The Secret Footballer: What Goes on Tour by The Secret Footballer

Author:The Secret Footballer [Footballer, The Secret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bantam Press

PART FIVE

Welcome to Las Vegas

11

SO YOU HAVE made it. Well done. Your face is on football stickers and young men who are selling very expensive cars want to shake your hand and pretend to be your best friend.

It all happens so fast that even if it happens, as it did to me, a little later in life, you still feel as if somebody has put a hood over your head, bundled you into a limo and dumped you into some world with no rules and no limits.

You know those people who say that if they won the lottery, they wouldn’t change a thing? They’d still go and work in the factory and live on the terrace and sup watery ale in the local? Miserable bastards should be barred from even playing the lottery.

What is the point in handing over a huge fun-size cheque to somebody who thinks that their regular life is as much fun as they can handle?

I can trace my career, the financial side of it (and therefore the football side too), through the holidays we took and the things we bought. It’s a line that runs parallel to the growth of the Premier League. From the days when everybody went to Marbella and footballers just lorded it over those who had been saving all year to get there, to the world of private villas in Miami or Dubai where the entire point is to keep the rest of the world out. That’s one way of telling the financial life story of the Premier League.

When Deloitte brought out their report for the 2015/16 season, the first time that Premier League wages had passed the £2 billion mark, they topped the piece with one incredible statistic. ‘By half-time of the second Premier League game that is televised domestically in 2016/17, more broadcast revenue will have been generated than by all the First Division matches combined 25 years ago.’

That is the context of this book. The Premier League is one gigantic, out-of-control money machine. It defies all laws of economics. The same product just keeps on getting more and more valuable. Last season, when Spurs lost to Newcastle on the last day of the season, they dropped from second place to third. That single place cost £1,236,083. Four years previously, the drop would have cost just £755,062.

As no Spurs fan will need reminding, Arsenal stole that second-place slot. They were the biggest Premier League earners for the season, having topped up their second-place reward of £23.7 million by appearing on TV some twenty-seven times, bringing them income of £101 million before tickets (the most expensive seats in the league), sponsors, merchandise, exhibition games and so on. If they repeat the trick precisely and come second in 2016/17 and appear on television the same number of times, they will get a cheque for £152 million.

That is the extent of the madness. If players get a huge cut of the profits, that is because players put bums on seats and satellite dishes on gable ends.

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