Huge Pay Bill at Chelsea FC - 16/10/2004

Some of Sepp Blatter's comments about a handful of club owners controlling the global game could well apply to Chelsea (see article below). The latest accounts for the club suggest that the average employee earns about as much as the boss of a FTSE 250 company. In the year to June 2004 aggregate payroll costs for 124 employees reached £102.5m. This equates to an average of more than £826,000 per employee, £44,000 more than the 2004 pay package of a FTSE 250 chief executive, according to a study by KMPG business advisers. The Chelsea figures cover 91 playing staff, including managers and coaches, and 33 administration and commercial workers. The £102.5m total represents a sharp increase from the £45.2 paid out the previous year before Roman Abramovich took control. Even if £20m of one-off termination payments are deducted, average payroll cost per employee works out at £676,000. By comparison, lowly League Two club Mansfield Town paid 209 staff a total of just £1.5m in the year to June 2004, an average per capita payment of £7,235. (Quite why Mansfield have more staff than Chelsea is not clear, but many of these must be part-time staff or apprentices, otherwise the club would be paying below the minimum wage). Accounts for the ultimate parent undertaking, Chelsea Ltd., show that £224m of interest free loans, assumed to be made by Mr Abramovich, are no longer repayble on demand, but require eighteen months' notice. What is evident is that all this money has been well spent as Chelsea's 5-1 demolition of Bolton after Wanderers had dared to score against them at the Bridge makes clear. Whether on not this is 'suffocating' football as Blatter claims is a matter of opinion, although many fans of other Premiership clubs would think that way.