Fulham Catapulted Into £100 Million League

[White Noise]

Fans will be the last to gain from Premier League's £3bn jackpot


By Patrick Collins


PUBLISHED: 23:00, 16 June 2012 | UPDATED: 23:00, 16 June 2012



Three billion pounds is an extraordinary amount of money; too much to count and too vast to imagine.

With three billion pounds, you could make a lot of people extremely happy. As Richard Scudamore has just discovered.

When the Premier League's chief executive announced his new television deal, football's cottage industries lifted grateful glasses.


Increase: The new Premier League deal is an improvement of around £1.245bn

From cosmetic surgeons and night club owners to the champagne houses of Bollinger and Pol Roger, to the frock shops of Armani and Versace, to the estate agents of rural Cheshire, they all realised just what this meant. Business as usual.

In fact, it is considerably better than that. Three billion pounds over three years for domestic television rights is an improvement of around £1.245bn, or 70 per cent, on the current deal.

In Scudamore's words it is 'a decent commercial increase'. But, of course, he is being clumpingly coy, like a man who wants us to know he is making A Joke.

For the sums are quite astonishing. One illustration: in 1992, when the Premier League was formed, the cost of a single, live, televised match was £633,000. Under the new deal, for a great many more games, that figure will rise to £6.5m.

It all sounds like unqualified good news, until we consider another of Scudamore's remarks: 'As ever, the security provided by broadcast revenues will enable our clubs to continue to invest in all aspects of their football activities and plan sustainably for the foreseeable future.'

And that is where we part company. You see, we know - and he also knows, although he can't say - that the notion of clubs practising sustainable planning is simply absurd.

Under the current, gargantuan deal, and on the last available figures, eight of the 20 Premier League clubs made a profit and the rest recorded losses.

One of the principal reasons for this situation, again on the last available figures, is that the average salary of a Premier League player was £1.16m per year.

Such a statistic usually provokes a grunt of disgust from those who believe that young men are fortunate to be earning money from doing something so patently pleasurable.

Yet we should remember that nobody forces clubs to pay such sums. They have opted into the rat race for all manner of reasons, among them proprietorial ego and fan pressure, and a great many have been spending money they do not possess.

Far worse than the payments to players are the payments to football agents. Premier League clubs are currently handing over something in the region of £70m a year, every year, to these unspeakable chancers. This is money which is permanently lost to the game, paid out for trite and irrelevant services on a scale which a normal industry would not contemplate. But who's counting?


Champions: Manchester City were crowned Premier League winners last term

It isn't real money, it's TV money. And there's a lot more where that came from. Which is absolutely true. Even before the world television rights are auctioned, the current jackpot stands at £3bn. And will that sum promote greater prudence, self- discipline, simple commercial rigour among the clubs? Will it hell.

Transfer fees will soar, players will demand and agents will plunder. Managers, too, will join the stampede, seeing no reason why they should be excluded from this new era of even greater excess.

In effect, the arsonist is being presented with the keys to the fireworks factory. Probably with similar results.

There are those who believe that the market must always rule. They will quote the words of dear old Scudamore as if he were divinely inspired. Others see it rather differently.

Even after 20 years, and despite its many virtues, we resent and deplore the way in which the Premier League was formed. Its founders assured us that it would assure the long-term success of the England national side. That hasn't worked out too well.

We were also told that it would prevent the major clubs forming their own, exclusive, league. The fact that only four or five clubs can even dream of winning the title rather scuppers that claim.

For injustice abounds. Where income was once fairly distributed under the old Football League, we now have a situation in which Premier League wages are now around five times greater than those of the Championship and 30 times more than the paupers of League Two.

The smaller clubs are receiving a pittance while the ultra-wealthy are being rewarded beyond measure. It is deeply offensive and thoroughly unfair.

And who is paying the price for this orgy of unreasoning largesse? Need you ask? Sky have enjoyed massive profits through their association with football. Those profits will grow, since prices will rise to cover their costs.

The fact that most people in this country do not subscribe to Sky is of no significance. Sky is where the money is, which is all that concerns the Premier League.

Equally, and at a time of double-dip recession, this incredible windfall could be used by the clubs to slash seat prices to bring them within the reach of lower income supporters. I doubt this has even crossed their minds.

For the monster will continue to devour its gluttonous diet. Richard Scudamore will trouser the bonus his entrepreneurial efforts have merited. And the aristocrats of English football will insist, three billion times over, that everything is just perfect in the richest league in all the world.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2160341/Fans-gain-Premier-League-TV-deal--Patrick-Collins.html#ixzz1y1jiQFvH

[Alternative]

What about the proposed new rules on balancing the books for clubs in European competition?

This may make that easier for Premier League clubs, but if the money goes straight out the door on player wages it is no benefit.

I am also uneasy that football is now even more of a business racket.

[Adam87]

I think something will have to give at some point with players wages, either our wages are going to become the highest in europe sooner or later, so if players here want to leave for somewhere else t wont be abroad for money as they wont gain anything. I think there has to be a wage cap sometime. There must be, you cant have all this money going on players wages getting higher. I want the momey spent on the ground and academy. Cant wait till we get a ground of 35,000. I know for a fact if we stay in the premier league we will sell it out. Average Attendences are getting bigger every year, i hope he continues to invest in the new ground after the new stand has been built.

[White Noise]

http://www.people.co.uk/sport/columnists/dave-kidd/2012/06/17/why-euro-2012-suggests-roy-hodgson-could-be-england-s-flexible-friend-102039-23897269/



£3billion Prem is lobster potty


THE Premier League's domestic TV rights deal, worth £3billion over the three years until 2016, has been hailed as another triumph for chief executive Richard Scudamore.

You can't fail to be impressed by the league's extraordinary money-making capabilities during an economic crisis, yet sometimes you wonder where all of this cash is ending up.

Then you read about police being called to the wedding reception of Newcastle's back-up midfielder Danny Guthrie, because guests were hurling lobster thermidor at one another inside a stately home.

It's what they call social mobility.