| European clubs are on the verge of bankruptcy European professional football seems to have passed its golden days: in most countries, cash flows are not increasing, and in some they have fallen sharply. It is unknown when the next boom will take place and new injections will begin. Today we are witnessing constantly declining revenues from sales of television rights, as well as the collapse of the transfer market. And this allows us to say that European football is going through a real crisis.
At the end of the 90s, at the turn of the millennium, investors did not hesitate to invest huge sums in football. In the 2001/02 season, the founders of football could boast a turnover of 1,748 million euros, Italy had the second figure - 1,127 million, followed by the Germans (1,043 million). Prices for television rights grew exponentially every year.
However, soon, unexpectedly (at least for many fans), a crisis arose. The shrinking advertising market has led to television companies sharply reducing their investments in such a popular product in the Old World as football. This season, UEFA has lost about 119 million euros for TV rights from the Champions League compared to last year, that is, it received only 561 million. In Italy, rights for broadcasting matches fell from 562 to 500 million. Clubs of the first and second Bundesligas after the collapse of Kirch media received 290 million instead of 360 million. The collapse in prices has led to the fact that many teams have recently been on the verge of bankruptcy. The reasons are very clear: in Germany, the budget of most clubs consists of 40% of television sales, the situation is even worse in Italy and France, where television money makes up 52% of total turnover. Only the English Premier League is still, as they say, afloat - football officials in Foggy Albion consistently charge investors 700 million euros annually for television rights.
In Germany, by this summer, the Swiss company Infront will prematurely terminate the agreement with the German Football League (NFL), under which it transferred 290 million euros annually for television rights. And if you remember that Infront planned to pay about 600 million over the next two years, then it is not difficult to guess how much German football has lost. Not everything is so bad though. The NFL, seeing decent football quotas, will no doubt find another partner. According to the head of the organization, Werner Hackmann, already in June the league plans to review all contractual agreements with the channels Premiere (pays 150 million annually), ZDF (10 million) and DSF (12 million). He is confident that today you can get a lot more money for broadcasts. In addition, Hackmann said the NFL is mulling over its own television project.
Unlike Germany, where local football officials have no doubt about the future of football, in Italy there is currently complete uncertainty. The last optimists no longer doubt that football in the Apennines is in ruins. Even the head of the professional league, Andriano Galliani, called the current system “rusty.” The total debt of all three series in Italy is at least 3 billion euros. Such a deplorable situation provokes an additional outflow of money from football. Two years ago, media mogul Cecchi Gori was the first to jump ship after parting ways with Fiorentina. The next fugitive was Lazio president Sergio Cragnotti, and just recently one of the most influential people, Inter president Massimo Moratti, left Italian football.
Serie A leader Roma is delaying salary payments for several months. If the President of the Romans, Franco Sensi, is still trying to somehow change the situation, then Parma, which has lost its main sponsor - the dairy concern Parmalat, seems to have a very difficult time: the club urgently needs 90 million euros in order to cover its main debts.
And one more detail that negatively characterizes the Italian football system. The Italians don't invest money in their arenas. All over Europe, modern stadiums are currently being upgraded and built. Italians prefer to buy new stars, without thinking at all about the comfort of the audience. The result is a sharp decline in match attendance.
The problem of stadium attendance also affected Greece. In the 2002/03 season, Greek arenas attracted an average of just over 4 thousand spectators. No more than 10 thousand fans come to the matches of the Greek football giants Olympiacos and Panathinaikos. An unsuccessful performance in the Champions League has sharply reduced the flow of spectators to stadiums during European cup battles. The nonsense of the current Champions League was the match between AEK and Monaco, which was attended by only 1,205 fans.
Almost every week, professional football players playing for Greek clubs go to court over unpaid wages. True, this doesn’t help - the teams simply don’t have the money. All 16 national league teams have debts: champion Olympiacos has 61 million, Panathinaikos has 23 million. According to the most conservative estimates, the total debt of all teams is about 160 million euros.
Many football federations in such cases turn to state help. And if in Greece and Italy requests to write off or defer debts are usually granted, in Germany the government prefers not to interfere in the financial policy of sports. And the point here is not at all that the Bundestag is not interested in local football. It’s just that the deputies are well aware that with their help they will only slow down the process of the collapse of football, because the football business can only develop if there are active sponsors.
The largest transfers in Europe
Footballer From Where To Amount (Euro) | 1. Jose Antonio Reyes | Sevilla (Spain) | Arsenal (England) | 35 million | | 2. Louis Saha | Fulham (England) | Manchester United | 17.5 million | | 3. Scott Parker | Portsmouth (England) | Chelsea (England) | 14.6 million | | 4. Daniel Van Buyten “Marseille” (France) | Manchester City | 11 million | | 5--6. Dejan Stankovic | Lazio (Italy) | Inter (Italy) | 4 million | | 5--6. Dmitry Sychev | "Marseille" (France) | Lokomotiv (Russia) | 4 million |
Alexander PODOLSKY
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