During this year, Sacha Lord was one of the keenest voices in nightlife to get clubs and festivals to reopen. He would frequently cite arguments about such venues being good for the mental health of people and also the significant number of workers employed by the industry.

One thing which he wasn’t so keen to mention was the personal hit his finances were taking due to his venues, Warehouse Project and Parklife, being legally barred from reopening. So now some time has passed, I thought I’d take a look on Companies House to see how much his personal circumstances affected his views.

Let’s start by looking at a full statement of Warehouse Project’s (WHP) accounts dated 31st December 2020. According to their own accounts, at the end of 2019, WHP made £1,072,669 of profit after taxation. The figure as of the end of 2020 was -£525,041 – a substantial loss. And this figure was unlikely to have been helped by the long winter lockdown ordered by Boris Johnson for England in January.

In the meantime, the statements for Parklife Manchester Ltd are also up to the same date of 31st December 2020. At the end of 2019, post-taxation profit was at £2,468,949. As of the end of 2020, the company had a profit after tax of £1,789,373. Given they couldn’t operate a festival in 2020, this surprised me – so what explains it?

It appears the group had an operating income of £4,273,946. Their report says “refer to note 5 for further details” – and note 5 simply says “Insurance claims receivable”. Exactly what type of insurance Parklife are talking about here is unknown, but they appear to be saying a payout relating to insurance effectively filled the black hole due to pandemic induced closure.

Infact, Parklife did so well that a dividend of £2.5million was paid out during 2020. As one of the listed directors of the company, Lord would almost certainly have received a share from this dividend – although we will never know the exact figure.

In summing up? My hunch is Lord’s personal finances did take a hit – but nowhere near the extent anyone would think. And if things get difficult, he could up his drinks prices…