The Price of Football

Understanding Football Club Finance

By (author) Mr Kieran Maguire

Publication date:

25 February 2021

Publisher

Agenda Publishing

Dimensions:

240x170mm
7x9"

ISBN-13: 9781788213257

The first edition of The Price of Football quickly established itself as the go-to guide to understanding football club finance for the serious fan. Kieran Maguire, one of the UK’s top football finance analysts, shows how professional clubs operate as businesses and explains, in non-technical language, how to read, understand and interrogate club accounts.

As a clear-headed analysis and presentation of the financial imperatives and challenges facing football clubs across the English and Scottish Leagues, it has become a welcome resource not only for students of the industry, but by a wider constituency of supporters looking to understand their club’s latest transfer deal, or season ticket price.

This fully revised and updated edition includes analysis of the most recent club accounts, the latest legal rulings on club affairs, as well as the impact of Covid-19 on the game’s finances.

Foreword by Kevin Day

1. Introduction

Part I Football club financial reports

2. The balance sheet

3. The profit or loss account

4. The cash flow statement

Part II The price of football

5. Buying players

6. Ticket prices

7. Broadcasting and sponsorship income

8. Financial fair play

Part III Football club financial analysis

9. How to analyse club accounts 1: trend analysis

10. How to analyse club accounts 2: ratio analysis

11. Valuing a football club

12. Ownership models: love, profit, vanity and insanity

13. Red flags: things that make you go “hmmm” – creative accounting and football finance

14. Football finance in a post-Covid-19 world and Project Big Picture

Glossary of terms

Football needs Kieran. His brand of financial scrutiny is well thought out, simple to understand, but most of all consistent. He has no fear or favour and is always on the money. We have to change the financial and regulatory situation in football if we are to avoid more disasters like that at Bury, Bolton, Blackpool, Coventry and not least Accrington Stanley, a town that has first-hand experience of the desolation that can befall towns that lose their key social activity.