The Political Economy of Football V2

This week we learnt that Liverpool FC is in talks over a potential stake sale with a consortium backed by money from the Mittal family, but likely to include some US investors. A valuation of more than $6 bn would suggest the bullish thesis — that football clubs remain a good asset appreciation play — is still intact. Meanwhile Leicester City’s Thai owners also see now as a good time to attempt a sale. The club, which won the Premier League a decade ago, dropped into English football’s third tier last season. There are other clubs, including Crystal Palace, looking for investors — or potentially new owners. Is this a sign that the market is heating up again? Does the World Cup alter the equation? To some extent, nothing much has changed. Lots of clubs have been quietly open to offers for some time, but the bids haven’t come. Liverpool itself was in the market not so long ago, and ended up selling a very small stake to a fund with close ties to the existing owners. If any invest...

Something potentially big happened on the fringes of the World Cup this week.  European Football Clubs, the (unhelpfully) renamed entity previously called the European Club Association, agreed to set up a joint venture with Fifa to run the Club World Cup. EFC has a similar arrangement in place with Uefa to market media rights for the three pan-European club competitions, a partnership that has already yielded significant increases in TV revenue. The deal is likely to accelerate plans to expand the tournament from 32 teams to 48, perhaps as soon as 2029. Europe already sent 12 teams to last year’s Club World Cup, but with a cap of two teams per country. Assuming the increase is split on a pro-rata basis, Europeans would take up 18 spots in a bigger competition, and the per-country cap will surely be raised. Last year’s CWC suffered from not having several of the biggest clubs in the world involved — Barcelona, AC Milan, Manchester United and Liverpool. Raising the number of Europe...

The Deloitte Money League for 2026 has been published.  The cumulative revenue of the Money League clubs grew by 11%, rising to €12.4 billion (2023/24: €11.2 billion). Matchday (€2.4 billion), broadcast (€4.7 billion) and commercial (€5.3 billion) revenues all grew to record levels, as the latter became the first revenue stream to exceed €5 billion. For the third consecutive year, commercial revenue represented the most significant proportion of total revenue for Money League clubs, generating an average of €265m (2025: €244m). The key drivers for this included improved retail performance, increasing sponsorship revenue, as well as the use of stadia and surrounds on non-matchdays. The latter represents a significant shift in the business models of certain clubs to focus on greater utilisation of stadia assets through a diversified entertainment offering. On-site breweries, restaurants, hotels, and other offerings are therefore becoming more common, demonstrating the importance ...

The Club World Cup has certainly been controversial.  Thanks to the generosity of streaming platform DAZN, who paid a thumping great $1 bn for a TV rights deal, even though other broadcasters had shown little interest, FIFA were able to create a massive prize pot for the event of the same amount. Some cynical observers have noted that shortly after the agreement was signed, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) bought a 10% minority stake in DAZN for, you guessed it, $1 bln.   A week later, FIFA confirmed that Saudi Arabia would be the hosts of the 2034 men’s World Cup, though to be fair they were the only bidders. To place this into perspective, the FIFA Club World Cup’s €857m ($1 bn) revenue is around 40% of the UEFA Champion League’s €2.5 bn, but is more than the Europa League €565m and Europa Conference €285m combined. The prize money would have been even higher in terms of Euros if the Dollar had not tanked in the last few months. For example, using the Jan...

Tomorrow night, the global champions of club football will be crowned in MetLife Stadium, the culmination of Fifa’s new month-long tournament.  Either Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain or Conference League title-holders Chelsea will win international bragging rights (of a kind) for the next four years. But regardless of the outcome in New Jersey on Sunday, the competition has been a huge financial boon for Chelsea and its private equity owners Clearlake Capital. Since the £2.5bn takeover in 2022, the club has been on a record-breaking spending spree. According to estimates from Transfermarkt, Chelsea have forked out €1.6bn in the last three years on new signings, considerably more than any other team in Europe. The pace of additions has not slowed. More than €200mn has been committed this summer to bring the likes of João Pedro and Liam Delap to Stamford Bridge. To help finance all this, Clearlake and a group of minority shareholders led by club chair Todd Boehly h...

The Club World Cup has generated little excitement in the UK and although I watched some of the games on 5, others do not appear to have been broadcast (ok, one can go to DAZN.com).  Financially, it's case of to those that hath shall be given in large part. A look at the prize money leaders throws up some familiar (some might say obvious) names. Sitting at the top are Manchester City, the only club to exceed $50m so far. Behind them are some of the wealthiest clubs in world football: Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, and on it goes. Regardless of the order, it’s fairly clear European sides will be taking home most of the spoils. The top eight prize money spots are occupied by European clubs and of the $741m allocated, $424.5m (57 per cent) has gone to UEFA clubs. On average, the 12 competing clubs from football’s richest continent have earned $35.4m apiece this summer.   The distribution of participation fees ensured Europe’s clubs would always get the bigge...

The Club World Cup kicks off late tonight when Inter Miami host Al Ahly, Egypt’s dominant team, in Florida. Fifa president Gianni Infantino has promised the new 32-team tournament will be the “pinnacle of club football”, yet many have been wondering if anyone will tune in. Players are unhappy at being asked to play yet more matches while domestic leagues complain that an already overcrowded calendar is at breaking point. A report from Deloitte this week warned that football’s “insatiable appetite for growth” risks having a negative effect on club finances through higher wage demands, while another from Fifpro called for a guaranteed 4-week off-season break and mandatory time off during the season. Yet Fifa and Uefa are pulling in the other direction. Commercially, the CWC has been an uphill battle. A lack of appetite among traditional broadcasters and big streamers led to a global rights deal with DAZN, now backed by the Saudi state. In the UK, half the games will also be sho...

FIFA has finally confirmed the revenue distribution model for the expanded version of the Club World Cup, which will take place in the United States from 15 June to 13 July.  The big headline is that a cool One Billion Dollars will be shared between the 32 participating clubs, so the teams that reach the latter stages of the tournament can look forward to receiving a substantial windfall. The highest ranked European club, namely Manchester City could earn a massive $125.8m (including $38.2m participation pillar), while the top South American club would only receive $102.8m, as their participation pillar is much lower at $15.2m. Chelsea’s maximum earnings of $116.6m (£97m) are less than Manchester City’s $125.8m (£105m).   It’s worth noting that the big money only accrues in the later stages of the tournament. For example, City would receive “only” $51.7m for reaching the last 16 with the other $74.1m up for grabs from the quarter-finals onwards. One obvious concern about...

Fifa has finally answered one of the key questions around the upcoming relaunch of the Club World Cup — how much it pays. On Wednesday the competition organiser revealed its prize money schedule, with payments based both on turning up and actually winning matches.  Considering the rates were negotiated with the European Club Association, it’s perhaps little surprise that the bulk of the purse is heading to the top European clubs. Some are promised $38.5mn before a ball has even been kicked, with potential earnings for winning the tournament of $125mn when ends on July 13. Fifa has made a lot of noise about the Club World Cup being a chance to spread some of football’s wealth beyond Uefa’s sphere of influence. The month-long competition will feature 32 teams from around the globe who qualified largely based on performance in regional tournaments. Yet the financial impact will be felt differently depending on where a team hails from.   Assuming — perhaps unfairly — that Au...

Another row has broken out about Fifa's revamped Club World Cup competition due to be launched in China next year, expanding it from eight to 25 teams. Opposition this time has come from Latin America rather than Uefa concerned about the impact on the Champions League. Alexander Dominguez, the president of Connebol (South Ameirica's governing football body) has got the hump because Fifa talked to clubs in his continent without his knowledge. He argued that Fifa was creating false hope that billions of dollars would be secured for the tournament. There is more to this than process. The Lex column in the Financial Times is very sceptical about the figures produced by Fifa supremo Gianni Infantino, referring disparagingly to 'a contest sketched on the back of a programme' and dubbing the supremo 'Gianni come lately.' The Pink 'Un thinks that the numbers will be revised down once again once reality hits home. The FT points out that there is an underlying ...