The Political Economy of Football V2

Swindon Town lost another £2.5 million during the most recent financial year, and have borrowed over £10 million from Clem Morfuni since he became owner.  The football club’s accounts for the financial year, which ended in May 2025, were published on Companies House and revealed the loss that CEO Anthony Hall said would be the case in his most recent interview on the club’s YouTube channel. The accounts showed the club now has debts of £10,683,645, which is up from £8,111,047, meaning there was a total loss of £2,572,598 during that financial year.   These losses exceed those of the last two financial years by over £1 million, with those being £1,073,519 in 2023 and £1,340,136 in 2024. Also, in the documents, Swindon are shown to have bank borrowings of £10,374,725, which have come from Morfuni to support the running of the club. During that roundtable discussion with Morfuni, Hall, and Ian Holloway on the club’s YouTube channel, the Australian businessman admitted that ...

Javier Tebas rarely pulls his punches, and the president of La Liga was in fiery form, ripping into Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi and the Premier League as part of a stout defence of the Spanish game at this week’s Financial Times Football Business Summit. Tebas took issue with the Premier League’s new “squad cost ratio” system that is replacing the profitability and sustainability framework, saying it would not end the financial imbalances he has long lamented between the English top division and continental European competitions. The Premier League’s new regulations will penalise clubs if they spend more than 85 per cent of revenue on transfers and wages, but Tebas faulted it for excluding other costs from the calculation. “They’re going to have more inflation and more problems,” he predicted. “A rule that does not take expenses into account is useless.” Premier League boss Masters later dismissed this criticism, insisting the squad cost ratio would ...

Perhaps the newsiest moment of this week’s Financial Times Football Business summit came when Richard Masters, Premier League chief executive revealed that the league is finally building a direct-to-consumer streaming platform, which will debut next season in Singapore. The idea has been floating around since before the pandemic, with most people referring to it by the rather tongue-in-cheek moniker “Premflix”. Its real name, we now know, will be Premier League+. Masters called it “an important step” and a “big change” for the world’s most popular football league. So, what does this all mean? Firstly, the Singapore move should be viewed as an experiment. The Premier League is doing this in a small but mature market and in partnership with a willing broadcaster, StarHub. The stakes, therefore, are relatively low. It gives the league the chance to test its capabilities in all sorts of things it hasn’t had to do before — such as taking subscription payments and pricing its own product...

Snoop Dog’s appearance at the Swansea v. Preston North End midweek match is one of the most surprising, if not bizarre, events of the Championship season. Indeed, the only thing that surprised me more was when one of my granddaughters told me she had discovered her inner Welsh woman and was moving to Swansea (Abertawe) despite not speaking a word of Cymraeg.    Swansea City do not seem to particularly emphasise their Welshness as much as Wrexham.   Paradoxically, I did some consultancy for a Swansea client.   They were happy with what I did, and asked me to do more, but I didn’t get paid until I got one of my Welsh speaking nephews to draft an email in Cymraeg. In some ways, it’s hard to make sense of the Swansea and Snoop Dogg story. But maybe this is just how the Championship rolls these days. Wrexham have their Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, the seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady is a minority investor in Birmingham City, and if Snoop had hu...

One group of beneficiaries from modern big business football are the legal profession. West Ham United are considering launching an appeal at the Supreme Court after being ordered to pay £3.6million ($4.86m) to their landlords at the London Stadium. As part of West Ham’s rental agreement with the London Stadium, which has been their home ground since leaving Upton Park in 2016, an ‘anti-embarrassment clause’ required the club to pay their landlords a share of any profit they received from selling shares. The clause has been active after Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky bought a 27 per cent stake in 2021, which made him the second-largest shareholder at West Ham, after David Sullivan, the majority shareholder who owns 38.8 per cent. In 2021, West Ham’s landlords informed the club that share transactions within their company meant the London Stadium was owed a significant payment. The club paid £2.6m but challenged the additional £3.6m. The matter was referred to expert determina...

The withdrawal of the preferred bidders for Sheffield Wednesday is not a great surprise as rumours about  the crisis ridden historic club had been circulating for weeks.   There were doubts about where their money was coming from. T he shock is that the group has walked away claiming that it has only just discovered that a League One club with very few players under contract, a dilapidated stadium and a threadbare academy is not worth the £40 million it bid for Sheffield Wednesday two months ago. The good news is that Sheffield Wednesday are still one of the biggest and most famous clubs in the land. Investors will still want to take on the huge and very expensive challenge of turning the club’s fortunes around. They just will not want to do it having paid more than maybe £15m to buy the stadium and settle the tax and football creditor bills. That, of course, will mean Chansiri and any other unsecured creditor is not getting 25 per cent of what they are owed. The Thai bus...

The chair of England’s new football regulator has told Premier League clubs to view money passed down to lower divisions as an “investment” in the game, as he urged the sport’s bosses to strike an agreement on how cash is redistributed. In a stern warning to the Premier League, David Kogan, who chairs the Independent Football Regulator, said that clubs “enjoying the good times at the top must surely see that any money passed down through the leagues is an investment”. “My message today is that it can’t just be about the clubs at the top. It has to be about ensuring the whole pyramid can survive,” Kogan told the FT’s Business of Football Summit on Thursday.   He cautioned that the lack of a new deal on how money was redistributed from the top flight “creates uncertainty that is detrimental to the pyramid and to growth and investment in the English game”. Talks between the Premier League and the English Football League — encompassing the Championship, League One and League Tw...

European top-flight football clubs lost more than €1bn last year despite record revenues of more than €30bn, according to new data that highlights the challenges facing the growing list of professional investors pouring billions of euros into the game.  Figures from governing body Uefa, which was released on Thursday at the FT Business of Football Summit, showed that combined revenue of clubs playing in top leagues across Europe was set to surpass €30bn, up from €28.6bn a year earlier. The projection is based on initial filings from more than 700 teams across the continent, although the biggest 25 clubs accounted for almost half the total.  Uefa cited increased income from sponsorship, player transfers and prize money for teams playing in pan-European competitions as the key drivers of growth, offsetting weakness in domestic media rights in some countries. However, as clubs look to boost alternative revenue sources, such as stadium hospitality and hosting non-football events,...

Alex Lowe was writing in The Times about toxicity at Twickenham.   Egg chasers have an historic reputation for being good sports (well outside Wales, anyway). But what Lowe had to say about the breakdown of the social contract between fans and clubs in football is worth quoting at length. I'n the Premier League it is now de rigueur for boos to ring out at half-time if the home team are not winning. Why has it flipped? The cost of watching live sport has vastly outstripped wage inflation. Long gone are the days of paying on the turnstile at a top-flight football match. Now you often need to pay to be a club member for the right to buy tickets that can exceed £100. Fans are treated as consumers, which can lead to an estrangement from the team. There will always be a hardcore fighting against the tide, but the sense of community erodes. West Ham United fans had to launch a protest campaign to force the club to reinstate junior and OAP ticket prices. The club were prepared to ...

Premier League football teams could be banned from accepting sponsorship from gambling companies without a UK licence, as ministers look to crack down on black-market betting. Culture secretary Lisa Nandy on Monday said it was “not right that unlicensed gambling operators can sponsor some of our biggest football clubs, raising their profile and potentially drawing fans towards sites that don’t meet our regulatory standards”. The plans, which will be put out to consultation in the spring, are intended to reduce harm from gambling and “eliminate unfair competition” for companies regulated by the Gambling Commission, according to the government. Several teams in the English football leagues, including the top division, have sponsorship arrangements with unlicensed gambling operators. These partnerships are not prohibited at present, so long as UK customers cannot access the illicit platforms. But the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said ministers were “deeply concerned” that...

West London is well served by top football clubs: Chelsea, Fulham, Brentford and Queens Park Rangers who would like to regain their place in the top flight.   Fulham have the most expensive tickets in the Premier League and have been trying to move up market. Looking in from the outside, QPR’s results are particularly erratic.   A good away win is often followed by a home defeat. The following comments are based on the usual forensic analysis by the Zurich-based football finance guru Swiss Ramble and much more detail and analysis is available on his Substack page. QPR have long wanted to relocate from Loftus Road but have failed to do so.    Viable options simply aren’t there.   Meanwhile, they have their share of minor celebrities: Giles Coren and Lord Young of Acton (who did wonder if he should call himself Lord Young of Loftus Road).    He is actually mentioned in the Epstein files.* Having spent three out of the four seasons between 2011...

Some years ago I gave a talk in Dundee and my host, knowing that I was a football fan, took me to see how the grounds of Dundee and Dundee United overlap on the same road. There has been talk of a joint purpose built stadium, but that fell foul of ground sharing rules.  In any case it would surely undermine the identity of each club. I was looking through the Non-League Paper yesterday at the Scottish Tier Six tables (as you do) and I noticed that the top two places in the McBookie Midlands Premier League were occupied by Dundee North End and Dundee Downfield while down the table was Dundee East Craigie No shortage of football options there then.

Tottenham Hotspur have frozen their season-ticket prices for next season following consultation with fan groups.   In other words, the cost falls In real terms (Arsenal have increased their prces close to the rate of inflation). The decision is the result of discussions with the club’s Fan Advisory Board and the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust, which began late last year. Spurs did not raise season the price of season or match tickets for the current 2025-26 campaign, but began removing the concession for new senior season ticket holders (for those aged 65 and above) — a decision which resulted in criticism from some fan groups. The club increased season-ticket prices by six per cent for the 2024-25 season, leaving the most affordable adult season ticket at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium priced at £856. Senior supporters who purchased a season ticket for the current campaign did not receive a concession, while existing season ticket holders who become eligible for a...

Scotland is to be restricted to one Champions League place from next season with additional places being awarded to Cyprus and Denmark. Football finance guru Kieran Maguire spells out the serious consequences for Scottish football which already faces financial challenges:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/clygvv8kqklo

Chelsea have agreed a deal with Industrial AI company IFS to be their front-of-shirt sponsor for the rest of the season.   The shirt with the IFS logo was seen for the first time in the home draw against Burnley.. The club’s shirts have been without a front-of-shirt sponsor since a temporary arrangement lasting seven games with DAMAC ended last summer. The valuation of the agreement with IFS, who will remain a partner of the club until 2028, has not been disclosed as of yet, but it is in line with the club’s expectations for a deal like this. IFS, now the club’s 14th global partner, is the latest tech company to align itself with Chelsea. In October, the club announced a sleeve sponsorship deal with Vietnamese technology company FPT that runs until the end of the campaign. Chelsea are working on a multi-year sleeve sponsor for 2026 onwards

Arsenal Supporters' Trust state: ' We are disappointed that the FSA’s  ‘ Protect the Fans, Protect the Game’   proposals calling for a ticket price freeze across all Premier League clubs has not been taken up. Neither the Premier League nor Arsenal have seriously engaged with the idea that a freeze at all clubs would help stop the ‘arms race’. Season tickets will be going up by 3.9 per cent (slightly above the rate of inflation) and most season tickets will cost over £1,000.   A seat in the centre of the lower tier will go up by 27 per cent to £1,281. AST continued: 'We firmly believe that with the football sector benefitting from ever-increasing broadcast and commercial revenues it is time to stop squeezing match-going supporters so hard. Arsenal recently reported to Deloitte a big increase in last season’s total revenue to £691m (up by 10%) and ticketing income of £154m (up by 19%). It is frustrating for fans to see football clubs and leagues do so little to combat...

The Financial Times Business of Football summit kicks off next Wednesday Here are the main discussion points: Financial state of play   — Uefa, which governs football in Europe, will be unveiling its latest annual report on the professional game’s finances at the summit on Thursday morning. We’ll be looking out for the latest trends in revenue growth, rising costs, club investment and that one thing that has proven elusive in football for so long: profits. Impact of regulation  — T he spending rule book has changed a lot over the last couple of years, with Uefa introducing its “squad cost ratio” approach for clubs taking part in European competitions. The Premier League is  following suit  from next year. We’ll be talking to the heads of Spain’s La Liga, the English Football League and the new Independent Football Regulator to see which way the wind is blowing. Plus, we’ll have feedback from clubs and players’ unions. Stadium wars  — Changes to financial rules h...

Club Brugge’s exciting draw in the Champions League attracted attention with them once again being seen as a club punching above their weight.  Club Brugge has built a reputation for smart recruitment, developing young players and supporting them through its academy pipeline. That model has allowed it to compete sustainably, even against far larger opponents. Yet a strategy like this requires operational discipline as well as sporting ambition. Top clubs recruit internationally, negotiate across jurisdictions, and move significant sums across currencies. In many respects, they operate like mid-sized multinationals. The complexity is simply less visible to supporters. Transfers are one of the clearest examples. Deals are often completed under intense time pressure during short transfer windows, with multiple parties involved and payments moving across currencies and banking systems. In that environment, small inefficiencies can quickly become expensive. Foreign exchange costs ...

The New York Times has been looking at what would happen should Tottenham Hotspur be relegated.  I should preface this report by saying: ·       The forthcoming lunar mission will confirm that the moon is indeed made of cheese ·         The Pope will confess that he is not a Catholic ·         Bears will reveal they prefer using a Portaloo to the woods I don’t think Spurs will be relegated, but what would be the implications if the unlikely happened? They are the ninth-wealthiest team in the world game, according to Deloitte, with revenue of €672.6million in 2024-25 — around €88m more than the next-richest, London rivals Chelsea. After reaching the upcoming round of 16 in the Champions League despite their domestic struggles, that number is in line to increase this season. No club in the 34-year Premier League era have recorded more than £200million in single-season revenue and gone down. While their ...

  Cartoon copyright Private Eye Instability in leadership seems the fashion today.  We have had the greatest turnover of prime ministers in the democratic era.  An article in the Financial Times this week revealed an increase in changes in the CEOs of companies, in part driven by so-called 'active investors'. But football has some of the shortest tenures of all.  Since 2011 there have been 23 managers at Watford and 18 at Forest with Sean Dyche managing both teams. Forest are the first team since the league's formation in 1888 to have four permanent managers in one season, although Leyton Orient hold the all comers' record with five in 2016/17. Has it brought Watford or Forest success?

The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust has accused the club of selectively editing the minutes of their February meeting before publication, claiming that references to fan concerns — including “the risk of relegation” and discussion of the club’s “lack of ambition” — were left out. The trust has a memorandum of understanding with the club stating that they should meet twice a year. The latest meeting took place on February 3, eight days before the dismissal of the head coach Thomas Frank, at which four trust board members met with four club representatives, including the chief executive Vinai Venkatesham. The trust has claimed that there were “a number of specific points raised during the meeting which the club did not agree to include in the final published version”. The agreed minutes were published on Monday. In a statement accompanying the publication of the minutes on its website, the trust said: “As a democratic supporters’ organisation elected to represent fans’...

Those of us who have been enjoying the Winter Olympics sense that they have generally well organized, leaving aside problems with disintegrating medals.   Italy can do things with style and panache, reflected n its world beating success in luxury goods sectors, but its football clubs are something of a basket case.   Serie A is no longer looked to as the epitome of football style. From his Zurich lair, the Swiss Ramble takes a forensic look at the 2024/25 accounts of AS Roma.  Here are some highlights. This was Roma’s fifth season under the ownership of The Friedkin Group, who purchased the club from fellow American James Pallotta in August 2020. In this period, there has been a fair degree of change at Roma, including no fewer than six head coaches.    Despite all this upheaval, Roma have been fairly consistent in in the league, finishing between 5th and 7th in each of the last seven seasons. That’s not too bad, but it does represent a decline in pe...

James Bord, who led the consortium that won the race to buy Sheffield Wednesday, is being sued by a former friend and business partner over his investment in Córdoba, the second-tier Spanish football club. The Times has discovered that Bord is at the centre of an extraordinary legal dispute with Jonathan Cohen, the Canadian poker player, primarily over an investment that Cohen made in Córdoba, who are part-owned by Bord, who is also a director at the club. Cohen’s legal representatives, Holland & Hart LLP, lodged a complaint on his behalf with the district court in Clark County, Nevada, on Tuesday. In the documents, seen by The Times, Cohen alleges that Bord: • “Wilfully” deceived Cohen into thinking that Córdoba were debt-free when he agreed to invest in the second-division club in 2024 when they were actually “around $23million in debt”, which amounts to about £16.9million at the present exchange rate. • “Took hostage” a bitcoin account owned by Cohen, which was...

When I first became aware of football in the early 1950s Hearts appeared to be one of the top Scottish sides and I liked the idea that they were known as ‘jam tarts’. A famed fund manager and one of the UK’s best-known sports gamblers are backing a data-driven bid to break Glasgow’s hold over Scottish football and deliver the first league title for a team outside the city in four decades. Heart of Midlothian sit top of the Scottish Premiership with just a third of the season left, as they seek to achieve what no club has done since Sir Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen side in 1985 and end the dominance of Celtic and Rangers. The fortunes of Edinburgh-based Hearts, whose last title was in 1960, have been transformed under a new approach, with fresh investment and expertise, that has also outsourced key elements of player recruitment to computer algorithms. Central to Hearts’ rejuvenation has been the arrival of Tony Bloom, a high-stakes poker player and chair of Premier League Brighton ...

The New York Times has taken a look at the financial implications of relegation from the top flight, although it hasn’t bothered to look at the bottom two clubs.   I don’t think that Spurs are really in danger and Crystal Palacewill surely finish lower mid-table. More likely than not, either West Ham or Nottingham Forest will occupy the third relegation spot. West Ham United A return to the second division would bring huge ramifications.   Broadcast revenues — money awarded from the Premier League — amounted to 57 per cent of their income last season. There was £131million ($178.5m) of TV money banked courtesy of finishing 14th in May, but parachute payments for a first year back in the Championship would be in the region of £49m, with EFL TV money then bumping that up to roughly £55m. That drop-off is, obviously, enormous and would likely ensure West Ham’s revenues were almost halved as a second-tier club again, once you allow for the inevitable reductions in com...

A ston Villa are set to be hit with a heavy fine for breaching Uefa’s financial rules for a second year running. The club are expected to have breached Uefa’s squad cost rule, which imposes financial penalties if a club’s spending on player wages, transfers and agents is more than 70 per cent of its revenue.  The rule is effectively a luxury tax and   Villa   were fined €6million (about £5.2million) in July for breaching the 80 per cent level during 2024, and that limit was reduced by Uefa to 70 per cent for 2025, which the club have struggled to comply with. However, it is thought Villa are not in danger of violating their settlement deal agreed with Uefa last year for breaching its separate football  earnings rule that covers financial losses. That deal included a €5million fine, targets around future losses and some transfer restrictions. Breaches of the settlement can lead to more serious sanctions such as exclusion from European competition. Villa are understood...

C eltic PLC on Friday reported a decline in profit for a first half that saw a "great deal of change and disruption", with the football club on its third manager of the season.   Celtic won a fourth Scottish league title in succession in May, but results on the pitch since have not been as emphatic this term. It believes there is "all to play for", however. In the six months to December 31, Celtic's pretax profit slumped 70% to £13.2 million from £43.9 million a year prior, with revenue sliding 29% to GBP59.4 million from GBP83.5 million.   Profit from player trading fell to £14.1 million from £21.5 million a year prior. The revenue decline, Celtic said, was due to it participating in the UEFA Europa League, the secondary European competition, instead of the Champions League like a year prior. In the current 2025/2026 season, Celtic exited the Champions League before the league phase began. In the prior season, it made it out of the league phase and into the Feb...