Follow the Money — David Conn

, 23 July, 0comments  |  Jump to most recent
This very impressive article by Guardian football writer, David Conn, is actually from last summer, but I can't find any indication that we discussed it on ToffeeWeb at the time. Conn is a Man City supporter, and much of what he wrote was on the back of their money-fueled Premier League Trophy win. And City are spending again in a clear bid to win it back next season.
The Premier League, powered by intense sporting and commercial competition, provided perfect ‘content' for the media during a consumer boom, and has been hugely successful. The game has been transformed by the arrival of foreign players and the modernisation of training and management techniques under the influence of European coaches, most notably Arsène Wenger at Arsenal. The overseas stars brought European finesse to the English tradition of fast, direct football, and a more exciting style of play has been the result. The Premier League's TV deals have grown hugely: £670 million in 1997, £1.6 billion in 2001, a dip to £1.1 billion in 2004, £2.4 billion in 2007. The current deal, for 2010-13, is £3.1 billion, including overseas rights reaping £1.4 billion. In June, in the middle of England's humdrum performance in the European Championships, the Premier League announced it had secured £3 billion from BSkyB and BT (its first entry into the field) for the right to broadcast live matches in the UK in 2013-16.

Yet in this time of unimagined riches, professional football clubs have become insolvent 56 times since the Premier League began. The most calamitous case was that of Leeds United, which reached the European Champions League semi-final in 2001 but collapsed two years later. The club's chairman, Peter Ridsdale, confessed that in borrowing £82 million to buy and pay the wages of players good enough to compete with a dominant Manchester United, Leeds had ‘lived the dream'. Over the last twenty years, players' wages have increased in direct proportion with every TV deal. Their increasingly powerful agents, with commissions at stake, argue that the players are ‘the product', and that agents are entitled to their share. It was a shock in 1995 when the centre-forward Chris Sutton signed for Blackburn Rovers at £10,000 a week. Now that seems quaint beside the £198,000 a week Manchester City pay the Argentinian striker Carlos Tevez. Clubs have consistently overspent, whatever their revenues, on the wages of players who might keep them in the Premier League or, in the case of the biggest clubs, help them qualify for the European Champions League. In 2009-10, 16 of the 20 Premier League clubs made losses; in 2010-11, 12 of the 20 did.

Quotes or other material sourced from London Review of Books





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