Newcastle United’s financial report for the 2024/25 season confirmed the club had sold St James’ Park to a subsidiary company last June.
The club effectively selling the stadium and surrounding area to itself generated a £133.2million profit on the books. Without the stadium lease and land sale, a record loss of £98.4million would have been posted by the club but instead a pre-tax profit of £34.7million was reported.
The sale is understood to have helped Newcastle comply with Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules for the 2024/25 campaign. But the club defended its decision with the justification that it was made with the future of the stadium as a priority.
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The sale was described by one source as an “enabler for what we may or may not be doing in the future”. A decision on whether to expand at St James’ Park or build a new stadium is yet to be formally decided.
In the meantime, the 72-year stadium lease has been transferred to PZ Holdings Ltd, a company owned by the club’s shareholders.
“The motivation was very much to reorganise our property assets and get them into the correct legal boxes to allow us to go forward with our potential development, either at St James’ Park or for a new stadium, and to facilitate that with financing and other similar items,” said chief financial officer Simon Capper.
“There may be more similar transactions to come in the future, depending on what we end up doing, but the profit calculation that had to be done is then a consequence of the detail of the accounting rules that the Premier League require us to follow in doing any transaction with a company that is associated with us. So it does create a very significant accounting profit because of that.”
It marks a fresh twist in the long-term debate surrounding the future of Newcastle’s stadium, with a St James’ Park expansion from 60-65,000 previously considered and a 70,000 capacity new-build on Leazes Park also floated.
Amid the speculation, no official stadium designs have been made public at the time of writing but stadium concept designer and 3D animator Damián Bosio shared his ideas on what a proposed expansion of St James’ Park or new stadium could look like via his YouTube channel, Bondibot. The designs were made public last year, but provide an idea of what an expanded St James’ Park or new ‘Leazes Stadium’ could look like.
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