Premier League: As Swansea close in on Milan, how TV cash is transforming 'the best league in the world'

Back in 1995, when Lord Sugar was plain old Alan and he was owner of Tottenham Hotspur, he was asked about the array of foreign superstars like Jurgen Klinsmann coming to play in the Premier League. In a throwaway remark, Sugar half-smiled - he never quite manages a full one - and said he could see the day when clubs could let the fans in for free, such was the TV value of the product he and his fellow chairmen were serving up.

A generation on and Sugar’s off-the-cuff prediction has proven folly. Last week the owners of the 20 Premier League clubs collectively decided not to place a cap on ticket prices for away fans (seven objected, enough to veto any proposal). The clubs are swimming in oceans of money and could comfortably make a transformation in the nature of what it costs to be a fan, yet chose not to formally act on easing the financial burden on supporters.

Same old Premier League, same old club owners. If the slavish devotion to extracting every last penny out of fans is a familiar phenomenon, at least the actual football is offering something different this season.

The transfer window is closed, there’s a third of the campaign to go, and the real fun has begun. The title race is the most open in a generation. Substantial clubs are battling for survival, and there is even competitive interest in the middle of the table. It is the business end of the season. But with a new £8.3bn TV deal in the offing, for club owners the emphasis is very much on business.

The people who own England’s top flight clubs will be aiming to ensure their particular strategy pays off and they grab a greater share of that lucrative TV dividend. Supporters have strong reasons to despise the commercialisation of the sport. Talk of balance sheets, amortisation, fixed intangible assets and brand monetisation should never obscure what is really important - the football. Yet the business models employed by those clubs provide a telling sub-plot to the narrative of on-field action.

A dash for cash unites them all. They are all exploiting the loyalties of supporters who have a devotion to their ‘brands’ that no other business enjoys. But from oligarchs to investment corporations, American franchise portfolios to the all-too-rare cases where supporters have a direct say, there are contrasting ways to run EPL clubs. These methods will have a direct impact on the look of the table by season’s end.

Since its foundation in 1992, status in the Premier League has been broadly determined by a simple equation. The more spent on transfer fees and wages, the higher the league position. Top-flight English football is now entering a new phase.

Early on the Premier League was a money-transfer operation that directed the TV cash into the hands of players, agents and get-rich-quick directors. The clubs themselves were financial basket cases, riddled with debt and often at the mercy of benefactors or perilous top-flight status.

It’s a slightly different picture today. A privileged tiny few still reap the riches, and debt is still a major issue, but for the most recent year when figures are available, 15 out of the 20 clubs turned a pre-tax profit. The Premier League now resembles not so much a Wild West gold rush as a maturing industry. ‘Consolidation’ is the word often used to describe this stage in the league’s history. Owners want stability, predictable income streams, and growth that can be accurately forecast rather than speculatively wished for.

While the retention of relegation thankfully means we haven’t quite got to the stage of the American franchise system, with the slight shift in strategy has come a greater degree of competitive balance. It is not a levelling of the playing field - Manchester United are still vastly more wealthy than Watford - but TV cash has meant the less well-off clubs can not only better resist bids for their top players but also attract superior talent.

The various tables that rank clubs across global sport illustrate the point. Deloitte’s and Forbes’ annual ‘rich-list’ leagues have seen a familiar roll-call of big English names. but other EPL clubs outside the top 20-rankings are gaining on their European competitors. A further eight English clubs lie just outside Deloitte’s Top 20 figures for 2014-15.

As shown in Sporting Intelligence’s 2015 review of wages across global sport, part fan-owned Swansea pay their first-team players an average of £1.6m per year. It moved the Welsh side 58 places up the wages table compared to the previous year, to 95th position. Italian giants Milan, by contrast, paid their stars nearly £2.4m a year, but slipped to 58th place. The money gap between the two sides is closing.

It means a club that has played in European competition just once (outside of its participation due to winning the Welsh Cup) are financially competitive with the seven-time winners of the European Cup/Champions League.

It also means Stoke City can sign talent like Xherdan Shaqiri and Ibrahim Affelay, West Ham Dimitri Payet, and Crystal Palace secure Yohan Cabaye - and more pertinently pay the wages that mainland European clubs struggle to match. And once the new TV deal kicks in, bringing with it a minimum of £96m per season for each club, that EPL spending power will grow.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has said: “the Premier League has so much financial power that the lower teams, who spent a bit less, they can still buy the best players of Valencia, of Lyon, and that makes the league much more competitive.”

The consequence for Arsenal is that they and the rest of the modern elite are now playing in a domestic league that is arguably more competitive than it has ever been. This, by any measure, has been a thrilling season on the pitch. Leicester’s continuing refusal to comply with expectations and drop out of the title chase has been gleefully refreshing, mocking the clubs that have hitherto carved up the honours between them.

Off the pitch, the picture is less inspiring. As it to illustrate in essence the complete contradictions the Premier League provides, on the day Leicester’s band of rag-tag brothers shamed the complacent superstars of Manchester City with a brilliant 3-1 win, the consequence of the never-ending grab for cash was writ large at Anfield.

Thousands of fans, pushed to the financial limit, finally snapped and walked out en masse in protest over the cack-handed move by their club’s owners to ramp up some ticket prices. The decision has since been rescinded, but the issue won’t go away.

The sense of supporter anger and disenchantment is entirely understandable. And there is little solace in finding connective ideals with those in Leicester’s boardroom. Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha is another billionaire owner likely to have calculating ambitions at odds with those of the delirious Foxes fans enjoying every moment of their club’s incredible season. But as with his peers, Srivaddhanaprabha’s cold business logic will have an inevitable bearing on how those supporters will be feeling come May 15th.

COMING IN PART 2: A look at how the Premier League clubs and their ownership models and strategies affect they way they are run