Soaring wages endangering football clubs, Deloitte warns
ENGLAND’S leading clubs are jeopardising their futures by spending increasingly dangerous sums on player wages, one of the country’s most prominent football finance experts warned last night.
Premier League teams forked out a record 68 per cent of their income on pay packets during the 2009-10 season, according to research published today by Deloitte’s Sports Business Group.
The total wage bill of £1.4bn constituted a five per cent rise and wiped out a two per cent improvement in revenues that saw top-flight clubs collectively earn more than £2bn for the first time.
Deloitte’s Dan Jones, who edited the Annual Review of Football Finance, told City A.M. the increase in wages-to-turnover ratio was cause for alarm. “The thing that concerns us is that we went through about 10 years of the wages-to-turnover ratio in the Premier League being around 60 per cent,” said Jones.
“Then suddenly last year it went up to 67 per cent and this year it’s edged up to 68 per cent. We think that is right at the boundaries of where you want it be. We’ve always talked about 70 per cent as being a warning level.
“Obviously you have to look at each individual club, but for the Premier League overall to be edging towards that 70 per cent mark is a concern.”