D&T’s Annual Review of Football Finance revealed that England’s 92 professional league clubs earned £1,078m ($1,533m/B1,708m), an increase of 13 percent on the previous year. The Premier League saw the most growth, up 15 percent to £772m ($1,098m/B1.223m), while the 72 Football League clubs increased earnings by 9 percent to £306 ($435m/B485m).
The rise in revenues was more than countered by an increase in costs, up by £188m ($267m/B298m) which resulted in an overall deficit of £59m ($84m/B93.5m). Of the 92 clubs, only 15 made an operating profit and ten of those were from the Premier League.
Deloitte & Touche head of sport Gerry Boon revealed that transfer spending decreased slightly, but that wages were increasing at an exponential rate: “We will have seen a reduction in the season just ended (despite the frentic world record activity in the summer ahead of ‘The New Rules’) as Signor Monti’s Damoclean Sword cast a long shadow over the whole business of transfer activity in 2000/1. Somebody could do football clubs a massive favour if they could find a way of doing exactly the same over the whole process of wage negotiation.”
The report predicts that growth will continue, thanks to new television deals, and that turnover will reach £1.5bn ($2.13bn/B2.37bn) by 2003. Deloitte’s also forecast the wealth gap between the Premier League and Football League will continue to widen.
English soccer clubs generated over £1bn ($1,42m/B
