Football Finance
Top Scottish Clubs Owe £100m - 21/11/2009
Scotland's top football clubs are carrying debt totalling nearly £100m...
Wembley Stadium Could Default On Bank Debts - 02/11/2009
Wembley National Stadium, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Football Association, made a pre-tax loss of £31m last year and could default on finance arrangements if wealthy patrons fail to renew their season tickets...
Football League Supremo Calls For Wage Cap - 11/10/2009
Former Conservative minister Lord Mawhinney has called for wage controls in his capacity as chairman of the Football League...
Premiership Tightens Up Financial Rules - 20/09/2009
Premier League clubs have agreed to a rule change that will see them subject to financial regulation with immediate effect...
Jackpot For Economy - 14/09/2009
England's qualification for the World Cup should provide a big boost to the economy. Estimates suggest a revenue boost of between £1.5bn to £2bn...
Ten Per Cent Drop In Premiership Transfers - 07/09/2009
Transfer spending involving Premiership clubs in the summer transfer window is expected to total £450m, down 10 per cent on last summer's £500m...
Football Rides Out The Recession - 24/08/2009
Football has not been completely recession proof but it has survived the recession much better than many other sectors...
How Much Are Global Sporting Events Worth? - 02/08/2009
Britain has done well recently in securing global sporting events and is bidding for the World Cup in 2018. But how much they are really worth?
Will Banks Take Their Ball Away? - 09/06/2009
Football was a banker's playground for much of the last decade but have banks now reached a point where they will take their ball away and end the game?
Serie A The Fastest Growing League - 07/06/2009
Serie A was the fastest growing league in Europe in the 2007/8 season reveals the latest Deloitte Football Finance report...
Wages and Transfer Spending Up - 06/06/2009
Total wages in the Premier League have exceeded £1bn for the first time as England's elite football clubs take advantage of extra television rights revenue...
Championship Revenues Show Steady Growth - 06/06/2009
The Championship has resumed its path of steady growth, according to Deloitte's Football Finance report...
Premiership Revenue Tops £2 Billion - 05/06/2009
The publication of the Deloitte report on football finance is always one of the highlights of the year for those of us interested in the business side of football and we will be providing further analysis from this year's report over the next few days....
Footballers Seek To Avoid Top Tax Rate - 02/06/2009
Premiership footballers are hoping to avoid the new 50p income tax rate by asking clubs to pay their salaries as interest free loans...
Non-League Clubs Go Bust - 23/05/2009
As we have argued for some time non-league clubs are most likely to go bust in the recession. They are often dependent on smaller scale businesses as benefactors which are most likely to be hit by the credit crunch...
Football League Wants A Bigger Share Of The Pot - 23/05/2009
The Football League wants the Premiership to increase its handouts to lower division clubs in proportion to wage rises at the top level...
Footballers To Strike Back Against 50p Tax Rate - 23/05/2009
Premiership clubs are braced for a wave of pay demands from star players in anticipation of the new 50p tax rate on higher earners...
Money There To Buy Clubs - 16/05/2009
The money is there to buy football clubs, but valuations will have to be more realistic. That is the view of Keith Harris, the executive chairman of investment bank Seymour Pierce...
The Costs of Relegation from the Championship - 02/05/2009
Considerable attention is given to the costs of relegation from the Premiership to the Championship, but relegation from the Championship to League 1 can be equally traumatic...
Top Ten Earners in World Football - 29/04/2009
France Football magazine has published its estimates of the world's leading footballers and managers earnings in 2008...
New Investment Fund For Clubs - 28/04/2009
At least six Football League clubs have begun negotiating with a City-based investment fund in the hope of borrowing money for the close season...
Wenger Hits Out At Tax Changes - 27/04/2009
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has said that the era of foreign domination in the Premiership will 'soon be over' due to the declining value of the pound...
Why Administration is Common - 05/04/2009
Going into administration is a very common reorganisation device for football clubs. Research by John Beech at Coventry University says that since 1986 there have been 68 cases of clubs in English leagues becoming insolvent, some of them more than once...
Transfer Record Broken - 03/02/2009
Spending by Premiership clubs on new players in the January transfer window has hit a fresh all-time high...
Will Credit Crunch Hit Transfer Spending? - 31/12/2008
Spending in the January transfer window has soared in recent years from £33m in 2003 to £175m last year...
Conference Clubs In Tax Trouble - 21/12/2008
At least nine Conference clubs have tax bills threatening their existence...
Bigger Hit For Scottish Football From Credit Crunch - 13/12/2008
Many of those involved in Scottish football think that it will take a bigger hit from the credit crunch than the game south of the border...
Credit Crunch Starts To Hit Matchday Revenues - 23/11/2008
The standard assumption in the sports economics literature is that demand for tickets at top flight clubs in any sport is relatively inelastic, i.e., relatively unaffected by changes in (real) prices. That may apply in normal economic conditions, but...
Promoted Teams Need Careful Business Strategies - 11/11/2008
Getting promoted to the Premiership can seem like a bonanza, but getting relegated can bring a cold dose of reality. Once the parachute payments run out, life becomes very difficult...
Intermediary Says There Will Be More Gulf Sales - 09/11/2008
Amanda Staveley has emerged as a key figure in major deals with Britain and the Gulf States, recently facilitating the purchase of a 16 per cent stake in Barclays Bank for Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan...
The Most Costly Bench Warmers - 22/10/2008
The Premiership's most costly bench-warmers have been revealed in a new list published by football website IMScouting.com...
What Relegation From The SPL Means - 13/10/2008
The impact of relegation from the English Premiership is a familiar story, but what about the implications of being relegated from its Scottish counterpart?..
Financial 'Meltdown' and Football - 12/10/2008
The International Monetary Fund has talked this weekend of a 'meltdown' in the world's financial system... As we have emphasised before, we think that the real threat could come to lower or non-league clubs in the near future...
Triesman Blasts Football Debt - 08/10/2008
Lord Triesman, the chairman of the FA, and Richard Scudamore, the chairman of the Premiership, got in an argument yesterday about the effect of the credit crunch on football at the Football Leaders conference, ironically held at Stamford Bridge...
Credit Crunch Could Hit Non-League Clubs - 06/10/2008
There has been a lot of speculation about whether the credit crunch will hit a leading Premiership club, but it may be non-league clubs that will be first in the firing line...
The Credit Crunch and Football - 24/09/2008
How will the credit crunch hit football? The financial storm is not over yet, but at the moment, within the Premiership at least, the top clubs are sitting pretty, while smaller clubs in less prosperous areas are having to be more innovative in their response...
Credit Crunch Hits Scottish Clubs - 08/08/2008
Scotland's top clubs are feeling the effects of the credit crunch, according to research by leading accountants and business advisers PKF...
Football Defies The Credit Crunch - 02/08/2008
The credit crunch seems to be having a limited impact on the football transfer market. Cristiano Ronaldo, we are told, would cost Real Madrid £80m if Manchester United decided to sell him. United themselves are reporting to be considering a £30m bid for Berbatov, while Chelsea have offered a world record fee for Kaka...
Clubs In Tax Trouble - 21/07/2008
Half the clubs in the top four divisions are significantly behind in payments to the taxman...
€1 Billion Revenue Increase for Europe's Top Leagues - 29/06/2008
The annual report of football finance by Deloitte Sports Business shows that the total market for the 'big five' European leagues grew to €13.6 billion in 2006/7...
Economic Downturn Could Hit Clubs - 26/06/2008
An economic downturn will see more football clubs default as the strength of their fan base comes under pressure from high ticket prices, claims rating agency Standard & Poor's...
European Pot Of Gold - 26/06/2008
Manchester United made £33.9m from playing in Europe last season. They were followed by Chelsea with £28.7m, Liverpool with £21.1m and Arsenal with...
Football Faces Money Laundering Probe - 21/06/2008
Claims that football clubs are being used as a conduit for money laundering are to be investigated by the global watchdog on criminal fund flows...
Conference Tightens Up On Club Finances - 15/06/2008
The Conference are to scrutinise expenditure of all their clubs in an attempt to avoid the end-of-season financial problems that are plaguing the top non-league competition...
The £2 Million Game - 01/06/2008
The publication of Deloitte's authoritative annual review of football finance is always a major event and we shall be publishing a number of articles reporting their results. This article looks at some of the highlights...
Euro 2008 Cash Bonanza For Uefa - 09/06/2008
Sponsors and broadcasters are providing Uefa £1bn in revenue for Euro 2008, some 35 per cent more than the amount raised from the 2004 tournament in Portugal...
The Price Of Relegation - 18/05/2008
Relegation from the Premiership affects every aspect of a club's activities. Television money disappears, sponsors want to pay less and those players who stay can expect smaller pay packets. The Deloitte Sports Business Group calculates that...
Market Listings Go Out Of Fashion - 07/04/2008
Eleven British football clubs floated on the Stock Exchange's main market or on Aim between June 1996 and August 1997 in the wake of the television agreement with Rupert Murdoch's Sky. Today, there are no clubs left on the main board, with just seven on Aim...
UK Tax Law Loses Champions League Final For Wembley - 30/03/2008
England has lost out on a bid to stage the 2010 Champions League final at Wembley because European football's governing body has objected to its taxation policy...
Non-League Football Costs Money As Well - 27/02/2008
Keeping a semi-professional non-league club going costs money: not the sums required to fund a league club, but still quite substantial sums for an individual to find...
Football Still A Growth Sport - 15/02/2008
Football remains a growth sport, especially at the highest level. Figures from Deloitte show that the top 20 clubs' collective revenue grew by 11% to €3.7 billion...
Transfer Window Bonanza - 03/02/2008
Gross transfer spending by Premiership clubs in the January window was £150m according to Deloitte's Sport Business Group...
Deal Done on Player Compensation - 26/01/2008
Clubs with players on Football World Cup or European Championship duty will be paid about £130m in compensation over the next six years by Fifa and Uefa...
Owners Ready For Wage Cap Says Rams Boss - 04/01/2008
Derby supremo Adam Pearson believes the growing influx of overseas investment could lead to a salary cap for Premiership players...
Global Investment in English Clubs Looks Set to Increase - 30/12/2007
Alan Switzer, a director in Deloitte Sport Business Group, has forecast: 'We expect to see further investment in English clubs in 2008 as more Premier League and Championship clubs come under the management of investors from around the globe.'
Average Annual Salary Of Top Flight Footballers Tops £1m - 25/11/2007
The average annual salary of a footballer in England's top flight has broken through the £1m ceiling for the first time...
Price Of Arsenal Bonds Slump - 18/11/2007
When Arsenal football club decided last summer to raise finance by using ticket receipts to issue bonds, it created a new fanbase for itself in the City of London. The deal...
Sports Minister Sticks To His Guns - 04/11/2007
Sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe is refusing to withdraw comments about players' wages and ticket prices despite admitting that he got some of his figures wrong and attracting criticism from both Chelsea and Manchester United...
Clubs Could Improve Sponsorship Income - 21/10/2007
A study by International Marketing Reports suggests that some clubs could boost their sponsorship income...
Premiership Transfer Fees Top £500m - 09/09/2007
English football transfer fees rose by two-thirds over the summer, setting a new record of more than £500m compared with the £300m spent in the summer of 2006...
Football Clubs Not Businesslike Enough - 19/08/2007
It is often stated that football clubs these days are run like businesses. But writing in the Financial Times Simon Kuper argues that they are not businesslike enough...
New Stadiums Boost Club Revenues - 14/08/2007
New stadiums are driving an average 66 per cent increase in football clubs' turnover in their first season at their new homes according to research by Deloitte's Sport Business Group...
Terry Tops Rich List - 29/07/2007
A new five-year deal signed by Chelsea and England captain John Terry has made him England's highest paid football player...
League Clubs Try To Cut Out Agents - 27/07/2007
Football League clubs spent £8.6m on agents in 2006/7 compared with £7.7m in 2005/6, but during the past six months spending has been cut...
Top Players Benefit From Tax Loophole - 23/07/2007
Many top Premiership footballers are paying lower rates of tax than the supporters who watch them by making use of a tax loophole...
Why Buy A Football Club? - 10/06/2007
Some financial advisers are now predicting that all twenty Premiership clubs will be under new ownership before the end of the year...
The Political Economy of Football Analysis of 2007 Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance - 02/06/2007
Professor Wyn Grant takes a look at the latest Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance and analyses the key conclusions made in it...
Championship Play-Off Offers Rich Prize - 13/05/2007
This month's Championship play-off final is the richest prize in the world for a single football match. Deloitte estimate the minimum value at £60m...
Footballers Rich List - 25/04/2007
David Beckham remains the world's richest footballer. He and his wife Victoria have increased their wealth by £25m to £112m in the past year...
L'Europe Parle Anglais - 15/04/2007
'Europe Speaks English' was the headline of the French sports newspaper L'Equipe after English sides took three of the four places in the Champions League semi-finals...
Winning brings extra rewards in fight for Europe's big prize - 13/04/2007
Three English clubs are on the gravy train to Athens. Our correspondent looks at who stands to gain most from being last man standing...
International Investors Target Championship Clubs - 11/03/2007
Foreign investors are increasingly targeting Championship clubs with little or no international reputation for acquisition...
Premiership Clubs To Move Up Money Table - 11/02/2007
Even though the latest 2006 Deloitte Football Money League shows the top English clubs slipping down the order, the results are likely to prove a blip...
Spanish Clubs Top Rich League - 11/02/2007
Real Madrid retained its place at the top of the Deloitte Football Money League, the club's second season at the top, while Barcelona moved up four places to second...
Bottom Clubs Most Active In Transfer Market - 04/02/2007
Total spending in the transfer window was over £62m, only £8m short of the record spend in January last year...
Chelsea Hit Back At Real Criticisms - 08/10/2006
Chelsea have hit back at accusations by Real Madrid's president that the club is pushing up European transfer prices...
Brazilian Football Clubs Finances Annual Survey - 28/09/2006
In September 2006, Casual Auditores Independentes S/S released its latest annual survey on the financial situation of Brazilian soccer covering 21 clubs and including expert comment from the analysts...
The Cost Of Being A Fan Is Rising - 17/09/2006
The cost of being a football fan is rising fast. Virgin Money estimates it costs nearly £100,000 to be a fan who supports a club for...
Why Premiership Clubs Are Attractive Buys - 10/09/2006
Explanations of the current interest in buying Premiership clubs has focused on two factors. One is the new television deal that is worth nearly £700 million a year from 2007...
Most Analysts Optimistic About Premiership Football Business - 27/08/2006
With Randy Lerner acquiring a majority stake in Aston Villa, most analysts are optimistic about the future of the Premiership as a business although there are dissenting voices...
Football Back In Vogue With Financiers - 23/08/2006
One year ago a Sunday newspaper ran a story with the headline 'The game that ate itself', but now football is back in vogue as a sector with investors...
Stakes In Footballers Up For Sale - 23/07/2006
Hedge funds and private financiers are planning to invest in Premiership players in the same way that they buy stakes in aircraft and works of art...
Italian Scandal Could Hit Transfer Fees - 25/06/2006
The match fixing scandal that is rocking Italian football could have implications across the rest of Europe...
'Big Five' European Leagues Generated Revenues Over €6 billion - 06/06/2006
The latest annual review of football finance from accountants Deloitte shows that the 'big five' European leagues - the top-tier leagues in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain - generated revenues of €6.3 billion in 2004/5, an impressive 8% growth on the previous year...
Premiership Wage Costs Fall - 04/06/2006
For the first time in the history of the Premiership total wages and salaries costs fell in the 2004-5 season...
English Football In Good Financial Health - 02/06/2006
The publication of the annual Deloitte Review of Football Finance is an event eagerly awaited by those interested in the economics of football. What is clear is that Premiership clubs in particular are in good financial health...
VAT Tribunal Decision May Hit Clubs - 27/05/2006
Clubs facing losing millions of pounds if the result of a landmark case on agents payments goes against Newcastle United...
Top Clubs Get Their Costs Under Control - 23/04/2006
Premiership clubs seem to be getting their costs under control. Excluding Chelsea, the other seventeen Premiership clubs made aggregate profits of more than £75m...
Clubs Told To Sell Off Stadiums - 09/04/2006
Cass Business School has urged football clubs to sell off their stadiums and turn them into flats because they are a drain on resources...
It's All At The Co-Op Now - 19/03/2006
The Co-operative Bank has lent more than £100m to seven clubs over the last decade...
Premiership Credit Ratings - 17/03/2006
ICC Credit, a credit reference agency, has produced an alternative Premiership table to illustrate its credit scores...
Cash Flows Into Non-League Football - 09/03/2006
One occasionally hears fans saying that they often go to non-league football these days because it's less driven by money and greed than the Premiership...
Plan To Get Players To Pay Agents - 20/02/2006
Players may have to reimburse their agents if a plan put forward by Manchester United chief executive David Gill...
Real Madrid Tops Football Club Rich List - 17/02/2006
For the first time Real Madrid has topped the rich list of clubs, as ranked by income, drawn up by accountants Deloitte...
Transfer Window Spending Rises in January 2006 - 04/02/2006
Premiership football clubs spent a record £70m in the January transfer window despite the inactivity of previously big spending Chelsea...
Will Takeover Change Brazilian Football? - 06/12/2005
The takeover of top Brazilian football club Corinthians by British-based Media Sports Investment (MSI) has led to speculation about whether it will initiate a process of change in the organisation of the country's football noted for its corruption and amateurism...
Regulator Decides No Action Needed On Chelsea Village - 2/10/2005
The Financial Services Authority has concluded what is a rather long 26-month investigation into the 'nature and status of certain' shareholdings in Chelsea Village...
Foreign Clubs Benefit From Summer Spending - 11/09/2005
Thanks to £56m of spending by Chelsea and £38m by an increasingly desperate Newcastle United, England's top football clubs have spent 10 per cent more on player transfers this summer compared with last year...
Value of Footballers Questioned - 05/09/2005
Football clubs should write down the value of players on their balance sheets according to new research from accounting academics at Cass Business School...
Football Clubs A Bad Investment - 29/08/2005
Has there ever been a sector where the shares have performed so badly as football clubs? This is the question posed by the Financial Times in a survey of the sector...
The 'Chelsea Effect' On Transfer Market - 09/08/2005
Chelsea's buying power is having an increasing impact on the transfer market in English football...
League Fixture Income At Risk - 17/07/2005
A Court of Appeal verdict against the British Horse Racing Board has placed at risk the lucrative rights the Premier and Football Leagues enjoy from selling the publishing rights to their fixtures...
Top Ten Champions League Money Earners - 14/06/2005
Liverpool, the European champions, topped the Champions League money earners table with television and performance bonuses making the club £20.5 million....
Premiership Has Most Of The Money Whilst Wage Inflation Slows - 09/06/2005
Most of the money in English football is concentrated in the Premiership according to Deloitte's football finance report...
Election Setback For English Football Clubs - 10/04/2005
When an election is called the political parties have to agree what is going to happen to outstanding legislation. Bills not passed usually have to be gutted to make them acceptable to the opposition and this is what has happened to the controversial gambling bill. The number of 'super casinos' permitted has been reduced from eight to one, a blow to football clubs that thought they had identified a new source of revenue...
Fans Invited To Take Part In EU Football Review - 25/02/2005
Fans were invited to take part in a major review of European football launched by the EU. The dedicated website for the review is at Football Review . Responses were required before March 13 2006...
United Top Rich List - 18/02/2005
Manchester United remain the world's richest club, but Chelsea are closing the gap according to a report from accountants Deloitte. In 2003/04 United's income was £172m and Chelsea, who moved from tenth to fourth spot in the list, made £144m...
ITV Likely To Sell Arsenal And Liverpool Shares - 01/02/2005
ITV is thinking of selling its holdings in Arsenal and Liverpool. A decision will be taken following the completion of a £30m share deal that will see its Arsenal holding rise from 5 per cent to almost...
Top Scottish Clubs Further In Debt - 23/01/2005
Scottish Premier League clubs lost £53m in 2002-3, the most recent year for which figures are available. This was £10m down on the previous year and early accounts for 2003-4 suggest...
Financial Crises Help To Clean Up Clubs - 29/11/2004
The annual State of the Game report from the Football Governance Research Centre at Birkbeck, University of London, sees signs of some positive progress on the corporate governance front...
Premiership is getting less competitive - 11/11/2004
A study by the Football Governance Research Unit at Birkbeck College, London has confirmed what many fans have long believed to be the case: the Premiership has become much less competitive...
Football Pulls Out Of The Stockmarket - 10/10/2004
In 2001 there were twenty football clubs listed on the main Stock Exchange, now there are only nine. In many cases clubs have derived the benefit from a listing and now find the costs of remaining on the main exchange too onerous...
Clubs Get Costs Under Control - 27/08/2004
The latest Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance suggests that clubs are getting their costs under control, but that the gap between the Premiership and Division 1 (or the Championship) is widening...
Premiership in Good Financial Health According to Deloitte - 04/06/2004
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