Dipping into Funds

Money makes the world go round…in particular when it comes to football today and the multi billion pound business of winning the Premier League using fair means or foul. Money was obviously the topic of a lot of discussion in fanzines as the promised riches of the Premier League era hove into view but there were plenty of other aspects of money discussed; how much to spend, how much clubs were bringing in, ticket prices etc. This week we’ll dip into that murky world of finance and look at the fun fanzines had and the contrasts that fanzine coverage records so adeptly.

Charidy Mate!

You can’t talk about money and fanzines without mentioning that the vast majority of fanzines over the years have run at a loss or have returned what small profits they made to their club to try to help. I could have picked out almost and zine/club to demonstrate this but Issue 1 of the brilliant Sing When We’re Fishing from Grimsby was to hand and their Distribution/intro/ Club Honours board are a perfect example of what I’m talking about. 30p for 16 pages of this sort of thing..

Where’s the Money Gone

The title of Leicester City Fanzine Where’s The Money Gone? gives something of a clue as to their raison d’etre. In 1995 and issue 11 they carried an amazing exclusive explaining that Hugh Grant’s “meeting” with Devine was down to the season ticket prices at newly relegated Leicester. Hug(h)e if true.

More believably, a letter in issue 3 from April 1994 peaked my interest. The article on finances was drawn up by a 14 year old fan and goes on to draw conclusions based on that plus City’s transfer dealings at the time.

It’s hard to get info on Leicester’s finances at the time this letter claims that the club received £179,912 for a sellout Forest game in receipts a few years previously, and extrapolating a few other numbers they draw a not unreasonable line from this to an estimated profit number. As a piece this is very impressive for someone so young but it is also badly flawed as it fails to allow for running costs of the club; for example the wage bill of an average Premier League club was already between £10 and £15m a year in 1995) Zola and Bergkamp were reported to be on £25,000 a week for example!).

To balance that out I looked back at prize money and though it is surprisingly difficult to get figures for PL prize money over the years in the first year of the Premier League, 1992-93, the total prize fund for all 22 clubs was £38m. Even if you double that share for placement and TV appearances its clear many clubs were already “speculating to accumulate” in wreckless fashion. Perhaps Leicester weren’t.

I’m not being critical, its a common theme in fanzines that as fans we sometimes are “over enthusiastic” in our wants but I also wonder what the editors would make of the finances of Leicester now, a deficit of £71.1m for the 2024-25 season, their last top tier season, accumulated losses since 2019 already reaching £375m, and in recent years loans worth at least £100m have been taken out with an Australian investment bank, at rates of about 8% to 9%, future finances have been cashed in to keep the club running. I fully agree with Leicester fans now wanting King Power out but you do have to think the club is now not an attractive investment proposition in more ways than one.

The Abbey Rabbit

The name may have borrowed a lot from an Abbey National campaign but it’s also a clever pun for discussion of all things Cambridge United. The Abbey Rabbit issue 40 covers some financial matters and a proposed ground move. The main piece is an article covering a fans forum set up by the club and on it’s 9th occasion you will not be surprised that no one from the board appeared. They did send the manager and club secretary neither of whom would be equipped to answer that much and the local Radio reporter apparently didn’t have a fully functioning tape recorder with him. Tremendous stuff.

There follows a discussion that I suspect has been repeated at length over the years throughout the lower divisions but it is worth noting because of its coverage of Sincil Bank and Sixfields and their developments, the need for additional revenue streams down the leagues (trickle down money from the PL? pah) the total and utter lack of support from the local council or the very rich University plus the great bit where a fan wants to build a 5,000 capacity away end, just in case.

The result of all this or more pertinently why am I mentioning this? Well just this week Cambridge United announced the latest study into moving to a POTENTIAL new ground, this time by a local airport and just the 31 years later, it also states that it would be a decade until this happened. They announced a similar study in 2019.

How did that trickle down economics from the Premier League work for football? Cambridge print fanzines don’t exist any longer so I had a look at twitter to see what the response has been to this new plan…it makes you even more sad that print fanzines have stopped at so many clubs.

One other interesting thing appeared in the announcement of the new study; this ridiculous statement from the city’s ancient university who as mentioned are one of the richest in the world. (in case you weren’t aware, the central university holds cash and investments worth roughly £6 billion and the 31 colleges hold billions more accumulated over centuries of property ownership and donations.)

Before we go on I’ll get on my high horse for a minute; this bit about being the birthplace of modern football is of course rightly disputed by many in Scotland and Sheffield. In any case, the thought that a scrap of paper that no one even has a copy of pinned to the trees round a field at the University for posh public school boys to look at in 1848 make this claim to be the “birthplace of modern football” execrable and laughable. Finally, if the uni money bags were really concerned perhaps they would have done more to help United over the years…the women’s team partnership was announced in 2023…that team has existed since 1993 never mind the club as a whole. Civic engagement? Don’t make me laugh.

Poor Ossie?

A Tottenham fanzine covering Swindon? Well this made perfect sense in June 1990 as Swindon, managed by former Spurs hero Ossie Ardiles won the play off to the first division only to be relegated by the Football League to the third division for a variety of illegal payments. My Eyes Have Seen The Glory issue 4 responded

You can watch the Sky news report and the reaction of Swindon fans here, their views are as you would expect, a mixture of emotional and illogical with anger directed in some of the wrong places. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZKvZ_HdJHs&t=5s. There is a much longer video online as well from which I took this screen grab because that neckerchief and his garbling of the famous expression “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” is superb. I don’t remember being tempted by fashion like this myself in the 90s, I guess it’s a West country version of New Romantic.

The article itself is well thought out and argued…there but for the grace of god and the league have acted correctly and in good faith…good so far but then we veer into also clubs should be allowed to pay player what and how and when they want would have had Man City’s legal team talking about precedent if it had become league policy. Of course we have to add the bit about wishing it were Arsenal, we’re still 5 years away from gorgeous George and his £425,000 “unsolicited gift” from Rune Hauge. This was however memorably commemorated on the cover of another Tottenham fanzine, Spur of the Moment in 1995.

A Little Flutter

Betting is a part of watching football for many fans, accumulators a very big part of that. Some fanzines were accumulators as well, covering more than one team, sometimes even three! So it was with The Blues Brothers who covered not just 3 teams but three countries as well, Rangers, Chelsea and Linfield.

Betting was much more regulated and of course not online then so it’s “space” in terms of peoples lives was much smaller. So the cover of issue 15 in October 1997 is something of an outliers, one of a very small number of fanzines that actually talked about betting.

For the record, this was £10.90 down the drain, Celtic were Scottish champions, Arsenal in England and completing a city rivals humiliation for all three, Belfast rivals cliftonville pipped Linfield for the Irish League.

The Final Whistle Comrades

Of course the sums of money and the chasm is much bigger nowadays and the numbers are way way above normal, sensible inflation. In 1993 Manchester United won £780,000 for winning the title, last year Arsenal scooped £198.7m. (Chelsea received around £162m for burning through managers and failing to qualify for Europe)

What is recorded in fanzines is the advent of the money years with plenty of warning about this causing a split in football and how desperate clubs and fans were to get involved and how fanzines often ran purely to make a few quid for their club. Even more jarring further down the leagues even having a rich neighbour means nothing. My personal opinion is that the way betting has spread is a curse but let’s face it even back in the days of peak fanzine people did silly things with trebles and finally fanzines could always find a gallows sense of humour to help get through things

There is a solution to all of this…MARXISM. Or so Falkirk’s One F in… suggested back in issue 7 back in 1999. Nothing else has worked and they make some strong points here..

You Have been Watching