The man who sold Liverpool and bid for Chelsea reveals the extent of the Premier League’s financial dominance

Not many people have been involved in taking over football clubs like Sir Martin Broughton.The lifelong Chelsea fan …

Not many people have been involved in taking over football clubs like Sir Martin Broughton.

The lifelong Chelsea fan and former chairman of British Airways successfully oversaw the sale of Liverpool Football Club in 2010, having been appointed temporary chairman by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2010 when the Reds were about to be run by Tom Hicks and George Gillett. .

Then in 2022, the businessman led a consortium including Sebastien Coe, Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams in a bid to buy Chelsea, which was eventually outbid by Todd Boehly for the London club.

Broughton is in a unique position to comment on the finances of the Premier League, which he says is already a bit like a European Super League.

“If you go back to the first decade of the Premier League, I think for nine years it was won by Manchester United or Arsenal,” Broughton recalled in an exclusive interview with FourFourTwo.

“It was a bit like Scotland. Than [Roman] Abramovich came in and made it three [clubs]Than [Sheikh] Mansour entered [at Manchester City] and made four of them. Then Fenway took Liverpool back up to make it five.

“And now you have the Saudis coming to Newcastle, making it six and Tottenham are always a bit on the edge.

“So one of the great attractions of the Premier League is that you play titans against each other every week and you have no certainty about who will win the league.

“In Germany, [the question is] Will Bayern win the league? In France it’s PSG or PSG or PSG, so they don’t get the same media attention. So the Premier League is increasingly similar to the European Super League in many ways.

“Are [the Super League] here in many ways, which attracts more buyers.”

Today’s best offers on new Liverpool shirts

Broughton explains how football agent Rafaela Pimenta, whose clients have included Erling Haaland, Paul Pogba and Marco Veratti since the death of super-agent Mino Raiola, demonstrated the Premier League’s dominance over all others at the recent Business of Football Summit:

“[Pimenta] said that in the past people [players] could say, ‘I’d like to join…’ — and they’d quote a club, it could be a Premier League club. It was before Barcelona.

“Now it’s people [players] saying, ‘I want to play in the Premier League’ — because that’s the goal to play now. I put it in that context because what makes it so exciting to watch the Premier League is that the best players want to come here.”

With the Premier League being Europe’s most competitive league, effectively a European Super League, that’s nice for the Premier League itself, but even Broughton admits that as a fan it can be a pain for supporters of teams eager for silverware.

“There are too many other teams that are very good right now,” he admits. “It just makes it harder to win. The Premier League has gotten harder over time.”

Newcastle is taking the ‘Liverpool approach’ — and Financial Fair Play is needed

So how does Newcastle’s takeover affect the Premier League and what does Broughton know about their approach to competing for trophies?

“My own feeling from speaking to Amanda Staveley in Newcastle is that they see the Liverpool process of sensible data analytics acquisition as the right way forward,” he explained. “Not the kind [Todd] Boehly [at Chelsea] splashes huge amounts of money for players.

So how do we prevent clubs from spending their way to success?

“I think we all need to look for good — better than we’ve had — financial fair play rules that deliver a sensible outcome,” says Sir Martin.

“It’s fair to say that Manchester City are above all others at the moment in terms of performance over the past five years. And what we don’t want is one team winning all the time [the Premier League].

“There are doubts about the integrity of that process, of course, but the Premier League is a stronger place to have Manchester City in.

“But we do want good financially fair play to be possible in the future where everyone plays within sort of a sensible set of goals and then it’s who can perform best within those rules and who can just spend more money.

“And I think that’s the way forward. And I think we’ll get there. It may take a year or two to get there, or three. But I think that’s the way forward.

“I think I am not paying ridiculous amounts, but I am very careful, but at the same time I am willing to invest. You bring in one or two new players every year, that’s good. Bringing in 14 just to put numbers on actually makes it really hard.

For an owner like John Henry at Liverpool, or any club not backed by a nation state, stronger implementation of financial fair play rules can’t come soon enough.

Sir Martin’s book, Every time I hear that song (opens in new tab)is out now, published by Nine Elm Books.

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