The Finances of Football

http://www.itsroundanditswhite.co.uk/2012/01/06/evertons-blueprint-for-oblivion/

bleak picture, if it's all true

Some good stuff on that site. They could do with making their articles a bit longer imo.

Everton do concern me. They've got most of the ingredients of a big club but have built it into no clout whatsoever. Goodison doesn't even seem like a hopeless ground to me - it's big enough despite being hemmed in - yet they're pissing about with no-hoper schemes and robbing-peter-to-pay-paul while Moyes keeps them afloat.

The English game is destroying the Northern Irish game is also something I harp on about a lot, nice to see it from a different perspective. There's no way out though - you can't have a tiny league with a tiny geographic spread, that is also a good league objectively worth watching anymore. They are simply incompatible.

Like some modern day Faustian pact Everton has literally sold their soul to remain solvent. All their assets have been either sold or mortgaged: this includes their stadium, which acts as security for a £30m loan; their future season ticket sales, the method by which the loan is repaid; and their ability to generate future commercial income as they have uniquely sold the rights to both their catering and merchandising operations.

Yikes... I don't know of another club that has sold so many key assets like this. The article makes it sound like Everton is just a huge debt-house, only alive to try and pay off those debts and make new debts to pay off old ones.

I don't know of another club that has sold so many key assets like this.

I do. They're currently awaiting the decision on a tax case that could cost them £50m and shut them down. Lots to read here if you're ever stuck for an afternoon's reading - http://rangerstaxcase.com/

http://s15.postimage.org/em75660m3/totalrevenues.png

HSV must be the most underperforming club of that lot. Also lol at no ManC, although I guess they don't need revenues

yeah HSV's income surprised me a lot, considering they only seem to have been buying Chelsea youth lately (tbf tore and bruma have been half decent)

Juventus surprisingly low. All of Italy really, they must be due big things soon?

Juve are filling the new stadium, I think the knock-on effect will be p dramatic soon.

Italy is still a shambles though. Just lost their 4th CL spot, still not filling stadiums, not making much on tv deals as they should be etc.

Also lol at no ManC ???

Man C - 169.6

bayern munich are impressive in that they make nothing like the tv money that premiership teams do and i can't imagine the bundesliga is as big in asia or africa as the epl (i may be completely wrong on this). in addition they don't totally rip-off their fans with the matchday experience. i think they're just fucking great at marketing and merchandising. lucrative sponsorships mainly. suppose it must help being by far the biggest and most successful team in the biggest and most successful country in europe.

if man city win the league then they'll be up there soon enough, what with history and tradition not meaning much to most fans of big epl teams:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/10/23/1319381519355/Manchester-United-V-Manch-002.jpg

Haha wow - it's less that guy, more the fact that there's a mass-production market for those

bayern munich are impressive in that they make nothing like the tv money that premiership teams do and i can't imagine the bundesliga is as big in asia or africa as the epl (i may be completely wrong on this). in addition they don't totally rip-off their fans with the matchday experience. i think they're just fucking great at marketing and merchandising. lucrative sponsorships mainly. suppose it must help being by far the biggest and most successful team in the biggest and most successful country in europe.

― zverotic discourse (jim in glasgow), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:25 (8 minutes ago)

They are gonna become like Utd now - i.e. the only team that can be on the same scale as Barca and Real - when our bubble bursts and the Bundesliga picks up the rope, like the Premiership did when Serie A's bubble popped.

Will the EPL bubble burst though? The foreign tv revenues are becoming staggering, and I'm not sure I can envisage any other country bar matching the EPL package (in the broad footy-as-pop-culture sense).

Unless foreign love for it is just a fad, then everyone's swimming naked.

Also lol at no ManC ???

Man C - 169.6

― le ralliement du doute et de l'erreur (Michael White), donderdag 9 februari 2012 19:15 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Missed them, soz

The EPL bubble has been about to burst for about 12 years. I've resigned myself to the fact that it's not gonna happen.

Wenger says it will, and people hate him for it.

Wenger less reliable on football than onimo imo

i dunno, onimo what are your thoughts on mertesacker?

I thought he was a great signing but he's looking increasingly like a Big at a club that doesn't suit them.

a measured response there, Tom D might be on to something.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17197269

Villa lost 53m (pre-selling Young and Downing) last year. It is amounts like this which make me assume the league is fucked, long term. Lerner is not going to want to pay that off.

Swiss Ramble does Arsenal

That's a great piece. It'll be really interesting to see what happens in the battle between Stan Kroenke and Alisher Usmanov over the next few years as well. The latter's possibly the most transparently crooked man with a stake in a major European club (with the possible exception of Akhmetov at Shakhtar) but he has the resources to put a pretty attractive bid together.

Berlisconi surely

From the link that IK provided

There are clearly issues with Arsenal’s equitable wage structure, which means that the best players like Robin Van Persie are not particularly well remunerated (by modern standards), while fringe players like Abou Diaby, Marouane Chamakh and Manuel Almunia are handsomely rewarded for their efforts. This was epitomised recently by Johan Djourou’s new £50,000 a week contract, which seemed more in recognition of his frequent interviews with Arsenal.com than his defensive ability.

#shotsfired

xp, as bad as Berlusconi might be, i think the worst allegation i've heard against him is that he got started by taking money from the mafia to build a business empire and might have done favours for them along the way.

Usmanov is the mafia.

'fringe' is a hell of a euphemism for 'utter shite' imo

Djourou could get a massive contract hosting the National Lottery and game shows for the BBC, no wonder Arsenal are throwing money at him.

Arsenal’s expertise can be evidenced by two great statistics: (a) the last time that they reported a loss was way back in 2002; (b) in the last four years alone, they have accumulated staggering profits of £153 million.

Only another 120m to go and we pay off the stadium. I'm convinced they are trying to pay it off early. I just wish that were this the strategy, they'd fucking say so. Otherwise that 153 fucking million, could help us ummm, maybe improve a little.

I thought it the article that the board specifically said they weren't going to pay it off early because it was 'good debt'

here it is

Many ask whether it would be possible for Arsenal to pay off the outstanding debt early in order to reduce the interest charges, but Gazidis has previously implied that this is unlikely, arguing that not all debt is bad, “The debt that we’re left with is what I would call ‘healthy debt’ – it’s long term, low rates and very affordable for the club.”

Yeah sorry, long article, should have read the whole thing before commenting etc.

So basically it is 2014 or bust? hmmm.

So hang on, the owner's plan is to get Arsenal debt-free, then flog it for substantially more than they paid for it, leaving the owners filthy rich and Arsenal FC and the fans with a team fully capable of mounting a serious challenge for a Europa League spot? Is that right?

Owners already did that/died and now Kroenke is hoping to do that again, I think.

Swiss Ramble on Villa
http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2012/03/aston-villa-prophets-and-losses.html

P fucking bleak. Wages-to-turnover ratio of 91%! just for starters.

I don't know what Lerner wants out of this tbh

To lose £100m+ it seemingly

Should be no 'it' there.

It's hard think of a way to blow £100m without having some kind of fun, but that might be it.

Thing is from the outside looking in you would think it would have been possible to spend £100m less and still be in roughly the same position they are in now.

Manchester United Ltd, the world's best-supported soccer club, filed with U.S. regulators on Tuesday to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering of its Class A common stock.

The company told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a preliminary prospectus that Jefferies, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank Securities are underwriting the IPO.

I'm still amazed by people trying to make money long-term from football. It's football! All you need is a couple of season of bad injuries and your'e fucked! This financial asset-stripping is only good for people who don't like football.

If anyone fancies part owning Panathinaikos :

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/feature/_/id/1126919/paraskevas:-panathinaikos-reborn-under-fan-ownership?cc=5739#

http://bundesligafanatic.com/financial-fair-play-the-implications-for-the-teams-in-the-bundesliga/

Great article on how things are working out in the Bundesliga

That's excellent.

What I'm having trouble with is how the new, enormous EPL television deal is going to feed in to conditions elsewhere on the continent. Are English clubs going to sweep the board for the next five years?

Not too sure. If we pretend that wages in the Prem stay exactly the same as they are now and then add in the new TV money how many clubs in the league would still fall foul of ffp?

Are the majority of clubs here living so far beyond their soon to be increased revenue that they wouldn't be able to increase salary anyway?

the Glazer family have taken the unusual step of buying out DHL, so certain are they of negotiating even greater revenue

I'm giving up trying to understand this stuff

surely it's pretty simple, they want a new and bigger deal immediately so they end the dhl deal now?