CARLTON President Mark LoGiudice has today announced that the Club has reduced its debt by a further $1 million.

Announced in a letter to members on Wednesday morning, it comes on the back of Carlton reducing its historical debt by $2 million back in September.

It means that Carlton has halved its debt in just one year: the Club - according to LoGiudice - now hopes to be debt-free by 2022.

Most tellingly, the positive result has also allowed for a significant increase in the Club’s football department investment.

He said that the result had been achieved by a true whole-of-Club effort — in particular, the record membership growth achieved by Bluebaggers in 2019.

“With the support of our Board, club Executive and staff led by CEO Cain Liddle, all of our players and commercial partners and of course all our members, we have been able to achieve a significant improvement in the financial performance of the Club,” LoGiudice said.

“Under the current administration, we have increased investment in our football programs by more than $4.5m annually between 2018 and 2020. This additional investment has been generated through increased club revenues.

“Thanks to you [the members], we enter 2020 off the back of our biggest year-on-year membership growth… we thank all our loyal members and supporters for their continued commitment and belief in the direction of our football club.”

After the positivity in which both the AFL and AFLW seasons ended with in 2019, LoGiudice said the Club was looking to raise the bar in 2020.

With the Club’s membership tally already tracking at an increase of over 10,000 compared to last year, LoGiudice said The Carlton Way - the Club’s five-year strategic plan - would continue to dictate all operations going forward.

“Our positive off-field position extends beyond just the financials and we will once again look to improve in all areas of the Club in the coming year,” he said.

“We have now entered our final planning phase [of the Ikon Park Master Plan], which will see the Carlton Football Club boast fully integrated, state-of-the-art facilities.”

LoGiudice also announced that the Club’s Annual General Meeting will be held at Ikon Park on Monday 24 February at 6.30pm.