Relentless hunt for profits still not matching global popularity

The Guardian

02-03-2025

When William Goldman wrote in his memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade that in Hollywood 'nobody knows anything', he coined a phrase that spoke directly to the chaos at the heart of the movie industry. It was a remark made in 1983, the year of classic movies such as Tootsie, Trading Places and Local Hero and an era when the box office was booming.
The phrase came to mind this past week in the ballroom of the Peninsula hotel in London, where the great and the good and the rest of the global football industry gathered for the latest FT Business of Football Summit.
Just like Hollywood in the early 80s, the football industry has a lot to shout about today. There is the success of the expanded Champions League (at least in the sense it has increased income for a greater number of clubs and nations). There is more power for clubs within the European system, a response in part to the Super League plot. There is the ubiquitous refrain that, in a world of limitless content, nothing does what live sport can. For the Premier League, it can even point to continued growth in the value of its media rights.
Despite all this, the background noise was one of people scratching their heads. For all the brand awareness, the eyeballs and the solidarity payments, most in the business of football are struggling to make the whole thing profitable. When it comes to a diagnosis of the problems and the solutions that should be pursued, opinions differ wildly.
Todd Boehly was the headline act and gave a distinctly low-energy tour around his thinking. For the Chelsea co-owner, the future is Netflix. Or at least, it is the Premier League striking a worldwide media rights deal with a global brand (like the MLS has with Apple or the NFL with DAZN). A one-stop shop for every fan across the world, the scale of the opportunity, Boehly thinks, means it has to be an option the league considers and is, in his opinion, 'where we're headed'.
That is all well and good for the richest domestic football league in the world, but for others such an opportunity may not be viable. For clubs such as Marseille there need to be 'new ideas'. For their president, Pablo Longoria, that involves turning the Stade Vélodrome into a destination outside matches and making better use of 'digital opportunities'.
For Sporting in Portugal and their executive André Bernardo, dynamic ticket pricing needs to be on the table. For Giorgio Chiellini, the legendary defender turned head of football institutional relations at Juventus, more games are inevitable, but the proceeds from those games should be shared. 'It's hard to go back and the direction of travel is more games,' he says. 'The only answer is more redistribution.'
While every executive appears to have an idea on how to make things better, there is not a consensus on which approach is most likely to work. Equally, there is no agreement about the other end of the money puzzle: what regulations are necessary to create the holy grail of financial sustainability and competitive balance. A topic at the heart of the debate over the independent regulator for English football, it is something everyone in European football (including its American owners) says they want, but in their own way.
For Richard Masters and the Premier League, the imposition of an independent regulator will be overly restrictive, with the 'unintended consequences' an even greater risk. For Charlie Marshall, chief executive of the European Club Association, which speaks for more than 700 men's and women's clubs, the concern is also 'over-regulation' and 'rules that don't allow for dynamism'.
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For Fausto Zanetton, an Inter board member and investor, however, the focus must be instead on stemming losses, and for Ian Lynam, a leading sports lawyer, concerns over tighter regulation are outweighed by the risks of laxer rules. 'You can't say that more competitive balance means a better league,' he says, 'but a complete absence of it leads to destruction.'
The lack of agreement was striking, as was the tendency for speakers to use the same terms ('financial stability and competitive balance' among them) to mean very different things. This reflects the problems of a sport that has never been more globally popular but is not generating revenues to match.
But perhaps it also reveals the complicated and complex reasons why investors get into football in the first place. For all that sportswashing and financialisation may play a part, listening to owners and executives you also hear very strong personal motivations: a desire for legacy, for excitement and, even, for affection.
The human component in any business decision, especially a business as emotional as football, is perhaps undervalued.