UK Athletics Accounts, the challenges ahead, from a briefing by UKA Chairman Ian Beattie

This piece was posted on December 6, just after its embargo ended. Stuart Weir, in a briefing with UK Athletics writers, spoked with Chairman Ian Beattie on the problematic situations with UK Athletics.

UKA Accounts

UK Athletics is about to release its annual accounts for the year to 31st of March 2023 and is reporting a loss of £3.7 million ($4.6m) for the year. Briefing the UK athletics writers on the accounts, chairman Ian Beattie explained: “That means that accounts on 31 March will show a net liability position of £3.2 million. And clearly that’s not sustainable going forward”. 

He attributed the loss to a number of reasons: “The biggest of these was the loss in events, which was almost £2 million ($2.5m). The biggest loss was the Birmingham Diamond League 2022, which was the test event for the Commonwealth Games, where we lost nearly £800,000 ($ 1 million). The World Indoor Tour Final in Birmingham lost around half a million pounds ($600,000), and the balance was made up of subsidies to other events”

He added that for the first time UKA had had to make a contribution of about £250,000 ($315,000) to the World Class Program [funding for elite athletes which comes from UK Sport]. In addition, there had been disciplinary and legal costs of around £150,000 ($190,000), and the balance was due to the shortfall in the ongoing operating costs of the business, net of commercial income: “To put that simply, there simply wasn’t enough commercial income to cover the costs we needed, to operate as a governing body. I’m not underestimating these numbers at all, and it’s clearly a tough time”. 

He explained further that “the only income that UKA has at the moment is commercial income and UK Sport funding. Both of these are under pressure, and UK Sport funding can only be used for very specific purposes, on the performance side, with UKA also now expected to contribute to the world-class program costs as well”. 

In the follow-up, Beattie who is a chartered accountant by background, was asked the blunt question: did that mean that UKA was bankrupt? He answered that with a “No” and explained: “It’s important to highlight that our accounts will show a cash position at 31 March 2023, improved by £1.2 million ($1.5m) compared to the previous year and that we closed the year at that date at 31 March 2023 with cash…