The 30th Edition of the Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance has revealed that the global game contracted by 13 per cent in the 2019/20 season, the end of which was impacted most severely by Covid and the lockdown of activity across the sport and wider society.
The names given to the reports in recent years have represented a marker of how things have been from ‘Roar Power’ in 2018 to the more humble ‘Riding the Challenge’ for this latest look back.
Across Europe revenue fell from €28.9 billion in 2018/19 to 25.2 billion one year later, the first decline since 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.
Clubs’ total revenue in the English Premier league decreased by well over half a billion with the average drop per club being just under €40 million, an indicator of the size and scale of what those mega clubs are all about.
The surreal world of football shines through though with wage costs in England, Germany, Spain and France all still increasing in absolute terms despite the drop in revenues to pay for that transfer of wealth to individual players.
Ten of the clubs in the Premier League had their wage bills alone exceeding the overall revenue coming into the club. The lesson seems to be to ‘go big or go home’ with each of the six biggest wage bills having a comfortable positive differential of revenue over this one element of expenditure.
The report focuses primarily on the big five countries of those four as well as Italy. Twelve other countries of smaller size are also monitored, From Russia as the largest to Sweden as the smallest with average revenue per club of €7 million. Together they represent only 11 per cent of the overall football finance picture in Europe meaning that the countries whose Leagues are not deemed big enough to report on will collectively be worth substantially less again.
Thankfully UEFA publishes its own benchmark report which does reference all the countries and from which we can get a clearer independent viewpoint on the state of the Irish domestic game South and North of the border.
The Deloitte Report is still of value looking at macro pictures of investment financing and other areas.
It is also very positive on the growth of the Women’s game, noting that 18 of the world’s Top 20 clubs have a women’s team and that the idea of focusing on the Women’s game was becoming firmly embedded within football culture at every level.
There are interesting asides on fandom and climate change which we will look at separately in the coming weeks.
You can download the report to read at your leisure and marvel at the numbers here.
