The Political Economy of Football V2

This has not been the happiest of seasons for Manchester City but for many fans the on-pitch struggles have not been the biggest source of frustration. Over recent months, a number of incidents at City matches, both at the Etihad Stadium and away from home, have piled up to cause a growing sense of disillusionment, especially as many fans believe those incidents are a direct consequence of the club’s ticketing policies. Earlier in February, City fans wrote to the club’s chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, to request that season ticket prices be frozen, almost a year on from price rises that sparked a protest banner inside the stadium which read ‘record profits but record prices, stop exploiting our loyalty’. Fan calculations show that season ticket prices have risen 15 per cent on average over the past five years. In some areas of the stadium it is as high as 25 per cent. Following complaints about the treatment of supporters at the Champions League final in Istanbul the previous su...

The number of European football club takeovers halved last year, as high valuations, legal disputes and a slowdown in the market for broadcast rights hit investor appetite.  Just 23 clubs in Europe changed hands in 2024, according to figures from Uefa due to be published this week in its annual report on football finance. The figure is a steep drop from the 44 that were sold in 2023, and the 48 in 2022, a year that included record-breaking deals for Chelsea FC, AC Milan and Olympique Lyonnais.  After the £2.5bn sale of Chelsea, several elite clubs explored sales, including Manchester United and Liverpool FC. But in both cases, the clubs’ US owners ultimately sold minority stakes. Several other English clubs, including Tottenham Hotspur, Brentford, Crystal Palace and West Ham, have been seeking new investors, but none have reached deals.  After decades of uninterrupted growth in the value of broadcast rights, football clubs have been adjusting to a marked cooling in th...

Leeds United chairman Paraag Marathe has outlined the club’s plans for the expansion of Elland Road. Leeds announced their intention to expand their stadium in September last year, taking the capacity from 37,645 to 53,000 seats. This would make it the seventh-largest club stadium in England. Marathe, who is also president of 49ers Enterprises, the group that owns Leeds, said that the club are aiming to expand without compromising the existing capacity. “We’ll expand the hospitality and also the GA (general admission), it will be a little bit of everything,” said Marathe, speaking online as part of the Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit on Wednesday. “Mostly in the West Stand but then we’ll look at the South and North, too. But we want to do it without compromising seats over the next couple of years, so it’s going to be a bit tricky but that’s our goal and we’re ploughing forward on all fronts.” “What’s of paramount importance is to keep the cauldron and electr...

Having spent three out of the four seasons between 2011/12 and 2014/15 in the Premier League, QPR are now in their tenth consecutive season in the Championship. During this period, they have spent most of the time in the bottom half of the table with their best finish being ninth in 2020/21, while the last two seasons involved battles against relegation. There was another disappointing start to this season’s campaign, when the Hoops only won one of their opening 16 games, leaving them bottom of the Championship, but results have picked up since then, so they are currently in a respectable 14th place. QPR’s pre-tax loss reduced in 2923/4 from £20.3m to £13.5 m, as revenue rose £2.6m (11%) from £23.3m to £25.9m, while profit from player sales more than doubled from £1.0m to £2.2m.    In addition, operating expenses were cut by £4.4m (10%) to £41.1m, but net interest swung from £0.8m receivable to £0.6m payable. All three revenue streams were higher, led by gate receipts, w...

Hibernian's owner Ian Gordon has said that he will write off the club's £7.2m loss and convert debt into equity:  https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/hibs/latest-hibs-news/donation-ian-gordon-confirms-he-will-write-off-hibs-ps7m-loss-as-he-addresses-finances-and-ben-kensell-exit Gordon hinted that he was less than satisfied with the club's departing chief executive.

Typically, newcomers struggle to survive in the Premier League, especially in recent years — there’s nothing new there. But last season was the first time since 1998, and only the second time ever, that all three promoted Premier League clubs were relegated to the Championship. To provide some context to just how difficult it has been for Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton, last season’s relegated trio provide an unflattering reference point. Statistically, Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton Town were the worst bottom three in Premier League history. They picked up 66 points between them — 10 points fewer than the next lowest on record. Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton are currently on course to finish with a cumulative total of 63 points. They have two fewer wins than Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton at the same stage of the season and have conceded 174 goals compared to 178. The financial numbers are interesting, too, and, in many ways, highlight what promoted clubs are u...

Representatives of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will fly into the North East next week for a crunch “off-site” meeting about Newcastle United. In previous years these meetings have taken place in the grandiose surroundings of Alnwick Castle, as captured by Amazon’s fly-on-the-wall series,  We Are Newcastle United .   It is not known where the meeting will take place this time but the chief executive, Darren Eales, is expected to be there, as is the sporting director, Paul Mitchell, and Jacobo Solis, recently appointed to the club’s board of directors. There are two potential plans left on the table. One is to stay on the present site and expand the Gallowgate End to a capacity of 60,000 (it cannot go bigger because of restrictions to the East Stand). The other is to build a new stadium, a giant bowl structure, beyond the Leazes End, in Leazes Park, with a capacity of 70,000. The Times understands that senior figures have already been walked around the potential ...

Ever since Sir Jim Ratcliffe purchased a stake in Manchester United, the INEOS chairman has taken a series of unpopular decisions that have left many supporters scratching their heads, as the local boy made good appears to not care about being put in the same category as the reviled Glazers. Is he a rat putting the club over the cliff or a hard-nosed businessman sorting out a bloated club? Change is certainly needed, but some of his cost cutting measures seem to inflict more pain than is justified by the savings they create. The billionaire has pushed forward a series of decisions to reduce the club’s cost base, including making around 250 employees redundant last year with plans to further reduce staffing levels, reportedly by another 100-200. This will even impact United’s famous academy, which has supplied at least one homegrown player for every match day squad since 1937. Other cost savings measures included ending Sir Alex Ferguson’s ambassadorial role despite the Scot being...

Eagle-eyed viewers of Sky Sports’ coverage of Tottenham Hotspur’s 1-0 win against Manchester United last Sunday will have noticed a change. When head coach Ange Postecoglou was interviewed before kick-off and asked about the lift of having players back from injury, he was described as “Tottenham Hotspur Head Coach”. When the Tottenham starting XI was displayed down the left-hand side of the screen, it said “Spurs” at the top. And when the graphics showed the team in their positions, starting with a cutout of Postecoglou, arms crossed, the word across his chest was “Spurs”. An email that was circulated to Premier League broadcasters on February 10 has been seen by  The Athletic . Titled “Tottenham Hotspur Naming Update”, the email makes clear how the club wants to be referenced. “Tottenham Hotspur have provided clarification regarding the club’s name. They have requested that the club are primarily known as Tottenham Hotspur, with Spurs being the preferred short version. The c...

The Winkelvoss brothers, 43, have completed a $4.5 million investment in Real Bedford Football Club, believing they have an unearthed the “ultimate underdog story”. The club attracts an average of only 300 spectators per game, and the brothers hope their investment can help it climb from the eighth tier to the Premier League. I must say I am more sceptical.   It's a long haul and other moneybag or benefactor clubs have failed to make it.  Remember Rushden and Diamonds?   Even AFC Fylde have failed to break into the EFL. Even so, it is the latest “must have” accessory for business tycoons or the wealthy stars of film, music and sport: a grassroots British football club that they can dream of turning into a professional outfit. The Winklevoss twins, crypto billionaires, are the latest to join the ranks of lower-league owners, after taking over eighth-tier Real Bedford. They are following in the footsteps of the Hollywood duo Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney,...

An American consortium that includes the San Francisco 49ers is believed to be moving closer to agreeing a substantial investment into Rangers.  The deal is being led by Paraag Marathe, an executive who leads the venture capital arm of the 49ers NFL team, but also includes members who have not yet been named. 49ers Enterprises already has a controlling stake in Leeds United after taking control at Elland Road in 2023 in a £170 million deal. Marathe is chairman at the Yorkshire club. Talks are at a relatively advanced stage and may pave the way for an agreement to be announced in the coming months. There is potential for the consortium to attempt to buy out other Rangers investors and build up its stake in the Ibrox club over time.. Rangers already has a US presence in its boardroom and on its shareholder register.   John Halsted, a Wyoming-based private equity investor, has been a non-executive director since August 2023. He originally bought sha...

Arsenal’s pre-tax loss significantly improved from £52m to £18m in 2023/24, as (football) revenue shot up £149m (32%) from £465m to a new club record £614m, while profit from player sales also greatly increased from £11m to £51m. However, this was partially offset by substantial growth in operating expenses, which rose £142m (27%) from £521m to £663m, while net interest payable also increased from £6m to £18m. The club was honest enough to point out that the underlying loss only reduced from £34m to £18m, as the previous year was adversely impacted by an exceptional £18m impairment that was booked to write-down the value of certain player registrations. All three of Arsenal’s main revenue streams saw good growth, achieving new club highs. The largest increase came in broadcasting, which rose £71m (37%) from £191m to £262m, driven by more success on the pitch. Although it’s rarely good news to lose money, Arsenal’s £18m loss is actually not too bad for the Premier League, where ...

Manchester United’s part-owner Ineos is seeking an early termination of its multimillion-pound sponsorship deal with Tottenham Hotspur as Sir Jim Ratcliffe continues the drastic reduction of his investment in sport. In 2022 Ineos struck a five-year deal with the north London club to promote its 4×4 Grenadier car, displaying the company’s logo on the seats in both dugouts and on the digital advertising hoardings during matches. It could be seen during United’s Premier League encounter at the Tottenham Stadium last weekend. The Times has revealed that Ineos is now in what have been described as amicable discussions to exit their deal with Spurs two years early.

Arsenal recorded an overall loss of £17.7million ($22.3m) in the year ending May 2024, a considerable improvement on the previous year’s loss of £52.1m, while their spending on salaries increased by 40 per cent. Player trading has a significant impact on profitability and the restricted budgets of buying clubs had a negative impact:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cly3n20xnmgo The club’s wage bill now stands at £328million, which though a big jump on the 2023 accounts, is still only the fifth-highest in the Premier League for 2023-24. There has been a huge jump in revenue from £466.7m to £616.6m which is partly attributed to on-field success, via the long-awaited return to the Champions League. Participation in Europe’s top competition brought in £80.4m — more than double what Arsenal earned from the Europa League in 2022-23. Matchday income has risen by 28 percent to £131.7m, taking them above neighbours Tottenham Hotspur and second in England only to Manchest...

Dan Ashworth’s hiring and ultimate departure from Manchester United cost the club £4.1million, according to the club’s latest financial results.  United’s figures for the second quarter of the 2024-25 season reveal a total of £14.5m in exceptional costs related to the departures of Ashworth, manager Erik ten Hag and his backroom staff. United’s results reveal the cost of a season of turbulence so far at Old Trafford, with the £14.5m in exceptional costs contributing to the club recording a second-quarter loss of £27.7m. United have consistently posted losses over the last five years, totalling £373m since the start of the 2019-20 season, which has led minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe to implement a range of cost-cutting measures across the club since taking control of operations last year. According to the second quarter results, United’s revenues fell by 12 per cent compared to the same period last year, largely due to the club’s failure to qualify for the Champions League r...

While many clubs’ ascent to European competition has been driven by deep-pocketed owners, Brest’s uptick in fortunes has relied on canny use of its small budget and a focus on experienced players.  Its old-school model of local owners and prudent transfers is the antithesis of cash-rich clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain. To stay in Europe’s elite club competition, “the Pirates” face a tough second-leg match at PSG next week. The team lost the first-leg to its French rivals 3-0. The tie highlights the stark disparities between the tournament’s biggest and smallest teams.  Over the past decade, Qatar-owned PSG has spent close to €2bn on transfers, according to Transfermarkt — 40 times more than the Britanny club. Brest reported revenue of €51mn for 2022-23, a fraction of the €807mn earned by its Parisian rival over the same season. Stade Brestois 29, the club’s full name, has a loyal fan base in the rainy industrial port with working-class roots. Yet the team’s success has s...

Brentford have clearly come a long way, as they were playing in League Two only 15 years ago. Supported by owner Matthew Benham, who fully bought the club in June 2012, both in terms of financial contributions and a smart, data-led recruitment policy, the club has made great progress on and off the pitch. However, last season Brentford swung from a £9m pre-tax profit to an £8m loss, a decline of £17m, as significant investment in the squad led to a £35m (21%) increase in operating expenses from £166m to £201m, while net interest payable quadrupled from £1m to £4m.   This was partially offset by a significant improvement in profit on player sales from £6m to £25m, though revenue was flat at £167m. The club said that it had done well to maintain revenue at the same level, despite external economic pressures and a drop of seven positions in the league.   That led to a £7m (6%) reduction in broadcasting income from £135m to £128m, though this was offset by commercial income ri...

The most striking events of yesterday’s game at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium came long before kick-off, with an organised protest march to the stadium. It was the biggest organised display of discontent Tottenham have seen for years. There have been moments of frustration and disappointment over the years, just as you would endure at any football club. There was a real outburst of anger in April 2021 when Spurs signed up to join the Super League and fans congregated outside the stadium with anti-ENIC and anti-Levy banners not too different from those seen on Sunday. But that was still the era of Covid restrictions and those protests were just a few dozen fans outside the ground, many of them wearing masks. This was something bigger. It all started two hours before kick-off at the junction of Lordship Lane and the High Road, just down the road from the stadium. At first, a few dozen fans were gathered on the pavement in front of The Trampery, the grand red brick building on the cor...

The Premier League has once again been made to look foolish by Manchester City’s smart lawyers and run up yet another big legal bill.   The top flight competitionhas been dealt a devastating blow in its legal battle with Manchester City after its sponsorship rules enforced between 2021 and 2024 were declared void. An independent tribunal ruled in October last year that three elements of the rules regarding Associated Party Transactions (APT) were unlawful, in particular around loans from owners and shareholders to clubs. City’s interpretation of the initial decision was that the APT rules in their entirety were void and that the unlawful elements could not simply be struck off. The Premier League dismissed these concerns and pushed ahead with amendments which were approved by 16 of the 20 top-flight clubs in November. The rules, introduced in December 2021 in the wake of the Saudi-led takeover of Newcastle United, were designed to maintain the competitiveness of the...

Crypto coin company Tether has acquired a minority stake in Juventus:  https://www.tradingview.com/news/cointelegraph:8a31b6487094b:0-tether-invests-in-juventus-football-club/ Tether, which issues the $142 billion stablecoin USDT, didn’t disclose the size or value of its holding in Turin-based Juventus in an announcement on Friday. Juventus didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The El Salvador-headquartered company has ramped up its dealmaking significantly in recent years as its profits swelled, powered by rising interest rates on the US government bonds it manages. Tether said it has more than $7 billion in excess capital last month, up from about $1 billion from three months earlier. Tether has been investing in everything from digital payments to farming infrastructure, rapidly expanding its reach across the global business sphere. It plowed $775 million into the social media company Rumble Inc. in December, while holding a stake worth more than €1.32 billion...

 'Strong action' has improved Shrewsbury Town's finances, but they are still making a loss and seeking outside investment:  https://www.shropshirestar.com/sport/2025/02/14/roland-wycherley-strong-actions-have-help-improve-shrewsbury-towns-finances/ The club serves a large rural area and has to face clubs with very wealthy owners such as Birmingham City, Wrexham and Wycombe Wanderers.   League One is becoming more like the Championship as outside investors crowd in.

 Greg Campbell has hit back at a recent article in the Financial Times by Brentford’s Cliff Crown on the subject of the proposed football regulator.  Campbell is a partner in Campbell Tickell, a management consultancy.   He has written a code of governance for football clubs. ‘I was interested to read the opinion piece from Cliff Crown, chair of Brentford Football Club (“Regulation must not stop football clubs that dare to dream”, Pink ‘Un, February 4). However I believe there is more to the story. While Brentford’s recent track record is impressive, parachute payments (to clubs relegated from the Premiership to the Championship) create a yo-yo effect instead of promoting competition. Clubs like Southampton, Leicester, Burnley, Sheffield United, Norwich, Ipswich, West Brom and not many others continually bounce up and down between the Premiership and the Championship. The parachute payments system distorts competition and makes it very hard for others to break thr...

Hibernian’s 2023/24 accounts covered a season when the club finished in “a very disappointing eighth position”. However, they did somewhat better in the cup competitions, reaching the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup and the semi-finals of the League Cup. This was the second time that Hibernian had finished 8th in the last three seasons, which is clearly below expectations. These are their worst finishes since 2013/14, when they ended up being relegated, spending three seasons in the Championship before returning to the top flight in 2017. The club has not been helped by frequent changes in the manager with four men being handed the reins after the sacking of Jack Ross in December 2021. Shaun Maloney only lasted four months, while Lee Johnson survived for more than a year before also exiting stage left. In terms of ownership, there was a lengthy period of stability after Sir Tom Farmer, the former Kwik-Fit CEO, bought the club and the stadium from the receivers in 1991.  ...

As it complains about ‘the deindustrialisation of Europe’, INEOS is undertaking a slowing down or outright cutting of investment in what had been flagship businesses.  On Wednesday, the INEOS Group received a further blow when leading agencies Fitch Ratings and Moody’s downgraded their credit rating to “negative”, citing mounting debts of almost €12bn (£10bn), over five times larger than INEOS’ annual earnings.  INEOS’ recent business decisions have the appearance of stripping back to protect the motherlode, but even United have not escaped the cost-cutting.   On Tuesday,  The Athletic  reported that Ratcliffe was following up 250 job losses last summer by making another 100 staff roles redundant over the upcoming months. This is just the latest in a string of what Ratcliffe has termed “right-sizing” measures — such as removing club credit cards and cutting Sir Alex Ferguson’s ambassadorial deal, as well as raising ticket prices and eliminatin...

Swindon Town are planning to boost their commercial revenue as part of their campaign for promotion to League One:  https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/sport/24930164.swindon-town-look-events-boost-push-league-one/

The last derby between Everton and Liverpool at Goodison had a predictably explosive end, but research by The Athletic shows that both teams are less reliant on local talent than they were in the 1990s. In private conversations with  The Athletic , multiple people working within player recruitment in the north-west of England have said that neighbouring regions such as Greater Manchester and Yorkshire offer a greater diversity of young players in comparison with Merseyside, due to those areas having higher populations and more people relocating to them. The talent pool available to Premier League clubs is also so vast now that the focus is on nurturing the best players regardless of where they hail from rather than those on your doorstep. Every professional footballer from Merseyside has a story to share from their upbringing. Many of them include street football and playing with their mates. Rooney, for example, first turned out for a kids' team run by The Western Approach...

Manchester United staff have been left stunned by the “brutal” dismissal of the club’s long-serving head of team operations as part of the restructuring by Ineos at Old Trafford. On a day when it emerged that further redundancies are planned, with more than 100 staff now at risk of losing their jobs, The Times has revealed the shock decision to part company with Jackie Kay after almost 30 years serving the club. Kay, from a United-supporting family, has worked at the club since 1995, initially as executive assistant to David Gill, the former chief executive, before taking charge of first-team logistics for more than a decade at the Carrington training ground. She was promoted to head of team operations in October 2023, only a few months before Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos became co-owners, and was a hugely popular figure with the players as well as a succession of managers. One insider described Kay as “the oil in the machine”, the conduit beyond the manager and the players. ...

The English county of Devon is in the spotlight, with two of the best three teams in the country making the long journey south-west in the FA Cup fourth round. I lived in Exeter for two years and never felt more disconnected from football.   For some, rugby union is more synonymous with the area than football — the Exeter Chiefs won the Premiership in 2017 and 2020 — but dig beneath the surface and look beyond the stunning coastline, popular tourist hotspots and cream teas and you will find an area that has forged its own footballing culture. Devon’s two English Football League (EFL) clubs have never been in the top flight and neither have won a major trophy. Plymouth are bottom of the Championship, while Exeter are 18th in League One. Torquay United have a proud heritage but are now in the National League South, the sixth tier, after falling on hard times. Devon is the fourth-biggest county in England by area, but it is sparsely populated.    The fact Dev...