The Political Economy of Football V2

National League North side South Shields have been taken over by a group of international investors led by Jason Ye:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9we09dzxpzo A graduate of New York University, Ye obtained his law degree at Rutgers.  His links with South Shields are obscure. Jason was selected to the 2020 New York Metro Corporate and Securities Law “Super Lawyer” Rising Stars list. Jason currently sits on the Alumni Steering Committee of the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance. An expert on China-related capital market matters, Jason has been invited to many speaking engagements globally and quoted on numerous occasions by major media outlets in the U.S. and China. 

For a club that has won more La Liga and Champions League titles than any other team on the planet, the past two seasons have been disappointments for Real Madrid, which finished behind arch rival Barcelona in the Spanish league standings in back-to-back years and crashed out of European competition in the quarterfinals each time. Yet for all of the hand-wringing among the team’s exacting fans, business has never been better for Los Blancos. During the 2024-25 season, Real Madrid posted $1.27 billion in revenue, up 12% from its mark the year prior, already a record for a soccer club. In fact, the new figure just edges the Dallas Cowboys $1.23bn from the 2024 NFL season for the highest revenue total for a sports team ever measured by  Forbes  (without adjusting for inflation). So even with Real Madrid sitting out Saturday’s Champions League final—where Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain will battle for an extra $29 million in prize money—Los Blancos are the worl...

West Ham United’s relegation from football’s Premier League has reopened the debate about the legacy of London 2012, as ministers begin to look at whether the UK could host another Olympic Games in the 2040s. The east London club is set to pay less in rent for the stadium that was converted into a football venue after the 2012 Olympics when it starts in the English Championship next season, meaning less income for the public owners of the arena. The episode is the latest pitfall to face the London Stadium, which shone during the Olympics but has struggled to satisfy the public since. Athletes have complained that the stadium now hosts too little athletics, while football fans have criticised the distance between their seats and the pitch. The Hammers last week battled to avoid dropping into the second tier but North London side Tottenham Hotspur stayed up instead. Their tussle came 14 years after the two clubs vied to lease the Olympic Stadium, which hosted the 2012 Olympic and Par...

Arsenal supporters used to want “Kroenke out”. Those calls have died down now that the Gunners have won their first Premier League title in 22 years. Beating Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final later today would be a crowning moment for billionaire sports tycoon Stan Kroenke and son Josh. A lot has changed at Arsenal since the club lost to FC Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League final. That season, PSG finished ninth in the French league. These days, they’re a powerhouse. Now owned by state-backed Qatar Sports Investments, the defending champions of Europe have transformed into a winning machine and will be anything but a pushover for Arsenal.    Transformation is the word in Paris and north London. In 2005-06, Arsenal made a net profit of £7.9mn on revenues of £137mn. Its shares were still publicly traded. The club said goodbye to Highbury before moving to the 60,000-capacity Emirates Stadium. Arsène Wenger was still the manager. The women’s team was sti...

Arne Slot has been sacked as Liverpool’s head coach. A joint statement from Liverpool’s owners on Saturday confirmed the decision, saying it was “necessary” and “the team’s trajectory is best addressed through a change of direction”. “That this was a difficult decision for us to make as a club goes without saying,” it read. “The contribution Arne has made to Liverpool FC in the time that he has been with us has been significant, meaningful and — most importantly of all to supporters and ourselves — successful. “At the same time, we have collectively come to the conclusion that change is necessary in order for the club to keep moving forward. “As such, we can only wish Arne well in the next stage of his coaching career, with our expectation being that he will continue to be successful. We do so in the knowledge that his Liverpool legacy is intact and will become yet more meaningful in the years and decades to come. “Nevertheless, the conclusion we have come to is built on a be...

In UK politics Tony Blair has been insisting that everything is best left to the market with government following business friendly policies.   Football fan Andy Burnham insists that you can’t leave everything to the market. PSG are the most successful state project in football. That is worth remembering as they dazzle you on the pitch. Qatar Sports Investments bought PSG in 2011, the deal concluded just under a year after the tiny Gulf state of Qatar was named host nation for the 2022 World Cup. The semantics behind criticisms of their motivations may vary: sportswashing, soft power, geopolitical influence, an elaborate state marketing exercise. Whatever term you use, it all adds up to essentially the same thing: Qatar bought a famous but hitherto underachieving European football club, in a desirable location, in order to further the interests of Qatar. From a football perspective, it has worked spectacularly. PSG have won 12 of the past 14 French titles and last season...

Coventry City owner Doug King is profiled in FT Wealth, of itself something of an accolade.The 59-year-old calculates risk and reward for a living. Since graduating from Loughborough University in 1990 with a degree in mathematical engineering, he has traded everything from grain to petroleum.   The business model of the average Championship club, however, requires another kind of risk management. Wage bills that exceed revenues. Seemingly unavoidable operating losses. Fans who feel like they own the clubs. Owners who pick up the bill until they won’t, or can’t. When he bought Coventry, he assumed more than £36mn of net liabilities and cleared debts owed to the former owners. “I think that I bought [the club] because I felt like I could do a pretty good job of running it or handling it. I like sport, I understand business, I understand trading, so when you get into contracts with players and you’re looking at transfer agreements   .   .   .   contingencies, payment plans, he gi...

The Kroenke family first invested in Arsenal in 2007, eventually taking full control in 2018. After years of perceived lack of communication and ambition, supporters launched the “We Care, Do You?” campaign in 2019, which questioned their ownership.  Two years later effigies of 'Silent' Stan were hanged and burnt outside the Emirates Stadium by fans protesting Arsenal’s decision to become founding members of the ill-fated European Super League.  The Arsenal supporters who felt the Kroenkes were detached and uncommunicative launched their “We Care” petition, gaining more than 100,000 signatures. The Kroenkes felt there were misconceptions about the work they had been doing in the background. Josh Kroenke said in a press conference: “Should we get a great result on Saturday, it’s not going to change or affect who we are. When you win something, the sun’s still going to come up the next day. You’ve got to get back to work and there are many teams trying to gain on you, incl...

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire has warned that Southampton need to be very careful with their debts and finances.  With sports lawyers on the prowl for business, there is also the risk of legal action:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c8d82zn563vo  

The Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has issued a withering assessment of the way the club was run under Daniel Levy, likening the state-of-the-art training centre to a five-star hotel rather than a centre of high performance.  Venkatesham was appointed to his role in April 2025, having stepped down as chief executive at Arsenal the previous summer. However, he has said that some aspects of the club were “in a significantly worse state” than he expected.  “Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world,” Venkatesham told BBC Sport. “But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer. I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”  He explained that the football side of operations was the club’s main downfall when he arrived last year. [One Spurs fan wryly observed that it was like a water company sayi...

Before the season started, everyone expected the Black Cats to go straight back down, but Régis Le Bris’ side defied the odds to reach Europe for the first time since 1973.   From Zurich the Swiss Ramble reviews their remarkable progress.   Here are some highlights. The return to the Premier League did not come easy, as both promotions were only achieved via the play-offs, including a nail biting victory over Sheffield United to get out of the Championship, when the winning goal was scored in the fifth minute of injury time. Ownership There has been a distinct improvement in Sunderland’s fortunes since Kyril Louis-Dreyfus (KLD) became controlling shareholder in February 2021, when he bought 41% of the club, though the previous ownership group retained 59%: Stewart Donald 34%, Juan Sartori 20% and Charlie Methven 5%. Even though it was only a minority stake, this gave Louis-Dreyfus full control of the board. This transaction made Louis-Dreyfus the youngest perso...

Tottenham Hotspur’s owners, the Lewis family, broke their long silence on Wednesday,  issuing a rare statement  taking “ultimate responsibility” for the club’s struggles and promising more investment for a rebuild. The Lewis family, who have owned the club since Joe Lewis acquired a controlling stake in 2001, have promised investment in several areas, said their plans for Spurs “require investment — in our teams, the academy, our backroom functions and more — and we are fully committed to this. “We are not selling the club. We are all in. We are investing in it. You will see more of this in the coming months.” This statement is the first time the Lewis family have ever commented publicly on Tottenham matters, even though ENIC first became majority shareholders when they bought Alan Sugar’s stake at the turn of the century. Traditionally any communication was done by Daniel Levy, but he was sacked as executive chairman last September. Since, the Lewis family have starte...

There is to be an election for the presidency of Real Madrid.  Florentino Pérez, a 79 year old construction magnate and president for the last 25 years could well hang on, but his authority is ebbing away. The club has 100,000 members who pay €179 a year, although a season ticket costs an extra €3,200 on top.  Some members sell their tickets on. Real Madrid has not won a grand trophy for two years.  An expansion of the Bernebau budgeted at €575m has cost €1.3 billion and counting.  The Spanish squad for the World Cup does not include a single Real Madrid player. Pérez called his first press conference for ten years and gave a rambling and paranoid performance, blaming referees and the press among others. His opponent is Enrique Riquelme, 37, who owns an energy business.  The first presidential election in 20 years has been called for June 7th.  Meanwhile, the appointment of the 'special one' as manager has been delayed. Pérez is favourite to win, but that t...

No real surprise that The Economist has a pop at the independent football regulator, it's a liberal paper that thinks everything can be solved by the market mechanism. The paper fears that the regulator will put off the footloose international capital that has made the Premier League a rare British success, but in reality the regulator isn't that powerful. The article points out that 700 million people across the globe may watch a single Premier League game.  The American Super Bowl attracts just a third of that.   The league generates $10 billion a year for the UK economy. The majority of TV revenue comes from foreign rights, by comparison the NFL gets 98 per cent of its m media rights revenue at home. 75 per cent of this year's minutes were racked up by foreign born players and in total 128 countries have been represented in the top flight. Lower leagues are also flourishing.  Attendance in League One is up by 47 per cent over a decade and the National League is up...

Chelsea’s underachievement this season has been highlighted by a financial analysis that says only Wolverhampton Wanderers have performed worse in the Premier League compared to money splashed out by the top flight’s biggest spenders.  One Chelsea fan described it as ‘epic mismanagement.’ Despite spending £637 million on wages, transfers and agents fees, Chelsea finished tenth — 33 points behind champions Arsenal — and missed out on the European places. Sunderland’s achievement in qualifying for the Europa League spot secured them billing as the best value for money along with Arsenal, followed by Brentford, Bournemouth and Brighton & Hove Albion. After Wolves and Chelsea, Burnley were the next worst-performing, followed by Tottenham Hotspur. Omar Chaudhuri, the chief intelligence officer at the sports intelligence agency Twenty First Group, which carried out the analysis for The Times, said: “Chelsea are in the top two spenders but have failed to qualify for th...

The man behind Saudi Arabia’s takeover of boxing wants to buy Derby County.  It is understood that the English Football League and the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) are aware of Turki Al-Sheikh’s interest in the Championship club, but both organisations declined to comment when approached by The Times. Al-Sheikh is an adviser in Saudi Arabia’s royal court and serves as the head of the General Entertainment Authority. The 44-year-old has flooded boxing with unprecedented riches under the “Riyadh Season” banner, staging multiple bouts involving Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua in the Saudi capital, along with bankrolling stadium fights on British soil. Al-Sheikh will have to demonstrate to the IFR that the source of any takeover’s funding was separate to the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which owns Newcastle United.  Derby finished eighth in the Championship last season, missing out on the play-offs by four points. David Clowes, a property developer and boyhood fan, sp...

It would seem that Arsenal are not particularly popular champions this season because of their style of play.  To me it seems that if set plays win you matches, that's fair enough.  In any event the Gooners are laughing all the way to the bank. Arsenal’s first Premier League title for over two decades is expected to generate almost £200million ($269m) in domestic prize money as payouts to England’s top clubs hit new heights this season.   That is before we talk about the Champions League. Arsenal are expected to earn £198.7 million in broadcast revenues from the Premier League this season, a £27.2m increase on 2024-25 and £23.8m more than Liverpool received for winning the competition a year ago.  Arsenal’s takings are expected to be over £20 million higher than the previous single-season record: Manchester City’s £176.2m in 2022-23. The New York Times estimates that five clubs — Arsenal, City, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Liverpool — have all cleared ...

The authoritative Swiss Ramble swoops like an eagle from his Zurich eyre to review the latest accounts of Crystal Palace.  More detail and analysis are available on his Substack page, but here are some highlights.  Palace’s recent improvement in cup competitions is impressive, but their consistency in the league is also fairly remarkable, especially for a club with relatively limited resources, as they have finished between 10th and 15th thirteen years in a row following promotion to the Premier League in 2012/13 Palace also enjoyed a very successful season off the pitch, as they swung from a £32.9m pre-tax loss to an £8.3m profit, mainly due to a significant increase in profit on player sales from £1.3m to a club record £66.1m. Revenue rose £6.4m (3%) from £190.2m to another club high of £196.6m, though this was more than wiped out by operating expenses, which grew £28.2m (13%) from £210.9m to £239.1m. As a result, the operating loss more than doubled from £20.7m to £42.5...

Politicians and football are a bit of a two-way street.   Clubs are keen to host them at games in the hope of securing influence.   Politicians use football as a means of demonstrating authenticity. Andy Burnham’s passion for football has built him a following across the north of England, according to new data that suggests the Greater Manchester mayor has cultivated a public brand despite trailing media-savvy rivals on TikTok and Instagram. Financial Times analysis of X found 17 per cent of Burnham’s posts so far this year have been about football, more than almost any other topic, helping him build a social media following that extends far beyond his own team, Premier League side Everton. About 15 per cent of Burnham’s followers in the north of England are Liverpool fans and a further 27 per cent support Manchester United or Manchester City, according to audience intelligence platform Pulsar.  Burnham has been a leading advocate of a 'Hillsborough' law. ...

Commiserations to West Ham fans where the club's relegation is largely the result of poor decision-making by the owners.  My father went to the famous first FA Cup final at Wembley to support the Hamers. The club must stand an excellent chance of returning to the Premier League next season, but it needs to be decided who is in charge and what is to be done. Wages have risen as revenues have declined, as a result of the lack of European football. West Ham finished in 14th position in 2024-25, but had the tenth-largest wage bill that campaign, and their underperformance has been even worse this season.  The club’s debt was only £20.8million in May last season, and they owed a net £178.6million on transfer fees. Since then, the debt has increased through a loan facility to more than £110million. It is possible that the main shareholders will put money into the club. West Ham have to comply with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules, which li...

Former player Brad Piercewright has launched a bid for non-league third tier Kettering Town, but the current owner says they are not for sale. Having seen success in IT, Piercewright claims that he is now worth £58m and is prepared to pay £450k cash for the Poppies.  However, he says that its real value is £1 because of alleged debts. The club does not play in the Rose of the Shires but at nearby Burton Latimer having lost their Rockingham Road stadium. Piercewright says his objective is the EFL, but we have heard that before from investors in non -league clubs.  Think AFC Fylde just for starters. Current owner George Akhtar is adamant that the club is not for sale, although it has been suggested that he would accept outside investment.

Looking at today's relegation battle between West Ham and Spurs, Alyson Rudd writing in The Times  states: ' Both clubs have a grumbling fan base, but more West Ham supporters have been able to place their concerns to one side while matches are in full flow. Spurs fans, by comparison, have practically engineered the present crisis by making sure their cavernous stadium bridles and sneers and jeers, thereby undermining the efforts of the players and leading to the unenviable statistic that Tottenham have won only twice at home in this league campaign.' I would hasten to add that most fans enjoy moaning and complaining about their own team.  I should know that as a Charlton fan whose supporters are among the leading negativists and pessimists in the EFL.  Win a game and social media is quiet.  Lose it and the armchair managers pile in explaining how they would have won and demanding that the manager be sacked. West Ham fans have never really settled in at the London St...

Congratulations to Hull City on their play off victory.  The Championship final is the most valuable one-off fixture in world football. For Hull, their 1-0 victory at Wembley today will see them bank at least £205million ($275m) in additional revenue across the next three seasons, . Deloitte said this could jump to more than £365million ($490m) if the Yorkshire side manage to stay in the Premier League beyond their first season back at that level. The findings were based on factors that took into account the projected rises in matchday, broadcast and commercial incomes. With neither of these teams in the final benefiting from parachute payments which are given to recently-relegated Premier League sides in the EFL, to help them adjust to the drop in revenues after losing their top-flight status — the uplift in revenue from sealing promotion is greater than when teams receiving those payments have bounced back quickly to return to the domestic elite e.g., yo-yo club B...

The Financial Times sports team reports: ‘Our inbox has been bombarded with notes from law firms, who think the EFL has opened the floodgates to further litigation. Southampton players may look to sue the club for depriving them of potential promotion bonuses. Clubs that finished just outside the play-offs or who were relegated after losing to Southampton could also claim their league position was affected by cheating. Even Hull might well argue they should be promoted by default.’ The bizarre case also raises some more philosophical issues. It comes a few weeks after the Confederation of African Football decided to award the African Cup of Nations to Morocco, despite the team losing the final in extra time to Senegal. CAF judged that Senegal had forfeited the match by leaving the field of play for about 15 minutes in protest at a refereeing decision. In other sports, changing the outcome of a competition after the fact is not unheard of. Doping cases have led to several Olympic ch...

Spurs’ plight has gripped football fans this season. But it has also overshadowed the troubles over at West Ham, who will be relegated if they fail to beat Leeds. West Ham are — by several measures — a big club. The east Londoners rank 20th in the Deloitte Money League, just four spots behind Italian giants Juventus. The club has spent more on transfers in the past five years (€815mn) than Aston Villa, Bayern Munich or Atlético Madrid, while the team’s home ground, the London Stadium, is the second largest in English club football. Relegation would hit West Ham’s finances far more severely than Spurs. TV money, which drops precipitously upon exiting the Premier League, accounts for 57 per cent of West Ham’s revenue, compared to just 29 per cent at Spurs. West Ham also have a leadership vacuum. The club’s split ownership — with no single party holding a majority stake — was held together for years by chair Karren Brady. Such a system can work, as seen at Crystal Palace, where Steve ...

It is now or never for the city of Leeds to unlock potentially billions of pounds of investment around Elland Road, according to Leeds United director Peter Lowy. Lowy is one of the most significant shareholders within the 49ers Enterprises ownership at Elland Road. While he keeps some distance from on-pitch or transfer matters, his expertise, after decades at the helm of shopping centre giant Westfield, is in developing the stadium and the land around it. He spoke to  The Athletic  at UKREiiF, a real estate investment and infrastructure forum being held in Leeds this week. Lowy has just been on stage, explaining why he feels a tram system is so important to the city, when he sits down for our interview. While the redevelopment of the stadium has planning permission and will accelerate through the close season, the future of the 30 acres of land around the ground is foremost in Lowy’s mind. He is concerned about the pace at which an agreement on a tram system is being re...

I confidently predicted that the real beneficiaries from Spygate would be sports lawyers and that looks like being the case.  Given the reputational damage they have already suffered, the club has wisely decided not to take the matter to judicial review, even though they might have grounds for doing so.  It would have been better if they had made a full admission more quickly. Southampton players are exploring their options regarding legal action against the club. Tonda Eckert’s squad had largely been kept away from the affair and only had the basic details communicated to them by the club. The players were furious at the EFL verdict, having only found out at the same time as everyone else, with members of the squad who had taken 40 per cent pay cuts after suffering relegation from the top flight year were due to have that reinstated in the event of promotion to the Premier League. They are due to meet with the club on Wednesday, and sources with knowledge of the players...

Newcastle United’s owners are open to selling a minority stake in the club in order to help fund significant infrastructure projects, including a potential replacement for St James’ Park and a purpose-built training ground. People familiar with the matter have told  The Athletic  that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) retain a long-term commitment to Newcastle, the club they bought from Mike Ashley for £305million in 2021.  Nevertheless, they are willing to dilute their current 85 per cent shareholding and have been approached by possible investors. The British Reuben family own the other 15 per cent of Newcastle. David Hopkinson, Newcastle’s chief executive, has been pushing to end the sense of stasis regarding the club’s stadium plans and training facilities, both of which have become a source of frustration. St James’ is routinely sold-out but is in need of refurbishment, while Eddie Howe’s first-team squad continue to train in an environment which is mor...

Southampton have been kicked out of the Championship play-off final, known as the richest game in football due to the financial rewards from winning it, after the club was found to have broken league rules by spying on opponents’ training sessions.  The English Football League, which runs the second, third and fourth tiers of professional men’s football, said on Tuesday that an independent disciplinary commission had decided to expel Southampton from the play-off final, due to take place on Saturday. It added Southampton had “admitted to multiple breaches of EFL Regulations related to the unauthorised filming of other clubs’ training”. Southampton will also receive a four-point deduction for next season. Southampton had been hoping to bounce back to the Premier League after being relegated last year. The south coast club is majority owned by its chair, Serbian billionaire Dragan Šolak. The club still has tickets for the Championship play-off final advertised for sale on its web...

Tottenham Hotspur will travel across London on Tuesday night for one of the most financially consequential games in football history. Victory against rivals Chelsea would see Spurs take a big step towards maintaining their place in the Premier League after the club’s worst season in more than 50 years. Defeat would leave the door open to relegation and a potential drop in revenue of up to £270mn next year alone. Spurs’ plight belies its longstanding reputation as one of the game’s most shrewdly run clubs under former executive chair Daniel Levy, who was ousted last year by majority owners the Lewis family. Over the course of his 25-year tenure, Levy garnered a reputation for overseeing a lean, frugal operation — former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson once said that negotiating with him was more painful than his hip replacement. But his latter years were characterised by wasteful spending on players and worsening performances on the pitch. The spectre of relegation is pr...

Does Milan’s San Siro need to be demolished?   Edwin Heathcote reviews the evidence from an architectural perspective in the Financial Times. Milan’s San Siro stadium is one of football’s great spectacles. Part of it is the atmosphere during a game, especially one of the Madonnina matches, the fierce derbies between the two teams that call the stadium home, AC Milan and Inter. But it is also the incredible sight of the architecture after a match, when the fans descending the huge concrete circulation cylinders create the dizzying impression of a building swirling around them, as if the whole structure is spinning in response.  The Madonnina is named after the gilded statue of the Virgin that stands atop Milan’s Duomo. The San Siro is far bigger than even that huge gothic cathedral and, together with La Scala opera house, the three constitute a kind of trinity of revered Milanese monuments. Unlike the other two, however, the San Siro looks likely to be demolished....

Having lived in the Midlands for over 50 years, I regard Aston Villa as the leading regional club, a status that has gone from aspiration to fulfillment.  My chiropodist is a keen season ticket holder so we always discuss the club’s progress. Here I rely on the latest assessment by the Swiss Ramble of the club’s 2024/25 accounts.   He has an unrivalled data set and forensic financial skills which he applies from his Zurich base.    Read more on his Substack page. This has the makings of another fine season for Aston Villa, as they on course for fourth place in the Premier League, while they have guaranteed their qualification for the Champions League. In addition, they could get their hands on some silverware by winning the Europa League, as they are favourites to beat German side Freiburg in this week’s final in Istanbul. It bears remembering how far Villa have progressed under owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, who bought the club in July 2018.  ...