Bath Won the Treble and Still Lost £3m

In the 2024-25 season covered by these accounts, Bath went from a club Johann van Graan once called "broken" to the most decorated side in England. They won the Premiership Rugby Cup in March, the EPCR Challenge Cup in May (beating Lyon in Cardiff) and then the Premiership itself in June, edging Leicester Tigers 23-21 at a sold-out Allianz Stadium to end a 29-year wait for the title.

None of that silverware shows up on the balance sheet. Turnover for the year came in at around £23m, roughly flat on the season before, while the club posted a pre-tax loss of close to £3m. Wages ate up almost two thirds of income, with staff costs of roughly £15m needed to fund a squad built around Finn Russell, the league's top points scorer, and a deep England contingent.

Net assets sit at a striking minus £20m, and estimated borrowings run to around £33m, the legacy of years of underwriting by owner Bruce Craig and, more recently, plans he submitted in late 2024 for an 18,000-seat rebuild of the Rec. Winning everything on the pitch has not yet translated into a business that pays for itself off it.

The turnaround under van Graan is the recruitment story worth flagging here: rather than one marquee arrival, it was continuity and squad depth, built over three seasons, that finally clicked at once across all three competitions.

Turnover vs staff costs, FY2024-25