The Political Economy of Football V2

Liverpool owner Fenway Sports Group (FSG) is in talks with Getafe president Angel Torres about a staged takeover that would add the La Liga club to its portfolio of sports teams. FSG’s interest in Getafe was first reported in Spain last month but Torres downplayed the status of the talks earlier this month in an interview with Spanish radio station COPE, saying there have been rumours about a takeover since he bought the club in 2002 “and now it’s Liverpool but we’re not for sale”. Despite this denial, it is widely known in the industry that Getafe have been for sale for years and FSG is just the latest to take an interest in the club, who are about to start their 21st season out of the last 22 in Spain’s top flight. Over that period they have built a reputation for being well-run and for developing young talent, such as current Aston Villa midfielder Emi Buendia, Galatasaray’s on-loan striker Alvaro Morata and their in-demand Nigerian star Christantus Uche. Torres has previous...

After a few years of relative obscurity in the middle region of the Championship, Swansea City’s name has featured prominently in the sports pages recently after the arrival of a couple of famous new investors. First up was Ballon d’Or winner Luka Modrić, who said, “Swansea has a strong identity, an incredible fanbase, and the ambition to compete at the highest level.”   He has been joined as a minority owner by the American rapper Snoop Dogg, who commented, “The story of the club and the area really struck a chord with me. This is a proud, working-class city and club. An underdog that bites back, just like me.” Swansea’s owners believe that such celebrity partnerships will help boost the club’s global profile, describing the investment as “an endorsement of the club’s ambition and vision”.   More tangibly, this a clear attempt to help drive commercial growth, in much the same way as Hollywood’s Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have done for Wrexham, another Welsh club. ...

Morecambe face expulsion from English football’s league pyramid after the fifth-tier National League suspended the Lancashire-based club with immediate effect because of their dire financial position. In a short statement, the league said its Compliance and Licensing Committee had met on Monday afternoon to debate Morecambe’s ability to start the season. The club have been in football’s Emergency Room for years but the crisis has deepened in recent weeks after a protracted takeover by London-based sports investment company Panjab Warriors stalled and a new potential buyer emerged. With Morecambe already under a transfer embargo, the National League announced on Friday that it was effectively giving current owner Bond Group Investments until noon to sell the club. But that deadline came and went, giving the league no option but to suspend the club until August 20, which means their first three fixtures of the new season — away at Boston United, home to Brackley Town and away at ...

Common sense would suggest that confirmation of John Textor’s exit from Crystal Palace should resolve the issues around the Premier League club’s connection to French side Lyon. After all, the American investor has now both sold his Palace stake and left all positions of authority at Lyon. Palace are taking their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), asking the so-called “supreme court” of worldwide athletic endeavour to overturn UEFA’s decision. Palace have also named Nottingham Forest and Lyon in their appeal, as their fellow Premier League side have been elevated from the Conference League to the second-tier Europa League at their expense, while their disputed stablemates from Ligue 1 have been left in the Europa League, as their higher domestic league finish of the two sides trumps winning the FA Cup.  Steve Parish, Palace’s chairman, will not mind which of those clubs CAS demotes, as long as what he views as the “terrible injustice” of his team being removed ...

  Manchester United season-ticket holders could have to pay up to £4,000 each just to reserve a seat at their new ground if the proposed move into a 100,000-seat stadium goes ahead. The introduction of a Personal Seat Licence (PSL) is one of many possible ideas that have been put to supporters during recent focus group sessions organised by US stadium consultants CSL International, which has experience of helping American franchises find ways to part-fund new stadiums. Under the PSL scheme, which is commonplace in some American sports, if a fan buys a seat licence they are given first refusal on that seat for 30 years. The seat licence owner would still have to pay for a season ticket on top of that one-off fee and if they failed to take up the option to buy a season ticket one year, the club would take back the ticket and the licence would be void. The initiative would give fans a guarantee of remaining in the same seats every year, but they would have to pay for that...

A naming rights deal for the London Stadium looks as elusive as ever after venue chiefs admitted there was “a significant risk” that no sponsor will be found before 2028. The owners of the stadium, which is occupied by West Ham United for most of the year, have been unable to secure a deal to reduce the venue’s losses despite previously claiming one was imminent. The risk of a continuing failure is spelt out in the draft annual report of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which owned the stadium until March, when it transferred to be directly under the Greater London Authority. Meanwhile, West Ham are still in a dispute with the London Stadium owners over who should pick up the costs of staging matches involving their Women’s Super League (WSL) team. The club’s 2013 concession agreement to use the stadium — labelled as the “deal of the century” by one London Assembly member — makes the venue’s owners responsible for paying costs such as stewarding, security and e...

Crystal Palace have lodged an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against their demotion to the Conference League. A UEFA panel earlier this month recommended that Palace were denied entry to the Europa League, in which they qualified by winning the FA Cup last season, after it found the Premier League side and Ligue 1’s Lyon breached the governing body of European football’s multi-club ownership rules. CAS said Palace’s case “will be an expedited procedure with an operative decision (without grounds) to be rendered on or before 11 August 2025.” However, the qualifying play-off draw for the Conference League, which will include the English participant, takes place a week earlier on August 4. Palace chairman Steve Parish has suggested Forest had played a significant role in the club’s swapping European competitions. “We’re led to believe that’s the issue,” Parish said. “If there wasn’t someone who wanted to get in as a consequence, then there wouldn’t be ...

West Ham United will be forced to temporarily move out of their home if the World Athletics Championships is staged at the London Stadium in September 2029.   Last week the government announced that it would provide the financial backing for a bid, with £35million from the Treasury and a further £10million from the London mayor’s office now guaranteed. However, the championships now forms the finale for the international track and field season as part of a new World Athletics initiative, meaning that the nine-day event will likely take place after the start of the 2029-30 football season. September will be the preference for World Athletics, should London be chosen, and organisers would therefore need to look for the event to coincide with the international break at the start of the month, which usually involves a midweek and weekend game. That, however, would not fully resolve the fixture issue for West Ham. The process for changing the seating configurat...

At first, Barcelona agreeing to sign Marcus Rashford on loan from Manchester United for the coming season seems like a deal that works for everyone.  Rashford wanted to leave United, who were keen to get his £325,000-a-week ($438,000) wages off their books, while Barcelona have been looking for an experienced player to cover at left-wing and centre-forward. The 27-year-old fits that profile.  The immediate problem, however, is whether Barca will be able to even play Rashford given their long-running issues registering players within La Liga’s strict salary limits. Their most recent registration problems came last winter, when only Spanish government intervention allowed the team to use attacking midfielder Dani Olmo and backup forward Pau Victor in the second half of 2024-25.   Uncertainty over their squad situation led the Athletic Club attacker Nico Williams to decide against joining Barca this summer, after a deal had otherwise been agreed. The club are currently...

More about Nottingham Forest's £80m loan from Apollo Management which we reported on Saturday. The £80million loaned from Apollo to Forest is senior debt, meaning it takes priority when it comes to repayment; in the unlikely event Forest were heading out of business, Apollo would be at the front of the resultant queue. The loan has a three-year term, due for repayment on December 20 2027, though there is provision for that to be extended a further two years. It incurs 8.75 per cent interest annually or, based on the £80m balance, £7m per year. That was around half Forest’s total matchday income in the 2023-24 season (the latest for which we have figures). £55m of the Apollo loan has been used to repay the amounts due to RMF. Based on most recent interest rates, those RMF loans were incurring £6.4m in annual interest, so this refinancing — now a common occurrence in football — works out cheaper in a sense; applying the Apollo interest rate to £55m gives an annual charge of £4.8m...

Prices for season tickets have increased markedly since the resumption of matches after the Covid-19 pandemic. This season, there has been a change in attitude, with seven clubs freezing prices for attending their 19 home league matches. However, all but one club — Crystal Palace — raised prices last term. Still, attending football remains an expensive hobby, with nine clubs charging more than £1,000 for their most expensive offerings and several others coming close to that mark. Clubs had previously expressed sympathy with fans and referenced the cost-of-living crisis while simultaneously increasing prices. This year, those reasons are less prominent, with the latest argument being that the increased cost of national insurance employer contributions has necessitated an increase in prices. Ten Premier League clubs have some form of minimum usage policy. Arsenal, Aston Villa, Brentford, Brighton & Hove Albion, Leeds United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Sunder...

Life has certainly been more of a rollercoaster for Clarets fans since Alan Pace took over the club in December 2020, when his company ALK Capital purchased an 84% majority shareholding, as his tenure has so far included two relegations and two promotions. The last available accounts for Burnley are from the 2023/24 season, which means that they are a full year out of date, but they are still relevant for our analysis, as they neatly illustrate the club’s financial status in the Premier League. Despite promotion to the Premier League, Burnley still lost £28m before tax, though this improved from a £36m loss in the Championship. Revenue more than doubled from £65m to £134m, while profit from player sales increased from £11m to £15m. Burnley have rarely generated big money from player trading, only twice making more than £15m in the last decade. Indeed, their profit was £7m or less four times in this period.   However, this was largely offset by a steep increase in operating exp...

The baffling saga at Morecambe continues.   Punjab Warriors were approved purchasers but were sidelined by a new consortium:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cdezw4g47w6o Meanwhile fans fear for the future of their club:  https://www.beyond.radio/news/local-news/interviews-anger-frustration-sadness-fans-unite-at-morecambe-fc-over-club-crisis/

Apollo Management has lent £80mn to Nottingham Forest Football Club in expensive debt to allow it to pay off other liabilities, in the private capital firm’s first known foray into English Premier League football, reports the Financial Times. The US group in December provided a three-year term loan at an annual interest rate of 8.75 per cent, according to corporate filings. Some £55mn of the proceeds have been used to refinance an existing facility owed to Rights and Media Funding Group, a lender that has in the past provided financing to premier league club Everton, while the remaining £25mn is additional working capital. Apollo’s loan — secured on assets including Nottingham Forest’s stadium — is an example of a growing trend in which big US private capital groups offer high-interest debt to European football clubs in need of cash. Clubs including premier league peer Chelsea and France’s Olympique Lyon have also borrowed from US-based private credit lenders. Nottingham Forest’s...

Clubs even at Step 2 of the non-league system are going full time or have 'hybrid' squads with some fill-time players.   Last season at Eastbourne in the National League South wages cost the owner £1m on top of income.    Salisbury have been taken over by new Kuwaiti owners.   Chelmsford recently announced a seven figure sponsorship deal. I recently saw the accounts of a National League North club for 2023/4 which has just part-time players.  In 2023/4 the club was relegated to the third tier and this involved the loss of National League sponsorship of £38k, although this was offset by a £36k rise in commercial income.  £106k was received for transfer fees to EFL clubs.   Sponsorship this year from the League will be £45k. Turnover declined after relegation from just under £500k to £395k.  The gross loss went up from £4k to £103k, although this was partially offset by temporary rental income.  The seven directors put in an aver...

Uefa has made it clear to Chelsea and Aston Villa that it will scrutinise any player “swap deals” to ensure the fees have not been inflated after taking issue with at least one previous transfer. The practice of two clubs paying significant transfer fees to each other with a player moving in either direction has taken place involving several teams in the Premier League in recent seasons. Some rivals have viewed such deals as a way of artificially increasing transfer income to help comply with Profitability and Sustainability Rules, and Uefa revealed earlier this month that it knocked back the value of at least one deal involving both Chelsea and Villa. Chelsea have a settlement agreement with Uefa, which runs for the next four seasons, and Villa for the next three seasons, after they breached its financial rules, which are tougher than the Premier League’s in terms of permitted losses. It is understood that Uefa will continue to look at all such swap deals but given that Ch...

Burnley have become the first Premier League club to launch a formal commercial partnership with X.  The social media platform, owned by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and formerly known as Twitter, is becoming Burnley’s first ‘strategic digital platform partner’ as they prepare for their return to the top flight. The agreement will see X and Burnley work together to produce content and, according to their press release, “deliver world-class fan engagement, content and brand amplification”. A key component is the production of a series of ‘X Originals’ films, which will chronicle the club’s first season back in the Premier League following relegation in 2024. There will be 20 episodes, each between 10 and 12 minutes, with one released every fortnight. Similar films have been commissioned for tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams and the NFL this summer. X is keen to use this partnership and its associated content to engage the “fandom audience”. It hopes ...

American rapper Snoop Dogg is the latest celebrity to join the ownership group of an English Football League (EFL) club by investing in Championship side Swansea City.   The Abertawe club confirmed the 53-year-old’s investment on Thursday. Snoop Dogg was involved with Swansea’s kit launch earlier this week, appearing in a social media post wearing the team’s home jersey for the 2025-26 season. “My love of football is well known, but it feels special to me that I make my move into club ownership with Swansea City,” he said in a club statement.   The story of the club and the area really struck a chord with me. This is a proud, working class city and club. An underdog that bites back, just like me.   I’m proud to be part of Swansea City.” Swanseaare owned by Americans Andy Coleman, Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen through Swansea Football LLC. The ownership group added: “Snoop has openly shared his love of football and his desire to be involved in the game, a...

Apollo is in talks with Atlético Madrid about taking a stake in Spain’s third-biggest football club in a move that would mark a rare foray into sport for the Wall Street investment giant. The talks emerged out of Atlético’s hunt for investors to back an €800mn real estate project next to its stadium, according to one club official. The official told the Financial Times Apollo raised the alternative idea of taking a stake in Atlético Holdco, the company that controls the football club, during discussions over the real estate project. Two of Atlético Holdco’s major shareholders — long-serving chief executive Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, who owns 50.8 per cent, and club chair Enrique Cerezo, who owns 15.2 per cent — are not willing to sell any shares, according to the official. However, the person added that they would be open to issuing new equity to allow Apollo to acquire a stake. A deal could see US private investment group Ares Management, which owns a 34 per cent stake in Atlético’s ...

Gareth Bale says the consortium he is fronting in a takeover bid for Cardiff City has made a new offer for “full control” of the League One club. Speaking to Front Office Sports, Bale said: “I guess exciting news. We have a brand new offer on the table, recently just gone in. “We think it’s a great offer. We’re very happy. We think it’s very fair, if not more than fair, and something we hope the current owners will take serious. We’d love them to accept so we can take full control and get on with what we want to do and create Cardiff into the club we know it can be.” It would have to be considerable improvement on the reported initial £40m offer as Vincent Tan keeps counting the money he has not spent well at the club. Would a serious consortium conduct its business in private?

It was in early 2024 that  The Athletic  was told of Aston Villa’s desire to pursue stadium naming rights. Chris Heck, the club’s president of business operations at the time, led discussions among staff to find a lucrative, big-brand sponsorship to rename Villa Park. Many clubs have raised significant revenue this way, including Arsenal with the Emirates Stadium, Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium or, further away, Barcelona’s Spotify Camp Nou. Heck and his team cast the net far and wide, discussing worldwide brands, but a suitable partner has not been found. Stadium naming rights would, undoubtedly, have the greatest commercial impact, far exceeding any additional money brought in through the hike in ticket prices at the start of the 2024-25 campaign or the upcoming season’s rise of five per cent. Would supporters sacrifice tradition and be prepared to change Villa Park’s name in exchange for PSR to be less of a yearly issue? Manager Unai Emery has driven Villa’s ...

The Club World Cup has certainly been controversial.  Thanks to the generosity of streaming platform DAZN, who paid a thumping great $1 bn for a TV rights deal, even though other broadcasters had shown little interest, FIFA were able to create a massive prize pot for the event of the same amount. Some cynical observers have noted that shortly after the agreement was signed, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) bought a 10% minority stake in DAZN for, you guessed it, $1 bln.   A week later, FIFA confirmed that Saudi Arabia would be the hosts of the 2034 men’s World Cup, though to be fair they were the only bidders. To place this into perspective, the FIFA Club World Cup’s €857m ($1 bn) revenue is around 40% of the UEFA Champion League’s €2.5 bn, but is more than the Europa League €565m and Europa Conference €285m combined. The prize money would have been even higher in terms of Euros if the Dollar had not tanked in the last few months. For example, using the Jan...

Shortly to receive the Royal Assent, here is a fan friendly guide to the Football Governance Bill which sets up the football regulator, opposed by many Premier League clubs and the league itskf:  https://thefsa.org.uk/news/whats-in-the-football-governance-bill/ It's step forward, a useful reform, but not a revolution.   Money will still talk.

Tomorrow night, the global champions of club football will be crowned in MetLife Stadium, the culmination of Fifa’s new month-long tournament.  Either Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain or Conference League title-holders Chelsea will win international bragging rights (of a kind) for the next four years. But regardless of the outcome in New Jersey on Sunday, the competition has been a huge financial boon for Chelsea and its private equity owners Clearlake Capital. Since the £2.5bn takeover in 2022, the club has been on a record-breaking spending spree. According to estimates from Transfermarkt, Chelsea have forked out €1.6bn in the last three years on new signings, considerably more than any other team in Europe. The pace of additions has not slowed. More than €200mn has been committed this summer to bring the likes of João Pedro and Liam Delap to Stamford Bridge. To help finance all this, Clearlake and a group of minority shareholders led by club chair Todd Boehly h...

The Football Governance Bill should receive the Royal Assent later this month, having overcome resistance by Premier League clubs.  We will have to wait and see how effective it is in dealing not just with rogue owners, but those out of their depth, Cardiff and Hull offering examples of this problem. Hull have been told by the English Football League (EFL) that their failure to maintain transfer payments would result in a penalty preventing them from spending money on new players until January 2027. Hull were quick to confirm their intention to appeal last Friday, citing misunderstandings over the £1m owed to Aston Villa after loaning Louie Barry in January, but there are bubbling concerns over the club’s financial health in the Championship. Now,  The Athletic  has revealed: Hull had future commitments of almost £22m to clubs for players signed under Ilicali at the end of May A debt of close to £3m is owed to former owner Ehab Allam Seve...

Crystal Palace being denied entry to this coming season’s Europa League is a “terrible injustice” and a “bad day for football”, the club’s chairman Steve Parish has said. A UEFA panel has recommended that Palace are denied entry to the competition after it found that the club breached the governing body’s rules on multi-club ownership. The south London club are now set to compete in the third-tier Conference League but intend to lodge an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Nottingham Forest, who finished seventh in the Premier League and originally qualified for the Conference League, could now replace them in the Europa League. UEFA’s rules state that no individual or legal entity can have “control or influence” over more than one club participating in a UEFA club competition, and European football’s governing body must be satisfied that the respective clubs are separate entities to maintain their tournaments’ integrity. Palace’s issue stems from Eagle Footba...

In just over a month, Barcelona will return to the Camp Nou for the first time since starting a €1.5billion (£1.3bn; $1.8bn) refurbishment project two years ago. At least, that’s what the club is hoping. Work on Barca’s stadium has already suffered several setbacks, with an original return date of November 2024 long since passed. Now the club is targeting August 10 — when Barca play their traditional season-opening friendly match, the Joan Gamper Trophy — for the big day. That date represents a fifth rescheduling of the team’s expected return. Delays to the project have already forced Barca to play at the city’s Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys much longer than expected, but the option of starting a third consecutive season there appears to have been ruled out. They no longer have permission to play at the ground, nor do they intend to apply for it. Work on the Camp Nou began in June 2023, with the aim of modernising the ground while increasing its capacity to 105,000, which would b...

Former Wales international Gareth Bale is fronting a consortium of US investors that is reportedly looking to purchase Cardiff City. As well as being one of the greatest ever Welsh footballers, Bale is also famously a son of Cardiff, so this story ticks many boxes. The Times reported that the consortium would be prepared to offer £40m for Cardiff, though it is debatable whether such a price would be acceptable to current owner, Vincent Tan, who has ploughed much higher sums into the club since his arrival in 2010. The Supporters Trust clearly thinks that the owner shoulders much of the blame for the club’s current predicament, “Relegation in all honesty has been coming since the 2021/22 season and the failure to address fundamental required changes from the top down has now come home to roost.” There was “a small marginal increase” in Cardiff’s pre-tax loss from £11.4m to £11.7m in 2023/24. Revenue fell £3.5m (13%) from £26.7m to £23.2m, while profit from player sales dropped fro...