Football has a money problem. Rather than being shaded by money trees, the health of the modern game is being antagonised by the very fabric of its ecosystem. Footballers, fans and clubs are all pawns in the money plays of billionaires and nation-states, attracted by the cash flow of the industry. Without them, without their money, this sport which we schedule our lives around looks like a stranger.
Big spenders pump so much money into the game that it’s easy to see it as a positive. Chelsea have spent €1.23b on players in the last five years; is football better off without that money being spread around the world? An extravagant fee can bring a smaller club from the edge of dissolution and can feed a player and their family for a lifetime. However, the romantic view will always fail to consider the financial straw which every €100m transfer places on the back of the current footballing landscape.
A financial bubble can be described as an overinflation in value of assets. A bubble bursts when shareholders panic about the direction of an industry, selling their stock at low prices, drying up the cash flow. We could be heading to a point where the level of spending bloats beyond what clubs are able to recoup. For this to happen in football, there would have to be monumental shifts to prize money, and TV deals, not to mention that many invest in the game for the leveraging of soft power, not just straight profits. But the current financial landscape of the game forces us to consider this possibility, to not only ask “Will the bubble burst?” but “What does this thing look like after it does?”
