OUTGOING Port Adelaide president Greg Boulton is confident his club can break even next year, despite recording an operating loss of more than $1.4 million in 2008.
The Power's financial figures were flattered by state and federal government grants of $5 million, which led to a consolidated profit of $3,972,180 before paying the sub-licence distribution to the SANFL.
But take away the grants and annual SANFL fee and the Power's result is a loss of $1,421,811.
Boulton, who will stand down as president after the December 15 annual general meeting, said the club already had plans in place to turn the result around.
"No-one likes to make a loss – let alone a $1.4 million loss – but we can manage it. We’ve already planned to next year better than break even," he said on Monday.
"We’ve known the magnitude of this loss for three or four months. We get monthly projections, so our CEO Mark Haysman and the management team knew where we sat and plans have been put in place over the past four or five months for next year.
"I’d rather be going out with a $1 million profit and a grand final victory but, guess what, the AFL competition is a lot harder than that.
"You don’t like it and you don’t accept it, but as long as you’ve got actions in place to turn it around and make it more positive next year [you can manage it]."
Significant drops in membership, match receipts and merchandise sales compared to the grand final campaign of 2007 were directly related to the club's 13th-place finish.
"The financial result is definitely a reflection of poor on-field performance and losing games early in the season. And last year, we didn’t have the scheduling we’ve got for 2009 and we’re excited about next year’s scheduling," Boulton said.
"I think we’ll get our crowd numbers slowly come back next year. We had a disappointing result in our licenced club [The Port Club] and also our merchandising was down. I think that was all linked to losing early, taking a while to come back and ending up where we did at the end of the year.
"But we see that our supporters will get to a lot more games and we’ll have better results in 2009."
Port Adelaide has already signed Vodafone and Bianco as joint major sponsors for next season and is locked in discussions with the SANFL and AFL to increase the club's revenue for home games at AAMI Stadium.
More than 27,000 patrons are required to balance venue costs and the Power averaged just 23,842 in 2008.
Boulton said the club would like to lower the break-even figure to about 24,000.
"The AFL, the SANFL and us are looking at all the options, nothing is closed," he said. "The SANFL are very positive in helping us move forward and getting more out of the stadium arrangements.
"We’re not getting 40-45,000 people to a game, so we have to have a structure there to cater for 25-30,000. But the first and upmost thing our supporters want to see us do is [win] and I think we’re going to do that a lot better next year with the draw and a really exciting group of players taking us forward.
"And we’re definitely going to get more out of our fundraising, but we look at our supporters and say, 'Hey, we still need your help. We need you to sign up as members to help us in 2009'."
