New face of game as clubs make profit without fans

THE Premier League’s broadcast deal is so great that half the clubs would have made a pre-tax profit in the 2016-’17 season even if they had played in empty grounds.

BBC research has shown just how much the record £8.3billion of TV revenue has boosted the coffers of top-f light teams.

So great are the figures that 10 clubs in the 2016-’17 campaign – the first benefiting from the current broadcast deal – would have recorded pre-tax profits even with match-day incomes stripped away.

Furthermore, match-day income represented less than 20p in every £1 that 18 Premier League clubs earned during that campaign.

Dr Rob Wilson, a sport finance specialist at Sheffield Hallam University, told BBC Sport: “That is when the focus really went towards generating TV money rather than match-day ticket receipts. The revenue structures of those clubs are there to stay.

REVENUE

“When you get a £120m payout from the Premier League for kicking a ball around, you can play in an empty stadium. From a revenue generation perspective, clubs do not rely anymore on match-day ticket income.”

Bournemouth, with the smallest ground capacity in the Premier League of just 11,450 and who intend to build a bigger stadium, had a turnover of almost £136.5m in 2016-’17, with £5.2m from tickets. That is less than 4p in every £1 of its income for the season.

For all that, Football Supporters’ Federation chairman Malcolm Clarke believes that fans still have a key role to play: “On one level they don’t need the fans because they have got so much money, but how boring would it be to watch a game in an empty stadium?”