It is not every day that one surveys the annual performance of a venerable 120-year-old organisation, notes a near $400 million loss, and concludes that business is ticking along very nicely. Then again, the organisation is FIFA and the business is football – a realm which, you might often be forgiven for thinking, operates in keeping with a commercial logic that is entirely its own.
August 24 – Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, Newcastle United: Middle East-based interests have already snapped up their share of Western trophy sports assets. The region has also hosted dozens of high-profile international sports events, none more glittering than the FIFA World Cup, whose kick-off in tiny but mega-wealthy Qatar is now less than three months away.
By David Owen
April 1 – There’s more than one way to skin a cat. FIFA succeeded in meeting its 2021 revenue projections. Indeed, it exceeded them somewhat, securing $766.5 million against a budgeted $742 million. But the route the football body took to arrive at this happy conclusion is far different from that expected – and somewhat mysterious.
By David Owen
I can well imagine how much FIFA boss Gianni Infantino looks forward to my words of advice, dispensed periodically via this website. So let me dredge up another pearl: Mr president, perhaps you should consider focusing a little less on developing grandiose new revenue surges geared to ever bigger and more frequent competitions, and a little more on nurturing the revenue streams FIFA already has.
June 5 – Brace yourselves, Premier League bosses. Extrapolating the forecast in yesterday’s Tottenham statement to gauge the possible league-wide revenue loss attributable to Covid 19, does not make pretty reading.
June 1 – The bubble has burst. Covid-19 will not stop some Premier League clubs from turning a profit for the current season, even though it now looks set to be played out behind closed doors.
In April 1967, in an era when sports rights-holders were apt to worry about the impact of television on attendance figures, Football League chairmen in England took less than half an hour to turn down a BBC live television proposal worth a then highly respectable £781,000.
By David Owen
One line in Watford’s recent annual accounts jumped out at me. Explaining a near 15% increase in turnover, the strategic report said this was “mainly due to an increase in Media & Broadcasting revenue because of a higher finishing position consequently attracting increased centralised distributions from the Premier League”.
City Football Group (CFG)’s business strategy always seemed rather baffling. Yes, OK, assemble a collection of similar businesses – in this case football clubs – inside the same tent and you can shave back-office costs. You might be able to engineer a less wasteful talent development pipeline than one-legged rivals. And if the real aim is soft power, well, the Abu Dhabi flag has been well and truly planted in outposts of the beautiful game from Melbourne to Mumbai.
By David Owen
October 21 – Women’s football is on a roll – and more power to its elbow for that. Nonetheless, the viewing figures for this summer’s Women’s World Cup, released at the end of last week to some fanfare, deserve to be treated with a certain amount of caution.
Alistair Burt, a former Minister of the Crown, is one of those increasingly rare Conservative MPs who don’t make you feel like you have been transported to the Planet Zog when you talk or, more recently, listen to them.
So, how were the last four years for the FIFA business? With the governing body’s 2018 financial report finally published in the wake of the Miami Council meeting, a proper analysis can now be attempted.
By David Owen
If there is one message to FIFA from the TV viewing figures for Russia 2018, it is that, if it wants to attract even bigger audiences, it must hope for, or somehow engineer, greater diversity in its crown jewel’s final stages.
The good news for Premier League club owners: top-tier English football has never been more profitable. The bad news: this is probably as good as it is going to get for at least the next five years – an age in terms of media technology.
The Bundesliga is the top football league in Western Europe’s most populous country. Based purely on these two facts, you might expect it to generate more revenue than any other rival league worldwide.