The Political Economy of Football V2

Foreign investment is reaching well down the pyramid, National League North King's Lynn being the latest example.    Singapore-based Turn Sports Investment have been buying into the club since 2024 and are now completely in charge. A minority shareholding has been taken by the Blue and Gold Supporters' Trust to ensure local community involvement.   They state: 'TSI has stepped in a responsible custodian to stabilise the club in the short term.'   They will relinquish their role 'once the right structures are in place.' Former owner Stephen Cleeve has written off his director's loan and will have no further involvement. More about TSI here:  https://turncapital.io/2024/01/08/turn-sports-investments-invests-in-kings-lynn-town-football-club-inks-strategic-investment-and-partnership-deal/

The attempt by The Athletic to rank Premier League clubs by the current happiness of their fans can only be intended as a bit of a laugh, although the rankings of Sunderland first, Arsenal second and Chelsea are a temporary third seems reasonable enough. And who are bottom?  Yes, it's the ever demanding and never satisfied fans of Tottenham Hotspur. The Athletic says: 'Whether it’s team-mates arguing at full time, team-mates ignoring the manager, the manager slating the fans, the fans booing the players or the players ignoring the fans, it’s not exactly sunshine, lollipops and rainbows at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium right now. Three home wins in 21 league matches will do that to you. As will charging some of the most expensive prices in the country to watch it.  It really is a shiny stadium, though.' A couple of my friends are Spurs fans and they do their best to keep their spirits up, but there is a great contrast with the mood I remember in the early 1960s.

I have always been a sceptic about the idea of fan owned clubs.  It's not just a question of the lunatics running the asylum: one can usually find well qualified lawyers and accountants to sit on the board.  However, even if fans can raise the purchase price of a club in administration, they find it difficult to sustain the losses needed to secure success on the pitch and a downward spiral on and off the pitch can often result.. Exeter City has been referred to as the glowing example of a fan owned club, escaping from the clutches of the administrators, albeit with the benefit of some lucrative FA cup games. Yet they raised their playing budget by £1m in two years while everyone else in the league was raising it by £3m or £3.5m.  The highest playing budget in League One is £19m.  The Grecians are currently fifth from bottom.   General manager Clive Harrison admitted that it was not possible to guarantee selling a player each year to fill the financial gap. ...

Milan’s 2024/25 accounts were the third set of accounts reported under the ownership of Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital Partners, who purchased the club from Elliott Management in August 2022 in a €1.2bln deal, with Elliot reportedly providing a €560m loan to help RedBird complete the acquisition. Chief executive Giorgio Furlani told the Harvard Business School, “Our goal became to stop losses, to live within our means. As important as sporting success is, we realised we shouldn’t go into a success-at-all-costs mode: the extra costs incurred in pursuing success can kill you financially.” In the previous ten years, Milan had lost around €900m, with Giorgio Furlani admitting, “Milan was not sustainable the way it is today, the club was on the verge of bankruptcy.” Milan posted a pre-tax profit for the third year in a row, though this reduced slightly from €12m to €10, reports the authoritative Swiss Ramble. This was especially impressive, given the indifferent sporting results. ...