Why Billionaires are snapping up English football clubs?

The economy of football were changed sometime in the 90s with the invention of digital TV. Back in the 60s, we have black and white TV screens. If you told people back then that to watch a football match coloured and live from another country would be a reality one day, they would call you mad.

But by the 90s, it is not only possible, it has rewritten the rules of football's economy. For the world's most famous sport, it only meant that a lot of people from all over the world would be able to watch the exciting sports live. Hence the scramble of purchasing of TV rights from TV stations from all over the world.

When that happens in a large scale, it only mean that there is now a substantially huge and powerful equation governing the football's economy. With that, the football clubs suddenly are in a good position to ask for astronomical money in deals. So that is the reason why football clubs are becoming richer.

Again, when that happens in a large scale, it only mean that there would be a crazy financial fights over the top talents and that in turn elevated the entire valuation of all groups of soccer players. A 24 year old Bryan Robson moved to Manchester united for £1.5 million on 1 October 1981 and that was a British record. Today, for a talented 16 year old, clubs wouldn't mind to pay £5 - £10 million and that is the market rate.

Because of that, football suddenly turned extremely commercialised towards the end of 90s and clubs became technically a business entity in an environment where the riches clubs will have the biggest share of the pie. And factually, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Barcelona, some of the richest clubs in Europe had ruled the economy as well as competitions.

Sometime in the beginning of this century, a man by the name of Roman Abramovich changed the situation completely. There were rumours that he bought into Chelsea for tax invasion purposes. This was never confirmed nor investigated. At the turn of the century, with clubs at the top getting bigger and bigger slice of the pie, the bottom lot found themselves losing out on financial deals because they are not that 'pretty' to watch and yet have to compete with top clubs on the same financial grounds for players. This essentially protected the top clubs and it became a mechanism that interlock and prevents clubs from lower half from coming up and race with them 'fairly'. Over the years, a few other clubs had tried like Leeds United and Newcastle United but they couldn't last the distance as far as purchasing power is concerned. Top clubs were dishing out £20 million and £20 million and £20 million and puts the player on the bench while even popular teams like Tottenham Hotspurs, a mid table club is finding it hard to keep up with their acquisition power.

The solution to that was a investor cum 'Sugar Daddy' as in the case of Chelsea. He is a pioneer in that sense. He bought into the club and quite infact bought the global 'eye balls' for free because while he is investing in the club and turning it into a top one, all eyes are on him and his brand name 'Roman Abramovich the £5 billion pound man' was suddenly 'advertised' to the entire world. In the equation of advertising, that is a damn cheap price to get everyone from any corner of the world to know him. Not forgetting that Chelsea in a few years time would be self-sustaining which means it can generate enough revenues to sustain the club because it is a top club ranked side by side with Manchester United now.

The man changed the entire story just like how digital TV changed it in the 90s. His achievement became a model for billionaires now who are trying to buy into these 'global advertising media'. That altogether skyrockets the club's value once again as we can see Manchester City who finished 9th last season being sold for over £200 million pounds and Ashley asking for £400 million pounds for depleted Newcastle United who hasn't even won a game in 5 matches.

This would set the trend for the richest man to buy and pay for the best players and my prediction is that until a football 'economy crash' which I have no idea how it would happen, it would raise the profile of English Clubs, English players, English football standards, EPL football's wages, EPL ticket prices. All in all, this would be the English Football's decade. If that escalated quickly and if they had a reasonable system in place to protect the growth of local footballers, the England team is going to benefit from it all and improve and we should see them winning a major tournament within the next decade.