Football (soccer to those in the USA) is at something of a cross-roads. Building on a string of crises dating back to the early 2000s, the current 2015 FIFA crisis has bought the entire football sector into question, and its future into doubt.
- What will happen to FIFA? Will changes be sufficient to avert future crises?
- What will become of the many national associations and federations that depend on FIFA for revenue?
- What about UEFA?
- Are there also weaknesses in the global club system that warrant more attention?
These are weighty questions, hard to answer because football produces different kinds of value to different constituencies who have different visions for the future—and diagnoses of what has gone wrong in the past.
On the one hand, some see football as the People’s Game
Estimates suggest that football attracts 5% of the global population as participants[i] and over 50% as supporters, fans and spectators.[ii] Unlike most other sports, it is globally enjoyed, with over 80 million players in Asia, more than 60 million in Europe, in excess of 40 million in both Africa and North America, and nearly 30 million (or 7% of the population) in South America.[iii] It is an organized presence as well, with over 300,000 clubs competing at various levels across the globe,[iv] overseen and coordinated by hundreds of league and association bodies.[v]
These clubs are physically located in local communities, and are relied upon as places to gather, play, watch, and engage. Many of these clubs were created generations ago and have been long-standing community anchors, socially owned by generations of fans who avidly follow their clubs and rely on these clubs for a sense of identity. To these people, football is about the players and the supporters and local communities surrounding stadiums: It is the people’s game.
In the eyes of such observers, football runs into problems when it de-emphasizes the people. The problems are reflected in words like ‘professionalization’, ‘corporatization’, and ‘globalization’. A better future would see more focus on people, local communities, and traditional values in the game.
On the other hand, football is considered a Money Game
Football has professionalized all over the world in the last few decades. It has become a real money game—and a global one. There are between 4,000 and 6,000 professional or semi-professional men’s clubs constantly raising and spending money in the name of football all over the world (this doesn’t include women’s clubs or clubs in related sports like beach soccer and futsal).[vi]
It is difficult to state with certainty how much money these clubs (and associated structures) produce. Annual reports by Deloitte, UEFA, and others provide reliable data for top leagues in Europe, and different Confederations have begun capturing data for its own region. These data allow one to estimate the size of the sector in terms of annual revenue produced in these regions. Data for other regions are not readily aggregated in any fashion and are hard to come by (and impossible to come by in some cases, like most of Africa and Oceania). The table below aggregates what data exist for various regions and provides estimates to fill gaps where data do not exist. The revenues are broken into four categories: revenue in European clubs, revenue in clubs outside of Europe, Total club revenues (global), and FIFA, Confederations, and other League body revenues. The total of these sources amounts to about $38 billion (for 2013), but a more accurate final figure is $33 billion when one considers the double-counting of Confederation and Association revenues.[vii]
Estimating the annual revenues in global professional football
|
Revenue Source |
Revenue ($ billion, 2013) |
Sources and Comments |
|
Richest 10 Clubs in Europe |
4.3 |
Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance (2014) and Deloitte Rich List (2014);[viii] also verifiable with Forbes list of most valuable soccer clubs. |
|
Second Richest 10 Clubs in Europe |
1.8 |
|
|
Third Richest 10 Clubs in Europe |
1.3 |
|
|
Rest of Top League Clubs in Top 5 Countries |
5.9 |
UEFA 2013 club financial data (made available by league). |
|
Other Top Leagues in Europe |
6.3 |
|
|
Lower League Clubs in Top 5 European Countries |
2.7 |
Multiple sources for each league in the top 5 European countries, and estimates for others based on Transfermarkt data and other studies. |
|
Other Lower League Clubs in Europe |
0.65 |
|
|
Total European Clubs |
23 |
|
|
African Clubs |
0.3 |
Estimates based on multiple sources for top countries. Estimates for others. |
|
Asian Clubs |
2.3 |
Estimates based on multiple sources, including annual reports and studies. |
|
Oceania Clubs |
0.0 |
Estimates based on academic, media reports. |
|
North American and Caribbean Clubs |
2.0 |
Estimates based on various sources, including reports for major leagues. |
|
South American Clubs |
2.6 |
|
|
Clubs outside of Europe |
7.2 |
|
|
Total Clubs (Global) |
30.2 |
|
|
FIFA and Regional Confederations |
3.4 |
Annual Reports, with average annual revenues for FIFA, UEFA, and estimates for others. |
|
National Associations and League Bodies |
4.0 |
Estimates based on annual reports from some associations, leagues, estimates for others. |
|
Total |
38 |
|
|
Total without duplication of Association and Confederation revenues. |
32 – 34 |
This assumes that 50–75% of revenues from Confederations and Associations are counted as revenues by other Associations, or Clubs. |
Source: Various, as alluded to in the text. Authors’ analysis.
The data show that clubs are the main economic vehicle in the global football sector, and that European clubs in particular make up about 66% of all global revenue. The richest 30 clubs are all located in Europe and account for about a third of all European club revenue and about a quarter of all global club revenue. The figure below shows that global professional football produces about as much annual revenue as the United States movie industry or the apparel and sports good company Nike. It accounts for about 40% of revenue produced in all spectator sports. The richest 30 football clubs alone produce about as much revenue as the US baseball and NFL sectors.
Many observers focus on these kinds of data and emphasize the fact that football is now a major money game. In their eyes, the problems of the game center on money, and the way different entities (clubs, leagues, and bodies like FIFA) raise and use the money: Is there enough money? Are transactions transparent enough? Are resources properly shared? According to such observers, a strong future for the game will only be possible if these money questions are effectively addressed.
The bigger question for both constituencies (and all others) is whether the money game answers will satisfy the people’s game concerns
- Can a Money Game also be the People’s Game?
- Or will the future see some clear break in the way we think about football: Moving more towards a financially centered sector that is less people-centered than it was in the past?
- Or: Is this a false choice? Is it possible to balance the needs and objectives of a Money Game with the needs and objectives of a People’s Game, to keep football as a sport that can still be
[i] Most data on the size of the global football market come from secondary sources (or are presented as primary data but cannot be validated as such). An example is Repucom’s estimate that 20% of the global population participate in football (repucom.net/global-interest-football/). FIFA did primary research a decade ago, and produced more modest—but still impressive—numbers (FIFA. 2006. The Big Count. (www.fifa.com/worldfootball/bigcount/clubs.html)). These showed that 4.13% of the world’s population participated in football in 2006, which amounted to 265 million participants (which would be well over 300 million people now).
[ii] It is difficult to know which data sources to rely on when reflecting on football’s popularity, but a host of studies show it is very popular. Repucom estimates that 46% of the global population is interested in football (repucom.net/global-interest-football/). A media study finds football is the most popular sport in 9 of 16 markets (www.knowthefan.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/KTF_GlobalOverview_2014_WEB.pdf), with up to 66% of adults interested. UEFA’s 2012 Club Licensing and Benchmarking Report finds interest in 82% of European adults (www.uefa.org/MultimediaFiles/Download/Tech/uefaorg/General/02/09/18/26/2091826_DOWNLOAD.pdf). Other studies estimate that football is supported by as many as 3.5 billion fans. This equates with about half of the world’s population and is over a billion more than the next most popular sport (cricket) and over three times as much as the main three American sports combined (http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2011/09/ranking-sports’-popularity; www.topendsports.com/world/lists/popular-sport/wiki-sports.htm; www.sportyghost.com/top-10-most-popular-sports-in-the-world/). Studies also show that football enjoys more television viewers than other sports (whatculture.com/gallery/10-most-watched-sporting-events-in-tv-history/2; qz.com/171174/putting-the-global-perspective-into-the-superbowls-massive-tv-audience/). According to estimates, the FIFA World Cup, UEFA Champions League and FIFA Confederations Cup netted about 5.9 billion television viewers, compared with the next-best Olympics (which drew about 2 million viewers). It also attracts more interest on the internet with a larger number of Wikipedia, Facebook and twitter visits than any other sport, and accounting for the eight most popular sports teams on social media (www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2015/07/15/barcelona-and-real-madrid-head-the-most-popular-sports-teams-on-social-media/; www.topendsports.com/world/lists/popular-sport/google-trend.htm).
[iii] See regional breakdowns in FIFA. 2006. The Big Count. (www.fifa.com/worldfootball/bigcount/clubs.html).
[iv] See club numbers in FIFA. 2006. The Big Count. (www.fifa.com/worldfootball/bigcount/clubs.html).
[v] FIFA is the Federation of football associations and has 209 members, in the form of associations across the globe. Bigger associations include the English Football Association (with annual revenues exceeding $400 million in 2013). Most associations are much smaller, however, and a large number of the associations in Africa and Oceania rely significantly on FIFA for operational revenue.
[vi] FIFA’s Transfer Management System (TMS) group claims to collect data from over 6,000 clubs globally. TMS officials provided data on club numbers by region, and the total added to 4137, with 2001 clubs in Europe, 652 in South America, 652 in Asia, 258 in North America and the Caribbean, 571 in Africa, and 16 in Oceania. These numbers are slightly different to those from Transfermarkt, which is a website that analyses transfers in clubs across the world. Transfermarkt identifies over 4700 clubs globally, with more than half of these in Europe.
[vii] Given that a large portion of UEFA revenues are also counted in club revenues, for instance, given prize monies and solidarity payments; and a large portion of FIFA revenues are similarly captured in revenues of Associations, given solidarity payments.
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