Scotland's poor TV deal hits club revenue

From his fastness in Zurich, the authoritative Swiss Ramble has been reviewing the 2019/20 accounts of Scottish Premiership clubs.

Most Scottish Premiership clubs aim for break-even with five making small profits, led by Hearts £0.5m and Motherwell £0.3m. Rangers’ £17.5m post-tax loss is the big outlier, especially compared to Celtic’s£0.4m deficit, largely due to their recent investment in the squad.

Celtic had the highest revenue with £70m, though the gap to Rangers £59m has narrowed. Both Glasgow clubs earn at least four times as much as other Scottish clubs with closest challengers being Aberdeen £14m, Hearts £12m, Hibernian £9m and Kilmarnock £5m.

However, it is worth noting that Celtic were boosted by £24m profit from player sales, largely due to Kieran Tierney’s move to Arsenal, which was significantly higher than other Scottish clubs. The next highest were Kilmarnock £1.2m, Motherwell £1.0m.

The Old Firm had by far the largest operating losses (i.e. excluding player sales and interest) with Celtic being highest at £24.5m then Rangers £15.9m. Next highest was Hibernian with just £1.4m. Hearts was the only club with an operating profit, thanks to £3.7m donations.

Revenue for most Scottish clubs fell in 2019/20, partly due to the impact of COVID-19, but Rangers increased by £6m (11%), due to reaching Europa League last 16. In contrast, Celtic’s revenue dropped £13m (16%) with match day and commercial heavily affected by the pandemic.

Poor TV deal

The Scottish Premiership TV deal is very low, so Celtic only received £3.4m for winning the title in 2020. To put this into perspective, Premier League winners got £152m, while last place was worth £97m. Even a Championship club (no parachute payments) got twice as much £7m.

There is a new five-year Scottish TV deal with Sky Sports worth £30m (€34m) a year from 2020/21 (up from £25m), but this is not going to move the needle by much. It’s still much lower than Poland Ekstraklasa €58m and Belgium Jupiter League €83m, let alone Premier League €3.6 bn.

Reaching the Champions League group stage can make a big difference to Scottish clubs, e.g. the last time Celtic managed this in 2018 they received £30m TV money. On top of that, a club would have higher gate receipts and an uplift from performance bonuses in commercial deals.

Wage bills and debt

Celtic had the highest wage bill with £54m, ahead of Rangers £43m, though the gap has narrowed to £11m from £35m in 2018. There remains an abyss between the Old Firm and the other Scottish clubs, i.e. the next highest are Aberdeen £10m, Hearts £9m and Hibernian £7m. Most Scottish clubs have reasonable wages to turnover ratios, just above UEFA’s recommended upper limit of 70%, but that’s not too bad in a COVID-impacted season.

Scottish clubs do not often pay big money to sign players. In fact, Celtic’s gross transfer spend of £20.7m in 2019/20 was easily more than the rest of the Scottish Premiership combined with the next highest being Rangers £11.0m, followed by Aberdeen £1.3m and Hearts £0.4m.

Rangers’ £19.3m gross debt is more than all the other Scottish Premiership clubs combined (£15.7m) with the next highest being Hearts £5.7m, Celtic £5.4m and Aberdeen £1.3m. These numbers are significantly lower than most English clubs.

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion. Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs. An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...

Spurs CEO attacks luxury training base

The Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has issued a withering assessment of the way the club was run under Daniel Levy, likening the state-of-the-art training centre to a five-star hotel rather than a centre of high performance. Venkatesham was appointed to his role in April 2025, having stepped down as chief executive at Arsenal the previous summer. However, he has said that some aspects of the club were “in a significantly worse state” than he expected. “Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world,” Venkatesham told BBC Sport. “But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer. I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.” He explained that the football side of operations was the club’s main downfall when he arrived last year. [One Spurs fan wryly observed that it was like a water company sayi...

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...

The Political Economy of Football V2

Search This Blog