An Interview with Football Finance Expert, Kieran Maguire
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Kieran Maguire, a financial football expert, highly acclaimed for his work in the media and teaching, and has surmounted complementary nicknames describing him as the ‘Columbo’ and ‘rain man’ of football finance. It was a very enjoyable chat, discussing his infamous podcast, his footballing opinions and his views on some of the legal-economic issues I have written about in Food & Footy.
The Price of Football Podcast
Photo Credit: The Price of Football - Apple Podcasts
I was first made aware of Kieran Maguire when encountering his podcast, The Price of Football, which he co-hosts alongside comedian Kevin Day. The podcast has existed for over two and a half years and they release two shows a week ‘following the money to find out what’s really going on behind the scenes of the beautiful game’. I would highly recommend a listen, be it on your morning commute or whilst cooking, as it delves deep into the technical side of football and the duo present it in a way which is interactive and enjoyable. There is a never-ending train of contentious issues that arise in football, so they are certainly never short of topics to debate about.
I began by asking Kieran whether he envisaged the podcast to be such a roaring success, particularly as it covers a relatively niche subject matter. It has accumulated over six million downloads, with a loyal fanbase to say the least...
“Our philosophy is: Every fan is as important as every other fan. Manchester United do not take precedent over Morecambe and we will talk about non-league as much as we will talk about Barcelona.”
Covering a plethora of issues throughout the football pyramid provides the added surprise to the podcast that any topic can come up, and the fact there are over 375 unanswered questions demonstrates the desire of fans to learn more about the financial side of the sport. Kieran did not anticipate the podcast would become so successful and has formed quite the comedic duo with Kevin Day:
Regarding the future of the podcast, there will soon branch out to more live shows, a trend many podcasts are moving towards. I will soon be attending The Athletic’s Football Clichés live show, another podcast part of my weekly digest. On expanding the podcast to more shows a week, Kieran offered an amusing explanation as to why they are keeping it to just the two a week…
So How Did Kieran Become Engulfed in Football Finance?
Kieran spoke of his work as a teacher in the “two powerhouse cities” of Liverpool and Manchester and utilised the football industry “as a trojan horse” to enhance the engagement of students. When unfortunately breaking his knee, he found himself on crutches for five weeks, and decided to number-crunch at that time, really kick-starting his work in football finance.
Kieran on his Beloved Club, Brighton & Hove Albion
Photo Credit: Football 365
Kieran is an avid Brighton fan, holding a season ticket for the Seagulls and is understandably gutted by the departure of Graham Potter to Chelsea. A world record £22 million compensation fee was paid to secure his services, beating the previous record of £17.4 million for Julian Nagelsmann joining Bayern Munich in 2021. I asked whether he could forecast a trend emerging where compensation fees will reach astronomical levels in the future, akin to when Neymar’s transfer to Paris Saint-Germain instigated an exponential rise in transfer fees:
“I’m not necessarily convinced of that because there are an awful lot of unemployed managers. The fact that Pochettino and Dyche are available automatically increases the pool of talent that is available to take jobs... The supply and demand automatically reduces the price... Brighton were clever with giving Potter a six-year contract, which meant that he had a long tail, meaning someone would have to buy him out of it.”
Kieran on Brighton’s financial model
We briefly discussed the appointment of Brighton’s new Head Coach, Roberto De Zerbi. He is well-known for deploying an attacking style of football including ‘playing out from the back’ with his tenures at Shakhtar Donetsk and Sassuolo his most successful. Kieran therefore felt a transition to Brighton would not be an overwhelming challenge, as his style of play is not too dissimilar to Graham Potter’s. We spoke about the notion of a ‘New Manager’s Bounce’ in football, where an uptick in form arises when a new manager joins a club and he pointed to the interesting work of Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s book, Soccernomics, which investigates this. To read further on this, follow this link.
The Future of The Fan-Led Review on Football Governance
Photo Credit: The Independent
In light of recent rumours unearthing that the Prime Minister, Liz Truss, may be looking to veto the Review, it felt appropriate to ask Kieran what his thoughts were on the matter.
“The Prime Minister has been vocal about wanting small government, minimising interference. That would suggest that there is a greater risk that the contents of the fan led review and the government’s response, which was universally in favour, could be thrown to the wolves.”
He revealed that lobbyists are attempting to dilute the recommendations via a series of supposedly ‘independent’ think-tanks, but it is still difficult to ascertain what will happen in regard to the Review panning out in the way proponents of it desire.
We rounded off our discourse surrounding the Review by talking about the future of breakaway competitions and how English football’s competitions will soon look. He mentioned an excellent column by Martyn Ziegler’s column who wrote of a ‘Brave New World’ in English football, whereby FA Cup Replays may be scrapped and the League Cup revamped. A major issue concerns player burn-out whilst tackling the fixture schedule is one of the key priorities for football to appease the players whilst balancing the commercial benefits.
Todd Boehly’s Controversial Proposals
Photo Credit: RTE
My first article on the Footy section of Food & Footy discussed the takeover of Chelsea FC just prior to Todd Boehly’s consortium successfully taking ownership of the West Londoners. Fast forward a few months and the American has launched himself onto the back pages by proposing some drastic changes to English football:
Ultimately, I hope the Premier League takes a little bit of a lesson from American sports, and really starts to figure out, why don’t we do a tournament with the bottom four sports teams, why isn’t there an All-Star game?
– Todd Boehly, 13 September 2022
For the full interview with Todd Boehly, watch below:
This has received some considerable backlash from many big names in the game, including Thierry Henry and Jamie Carragher, as well as Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, who jokingly remarked, “Does he want to bring the Harlem Globetrotters as well?”
Boehy’s idea for an ‘All-Star’ game involving the best players from the Northern Premier League teams against those from the South predicates on the financial rewards it will create. He described how the MLS All-Star game made $200 million from a Monday and a Tuesday, and believed if England introduced this, it would benefit the wider football pyramid. In regard to the Premier League’s relationship with the EFL, The Premier League claim it paid £1.23 billion to the EFL and wider football pyramid between 2019 and 2022 (£401m per season), amounting to 16% of broadcast revenues, but the EFL desire 25%. I asked Kieran what his thoughts were on Boehly’s suggestions and whether his financial forecasts are founded on the truth:
“No, because this figure of $200 million has been questioned because the Premier League is not going to say, ‘we have a game worth $200 million and we are going to distribute all that money to grassroots football.”
Kieran was evidently sceptical of the idea, a belief I resonated with, partly due to the issue that clubs will be incredibly fearful of their star players becoming injured in such games.
“They’ll be playing for twenty minutes a piece; nobody is going to go in for a hard tackle. If it is at the end of the season, they have all got their eyes on the beach. There is no jeopardy from the player’s perspective of putting in effort in this.”
In connection with the EFL and Premier League’s oscillating relationship, the subject of ‘parachute payments’ naturally arose. These are the payments that ‘aim to soften the blow of leaving the footballing financial gold mine that is the Premier League’. Kieran provided a balanced analysis of these much-critiqued solidary payments:
In relation to the competitiveness at the top of the Premier League, there are undoubtedly concerns, particularly due to the duopoly of Manchester City and Liverpool. Kieran empathised with the belief amongst American owners that English football could extract further commercial benefits from its sport, but also believed it should grow in the right way.
“The owners of elite clubs want the commercialism of the NFL, which is very good at monetising fans, without the egalitarianism. In the Super Bowl there has been twelve different winners in the last fifteen years compared to five in the Premier League.”
A Question on Food...
Photo Credit: The Daily Mail
As my blog fuses my two passions, Food & Footy, it felt appropriate to intertwine the two into a question for Kieran. As a fan of Tottenham Hotspur, I am amazed by the food and drink offerings that the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium takes full advantage of, and reportedly Spurs rack up over £800,000 in revenue per match through its array of suites, restaurants, bars and street-food outlets. I posed a question to Kieran, asking him for his thoughts on Spurs’ new stadium and the possibility of a naming-rights deal arising...
“What I think Spurs have done extremely cleverly is they have made the concourses efficient of relieving cash very quickly and have made them quite a pleasant environment.”
On naming rights:
Barça’s Spending
Photo Credit: ESPN
Over the Summer, I wrote an article outlining how Barcelona utilised creative fundraising to ensure they could spend big on players despite ostensibly suffering financially. They are seemingly always front-and-centre on the football finance news, with young prodigy, Gavi recently signing the first ever €1 billion release clause. I asked Kieran how Barça will be impacted later on down the line after making these financial decisions...
Juventus’ Financial Status
Photo Credit: Black White Red All Over
After my recent trip to Italy, on Food & Footy I recounted the shocking events of The Calciopoli Scandal, and the rejuvenation of Juventus since their relegation to Italy’s second tier. However, recent reports are emerging that The Old Lady will soon announce losses of over €240 million for the 2021/22 financial year, a considerable amount! Kieran gave his opinion of their current financial status, believing their powerful owner Andrea Angelli will aid their financial recovery, and the smart ‘free’ signings of Paul Pogba and Angel Di María further demonstrates their creative approach. However, Kieran outlined that Juve will have less malleability than Barça due to Serie A’s current condition.
“They have far less flexibility... as Italian football is significantly behind the Premier League in terms of the revenues it generates from its broadcasts and the lack of investment in infrastructure. A consequence of a number of decisions they made historically has put them on the back foot and ironically that has made Italian football more exciting as they have not been able to dominate financially.”
We concluded our chat with brief prediction as to how the transfer market will go in the future, as we noted how there is a growing tendency towards new-styled deals. More and more transfers involve loans with obligations or options to buy and buy-back clauses are now being inserted in contracts, as a response to the difficult financial climate amidst the global pandemic.
Final Thoughts
It was a great opportunity to chat all things football finance with Kieran, and was intriguing to hear not only about his career but also his insight surrounding the most contentious issues impacting football right now. He added some fascinating perspectives on the topics I have focused my Food & Footy articles on, and pointed me towards some other valuable resources for me to expand my knowledge on the beautiful game.