My thanks to TampereOwl and Maakuntasatraappi for this interesting topic. It's a shame, however, that your opening was responded with such a rubbish.
My tip for TampereOwl is this: since the Finnish clubs are rather reluctant to disclose any financial information that exceeds the minimal level set by Act of (Finnish) LLCs, you probably should focus only on
this information in order to proceed with your study. A good start is to identify the legal entity and the form of a legal entity that runs the particular football business you wish to obtain information for. For example, Tampere United is a limited liability company (OY) and is the legal entity managing the operations of my favourite squad. Thus, the financials of Tampere United LLC fully reflect the financial status and business prospects of team Tampere United.
Well, You may ask, how to get this information then? At first, I need to say, disclosing financial information, which includes the balance sheet, income statement, notes to the financial statement, audit story and a cover letter by the general director (propably including information you wish to read), is mandatory. This information is then available at the Chamber Archive, availabe only in Finnish at
http://www.prh.fi/fi/tietokannat/katka-yreka.html.
However, commercial services also exist and my favourite is
http://www.asiakastieto.fi/aarre/ or
www.aarre.fi. This service has a small fee (there's a price list but special discounts do exist). Aarre services include a thorough analysis of mandatory disclosure, credit ratings, comparison between selected business entities etc. There's a lot of interesting news for a curious reader, but due to legal aspects I recommend not to post them to the Internet.
Anyhow, I wish you good luck - hopefully that you will link your blog on these pages?
Thank you, that's very interesting. I'm not a financial journalist though, and reading all of that in English would be quite arduous, never mind Finnish. Maybe there is a Finnish football journalist who would be willing and able to get all that information, or maybe already has it? I don't think I could stretch to 47 euro for each club, as Aare seem to be charging for all their info. Someone with a sympathetic employer would be a better bet than a speculative freelancer. I get no money for my veikkausliiga stuff.
Is the chamber of commerce info the basis for the licences awarded at the start of the season? Iposted the plans of each team on my blog when they appeared at the start of the season, mainly their projected playing and non-playing budgets and break even attendance targets. I'm assuming it's the SPL that gives the licences out, do they have auditors in or is it just the secretary leafing through an application?
I'm interested in the debate about average ticket prices too, as that is key to my calculations. My current formula involves quite a high value and relatively few concessions, but if somebody has different information I'm willing to change it.
The blog is at
http://footballinfinland.blogspot.com.
