The Finances of Football

Overseas rights have always been shared equally, and while in 1992 they were almost nonexistent, the current deal, reflecting the game's global popularity, especially in the Middle and Far East, is worth £1.4bn over the next three years. So last season Blackpool received the same as United: £17.9m.

^ tbh i can sympathise with ayre a teensy bit when you see it like that. fuck it tho

Spain is in a pretty sick condition though by any standards xps. It just seems to me that most other leagues heading the same way, it's totally obvious that the elites in each will band together in one really good competition, rather than put up with half-a-dozen dysfunctional ones.

That said, Serie A's opening this year has been old-school.

I've really enjoyed Serie A this year after ignoring it for a decade.

spain sick as anything, only world champions, euro champions, current world #1, champion's league holders, yadda yadda

Nothing would be more boring than the top clubs from Europe in a top competition. I'm already half bored once the Champion's League qf are on because it's basically the same 8 clubs all the time. Bring back the 90s Champions League where you'd get IFK Goteborg and AEK Athens and Galatasaray and so on actually being competitive.

getting a bit sick and tired of this myth that the epl is competitive unlike spain. Been the same 2 teams for the last 6 or 7 years winning the league. Short of a billionaire who can flush millions down the toilet with nary a pause buying a club that's not going to change.
Wonder if malaga finish top 3 this year.

― pandemic, Thursday, 13 October 2011 13:55 (50 minutes ago)

I don't think anyone said the whole league was competitive. But in the premiership the tv rights are collectively bought and shared amongst the teams, so all the clubs are on a kind of equal footing when it comes to the money they receive, meaning there is more of a chance for a well run club to be competitive. In Spain where Real and Barca gobble up all that money and no-one else sees a dime compared, it is impossible to compete - look at the past couple years, any team that looked good enough just had those two teams buy their best players, essentially nullifying them (Alves, Villa, Albiol etc.) In theory, that shouldn't happen here considering the only real difference is sponsership, gate receipts and the money you receive for how well your team does and hopefully FFP can kick the billionaire system out*, leaving a closer financial playing field where a team like Newcastle or whoever, if well run, could break the mould. In Spain however, stadium revenue etc. may be similar but having Barca and Real earn 200m+ more than every other team from TV rights means there is nowhere near the balance, to the point where they are looking at Malaga oil to compete!

*lol

You know Spain's situation is shit when you realise how hard it is for all the other clubs to actually find sponsorship deals. Real and Barca both get something like 30M/yr, the third highest deal is around 5M/yr iirc

I think it was Valencia to whom Ashley Madison (the online dating site for married ppl) proposed a sponsorship deal like a few M/yr + money everytime one of their players cheats on his wife

I'm already half bored once the Champion's League qf are on because it's basically the same 8 clubs all the time. Bring back the 90s Champions League where you'd get IFK Goteborg and AEK Athens and Galatasaray and so on actually being competitive

I wanted to come back to this because the national league system is EXACTLY what's killing these clubs now imo. IFK can't compete because they have fairly small crowds and Swedish telly income is negligible. Even if they did make the CL they only get the Swedish portion of the pot, not the portion that comes from selling rights to Germany or Italy.

If we do get a proper European league, those clubs will have to resurrect to some extent because a proper league would want to take in the Scandinavian etc. markets too. Scandinavia's rich, it wouldn't make sense to have no teams there.

surely it would make more sense to transplant a franchise that is already popular in scandinavia to a central location like stockholm? northwest england is already saturated with one global alpha level team and another that is quickly approaching that status

therefore the answer is for john henry to make that bold move

Scandinavia's rich, it wouldn't make sense to have no teams there

I think a lot of Scandinavians follow English football anyway. There's certainly a hell of a lot of Norwegian Man Utd fans.

i can't remember if this is true or if i made it up but were liverpool not also at the forefront of the 92 premier league breakaway?

Yeah, think it was a combo of Liverpool and David Dein at Arsenal.

Tons of Scandinavians at Liverpool too.

But what I mean is: what's the future for football? You'd like to think big populations would support big clubs. It can't just be the best players going to the same half-dozen lucky clubs, whom everyone watches while local clubs wither. Right now half of Europe is in the position the Irish league's always been in.

Just in case there's any doubt about this: I think a European league is a terrible idea and individual TV deals would be disastrous for all but a few clubs.

Maybe, but I can't see them not happening idc.

there'll be a deal concluded with a bigger share of the cash going to the clubs that generate it, do again in a few years

Nice of Ian Ayre to even entertain the idea that we'll be competing with the likes of Barca and Real in the near future. If we don't get top 4 this season then we're fucked.

I don't think anyone said the whole league was competitive. But in the premiership the tv rights are collectively bought and shared amongst the teams, so all the clubs are on a kind of equal footing when it comes to the money they receive, meaning there is more of a chance for a well run club to be competitive. In Spain where Real and Barca gobble up all that money and no-one else sees a dime compared, it is impossible to compete - look at the past couple years, any team that looked good enough just had those two teams buy their best players, essentially nullifying them (Alves, Villa, Albiol etc.) In theory, that shouldn't happen here considering the only real difference is sponsership, gate receipts and the money you receive for how well your team does and hopefully FFP can kick the billionaire system out*, leaving a closer financial playing field where a team like Newcastle or whoever, if well run, could break the mould. In Spain however, stadium revenue etc. may be similar but having Barca and Real earn 200m+ more than every other team from TV rights means there is nowhere near the balance, to the point where they are looking at Malaga oil to compete!

*lol

― Ravaging Rick Rude (a hoy hoy), Thursday, October 13, 2011 1:56 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest

Yes, I agree with this. Well put.

David Conn's got a series of pieces on John W Henry running at the moment. Part one; part two. I've only read the first part so far. It's good, though mostly about baseball.

Red Sox implosion continues. Should think Henry will have his hands more than full with that other the winter. Need to find new manager, new GM, and sort out a "cancerous clubhouse". Some starting pitching would be good too. Still Carl Crawford only has 6 years left on his $100m+ contract so all's well.

Sounds like they should sign Andy Carroll to give the place a lift.

Clubs don't share ticket and merchandise revenues so why should we share our TV income with everyone else?

http://i.imgur.com/IGUV2.jpg

Because a club's value is partly its value as a stand-alone business, and partly its value as 1/20th of its league. Pooling certain income raises the value of the league part, to the eventual benefit of the club itself.

Where I think everyone else has it wrong is that I believe the big clubs know this, don't give a stuff, and will happily move forward by ditching their current leagues for 1/20th share of a far more lucrative league.

Clubs don't share ticket and merchandise revenues so why should we share our TV income with everyone else?

― Chris, Friday, 14 October 2011 13:35 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
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you need another team to play! should that team not make any tv revenue from a liverpool game? if so, why play them?

think it's not that simple, IK.

A league derives value from the teams playing therein. A league of Stokes and Blackburns would not long enjoy a billion-euro television deal.

Obviously the top five or six clubs will streak away from the rest of the league if this happens, but it'll be harshest on the newly-promoted clubs. Even the Fulhams and Evertons of this world, if astutely managed, will manage to do okay out of it by virtue of being in the Premiership year in year out. They might do well by signing popular Korean or Japanese players as well, which would ramp up the value of their deals in particular markets.

This will be very very harsh on newly promoted clubs like, say, Swansea, who will struggle to sell their overseas rights for very much and will struggle to compete with teams like Bolton and Stoke let alone anyone further up. In time, you'll see the same teams yo-yoing year in year out.

I know that xp, what I mean is that a league of Utd, Barcelona, Bayern, Milan, etc would be worth so much that I simply can't see it not happening. A club like Barcelona play maybe ten top-drawer matches in a year, plus about forty middling-to-dud games. The hike in value from them switching that ratio around would be so huge that it can't not happen imo.

Stoke? Blackburn? Pah.

http://andersred.blogspot.com/2011/10/real-problem-with-liverpools-media.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAndersredBlog+%28the+andersred+blog%29

I do bang on about a European league a bit, and not sure anyone really wants it, but the numbers make it inevitable I think. Basically the idea is just that a single market must gravitate to a single league - since Bosman etc that market has changed to a European one is all.

xp to IK - would that actually be an attractive proposition? I don't mean morally - obviously it would mean the richest clubs completely screwing all the others. I mean would anyone be *that* interested in some kind of European Premier League replacing domestic leagues? Personally it doesn't capture my imagination. I generally find the group stages of the CL boring and only really get interested when it reaches the knockout stage (and often not even then). The novelty of Man Utd v Juventus and Chelsea v Real Madrid week after week, year after year, will wear off pretty rapidly.

This will be very very harsh on newly promoted clubs like, say, Swansea, who will struggle to sell their overseas rights for very much and will struggle to compete with teams like Bolton and Stoke let alone anyone further up. In time, you'll see the same teams yo-yoing year in year out.

Yeah but we deserve a bigger slice of the piece. 18 league titles, 5 European cups - we've earned our pie. It may even given the little teams a kick up the arse to get closer to us. Nothing's stopping Swansea from touring China.

why should real madrid subsidise psv just because they play in the same league? fuck them, it's time for a hyperleague with just madrid and city imo

Pretty sure it'd be much more attractive worldwide where no-one cares about Bolton or Real Zaragoza; it's hard to imagine what it'd be like for domestic fans, but I'd guess that derbies apart, it's not going to be much different as people primarily care about their own team, not the opposition.

The question is no doubt what's going to be more important, financially?

as people primarily care about their own team, not the opposition

They care about both.

How did that turn into a link? I must have gone mad.

Would PSV, Lyon, Porto, etc want to swap a chance to win the league on a regular basis with scraping 14th place in a Euro superleague, even if it meant more money? City and Real are going to outspend them, and have more lucrative rights, whatever happens.

Not all the time or all that much though, surely? How much would you really miss the games against Sunderland or Fulham? Have you missed pitting your wits against Middlesbrough these last few years.

What say you to my pie comment above, Matt?

Yeah but we deserve a bigger slice of the piece.

Oh ffs. Pie, not piece.

Yeah but we deserve a bigger slice of the piece. 18 league titles, 5 European cups - we've earned our pie. It may even given the little teams a kick up the arse to get closer to us. Nothing's stopping Swansea from touring China.

Actually over the lifetime of the Premiership you've "earned" close to fuck all, but whatever.

Would Man United, Chelsea, etc. want to swap a chance to win the league on a regular basis with scraping 5th or 6th in a Euro superleague, even if it meant more money?

It may even given the little teams a kick up the arse to get closer to us.

This is the sort of doublethink that Tory MPs trot out when they argue that reducing benefits will aid social mobility. It's nonsense.

What say you to my pie comment above, Matt?

I assumed it was just pure trolling

Perhaps we should give Nottingham Forest a slice of the pie as well? They've earned it more than Man City.

Thanks Matt.

Sorry, I'm being an arse on purpose. I don't back Ayre's proposal - these are just some of the arguments that have been thrown at me by a number of Liverpool fans. One dude's even gone as far as to say that anyone who attacks Ayre on this isn't a true supporter. Head, brick wall.

I withdraw my snarky comment about the five-times Ottoman Empire league champions then.

lol no worries.

Some very polite trolling there - was hoping you'd ramp it up a bit, personally.