English Premier League Rakes In £3 Billion Mark
Deloitte’s sports team, devoted to sports analysis, has put the income generated as Premier League clubs’ revenues in 2013-2014 season at £3 billion, beating the previous records.
Deloitte said that the figure is over and above the four year seasons, after passing £2 billion, adding that the revenues have doubled in seven years.
The head of the team, Dan Jones described the increase as “a remarkable achievement in isolation, but phenomenal in the wider economic context of that same period.”
He said the battle between TV firms for Premier League rights was key to driving the league’s revenues higher.
Mr. Jones, in Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance said: “the entry of BT Sport into the market to compete with BSkyB has applied huge upward pressure to broadcast revenue – from the 2013-14 season onwards each domestic live game on average generates broadcast revenue of £6.5m.
“It is clear that BT Sport’s entry is not a passing fad but a serious, focused, long-term commitment.”
In 2013-14, top flight clubs benefitted, on average, from an extra £25m in broadcast revenue.
While providing a snapshot of the 2013-14 season, the Deloitte report looks at the 2012-13 season in greater depth.
There were positive signs in the Premier League, with revenues rising to £2.5bn for the first time, but the perennial issues of high wages and debts remained.
Premier League operating profits decreased slightly, and Deloitte said clubs were operating on “razor thin” margins. Wage costs as a percentage of revenues hit a new high of 71%.
Clubs’ aggregate net debt grew by £139m to a total of more than £2.5bn by summer 2013.
Deloitte says this was largely driven by an increase in interest-free “soft loans” from owners of £228m.
In fact, soft loans totaled £1.6bn, up from £1.4bn a year earlier, represented close to two-thirds of total net debt.
Some 90% of this figure was attributable to four Premier League clubs – Chelsea, Newcastle United, Aston Villa and Queens Park Rangers,
However, Deloitte expects Uefa’s Financial Fair Play break-even requirements – which saw Manchester City punished last month for breaching the rules – to focus clubs’ minds on balancing their books.
“The signs are that most clubs are adopting a more financially robust and balanced approach to the way they run their businesses, and they must continue down this path if they are to safeguard the long term financial health of the game,” Mr Jones said.
Meanwhile, the growing global appeal of the English Premier League could be seen in the fact that during 2012-13 half of the clubs had foreign owners, compared with only one 10 years earlier.
International owners have “also influenced the increasingly global commercial perspective driving clubs’ business plans, as well as helping the overall export of the Premier League brand around the globe,” says Deloitte.
It says it is only a matter of time before there is an owner or major sponsorship deal from China, where the Premier League is a major consumer brand.
The drive to achieve promotion to the Premier League saw Championship clubs gamble heavily in 2012-13.
Wage costs exceeded revenues in the Championship for the first time in 12 years, leading to a record wage-to-revenue ratio of 106% and record operating losses of £241m.[myad]
President Goodluck Jonathan has said that conventional government universities are weak in discipline and high moral values. “universities owned by religious bodies have discipline and moral education. This is quite weak in terms of conventional universities owned by government.
Illitrate FCT Police Commissioner And The Nigeria Police By Firdausi Ahuoyiza
Mbu Joseph Mbu, if you haven’t heard about him, is a police officer and Rivers state police commissioner who had serious running battle with Amaechi, the civilian governor of the state. So much was the battle that Mbu was seen as running a parallel government in police uniform, taking instruction only from ‘Abuja’ as Amaechi was running his own government in civilian cap. Though unform and civilian normally should operate at different levels, Mbu was doing more politicking than Amaechi then.
And before one could say ‘Rivers,’ Mbu found himself transferred to Abuja, the centre of political scheming. Perhaps, his boss or bosses had seen in him the ability to create controversies, navigate in them and damn the consequences.
The first controversial official pronouncement he made since arriving in the federal capital was the declaration on Monday, of a ban on public protests in the federal capital territory against the abduction by Boko Haram, of 276 female students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in Borno state. By such declaration, Mbu has simply made it known that he is back at his crudity, either by his own calculation or as a proxy.
His ban on protests is a byproduct of the movement by the #BringBackOurGirls# led by Hadiza Bala Usman and a former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili.
In the last 44 days, they have pressed home the call on government to ensure safe and quick return of the Chibok schoolgirls.
Mbu, in reaction to series of such protests said that he would not fold his arms and allow the protest degenerate into lawlessness. Lawlessness???
He claimed that his action is aimed at preventing those who want to perpetrate evil by hiding under the protests from do so, saying that he had information that some people were planning to mingle with the protesters to detonate bomb at the venue of the #BringBackOurGirls sit-out at the Unity Fountain so as to embarrass the government.
“The trend,” Mbu said of the protest, “is now posing a serious security threat to those living around and citizens who drive through. As the FCT Police boss, I cannot fold my hands and watch this lawlessness” (Lawlessness???).
“Information reaching us is that too soon dangerous elements will join the groups under the guise of protest and detonate explosive aimed at embarrassing the government.”
It appears that Mbu has forgotten that Nigeria is in democracy, and operating a constitution that allows people free assembly and movement among others.
It is becoming clear that our law enforcement agents are abdicating their constitutional responsibilities in a democratic set up and trying to tailor the society to suit their lazy disposition to enforcing law.
Even in a dictatorial system, the police owe it a duty to look beyond the ordinary rumour (which Mbu now engages in) by providing effective security even in the worst of situation, and has no business restricting people from expressing their feelings the way they want to.
Of course, the rumour and or hypothetical reasoning by Mbu that some bad elements might hide under the peaceful protests by the bringbackourgirls campaigners begs the issue and portray the police as a bunch of lazy men and women in uniform.
Except their is more to the ban than people outside the system don’t know, Mbu is clearly bringing a strange elements into Nigeria’s kind of democracy.
He may need to define the meaning of this new system of banning public protests under whatever guise, genuine or self-serving to those whose knowledge of democracy is different.
Even though, the police High Command rose to disown Mbu hurriedly a day after (Tuesday), because of the negative international implications on Nigeria, fact remains that the police men and women are treating the constitutional matter with disdain while finding soft spot to sleep, away from their job.
‘Advisory Notice’ to the protesters, as the counter statement from the Force Headquarters’ Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Frank Mba described the new directive did not cancle Mbu’s outright ban of same.
The Police would do well to go back to the drawing board on their proper roles in a case such as this. They ought to know that what they are expected to do is, among others, provide guidance, protection to and surveillance to participants at rallies, protests and similar other actions.
Or are the police saying that they don’t have the capacity to carry out such simple civil duty?
[myad]