The Political Economy of Football V2

Now that the dust has settled from the transfer window it is worth looking at the pattern of spending courtesy of the authoritative Swiss Ramble.  These are just highlights: for comprehensive coverage subscribe to his Substack blog which covers all the European leagues including minor ones. Liverpool’s £459m spend in the transfer window was the third highest of all time, only surpassed by Chelsea’s massive spending since Boehly and co arrived (£745m in 2022/23 and £553m in 2023/24). Liverpool had the highest gross spend of £393m, followed by Chelsea £284m and Arsenal £254m, though six clubs in total spent more than £200m.   The three promoted clubs all spent a fair amount, led by Sunderland’s £163m, though Burnley £117m and Leeds United £98m did not exactly hold back either. The lowest gross spend of the Big Six was Manchester City’s £179m, though this was partly because they were very active in the previous January window. On the other hand, three clubs spent less than £5...

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...

Fans see Liverpool as most likely to win the league, though most Arsenal and Man City fans also believe they have a realistic chance of the title  Ahead of Liverpool vs Bournemouth kicking off the new Premier League season on Friday, a new YouGov* study looks at fans’ hopes and expectations for the 2025-26 competition. What do Premier League fans see as realistic for their teams in the 2025-26 season? While most fans are optimistic of their teams’ chances this season, their sights are set at different levels.   Among the ten clubs with fanbase samples large enough for us to look at in detail, just three teams’ fans primarily think topping the league is within their grasp. Three quarters (75%) of Liverpool fans say they can realistically hope to retain the title, while 59% of Manchester City supporters and 55% of Arsenal fans believe they can win the league this season. Topping the table is an ambition also held by 32% of Chelsea supporters, though most (56%) see qualifyi...

Contrary to widely held belief, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia has contributed wonderfully to English football this summer. It’s done marvellously for Liverpool, excellently for Chelsea, great for Manchester City and, further afield, even found time to help Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid too.  For Newcastle United, not so much. Indeed, those who once welcomed the PIF to the city will increasingly worry whether it cares much for their club at all.  Saudi Arabian money propped up Fifa’s Club World Cup, which was only going to benefit two English clubs — Chelsea and City — plus a longer list of European royalty. Now, PIF-backed Al-Hilal have paid £46.3million for Darwin Núñez of Liverpool, a windfall that may help facilitate their continued interest in Newcastle’s crown jewel, Alexander Isak.  In landing Darwin Nunez from Liverpool in a deal worth at least £46million this week, Al Hilal will believe they have made another statement for the Saudi Pro Leag...

 Liverpool have already brought in Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen for £100m, Hugo Ekitiké from Eintracht Frankfurt for £69m, Milos Kerkez from Bournemouth for £40m and Jeremie Frimpong again from Leverkusen for £30m. The eventual transfer fees could be even higher if all the add-ons are paid, e.g. another £16m for Wirtz and £10m for Ekitiké, while the total cost to be capitalised will include agent fees (assumed at 10%), the 4% Premier League levy and a 5% solidarity payment for international deals. As it stands, i.e. excluding the potential Isak purchase, Liverpool have still spent a cool £284m, with only two other clubs breaking through the £200m barrier, namely Chelsea £285m and Arsenal £220m. To place this into perspective, if Isak’s signing is secured, Liverpool’s £421m would be the second highest annual transfer spend ever in England, only surpassed by Chelsea’s £745m massive outlay in the first season after the arrival of the Clearlake Capital crew.   Even if...

Liverpool owner Fenway Sports Group (FSG) is in talks with Getafe president Angel Torres about a staged takeover that would add the La Liga club to its portfolio of sports teams. FSG’s interest in Getafe was first reported in Spain last month but Torres downplayed the status of the talks earlier this month in an interview with Spanish radio station COPE, saying there have been rumours about a takeover since he bought the club in 2002 “and now it’s Liverpool but we’re not for sale”. Despite this denial, it is widely known in the industry that Getafe have been for sale for years and FSG is just the latest to take an interest in the club, who are about to start their 21st season out of the last 22 in Spain’s top flight. Over that period they have built a reputation for being well-run and for developing young talent, such as current Aston Villa midfielder Emi Buendia, Galatasaray’s on-loan striker Alvaro Morata and their in-demand Nigerian star Christantus Uche. Torres has previous...

UEFA’s PSR regulations are a fair bit stricter than the Premier League, as the allowable losses are much smaller, even though these have been increased over the years, while clubs also have to contend with the new squad cost control ratio. Aston Villa In contrast to Arsenal who appear to meet the criteria, the authoritative Swiss Ramble thinks that Villa have missed UEFA’s PSR target by a country mile.    By his reckoning, their adjusted PSR loss for the 2-year monitoring period was a hefty £140m, using figures provided by the club itself for allowable deductions. That would mean a €161m PSR loss, which would be a cool €100m over the allowable target, even though this was boosted by the €55m allowance for an equity contribution. It very much looks like Villa have also breached the new squad cost control limit, though the magnitude of the over-run depends on how the 13th month in their accounts is treated. This has been tacitly admitted by the club, as Villa basically i...

The Times carried a long interview with Liverpool chairman Tom Werner yesterday. He noted that NBC recently said 12 Premier League matches this season boasted audiences of more than a million, with English and Spanish fans across the NBC platforms consuming 17.14 billion minutes of coverage across the campaign. Liverpool are at the forefront of that growth. “We are very aware of the global power of Liverpool,” Werner says. “The club’s reach around the world is by far the strongest in the Premier League. We’re the only Premier League club to surpass 500million views on television [by March 2025 from August last season]. Last season on social media we generated 1.7 billion engagements. That’s not unique engagements, but it’s still a huge number." “Many Americans still don’t appreciate the global power of football. But we think there could now be as many as a billion people around the world who follow Liverpool. There is a special connection with the fans. You feel it at the game...

There are signs that FSG’s vision of a virtuous circle — where success on the pitch powers commercial revenues, which can then be reinvested into the playing squad and the youth academy — is becoming a reality. Liverpool won the title despite spending less than any other Premier League club across the summer and winter transfer windows, according to Transfermarkt data. Its use of sophisticated data analysis techniques to identify undervalued players — such as midfielder Ryan Gravenberch and defender Ibrahima Konaté, each signed for €40mn — means they have spent less on transfers than all their major rivals since their last title win, in 2020. However, keeping a successful group of players together has required Liverpool to extend contracts and increase player wages. The result is that its wage bill is now the second highest in the league. That puts the onus on Liverpool’s commercial department to increase revenues. Ben Latty, the club’s chief commercial officer, told the Financia...

Under the ownership of US billionaire John Henry’s Fenway Sports Group, which bought the club for £300mn in 2010, Liverpool have made the most of the commercial opportunities that arise from on-pitch success. Winning has powered growth in the club’s commercial revenue, which exceeded £300mn for the first time in 2023-24, roughly half of overall revenue. In a world where media rights growth is under pressure and ticket prices are already pushing the limits of fan patience, commercial revenue is increasingly critical to funding success. Owners also need to limit losses to comply with the financial regulations set by the Premier League and Uefa, European football’s governing body. While Liverpool have dominated this season despite spending less in the transfer market than most rivals, their wage bill has climbed sharply in recent years — highlighting the cost of keeping their star players.   The club has just agreed contract extensions with Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah and centr...

Fenway Sports Group believe there is an opportunity to restore Malaga to the upper echelons of the Spanish and European game and there is huge potential for the only professional team in Spain’s sixth-largest city with a population of around 600,000.  The team also has a loyal fan base — even when playing in the third tier last season, attendances at its rustic La Rosaleda stadium regularly topped 20,000. That strong support helped the team, coached by long-time club servant Sergio Pellicer, to get promoted back to Segunda in 2023-24, despite the ongoing off-pitch turmoil. Malaga is also a well-known tourist destination, and the Costa del Sol area is home to a wealthy expat community, bringing opportunities for VIP matchday revenues and international marketing. Fenway Sports Group is routinely held up as an exceptionally valuable sporting empire, with Forbes pricing the group at $12.95billion in 2024, pitching them as the world’s third-most valuable sporting group a...

Globalisation may be disappearing in other spheres of economic activity as protectionist barries are raised, but the spread of the multi-club model suggests that it is alive and well in football (soccer).  Liverpool are the latest club to jump on board. Ever since the appointment of Michael Edwards as chief executive of football at Fenway Sports Group (FSG) in March 2024, it has been clear the multi-club ownership model is coming to Anfield.   Edwards, Liverpool’s former sporting director, returned to the FSG fold with the belief that the club has little choice but to expand if it is to “remain competitive” in the Premier League and beyond. The key to that is an ambitious plan to invest in a partner club. FSG’s multi-club plans mean falling in line with the Premier League crowd, effectively. Well over half of the 20 teams in the English top flight now have relationships with at least one other European club and the pattern has been extended in the past two years. Liver...

There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about stadiums with Manchester United unveiling their ambitious and as yet unfunded plans, Chelsea’s board divided about Stamford Bridge, and Everton starting to move into Bramley Dock. Stadiums are an expensive capital asset that cost money to maintain and are used for football at best an average of every 10 days.   The new Tottenham Hotspur stadium is designed to maximise use for purposes other than football.    Some continental clubs have built their stadiums so that there are shops and other commercial premises around the ground floor. I don’t want to start choosing the most iconic stadium I have visited, but Anfield is up there. Anfield has been transformed since Fenway Sports Group (FSG) bought Liverpool in 2010. Where houses were once tucked tightly up to all sections of the ground, now there are wide walkways on either side of the newly-built Anfield Road Stand (which opened in 2023) and Main Stand (expanded i...

Today’s Subbuteo comes complete with accountants and, in the case of Manchester City, first rate lawyers.   Clubs need to be assessed off the pitch as well as on it which I have been doing since the mid-1990s – but now there are better informed minds at work in the form of the Swiss Ramble, Kieran Maguire and the new football business correspondent at The Athletic. Despite the sizeable flak FSG get for not doing a City and going on a trolley dash each transfer window, it is evident that they've been good custodians of the club.    The club has been run at a profit, nowhere near the PSR limit, they have expanded the historic stadium and undertaken investment into the playing squad at the right time. Winning the revamped Champions League would have banked Liverpool €52.5million (£44m; $57m) more than they will now receive, not to mention a further €5m had they gone on to win the European Super Cup. They still earned an estimated €100m, underlining just how lucrativ...

It probably came as something of a surprise last week when the club announced a massive loss for the 2023/24 season, though this did reflect results on the pitch, as they only played in the Europa League, where they reached the quarter-finals, as opposed to the far more lucrative Champions League. They finished third in the Premier League, two places better than the previous season, while they won some silverware after beating Chelsea in the Carabao Cup final, though they were eliminated in the FA Cup quarter-finals by Manchester United. Liverpool’s pre-tax loss significantly widened from £9m to £57m, which is not only the largest under FSG, but is actually the club’s highest ever.   Despite missing out on the Champions League, Liverpool still managed to increase revenue by £20m (3%) from £594m to £614m, a new club record, though profit from player sales fell £12m from £34m to £22m.   However, there was steep growth in operating expenses, which shot up £52m (8%) from £632m...

Liverpool have reported a loss before tax of £57million for the financial year after the club were left counting the cost of missing out on Champions League qualification. The figures for the 12-month period up to May 31, 2024 also show that it now costs £600million a year to run Liverpool after administrative expenses rose by £38million. Of that amount, the club’s wage bill stands at £386million, which represents an 86 per cent increase from £208million in 2018. Included in that top-line figure for wages are contractual payments of £9.6million to Jürgen Klopp and more than ten members of his staff when they left at the end of the previous campaign. Liverpool’s fifth-place finish in 2022-23 resulted in them playing in the Europa League last season, which is not nearly as lucrative as Champions League football. There was a £38million drop in media revenue, to £204million, largely as a consequence of not being at Europe’s top table. That was partly...

The last derby between Everton and Liverpool at Goodison had a predictably explosive end, but research by The Athletic shows that both teams are less reliant on local talent than they were in the 1990s. In private conversations with  The Athletic , multiple people working within player recruitment in the north-west of England have said that neighbouring regions such as Greater Manchester and Yorkshire offer a greater diversity of young players in comparison with Merseyside, due to those areas having higher populations and more people relocating to them. The talent pool available to Premier League clubs is also so vast now that the focus is on nurturing the best players regardless of where they hail from rather than those on your doorstep. Every professional footballer from Merseyside has a story to share from their upbringing. Many of them include street football and playing with their mates. Rooney, for example, first turned out for a kids' team run by The Western Approach...

Calculations by the authoritative Swiss Ramble suggest that three clubs have already received more than €90m from this season’s Champions League, namely Liverpool €100m, Arsenal €91m and Barcelona €90m.  They are closely followed by Bayer Leverkusen €89m, Atletico Madrid €86m and Inter €86m.   The top eight clubs have all banked more than €30m in prize money, ranging from Liverpool’s €38.3m to Aston Villa’s €32.7m The country that has earned most to date from the Champions League is Germany with €349m, just ahead of England €340m, followed by Italy €310m, Spain €291m and France €272m.   There is then a big gap from the Big Five leagues to Portugal €112m and Netherlands €107m, both of whom have two clubs in this season’s Champions League. If we instead look at the average per club, then the dominance of the Premier League becomes apparent, as England are by far the highest with €85m, comfortably ahead of Spain €73m, Germany €70m, France €68m and Italy €62m. Clea...

Qualification to Europe’s flagship competition has always equated to significant financial windfalls, but never quite like this. The revamped format, with the total games played climbing from 125 to 189, has swelled coffers at UEFA and ensured the 36 participating clubs have been handsomely rewarded. The total prize pot is forecast to stand at €2.47billion (£2.08bn, $2.59bn) this season, 22 per cent up on the €2.03bn of last. UEFA effectively splits that three ways; an equal share, performance-related amounts and a complex and new ‘value pillar’ shaped by market pools and coefficients. An equal share of €18.6m has already gone to each of the 36 clubs involved in the group phase, with the chance to build on that number through match weeks one to eight. Every win has been worth €2.1m, every draw €700,000. Alongside that has been the opportunity to earn more through league position. The higher you finish after the eight games are played, the more you bank. Broadly mirroring the ...

Real Madrid became the first football club to generate over €1 billion in revenue during the 2023/24 season and are at the top of the 2025 Money League. The completion of renovations works to the Bernabéu Stadium catalysed the growth of matchday revenues to €248m in 2023/24, a 103% uplift on the previous year. The increase was realised predominantly on account of the marketing of Personal Seat Licenses, which provided an uplift of c.€76m, as well as the sale of new VIP seats and the increased capacity of the stadium from December 2023. The club also reported a 20% increase in commercial revenue (from €403m to €482m), boosted by increased merchandise and new sleeve sponsorship.  Manchester City remained the highest revenue generating English club, with revenue of €838m. The gap between the top-two Money League clubs in 2023/24 was €208m, the highest on record (previous record: €84m in 2018/19).  Several clubs identified the impact of infrastructure investments as a key dr...