Canberra United is responsible for Capital Football's $350,000 loss, but ACT soccer's governing body has vowed to run the club again next summer.
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Capital Football said it would have turned a small profit this year if it didn't have the A-League Women team on their books, after it improved its bottom line by more than $500,000 on 2022.
It reported a loss of $350,162 in their 2023 annual report - a massive improvement on the previous year's loss of $874,340.
The result was announced at its annual general meeting last week, where West Canberra Wanderers stalwart Steve Rohan-Jones was elected onto the board to replace Fran Sankey.
Sankey retired after 10 years on the board, as both a director and a chair.
The Canberra Times revealed a large chunk of the 2022 deficit was down to Canberra United, with about $600,000 believed to be due to the ALW side.
![Capital Football said it would've made a small profit if it wasn't running Canberra United. Picture by Jeffrey Chan Capital Football said it would've made a small profit if it wasn't running Canberra United. Picture by Jeffrey Chan](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/reqbnGrLXyZFax2TwSi3Na/24dea104-c007-4890-bb29-5e215339de2a.jpg/r0_0_1900_1072_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
That's been reeled in off the back of Matildas fever, with United enjoying record crowds last season.
Capital Football chair Angelo Konstantinou was happy with the step towards breaking even, but said the organisation would keep working towards getting its finances back in the black.
"Considering from 2022 to '23 it's a pretty good result - half-a-million dollars better off than the year before," Konstantinou told The Canberra Times.
"While [former chief executive Ivan Slavich] was there he worked really hard to get that number down and bring in extra dollars.
"I thanked him at the AGM, and the board worked pretty hard also just to make sure we run as lean as possible while not affecting anything else.
"Hopefully we make a small surplus [this year], if possible."
Konstantinou admitted Capital Football would have made that small profit in 2023, but for the running costs of Canberra United.
Capital Football created headlines when it couldn't guarantee United's future due to the rising costs of running an ALW team.
The plan was for the owners of a new Canberra A-League Men's team to take over United, but there's been no word out of the Australian Professional Leagues about where that's up to for months.
Off the back of that uncertainty, players have already started leaving Canberra, with Young Matildas goalkeeper Chloe Lincoln (Western United) and Sasha Grove both confirmed and Nikki Flannery believed to be going as well.
Konstantinou vowed to continue to support the former ALW powerhouse next season.
"Without CU we would've turned over a very small surplus," he said.
"I don't think we were trying to hide the true cost of Canberra United. It's turned a lot more professional, which is great for the sport and everyone playing, but unfortunately it's tough for us to run it as a member federation.
"For this year we're running it ourselves - we're out looking for a [general manager] to oversee the team and ultimately when an A-League [Men's] team comes in it will go up into the A-League team."
The back-to-back losses have eaten into Capital Football's cash reserves to the point where it's walked away from the Throsby Home of Football.
Instead, the ACT government will build community sports fields on the site, but it will no longer be the home of a soccer centre of excellence.
It was meant to become Canberra United's base when it was first revealed in 2019.
Konstantinou said Capital football could still be involved in Throsby at a later date.
"The government's going to be doing the community ovals so the community won't be short of any ovals and then we'll look into stage two and see where we sit at stage two," he said.
"It just depends what that looks like. There's a lot of moving parts with this - Throsby, Canberra United, Capital Football - at the moment so as time goes on we need to re-evaluate and see what's best for the organisation."