Football finances
In the comments section in the post on the this subject we've been discussing whether players are paid more relative to turnover now than in the good ol' days. In keeping with the traditions of this site, we haven't really had a clue.Delving into the Times' archives however might allow me to have a stab. Apparently the club with the highest turnover in 1958/1959 was Manchester United, at £178,312. The club with the highest turnover in 2003/2004 was also that delightful club, on £173m. It fell to £157m by 2005, but I'm going to stick with that as it is basically 1000 times higher. For what it's worth scaling up the 1958/1959 by RPI gives you £2.6m, or £8.7m by the GDP, which is perhaps more relevant in this case. So club turnover was about 70 times higher in real terms than in 1958/1959, or 20 times higher in terms of other firms.
In terms of profit in the earlier year they made £26,501, which is just under 1/7th of turnover. In 2003/2004 it was £30m, which is a slightly higher 1/6th (though this was an exceptional year - by 2005 it was just £11m).
At the other end the smallest club in the league (Southport) in 1958/1959 had a turnover of £20,055, which saw them lose £7,556, a whopping 1/3rd of turnover. It's much harder to find such figures today, Southport are out of the league so wouldn't be a fair comparison. Rotherham who were recently deducted points and demoted to Div Four (as it used to be) for going into Administration had a turnover of aorund £2.5m, a 100 times larger but only a 1/10th of the size relative to Manchester United. Incidentally Rotherham's turnover in real terms is about the size of Manchester United's in 1958/1958, which is worth remembering if people make RPI-based historical comparisions without any explanation.
Onto wages. In 2003/2004 Man U spent 45.5% of its turnover on salaries, of 528 people, which is something like £80m. This is remarkably low by the league's standards, the average was 60% . 13 players earned more than £67,500 a week in August 2004.
Figures for 1958/1959 are hard to find. Only 12 players earned more than £1,000 a season, which is about £19/week (this typically would be the maximum wage of £20 a week when the season was on, and a bit less when had finished!). So these top players are earning 3,550 times more than their equivalents in 1958/1959, compared to club turnover of just 1000 times as more. However a caveat, by 1960/1961 apparently 500 players were earning that much. Thus if we knew how much they might make the figures more comparable. On the other hand the article says that 'players wages eat up 1/3rd of the turnover' and that 'managers, trainers and ground staff also take a bite'.
Finally on income, ticket receipts to the premiership in 2003/2004 were £363m. I couldn't find figures for the other divisions, but using the same proportions as for wages, ie Div 1 = 25% of premiership and Div 3 and Div 4 = combined 1/2 Div 1, I get £500m. In 1958/1958 it was £46.5m. This is 1/10th of the 2003/2004 figure, and hence in real terms far higher. In terms of attendance, there was just under 30m in 2003/2004 and 33.6m in 1958/1959. This makes the average ticket price £17 in 2003/2004 and £1.4 in 1958/1959. That's equivalent in terms of the CPI of £20 today, and in terms of average earnings, £50. So football has actually got cheaper.
Note: A good stat size is this.
posted by Matthew @ 7/18/2006 07:25:00 AM
Comments: 1
