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Articles and reports on financial issues within football – soccer – from The Political Economy of Football.
Leyton Orient are in a state of chaos under owner Francesco Becchetti and face relegation to the non-league pyramid for the first time in their history. Becchetti is now neglecting the club, using protests as an excuse, and refusing to authorise any squad additions.
It will be difficult to find a buyer for the League 2 club, the second oldest professional club in London, as the owner has loaded it with £9m to £10m of debt.
Bolton co-owners Ken Anderson and Dean Holdsworth have an increasingly strained relationship and the whole matter could end up in court.
Chairman Anderson spoke out on the club website about the sale of Zach Clough to Nottingham Forest for £2.5m, claiming that he was left with no alternative after Dean Holdsworth refused to provide any funds to financially support the club.
As Manchester United report a good set of quarterly results, it is worth recalling the description of them in the Lex column of the Financial Times last month: ‘a merchandising company that happens to play football.’
Using a KMPG database, the Financial Times has analysed the accounts of 69 clubs over four seasons. The results reveal that big spending does not always guarantee success.
Arsenal’s decision to increase 8,000 of their Platinum ticket prices at the Emirates by 3 per cent (above the rate of inflation) from next season has angered fans. Club level seats range from £2,910 in the corner to £5,755 on the halfway line.
Premier League clubs made a net profit of £4m in the transfer window compared with a loss of £109m last year, according to figures from the Premier League. This January’s transfer window saw the biggest spend ever of £237m, compared with £178m last year. Sales amounted to £241m.
According to figures from Deloitte Sports Business, the gross spend by Premier League clubs in the 2016/17 season totals £1.4 billion, surpassing the previous record of £1 billion by more than a third.
Watford’s Nigerian striker Odion Ighalo was the last player to move to the Chinese Super League in the transfer window. He went to Changchun Yatai in the north of China for £20m. Full details of the players who have made a lucrative move can be found here.
Alan Shearer has suggested that fans are being cheated by clubs putting out weakened sides in the FA Cup. According to Radio 5, Premier League clubs made an average of seven changes in their matches over the weekend.
Winning the FA Cup is never going to produce large sums of money and foreign owners may be used to the situation elsewhere in Europe where cups are very much secondary competitions, hence the abolition of the Cup Winners’ Cup.
According to Fifa’s Transfer Matching System (TMS), the total spend on transfer fees worldwide was $4.8bn in 2016, a 14.3 per cent increase compared with the previous year and well above inflation.
Since 2010, all clubs are required to record transfer deals through the TMS. 14,951 deals were concluded in 2016, the highest number ever, and about a thousand more than the previous year.
The top Beijing team, Beijing Guoan, has been sold to a local property developer at a $800m valuation, suggesting that it is worth more than European giants such as AC Milan and Atlético Madrid.
Sinobo Land is buying 64 per cent of the club from Citic, a state-owned investment group for Rmb3.6bn valuing it at Rmb5.6bn ($807m). This would rank Beijing Guoan alongside the 15 most valuable clubs in Europe, according to KPMG estimates.