The Premiership football boom shows no sign of slowing in 1999 but, asks Pete Nichols, what hope for the sports that live in its shadow?
Last year in the United States, the team owners of the National Basketball Association (NBA) almost took the momentous decision to call off the 1998/99 season. In doing so, they would have been making a dramatic – not to say expensive, in the short term at least – stand against the rise of player power in professional sport, which has seen players and agents negotiating ever more extravagant salaries for their work.
When baseball lost its World Series to a strike in 1994, Bill Clinton described it as “a few hundred folks trying to work out how to divide up $2- billion”. It was almost precisely the same accounting, with basketball having benefited from baseball’s post-strike decline to bring its own revenues up to the $2-billion mark.
In the NBA, the average player salary for last season was a staggering $2,6- million. At the very top end, last year Michael Jordan re-signed with the Chicago Bulls on a one-year contract for $33-million. To that figure, Jordan can add an estimated $45-million for endorsements.
On the British side of the pond, it might seem difficult to comprehend players and owners squabbling over their percentages of a $2-billion honey pot. American sports have always been portrayed as awash with money while their British counterparts are seen as having more modest pretensions. As a general rule that still rings true, but British football in particular is now giving the likes of baseball, basketball and American football a run for their money.
While the NBA originally raised $470- million from television sales for this season, Sky (with a bit of BBC money helping) pays the Premiership 148,6- million a season.
For the FA Cup, British television channel ITV is midpoint in a deal that earns the sport 32,5-million annually. Tally them up and you have almost $300- million.
Television money tells only part of the tale. Manchester United, playing an average of 30 home games a season, will generate around 30-million on gate money alone. One weekend’s worth of Premiership matches, at an average gate of 30 000, could pull in 18-million.
At this stage, number blindness starts to set in. Suffice to say that with British football (the Scottish Premier League and Nationwide figures are still to be included, as well as marketing and advertising revenues) we are dealing with a 1-billion-plus industry.
Unlike in American sport, British footballers do not jointly wrangle over the pot. They negotiate contracts individually, but the money filters through just the same. At the beginning of the first Premiership season in 1992, there were no millionaire salaries and Chelsea had just a single foreign player (Norway’s Erland Johnsen).
Run through the Chelsea squad now and you will find only four regular first-teamers who are British (Dennis Wise, Jody Morris, Graeme le Saux and Michael Duberry) and a majority of players who are picking up wage packets of more than 20 000 per week – a few with considerably more. As 20 000 a week translates to more than $1,5-million a year, we are coming close to the NBA strikers.
The British Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is set to contest Sky’s contract with the Premiership in court this month, but even if the OFT should rule against this “cartel”, it is hard to see the brakes being put on the sport’s wealth. If clubs are obliged to negotiate their own television deals, the only difference will be that the rich are going to get richer still.
As it stands, around 90% of football’s millionaire earners are concentrated in 10 teams. By the time we ring in the millennium, it is a fair bet that Chelsea will have every player over the million mark, while Charlton will still have none.
In a comparison of British-based sports, football is in a league of its own, with only Bernie Ecclestone’s worldwide Formula One business coming close. Add up the rest and you find that the accumulated wealth of every other sport in Britain falls far short of football.
British golfers, for instance, seldom miss a trick as far as endorsements go, being generally both clean- living and articulate.
And yet, the European Tour is about to feel the heat from the US as the gap in total prize-money widens. This year, the US Tour will break the $100-million prize money barrier for the first time.
Tennis in the United Kingdom is still hugely reliant on Wimbledon, and the game has clearly been much advanced by the idea that a Briton could actually win the men’s singles title.
Tim Henman has a real chance, the only worry being that he is already tipping himself to do it.
Tennis players, like jockeys, are never to be believed in such instances.
Cricket, very much the pauper among the major sports, will feel slightly flusher in 1999 with the 103-million from Channel 4 burning a hole in its pocket.
A few more players could find themselves joining Chris Adams on six- figure salaries, and more counties may begin introducing the 12-month contracts pioneered by Lancashire.
That at least will put an end to all those “look who’s selling Christmas trees this year” stories.
Athletics, too, will feel a little bit richer having stumbled on a new five- year television deal with the BBC. The annual figure is only 3,5-million though, and that will not stretch very far. It is hard to see any Britons realising their fortune on the track, although sponsors will inevitably smile very sweetly on a British world champion, particularly someone as marketable as the heptathlete Denise Lewis.
Horseracing is currently trying to bring about its own form of financial revolution, although an increase in the prize money in the short term seems unlikely.
Jockeys never rank in the endorsement stakes; in Britain only Frankie Dettori holds a significant profile outside the sport. Jockeys make their money from riding fees and a cut (10%) of the win money, so any increase of the latter would be welcome.
There will be no increases in rugby union, where the chips are being called in. The sport, still tottering into professionalism, has overspent and there’s only one way to recoup it. The clubs still don’t talk to the Rugby Football Union – or is it the other way round? – and the sport, for over a year now, has given a very good impression of an industry in disarray. An England World Cup win looks like the dream ticket, but unless everyone pulled in a similar direction after it even that would turn into another nightmare.
Motor racing will continue to make millionaires, as it should when you put your body on the line. And the same applies to boxing. Lennox Lewis is no artist in the ring, but he does have the opportunity to eclipse any earner in the history of British sport.
A rape conviction did Mike Tyson’s earning power no harm at all. In 1997, he accumulated $75-million while still on parole. A bit of ear-biting has probably raised the game again and a match against Lewis (assuming that Evander Holyfield has succumbed first) for the undisputed heavyweight crown would put a fortune both their ways. It could even be enough to impress Michael Jordan. Maybe.