The pound of last hope: European football's revenues have stopped growing
Since the beginning of the current season, a new television contract has been signed for the English Premier League. The Sky media consortium will pay £1.6 billion per year until the 2028/29 season inclusive. In total, a record amount of 6.75 billion is obtained. As part of the agreement, Sky will broadcast the maximum number of matches per season from August 2025 — 215. Meanwhile, despite the impressive numbers, the contract is a warning about the limits of the growth of the commercial model of English and all European football. Izvestia tells us why the financial component of big—time football has reached its peak.
The illusion of growth
Compared to the figures of the past, the amount is really serious: compared to the 2001-2004 contract, the growth exceeds 3.3 times. But in comparison with the statistics of recent years, the amount no longer looks so impressive. The current contract is only 4% higher than the covid-19 deals (2019-2025) and is inferior to the amounts received in 2016-2019 (£1.69 billion versus £1.78 billion per season).
But that's not all. To conclude the contract, the nuclear power plant sold Sky the rights to a much larger number of broadcasts — 70 more than under the 2019-2025 agreements, and 99 more than under the 2016-2019 agreements. As a result, the cost of one match dropped significantly — almost one and a half times compared to the peak reached in the second half of the 2010s. The only "sacred cow" that was not touched was the Saturday match window, which runs at 15:00 GMT (they are still prohibited from broadcasting because the authorities encourage people to go to the games of local teams in the lower leagues).
And the most important thing is that the amounts are given in nominal current pounds, which does not take into account the ongoing decline in the purchasing power of the British currency. This has become especially important in the last few years, characterized by a surge in inflation. By 2019, the pound had fallen in price by 30%, by 2016 - by 36-37%. As a result, the actual amount received from the television contract fell by a third, and in terms of one match, it even doubled. In fact, this is a huge drop in income.
The situation can only be sweetened by the growth of television revenues from sales abroad. Indeed, the total amount of all contracts in 2025 increased by 23% compared to 2022 (when the previous multi-year agreements were concluded) and will amount to 6.5 billion pounds in the next three years. This amount more than compensates for cumulative inflation over the past period (about 15%), but does not fully cover the huge losses from the decline in domestic TV revenues in real terms.
Descent from the peak
In fact, it can be recorded that the commercial growth of football as a product is reaching its peak. England is not the worst example in this regard, since in other top European leagues the situation with television revenues is much less pleasant for clubs. In Spain, the nominal contract increased by 1%, in the German Bundesliga it did not change, in Italy it "lost weight" by 3%, and in France Ligue 1 could not agree on television money at all and decided to "stream" football directly, which is likely to be much less profitable. If all this is recalculated in real terms, then the drawdown will be about the same third. At the same time, the earnings of clubs from television in the four mentioned leagues were less than in the Premier League, even if you add them together. For them, this fall can be no less painful. However, the continental clubs are poorer on average, but they are more careful in increasing their expenses.
Why is this happening? The most obvious answer to the question is high expectations. Football was a fast—growing "commodity" in the first two decades of this century, especially English, which mastered the commercial model earlier than others and received a strong influx of investments from businessmen willing to fork out money (from Roman Abramovich to Sheikh Mansour). Companies, including giants like Sky, were willing to pay any amount of money just to stake out a market share. Times have changed, and now media giants have started counting every penny.
Football in Europe has long been a free spectacle: it was not shown on the same scale as it is now, but on public channels. Since the 1990s and especially the 2000s, the processes of monetization and financialization of big-time sports have begun. Not everyone accepted this, and when the opportunities began to allow, the number of people watching pirated broadcasts increased dramatically. With current Internet speeds and a much greater digital literacy of the population, the scale of this phenomenon is growing rapidly. This is also a serious source of losses for media corporations, which they inevitably include in the price.
At the same time, there are currently no special opportunities to increase club revenues. Nevertheless, television money was and is for most of them "bread and water." How to expand them — paid highlights, monetization of live broadcasts (for example, players actively advertising something right during the match)? All this looks strained and unrealistic so far.
The potential for revenue growth through ticket sales is also limited. The Premier League and the Bundesliga have almost 100 percent attendance, and the stadiums are mostly quite large - it's unlikely that they can be increased. At the same time, tickets are very expensive in England and are becoming inaccessible to a large part of fans, who are increasingly giving way to "sports tourists" and people for whom a trip to, say, the Emirates Stadium (Arsenal's home arena) in London is an indicator of status. By the way, this leads to much less vivid fan performances, which also reduces both the popularity and the "market value" of the game to some extent. In Germany, for the same reason, raising ticket prices is not an option: they take care of the atmosphere in the stadiums. There is some potential for growth in Italy and Spain, but huge investments are needed in these countries to build modern arenas.
Finally, commercial revenues remain, but it seems that the peak has already been reached here. According to this indicator, the incomes of top clubs only slightly outstrip the rate of inflation, and the lower teams cannot boast of growth at all. The behavior of sponsors of most clubs is also typical. If 30 years ago these were local companies, 10-15 years ago they were multinational corporations, now they are most often bookmakers, cryptocurrencies or, at best, companies affiliated with club owners (that is, fake sponsorship, whose purpose is to bypass the "financial fair play"). All this is quite significant in terms of commercial attractiveness.
Downward movement
Meanwhile, expenses are growing faster than revenues, and for many Premier League clubs, the situation becomes normal when the payroll covers 60-90% of the budget. The owners are looking for various means, from attracting a currently popular private loan to various complex schemes with transfers and depreciation (Chelsea shows wonders of resourcefulness in this regard), but this cannot continue indefinitely either.
Superimposed on all this is the rather gloomy economic situation in Europe itself. The UK has been experiencing budget deficit problems for years, the standard of living of the population (and therefore the amount of money that the average Englishman is willing to spend on football) is falling, and now new tax amendments may lead large businesses to a mass exodus from the City of London.
At one time, Italy's football and financial dominance in the 1990s came to an end at the same time as the rapid growth of the national economy ended. The then "patronage" model of financing proved unrealistic in the context of declining incomes and bankruptcies of the owners themselves. The situation is similar now. Of course, football is still supported by people and even entire states (Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia) that are willing to fork out. But the fact that the industry needs the most free money in the world to operate says quite a lot about the limits of the achieved growth. Whether we will see a massive collapse of the leading clubs or just a slow degradation, only the future will tell.
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