Before the season, Žalgiris had planned 325 thousand euros in their budget – for participating in the first round of the UEFA Conference League qualifiers.
However, the capital team overcame both Petrov and Tbilisi Dinamo, so the UEFA bonus increased to 1.075 million euros.
VIDEO: HISTORIC COMEBACK | Vilnius Žalgiris vs Dinamo Tbilisi all goals
HISTORIC COMEBACK | Vilnius Žalgiris vs Dinamo Tbilisi all goals
“So, we have a surplus that we can carry over to next year’s budget, but what is it really? De jure – 750,000 euros. De facto – unfortunately, much less, because we need to deduct:
charter flights and hotels, local transfers, catering
bonuses to the team, especially after the locker room shouts of “double bonus”
TV broadcast costs
Roughly calculating, it comes to about 450 thousand euros. The charter to Tbilisi was especially expensive, where the prices started to break hearts and we slowly began looking for other options, but Tadas said the team must fly like people and all the searching ended.
So realistically, from that bonus surplus, 300,000 euros remain. Which is also not bad, because having 300K and not having 300K is practically 600K,” writes A. Tapinas on his Substack channel.
“Then there are additional revenues:
tickets sold for three matches
TV rights abroad
sold flight tickets
Here you can additionally count about 170 thousand euros and I won’t even touch on the very active merchandise sales,” continues the Žalgiris president.
“– So, adding everything up, we have nearly half a million in additional income, which will very neatly go into next year’s budget and my plan to grow by 20% and reach 5 million is more than realistic. Seeing the growth in commercial income, I’m even starting to think not about five, but the next digit.”
However, according to A. Tapinas, an even bigger wallet is needed: “We need to reach a double-digit annual budget – 10+ million. It doesn’t need to happen in a year, because there are many examples of clubs that, after suddenly receiving injections, fail to manage and squander large sums. If we count 20% annual growth, Žalgiris can reach a 10 million budget by 2031.”
In the third round of the Conference League, Vilnius will face the Croatian giant Hajduk Split. Kauno Žalgiris on Tuesday was no match for another Croatian powerhouse, Zagreb Dinamo, losing 0:5, but A. Tapinas believes Vilnius Žalgiris will cause their opponents much more trouble.
Understand instantly
5 minutes and that’s it – Vilnius Žalgiris fans sold out tickets
A warning to Vilnius? Hajduk ultras set fire to the stadium in Croatia before their visit to Lithuania
“We are calmly and stress-free preparing for the Hajduk challenge, I won’t predict the result, but I would like us to bring intrigue to Split next week,” says A. Tapinas, noting that bookmakers give Žalgiris a 20% chance to advance, but even the opponents’ fans are not that optimistic.
“– Objectively, Žalgiris has two more advantages:
Hajduk has just started the championship, they are far from normal form, and the players had a brutal match with extra time on Thursday, then on Sunday they traveled to Varaždin and looked physically exhausted there, and now they have a match on Thursday. Žalgiris gave the whole team two rest days after Thursday and has been training calmly in their own regime since Sunday.
Hajduk probably has never played on artificial turf in their life, and we saw how Dinamo felt on it.
So how to put it. Maybe the 40% that Hajduk fans give us is quite logical. Interested.”
The first Žalgiris and Hajduk clash will take place this Thursday at 8 p.m. in Vilnius, at the packed Žalgiris home stadium, and the return battle awaits in Croatia a week later.
