Stoke report loss of £25.7m for 2023-24 season

The Bet365 Stadium has been Stoke's home since it first opened as the Britannia Stadium in August 1997

Stoke City have reported a loss for the year of £25.7m for the 2023-24 season, their sixth straight campaign in the Championship.

Despite making 26 new signings between the opening of the 2023 summer transfer window and the end of the season, that also included a £4.4m profit on sales of players.

But, following a £7.3m reduction in staff wages in 2022-23, this increased to £4.3m in 2023-24.

The accounts also show a £6.1m net investment in facilities, while work has started on the £12m improvement of the club's Clayton Wood training ground, due to be completed in December.

The club have issued a statement outlining the extent to which they are still being funded by their owners, the Coates family, who also own Stoke-on-Trent-based online sports betting company Bet365.

In a statement the club said: "The trading loss of £30.8m and consequent cash deficit of £22.1m illustrates the directors' continuing commitment to financially supporting the club.

"The trading losses demonstrate the cost of operating in the Championship and the importance of ongoing sustainable investment funding from the Club's owners.

"The directors remain committed to working in compliance with the EFL's financial regulations as required, but will continue to state the case for change in favour of sustainable investment by committed owners."

The 2023-24 season also included the sacking of Alex Neil as head coach and the appointment of his successor Steven Schumacher, who has since also lost his job.

Technical director Ricky Martin has departed with Potters old boy Jonathan Walters brought in as his replacement.

Potters have lost £676,000 a week since relegation

Analysis - Football finance expert Kieran Maguire, talking to BBC Radio Stoke

"I've calculated that since Stoke City were relegated, on average they have lost £676,000 a week.

"That's from 2018 onwards, which is an incredible amount of money and a lot has been wasted.

"There is a big difference between spending money and spending it well.

"Nobody can doubt the degree of support that the Coates family have given Stoke City in terms of funding to improve for players, improve facilities for fans and also, from a fans' perspective most of all, to put money into the playing budget to, in theory, make them competitive.

"They should be far better higher up the Championship over the course of the last six or seven seasons than what has manifested.

"Stoke fans must have a bittersweet humour - 'what are we aiming for this season? Fifteenth, oh, the same as last season.'

"And again and again, [they] keep changing the manager, keep changing the squad and it keeps being repeated again and again despite these losses."

Stoke - a 'symbol of Championship mediocrity'?

The Potters spent 10 seasons in the top flight from 2008 to 2018, first, under Tony Pulis, then Mark Hughes.

But since Hughes' departure in January 2018, when Stoke were already on course for relegation under his short-term replacement Paul Lambert, the Potters have had seven bosses - Gary Rowett, Nathan Jones, Michael O'Neill, Neil, Schumacher, Narcis Pelach, who last only three months, and now Mark Robins.

In their time back in the Championship, other than at the start of the 2021-22 season under O'Neill when they made a flying start to climb to third in the table in early October, their final placings have been an almost symmetrically-perfect symbol of mediocrity - 16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th and 17th.

They currently sit 19th, unbeaten in their past four games since Pelach's Christmas sacking, having won and drawn one under caretaker-boss Ryan Shawcross, then done the same under Robins.