How Football Clubs Make Money? The Work Behind The Scenes
Without any doubt, football is the most popular game around the world. Like any other industry’s football have brands that are bigger than anyone else in terms of popularity and revenues, and such brands are teams like Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Barcelona.
To run a football club doesn’t come cheap. It does need a lot of money to maintain the stadium, to pay wages to the players and management staff plus assuring money for transfers of players. Expenses are coming from every corner so to meet this cost clubs must find revenue sources. So in this article, we will show you a few ways of how football clubs make money.
The Rights of Broadcasting Live Games
To own the domestic or international broadcasting rights does not come cheap, and this is one of the ways to bring revenues for the clubs. Most European Leagues are watched around the world, and that brings money to the clubs. The leader in this competition is the English Premier League, and according to BBC, the league received £5.14 billion for four years. The deal was done in 2015 when Sky Sports and BT paid that record sum of money for the rights to broadcast the English League.
In comparison, La Liga received only $1.5 billion in television rights for the 2014-15 season. Other leagues like Bundesliga and Seria A also received significant amounts of money as well, but no one has managed to match the price received by Premier League.
Also, the sharing of the money from television rights in Premier League is equally distributed between all team in the league where in La Liga the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona are getting 40% of the money, and the other 60% is distributed to the rest 18 teams in the league.
Matchday Income
There is nothing more exciting that matchday. Seeing your favourite players on the pitch in action while you are enjoying yourself in the stands eating your beloved hot dog.
For one football club, ticket sales are an essential factor. Without them, the functioning of the club will be put on risk. So to be ensured that they will have good cash income from tickets, clubs created the season tickets strategy. This is a beneficial way for fans and clubs because in doing that supporters will pay lesser than if they are going to buy individual tickets for every game. On the other side, clubs are assured that a certain amount of money will get into their accounts.
The Importance of Jersey Sales and Sponsorship
Another essential component for making good revenues is the sales of shirts and signing sponsorship with big companies who are ready to pay a tremendous amount of money to display their logo on the shirt or having the right to buy the name of the stadium. Another way of getting income is the stadium tours, but by far the money from sponsorship is on top of the list. For example, Arsenal signed a record kit deal in 2014-15 with Puma ensuring them £30 million every year. Close to them, it’s Manchester United who changed their long-time partner for kit supply Nike with Adidas for the mind-blowing £25 million per year.
Clubs, especially the big ones, make a huge profit from selling shirts of their superstar players the kind of Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Pogba and many more. They make so much money from this that back in 2010 when Manchester United sold Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid a Spanish daily had an article saying that the money Real Madrid paid has been already returned from shirts sales with the name Ronaldo.
The Importance of Wining Cups
What is the main aim of football? Scoring goals? Playing beautiful? Having loyal fans? All of that but the main thing in football it’s to be successful meaning winning trophies. By winning medals, clubs not only make fans happy but also bringing money. The amount of money is not so significant like the sponsorship deals, but from the commercial point of view, they are essential because if you win trophies, you will attract more companies who will want to make a deal with you.
Winning trophies means glory, successes, pride, bringing joy to your supporters. Moreover, being successful also will help you to deliver better players from the football world who will help you to expend the popularity of the club, therefore, more shirt sales — leading to more significant revenues and more contracts with sponsors. An example of that is bringing Paul Pogba from Juventus back to Old Trafford in 2016. Having the same sponsor, in this case, Adidas helped United to convince Pogba going back to Theater of Dreams at the expenses of Real Madrid. By that time that was the world record for most expensive player costing United £89.3 million. But with the sales of shirts, they double the money they paid for him.
Conclusion
Nowadays, football has changed dramatically, and there are countless ways for clubs to make money. Whether it is going to be through television rights or mega-deals with sport equipment companies to loaning out the stadium for filming.
One of the most significant differences between the clubs from the top of the pyramid and the one at the bottom is the way they make money. The difference comes from the price of tickets. For example, the teams from the top tier in England charge their supporter average £60 for a single ticket while the teams from lower divisions can’t do that.
Until the gap between the clubs at the top and the clubs at the bottom, it’s not narrowed and made less noticeable, the richer clubs will get richer and the poorer ones with get poorer.
Petar Leykov
When I saw the title of this article, I knew I would learn something that I sometimes wondered about. One example is how broadcasting revenue can be so different from one league to the next. I had not thought about how much money can be made from jersey sales of a newly acquired player. The player gets the income from the brand sponsor, and the team gets the proceeds from the player’s name and the brand’s name on the jerseys…right?
That’s right. The players themselves have sponsorships with certain brands and by the contract, they have signed they must wear their boots in this case.
Do football clubs make money from concession stands selling food and drinks during the games?
When there it’s an International game, for example, the one I attend not a long time ago between England and Bulgaria held on Webley Stadium in London in the lounge before going down to the stands there where different little food stalls which i believe they pay rent to Football Association. But when its a game in the local championship every team stadium has there own restaurants and food stalls therefor they make money from that.
Hey thank you for the awesome post! This is very interesting information, and I am shocked that there are so many ways that football clubs get money. I do find it sad that the poorer clubs will continue to diminish though. There is a football club here in town that does not have a lot of money.
Hi Jessie. I am glad that you like my post. Unfortunately, that’s the simple truth because they have a bigger audience and bigger demand and if there is demand there is profit.
What is the name of your local team?