By Paul Nicholson
September 3 – Football Benchmark, the sports research arm of accountancy and consultancy firm KPMG, has produced a new report looking at the relationship between total staff costs incurred by clubs from the ‘big five’ leagues playing in the Champions League (CL) and the cash received from UEFA’s CL distribution system in the 2011/12-2013/14 period.
Their findings show that the biggest winners are the Spanish teams who banked an aggregate €434.5 million from the UEFA revenue distribution, but Italian clubs achieved the highest average per club (€41.9 million) over the timeframe 2011-2014.
English clubs earned an aggregate €427.2 million but generally found staff costs were increasing more than their Champions League revenue from UEFA. On average the proportion of their staff costs recovered decreased from 19% in 2011/12 to 13% in 2013/14.
Across the same time period, the ratio between the revenue earned from Champions League and the staff costs for French and Italian clubs were between 24-29% and 24-37%, respectively.
While the average staff costs of a participating club from the ‘big five’ leagues in the UCL was €166 million, the average amount earned from UEFA by those clubs over the same period, was €37 million – about 22% of staff costs.
The Spanish have performed the best in the Champions League and have earned the most money from it, but their average staff costs have remained “broadly in line with the average staff cost across all the clubs competing from the ‘big five’ leagues”, says the report.
The authors do highlight the impact in 2012/13 of Borussia Dortmund’s and Bayern Munich’s final. The clubs respectively covered 51% and 28% of their staff costs in that season. Overall, the total amount earned from the UCL by German teams in the 2012/13 competition contributed to over one third of their total staff costs in that year.
Andrea Sartori, KPMG Global Head of Sport commented: “With five clubs participating in the 2015/16 UCL, Spain are favourites to be the biggest beneficiaries from the start of the new cycle. Indeed, these five clubs have already secured a combined amount of €60 million from participation in the group stage, which is equivalent to more than a third of the amount jointly gained in the entire 2013/14 season by Spanish clubs.
“This performance might be further boosted by achieving on-pitch sporting performance on a par with other Spanish clubs in recent UCL editions. However, it will be interesting to observe how this uplift in revenue impacts the profitability of clubs and whether there is any knock-on effect on total staff costs.”
To view the report go to https://www.footballbenchmark.com/champions_league_earnings_past_and_future_winners
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