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Champions League finals: dance of millions…

May 19th, 2008 | By: Jan | 4 Comments »

The Richest Clubs of the World (sorry it’s in Dutch).

Before Roman Abramovich boarded his private jet to go to Moscow for the CL finals he quickly bought two paintings for his London home. The Chelsea owner paid 75 Mio euros for the Francis Bacon and Freud doodles. When Roman wants something, he buys it.

Whether it’s sail boats, castles, football players or art. There’s only one souvenir out of his reach: the Champions League Cup. He was never closer to it then now.

The finals seem to belong in Moscow. The city of the new rich. Exorbitant cars, posh furs and many young millionaires. In the 1990s, Abramovich built his empire here, after the state owned Russian companies were let loose on the free market.

For years, Man United was the club with the image of being cash-loaded. It was the first club to leverage from it’s success in marketing dollars. Today, Chelsea is the money-club. He invested 700 million euros in his little toy and those investments returned him two EPL titles

The Daily Mail yesterday told the story of Alan Hudson, the playmaker of the Blues in the 1970s. The former star is so down on his luck that he needed to sell his Europa Cup II winners medal. The club icon made 125 pound per week in the 70s. Lampard makes that per quarter now.

But, it’s about football in Moscow. Man United’s highly payed superstar are nervous. Some of them won’t start. It could well be that new signing Nani starts on the bench and even Carlos Tevez isn’t too sure of his spot. “That’s our big problem. We have so many great players, I will have to disappoint some of them. I will tell them personally, like I always do,” said Sir Alex Ferguson.

The pressure at Chelsea is on Avram Grant. The manager can supply great statistics but hasn’t won anything yet. Chelsea missed one point to win the title and they also lost in the League cup final. This could be a year of “almost”.

It remains weird though, that a manager who fought for the title till the last day and reached the CL finals is under pressure, but when Roman wants something, he really wants something….

Tags: Abramovich, CL and UEFA, Ferguson, Grant, Oranje, van der Sar

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Comments

By ricardoc | May 20th, 2008 at 2:21 am

Well, really you’re posting so much information on unrelated topics that i don’t really know what your point is. Is it where the money earned by the clubs comes from, the Champions League final or the transfers of the two clubs. What is your point?

What i find really interesting is the fact that the italian clubs make so little money out of tickets. They seem to depend very heavily on tv rights. Which is in turn interesting since they don’t capitalize on that since marketing contributes so little (in comparison to Spain and England) to their accounts.
I also found it astonishing to see that Liverpool earns so little from tickets when compared to the other three big english clubs. How the heck is that possible?
One thing i don’t get though is in category falls the money earned from sportive success? In which category do the earnings from the CL, for instance, fall?
And it would be interesting to see whether there really is a big gap after the top 10-15 like Kevin Keegan claims.

Posted from France

By Jan | May 20th, 2008 at 2:34 am

Hi Ricardoc, thanks for your comments. I think the article – taken from http://www.ad.nl, I tend to forget to source the stuff, I’m sorry – wants to show how Chelsea has taken the place of ManUnited as “number one money-club” or something… Anyway…

Good point on the prize money. It doesn’t seem to fit in any of the three, so where does it go? Good point.

The Liverpool ticket sales question… I can’t answer that.

The Keegan remark is interesting taken into account that the number last in the EPL still gets more TV-money than, say, Ajax or PSV

Posted from Australia

By goose | May 20th, 2008 at 6:34 am

@Ricardo; thats why Liverpool want to built a new stadium, Anfield is too small

Posted from Netherlands

By Finnster01 | May 20th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

Let me explain the ticket situation. Goose is, as most of the time, spot on. It has everything to do with stadium size.

This year, Man U tops the average attendance with 75000 for each game. Number 2 is Arsenal with 60000. Number three is Newcastle with 50000. Then there is Liverpool, Sunderland(!), and Chelsea with 43000(+/-) and change.

Now, lets assume that an average ticket to a United match costs 50 pounds (not Euros, that exercise is left for the reader). With 19 home games (they all sell out) that gives them 14.25 million pounds sterling extra compared to number two, Arsenal. Forget about the rest (another exercise for the reader).

Besides the obvious big money in TV rights and so on, there is just no way in hell little teams like Fulham (Craven Cottage seats 25000) will EVER catch up with the big four. This is also why ‘pool is building a new stadium, as it makes sense cause they will fill it.

A 14.25 million pounds extra a year will let you sign a world class player. And that is ignoring shirt and merchandise sales.

Posted from United States