"If you want some accessible but informative insight into football then I suggest you couldn't do better than the Political Economy of Football website, which is not only intelligible but comes with the added bonus of being written by Addicks fan Wyn Grant." Ben Hayes - Charlton Athletic programme
WG A report by Ernst & Young suggests that Leicester City’s surprise capture of the Premier League title boosted the Leicestershire economy by more than £140m over the past football season. Of the £140m Gross Value Added. £110m was generated directly by the club, its community activities and match day tourism.
The football television rights market may have reached its peak, at least domestically, although overseas deals could continue to contribute increasing revenues, making up a growing share of the total.
An underlying driver is that fans are starting to watch football in a different way. The market is starting to fragment with less commitment to watching the whole game. Younger fans in particular are watching on their mobiles in shorter bursts.
FC Barcelona have signed a short sponsorship deal worth at least €220m with Japanese retailer Rakuten. The four season deal is worth €55m a year, a similar amount to the £47m a year that Manchester United earns in its contract with Chevrolet.
Barcelona has also signed deals to capture the Turkish electronics giant Beko on its shirtsleeves and US semiconductor company Intel unusually on the inside of its shirts. It’s a long way from just having Unicef on its shirts.
Manchester United’s debt has risen by 18 per cent to £338m, in part because of the Brexit vote and the consequent worsening of the dollar-pound exchange rate.
Results for the three months to 30 September saw revenue drop by 2.8 per cent while operating profits were down by 35 per cent to £6.2m. This was largely because of the club’s absence from the Champions League.
Foreign broadcasting deals have become an increasingly important part of the Premier League’s revenue stream. Their biggest deal yet is a new one for China that will earn £564m over three years from 2019-20.
Two-thirds of football ticket prices have fallen or been frozen compared with last season according to a survey conducted by the BBC. Paradoxically, it can now cost more to go to an away game in the Championship because of the £30 price cap agreed by Premier League ckubs.
The average price of an away ticket in the Premier League has fallen sharply from £46.44 to £29,46. The average cost of the cheapest home matchday ticket has fallen by six per cent from £30.75 to £29.05.
Plans for a restructuring of the Football League into a five league, 100-team competition have been scrapped after talks with the Football Association broke down. The FA was not prepared to move FA Cup games to create more weekend slots for matches.
The plans were unpopular with the non-league system which would have lost its leading clubs. Clubs might have found it difficult to financially sustain league membership.
The author of the impressive Swiss Ramble blog has turned his attention to the finances of Norwich City and in general gives them a clean bill of health. They have mixed sporting success with financial prudence.
Manchester United are now the best paid football team in the world, having overtaken Barcelona. Average basic first team pay at United is £110,962 a week. This is forty times as much as the club was paying in the first season of Premier League football in 1992-3.
In the first ten weeks of this season viewing figures for live Premier League games on Sky fell by 12 per cent year on year. Sky blames the decline in viewing on fewer big name clashes at the start of the season. However, it says that it registered a 3.5 million peak audience during Liverpool’s clash with Manchester United on October 17th, its highest rated Premier League game for three years.