Non-League digital ad hoardings revenue, do clubs budget for sacking managers?
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Hello and welcome to The Price of Football, the show that looks at the money behind a beautiful game with me, Kevin Day, and Liverpool University's Kieran McGuire. Kieran, how are you? I'm as good as you can be, still within the 24-hour... We're recording this on Friday afternoon, so I'm still within the 24-hour grumpiness stage of a defeat at Fulham. Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that, Kieran, because I'd forgotten all about that, even though it was only... I was...

I was watching it half-heartedly. Well, half-heartedly after you equalized. I decided to switch to the other game then. It's questions day, Kieran. We've got some cracking questions. We've also got a joke for accountants today.

which I have to say, I've been working in this industry for 35 years. I still can't work out what it is, but I'm really looking forward to your reaction. You won't need to remove a rib. I can tell you in advance.

Yes. Why was your manager not on the touchline? That's my question for you. He's banned. Oh, he's banned, is he? Yeah, he's quite combustible, is Fabian. So, yeah, he was up in the gods. Oh, okay. Oh, and speaking of questions, I meant to ask you this before on behalf of several people. Chelsea, why no front of shirt sponsor?

Because they've asked for too much money. Everybody's just blown a raspberry at them. It's not stopping them on the pitch. They are looking very, very good. Yeah, that's okay. They'll just sell another women's team or an academy team or a cup of tea to themselves. Not a problem. Just ask Todd. So for a man who's supposed to be chipper all the time, Kieran, whenever I mention that one...

the alliteration, the chipper Chelsea things. Adam Allcroft has our first question, and it's a timely one because we're at that time of the year. It says, in the early rounds of the FA Cup, says Adam, some of the non-league clubs have digital advertising hoardings. I've been to some of these grounds, and I know these must be temporary and just installed for the TV cameras. So my questions are as follows. What extra revenue is created by these digital hoardings,

And would the regular sponsors who have hoardings covered up by these new ones have a case to be legally angry at the club for stopping their one chance of national TV coverage? I spoke about being in Prague a couple of weeks ago. The Bohemians game we went to see, it certainly had cameras there.

And they had digital hoardings that were so short. It was literally a ball boy with a remote control trying to make them work. So I'm quite tickled by this concept. Obviously, it's a massive chance for non-league clubs who are on telly, on BBC Two particularly, to make a bit of extra money. So I'm intrigued by the answer to Adam's question.

In terms of the additional money, I know from talking to commercial directors that the step up from championship to Premier League brings in around about 10 times the amount of money on a 30 second digibox or whatever they call them.

I would imagine it would be, on a proportionate basis, it would be far higher. If it's the early rounds of the FA Cup, though, yes, you will be getting some people watching. The viewing figures are not huge. So it could be that you are selling your advertising hoardings for three figures. If you're a non-league club, so you're getting £500, you might get a grand. You're not actually getting a lot.

for the traditional hoardings, you're likely to perhaps get four or five times that from each sort of the digital sponsor. So it will be a significant difference. So that's the benefit to the club. I like this concept of legally angry. That's a new one on me, as opposed to illegally angry. So...

I don't think the local sponsors will be too concerned. First of all, if they take a look at their contract, it will say that, A, we might throw you a 30-second or a couple of 30-second ads as part of a substitute. Because remember, what's happening is that these deals, the ads are being changed all the time. So therefore, you can get access and you will be getting access. Secondly, again, probably part of the deal would be

If we get a home cut draw, we'll give you a couple of tickets just to make up for it. And thirdly, I think you've got to look at the demographic. If you are a local sponsor, let's say you're the local garage, you're the local butcher, you're the local firm of accountants.

who are you trying to get business from? You're trying to get business from local fans or the local community. So the fact that it's being broadcast on BBC2, I can assure you, nobody who is watching an FA Cup first or second round match when it's a non-league club against Burton Albion or Macclesfield, sorry, not Macclesfield, it'll be Accrington Stadium, nobody's going to say, do you know how...

Joe Bloggs sausages in Tamworth. I've just been inspired to go and put in an order. It doesn't happen. So it doesn't actually move the dial in terms of the benefits to the local sponsor. So I think all the positives are from the club's point of view. Also, if you check your contract, that will say if we are given a cup game, you will have the following options available to you and that will sort it out.

I don't know if it's possible, Kieran, but I'd love to find out how much advertising brought in in the early 70s, for example. I was a member at Sellers Park. It was a large poster that for about seven years, Van Heusen shirts in Croydon. It never changed. So I just wondered how much they were paying.

And whether it's worth the moment, whether they got, every Monday morning, a few surly, increasingly angry Palace fans turned up and went, the need to buy a new shirt came over me just as I watched Malcolm Ellison's team concede another goal. I mean, you're talking, you're probably not even talking four figures back in the day, are you, Kieran? No, no, back in the 70s. Oh, good grief, no, no, no, you'll be...

If you get 100 quid, you'll be doing well. I've got the accounts of clubs going back and when you see... I was asked to do something. I think it was for... I was asked to do a talk to...

Everton shareholders, not Mr. Mishiri, which I was honoured to do. It's very nice to be a part of it. And so I decided to research going back to when Everton were the best club in the country. You think about the late 80s. Everton were the number one club. They won the title on a few occasions and they potentially would have been able to do more as well in Europe.

But I think at the time they had in the last time that they won the old first division,

the highest paid player was on 40 grand a year, i.e. 800 quid a week. Holy, really? Yeah. That's interesting. It's also worth noting, Kieran, advertising has always been part of football. When the British Film Institute uncovered what they think is the earliest moving pictures of a footballer, I think it's from 1904, Burnley v...

Man United absolutely and you understand why it's called Turf Moor because it's in the middle of a moor basically but the entire there's one covered stand and the entire roof is an advert for tobacco so it's always been part of the game isn't it Tom McDavid has a question that we know isn't related to an issue we spoke to last week because he would have sent it in about a year ago

It reads like the backup to a question that we asked last week about clubs having to find money to sack managers, basically. Tom McDavis says, given the amount of managerial changes every season, will clubs tend to budget for having to sack, change a management team mid-season? And you told us about a club who couldn't afford to sack the manager but managed to find a sponsor to stump up the money to enable them to

So will clubs be sitting down and saying, well, we better keep 10% of the money back? They will be aware of the potential cost to them in the contract. Certainly when you employ a manager, there's got to be an element of good faith. Let's say if you are budgeting to sack the manager the day that you employ the manager, then surely that reflects very badly on the board of directors.

My personal view, and also having looked at the data, is that managerial changes don't work 90% of the time. But a bit like a lottery ticket, a bit like gambling on a match outcome, you tend to ignore the 90% of times that you lose and you remember the 10% of the times, which you will see at other clubs when it has worked.

So they won't formally budget, but the finance director, the finance team will be called in if the owner is saying, I want to sack the manager. Then you call in the finance director. How much is it going to cost us? What are the implications for PSR? Do we have the physical cash to make the first payment? Because quite often, some of those payments are on the drip.

So it does start to get complicated. And is there any way of mitigating or reducing the amount of money that we pay to the manager by perhaps delaying? So I think the classic example, I think we mentioned this the other week, is in the case of Manchester United and David Moyes. So when Sir Alex retired, David Moyes was recruited. I think he was on a five or a six year contract

And one of the terms of the contract, I believe to be the case, so I can be wrong, if I'm going to correct me, was that if Manchester United failed to qualify for the Champions League in the first year of the new manager's tenure, they only had to pay him 12 months'

compensation so what the Manchester United board did and David didn't have the greatest of times it wasn't as bad as I think some people made it out to be but Manchester United were just so so familiar with success that any any slight dip was was

amplified, I think. They waited until, I think it was three or four matches from the end of the season when Manchester United had lost a match at the weekend, which meant that they couldn't get into the top four. And then the following day, he was sacked. And that was done purely from a monetary point of view. So it is an issue which clubs are aware of. And they...

they do start to look at the small print of contracts if the tom-tom drums are along the lines of this isn't working in terms of the relationship and we can start looking for an alternative. I like the sound of a tom-tom drum. It's hard to say tom-tom drum, isn't it? I prefer a tom-tom drum. Michael Littleton, I beg your pardon, Michael, I think my subconscious mispronunciation of his name here is that I'm shocked at his temerity

that is disagreeing with you on something, Kieran. So Michael Littleton says, my question surrounds your oft-quoted view that no one makes money at a football club and that owners leave their business bona fides at the door when they enter. While I think this is almost always true in the lower divisions and non-league, is it really always the case in the Premier League?

This is especially true if we look at the value of franchise and not just the cash flow. I would think that the Glazers, John Henry, Stan Kroenke are all well ahead on their investments if we assume all these clubs are worth $3.5 billion or more. You might even argue that the UAE is getting value for money given the rising value of Man City coupled with a soft power benefit. Newcastle also. Therefore, is it fair to say all owners check their business bona fides at the door?

I am not so sure. Now, Kieran, I'm taking umbrage on your behalf here. So I don't mind people questioning me because I speak in sweeping generalization. So I realize that I tend to try and say something that will either make people laugh or include enough information for some of it to be true. But I'm aware it's quite possible that I'm parroting your views wrongly, which is what it's amazing how many people don't realize that when I tell them something, I'm desperately trying to remember what it is you told me to say.

But for Michael to have the sheer chutzpah to take you to task here, I'm not sure I'm happy with this. Well, I've got to agree with Michael in the sense there is money to be made in football.

But it is the exception rather than the rule. So if we take a look at the cases which he has highlighted, we have seen an acceleration in value as far as football clubs are concerned. And that acceleration in value has very much arisen in the last two to three years.

Look at what happened to Mike Ashley. He bought Newcastle United, we think, for around about £140, £150 million. He lent it over £100 million. He sold it for £300 million. So he just about wiped his face. And we've said this on more than one occasion. Mike Ashley ran a sustainable business at Newcastle United.

It was no fun for the fans because the football wasn't particularly good and the facilities were completely ignored. So they were having to observe a not very exciting product in ever-deteriorating circumstances. So that's what happens if you try to run the club on an even keel on a year-by-year basis.

In the case of Manchester United, Manchester United loses money most years in terms of income versus expenses. But the value of the club has gone up. Why? It's because it is a trophy asset. So I was actually talking to...

somebody very senior in football last week. And he said something which did cause me to reflect and think, actually, that's an absolutely nailed on point. The losses made by a club for summer owners. So if you take Ellis Short at Sunderland, Randy Lerner at Aston Villa,

People like Mel Morris at Derby. Mel Morris did plenty of bad things. His intentions, I think, when he joined the club were good. Farhad Moshiri is going to leave Everton half a billion pounds poorer than when he joined it. So there are people that are leaving clubs and they very much had their wallets empty during the experience.

But the person I was talking to, he said, what we should do is say, look, clubs lose money. And 19 out of 20 Premier League clubs lose money on a day-to-day basis. The only ones that are breaking even is West Ham. And we'll be coming back to West Ham a bit later as to why they're making money. But if you can find somebody to take it off your hands and pay you a higher price, because...

of a scarcity issue, and there's only 20 Premier League clubs available at any one point in time, we have a world in which wealth is being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. So if you look, there's a lot of talk about American owners. The American economy is doing really well, and the American economy will continue to do well as we move into a new presidency.

And that money will not be evenly distributed. So we're seeing wealth inequality rise spectacularly over the course of the last decade. Well, so what are you going to do with all this spare money? You buy a football club. And there's still a few more billionaires which are being created all the time, and they want to buy a football club as well. So you sell it to them at a profit. So FSG, fantastic job that they've done financially. We can hold them to task for other issues relating to Liverpool Football Club.

but purely viewed as a business, that's the case. There are plenty of losers. The winners in the main tend to be, and Michael uses this word franchise, Manchester United is a franchise as far as the Glazers are concerned. And that's how they want to operate it. It's the same with FSG and their ownership of Liverpool Football Club. It's the same with Stan Kroenke. So if you are a profit...

or revenue maximizer, you get your money not from outrunning the club, but you get your money from the sale of the club. So, yes, I take on board Michael's comments here. Looking at Manchester City, Manchester City owners bought Manchester City for 140 million quid

They have sold 15% of it and they've got 500 million back. So they're actually in profit as well in terms of the pure buying and selling. It's the bits in between. It's a bit like a racehorse. You might buy a racehorse for, let's say, 10,000 guineas

um you run it and it's and it costs you 30 or 40 000 guineas or 40 000 pounds because you've got your training fees you've got your your stable fees you've got your race entry fees but it wins a couple of races you're still running at a loss but it's now deemed to be a valuable horse in three or four years time and and you put it out to start and you recover your money there so

The bits in between is where you lose the money. It is possible if you buy the right club and if you are a canny operator to make money in terms of the buying and selling points.

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Now, Christmas is coming up, Kieran, and one of the joys of Christmas, of course, is the Christmas cracker joke. Except, of course, for everyone at the table with me and Ed, because somebody will start to read out the first line of the joke, and me and Ed will go, no, hang on, hang on, we'll get there, we'll...

And we'll be there half an hour later trying to guess what the second line of the joke is, which, as you can imagine, drives Ellie up the wall. But it's my pleasure, Kieran, to bring this little joke to you because we've got a question from Ian Hutchins. And Ian says, I have a question about managers and gardening leave, but first a spreadsheet joke for Kieran. And I shall do my best, Kieran, to give this joke the respect. So here's Ian Hutchins' joke.

To an optimist, the glass is half full. To a pessimist, the glass is half empty. To Excel, the glass is 1st of February. Yes. That's a laugh. I've been looking forward to that, Kieran, I have to say. Is that a joke? It's a nerd joke. I don't think it's going to be an opening or closing line in a new relationship.

Could be closing line, I guess. Actually, it could be the opening line, which is also the closing line if you're trying to impress somebody. Yes. Kieran, I'm not taking that from somebody who took his missus to Hartlepool for their first date. That's true.

What is the joke? Could you explain that? Well, a half is one divided by two. And if I was to go and put in, February is the second month. So if I was going to put in a date as a number, I'd go one divided by two, and then it would be 1st of February.

Oh, right, okay. Yeah, yeah. It was that good. Yeah. To be fair, Ian, if you analyse any joke, it tends to fall apart at the end. It's like the old saying, it's like dissecting a frog. You don't learn anything and the frog's dead. So... But Ian Hutchins has his...

That's his question. I like the fact he does the joke and then goes, anyway. Yeah, he's very wise. Moving on.

Christmas jumper, sir? Yes. Anyway, I was wondering if a manager is on gardening leave after being relieved of duties and the management position becomes vacant again, could they be made to take up the position again as they're still employed and under contract? And if this situation did occur and they refused, would they then be in breach of contract and the club entitled to stop paying them? I mean, it's an unlikely scenario, Kieran, because normally a manager would be put on gardening leave once

when a new manager is coming in anyway. But it's an interesting scenario nevertheless. Yes, I think this would be a very rarefied set of circumstances. You sack the manager, you think that manager X is going to come in to replace him, and...

Something happens and manager X says, actually, no, no, I've decided not to go ahead. So could you therefore expect the manager whose contract you've terminated to come back? Conceptually, yes. Practically, no. Because you've got a dressing room of players, some of whom might have said things to the press.

Saying, oh, I'm glad he's gone. Yeah, I've got a chance of... So how are you going to motivate the squad of players when you're effectively... Meaning that the old manager is now the interim. Now, interim managers can work in the sense... We saw with Ruud van Nistelrooy at Manchester United. It's just because it's somebody different. Different drills, different routines in terms of...

technical, tactical issues. But if you've got the old manager come back, there's been no change to technical and tactical issues. And you've still got the issues which originally arose, which resulted in the board of directors deciding to terminate that contract. So conceptually, you are still an employee. But mentally, the manager's checked out.

So would they be willing to work the same hours as before? It's not really a case of take me back and I'll change. It's not like a relationship that is going to work from an employment point of view.

Yeah, to put it in tabloid language, Kieran, in the unlikely event that MasterChef can't find a new presenter, they're not going to be asking Greg to come back, are they? No. Basically. Under any circumstances whatsoever. Ricky Prince has the West Ham question that you trailed earlier. And Ricky Prince...

I mean, Rick, if anyone sounds like a West Ham fan, it's Ricky Prince, isn't it? I think Ricky's a QPR fan. Is he? I think Ricky is one of our regulars, that's for sure. If I got that wrong, Ricky, apologies. There's nothing wrong with being a QPR fan, by the way. There's nothing wrong with being a QPR fan, but for some bizarre reason, West Londoners get really cross. It's a part of London. North London starts at Brixton, as far as I'm concerned, Kieran, but...

But the West Londoners get quite touchy when you confuse them with, I'm not a company. All right, calm down. You're called Ricky Prince. Anyway, Ricky Prince says, on a recent pod, you said West Ham were losing money despite only paying £3 million in rent. Now, Ricky's put that in quotation marks, Kieran, so he's obviously gone back and re-listened. Well done. That got me wondering how much, in your estimation, they should be paying

And as part of that, I also wondered if part of West Ham's negotiation of the rent would have been based on the amortised cost of building their own new stadium and whether that's vastly higher or lower than the quoted 3 million. How much would a club the size of West Ham have spent building a new stadium? And over what period could they have reasonably amortised that cost? The size of West Ham, Kieran, is a difficult question to answer. It's quite hard. I mean, they've got a big stadium, but it's hard to...

actually placed them in terms of all the other London clubs. Most clubs, you can kind of go, yeah, they're small, medium or large. With West Ham, it's very difficult to tell, especially given the fact that they've got that wonderful, probably over-large stadium. Yes, which they fill. They fill every week. And if we compare... For about an hour, yeah.

compare West Ham to Spurs. Spurs moved from a 35,000 capacity stadium to a 60,000 capacity stadium and they filled it. So clearly there was capacities. Football has changed. You and I are old enough to remember

the mid 80s when Chelsea would be playing in front of 10,000. Yeah. When 20,000 was considered a good crowd. Yeah. And so on. So football has changed. West Ham, therefore, have a broader fan base, a fan base coming from different parts of London and Essex and so on. They've also got overseas fans. So they do have the ability to fill that stadium.

So in terms of the actual numbers, yes, West Ham are paying this £3 million, just over £3 million for the stadium. To be fair, they're not getting 365 days of use out of the stadium. It is restricted to, I think it's around about 30 days. If we take a look at the position of Spurs, Spurs are...

And depreciating, depreciating, depreciating what you do to a stadium is the same as amortization as a football player. And that's costing Spurs 72 million a year. So that's compared to the 3 million rent. And often I will say to people that depreciation is quasi-rent. So it's costing Spurs a hell of a lot more. On top of that, Spurs are paying 26 million pounds interest because they had to borrow the money to build the stadium.

So you add those two costs together and we're almost at £100 million a year in terms of costs, which I think you can directly or indirectly link to the creation of the stadium. Are Spurs getting a raw deal? Well, this is where I think Spurs are super smart. What Spurs have managed to do is to treble the amount of money that they're generating through ticket sales. And if you compare the...

average revenue per fan per match Spurs are getting a good two two and a half times the amount of money because it's I don't want to upset West Ham fans Spurs have got a football ground West Ham haven't you know we've been there as away fans I know West Ham fans and they say well we have to accept it but you know we know it's an athletics track which has been carved out to a football pitch in the middle and

And that affects the value of the product. You are that much further away. It's not really designed for football as such. And therefore, West Ham can't extract as much money from the fans. The other thing that Spurs have managed to do is they said,

The advantage of owning it is that we can use it 365 days a year. So they've now signed a deal with the local council. Is it Haringey Council? Yeah. So they've now signed a deal with the local council, which has given them 30 non-football days a year where they can effectively have the club run.

at capacity they have the stadium at capacity which is which is great for you know for all the local businesses you know you just you've now got 60 potentially days where you can be earning money it's it's

really good in terms of generating interest. It's certainly from a commercial point of view, again, Spurs have trebled the amount of money they're making from commercial income. So the pluses for Spurs outweigh the minuses. But I think a lot of credit has to go towards the club in the sense that for

From a business point of view, and I have to stress this because from a fan point of view, the fans are being rinsed. And we've had those discussions ourselves with regards to the marginalisation of senior fans, the ever-increasing cost of tickets and so on. But pure business, if it's still selling out, then economics says that Spurs have done a really good job. Mm.

I have to say, when I did that walk from every London football club, it was quite sad arriving at West Ham. I mean, I used to love Upton Park, the bowling ground. But apart from a couple of stats, you just got no say. Every other club grounds you turned up at, except Millwall, the padlocks were on at Millwall, because they obviously didn't get the email.

but every other club you turn up at, you, you, you get a sense. He's got a different identity. You know where you are and there are people floating around. There are flans. There's always whatever club you go to, whatever time of day, there are fans floating around and at West Ham you turn up and it does, it just doesn't feel like West Ham United. But, um, that,

That figure you spoke of, £72 million, the Spurs depreciation figure, I think you said? Yeah, yeah. How has that figure arrived at? Is that a common ratio or equation that is used? Yeah. Spurs are saying that the grounds will effectively, from an economics point of view, it's going to last them for 50 years.

Which is reasonable. If you take a look at most real estate assets, you'd normally be depreciating over 25, 33, 40, 50 years. So yeah, that's all good. Right, I see. So it's the amount of money they paid or they borrowed for the stadium divided by...

That's right. So, yeah, stadium and the training facility is about 1.5, Bill. Yeah, it strikes me that I'm the only person involved with this pod and I include the listeners there who has to...

clarify what depreciation means and how the figure comes about. No, no, no. Lots of people aren't familiar with it. John Cowley has our next question. And John says, do the long seven years plus contracts that Chelsea have dished out have any wage escalation clauses? Usually players who improve are granted new deals a couple of years before their contracts expire. But this is not as likely to happen with a long-term deal. Or if it does, it's many years away. It's a cracking question, I think, from John, because it's something...

that didn't occur to me. Do these ultra-long contracts have an automatic increase in them? It is. Certainly, Chelsea have been briefing journalists along the lines of, yes, we've recruited a lot of players. Yes, they're all on long-term contracts, but...

The figure that Chelsea have been putting out to journalists, that we're only paying them £60,000 a week, which given that Chelsea's average wage, when I last did the calculations, was somewhere in the region of £150,000, £160,000. If that has been the case, then there will be a substantial reduction in the wage bill. I, however, am sceptical about...

the message that's coming out from the club. If we take, for example, the signing of Kai Shado, Brighton had accepted a £105 million offer from Liverpool. I know how much Liverpool pay. I know how much the Liverpool sort of benchmark wages are. And I can assure you it's far higher than £60,000 a week. And also, if Brighton could have turned around to him and said, we'll pay you 80, and they'd have been able to afford it. So...

I'm not convinced in the case of that particular transfer. What we are, however, seeing in terms of Chelsea is that if they sign a player on one of these long-term contracts, they turn around to the player 12 months later and say, we're going to make the contract even longer, and now we're going to factor in a huge pay rise.

So in the case of Cole Palmer, let's say that he did come in on 60 grand. Because remember, Cole Palmer, he paid a handful of games for Manchester City. So yes, it was a significant fee. It was a £40 million fee in order to sign him. But £60,000 a week for a player who is unproven is still extremely, extremely good money. Yeah.

He's been brilliant. There's no doubt about that. Having been on the receiving end of four goals at Stamford Bridge, and he could have got seven.

He is a fantastic player. So what they've done is that 12 months later, they say, yeah, okay, we acknowledge just how good you are. And they've done the same with Nicholas Jackson. But again, they've signed now a contract which is going to take them through until I think it's 2033. So they've now got sort of a nine-year contract where they used to have an eight-year contract.

And the wages have gone from a basic of 60 to a basic of probably double that, two and a half times that or so on. So there will be some clauses embedded into contracts for those players who have come to Chelsea on quite decent fees where they've not yet managed to prove themselves that they're having to slum it on 60 grand a week.

Yeah, we've only got two questions left, Kieran, but they're not quick answers. So this pod isn't going anywhere in the next 10 minutes or so. The first one comes from Tom McCormick. Tom says, I've heard you speak a few times about which clubs have arguably the most potential for improvement given their catchment area, Plymouth Argyle, for example. However, being the cynical pessimist I am,

That got me wondering which club has got the hardest deal. For example, a club like Middlesbrough has multiple big clubs fairly nearby and certainly near enough to be competing for local talent and not the most affluent catchment area. Similarly, Tranmere have to compete with two giant clubs and must be among the hardest clubs to run. So which club do you think has the toughest challenge in terms of potential for improvement? I think this is an absolute cracker from Tom. Yeah. I mean,

I don't think the affluence of a catchment area is a discriminator. Right. Because if we look at the history of football, professional football, and you wrote this in your first book, came from the factories of the North. Yeah. And it was very much a case of the pubs are closed on a Saturday afternoon and

People used to work on a Saturday morning. What are they going to do? So there was, and I'm not being misogynist in any way, shape or form, it used to be the vast majority of the workforce was men in terms of factory labour. Their families didn't want them at home because they would just come home. So therefore, the factory owners say, look, we've just paid them. They can't spend the money in the pubs.

Let's relieve them of some of their wages by giving them a form of entertainment in the form of football. So it is very much sort of a sport where its roots have come from non-affluence. But looking at individual clubs, my observation is that if we take a look at the concentration of football clubs, it's very much based, first of all,

in the industrial parts of the country. You look at the number of clubs that are in the Northwest in a relatively small area. Also, Tom made reference to the Northeast as well. Those shipbuilding, mining, those type of activities were part of the reason why we had the concentration of people. That's what towns were, concentration of people in individual industries.

So the Northwest and London were the two areas I concluded upon. I would say Leighton Orient are one because they are a club that

in an area of London where there is competition. You know, Wimbledon, AFC Wimbledon is slightly different. They've got a bit of a mini monopoly around their area to a slightly greater extent. So I think Leighton Orient would be one club where they really do have to work that much harder. Looking at the North West,

In terms of a club I would say probably outperformed, I would say Burnley because Burnley, it's not that far away from Manchester or Liverpool. So you've got the lights and the attractions of those. It's a relatively small town and itself, Burnley does have the issues of there are,

you've got Preston not too far away, you've got Accrington, you've got Blackburn, you know, individual towns, which again, not big in terms of population. But if you're brought up in Blackburn, there's no way you're going to be supporting Burnley. So it is very, it is very localised. So those would be sort of the main ones I'd be looking at. And also, you know, to be fair, Accrington have got exactly the same problem, that they're surrounded by, you know, first of all, kids want, you know,

fans of Manchester United and Liverpool and Manchester City, Everton, that's going to be quite natural if you've been brought up in Accrington. Andy Holt himself admits that he's a Manchester United fan. Yeah, yeah. And then you've got the medium-sized clubs in terms of their capacity and where they are in the football pyramid. So I think those would be my main conclusions.

Brian Moore of blessed memory who hosted the big match which is the regional football show for London and the southeast he always had a theory that it was almost impossible for London clubs to win the league because there were too many London clubs in division one and therefore too many derbies they were too intense and I think they won it 61 71 89 so it's only like three times in three decades essentially and

and he used to talk about how difficult it was for the smaller clubs to compete. And Orient, you can virtually see the West Ham Stadium from Orient, and it's not that far from Spurs. It's probably the way Orient fans like it. But Brentford, for example, have shown that you can be a smaller London club. I mean, 20 years ago, no one would predict that Brentford would be an established Premier League club. So it's not impossible for a club the size of Orient to...

It's unlikely. Wimbledon were a Division One Premier League side as well, and they were tiny. So it is possible for London clubs to sort of break free and break into the monopoly, if you like, isn't it? It is. I think very much you have to be different. It's a bit like...

We were talking to people at the FSA Awards about the podcast and the world of podcast is becoming increasingly competitive. And in order to...

In order to exist, you've either got to be big or you've got to be niche. And we've seen, whilst we joke about it, there's a reason why people will, if you read the Guardian, the Guardian Football Weekly is an absolutely fantastic listen. You know exactly the type of conversations that are going to be taking place. If you're a fan of Manchester United or some of the bigger clubs, the rest is football and the overlap. You can absolutely understand because football

you're effectively listening into a private conversation between Roy Keane and Jamie Carragher. And it's fascinating, the same with Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer. So you can understand why it happens. And I think it's a bit precious for us to say our industry, the podcast industry, but certainly as far as podcasts are concerned, we have gone down the niche route. And if you take a look at the original Wimbledon podcast,

They got to where they were by being different, by having a particular type of football. If you take a look at Brentford, it comes down to Matthew Benham and his decision to go down the mummy ball route and to target individual markets, which nobody else had considered. And again, fair play to him for doing that. Having spent time in rooms with them 20 years ago, if you told me that any conversation between Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer would be considered fascinating...

I would have suggested that you were probably in need of a drink. But isn't it strange how times change? I mean, Alan Shearer has a demeanour of a man who's also decided he might be resigning. He's just very interesting when he's not on the BBC. And he's better on the BBC than he used to be. But when you hear him with Lineker and Mika, some of those things that him, Lineker and Mika Richards did to match the day things were brilliant, hilarious, really good, really good conversations.

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Paul Doddimead has our last question, Kieran, and it's,

It's almost an existential one in a way. Paul Doddimeade says, what is the logic of current financial fair play rules? How does a target that focuses on losses and putting a cap on them benefit the industry as a whole? Shouldn't clubs be lobbying the governing bodies to amend FFP so they drive clubs to pursue consistent profitability? As the rules stand, they lack a level playing field. Not every owner can subsidise 90 million of losses financially.

through share purchases so it favors the clubs with the richer owners wouldn't consistently profitable clubs lead to better stadiums fan experiences and greater investment in player training facilities the women's game etc i'm going to take a guess kieran that the problem with paul's suggestion and i there's merit in it is the difficulty of pursuing consistent profitability

Yes, or profitability full stop. That's a big enough challenge. I think Paul raises a very relevant point. I've been quizzed on various panels. I had to go and sit in front of MPs and things like that on parliamentary groups and get asked a myriad of questions.

on the subject of profitability, sustainability, financial fair play, and so on. And my standard answer is, what do you want? So we have this, I think, calling it financial fair play, it back in the day,

instantly got fans thinking about their consideration of fairness. And one of the big misnomers is that fairness means equivalence. So at the start of each season, there's a chance that

each of the 20 clubs in the premier league have a chance of winning it and again if we go back to to our history with football care you know you and i are both old enough to remember derby county everton nottingham forest black um all winning the the old first division legion as well um

And that was seen as perfectly normal. And Ipswich being runners up and other clubs being running it up. Whereas today, if you are, yeah, if I go back to Brighton two years ago, we got really patronised. We finished sixth. You know, everybody said, oh, look, aren't you the teacher's pet? You got to being sixth. Yeah, we weren't challenging for anything.

And that was supposed to be a great achievement. And there is this new scenario where nobody is quite sure what financial fair play is for. My personal view is that it is anti-competitive. And I know that that's a view which is shared by our very good friend of the show, Nick DeMarco, in the sense that

that is it possible for a club to replicate the disruption that was caused by Roman Abramovich and then Sheikh Mansour coming into the game in 2005 and 2008 or 2009 respectively? No, it's not.

If you have a set of rules which are profit-based and effectively break-even based, what it means is that any club which has an existing financial advantage will continue to maintain that financial advantage with the rules in their present state. And that is a restriction on competitive balance. Why...

Paul raises the issue of why is nothing changing? Because the people in charge don't want it to change. It's the same, and I'm not getting on a political stope up here. It's the same as why are the rich continuing to get richer that much faster than the non-rich? Well, it's because they want and it's because they've got the vehicles and they've got the levers to allow that to be the case. It's exactly the same in football. And if I was FSG or the Glazers,

I wouldn't want it to change. I perfectly understand their position. I just think there's times you be a bit more generous in terms of looking after the broader issues of football. At the same time, they say we pay our taxes in terms of VA, pay our taxes via PAYE and national insurance and so on. So

It doesn't happen in any other industry where there's effectively part of it being subsidized by elsewhere. And isn't this a broader issue?

the lack of playing fields for kids and adults to get exercise and play football is not down to Manchester United or the Glazers or FSG. It's down to central and local government decisions being made. When Paul says, shouldn't clubs be lobbying the governing bodies to amend FFP so they drive clubs to pursue consistent profitability?

Is there a way to amend FFP so you drive clubs to pursue profitability? All that you need is 14 votes. That's all that it will take. But there is not a desire for that to be the case. And I said I can see football through the eyes of FSG and the Glazers. They'd probably be more than happy to do that because they're in a position where they can do that and be less impacted. What if you...

don't own a football club with the aim of making money.

And you want to see your club make progress and you're willing to subsidize the losses. If I'm interested in fine art and I want to go and buy some paintings, they're going to cost me an absolute fortune and I'm going to spend my money doing so. Nobody says, well, you're a billionaire, you're a multimillionaire, you shouldn't be spending your money on that. So why should we say to rich individuals, and I appreciate here that

um that not every owner can subsidize 90 million pounds worth of losses well in which case they don't but what what will happen is that they will be replaced by somebody who is willing to um subsidize the clubs and what we are seeing of course is that the premier league has become the billionaires club i think of the of the 20 ownership or ownership groups within the premier league i think 19 of them are in the billionaire category and you

You know, we've seen Burnley drop into the championship. We've seen Norwich City burn drop into the championship where their owners by by any other standard of wealth would be considered to be very wealthy. What we've seen is is a is a ratcheting up of the level of wealth required in order to to run a club in the Premier League.

But if FFP were to change, so the emphasis was on profit rather than loss, Kieran, this is what I don't understand. I mean, it takes a long time to turn around an ailing football club and maybe to get into profit. So would you be talking about punishing clubs then that weren't turning over a profit every year for whatever circumstances? Would that be the way it works? Yeah. If we go back to 2013...

um EFL owners voted to have an FFP loss over a period of three years which I think was something like three million pounds so yeah okay it wasn't okay it wasn't breaking but if you know compared to what the losses we are seeing and then within 12 months they voted to revise that to 39 million pounds it's the will of the owners um

If I'm a Premier League owner and I can't lose any money and I'm competing against clubs in Europe which are allowed to lose money and I want to be successful in Europe, I go, hold on, Real Madrid can lose so much. I can't. I've got a competitive disadvantage. And

We do have – it's a bit like where the Atlantic Ocean reaches the Pacific. You've got two different streams of thought coming together. The owners of Manchester City and Chelsea under Abramovich, and also I'd say to a certain degree our clubs. Steve Parrish did not buy Crystal Palace to make money. It was the same with Tony Bloom. They did it because they were fans. So how do you measure success if you are a –

historic fan who is now the owner of a football club you don't measure it in financial terms so therefore why should you be dictated to running your club in terms of making money it doesn't apply you know in formula one formula one teams lose money again going back to racehorse owners i know racehorse owners they they're all skint well not skint but they're all losing money from it but they're having some fun yeah yeah

I like the way when you mentioned the Atlantic and the Pacific, you provided your own underwater sound effect there, Kim, as well. Yes, sorry about that. It's like being in the inside of a Captain Nemo submarine. It's very good. Thank you to everyone who's donated to the pod via our Patreon page.

If you'd like to make a small monthly contribution to the pod as well, it would be very kind of you. It will get you access to our chat community and our regular quizzes. Christmas is coming up, and you can do that by going to patreon.com slash priceoffootball. If you've got a question you'd like answered on the show, email us at questions at priceoffootball.com. Don't forget, you can follow us on Twitter, X, and you can find us on our YouTube channel. And if you'd like to buy our book, which is out now in paperback, you can find details on our website, priceoffootball.com. We'll be back on Thursday.

with our news pod. And in the meantime, I shall hand you over to Mr. Kieran McGuire for his customary farewell. Well, thank you, as always, for everybody for getting in touch and all the kind words. Yes, the quiz is taking place next Monday, Monday the 16th of – is Monday the 16th, I think? It is. But certainly next Monday. And we are looking forward to it, and we are banging our heads together trying to come up with some questions. So it will be sort of a multiple-choice quiz.

Kevin will be your host of the quiz with occasional questions perhaps asked by, I presume Ali's said two opes and one of them's Bob and one of them's none when it comes to her asking a question or have you not broached the subject yet? It's very much down to her availability.

Right, okay. But she gave the impression that she would be desperately scrabbling around to find something to be available for. She's not one to hog the camera or the line, actually. It's not about the quiz, is it, Kieran? No, it's not. It's really not about... It's one of those few occasions where the taking part is much more fun than the actual...

answer the question let's face it most of our listeners are so bright there's very few of them don't get a lot of them although some of them get quite competitive but yes we're all looking forward to that and I will try and persuade Ellie to do something I'll try I've got more chance of getting a cat to do one than getting my son to do one but you never know

Yes, so if you want to support the show and you fancy coming on for the quiz, even if you just want to sign up with Patreon for a month, I know that's gaming the system, but you're more than welcome. And you can see us on a sort of face-to-face basis. It's always a good, fun hour, hour and a half. We enjoy it and the other listeners, and we get a chance to have a chat with some of you who have been so supportive of the show over the years. If you want to support the show in another way, however...

Just give us a review. Go to Spotify, go to your podcast app, whatever it happens to be, and stick down a few words. That helps us in terms of algorithms. We don't know how. Kevin and I, we cheerfully admit we are technological dinosaurs when it comes to things like that. But you can write whatever you want.

So you could even say you would rather have the show presented by Susie Sue and Anne Widdicombe. And I think that would be quite a feisty one. Susie Sue is without doubt the scariest woman I've ever met in my life.

Well, you're an accountant, Kieran, so you're scared of most women, to be perfectly honest. That's true, that's true, yes. If Susie Sue were doing it, then Ali would definitely do it because she loves the banshee, Susie Sue. Oh, I might put that... I can't. No, she would turn up to cause trouble with Ann Widdicombe as well.

I can give away a little secret. If you are taking part in the quiz, the answer to one of the questions will definitely be Max Rostan and bloody Barry Glendinning. Bye, everybody. Bye.

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