Business

Awareness
Lecture 5
The Business of a
Football Club
Case Study
Business of Football Club

▪ Where do clubs spend money

▪ Where do clubs make money

▪ Financial performance of clubs

Can you mention the reason why League matches
are conducted?
The Business of a Football Club

The English Premier League

(EPL) is probably the most-
watched sports league in the
world reaching 643 million
homes

▪ 20 clubs are competing the

league
▪ It is a perfect mix of skills,
emotions, rivalry and drama
Where do Clubs Spend Money?
Transfer spending – Transfer windows happens two
time in a year
▪ Club Net spend = Money spend on buying player
– money received by selling players (avg 1$.8B)

Players and support staff wages

Other operating expenses

▪ Stadium & Facility Maintenance

▪ Youth Academies - Clubs where future talent is
identified and developed
▪ Marketing & Admin - marketing campaigns
(mailers, ads & events), IT systems (website,
apps, ticketing systems, etc.) and accounting
▪ Players Travel – 90 Million dollars
Discussion Session
Where the club do earn?
1. Broadcasting Revenues

▪ Domestic rights are sold to TV

channels for a 3 year period

▪ Overseas broadcasting rights were

sold for £0.9B (overseas rights are
sold on a yearly basis)
2. Match Day Revenues

Higher the ticket prices, higher the

match-day revenues
▪ London based clubs (Arsenal,
Chelsea, West Ham & Tottenham)
generally have higher ticket prices
(£75-95) while others charge
anywhere between £40-60

Higher the stadium capacity, higher

the match-day revenues
▪ For this reason, a lot of clubs
(Chelsea and Tottenham in recent
times) try to shift to larger
stadiums
3. Commercial Revenues

▪ Income is divided into sponsorship and merchandising

▪ Millions of fans watching these games, hundreds of brands try to partner the clubs as sponsors. For
example, Adidas pays £75M ($95M) per year to be Manchester United's kit (uniform) sponsors. And
Chevrolet pays £65M ($82M) per year to be their premier sponsors. Apart from these two,
Manchester United has 24 other sponsors
 Merchandising

As part of this, clubs sell jerseys, sports accessories, branded gifts

through both their websites and club stores. Manchester United nets
around £100M ($127M) from merchandise sale every year
4. Money from Other Competitions

Clubs get a share of the

broadcast revenues and merit
money basis their ranking
(see pic below). Apart from
these, the teams also get
€2.7M ($3M) for every match
they win and €90k ($100K) for
every match they draw (too
much money, right?)
One more thing...

Did you know you could invest in these clubs?

▪ Like any other business, clubs can also be listed on stock exchanges where the general public (you &
me) can invest. Manchester United is actually listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 2012
 References:

https://simplanations.substack.com/
p/4-the-business-of-a-football-club