The Haves and Have Nots of Club Soccer
This is Deloitte and Touche’s (2006/07) latest list of richest football clubs:
1) Real Madrid: £236.2m
2) Man United: £212.1m
3) Barcelona: £195.3m
4) Chelsea: £190.5m
5) Arsenal: £177.6m
6) AC Milan: £153m
7) Bayern Munich: £150.3m
Liverpool: £133.9m
9) Inter Milan: £131.3m
10) AS Roma: £106.1m
The list shows that at the upper end, the game’s riches continue to be monopolized by the same group of clubs, with only one change in the top ten from the previous season. Between them, the collective revenue of the top 20 clubs – which are all European – grew by 11% to £2.5bn in 2006/07, the highest rate of growth since 2002/03. Deloitte says the new TV money could help more English clubs into the top 20 in a year’s time. Harry Philp, director of sports finance and advisory firm Hermes Sports Partners, said: “The top seven or eight clubs tend to usually be the same, and generally drawn from the big English, Spanish and Italian clubs. Deloitte’s figure takes into account income from ticket sales, merchandising and broadcasting contracts but do not include transfer revenues and does not calculate profitability.
Just a thought.
Is it time clubs had their finances checked (by whatever authority) a little, and some sort of Robin Hood kind-of-tax imposed to help out the smaller fry? To me the objective is putting a cap on the greed in the modern game. There is a lot of money – just like the haves and have nots – but is it truly trickling downwards? In the English Premier League (Premiership) the rich still keep getting richer by the day. It seems that fiscal disipline alone isn’t enough.
Do you think the re-introduction of true fans of the clubs, whether at owner or player level will help out in curbing such trends as rich billionaires of dubious reputation gobbling up all available football clubs? By true fan I have in mind the likes of David Moores, Ken Bates, Allan Sugar, among owners; and Alan Smith, Carragher, Francesco Totti and Paolo Maldini among players. These kind of individuals grew up supporting these clubs and achieved their dream of owning or playing for them.
There is, to me, an unhealthy obsession with boosting of profits and accumulating a massive war chest to play with the ‘big boys.’ Where does that leave the rest of the football world? Is it possible, however controversial, to introduce some sort of salary caps in wages, expenditure and such-like activities? I see that as the reason why leagues such as the SPL and Bundesliga fool. Liquid clubs like the Old Firms and Bayern Munich are light years ahead of the likes of Motherwell and Nuremberg. They can never compete. Once in a while we see surprise packages like Rosenborg emerge but their short-term success is unsustainable due to lack of depth. In the Premiership, Man U and the ‘Big 4′ have very deep squads as compared to Aston Villa – a founder member of the top flight league!
It provides an interesting point to debate on. I’m not naive on one thing, modern football is far more complex than in the days of Bill Shankly (ex-Liverpool coach). Without money it becomes impossible to even show up sometimes.
The actual article appears here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7242490.stm
What do you think?
