Selling a League 1 club is not easy as Leyton Orient owner Barry Hearn admits in this revealing interview.   Orient are debt free, but they are losing a million pounds a year and it is not easy to sustain a League 1 club of average gates of 4,000.   If they were outside London it might be easier as the London football market is relatively over supplied and fans have quality football on their doorstep, albeit at a higher price and not as easy to get into as Orient.

We have talked about 'the Burnley phenomenon' before on these pages.  This time we want to focus on their fierce rivals Blackburn Rovers who also come from a town of around 100,000 people but are currently 10th in the Premiership.

Premier League clubs paid out £150m in interest charges last year.    Manchester United paid out £41.9m.

BT Vision and Virgin Media have expressed disappointment at Ofcom's ruling on how BSkyB should sell Premiership football to rival platforms on a wholesale basis.   They said that the ruling had not gone far enough to loosen BSkyB's powerful hold on sport rights.   It is perhaps significant that BSkyB shares closed up 3.4 per cent at 602p following the ruling.

The Conservatives have dismissed Labour's proposals to give fans a 25 per cent stake in clubs as a pre-election gimmick.   This may well be the case, but a more serious objection is that there are significant company law problems with the proposal.  The Conservative proposal to give supporters a seat on the board also faces such obstacles and clubs which did have such schemes such as Charlton Athletic ha

For the past few weeks, we have been trying to get to the bottom of what has been happening at Hull City, admittedly with not a great deal of success.   That the relegation threatened club has complex and serious financial problems is evident.  The club's own stated view is that they have too high a wage bill in relation to turnover.  That is undoubtedly the case and it is a familiar tale in the Premiership.  But it is only part of the story.

As expected, Ofcom has ended a three-year investigation by telling BSkyB that it must cut the wholesale price at which it offers premium sports content to rival platforms by 23 per cent.  As also expected, Sky is to appeal against the decision which it can do to the Competition Appeals Tribunal and by seekikng a judicial review of the way in which the decision was made.   The decision offers the prospect of lower prices to fans, but could threaten Premiership revenues in the longer ter

This interesting article compares the finances of Bayern Munich and Manchester United and looks at the German model more generally.  The prudence of the German model has been widely praised recently, although FC Schalke have got themselves into serious financial trouble through the construction of a new stadium.   It's also interesting that Bayern have spun off sections of their activities into separate companies so that they can attract investment.

The imminent ruling from Ofcom that will allow  other platforms access to BSkyB's football output at competitive prices has rung alarm bells in the Premiership.   They are concerned that BSkyB would bid less aggressively for football rights, leading to a fall in their revenue.   They took 130 pages in a submission to Ofcom to make that point.  But other commentators think these fears are overstated.