Premier League Revenue Set To Break £3bn Mark
According to a new report from football finance experts at Deloitte, Barclays Premier League clubs are set for a 25% revenue boost next season following a number of lucrative new television deals, after the league reached £2.36bn in the 2011/12 and extended its growth last season.
The report estimates revenue grew to £2.5bn in 2012/13, and will continue to rise by a further £600m next season as a result of the league’s trio of new broadcast deals – worth around £5.5bn – which would take the projected revenue of Premier League clubs above £3bn for the first time.
The new deals include a $250 million contract with US broadcaster NBC, which will see all 380 matches broadcast to American fans over a period of three years.
Deloitte’s Dan Jones said: ‘Despite operating in a challenging economic environment, English club football’s profile, exposure and increasingly global interest have continued to drive revenue growth for the top clubs.’
Wages remain a serious concern for clubs and the league as a whole, with the total wage bill, across all employees, of Premier League clubs in 2011/12 standing at £1,658m (up 4%) – ranging from £202m at Manchester City to £35m at Swansea City.
Meanwhile, the revenue of the top 92 clubs exceeded £3bn – across English football – for the first time in 2011/12, but worries remain about the proportion of revenues being spent on player wages with almost 75% of the Premier League clubs’ revenue increase spent on staff. The overall Premier League wages-to-revenue ratio remained at 70%.
In the summer of 2012, the Premier League clubs had a total debt of £2.4bn.
Of that, £1.4bn was in interest-free soft loans from owners (2011: £1.5bn), of which around 90% related to three clubs: Chelsea (£895m), Newcastle United (£267m) and Queens Park Rangers (£93m).
The remaining £1bn interest-bearing debt was equivalent to about 40% of total annual revenues.
Jones added that debt in the Premier League was much less of a concern than it was four or five years ago: ‘When you look at how much of that is in soft loans, the interest-paying debt that is left is not that much.’
Deloitte also said that a number of financial fair play rules, including those introduced by the Premier League and Championship should focus the minds of clubs in respect to overall spending.
Although Premier League clubs generated the highest revenue of any league in Europe, Germany’s Bundesliga was the continent’s most profitable championship, with operating profits of £154 million. The Premier League was second, with profits of £98 million.
