The Political Economy of Football V2

Bournemouth have the smallest stadium and the smallest revenues of all the clubs in the Premier League and although they are already punching well above their weight, their American owner, Bill Foley, says their status as minnows is about to change. A new training ground is close to being finished, plans are advanced for a new stadium on the site of the present one that will close to double its capacity, with Bournemouth at the “pinnacle” of a multi-club ownership model. Foley’s investment group, Black Knight Football Club, is close to completing a deal to buy Moreirense, a mid-table club in Portugal’s top league, having already taken over Lorient in France and New Zealand side Auckland, who are top of the mainly Australian A-League, and taken a 25 per cent stake in Hibernian. All the clubs will emulate Bournemouth’s high-energy, high-pressing style that has brought unprecedented success under their Spanish head coach, Andoni Iraola. In an interview with the US-based Men in...

Calculations by the authoritative Swiss Ramble suggest that three clubs have already received more than €90m from this season’s Champions League, namely Liverpool €100m, Arsenal €91m and Barcelona €90m.  They are closely followed by Bayer Leverkusen €89m, Atletico Madrid €86m and Inter €86m.   The top eight clubs have all banked more than €30m in prize money, ranging from Liverpool’s €38.3m to Aston Villa’s €32.7m The country that has earned most to date from the Champions League is Germany with €349m, just ahead of England €340m, followed by Italy €310m, Spain €291m and France €272m.   There is then a big gap from the Big Five leagues to Portugal €112m and Netherlands €107m, both of whom have two clubs in this season’s Champions League. If we instead look at the average per club, then the dominance of the Premier League becomes apparent, as England are by far the highest with €85m, comfortably ahead of Spain €73m, Germany €70m, France €68m and Italy €62m. Clea...

Qualification to Europe’s flagship competition has always equated to significant financial windfalls, but never quite like this. The revamped format, with the total games played climbing from 125 to 189, has swelled coffers at UEFA and ensured the 36 participating clubs have been handsomely rewarded. The total prize pot is forecast to stand at €2.47billion (£2.08bn, $2.59bn) this season, 22 per cent up on the €2.03bn of last. UEFA effectively splits that three ways; an equal share, performance-related amounts and a complex and new ‘value pillar’ shaped by market pools and coefficients. An equal share of €18.6m has already gone to each of the 36 clubs involved in the group phase, with the chance to build on that number through match weeks one to eight. Every win has been worth €2.1m, every draw €700,000. Alongside that has been the opportunity to earn more through league position. The higher you finish after the eight games are played, the more you bank. Broadly mirroring the ...

Losses at Lincoln City have increased, but fans have been assured that the club is in good financial health.  Football finance guru Kieran Maguire says that the losses of just under £3m are 'mid-table' for a League One club, e.g., Charlton are thought to be losing £9m a year:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cn571e5n6klo

On paper, today’s game between Club Brugge and Manchester City at the Etihad is a mismatch, as the English champions are much stronger financially, but, as someone once said, “it’s a funny old game”.  As an example, City’s squad cost is more than ten times as much as Club Brugge, while the wage bill is £340m higher. Of course, they are very much the underdogs in this evening’s game against Manchester City, but even if they don’t manage to qualify, the income they receive from this season’s competition will still make a substantial difference to their bottom line. One of the most successful clubs in Belgium Club Brugge are one of the most successful clubs in Belgium, having won no fewer than 19 league titles, including six in the last nine years. Much of this has been built on money earned from regularly competing in Europe, which has given them a financial advantage over the rest of the Belgian Pro League. A recent highlight came two years ago when they reached the Champion...

Manchester United’s plan for a new 100,000-seater stadium has now received the backing of the local authority as well as the government, with officials describing the regeneration project as “transformational”. On Saturday the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, offered her public support, describing a state-of-the-art Old Trafford and the redevelopment of the surrounding area as “a shining example” of the Labour government’s policy for promoting economic growth. Now the executive at Trafford council has given its unanimous support, with officials revealing plans to appoint a “top-class consultant team” to collaborate with the Premier League club and the other relevant parties on the project. In a meeting on Monday night, councillor Liz Patel, an executive member for economy and regeneration at Trafford council, said: “I am delighted these plans have been approved by the council executive. As the report says, this is one of the most significant opportunities for urban renewa...

West Ham United have won a court battle with their stadium owners over a £3.6million payment they were obliged to make after the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky bought a 27 per cent stake in the club. The High Court has ruled that an “expert determination” that the club had to pay the money as part of their lease agreement with E20 Stadium, a body set up by the publicly-owned London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) to manage the stadium, contained two “manifest errors”. West Ham’s parent company, WH Holding (WHH), contested £3.6million of the £6.5million it paid to E20 in March 2023 under the stadium lease penalty clause, which was included so that any increase in the value of the club as a result of their deal for the London Stadium should be reflected in a payment to the stadium’s owners. The £3.6million will now be repaid to West Ham, unless E20/LLDC appeals. West Ham paid an initial £2.6million fee after Kretinsky — whose multibillion-pound takeover of Royal Mail’...

The US owner of Birmingham City football club has said the UK can unlock a wave of inbound investment “incredibly quickly” if the government makes tangible progress on its pledge to speed up planning approvals. Tom Wagner, co-founder of Knighthead Capital, told the Financial Times that Britain’s record of under-investment and slow growth could be turned around if Labour made good on its vow to remove obstacles to development.   “There are lots of projects that we are looking at in the UK that we’d love to pursue if the process can be made easier,” he said. “And we’re not the only ones. If things change by just a small amount, there’ll be a lot of capital inflow and a lot of excess growth.” Knighthead has acquired more than 60 acres of land around Birmingham City’s stadium since taking control of the League One team in 2023. The New York-based hedge fund plans to build a new 60,000-seat venue as part of a large £3bn regeneration project involving housing, retail and entertainme...

If Tottenham Hotspur were a PowerPoint presentation to be shown to a wealthy investor, every slide would go down a storm. State-of-the-art training ground, tick, and one of the plushest stadiums in Europe, tick. An inner-London location, absolutely, housing a club with a rich football history, sure, and a modern record of playing in the Champions League, perfect. And what about the numbers?   Hefty wages to cover? Big transfers to absorb? Surely some Profitability and Sustainability Rules problems to solve?   No, none of those.    The club is a success off the pitch, but this may have been achieved at the price of success on it.    And like many other leading clubs, fans are concerned about ticket pr ices. This is the present Tottenham, built like an asset to sell, more than a team to succeed. Ange Postecoglou is certainly not blameless for Spurs lying 15th in the Premier League, after losing six of their past seven matches — far from it. Post...

 The term ‘Big Six’ came to prominence at the start of the 2010s, replacing the old ‘Big Four’ — germinating as City began to win league titles and Tottenham forced themselves into the Champions League. It is a reign that has lasted 15 years, but the ‘Big Six’ now lie scattered.  But be careful about a rush to judgment.    This is also about financial capacity and resilience as well as good management. The gloom hanging over United and Spurs means this season is an extreme example, but the waning on-pitch prowess of these clubs as a collective is not exactly new — Aston Villa manager Unai Emery declared it dead in April 2023. “Now it is not a top six but a top seven, top eight or top 10,” the Spaniard said soon after his arrival in the West Midlands. “There are a lot of teams capable of targeting those positions and I want to add Aston Villa into it, too.” He was right — Villa finished fourth a year later. The ‘Big Six’ have ended the season  a...

Real Madrid were at the top of the Money League table for the second consecutive season, obliterating the old record, as they are the first club to surpass €1 bln with an astonishing €1,046m, equivalent to £899m.   The gap between 1st and 2nd has also never been higher after Real Madrid’s amazing growth last season. The previous record stood at €84m in 2018/19, when Barcelona were top of the tree, but this more than doubled last season to a staggering €208m. Manchester City retained second place with an English revenue record of £721m, even though they were less successful on the pitch, but still won the Premier League, the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup. Six other clubs reported more than £600m in revenue: Paris Saint-Germain stayed in third place with £693m, followed by Manchester United £663m, Bayern Munich £658m, Barcelona £654m, Arsenal £616m and Liverpool £615m. There were two new entrants to the top 20, namely Aston Villa and Lyon, who replaced Napoli ...

Last week was rather tempestuous  for the sporting empire of Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Following a 3-1 home defeat to Brighton last weekend, Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim labelled his team “the worst” in the club’s history and apparently damaged a television set in the dressing room.. United now sit 13th in the Premier League, closer to relegation than the Champions League. Amorim’s appointment was a key moment in Ratcliffe’s stewardship of the club. Since buying a minority stake last year, the UK chemicals billionaire has overseen a mass clear out of senior executives and cut headcount by 250 people. This is now his operation, and things are not going to plan. His sailing operation has also run into choppy waters. On Thursday, Ineos announced that its America's Cup team was parting ways with legendary British sailor Sir Ben Ainslie after failing to “find agreement on terms to move forward”. Ainslie responded soon after, saying he was “astounded” and threatened lega...

Playing European football has benefitted Manchester City and Chelsea over the years.  The past decade has seen the two former Champions League winners collect close to a combined £1.3billion ($1.6bn) in prize money from UEFA and the financial significance of playing in Europe is only climbing. Deloitte’s Money League, a ranking of football’s wealthiest clubs published this week, detailed that Chelsea’s revenue shrank by seven per cent in 2023-24 after missing out on the Champions League and this term spent in the Europa Conference League cannot hope to plug those broadcast revenue shortfalls. Chelsea need the Champions League if they are to catch up with rivals. Already hamstrung by the size of Stamford Bridge, which curbs matchday revenues, genuine growth can only come when returning to Europe’s flagship competition. London rivals Arsenal have demonstrated that, pulling well clear in the past 18 months. Arsenal made roughly £100million more in broadcast revenues alon...

Hundreds of Everton fans fear the club’s recent takeover has led to a dramatic collapse in the value of their shares, with the estate of the late chairman, Bill Kenwright, thought to be facing possible losses of as much as £5million. There are about 1,500 supporters who own approximately 8,000 shares, which before Everton were sold by Farhad Moshiri to The Friedkin Group (TFG) in December amounted to 5 per cent of the club. As recently as November last year, shares were being traded in private sales for £3,400. But the takeover has led to the total number of shares increasing from 135,000 to more than 1.6 million, with the supporters’ collective stake now less than 0.5 per cent and concerned fans estimating that each individual share is worth less than £175. Ian Kilbride, who only two months ago increased his stake to 200 shares at a price of £3,400, has told The Times that he is worried his total £680,000 investment is now worth only £35,000. He has written to the club urge...

Wrexham and Birmingham drew 1-1 yesterday.  It wasn’t always a glamour tie (and some Blues fans don’t like being linked with Wrexham by some rival fans as a plastic club). The Hollywood derby, a phrase coined ahead of the first meeting at St Andrew’s in September, sees one club owned by two high-profile actors face another whose board boasts an all-time NFL great. This is part of a wider trend that saw 2025 kick off with no less than 23 of the 72 EFL clubs in North American hands, almost a third. As if to underline this increasing globalisation of a competition now into its 137th year, Thursday’s match was broadcast live on both sides of the Atlantic as part of CBS’ new four-year deal to show games in the Championship, League One and League Two. Cosm’s immersive entertainment centres in Los Angeles and Dallas will also be screening Wrexham vs Birmingham live. Quite the contrast from that last meeting in 1994, when only 6,002 were in attendance as the two tea...

The recent sale of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia to Paris Saint-Germain for €70m once again highlighted Napoli’s ability to make big money from transfers. In the case of the exciting Georgian winger, this was exacerbated by the fact that his value in the books was only €2m, so the profit from the deal weighed in at a hefty €68m. In fact, based on the reported fee, this was the fifth highest profit from a player sale ever made by an Italian club. This is nothing new for Napoli, who have no fewer than four of the top ten player trading profits, including the best of all with €86m from the sale of Gonzalo Higuain to Juventus in the 2016/17 season. Given Napoli’s financial disadvantages compared to the traditional “big” Italian clubs, their consistently high finishes in Serie A have been pretty impressive, but the wheels came off last season, when they fell to 10th place, which was their lowest league position since 2008/09. Napoli’s pre-tax profit in 2023/4 fell from €118m to €91m, though t...

In this era of profit and sustainability, it is easy to forget that a football club needs two things to spend in a transfer window: room for manoeuvre on financial fair play and enough cold, hard cash to pay for signings in the first place. Cash is king, it is said. At Old Trafford, reality is beginning to bite.   The January transfer window is open, but Manchester United are yet to make a signing due to a need to balance any incomings with outgoings. That may come as a surprise to anyone glancing at the most recent set of accounts. As of the end of September, United had a healthy bank balance of £149.6m. That is more cash than they have held in reserve at any point since the Covid-19 pandemic. Last month, a further £79m was added by Sir Jim Ratcliffe as part of the $300m investment promised upon him becoming a minority owner last year, which also increased his minority stake to 28.9 per cent. There is a problem, though: United’s pile of cash has not been generate...

Real Madrid became the first football club to generate over €1 billion in revenue during the 2023/24 season and are at the top of the 2025 Money League. The completion of renovations works to the Bernabéu Stadium catalysed the growth of matchday revenues to €248m in 2023/24, a 103% uplift on the previous year. The increase was realised predominantly on account of the marketing of Personal Seat Licenses, which provided an uplift of c.€76m, as well as the sale of new VIP seats and the increased capacity of the stadium from December 2023. The club also reported a 20% increase in commercial revenue (from €403m to €482m), boosted by increased merchandise and new sleeve sponsorship.  Manchester City remained the highest revenue generating English club, with revenue of €838m. The gap between the top-two Money League clubs in 2023/24 was €208m, the highest on record (previous record: €84m in 2018/19).  Several clubs identified the impact of infrastructure investments as a key dr...

This post reports the general findings of the latest authoritative Deloitte Money League.  Club analysis in a separate post. Now in its 28 th  edition, the Deloitte Football Money League profiles the highest revenue generating football clubs in world football. The 2023/24 season unlocked a new frontier, as Real Madrid became the first football club to record €1 billion in revenue. The 2023/24 season created football history, as Real Madrid became the first football club to generate €1 billion across a single season. The club’s financial success during the season was underpinned by the newly renovated and expanded Bernabéu Stadium, which delivered significant uplifts to matchday and commercial revenue over the previous season.  Cumulatively, the Money League clubs in 2023/24 generated a record €11.2 billion, an increase of 6% over the 2022/23 season, with record matchday, commercial and broadcast revenues. In 2023/24, the average Money League club generated €560m, comp...

The Newcastle United Supporters’ Trust (NUST) has called on the club to freeze ticket prices and “recognise the financial strain many fans are facing”.   NUST has written to Darren Eales, Newcastle’s chief executive, to express its “concern” at suggestions price rises are on the way at a time when the cost of living is already high. Newcastle have been hemmed in by the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) and are looking to maximise their revenue streams. With St James’ Park routinely sold out for matches, ticket pricing is an obvious source. NUST insists this would be a mistake, however, and believes it would risk pricing out Newcastle’s most loyal and dedicated followers.   “With the expiration of long-term season ticket deals due for many supporters, we are concerned that the club may be contemplating another price increase for the 2025-26 season,” the trust says in its letter. “At a time when supporters are already feeling the finan...

 Tottenham have had top-six revenues and wage bills for a quarter of a century but still only won one trophy, the 2008 League Cup, during that time. Where they have led the way, though, is on executive pay. Year after year, Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy tops that ranking. The 62-year-old, who joined the board in December 2000, gave himself a pay package worth £6.5million ($7.9m) last season, including a £3m bonus. OK, during his reign, Tottenham have built a new training ground and the best stadium in the country, and the club now boast soaring revenues (mainly thanks to that stadium). But he has also burned through 11 permanent managers, run up record levels of debt, posted financial losses for the last four years and sparked rows with his most loyal customers about ticket prices and concessions. Maybe the problem is not whoever is in the dugout, it’s the bloke who keeps hiring and firing them? Chairmen do not sack themselves, of course, particularly when t...

Watford’s 2023/24 financial results covered their second season in the Championship following relegation from the Premier League.   Boosted by parachute payments, relegated clubs often bounce back quite quickly, though the Hornets have struggled. Despite going through managers like a hot knife through butter, Watford have actually done pretty well on the pitch, at least until the recent blip, as they have played in the Premier League in six out of the last nine seasons. Watford’s pre-tax profit almost halved from £24.1m to £12.8m, mainly due to a significant reduction in profit on player sales from £59m to £29m, though revenue also fell £8.6m (13%) from £66.2 to £57.6m. This was partially compensated by a £25m (27%) decrease in operating expenses from £94m to £69m, as the club “implemented several cost saving initiatives and made efficiencies across the business”.   As a result, Watford posted a large profit for the second year in a row, though this was again driven...