Sugar: Football boom time is over

Sir Alan Sugar today warned Premiership chairmen to stop spending so much money on players or risk being drawn into the television cash crisis threatening the Football League.

The former Tottenham chairman, who was criticised by fans during his 10 years in charge at White Hart Lane for not spending enough money on big-name stars, believes the football boom he helped start is coming to an end.

Sugar, chairman of Amstrad, was instrumental in the foundation of the Premier League in 1992 and helped set up the first big-money TV rights deal with Rupert Murdoch's Sky, worth £304 million.

Since then the value of the Premiership's rights have jumped to a staggering £1.6 billion.

The Premier League says the collapse of ITV Digital and the broadcaster's £315m deal with the Football League will not affect the value media companies will pay for top-level domestic football.

But Sugar is one of a growing band of industry experts who believe such confidence is misplaced. Greg Dyke, the BBC director-general, said of the last round of football rights deals in June 2000: "Prices were paid that I suspect will never be paid again. For people in football I suspect this is only the beginning."

Sugar backed Dyke, a former director at Manchester United, and said: "In my personal opinion, the last deal that was done is going to go down in history as the biggest and it's never going to be that sort of sum again.

"Since that deal was done, NTL pulled the plug on their pay-per-view deal and ITV Digital no longer have the funding for the Football League.

"I agree with Greg Dyke who said we have seen the last of it really."

Despite his forecast he says clubs won't ever learn and will just carry on spending what they have got until the money runs out.

He added: "While clubs are enjoying the benefits of the current TV deal I fear that most of them will spend the money and structure their clubs in such a way that their expectations for that revenue to continue beyond this deal will still be there and that's why they may run into trouble.

"What goes in at one end comes out the other. If a club gets £25m from TV it will spend £25m on players' wages. The following year when clubs have only got, say £10m, you have still got the wage structure from the previous year which you can no longer afford.

"I have been speaking with a couple of chairmen who share that view but they are still conducting negotiations with players who they might not be able to afford in two to three years time.

"At the moment, clubs in the Premiership get an average of £20m a season. I cannot see that being the case in two to three years' time and clubs like Leeds, who have spent a hell of a lot of money and not achieved anything yet, and Chelsea, who are in debt, could be creating a monster for themselves .

"Ken Bates (the Chelsea chairman) says it is under control. He is a shrewd man and I suppose he says that because he knows he hasn't got to pay it back for seven or eight years. But with that sort of debt I'm sure he's coming to the conclusion that he has to start cutting his cloth."

The Football League is facing a battle to retrieve the £178m it is owed by ITV Digital, which is now in the hands of administrators Deloitte and Touche.

League officials plan a meeting with other creditors of the collapsed broadcaster this week to discuss their next step.

Parent companies, who are the biggest creditors with more than £800m owing, say they are not liable for ITV Digital's debts.

The Football League says that is not true and are prepared to sue them for £500m if ITV Digital's administrators turn ITV Digital off thus breaching the contract with the league.

Other major creditors include Sky, which receives £60 to £70m a year for allowing its programmes to be broadcast on ITV Digital.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in