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Articles and reports on financial issues within football – soccer – from The Political Economy of Football.
At the end of 2014 football clubs had a combined debt of £1.927bn. To put that in perspective, it is the equivalent of 11.5 per cent of the mortgage debt of British households.
However, this interesting and evidence based blog post takes a broadly optimistic view. The debt mountain is shrinking. Clubs have been using the current television deal to pay it down and the new deal should give even more scope to do so.
The cost of away tickets for Premier League fans has been a constant source of complaint. Many fans feel with some justification that they have been priced out of following their team away, particularly when one factors in the cost of travel.
Is it better to have plenty of money in the bank or use that money to enhance performance on the pitch? That is the eternal dilemma at Arsenal and it is one that continues to exasperate the clubs’ fans. One comment after the latest financial results was that they had produced at least one good result this week.
Real Madrid are no longer the world’s most valuable sports team according to a new study by Forbes. At £2.1bn they have been overtaken by the Dallas Cowboys at £2.6bn.
Barcelona are in fifth place at £2bn. The only other football team in the top ten are Manchester United at £2.01bn.
Rooted at the bottom of League 2, Newport County are slipping deeper into financial trouble. Their promotion from the Conference in 2013 was funded by lottery winner Lee Scadding, but he has withdrawn his backing. The former truck driver got tired of funding losses of £40,000 a month.
He has handed responsibility for running the club to the Supporters’ Trust. They have until the end of September to raise the £225,000 needed to repay creditors and complete their takeover. So far they have raised half that amount.
Torquay United could be forced to close. One problem is that attendances have been falling. Only 1,558 watched their home game against Guiseley, 250 less than their break even figure of 1,800.
With guaranteed television money in the Premier League soon to reach more than £100m a year for each club, gate money is not the advantage it once was. For some clubs such as Stoke City and Swansea City, gate receipts represent less than 10 per cent of revenue. That proportion will diminish once the new broadcasting deal starts in 2016-17.
Celtic have turned a £4m profit into a £11m loss in the year to 30 June. The explanation is a failure to reach the group stages of the Champions League and a reduction in transfer income. Revenue fell by over a fifth to £51.1m.
Total Dublin schoolboy side St. Kevin’s Boys are considering applying for a place for a senior side in the League of Ireland. It’s a response to being denied a place in the new national under-17 league. They were told that there were too many Dublin sides already.
A study by VisitBritain shows that 800,000 visitors a year come to football matches, providing income of £684m for the economy. This is a 15 per cent rise on the figure recorded when the research was last done in 2010.