The Political Economy of Football V2

When I was growing up in London after the second world war, I would have been surprised to be told that one day I would have a great-granddaughter who would be educated in Valencios (a dialect of Catalan).   D.v.  I will be going to see her in the procession at the Three Kings festival.  Meanwhile, my interest in Spanish football increases but as a neutral. The authoritative Swiss Ramble has undertaken his usual forensic analysis of the finances of FC Barcelona.   Much more is available on his Substack page. Despite the impressive increase in revenue, which rose €95m (10%) from €916m to a club record €1,011m, Barcelona actually reported a pre-tax loss of €14m in 2025/26, which was slightly worse than the prior year’s €8m deficit.    This was due to a steep rise in operating expenses, which grew €111m (12%) from €900m to €1,011m, while net interest payable increased €13m (47%) from €26m to €39m.   This was partly offset by an improvement in pro...

Don’t think that it’s just in England that clubs are instigating legal action against each other.  In Spain the tensions between metropolitan Spain and Catalonia form the geopolitical backdrop to tensions between Real and Barca.  My great-granddaughter is taught in Valnecios which is really a variant of Catalan which in turn is closer to French than Spanish. UEFA says it has received “a substantial amount of documents” from Real Madrid in relation to Barcelona’s payments to a former Spanish referees chief.   European football’s governing body released a statement on Thursday confirming the documents will be “assessed” by its “ethics and disciplinary inspectors” as part of an “ongoing investigation”. Payments totalling €8.4million (£7.2m; $9.4m at current rates), made by Barcelona between 2001 and 2018 to former Spanish referees committee vice-president Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, first came to light in February 2023. Back in June 2023, UEFA’s investigators decided...

Barcelona are going to leave the Camp Nou again.  This was already part of their plans to finish ongoing rebuilding works at their iconic ground, but now we know — following comments from vice-president Ferran Olive at Saturday’s annual general assembly — exactly what they expect to happen next. Olive said Barca would finish this 2026-27 season at the Camp Nou, but would then have to play away from the stadium for around half of 2027-28. He said the club hoped to come back in January 2028. At that meeting, Barcelona also requested club members approve another big loan — taking on €510million (£437m; $584m) in further debt, €300m being earmarked for Camp Nou construction and €210m in further operational borrowings — in order to complete the works. This was voted through, meaning Barcelona’s total debts are now set to surge well past £2 billion and could hit €2.6bn in total, depending on repayment dates. It takes the budget for the Espai Barca projevt which encompasses the Camp...

The Swiss Ramble uses his unrivalled data bank and forensic skills to analyse the financial performances of the top 15 clubs in Europe.  Much more in depth analysis can be found on his Substack page. England still dominate the top 15 with the usual Big Six (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur), while the next highest contributors with three apiece are Spain (Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid) and Italy (Inter, Juventus and Milan). Germany provide two clubs (Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund), while Paris Saint-Germain are the sole French representative. Looking at the combined results for the top 15 clubs, they still lose money, but there has been a significant reduction in losses (excluding exceptional items) from £1.4 bln in 2021/22 to £257m in 2024/25.     The Premier League’s average loss widened from £55m to £70m.   Three of the other leagues swung from a loss in 2021/22 to a profit in 2024/25, ...

The finances of Barcelona are very complex, but in some ways quite alarming.   Continued success requires spending on players, the stadium and many other things besides (never forget utilities costs).   Yet one cannot run a world class football club and a global brand without taking big risks, even if it inevitably draws you into an international financial world that looks increasingly unstable and under pressure to many analysts. Barca tottered past €1billion (£859m; $1.1bn) in revenues last season, only the second football club ever to do so, behind rivals Real Madrid. Yet they still failed to turn a profit, losing €17.8m post-tax, while a costly remodelling of their Camp Nou home remains unfinished and debts continue to pile high. On the pitch, they wrapped up a second consecutive La Liga title in May in the best way possible, beating Madrid 2-0 at home to ensure their El Clasico rivals couldn’t catch them. Hansi Flick’s side fell at the quarter-fina...

Barcelona has topped revenues of €1 billion, but remains one of the most indebted clubs in world soccer:  https://forzafootball.com/news/barcelona-announce-record-breaking-finances-but-still-trail-real-madrid-159443561 The club has boosted its finances with a new commercial deal:  ysscores.com/en/news/14037095/fc-barcelona-boosts-its-finances-with-a-new-commercial-deal

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...

The FT’s Lex column takes a sceptical look at the Pink Un’s interview with Real Madrid supremo Florentino Pérez a few pages away. What’s the biggest prize in football? Many fans would point to the golden trophy awaiting the winners of the World Cup, which kicks off next week. Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez, however, reckons there’s an even more prestigious honour: owning a piece of his club. Pérez wants the fan-owned club to sell a stake to outside investors for the first time. But, to allay fears among existing members, he insists any new owners won’t actually have real ownership. “It would be like a sponsorship,” he said in an interview with the FT this week. In some respects, Pérez — the architect of Real Madrid’s so-called Galácticos strategy of signing the world’s most famous players — is in tune with the times. Investors in Elon Musk’s rockets-meet-social-media conglomerate SpaceX have practically no say over governance, but the excitement surrounding its impending ...

Florentino Pérez said prospective investors will pay handsomely “for the satisfaction of having a relationship” with Real Madrid but receive nothing in return, as the president of the world’s richest football club pursues a contentious plan to bring in outside capital at a €10bn-plus valuation.   In a rare interview with the English-language press, which came as he fights for re-election, Pérez told the Financial Times that acquiring a stake in member-owned Real Madrid was not like buying a traditional asset that would yield a concrete financial return. “It would be like a sponsorship, let’s put it that way,” he said. “In other words, there are people who associate themselves with Real Madrid without expecting anything.” After presiding over a trophy-laden 22 years at the helm of Real Madrid, Pérez’s future lies in the hands of the club’s members after he called a presidential election last month to quell growing unrest around the club. While Real Madrid generated €1.2bn of rev...

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...

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...

Problems on the pitch and in the dressing room in Madrid are feeding into the boardroom. This week Florentino Pérez, the club’s all-powerful president,  said  he would call an election, even though his current term runs for another three years. He vowed not to resign, and lashed out at his various critics, who he blamed for trying to destabilise the club. “Why do they want to get rid of me? Just because a few people are saying they want to stand for election? Let them stand”, he said. It’s not that long ago that Pérez was touting his plan to reorganise Real Madrid in order to raise money from investors. The idea was to allow an outside party — perhaps a private equity firm — to buy a stake of 5 to 10 per cent. The proposal is controversial, to say the least, for a club owned by its 100,000 members. The Spanish club has the highest revenue in football, at more than €1bn a year. Sportico reckons the club is worth $7.7bn; Football Benchmark has a slightly lower figure of aro...

One branch of my family now lives in Spain, but unfortunately none of them are interested in football.   That would be a lot to ask of my great-granddaughter who is three, but I have watched the older pupils from her school (boys and girls) enjoying a kick about in the village square. From his Zurich fastness, the Swiss Ramble has been casting his eye over the finances of Atlético Madrid.    Much more detail and analysis are available on his Substack page.   Some highlights follow. Private equity firm Apollo Sports Capital became majority shareholder in Atlético Madrid last November, buying a reported 55% stake. Following this deal, Quantum Pacific, founded by Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer, is the second largest shareholder with a stake of roughly 25%, while American investment firm Ares Management now has 5%. Gil Marin has seen his stake reduce to 10%, though he will remain as CEO, while club president Enrique Cerezo is down to 3%. Apollo’s investmen...

I t’s been a big few days for Atlético Madrid. Spain’s third-biggest club all but booked a place in the next round of the Champions League after dismantling an abject Tottenham Hotspur on Tuesday night. A couple of days later, the biggest-ever takeover in Spanish football closed, with Apollo completing its purchase of a majority stake in Atlético at a valuation of somewhere north of €2bn (how far north depends on who you ask). Success in Uefa competitions is one of the reasons the club made an attractive prospect for the US investment group The deal was a win for Ares Management, which sold down the 34 per cent stake it had acquired for €182mn in 2021. The firm will continue to be involved as a smaller shareholder in the club, and most likely as a lender for the ambitious €800mn real estate project that first sparked Apollo’s interest (and is probably still the key driver of the decision to buy the club itself). But another big beneficiary was Quantum Pacific, the investment firm of Is...

Real  Madrid file interim financials each year, and while they were again profitable in the opening half of this season, their surplus drooped notably. In the six months to the end of December 2024, Madrid made a pre-tax profit of €38.3m. A year on, the figure was just €6.1m, an 84 per cent fall. The heightened wage bill was a key driver in that, with most of the increase attributable to football staff and, within them, to first-team players.   Personnel costs there rose by €26.5m, as the impact of several new signings — Dean Huijsen, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Alvaro Carreras and Franco Mastantuono — was felt. Captain Dani Carvajal’s new contract, signed in October 2024, also had a bearing; six months of any extra cost incurred by that new deal will have been recorded in the latest figures, as opposed to just three months in those from a year ago. Wages in the club’s basketball team jumped too, up €7.8m to €25.1m, but that still meant Madrid’s football-related wage bill for...

Javier Tebas rarely pulls his punches, and the president of La Liga was in fiery form, ripping into Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi and the Premier League as part of a stout defence of the Spanish game at this week’s Financial Times Football Business Summit. Tebas took issue with the Premier League’s new “squad cost ratio” system that is replacing the profitability and sustainability framework, saying it would not end the financial imbalances he has long lamented between the English top division and continental European competitions. The Premier League’s new regulations will penalise clubs if they spend more than 85 per cent of revenue on transfers and wages, but Tebas faulted it for excluding other costs from the calculation. “They’re going to have more inflation and more problems,” he predicted. “A rule that does not take expenses into account is useless.” Premier League boss Masters later dismissed this criticism, insisting the squad cost ratio would ...

From his Zurich base the authoritative Swiss Ramble reviews how clubs have done so far in this season’s Uefa competitions.   Much more detail about clubs and calculations can be found on his Substack page. Eight of the top ten in money terms also featured in the top ten of the Deloitte Money League, while another one (Inter) was 11th in the so-called “Rich List”.   The only club that spoiled the strong correlation between money and success on the downside was Manchester United, which highlights the extent of the mismanagement at Old Trafford. His calculations suggest that five clubs have already received more than €90m from the Champions League, namely Bayern Munich €100m, Manchester City €97m, Liverpool €97m, Arsenal €96m and Chelsea €92m.   They are closely followed by Barcelona €89m, Tottenham €84m, Paris Saint-Germain €82m and Real Madrid €81m. Revenue available for distribution in the Europa League is less than a quarter of the Champions League, which has ...

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 ...