The Political Economy of Football V2

Manchester City has been found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges brought against it by the Premier League over breaches of its financial rules in a decision that will send shock waves through European football.  The club, owned by a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, was accused by the league of breaching rules between 2009 and 2018, and then referred to an independent panel in 2023 following a four-year investigation. The panel has found Manchester City guilty on 114 charges, according to people familiar with the matter, one of whom added that the charge that has not been proven was one of the most serious. The Premier League had argued that the club had broken the rules — such as by inflating sponsorship income and paying some staff off the books — to circumvent limits on spending. It also accused the club of failing to co-operate with its investigation.  Manchester City, owned since 2008 by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has maintained its innocence throughout and pl...

The Deloitte Sports Business report for 2026 states that the 2024/25 season was one of transformation and expansion, with both UEFA and FIFA launching refreshed competitions for their flagship men’s club competitions.   These saw more clubs compete for larger prize pots, with distributions for participating clubs bolstering otherwise plateauing broadcast revenues. These changes underpinned a 6% strengthening of the European football market, which surpassed €40 billion for the first time in 2024/25. The ‘big five’ leagues’ relative contribution to this total remained consistent with the prior season, at 54% (€22 billion).  Football cannot rely on more of the same to deliver sustainable growth, though. An increasingly saturated market is not good for players nor fans, and the Game is in danger of prioritising short-term gain over longer-term prosperity.  The complex trajectory of media rights values, coupled with the ongoing shift towards revenue-linked spending ...

Liver;pool have signed a shirt deal with Turkish Airlines, the fourth largest in the world, that is worth in excess of £300m over five years. The club believe that the deal is the most valuable in Premier League history, although Manchester United have made similar claims. The new deal will take over from that with Standard Chartered in June 2027 which was estimated to be worth £50m a season compared with £60m for the new deal.  Standard Chartered will remain as a global partner. They have been Liverpool's front of shirt sponsor since 2010.   The club have had only three such partners in the last 35 years, Carlsberg preceding Standard Chaetered. A deal for sleeve sponsorship is also up for renewal.   Expedia's branding has been worth between £9m and £12m a year.  The kit deal with Adifdas is worth £90m a year.

David Moyes has admitted that he has never spoken to the Everton owner Dan Friedkin in the 20 months since he bought the club, as the veteran manager prepares to pick up the pieces of a shambolic transfer window. Friedkin, the 61-year-old American, purchased Everton in December 2024 but claims emerged this week that they are looking for new investment after a transfer window that ended with a chaotic deadline day on Tuesday, in which they sold fans’ favourite Iliman Ndiaye to Manchester City for £65million and the USA international Folarin Balogun pulled out of a late move from Monaco, to leave Moyes with only 18 outfield players in his senior squad. With Moyes in the final year of his contract, the manager insists the transfer debacle will have no bearing on his future, although he did make the shock admission that he had never spoken to his American employer, with his contact coming via the owner’s representative, Rishi Majithia, and the club’s chief execu...

A fourth Premier League season has now begun with 115 charges hanging over Manchester City, who have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. You must go all the way back to March 2019 to find the root of this disciplinary action, a time when the Premier League confirmed they were investigating City following a series of allegations published by German newspaper Der Spiegel. Using documents provided by Football Leaks, the whistleblower platform set up by Portuguese computer hacker and activist Rui Pinto, it was claimed that City had manipulated the value of several commercial deals in order to circumvent UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. Abu Dhabi-based companies, namely Etihad Airways and Etisalat, were alleged to have helped a club owned by Sheikh Mansour, de facto leader of the country, reach financial compliance.  UEFA launched and completed its own disciplinary case against City, who successfully appealed a two-year ban from UEFA competitions through the Court of Arb...

Although the team I support Is not in the top flight, I enjoy the quality of the Premier League.  My wife takes a probably common position when she insists that football is limited to the Premier League, La Liga and the Champions League. Yet this successful global product is in danger of devouring itself by becoming less competitive. In 18 of the 33 Premier League seasons to the end of 2024-25, the club with the largest wage bill won the division (including six years out of the last eight); the second-highest payer has won it nine times, the third-highest four times and the fourth-highest on one occasion. Only once, with Leicester City’s title in 2016, has a club outside of the top four payers won England’s top tier since 1992. At their core, the different (financial) SCR rules (Premier League and Uefa) do have one through-line: they limit club spending on the above costs to a set percentage of relevant income, which in the Premier League’s case amounts to annual turnover plu...

Liverpool Football Club’s owner Fenway Sports Group is closing in on a deal to sell a significant minority stake in the business to investors including Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder is part of a consortium led by Amit Bhatia, the son-in-law of steel tycoon and billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, which is set to buy about a third of the Premier League side, reports the Financial Times. A deal, which the FT previously reported may value the club at more than $6bn, could come as soon as this week, according to two people with knowledge of the talks. However, one warned that the deal was not finalised and the timing could slip. Fenway and the consortium declined to comment. Bezos’s inclusion in the consortium highlights the global reach of Liverpool and the Premier League, which has transformed from a domestic competition into one of the UK’s biggest cultural exports. The incoming investor group also includes Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, the people said. Saverin was part of a wider co...

It’s over a quarter of a century since I worked in the United States.  Domestic soccer was in its infancy then.  I had to get up very early on a Saturday morning and get a change of trolleybuses across Seattle to watch Premier League football at an Irish bar.   Now the World Cup has given another boost to interest in the game, although it still lags behind American football, basketball and baseball (declining).   Is it bigger than (ice) hockey? Probably in the States but certainly not in Canada. “From the data we have and the metrics we look at, it suggests that we are the biggest Premier League club in the United States. I believe we’re in a unique position in terms of our pulling power.”   Liverpool’s chief commercial officer Ben Latty is talking to  The Athletic  about the impressive foothold they have established in the American market and their grand plans for further expansion. According to audience research company GWI (formerly Gl...

Chelsea have been fined £10 million ($13.4m) and given a suspended transfer ban following an investigation into 74 alleged breaches of the English Football Association’s regulations. The club were also initially hit with a suspended six-point deduction by an independent regulatory commission, which handed out the punishments, before this was overturned on appeal. Chelsea were instead given a two-window transfer ban, which is suspended until June 30, 2027. The FA can apply to activate that ban if any Chelsea are deemed to have potentially committed any similar breaches. The breaches relate to a period of time between 2009 and 2022 and “primarily events that occurred between the 2010-11 to 2015-16 playing seasons” — when Roman Abramovich was still owner of Chelsea — the FA said. The latest decision brings the amount of money Chelsea have been fined to more than £18m, after UEFA imposed a €10 million (£8.6m, $11m at the time) sanction in July 2023 concerning the same offences. ...

A consortium of investors led by Amit Bhatia and backed by the Mittal family is in talks to buy a significant minority stake in Liverpool Football Club, in a deal that would value the English Premier League side at more than $6bn.   Owners Fenway Sports Group are interested in capital investment rather than a complete takeover. The investor group headed by Bhatia, the son-in-law of steel tycoon and billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, has hired advisers to work on the offer and is in active talks with Liverpool’s current US owners Fenway Sports Group, according to people familiar with the matter. The football club was expected to be valued at more than $6bn in any transaction, three people said, one of the highest in football history. The attempted deal underlines the continued appeal of England’s top-tier football clubs and the global reach of the Premier League. People familiar with the talks stressed to th Financial Times   that no deal had yet been struck and there was n...

The Premier League’s ‘Big Six’ are on the hunt again.  After last summer’s transfer window was characterised by the league’s financial powerhouses harvesting talent from their domestic competitors, the biggest moves of this window so far suggest that trend is set to continue. All the mooted deals involve the Premier League’s traditional powerhouses attempting to poach from their domestic competitors — and in all cases, the would-be sellers insist their stars are not going anywhere, or that it will take an enormous sum to persuade them otherwise. How long can they hold out? Many think that the financial fair play rules are designed to protect the existing elite and disadvantage aspirational clubs. Aston Villa As ever, much depends on finances. Close examination of Villa’s situation reveals why they are determined to secure a huge fee for Rogers if he departs and why they might face pressure A UEFA settlement agreement will see them banned from Europe for a year if they breac...

Highlights from the Swiss Ramble's Premier League financial forecasts for the coming season: Arsenal are likely to set a new revenue record for English clubs after winning the Premier League and reaching the final of the Champions League. Revenue is boosted across the board by an uplift in central Premier League TV rights, mainly from overseas deals. Higher TV money from UEFA competitions, as nine clubs were involved in UEFA competitions, compared to seven in the previous season. Seven clubs froze ticket prices, but 13 increased their match day income via price increases. Only one club managed to generate an operating profit. However, there was a big increase in profit from player sales, partly driven by the assumption that deals completed in June 2026 are booked in the 2025/26 accounts. Three clubs have wages to turnover ratios above 80%, though, on the other hand, seven clubs are below 60%. Six clubs are profitable at a pre-tax level, though all but one of these are driven by sig...

An independent commission ruled on Wednesday that Everton must pay Burnley £35.1m after their breach of the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) in 2021-22 was found to have given them a crucial sporting advantage. Everton stayed up and Burnley went down in that season but, four years, on there is now a big bill to settle. Everton, who said in a statement they were “surprised and angered” by the verdict, intend to fight on but the case is likely to have long-term implications. This all dates back to the 2021-22 season, when Everton were found to have breached PSR with an overspend of £19.5m. Everton finished that campaign in 16th position but, importantly in this case, Burnley ended up relegated in 18th. The final gap between the two clubs was four points. Burnley have always felt wronged, believing that Everton’s breach resulted in them enjoying an unfair sporting advantage. The claim has consistently been made, all the way back to May 2023 with the ...

Over the past decade American financing has reshaped global football in its image, with billions of dollars of investment, a fast-growing domestic audience and a generation of new players. While US owners of European football teams have faced protests from fans for years, friction is rising. Some fear the sport is losing its way in pursuit of profit and that outside money is distorting the game’s balance of power. And yet the arrival of professional investors has so far done little to fix the game’s parlous finances. Americans now own 117 European clubs, according to data from CIES Sports Intelligence, including more than half the teams in the English Premier League, more than a third of Italy’s Serie A and over a quarter of Ligue 1 in France.  The effects are being felt both on and off the pitch. Clubs are increasingly run with commercial success front of mind, aping the US sports model, where team ownership has proved lucrative. This has led to a push to tighten football’s fi...

Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez is in election mode. He says the Spanish football giants are worth €10bn and rising. “In a few years it will be worth €20bn,” he told the Financial Times this week. He’s not the only one who thinks his club’s value has hit 11 figures. Manchester City chair Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who also leads Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, says the club has multiplied in value since Sheikh Mansour first bought in at an estimated valuation of $100mn-$120mn in 2008. “If you’re going to sell all this today in the market, you wouldn’t sell it for less than $10 billion minimum,” Khaldoon said in his annual interview published by City. He went on to say the club wasn’t for sale, just to be clear. So far only the Los Angeles Lakers have hit the $10bn mark, although the Seattle Seahawks might soon join them. Minority deals are getting done in that ball park too. But can a football team really be worth that much? Real Madrid have been crowned champion...

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...

The chief UK financial regulator has warned Premier League football clubs they could face legal action over “questionable sponsorship deals” with crypto companies that are not authorised to operate in Britain. The Financial Conduct Authority has written a letter to Premier League men’s clubs stating they risk enforcement action by taking sponsorship money from crypto and trading companies that are not permitted to offer services in the UK. Crypto companies have become prolific sponsors of top-tier teams in recent years as they seek to tap into the millions of football supporters and encourage them to trade digital tokens.  The FCA said it had seen “an increase in football club partnerships with unauthorised firms, some of which appear to be operating unlawfully”. In the letter, Fiona Mackinnon-Miller, head of the FCA department overseeing scams, promotions and consumer investments, warned that such deals “risk conferring legitimacy on these firms and may expose UK consumers to ...

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...

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...

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...