SPORT GETS SERIOUS WITH MAJOR MONEY DEALS
Success on the pitch or field this year was often overshadowed by the size of earnings taken and rights sold. James Goyder reports
Never has the correlation between sporting success and wealth been more apparent than in 2017 – and nowhere more apparent than in English top-tier football.
“We fully expect that the Premier League’s new three-year broadcast rights deal will see a return to record levels of profitability in the 2016/17 season,” Dan Jones, partner and head of the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said in a recent report.
Adam Bull, a senior consultant in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said: “We have already seen to some extent the impact of the current broadcast rights deal, with clubs’ combined transfer expenditure over the course of the 2016/17 season reaching almost £1.4 billion (Dh6.86bn) – eclipsing the previous record set in 2015/16 by one-third and far exceeding any other league in world football.”
This year, European football clubs have also embarked upon record breaking spending sprees, with Paris Saint Germain splashing out an incredible €222 million (Dh960.1m) to secure Neymar from Barcelona this summer.
The French Ligue 1 leaders will pay the Brazilian an annual salary of €36.8m.
But football is not the only sport reaping rich rewards – and Neymar was not the highest paid athlete on the planet this year; that accolade goes to the boxer Floyd Mayweather, whose disclosed purse for fighting Conor McGregor in Las Vegas in August was US$100m.
Mayweather would have earned considerably more once his cut of the pay per view (PPV) revenue came in. Very few of the key metrics from that fight have been publicly disclosed, but it is believed to have generated 4 million to 5 million domestic PPV buys and around US$500m in revenue. An estimated 3 million people also watched that fight on illegal streams without buying the official PPV.
This year the global sports market is expected to generate revenue of around US$91bn, according to Statista, almost double the $46.5bn generated in 2005.
Revenue from the sports merchandising market in North America alone, meanwhile, is expected to reach $14.2bn.
The year also saw a distinct shift in the way viewers consume sport, with Amazon in April paying $50m for the rights to show Thursday night US National Football League (NFL) games, while Facebook paid Fox an undisclosed sum to stream several UEFA Champions League football matches this auturmn.
This is a trend that looks set to continue in 2018.
“Politically, socially and technologically, the world is in the midst of one of the most disruptive periods in living memory – this disruption is affecting where investment in sports is coming from, how sports content is created and distributed, and changing the dynamics of relationships between rights holders, sponsors and fans,” says a report by the researcher Nielsen.
Earlier this month Verizon, a wireless carrier that owns AOL and Yahoo, agreed to pay the NFL a
figure of around $2.5bn to broadcast matches live on its various platforms.
Unlike the previous deal, which was for mobile only, this allows the telecommunications conglomerate to provide the streaming service to tablet and laptop users.
“With global sponsorship spend forecast to reach over $62bn in 2017 and global media rights spend expected to hit $45bn, the top-line metrics remain positive,” Nielsen said.
“But this is a period of rapid change for sports – from China’s remarkable investments at home and abroad to new technologies
such as virtual reality, the explosion in direct-to-consumer content to shifts in audience habits and consumption.”
But for sportsmen and women, too, it has been a year of change – and for some, such as the tennis player Roger Federer, that has been realised in his bank account.
His cumulative career prize money reached the $110m mark last month, surpassing a record previously held by the US golfer Tiger Woods. After missing much of 2016 due to injury, the Swiss star reclaimed his status as the highest-earning player in tennis, earning US$11.7m in prize money alone in 2017. Still, Federer did not have as lucrative a year as Justin Thomas; the American golfer earned $19.9m for his efforts on the PGA tour.
But when it comes to remuneration both were left casting enviously glances at the world’s top footballers, with both Lionel Messi and Neymar signing lucrative contracts. PSG took advantage of a release clause to sign Neymar from Barcelona. The Spanish club could not countenance a similar situation arising with Messi and managed to tie the Argentinian down in the summer to a new deal reportedly worth $667,000 a week.
The contract will run until 2021 and any club wishing to buy him out of it will have to come up with an improbable sounding $700m.
In September, the National Basketball Association (NBA) star Russell Westbrook signed a five-year contract extension worth $205m to stay with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It makes the 2017 Most Valuable Player (MVP) the highest earner in the history of the NBA. ESPN
calculated that he would earn $569,512 per game in the final year of the deal.
The women’s tennis stalwart Serena Williams has not competed since January due to pregnancy. But she remains the highest paid female athlete on the planet and earned $27m in prize money between June 2016 and June 2017, despite missing nearly half a year’s worth of competitions and tournaments.
Meanwhile, the International Cricket Confederation (ICC) Women’s World Cup final match between India and England held on July 23 at Lord’s in London clocked 19.53 million impressions on television in India. This set a new record, making it the most watched women’s sporting event in the country’s history.
India also played host to the Under 17 Fifa World Cup, a small but significant moment given the country’s potential as a footballing destination. However, it is a land where cricket remains king, and the local broadcast of this year’s Indian Premier League final garnered 39.4 million impressions alone.
In the US it has been a difficult year for the NFL. There is increased scrutiny of the physical risk involved in participating in such a high-impact sport, while the players have been sucked into an improbable-sounding war of words with the US president over whether or not they should stand for the national anthem.
Still, the 2017 Super Bowl in February brought in around $385m in advertising dollars.
About 113 million people watched the New England Patriots come from behind to beat the Atlanta Falcons, while consumer spending in the US related to the event reportedly topped $14bn.
Elsewhere, the Chinese government’s announcement in August that it would be limiting overseas investment sent shock waves through the sporting world. In recent years, investors from the country have purchased controlling stakes in some of Europe’s biggest football clubs, including AC Milan, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid.
On the plus side, at least for sportswear manufacturers, China will also be hosting the 2022 Winter Olympic Games and “its government is aiming to establish a $13bn sports industry by 2025, in addition to investments to promote fitness across the country”, according to World Trademark Review (WTR).
“The goal is to boost domestic consumption in this new economy,” said the market analyst. “This creates opportunities for western sports brands, but also the spectre of increased competition for domestic spend. With the sector a core focus of the Chinese government – in tandem with the ‘Made In China 2025’ initiative – there will likely be a significant focus on domestic brand creation and growth.
“Good news for those looking to expand their Chinese company client base, but clear competition for international companies in the sports sector eyeing Chinese expansion,” WTR said.
But while China limits outflows abroad, money from Asia continues to pour into elite overseas leagues.
In September, Rakuten agreed a $20m-a-season sponsorship deal with the American professional basketball team based in Oakland, California, the Golden State Warriors, a figure which pales in comparison to the $59m a year the Japanese e-commerce company will be paying Barcelona in a partnership that commenced in July.
There were no major international football tournaments this year.
The 2014 World Cup generated $4.8bn in revenue and 2017 saw a series of allegations surrounding this competition and its organisers emerge in a US courtroom. Some 23 people have already pleaded guilty to financial corruption, and the case is ongoing.
This year has also seen serious questions arise over the viability of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, despite the reported $500m a week that is being spent on infrastructure.
Mounting criticism of the decision to award the most lucrative tournament in sport to the country intensified when neighbouring countries and others broke off diplomatic ties in June. Earlier this year, Fifa announced plans to increase the number of participating countries in the World Cup to 48.
The absence of teams including Italy and the US, neither of whom qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, will be felt keenly. The expansion for the 2026 tournament should ensure that the traditional powerhouses of world football always qualify, as well as propel the tournament’s total revenue towards the $6bn mark.
The likes of Italy, Chile and the US might all have missed out, but the Middle East will be well represented in Russia. Iran and Saudi Arabia have both secured qualification for the 2018 World Cup.
Fifa aims to raise $5.66bn in revenue in the three-year period leading up to next year’s event.
A total of $400m in prize money will be divided between participating teams, but with several sponsorship slots still unfilled, it will be interesting to see whether the mostwatched sporting event on earth can retain its commercial appeal amid a pervasive wreak of scandal.
Whatever happens, there is little doubt that sport’s importance as a global and personal cash-cow is only likley to increase.
The highest paid athlete this year was the boxer Floyd Mayweather, whose disclosed purse for fighting Conor McGregor was US$100m