English Clubs will Dominate Europe in a Few Years Time
Premier League TV Deal
The huge Premier League deal, just announced, for televising football matches on Sky and BT will have a massive effect on European football.
The deal of over £5.1bn over three seasons, from 2016 onwards, will mean that the team finishing last in the Premier League will get £99m and the team finishing first will get £150m.
That’s 70% up on the current deal.
Champions League Money
The significance of that is that they reckon that winning the Champions League or European Cup, if you prefer, is worth £30 to £40 million to a team.
You’d be better off, financially, finishing bottom of the English Premier League.
All 20 English Premier League clubs will now be in Europe’s richest 30 clubs. The bottom team will be richer than Ajax, the top Dutch team.
When you think that Celtic get £2m a season from TV you can see the huge gap that is developing.
English Domination
A few years ago, English clubs dominated in Europe with Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea winning the Champions League. One year, three of the four semi-finalists were from England.
However, with the fall in the value of sterling against the Euro from €1.40 to the pound to as low as €1.07, English clubs could not compete in the transfer market with the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Now, they have a double whammy with a 70% rise in TV income in a couple of years time and Sterling rising against the Euro from €1.18 this time last year to €1.35 now – almost back to the level of the glory days.
Dominate Transfer Market
There will be two effects here.
Firstly, English clubs will dominate the transfer market with only Real Madrid and Barcelona able to compete and the best footballers in the world will end up in England.
Secondly, the Premier League will become more competitive with a smaller percentage of a club’s income coming from Europe in the future.
This had, previously had the effect of making the richer clubs richer and the leagues across Europe less competitive.
This will now be reversed in England.
Fans Around the World
Thee will also be a third effect in that, wherever you are in the world, and whatever local team you support, everyone will have an English Premier League team too.
In Spain, the clubs negotiate their own TV rights separately with Real Madrid and Barcelona getting the lion’s share.
In England it is the Premier league which is the product. So, with the money more evenly spread out, the Premier League will be more competitive than other leagues, more people will watch it – and the next TV deal will be even bigger still.