The Political Economy of Football V2

Chelsea have been handed a suspended one-year ban from signing first-team players and given a £10million ($13.7m; €11.6m) fine from the Premier League relating to breaches of financial rules during Roman Abramovich’s time as owner. The ban is suspended over two years, meaning that Chelsea will still be able to register senior players if they do not commit any further breaches. No sporting sanction, such as a points deduction, has been imposed. The club have also been banned from registering academy players for a period of nine months. The restriction, which comes into immediate effect, only applies to youth players that have previously been registered with another Premier League or English Football League club’s academy, and not any current players, international players or players who are registering on professional terms. It also does not apply to players who are applying for their first registration at Under-9 or otherwise, the Premier League said. The club will also pay a £750,000 ...

The Swiss Ramble was invited to give a presentation at the FT Football Business Summit on the increasingly popular model of multi-club ownership.   For some reason this contribution was not publicised by the Pink 'Un. It is the most thorough data-based treatment I have seen of the motivations for multi-club ownership and the advantages and drawbacks of the model.   Of itself it is a reason for subscribing to the Zurich-based football finance guru's Substack page. My only additional comment would be don't forget the wood for the trees.  I would argue that globalisation is alive and well in football and one thing that a globalisation model encourages is holding assets in different countries, albeit that the junior subsidiaries lose out. The Swiss Ramble states: ' One of the best known examples of multi-club ownership is City Football Group, largely owned by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). They first acquired Manchester City in 2008, but have significantly expanded ...

Eastleigh FC have increased season ticket prices by nearly 200 per cent.   Chairman Stewart Donald has made numerous attempts to sell the club or bring in new investors since losing his wife to cancer this year. The club blames increasing rates and utility bills along with the pending rise in the minimum wage.  Early bird prices range between £175 and £275 for adults and are still below the league average.  Eastleigh are currently 18th in the National League where they have been since 2014.   They have never really looked like promotion hopefuls but have evaded relegation. The town's population is listed as 24,000 and Southampton with its Championship team is not far away.

The owners of York City, promotion contenders from the National League, are being sued by the former owner for an estimated £4.2m. The dispute dates back to former owner James McGill selling his majority stake in 2022, as well as loans he made to the club. Club employees issued a statement backing the current owners Matt and Julie-Ann Uggla.

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire has warned Aston Villa that they cannot afford to slip into Euripe's third tier given that they have long been struggling to comply with Premier League financial fair play rules.   If you qualify for Europe you can only spend 70 per cent of your revenue on player costs comapred with 85 per cent in the Premier League. Maguire pointed out that for every £1 you earn in the Champions League you get 22p in the Europa League and 11p in the Conference League.    Moreover, every place in the Premier League is worth £2.5m. There are plans to expand the capacity of Villa Park to more than 50,000, but even if Villa double their match day revenue it will be over £100m behind that of United - they also attract more tourists who sp\end more on merch (yield at United is £80 per fan and at Villa £24). Maguire reckons that Villa need to be in the Champions League two years out of three if they are going to join the big six.

I t’s been a big few days for Atlético Madrid. Spain’s third-biggest club all but booked a place in the next round of the Champions League after dismantling an abject Tottenham Hotspur on Tuesday night. A couple of days later, the biggest-ever takeover in Spanish football closed, with Apollo completing its purchase of a majority stake in Atlético at a valuation of somewhere north of €2bn (how far north depends on who you ask). Success in Uefa competitions is one of the reasons the club made an attractive prospect for the US investment group The deal was a win for Ares Management, which sold down the 34 per cent stake it had acquired for €182mn in 2021. The firm will continue to be involved as a smaller shareholder in the club, and most likely as a lender for the ambitious €800mn real estate project that first sparked Apollo’s interest (and is probably still the key driver of the decision to buy the club itself). But another big beneficiary was Quantum Pacific, the investment firm of Is...