The five major European football leagues can consider the Covid 19 crisis over. At the end of the 2021-2022 season, the top divisions of England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France achieved cumulative revenues of €17.4 billion, up 2.3% on the pre-pandemic season and a new record by the just launched campaign will be surpassed. For 2022-2023, these leagues will add revenue of 18.6 billionThis is the projection by Deloitte in its study “Annual Review of Football Finance 2022”, to which this newspaper had access.
An improvement fueled by the inexorable growth of the first League English, which will open a bigger gap to the rest of the continent’s competitions. Deloitte speaks of a figure of 6,500 million brought in last season by all concepts: box office, audiovisual rights and commercial agreements between the 20 clubs that make it up. A number that represents a jump of 18% compared to 2020-2021 and 11% compared to 2018-2019, the last without the impact of Covid.
But the prognosis for the season that has just started is to break that record. Deloitte estimates the premier will generate 7,110 million, for which it will almost double The league, which will at least remain at the 3,700 million in which it completed the last campaign, the highest number ever, according to Deloitte. With this figure it was able to surpass the German Bundesliga and position itself as a second division tournament in terms of sales volume, which it will consolidate in 2022-2023. The Deloitte report points to new sponsorship deals with Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid as drivers of revenue growth this year. The first with Spotify including the stadium name and the second with the trading platform Whalefin.
The Italian league will continue at a lower tier at around 2,400 million, while the French will remain far from the rest at 1,800 million. Both are the only ones who will remain below the levels they were at pre-Covid.
cost effectiveness
The Deloitte study mainly focuses on the data of the major leagues in the 2020/2021 season, which was played without spectators in the stadiums. This year, revenue from the five tournaments reached 15.6 billion, down 8% from pre-Covid. But the impact has been greater in club profitability. The French suffered the most. Combined, they added operating losses of 622 million, adding to the previous 575 million losses. A total of 1,200 million operating losses over the two seasons marked by Covid-19.
In Spain, these losses amounted to 77 million in the period 2020-2021, although they were very heavily marked by the red figures of 208 million for FC Barcelona. Premier League teams generated an operating profit of 541m this season, light years ahead of the German season when clubs had an operating profit of 62m. Of course, despite operating profitability, English clubs added £669m before tax losses, nearly €800m, a variable that includes transfer spending or financial costs.
Another effect of the pandemic has been the arrival of new investors to the clubs at a time of financial difficulty. In 2021 there were a total of 15 such missions in these five leagues. Of these, eleven were purchases of minority stakes in the teams and four were acquisitions.
Deloitte predicts that the sector will continue to grow in the coming years given the increased revenue UEFA will generate from the new audiovisual rights cycle.
LaLiga will exploit the commercial rights of the Women’s First Division
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approval. The Professional Women’s Football League (LPFF) and LaLiga yesterday sealed an agreement under which LaLiga will be responsible for the commercial exploitation of the Women’s First Division. In particular, it is responsible for the marketing of the sponsor who gives the competition its name, its official ball and any type of commercial and licensing agreement. The agreement is valid for five years and, according to the LPFF, guarantees the women’s teams income of 42 million, with which they can use resources “to improve their management structures and thus improve the conditions of footballers”.