The Political Economy of Football V2

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 ...

Europe’s top spenders in the summer transfer window include some familiar names. Chelsea lead the way with a net spend of €245mn, followed by Arsenal and Real Madrid, according to Transfermarkt data. More surprising is the presence of Ipswich Town and Coventry City, sides newly promoted to the Premier League, in fourth and fifth place.  Ipswich have spent a net €159mn on the likes of attacking midfielder Julio Enciso as they seek to retain their place after a second promotion to the Premier League in three years, while Coventry’s owners have authorised a net spend of €138mn for the club’s return to the top division for a quarter of a century. The net spend of both exceeds that of Liverpool, the two Manchester clubs and reigning European champions Paris Saint-Germain, although this could change by the time the window closes on September 1. It is conventional wisdom that promoted clubs must spend big to have any hope of competing against the established sides ...

Finance and tech companies have piled into Premier League club sponsorship this season after a ban on gambling operators appearing on the front of shirts opened up some of football’s most valuable advertising space to new bidders. Betting firms have featured on the front of more than half of Premier League shirts over the past two seasons, but a ban agreed by clubs in 2023 came into effect this summer, prompting teams to find new deals. L Lynsey Pennie-Douglas, head of UK client strategy for Nielsen Sports, told the Financial Times that the changes amounted to “a genuine reset” for the sponsorship market. “Over the past decade, the value of that real estate has risen dramatically,” she added. For clubs outside of the league’s so-called big six — Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham — the average value of front-of-shirt deals has grown from £3.4mn in 2016-17 to around £9mn a year for the new season, according to Nielsen. Crystal Palace have s...

David Sheepshanks’s beloved club used to be run by those colourful  bon viveurs  John and Patrick Cobbold, the brothers who said their idea of a crisis was running out of white wine in the boardroom. Sheepshanks has shared his memories with The Times as he publishes his autobiography.  He has survived bowel cancer. When Sheepshanks took over as chairman in 1995 he ended decades of the Cobbolds’ benign dynasty. He tells a story of a game against Arsenal when the Portman Road boardroom was stocked with six bottles of gin, six bottles of whisky, six bottles of white wine, six bottles of red wine, and six sausage rolls. By the end of the day most of the booze was long gone but there were still five untouched sausage rolls. “And Patrick Cobbold held an inquest as to who the hell had eaten the one sausage roll.” “Ipswich was a beautifully run club. But if I draw an analogy in the nicest possible way, it was sort of like a golf club. It was all quite staid and traditional. I...

The latest Deloitte report on football finance calculates the benefits of promotion to the Football League. 'Coventry City, Ipswich Town and Hull City earned promotion to the Premier League for the 2026/27 season. Following their return to the top-flight after a 25-year absence, Coventry City can expect a revenue uplift of at least £210m across the next three seasons, based on projected increases in matchday, broadcast and commercial revenue. The other club that secured automatic promotion, Ipswich Town, may anticipate a minimum boost of £170m – this figure is comparatively lower as they were in receipt of parachute payments during the 2025/26 season, following their relegation from the Premier League in 2024/25. These figures could rise to £365m and £325m respectively, should both clubs avoid relegation after their first season in the Premier League. Amidst the controversy surrounding this year’s play-offs, Hull City ultimately defeated Middlesbrough in the final at Wembley to...

The Swiss Ramble investigates the 2024/25 accounts of Ipswich Town which relate to their year in the Premier League.   Much more detail and analysis is available on his Substack page. Ipswich’s transformation has been driven by the new owners, who purchased the club in April 2021 for a reported £40m. As a result, Ipswich Town are now majority owned by the appropriately named Gamechanger 20 Limited, though the ultimate owner was the Arizona state pension fund, the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS), via its investment firm, ORG. The new ownership group has certainly put its money where its mouth is to date, investing a lot in the squad and the club’s infrastructure.   They were helped by the previous owner, Marcus Evans, writing-off the vast majority of the club’s debt as part of the takeover, but it’s fair to say that the new owners provided the catalyst for Ipswich’s renaissance. There have been a few changes since the initial investment, as Bright P...

The row about Nigel Farage's visit to Ipswich Town rumbles on, although the club has said they have nothing to add to their earlier statements. On Tuesday,  The Athletic  was the first media outlet to reveal that elements of Ipswich’s account of Reform’s visit, chiefly that Reform leader Nigel Farage had not been invited to the club, had been contradicted by sources at the party. But with the controversy continuing to escalate,  The Athletic  has now revealed more details which undermine Ipswich’s account and raise further questions of the club’s handling of the affair. These include: The invitation to Farage was made by an associate of chief executive officer MarkAshton. Farage was met by a club executive and then had lunch with Ashton and Luke Werhun, the club’s COO. The club gifted the politician six ‘Farage 10’ Ipswich shirts free of charge. Members of staff, some senior, have made formal complaints to Ipswich’s human ...

Football clubs are best advised to avoid identification with any one political party as their fans are likely to hold a range of views. Ipswich Town appear to have been unaware of the way in which a private tour of Portman Road by Nigel Farage might then be exploited by Reform. The club may just have been naive, but it is something of a PR disaster which has upset many Tractors fans and led to some merriment in Norwich. Of course, sport cannot be kept out of politics, but partisanship, even if inadvertent, is best avoided.

The Arizona state pension fund that bought Ipswich Town in 2021 has sold a large chunk of its shares in the Suffolk-based club in a deal that values them at more than £350million ($446.9m), a record for a Championship team. The Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS), via its investment manager ORG, paid about £30million ($40m) for 90 per cent of the then-League One club in April 2021, which was also a record price at the time for a team in England’s third tier. PSPRS, which provides pensions to 24,000 former firefighters, police officers and prison officers in Arizona, halved its stake in the club in March 2024, when Ohio-based private equity firm Bright Path Sports Partners took a large minority stake in the club two months before they secured their second straight promotion and a return to the Premier League after a 22-year absence. Bright Path’s £105million ($140m) investment valued Ipswich at about £250million ($333.5m) which was already a healthy return o...

Alexander Isak’s £125million move from Newcastle United to Liverpool was a fitting final act that helped add a juicy full stop to the most spectacular summer of trading that English football has known. Deadline day alone saw £375m change hands, nudging the totalizer up to a figure that already ensures this coming January is not needed to make this the most lavish season on record. Never before have the Premier League’s 20 clubs spent nearly as much on players, both in gross and net figures. The total spend, in fact, was a remarkable £1.1bn more than last summer once the final agreements were struck by 7pm, representing a 55 per cent year-on-year increase. The fact a record number of deal sheets were lodged ahead of the deadline, a figure that ran into double figures for the desperate, illustrated the frenetic nature of business from start to finish. No club has ever had a higher gross spend than Liverpool, either. The £420m they committed on the deals to land Isak, Florian Wirtz, H...

Ipswich Town’s relegation has been confirmed after just one season back in the top flight - along with the other two teams that were promoted the year before. This is the second season in a row that all three promoted clubs went straight back down, underlining the increasing struggles for clubs coming up from the Championship. In fairness to Ipswich, they did spend big in an attempt to survive in England’s elite competition, having the seventh highest gross transfer spend this season with £129m, which was nearly £100m more than champions Liverpool.     Indeed, in terms of net spend, their £127m was actually the second highest in England, only surpassed by Brighton, so more than every single member of the so-called Big Six. In fact, only three promoted clubs have ever spent more than Ipswich in their first season in the Premier League, namely Nottingham Forest (2022/23) £170m, Aston Villa (2019/20) £156m and Bournemouth (2022/23) £130m.    Therefore, it’s fai...

It looks very likely that the three teams promoted from the Championship last season will be relegated from the Premier League. What is clear is that the number of points required to finish above the dotted line has been trending downwards for a decade, as have the cumulative points haul of the three relegated sides. It now requires mismanagement on a pretty epic scale for an established Premier League club to be relegated. Seventeenth-placed Wolves are averaging less than a point per game but could feasibly fail to win another point and stay up with 26 points, which is what 18th-place Luton finished on last season. When Charlton were in the top flight the survival target was 40 points. Usually, however, they are putting up a better fight than this. The nine-point gap between 18th-placed Ipswich and Wolves in 17th is also the biggest gap at this stage in the Premier League era, and by some distance: only once has the deficit been more than three points. Yet even huge investment...

Typically, newcomers struggle to survive in the Premier League, especially in recent years — there’s nothing new there. But last season was the first time since 1998, and only the second time ever, that all three promoted Premier League clubs were relegated to the Championship. To provide some context to just how difficult it has been for Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton, last season’s relegated trio provide an unflattering reference point. Statistically, Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton Town were the worst bottom three in Premier League history. They picked up 66 points between them — 10 points fewer than the next lowest on record. Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton are currently on course to finish with a cumulative total of 63 points. They have two fewer wins than Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton at the same stage of the season and have conceded 174 goals compared to 178. The financial numbers are interesting, too, and, in many ways, highlight what promoted clubs are u...

The Athletic has taken a look at the biggest investments in Premier League clubs, including subsequent payments.   They have used data from the Swiss Ramble and Kieran Maguire among others. It doesn’t cost much to this excellent online publication to get the full sp, but here are the top five: 1.        Chelsea (£2.65 bn) 2.        Manchester City (£1.5bn) 3.        Arsenal (£1.26bn) 4.        Fulham (£938m) 5.        Everton (£878m) And last but not least, Ipswich £123m.   Will it be enough for them to survive?    The price of an entry and survival ticket keeps going up.    But then Brentford in 19 th place have done well on £124m.

The singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran has acquired a minority stake in the newly promoted Premier League club Ipswich Town. Sheeran is a lifelong fan of the Suffolk club and has been shirt sponsor for the men’s and women’s teams since 2021. The 33-year-old’s total stake in the Premier League club, acquired through Gamechanger 20 Ltd, is 1.4 per cent. As part of the agreement, Sheeran will have the long-term use of an executive box at Portman Road, which he has personalised for this season. He will not be a voting shareholder or a board member. “This is just me putting some money into the club I love and them returning the gesture, so please don’t get on to me with signing suggestions or tactics to play.”

For the most part, their 17 years in the second tier Ipswich Town felt like they were running to stand still, as the financial disparity with the parachute clubs continued to widen.   In fact, things got worse before they got better, as the Tractor Boys were relegated in 2019 to League One, where they languished for four seasons before a dramatic change in their fortunes. The transformation was effected under the new owners, who purchased the club in April 2021 for a reported £40m. As a result, Ipswich Town became majority owned by the appropriately named Gamechanger 20 Limited, though the ultimate owner is a US investment firm, ORG. The new ownership group has certainly put its money where its mouth is to date, investing a lot into the squad and the club’s infrastructure. However, this looks like its part of a well thought-out plan, as shown by some astute recruitment. McKenna is the obvious jewel in the crown, but they also brought in former Bristol City chief executive, Mark...

Ed Sheeran is one of the most successful singer-songwriters of his generation. He also happens to be a diehard Ipswich Town fan. So when the Tractor Boys achieved back-to-back promotions to reach the English Premier League for the first time in more than 20 years last weekend, the Shape of You singer got in on the celebrations. Ipswich Town, like Sheeran, is a perhaps surprising success story. Despite being newly-promoted from the third division, the team finished second in the Championship, ahead of Leeds United and Southampton, both of whom were playing in the Premier League last year. Ipswich has spent just £8.6mn on new players in the past three seasons combined, Southampton forked out £204mn (albeit while still making a profit from player trading). The current Ipswich squad has a value of around £43mn, according to estimates from Transfermarkt, compared to more than £177mn at Leeds United. Based purely on money, Ipswich have massively overperformed. At the other end of t...

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire is very positive about the prospects for Ipswich Town in the Premier League, both for the club and the local economy.   The latter is sometimes overlooked, but a number of studies have shown that the impact can be considerable:  https://www.eadt.co.uk/sport/24291961.ipswich-town-kieran-maguire-promotion-mean-financially/ The three promoted teams this season have struggled, but I think that Ipswich are of a different calibre.  As Maguir e points out, there are really three divisions in the Premier League.  My guess would be that Ipswich will top the relegation league, i.e., be about 16th which would be a good platform for future progress and financial stability.

Ipswich Town have sold forty per cent of the club to a US private equity company Bright Path Sports for £105m:  https://www.itfc.co.uk/news/2024/march/22/press-release-bright-path-sports/ They manage a public sector pension fund in Arizona. They raise and deploy Native American capital:  https://www.brightpathsports.com/

The promotion of Ipswich Town with 98 points and over 100 goals was part of the transformation under the new owners, who purchased the club in April 2021 for a reported £40m. As a consequence, Ipswich Town are now majority owned by the wonderfully named Gamechanger 20 Limited, though the ultimate owner is a US investment firm, ORG, with a 90% stake. The remaining shares are split: 5% for three businessmen (Brett Johnson, Berke Bakay and Mark Detmer), who previously invested in US football club Phoenix Rising: and 5% for Marcus Evans, Town’s former owner. The new owners have certainly put their money where their mouths are to date, spending a lot on the squad and the club’s infrastructure. However, this has been part of a well though-out plan, as they have made some astute recruitment choices. As well as McKenna, they brought in former Bristol City chief executive, Mark Ashton, to lead operations off the pitch. Ashton spoke of the solid nature of Ipswich’s new investors, “In a per...