Word: clubness
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...today's Premiership highflyers is the fate of Leeds United, once among them. The northern English powerhouse overstretched its credit lines in order to sign players that would keep it in contention for English and European honors, and then disaster struck as a run of disastrous form saw the club miss out on Champion's League qualification. The resulting loss of projected revenues forced an emergency sell-off of star players, but that failed to avert a financial collapse, and the once mighty Leeds United now languishes in England's third-tier league. Just as wealth and success...
...carefully regulated trades and salary caps. The right to contract players can be bought and sold. And for a match-winner like Ronaldo, the driving force of a United team that finished last season as champions of both England and Europe, it's a seller's market. The Manchester club have the Portuguese star on contract for four more years (after which, if he's not sold, he becomes a free agent) at a weekly wage of $240,000. Real Madrid wants to pay $120 million (of which Ronaldo would keep $12 million, the rest going into the coffers...
...Commercial income such as sponsorships and worldwide sales of replica shirts and other branded merchandise: a couple of years ago, Real Madrid surpassed the earnings of Manchester United, in part because the Spanish club earned 42% of its revenues from commercial income, compared with Manchester United's 27% from the same source. The drive to raise commercial revenues has prompted Real Madrid to seek celebrity stars such as David Beckham (and now Ronaldo), knowing that their presence on the team can sell hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of replica shirts...
...Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who last year acquired Manchester City. Chelsea, with its 42,000-seat stadium, might be considered an underperforming asset from a strictly business point of view; its revenues in the years since Abramovich took over are far lower than what he has invested. But owning the club may be less a business venture than a vanity investment for the Russian billionaire...
Staying within reach of the top teams requires spending more money each season to keep pace with their efforts to concentrate the world's best talent in their team. And if a club is unable to attract a prestige investor, it becomes essential to expand revenue - most importantly by increasing stadium capacity. Arsenal two years ago moved from the 38,000-seat Highbury to the 60,000-capacity Emirates Stadium, which helped the club double its annual revenues to $180 million. The problem, of course, is that building a new stadium takes massive capital investment, and Arsenal recently admitted that...