Footballers to earn €300,000 a week by 2010
The annual review of football finance by Deloitte shows the average salary of top-flight players was a little less than £1 million in 2005/06, with some earning over £6m a year.
Dan Jones, partner of Deloitte’s sports business group, said a 3% wage fall in 2004/05 now appeared to be just a blip.
The review also shows a huge gap in wages paid by Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool compared with the rest of the Premiership. However, spending power among all Premier League clubs is now far superior to comparable sides in Italy and Spain.
Mr Jones said: “We expect wages to go up pretty significantly over the next couple of years but we are not alarmed by that because there is so much more money coming in because of the new TV deal.
“We do expect the average annual earnings for a Premier League player next season will be in the region of £1.1m and that over the next three years we will see English football’s first player to earn £10m per annum from a club, equivalent to £200,000 per week.”
Mr Jones said the wage rise could be explained by clubs anticipating the extra income from the £2.7 billion TV deal.
That would also explain why overall operating profits fell 15% — but are expected to double next season.
There is also concern at the widening gap between Premier League and Championship clubs. The gap between the average club revenue for each league was a record £56m in 2005/06 and is likely to rise to more than £70m next season.
Championship clubs’ total wage costs for 2005/06 increased by 5% to £228m — just twice the wage bill for Chelsea alone.
The gap that is expanding the quickest however is between the Premier League and other European leagues.
Mr Jones added: “Ten years ago there was pretty close competition between the Premier League and Serie A. Next season the Premier League is going to be €1bn ahead of Serie A.
“That is a good endorsement of the Premier League’s decision to stick to selling their rights collectively, whereas in Italy and Spain they have gone down the road of selling their rights individually.”
Mr Jones said the wave of new owners could contribute toward more restraint by clubs in terms of spending, but the new TV deal would make it possible to increase profits and have higher investment in terms of transfers and wages.
He said: “The big increases in the value of the overseas TV rights are shared out equally among all the 20 clubs, which means there should be an opportunity to cut the wages gap between the top four and the rest.”
Premiership clubs’ total wage costs for 2005/06 increased 9% — €101m to €1.2bn — the year before the clubs’ total wage costs reduced by 3% for the first time in the history of the Premier League.
Five English clubs have total wage costs greater than €73m each season: Chelsea (€167m), Manchester United (€125m), Arsenal (€122m), Liverpool (€101m) and Newcastle (€76m). Tottenham were sixth (€60m).
Five Premier League clubs cut wage costs in 2005/06 – in particular Fulham (down €5.6m) and Manchester City (down €4.8m).
Average gross annual earnings for a Premier League player next season estimated at €1.6m (2005/06: €1.3m).
Premier League revenues are set to exceed €2.5bn next season — €1bn higher than the next highest-earning league, Italy’s Serie A.
Fees to agents from Premier League and Football League clubs in 2005/06 were estimated to be almost €73m.
By the end of the 2005/06 season, Roman Abramovich had injected €713.8m into Chelsea, through a combination of debt and equity.
At least 11 Champion-ship clubs have net debt of almost €15m.
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