UK football may seek a slice of gambling industry revenue
News on 26 Oct 2018
News on 26 Oct 2018
The recent decision by American billionaire Shahid Khan to walk away from his GBP 600 million offer to buy Wembley Stadium spawned an interesting interview with Football Association CEO Martin Glenn this week in which he welcomed a proposal by the Daily Telegraph newspaper to raise income from football betting in an initiative not too dissimilar from attempts by US sports leagues to get a cut of sports betting revenues.
Glenn revealed the FA is now exploring a so-called “fair return” – potentially worth tens of millions every year from the sector. And in an additional proposal to raise money for artificial football pitches, he suggested local authorities could benefit from forming partnership agreements with developers.
The Telegraph notes that nine of the 20 Premier League teams and 17 out of 24 Championship teams are sponsored by gambling companies – but Glenn’s plan would see a small percentage levy on bets, rather than sponsorship.
“There are things definitely worthy of consideration,” he said. “France has effectively a tax on gambling. We would call it a fair return on football gambling. All those betting companies use our intellectual property to have people lay bets, so why wouldn’t a small percentage of that be put into the thing that made that possible in the first place? We, as football, could approach government and say ‘Have you thought about something like that?
“It doesn’t need to be a big lump sum. We’ve got GBP 64 million going into the Football Foundation between the three of us [FA, Premier League and government] – imagine if it was GBP 80 milion or GBP 100 million. If we could get to that it would be brilliant.”
Glenn said it was hard for him to ask for more money from government when the perception was that football is so wealthy. But the collapse of the Khan bid for Wembley means that the FA is facing a GBP 15 million a year bill for the upkeep of the iconic stadium.
“We don’t need to sell Wembley,” he insisted. “The finances are as good as they ever have been, but I don’t know what life’s going to be like in 20 years. A couple of years ago we were making GBP 320 million; now it’s GBP 450 million.
“That’s a dramatic change but if you look at the Premier League TV rights, the rate of increase has gone down. People are consuming football differently. It’s going to be harder in the future to get that sort of upfront income.
“My opinion is that we are at a high-water mark in terms of FA profitability and Wembley profitability, but it’s also going to face more competition.”
