Bundesliga is the most profitable league in europe

the bundesliga has an profit from 250 million €

sales increase from +15 % to 1,4 milliarden euro


that makes the bundesliga number 1 in europe

This explains why they don't win anything Toni


Spend the damn money and your teams might not get thrashed regularly in europe

There goes otto's excuse that the bundesliga doesn't make as much money as other leagues so can't compete.

What's commercial, as opposed to sponsorship?

most coaches in the bundesliga utterly useless when it comes to cl/uefa cup games, they are tactical not on the top

they dont have a facking clue, hopefully klinsi will change some things and other coaches will follow

another probelm is that the bunesliga cannot attract high quality players, or pay there sales

Related to this topic, this article from the BBC today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7423254.stm

Interesting points for me:

1. In the graphic at the bottom, you see that German clubs have a very healthy wage/turnover ratio, less than 50%. Italy hit 90% in 2001-2002 no wonder it all collapsed so startingly

2. Only 8 clubs in the Premier League actually made a profit

Commented on this in the Bundesliga general discussion thread.

No surprise for me, the Bundesliga is the last remaining (big) league that is financially healthy.

COTR wrote:



There goes otto's excuse that the bundesliga doesn't make as much money as other leagues so can't compete.

The Bundesliga is the most even league, Bayern the great exception. While this makes the league more competitive (at least behind Bayern), it's way more difficult to establish a group of 'elite' clubs that play in the CL every year basically, like in England. With the exception of Bayern, our top clubs can't simply compete with the top clubs of the other big leagues financially. Spain, Italy and now England are way less even leagues, and their top clubs have budgets that only Bayern can compete with.

That's what you have to have in mind when you look at statistics like that. In Europe, it's more beneficial to have a couple of strong clubs, than an 'egalitarian' league like the Bundesliga.


But like I've written often myself, money is not the only reason why Bundesliga clubs often disappoint in Europe (Deisler mentioned the lack of quality coaches already), and it definitely does not excuse the rather disappointing results in the UEFA Cup. In the UEFA Cup, German clubs are amongst the richest, and therefore should do much better than they did in the last few years.

The CL is a different beast, for the reasons explained above.

Don't agree re. Spain - there are only 2 clubs on a different financial planet throughout their history. The rest of them constantly ebb and flow and keep fluctuating with each other in the table. For eg. Valencia were very healthy financially until a couple of seasons ago, but now are in huge trouble.

Well, that's actually proving my point. Those two clubs are so dominant financially, that they are not just playing the CL every year, but have budgets only the biggest EPL clubs can compete with. Having two very dominant clubs, and other big clubs like Valencia that are still richer (have bigger budgets rather) than most top clubs in Germany, is simply more 'effective' in Europe than a single dominant club like Bayern that is able to compete with the richest, and a very even, 'egalitarian' league behind them.

2 1/2 > 1

The same (more or less) applies to France and Lyon btw.

What's the difference between four teams rule a league (EPL) or 1 team rules the league...? In both cases you can't say it is even....

In the EPL you are 97% sure the winner comes from the big 4. But you can still choose between one of the 4. In the Bundesliga you know 75% sure Bayern will win it. So for 75% the league is boring.

The difference is that it's better to have 4 dominant clubs in Europe than 1, as I've explained already. And you should actually read more carefully, I said that it is the most even league behind the dominant club that is Bayern -> it's harder to establish a group of top clubs in the Bundesliga than it is in most other big leagues.

Nobody was talking about the entertainement value, but you probably missed that also.

But I tried to explain that it doesn't matter how even a league is after bla bla bla... Behind PSV (and Ajax in a lesser sense)the Dutch League is probably as even as the Bundesliga so it is an utter shite statement

We were comparing big leagues.

And it's no shite argument, because it probably explains why Dutch clubs have been rather disappointing in Europe in the last few years also (by their standards).

Do you really don't get it Ricardo? If not, you may understand it after this simple example: Is it more beneficial in Europe, where only a few clubs can compete every year, to have 4 clubs with a budget €100m, than 1 club with a budget of €100m, and 6 others with a budget of €30m?

blutgraetsche wrote:
The Bundesliga is the most even league, Bayern the great exception. While this makes the league more competitive (at least behind Bayern), it's way more difficult to establish a group of 'elite' clubs that play in the CL every year basically, like in England. With the exception of Bayern, our top clubs can't simply compete with the top clubs of the other big leagues financially. Spain, Italy and now England are way less even leagues, and their top clubs have budgets that only Bayern can compete with.

its similar in spain blut, behind madriz and Barça, the rest simply cannot fight on ECL and La Liga fronts and hence the english catching spain in the overall rankings, although much of spain's success was also based on better uefa cup performance

Frank, like I've explained already, you simply have more rich clubs in Spain than we have in Germany. Yes, the league is even behind those dominant clubs also, but we only have Bayern, while you have Real Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia (usually).

Wage/turnover ratio will jump rapidly in next years report. That hasn't accounted for this seasons spending so the main influence of new owners across the board has not been accounted for.

Arsenal's wage budget figure is doing nothing to convince anybody that they are tightly run ship. A rough estimate, based on £0.3m p/w going on staff salaries and academy salaries, would make the average Arsenal squad player earn £65,000 p/w. If you are still losing players because of monetary reasons offering those wages then the club is horribly mismanaged.

blutgraetsche wrote:We were comparing big leagues.

My bad, I thought someone mentioned the Bundesliga

Dwarf wrote:Wage/turnover ratio will jump rapidly in next years report. That hasn't accounted for this seasons spending so the main influence of new owners across the board has not been accounted for.

Arsenal's wage budget figure is doing nothing to convince anybody that they are tightly run ship. A rough estimate, based on £0.3m p/w going on staff salaries and academy salaries, would make the average Arsenal squad player earn £65,000 p/w. If you are still losing players because of monetary reasons offering those wages then the club is horribly mismanaged.

I agree with the first paragraph entirely, and I think, certainly when it comes to considering the Premier League, the wages clubs spent in 07/08 will be more interesting and more representative of the future. To a degree, this information regarding the 06/07 season is already a bit irrelevant when it comes to the Premier League.

But I don't understand the point about Arsenal being mismanaged if, being able to offer wages of, as a rough estimate, £65,000 per week, they still find themselves losing players. If they're able to offer £65,000 per week to their average squad players, it suggests that they have plenty of money; if players are being offered this and still they leave the club, then I don't see how that is because the club is being mismanaged - it is simply that certain players can get more money elsewhere, or they want new challenges or environments.

Certainly, the figures bring into question Wenger's statements regarding the club's wage ceiling. I think there are a few points here.

For a start, obviously the figures are from the 06/07 season, at the end of which Arsenal sold Henry, Ljungberg and Reyes, whilst their main transfers in saw Eduardo, Sagna and Fabianski arrive at the club. I imagine that Henry and Ljungberg at least were on big wages, and so, with their departure, considering no big names arrived but considering a few players may have received wage increases, I imagine that Arsenal will have spent no more on wages in the 07/08 season.

At the same time, the clubs above them will, I presume, have increased their spending on wages. Man Utd sold a few players who were probably on decent amounts - Smith and Heinze - but brought in all of Tevez, Hargreaves, Anderson and Nani. Chelsea sold Robben but brought in Anelka and Malouda as well as a few squad players in Sidwell, Pizarro, Ivanovic, Belletti. Liverpool may well have spent a similar amount in 07/08 - they brought in a number of players, like Torres, Mascherano, Babel, but sold a lot too in Cisse, Bellamy, Garcia - but then, like you say, with the number of new owners in the league, I expect the likes of Portsmouth, Man City, Tottenham, all increased their expenditure on wages significantly.

In a word, I expect that Arsenal's figures for 07/08 will place them closer to the teams below them, farther from what Man Utd and Chelsea spend. Still, Arsenal are spending a lot of money on wages, yet seem to struggle to satisfy some players, and they make a lot of a supposed wage ceiling. At a guess, it may be that they pay significantly more in wages to academy players and youngsters than do most other clubs - because they have a lot of such players, because they're bringing in so many from abroad.

Premier League clubs are spending a greater proportion of their cash on wages than ever before, a report into football finances has found.

The revenues of top-flight English sides topped £1.5bn for the first time in the 2006/7 season, Deloitte said.

But the ratio of footballers' wages to turnover hit its highest level since the league began in 1992.

Pursuing on-pitch success meant clubs spent on players to the detriment of their finances, the report said.

Only eight of the 20 Premier League clubs recorded an operating profit in 2006/7 - half the number which did so a year earlier.

However, strong English representation in the Champions League - with three semi-finalists in successive years - suggested that quality in the Premier League was continuing to improve, it added.


'Sustainable level'

Wages paid by top-flight English sides grew by 13% from the previous season to £969m

One club, Reading, saw its wage bill more than double, while Portsmouth and West Ham United spent 49% and 41% more respectively on paying their players. Chelsea had the highest wage bill, totalling £132.8m

Spending was partly driven by the arrival of a new three-year broadcasting deal - worth £1.7bn - which began in August last year.


This will propel Premier League revenues for the 2007/8 season to about £1.9bn, the report estimated.

"A number of clubs essentially spent some of the money on new players and wages in advance," said one of the report's authors, Deloitte's Alan Switzer.


"They knew the broadcast revenue was coming so it was acceptable to do so, but what would be more worrying would be if clubs' wage bills increased even more significantly in coming years."

The wages-to-turnover ratio hit 63%, up from 62% in 2005/6 and 48% in 1996/7, though Mr Switzer said this was "still at a sustainable level".

"Wages will have gone beyond £1bn for the season which has just ended. It will be interesting to see what happens next, and how high they will go."

'Trophy assets'

Much of the investment has been at clubs which have seen new owners at the helm, said Dan Jones, a partner in Deloitte's sports business group.

However, the failure of clubs to produce a strong bottom line suggested that club owners might not have a "real desire" to make significant profits.

"The improvement in cost control which would demonstrate a normal business culture of maximising profitability does not appear to be happening at Premier league clubs," he said.

"It seems that, as in prior decades, we are seeing football clubs treated as 'trophy assets', except with clubs now owned by billionaires from a range of nationalities rather than local businessmen made good, reflecting the global appeal of the game."


The "key strategy" to making money for the club was in selling it on by building up a brand value, he added, "rather than a more tangible ongoing measure such as profitability".

Elsewhere in Europe, the top flight of the French, Italian and Spanish leagues saw about the same proportion of turnover being spent on wages as in the Premier league.

However in Germany, only 45% of income went on salaries.

The Bundesliga had the highest operating profit margin in Europe, the report said, at 18%.


This was helped by Germany having Europe's highest average attendances - with fans drawn by the continent's lowest ticket prices.

However the report noted that "the price of Bundesliga's clubs' very good financial performance seems to be a struggle to reach the latter stages of European club competition in recent years".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7423254.stm

This is the article Kas posted above.

Bashmachkin wrote:
But I don't understand the point about Arsenal being mismanaged if, being able to offer wages of, as a rough estimate, £65,000 per week, they still find themselves losing players. If they're able to offer £65,000 per week to their average squad players, it suggests that they have plenty of money; if players are being offered this and still they leave the club, then I don't see how that is because the club is being mismanaged - it is simply that certain players can get more money elsewhere, or they want new challenges or environments.

Taking a rough estimate, the only players that I'd imagine were significantly above that figure were Henry, Fabregas, Lljungberg, Gallas and Toure. Reyes was off on loan with a significant contribution of his wages being paid by the other club I'd imagine.

If the likes of Rosicky and Hleb were already deriving a high wage packet in the first place they shouldn't have been purchased in preference to other players. Other players like Senderos, Flamini and Denilson should have been comfortably under at the point giving them plenty of room to maneuver. They should have had spare funds available in reserve to take it up to that figure when players started demanding more money.

blutgraetsche wrote:We were comparing big leagues.

And it's no shite argument, because it probably explains why Dutch clubs have been rather disappointing in Europe in the last few years also (by their standards).

Do you really don't get it Ricardo? If not, you may understand it after this simple example: Is it more beneficial in Europe, where only a few clubs can compete every year, to have 4 clubs with a budget €100m, than 1 club with a budget of €100m, and 6 others with a budget of €30m?

Aha now you are comming on my level of intelligence ...

I need to apologise to you.... I responded as a typical Dutchie.... I hardly read the stuff but saw one word and spouted directly my nonsense to you...


You can beat me now.... Ein... Zwei.... Drei

I deserved it

No problem Ricardo, it's all good.

I see your point, Dwarf - but do we know that Arsenal weren't able to offer Flamini up to something like £65,000 a week, that they didn't have the funds in reserve? From what I've read, Arsenal offered Flamini £55,000 a week and weren't inclined to go higher; Flamini, feeling that he hadn't been paid well previously, asked for a significant amount more; and he ended up at Milan where he is getting that.

There's the issue as to whether he was being paid enough in the first place - but then, he only established himself as a regular first choice player at Arsenal this past season. The likes of Rosicky and Hleb came as first team players.

In general, I do think the extent of Arsenal's expenditure on wages is a bit puzzling, because they profess to having a strict ceiling, and none of their players tend to feature in any of the 'top fifty football wages' lists and so on. Like I say, I imagine that it may be the case that they do have a strict ceiling, but pay their youngsters, and their academy players, significantly more than most clubs. I don't see this as mismanagement so much, and without a rich owner, I think they are wise to stick to their means. But perhaps Arsenal's ethos is problematic - if they want to compete with the top clubs and keep their best players, they may need to reconsider their ceiling; whilst the problem with focusing on youngsters is that they'll inevitably want pay raises once they become established, so Arsenal may find themselves constantly having to renegotiate.

Bashmachkin wrote:
I see your point, Dwarf - but do we know that Arsenal weren't able to offer Flamini up to something like £65,000 a week, that they didn't have the funds in reserve? From what I've read, Arsenal offered Flamini £55,000 a week and weren't inclined to go higher; Flamini, feeling that he hadn't been paid well previously, asked for a significant amount more; and he ended up at Milan where he is getting that.

That's even worse than I thought! No wonder Flamini jumped ship. He should have been able to ask for around the average at least and then a further sweetener to stop him taking his option to leave on a bosman, rather than being offered such a poultry sum.

I remember reading somewhere that Flamini was still on the contract he had signed when he went to Arsenal at a young age...something like 15-20k a week. Then in the 06-07 season, when he didnt play much after having played at LB the previous year, he was told he needed to prove himself to earn a new contract, let alone an increase. So he finally does that this time, and yet they refused to budge.