The five major European soccer leagues can consider the Covid-19 crisis over. At the end of the 2021-2022 season, the first divisions of England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France reached accumulated revenues of 17.4 billion euros, 2.3% more than in the season prior to the pandemic, and a new record , which will be surpassed by the figures of the campaign that has just started. For 2022-2023, these leagues will add a turnover of 18.6 billionaccording to the projection made by Deloitte in its study Annual Review of Football Finance 2022to which this newspaper has had access.
An improvement that will be driven by the unstoppable growth of the premier league English, which will open a greater gap with the rest of the continent’s competitions. Deloitte speaks of a figure of 6,500 million entered by all concepts during the past season: box office, audiovisual rights, and commercial agreements between the 20 clubs that form it. A figure that represents a jump of 18% compared to 2020-2021, and 11% compared to 2018-2019, the last one without the effects of Covid.
But the forecast for the season that has just started is to smash that record. Deloitte estimates that the Premier will generate 7,110 million, for which it will almost double The league, which, at least, will remain at the 3,700 million in which it closed the last campaign, its highest figure to date, always according to Deloitte. That figure allowed it to surpass the German Bundesliga and position itself as the second league tournament in revenue volume, something that it will consolidate in 2022-2023. The Deloitte report points to the new sponsorship agreements with Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid as engines for revenue growth this year. The first with Spotify, including the name of the stadium, and the second with the Whalefin trading platform.
The Italian league will continue in a lower step, around 2,400 million, while the French will remain far from the rest, with 1,800 million. Both are the only ones that will remain below the levels they had before Covid.
Cost effectiveness
The Deloitte study focuses, above all, on the data from the major leagues in the 2020-2021 season, which was played without an audience in the stadiums. That year, the income from the five tournaments reached 15.6 billion, 8% less than before Covid. But the impact was greater in the profitability of the clubs. Those who suffered the most were the French. Between all of them they added operating losses of 622 million, which were added to the 575 million lost in the previous one. In total, 1,200 million operating losses in the two seasons marked by Covid-19.
In Spain, these losses were 77 million in 2020-2021, although very marked by the red numbers of 208 million for FC Barcelona. The Premier League teams accumulated an operating profit of 541 million that season, light years ahead of the German season, in which the clubs had an operating profit of 62 million. Of course, the English clubs, despite the operating profitability, added losses before taxes of 669 million pounds, almost 800 million euros, a variable that does include spending on transfers or financial costs.
Another effect of the pandemic has been the arrival of new investors to the clubs at a time of financial difficulties. During the year 2021, there were a total of 15 such operations in these five leagues. Of these, eleven were purchases of minority shares in the teams, and four were takeovers.
Deloitte predicts that the sector will continue to grow in the coming years, in the heat of the higher income that will come from UEFA for the new cycle of audiovisual rights.
LaLiga will exploit the commercial rights of the Women’s First Division
Agreement. The Professional Women’s Football League (LPFF) and LaLiga yesterday sealed an agreement whereby the latter will be in charge of exploiting the commercial rights of the Women’s First Division. Specifically, it will be in charge of marketing the sponsor that gives the competition its name, its official ball and any type of commercial and licensing agreement. The agreement is for five years and, according to the LPFF, it guarantees income of 42 million for the women’s teams, with which they will be able to have resources “for the improvement of their management structures and, with it, the improvement of the conditions of the soccer players”.
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