Premier League Owe 56 Percent Of European Football Debt

[Jockstar]

A report to be released by UEFA on the financial wellbeing of European football will reveal that Premier League clubs owe 56 percent of the continent's total footballing debt, raising further questions about why English football's finances have been allowed to spiral out of control.

George Gillett and Tom Hicks at Liverpool and the Glazer family at Manchester United, have accrued £1 billion of debt between them

The biggest worry for Premier League clubs is that both West Ham and financially stricken Portsmouth are not even included in the official report, called the "European Footballing Landscape", as their monetary problems prohibited them from being given UEFA licenses, meaning that the figures for English clubs would be even higher.

The Premier League debt comes despite England's clubs earning significantly more from televsion and other commercial income - €122 million on average - than any of Europe's other major league

Details of the report, released in the Guardian on Wednesday, reveal that the combined debts of the 18 Premier League clubs, excluding West Ham and Pompey, sit at £3.5 billion, with two of England's biggest clubs, Manchester United and Liverpool, owing around £1 billion between them.

The figure is more than all other European leagues combined and around four times the figure for La Liga, the second most indebted division. As the report analyses the 2007-08 annual accounts of all 732 clubs licensed by UEFA, the Premier League's actual debt is undoubtedly higher, as the interest payments for clubs like United and Liverpool have increased.

The debts of both United and Liverpool are cited by UEFA as highly significant to the Premier League's overall debt, with the report criticising the leveraged takeover model employed by George Gillet and Tom Hicks at Liverpool, and Malcolm Glazer at Manchester United.

"Just over half of [the Premier League's] commercial debt has been placed into the [relevant] clubs [or at a holding company level] recently as a result of leveraged buyouts," the report says, "so far acting principally as a burden rather than to support investment or spending".

The revelations of the report are likely to increase the calls for UEFA to bring in its proposed Financial Fair Play Rules,which make it a requirement for clubs to break even from 2012-13, with UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino pointing to the crisis at Portsmouth as the latest evidence that financial reforms are desperately needed in European football.

"The Portsmouth example shows something must be done to help the clubs be more sustainable," he told the Guardian. "The English Premier League clubs have higher revenues, but it is worrying to see such huge debt. If it is borrowed to fuel spending on players, the problem comes when you cannot borrow any more money and can no longer pay the debts."

[mrbojangles]

George Gillett and Tom Hicks at Liverpool and the Glazer family at Manchester United, have accrued £1 billion of debt between them

Bladdy dragging the rest of us down

[StevieH]

George Gillett and Tom Hicks at Liverpool and the Glazer family at Manchester United, have accrued £1 billion of debt between them

Bladdy dragging the rest of us down

piss off moneybags.

it's articles like this that make you think platini has a point though, whatever his anti-english leanings. why should teams from well-run leagues like germany have to compete with clubs who are effectively bankrupt in the champions league?

[whichschool]

George Gillett and Tom Hicks at Liverpool and the Glazer family at Manchester United, have accrued £1 billion of debt between them

Bladdy dragging the rest of us down

piss off moneybags.

it's articles like this that make you think platini has a point though, whatever his anti-english leanings. why should teams from well-run leagues like germany have to compete with clubs who are effectively bankrupt in the champions league?

Correct, same for every league ie Pompey/Notts County ... thing is Liverpools and Man Us debt hasnt been created through buying players so theyre effectively giving teams in the Champions League an unfair advantage over themselves.

The fools at the Premier League and the coksukas at the FA have never had any idea ... theyre in their positions purely through nepotism, and got lucky due to Rupert Murdochs business acumen.

[StevieH]

Correct, same for every league ie Pompey/Notts County ... thing is Liverpools and Man Us debt hasnt been created through buying players so theyre effectively giving teams in the Champions League an unfair advantage over themselves.

The fools at the Premier League and the coksukas at the FA have never had any idea ... theyre in their positions purely through nepotism, and got lucky due to Rupert Murdochs business acumen.

that's an interesting point, they haven't been. they've been created by the greed of foreign investors seeking a quick buck, the sort of thing that the league's fit and proper person test was put in place to prevent. the more i read of this stuff the more i find myself agreeing with platini. which grinds.

[whichschool]

that's an interesting point, they haven't been. they've been created by the greed of foreign investors seeking a quick buck,

Its not greed but common sense when buying a business, its how pretty much all big businesses have been bought in the last 10 years aswell as how all these buy-to-let property investors have got rich , and any Man U or Liverpool fan seeking a quick fix with an Arab billionaire deserves their clubs to be in such debt imho.

The only way this can be resolved is by both clubs fans getting together and boycotting their clubs games, buying shirts etc... for a couple of years so the owners have no choice but too sell on the cheap to these dreamers who are setting up fans trusts in the hope of buying the club.

Or wait until the present owners can get out of debt with the money they can potentially get from selling their clubs games on the internet to the world, which should take off in the coming few years.

[sharecropper]

It won't be long until these bankrupt owners accept the logic of their business situations and clubs start cashing in on franchising their names.

Imagine it, a Liverpool Football Club Sunday league side in every country in the world, a Manchester United Marching Band in every state in the USA.

The possibilities are endless.

And they should be getting in royalties from fan clubs using their names around the world. Although in Liverpool's case, that would be a rapidly decreasing amount annually.