The Political Economy of Football V2

Tottenham Hotspur will play their first game of the Premier League season at Wembley on August 18 against Fulham. Their first match at their new stadium will be on September 15 against Liverpool after the international break.This is the first time a club has been allowed to play home games at two venues in the same season. Their new £850m stadium will seat 62,000 spectators, and the club will schedule several events preceding the Liverpool game to "check and rehearse various operational aspects".

The initial reaction to Uefa's verdict on Paris Saint-Germain's possible breach of financial fair play rules was that they had been cleared of any breach, but in fact they are not in the clear yet.What Uefa said was: 'The CFCB Investigatory Chamber decided to close the investigation into Paris Saint-Germain. Such decision follows a detailed review of transfer contracts and an analysis of the related management accounts which confirmed that such transactions were in line with the UEFA Club Licensing & Financial Fair Play Regulations. Furthermore, the chamber concluded that after significant fair value adjustments of several club sponsorship contracts - on the basis of evaluations performed by independent third party assessors - the break-even result of the club remains within acceptable deviation for the financial years ending in 2015, 2016 and 2017. The financial impact of transfer activities as from the 2017 summer – up to and including the upcoming transfer window - …

The long running saga of the Charlton Athletic takeover looks like encountering further delays. Controversial Belgian owner Roland Duchatelet has been in London this week starting to make decisions about next season, including the sale of Ezri Konsa to Brentford and the managerial vacancy: Duchatelet takes the helm Richard Cawley from the South London Press tweeted, 'RD definitely wants to sell but I don't believe that Australian-backed consortium expected Konsa to go. Does get to a point where RD has got to start making some decisions on manager etc if this doesn't get resolved.''Got to say that the information I'm getting is that Andrew Muir's [Australian] consortium still in for the club, deal not collapsed etc etc, but you have got to question how close it now is if RD is selling a prize asset.''In terms of why this takeover has taken so long, I think you'd find that both parties will blame the other. It is hard to pull apart some of the i…

World Cup prize money is $400 million with winners earning $38 million and teams eliminated in groups $8m. In addition each team gets $1.5m of preparation money.In this context it is interesting to look at the newly published accounts of the Scottish Football Association. Income was up £3 million in 2017 to about £38.5 mill. Compares to Celtic £5m, Rangers £29m and English FA £351m.The Scottish FA made operating loss of £23,000 in 2017 compared to English FA £28m. 90 per cent of SFA income was from commercial and broadcasting income. Matchday from Hampden made £3.6 million.The Scottish FA wage bill was £9m in 2017. This is about the same as Barnsley in England. Rangers wages £17.5m Celtic £52.2m Aberdeen £7.8m.

The FA are seeking a bigger offer for Wembley than the £600m bid made by Fulham owner Shahid Khan: Sale opened up Three other potential bidders are understood to be in the frame. The FA will insist on a 'golden share' arrangement that would prevent a resale to an unsuitable owner.

The authoritative Swiss Ramble comments, 'Looking through the Premier League finances for 2016/17, one thing I noticed was a dramatic increase in the reported profit on player sales.' He sets out to analyse this increase and also tries to explain the mysteries of player trading accounting.Total profit on player sales in the Premier League in 2016/17 was £512m, which was a massive £215m (73%) higher than £297m in the previous season (£295m in 2014/15).In 2016/17 Chelsea had the highest profit on player sales for the second season in a row with £69m, mainly due to Oscar’s transfer to Shanghai SIPG, followed by Everton £52m, Southampton £42m and Spurs £40m. Interestingly, Manchester United and Arsenal only had £11m and £7m respectively.It’s a similar story for the last 4 years combined with Chelsea again leading the way with a hefty £224m profit on player sales, followed by Tottenham £192m, Southampton £147m and Liverpool £136m. Again, Arsenal £45m and Manchester United £32m are …