Premier League clubs made light of the financial implications of the coronavirus pandemic by spending over £1billion in this summer’s transfer window to once more showcase the league’s financial might.
With matchday income down due to the lack of spectators, clubs across Europe cut their cloth accordingly – but Arsenal and Manchester United’s respective deadline-day moves for Thomas Partey and Alex Telles capped off a typical English summer of spending.
The final total of £1.24bn ranks third in Premier League history for a summer window and represents, according a report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), a net spend of £813million.
“This level of spending is something of a self-perpetuating problem – for finishing bottom last season, Norwich got £87m in TV money so every club is desperate to not fall out of the league, and their safest bet of staying in is to invest in the playing staff.
“All of these clubs have got three main sources of income. All three of those will come under downward pressure.
“The sponsorship fees – behind every shirt sponsor is a real business, they have to make decisions about managing their own finances. The TV deals will come under more pressure given the wider economic uncertainty and people’s appetite to spend on pay TV.
“But I think the gate receipts is the one that’s going to be very difficult, even for the Premier League clubs, to bridge that gap.”
Despite the big spending in England, former Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis felt a greater level of financial responsibility had helped lessen the impact of Covid-19, which he said would otherwise have been “crippling”.
“We can be glad that the football world embraced more financial discipline seven or eight years ago and really put that as a priority,” Gazidis, now at AC Milan, told LeadersWeek.direct.
“Had we faced Covid and this crisis in the same financial situation that football was in seven or eight years ago, the crisis would have been even more dramatic – and it’s been dramatic enough. But it would have really been completely crippling.”
The Cebr report was commissioned by Football Index, the world’s first football stock market. To find out more go to: https://www.footballindex.co.uk/
