As a new European soccer season opens, the sport is "taking
on the trappings of big-league U.S. sports, where players,
owners, agents, broadcasters, and advertisers come together in a
giant business," according to BUSINESS WEEK. Escalating
salaries, competition for broadcast rights, merchandise deals,
"grandiose" stadiums, labor "strife," and a growing gap between
rich and poor teams, are changing European soccer. The "total
take" for the sport is "at least" $1.6B and in Britain, the 22
teams in the Premier League had average revenues of $23M each in
the '94-95 season, and soccer consultants at Deloitte & Touche
figure revenue has been growing for these clubs at 20% per year.
TV TIME: The arrival of soccer's "Big Business era" is part
of a "deregulation wave" sweeping Europe. This year, "the media
boom" in soccer has "exploded" with digital TV. Dozens of new
digital-TV sports channels are using sports programming to win
dominance over state-controlled broadcasters. Earlier this
summer, Germany's Leo Kirch paid $2.36B for world rights outside
North America for the 2002 and 2006 World Cup, and this June,
BSkyB renewed its contract with the English Premier League for
$955M, four times what it paid in '92. More than $6B has been
paid in soccer TV rights in the past four years.
MERCHANDISE: Sales of merchandise reflects the "new
commercial aggressiveness" in many teams. The Manchester United
as increased its merchandising income from $3.1M to $37M in four
years (Echikson, BUSINESS WEEK, 9/23 issue).
