£100k cheque that shows how riches changed the game
WheN Chelsea won the Premier League last season, their prize-money was £39million. It was part of an overall payment of £151m, including their share of domestic and foreign TV revenue.
When Leeds United became the last winners of the old Football League First Division in 1992, their prize-money was £100,000. Chelsea benefited from a 150,900 per cent increase in a quarter of a century.
In 1992 a cheque for £100,000 was a cause for celebration, though, as Leeds chairman Leslie silver proudly shows.
It was May 2 and one week earlier, at sheffield United, Leeds had secured their first league title since 1974. That was significant for the elland road club.
The wider significance for english football was that this was the last season of the Football League as we knew it. After 104 years, it was being washed away by new money.
As silver held up his giant cheque, the new Premier League — the FA Carling Premier League, to give the full sponsored title — had already been agreed. And with it came a new TV deal that, along with the 1990 Taylor report and the altered back-pass rule, would transform english football.
Leeds had just beaten Manchester United to the title in 1991-92 and before this final game of the season, against Norwich City, the old Football League trophy was paraded, as was the old money. ‘Are you watching, Manchester?’ sang elland road.
One year later, with Leeds’s title defence leaving them 17th and two points off relegation in the 22- team division, Manchester United were champions of the first Premier League.
It looks small today, but United’s prize- money was £ 815,000. It was nothing like the mushroom inflation of later years, but it was more than eight times what Leeds had earned 12 months earlier.
so this photograph marks a moment in time. It is a cheque, but it is also a falling curtain. This was the end of how english football shared the cash.
The new breakaway league had negotiated their own TV deal — they were offered £304m over five years by sky and ITV — which was mountainous when set beside sums such as £100,000.
The clubs involved were fervent. When silver joined the board at elland road in 1981, he found a club struggling to recapture the success of Don revie’s era. Off the pitch, there were hooligan problems and a dilapidated stadium.
silver had to write a cheque of his own for £200,000 to repel the bailiffs not long after walking in the door. silver, who was born ‘silverstein’ in London and was self-made in Yorkshire via a paint firm he started after fighting in the second World War, was a traditional figure in english boardrooms. he was a local businessman, part of a prominent Jewish community in Leeds, who wanted to help his local club.
By 1996, Leeds United were being taken over by an investment firm called Caspian for £16.5m.
In 1992 Leeds were a football club with a team; four years later, Caspian said it wanted Leeds to ‘ form the cornerstone of our strategy to create one of europe’s leading sports, leisure and media groups’. The likes of silver were selling up as clubs floated on the stock exchange, the ‘football club’ element of these businesses moving into holding companies. english football was being monetised.
In 1997 the second Premier League TV deal was worth £670m over four years and that jumped to £1.2billion in 2001. It was less than a decade after the £100,000 cheque and english football was transformed.
elland road was upgraded and staged three games at euro 96. In May 2001 it hosted a Champions League semi-final, Leeds v Valencia. In the same season, one of silver’s successors on the board, Peter ridsdale, was paid six times the sum written on the cheque in 1992. howard Wilkinson was manager in 1992 and no one could foresee he would be the last englishman to lead a team to the title.
Making his sixth start for the club was eric Cantona. he was already a cult figure at Leeds, yet six months later moved to Manchester United for £1.2m. The rest is history.
here, on May 2, the score was 1-0 to Leeds, rod Wallace scoring. In goal was John Lukic who, late on, picked up a pass from a team-mate. It was for the last time at elland road. From July the back-pass law changed and keepers had to kick the ball out. The speed and rhythm of the game was changing, too.