The Political Economy of Football V2

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...

Lyon will remain in Ligue 1 next season after winning their appeal over the relegation imposed upon them by the body which oversees the finances of French football teams, the club confirmed in a statement. The decision means Lyon will maintain their top-flight status, which they have retained since the 1988-89 season. Lyon finished the 2024-25 Ligue 1 campaign in sixth, making the Europa League alongside fifth-place Lille. Their qualification raised uncertainty over Palace’s participation in the European competition next season following their maiden FA Cup triumph, due to multi-club ownership rules — relating to Textor’s Eagle Football’s involvement in both clubs — and Lyon’s superior league placement giving them priority in participating. UEFA had postponed its decision on Palace’s place in the Europa League until after the decision on Lyon’s relegation and there has been no update yet from European football’s governing body. If Palace are barred from the competition, Notting...

Chelsea have been fined £27million by Uefa for breaching its financial rules — with the threat of having to pay a further £51.8million — and also face potential restrictions on transfer spending.   It forms part of a crackdown by Uefa on some of Europe’s top teams. Aston Villa have also been fined £9.5million by Uefa for breaching rules, Barcelona £13million and Lyon £10.8million. Chelsea’s punishment is the largest fine the European governing body has ever imposed on a club. The clubs “may not register any new player on its List A to Uefa club competitions unless the List A transfer balance is positive”, Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) announced. That means any spending on new players must be covered by income from the sales of outgoing players — it could mean that new signings cannot be added to those clubs’ A lists unless existing squad members are sold. Further fines will be imposed if Chelsea and Villa — who will play in the Champions League...

Hull City have been placed under a transfer embargo by the English Football League (EFL) to cast doubt over the Championship club’s financial health. Hull have been sanctioned for failing to maintain transfer payments and sources with knowledge of the matter not authorised to speak publicly indicate that it relates to money owed to Aston Villa after Louie Barry was loaned from the Premier League club last season. The spending restrictions, confirmed on Friday, outline that Hull are unable to commit funds to bringing in either permanent or loan signings until January 2027, a period covering three windows. Hull have confirmed they are appealing against the disciplinary sanction and are “confident of resolving the matter as soon as possible” but the EFL’s measures will invite doubt over the funding available to owner Acun Ilicali. EFL have been in regular contact with Hull in the summer weeks, requesting funding guarantees to prevent the club from being placed under a business pla...

Last week the DNCG, the French football financial watchdog, bared its teeth and confirmed the relegation of Olympique Lyonnais to Ligue 2. On the one hand, this was a huge shock, given that Lyon are one of the most storied clubs in France; on the other hand, given the various financial issues that have arisen since American businessman John Textor took over the club in December 2022, it did not come completely out of the blue. Lyon’s plight seems almost unthinkable, when you consider that they won seven consecutive league titles in the early 2000s. Those heady heights are a distant memory these days, but they still finished sixth in Ligue 1 in the last two seasons. When Textor bought a controlling stake in Lyon in December 2022 at a valuation of €884m, this was the largest takeover in the history of French football, though it was largely funded by “other people’s money”, as provided by US investment firms Ares Management and Iconic Sports Management. His share is now up to around...

Sheffield Wednesday’s happiest recent times in the early 1990s, when they were regulars in the upper echelons of the top flight and frequent travellers to Wembley in cup competitions, seem a long time ago. It is 25 years since they were last in the Premier League and Wednesday now resemble a decaying club under the ownership of Dejphon Chansiri, a 57-year-old businessman whose family own the Thai Union Group (TUG), the world’s largest producer of canned tuna. The money has dried up and so, too, has hope. The summer has brought no respite to the anxiety. The majority of Wednesday’s first-team players have gone through June without pay, prompting the English Football League (EFL) to impose a transfer ban that will run until 2027. Another payday came and went on Monday of this week, again with the bulk of staff going unpaid. Last Thursday was supposedly the first day of pre-season for the Wednesday squad, but talented head coach Danny Rohl was not there to greet players: he had sign...

A useful review of the finances of Aberdeen FC in the wale of their European qualification.    Despite bringing in record sums in 2024, they still lost money:  https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/business/6796357/aberdeen-fc-inside-look-at-the-finances-of-the-dons/

Since Matthew Benham became their majority owner in June 2012, Brentford have been on an upward trajectory. They have risen from the third tier of English football into the Premier League, opened a new stadium and upgraded their training ground. Substantial setbacks have been few and far between, with the most notable being defeat to west London rivals Fulham in the 2020 Championship play-off final. But this summer will provide Brentford with their biggest test since promotion. Back then, they needed to assemble a squad packed with quality as they prepared to play in the top flight for the first time in 74 years. Now they have to adjust to life without Thomas Frank, who has left after nearly seven years in charge to become Tottenham Hotspur’s head coach. Frank took three members of his backroom staff, including Justin Cochrane, who was viewed as his potential successor, and they need to be replaced. Captain Christian Norgaard only signed a new contract in March but Arsenal ar...