The Political Economy of Football V2

Movers and shakers from the world of football gathered in London this week for the annual Financial Times Business of Football summit.   Here are a few highlights. The long-term prospects for football’s broadcast model is always a hot topic of debate, but Chelsea chair Todd Boehly floated one idea: sell global Premier League rights to Netflix.   Boehly’s interests in sports include stakes in the LA Dodgers baseball team and the LA Lakers in the NBA, and he has a history of making moves when it comes to media rights. So he’s someone worth listening to. His point was that the Premier League is a rare beast: content that is in demand globally. “If you really think about what it could do to unlock a global media platform, there’s nothing like this. I’m not saying that is the direct answer right this minute, but I think that’s where we’re headed,” he said. Illegal feeds have long been a big problem for football rights holders and their partner broadcasters. Some of the f...

The number of European football club takeovers halved last year, as high valuations, legal disputes and a slowdown in the market for broadcast rights hit investor appetite.  Just 23 clubs in Europe changed hands in 2024, according to figures from Uefa due to be published this week in its annual report on football finance. The figure is a steep drop from the 44 that were sold in 2023, and the 48 in 2022, a year that included record-breaking deals for Chelsea FC, AC Milan and Olympique Lyonnais.  After the £2.5bn sale of Chelsea, several elite clubs explored sales, including Manchester United and Liverpool FC. But in both cases, the clubs’ US owners ultimately sold minority stakes. Several other English clubs, including Tottenham Hotspur, Brentford, Crystal Palace and West Ham, have been seeking new investors, but none have reached deals.  After decades of uninterrupted growth in the value of broadcast rights, football clubs have been adjusting to a marked cooling in th...

Unfashionable Atalanta are currently leading Seria A.   The combined cost of impressive players for Atalanta was less than the €95million brought into the club’s treasury simply from deals with Manchester United, purchasers of Rasmus Hojlund two summers ago and Amad Diallo in 2020. Though Hojlund represents the most expensive sale the club have ever made, that pair typify a market agility that sets Atalanta apart. Significant annual departures are a necessity because this is a mid-budget provincial club. Among the teams competing at the summit of Serie A, they are unique for having returned a profit every year of the past nine. The striking aspect is that, mostly, they have kept climbing. A would-be superstar now leaves Atalanta thinking twice before he declares he’s upgrading to play more regularly in the Champions League. Atalanta have qualified for the competition more often in the past five years than United, or, for that matter, Tottenham Hotspur, home of Cristian Romero a...

The £3bn sale of Chelsea football club moved one step closer this week, with two investment groups backed by US billionaires leading the pack in a hotly contested auction being handled by merchant bankers at Raine Group according to the Financial Times .   Other accounts, for example in The Times, argue that there are still four in the race. According to the Thunderer there is a bid in contention from Stephen Pagiluca, an America private equity executive who is joint owner of the Boston Celtics basketball team and the 55 per cent owner of Atalanta in Serie A.   The private investment firm he co-chairs has assets of £118m. As seen by the Pink ‘Un,  Todd Boehly , the financier and co-owner of baseball’s  Los Angeles Dodgers , is up against private equity tycoons  Josh Harris   and  David Blitzer  in the bidding for one of sport’s highest-profile assets, although there’s still an outside chance of a dark horse winner. US billiona...

The authoritative Swiss Ramble has been working away in his Zurich fastness to provide estimates of Champions League income.  It used to be said that Arsene Wenger liked to parade his Uefa coefficient through the streets of Islington, but one can increasingly see why. His calculations suggest that nine clubs have already earned more than €75m from the 2021/22 Champions League. Bayern Munich lead the way with €111m, followed by Real Madrid €106m, Manchester City €99m, Atletico Madrid €96m, Chelsea €94m, PSG €94m, Liverpool €92m, Manchester United €81m and Juventus €79m. The importance of the UEFA coefficient Looking at how Champions League revenue is distributed, the importance of the UEFA coefficient is clearly evident with the TV pool being much less significant than it was before. This rewards historically successful clubs rather than those with larger national TV rights deals.    The coefficient payment is based on performances in UEFA tournaments over past 10 ye...