Women's Champions League, where we were drawn against Chelsea, Real Madrid and FC Twente. Domestically, the team did not hit the heights we had all hoped for after securing the Championship in the previous season, however the intensity of the season and the Champions League experience will form the basis for valuable development in our Women's football operation. I thank Elena, Kelly and the Women's team management and staff for everything they have done to continue the progress of Women's football at Celtic.


Our objective each year is to compete in the Champions League. Unfortunately this season, we suffered a loss on penalties in the tie against Kairat Almaty, which resulted in Europa League entry instead. As a Board, we take responsibility for the failure to achieve that key objective and commit to improving going forward. We now look ahead to our Europa League fixtures against FK Crvena Zvezda, SC Braga, SK Sturm Graz, FC Midtjylland, Feyenoord, AS Roma, Bologna FC 1909 and FC Utrecht, where we will hope to perform strongly and progress in the competition.


Aligned to our core objective of competing in the Champions League is successful player trading. Last year, we invested record sums between transfer fees and first team player wages. This year, regretfully we did not achieve all of our objectives in the transfer window. We share and understand our supporters' disappointment and frustration, and we will continue to seek to review and improve our strategy and execution as the market continues to evolve.


Alongside player recruitment, the creation of Champions League players through our academy system and pathway to first team football is crucial to our strategy. During the year ended 30 June 2025, we completed a significant enhancement of our Lennoxtown facility, with a further phase to follow this year, and we recently completed the transformation of our Barrowfield training ground. At Barrowfield, this included the construction of a full-size indoor playing surface, a performance gym and all the facilities required for an elite footballing environment. This facility, dedicated to our Women's first team, under 18 professionals and boys' and girls' academies is unique to any club in Scotland and will provide outstanding facilities for our teams and academies to grow and develop for years to come. In addition, at Celtic Park, we have installed a new hybrid playing surface and refurbished several areas in the stadium. We are currently assessing a number of further capital projects to enhance the experience for our supporters in the stadium as we look to continue to develop Celtic Park.


The completion of our Barrowfield training ground underpins our commitment to the development of academy players and is crucial to enabling these players to maximise their potential and the connection they have with the Club. Nothing demonstrates this more recently than Callum McGregor, James Forrest and Kieran Tierney. Our captain Callum McGregor achieved the milestone of 500 appearances for Celtic in February of this year, and my sincerest thanks and congratulations go to Callum for everything he has achieved for Celtic over a period of almost 25 years. I would also like to pass on my thanks and gratitude to James Forrest. On the last day of the 2024/25 season, James scored in the final moments of the game to mark a milestone in the history of Celtic by scoring in the last 16 consecutive seasons of his career at Celtic. The goal marked James' 109th for Celtic in his 527th appearance and in lifting the Scottish Premiership trophy that day he became Celtic's most decorated player with 26 major honours, taking over from the great Bobby Lennox. We were also delighted to welcome Kieran back to Celtic, following a successful spell in the English Premier League, as we continue to build for success with our academy talent.


During the year we have also made progress with our digital strategy, as we look to enhance engagement and communication with our supporters. The implementation of our digital strategy will lead to improved touch points with our supporters, including the launch of a new Club App, digital ticketing options and the re-development of Celtic TV. We understand that our global supporter base wishes to engage with Celtic in this way and we aim to provide them with the opportunity to benefit from a more seamless experience.


We were also pleased to enter into new long-term partnerships with both adidas and JD Sports demonstrating our commitment to working with the best partners in the market. We also appreciate our longstanding shirt sponsor Dafabet, with whom we extended our successful partnership, and we thank all of our partners for their support.


Reflecting on an incredibly busy year, I would like to thank all of my colleagues who work tirelessly for the best for Celtic. As we look to the season ahead together with optimism, we have started off the domestic season well. We must and will strive not only for success, but also to continuously improve our Club both on and off the pitch.


I will close by thanking our supporters for their continued and relentless support of Celtic. It is never taken for granted. Supporters underpin everything we do and seek to achieve at Celtic.





Michael Nicholson, Chief Executive

 

Not long ago we were happy to have £15-20 in cash reserves depending on champs league qualification. Now the board are greedy *, i dont understand the logic either mate.

 

Kieran tierney sign on and wages would be my suspicion or does that come under the player acquisitions total they spoke about


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Im no expert but if dividends had a higher pay out our cash reserves wouldn't be as much?

Anyway.....something stinks with these new accounts.
We've been at a net profit in player trading for a good bit.

Just something doesn't feel riggt with this

 

Made to look as boring as possible.

 

Would have saves us paying 12 m in tax that could have been stood on the pitch and potentially go for more later on


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Accountants for you they think the tax man should get his share of everything it really surprises me that Desmond puts a lot of trust in lawell ( accountant) whilst dd is an investo meant to be a different mentality in doing business


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Fear not…

Someone will ask a laser focused question about relish choices for matchday burgers at the AGM…. while PL delivers an expensively commissioned joke about Sevco’s finances.
Shareholders will applaud.

All will be well in the Celtic plc universe.

 

These statements the board release are pretty shameful in how they try to present a strategy to the support that is so completely at odds with the strategy they actually pursue.

The numbers on statements, the activity over the summer (repeatedly) and right down to the teams performance on the pitch dont lie. This isnt a team thats being re-invested in. And this isnt a club thats targetting success in Europe. Its a club thats prioritising financial gain and benchmarking itself to the SPL.

Each statement the board releases is actually an attempt to disguise this to the support. Its not even worth picking the statements apart as its so obviously a misrepresentative narrative. However it shows they know that they are running the club in a way thats at odds with the support. And they feel the need to hide this via trying to distort and manipulate what is plainly obvious in the numbers and how we are conducting our business.

This dishonesty cuts right to the heart of the matter - which is the board are afraid to reveal their genuine policies to the support because they know it doesnt stack up and it doesn't prioritise the football team.

 

Cause the income includes money we know we are getting but doesn't mean we have the money.



The two things highlighted there, we are basically owed £19million more than we were compared to the year before, probably mostly transfers. Current assets mean it's money that we will get within the year and non-current means it's going to be 1+ year.

Means out of the O'Riley and Kyogo money essentially £18million+ of it we won't get for another 1+ years. We have taken big long term payments and less up front. So we technically don't have the money yet.

We likely do this on purpose, same as we will pay more up front for players just so we don't have too much cash there for fans to moan about.

Like we might sell O'Riley for £10million up front and £20million later, Kyogo £5million up front and £5million later then sign Trusty and pay £6million up front, Idah and pay £7million up front, Bernardo for £4million up front etc so even though we made profit we are actually down in physical money.

We are probably the only club operating like this. Means in future years we could make lesser profits or even lose money but end up with more cash cause money we are owed will have been paid to us.

They used to include in the accounts as well until recently how much we had in each bank account, there used to be like 4/5 bank accounts we used and had money all split among them. Now they don't tell us, probably because say £40million might be sitting in X Account and not have fluctuated in 3 years by now and fans would then notice "that moneys just laying there".

 

So....backwards as * then?

 

Yea transfer profit plus

the transfer net income, ticket money after June 30th, euro money, we will have all the operating costs and a euro deficit to account for. In next year's figures but currently we will have 90- 100m in the bank

 

Not fit for purpose.

They need to go.

 

its odd that neither of the 2 * mentioned that the 55th league title won made us #1 in terms of titles ,something you would imagine a club would like to highlight

 

We're at the stage now where they believe their own lies

 

A statement made to sound like success, where the reality is abject failure.

They reference the value of CL
with extra games. Without accepting the fact a repeat this year is a complete and utter * shitshow whereby we could not score against a dreadful team in 210 minutes.

Accepting the fact timings of transfers not good.

Aye no * Sherlock.

Accountants with no semblance of reality. They are responsible for a revenue drop of 20-25m in a calendar year by not recruiting properly.

No ifs. No buts.

The squad even as is, is a joke. Ffs our only recognised striker is a boy on a free via a Rodgers WhatsApp.

Chatlatans, the lot of them.

 

We must be the only club in world football that instead of trying to make their financial results appear better than they are we are now trying to make them look worse than they are. 'Eh, we don't have as much money as you all think'.

Most clubs have to really work to get money coming in. Celtic fans are throwing money at the club and these incompetents don't know how to best utilise it for us. It would mean they might actually have to do a bit and think and be progressive and dynamic.. you know hard stuff like that. Instead it just sits there.

 

That's an interesting choice of words:

I guess what they actually mean is that our objective is to participate in the CL and they used the word "compete" as spin to make it sound better. But if I take them at their word, we have almost always failed to achieve our objective over the past 15 years.

As far as I can see, we have competed exactly twice in the last 15 years: last season and Lenny's last 16 season. Maybe, if you wanted to be really generous, you could say we competed in 2016 even if we failed. All the other years, we either failed to qualify or qualified and then were cannon fodder when we got there.

Even if they were more honest about their lack of ambition and used the word "participate" or "qualify", our qualification record is unacceptably bad too.

All in all, it has been a decade and a half of abject failure in Europe by their own admission.

 

Did they not have a few more months to release these. I would have held off saying that the club made a £30m pre tax profit after recent weeks.