Everton's Finance Director, Grant Ingles, discusses his role and being part of the Everton Leadership Team.

Firstly, Grant, can you explain what your role entails and your main responsibilities?

As the Club’s Finance Director, I’m responsible for leading the Club’s finance and strategy team, which consists of 22 people.

We have a wide-ranging set of responsibilities, including delivering the Club’s annual accounts, maintaining the Club’s financial systems, managing the payroll, ensuring we comply with tax regulations and maintaining our banking facilities.

However, this is just part of the picture. The element of my job which is probably less well known outside the Club is the role we play in supporting decision-making across all our functions.

For example, each time we buy a player, sell a player, or agree a new contract for an existing player, it has implications for profitability, cash flow and funding for this season, and beyond.

Our job is to fully understand, interpret and report these implications to Denise, Marcel and the Board, allowing them to make the best decisions possible for the Club.

Away from football, we support the other areas of the Club with their own financial plans and spending decisions. To be competitive, we not only need to grow our revenue, but ensure our cost base is well controlled. Every pound we spend needs to deliver excellent value for money.

How long have you worked for the Club and what does it mean to you to be part of the Everton Leadership Team during such an important phase in the Club’s history?

I’ve had a long association with Everton Football Club, having first worked here in 2006 on secondment from the Deloitte Sports Group. I joined the Club permanently after that, eventually becoming Finance Director in 2013.

I’ve had other roles away from Everton, too, including working in Australia as the Finance Director of Sydney FC.

What I can say, after eight years working for the Club, is that the atmosphere around our workplace is one of energy and optimism about what we can achieve and everyone is working hard to move Everton forward.

We now have a great team in place. It’s a privilege to work for our CEO, Denise Barrett-Baxendale, and alongside the rest of our leadership team who are all ambitious and driven to take this club to the next level.

Can you explain more about the Finance department’s role when a player is being transferred to or from the Club?

Each player has their own package in terms of how they are remunerated. Some elements are contractual, and others are contingent on certain events happening, for example appearances or goals scored. Our role is in modelling that package and understanding – if the player was to hit certain targets - what the effect would be on our financials.

Also, when you sell a player, there are normally financial add-ons. We monitor their performance because - depending on the terms of the transfer – if they trigger a certain number of appearances, goals, or their club gets promoted, there could be a financial upshot from that.

Cash flow is also important, the press will often report the total transfer fee for a player, but it is important to realise that the fee is usually paid or received over several instalments, sometimes over several years. That impacts what we have available to spend now and it’s important we manage this effectively.

Everton has reported significant commercial growth over the past year, with sponsorship, advertising and merchandising increasing 34 per cent from 2017. How has that benefited the Club?

It’s extremely important. At the end of the day, we are competing against 19 other teams, and growing commercial revenue means we have more money to invest on the pitch.

It’s why the move to a new stadium is vital for us. Goodison Park is a fantastic football stadium, and there’s no other place like it, but the reality is it does hold us back from a revenue generation perspective.

A new stadium will not only give us the opportunity to sell more match tickets to our supporters and eliminate restricted view seats, but it will provide us with a step change in our ability to generate revenue from Hospitality and other commercial revenue streams such as sponsorships, catering and events.

Speaking of the new stadium, what role does the Finance Director play in delivering that and how important is the move for the Club?

I have two main responsibilities on the project. The first is to support Sasha Ryazantsev, our Chief Finance and Commercial Officer, who sits on the Club’s Board, in securing the funding for the project. Without going into too much detail, we are working on several funding options, but we must ensure it is the one that best suits the needs of the Club.

Secondly, my team is responsible for delivering the financial business plan for the new stadium. That includes identifying how much more revenue and profit it will generate for the Club.

It’s important the stadium is built on robust assumptions and fully tested so we can anticipate what the Club’s financial position will be when it opens. It also plays a significant part in our ability to attract funding for the project.

The success of the project is integral to the future success of our Club. Denise has set out her long-term ambition for where we want this football club to get to. That is “challenging at the top of the Premier League and competing at the highest level in European competitions”.

We recognise this is an extremely challenging objective given the financial structure of the League and the revenues generated by the top six earning clubs.

We earn 41p for every £1 generated by those six teams who benefit from higher broadcast fees, access to commercial and sponsorship deals that dwarf those available to the rest of the League, and, significant revenues from competing in the Champions League.

The reason it’s challenging is that we’ve got to work out a way of bridging the gap to that group of six without having access to the same financial benefits they have until we actually get there.

Denise has laid down the challenge to all of us of outsmarting our rivals and being more efficient than them at how we spend our money, especially when it comes to investing on the pitch.

That’s a big part of it, but the new stadium is another critically important piece in that it will create additional revenue opportunities that are within our control and will contribute towards closing that gap.

Of course, the financial impact of the stadium is important, but we also recognise that most of all it is for our supporters who deserve to be watching their club in a world-class, world-renowned football stadium fit for the 21st century.