Abramovich sells the most expensive football seats

According to KPMG, fans of Russian billionaire-owned Chelsea contribute the most to the club’s budget – 78 euros per match

It’s just a toy for a billionaire, it will never match Europe’s giants, he’ll get bored and the club will pay the price. Such talk followed when Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich became owner of the London football club Chelsea in June 2003. But twelve years later, not only has it matched top clubs like Real Madrid or Bayern Munich, it has even surpassed them in some economic indicators. According to the latest study by audit firm KPMG, Chelsea earns the most from its spectators. Comparing total ticket sales revenue with stadium capacity for all home matches shows that each seat brings the club 78 euros. “Chelsea is now a model club whose revenues grow every year,” said sports analyst and football agent Jozef Tokos for the Economic Daily.

A stadium short of perfection
Chelsea achieved the highest amount per stadium seat in the 2013/2014 season, mainly thanks to over 99% capacity attendance. This, of course, was also the result of success in the domestic Premier League and European competitions. Stamford Bridge, with its 41,841 capacity, was on average filled by 41,546 spectators. High ticket prices are driven by the huge demand for matches, as the low capacity cannot meet the interest. “The club’s management has known for several years that Chelsea could easily sell out a 60,000-seat stadium. It would significantly boost their revenues,” says leading Czech football agent Viktor Kolář. In the season before last, the club’s ticket sales revenue reached just under 85 million euros. For rival Manchester United, this figure was almost 50 million higher. Over the summer, the club’s management already presented plans to expand the existing stadium. Representatives of the local borough and its residents have been given the opportunity to comment. If they manage to gain the consent of all parties, Chelsea could have a larger stadium within two years.

Italian football in decline
The fact that fans spend the most money on English Premier League matches is further confirmed by the KPMG ranking, where Chelsea is followed by Arsenal (69 euros per spectator), Liverpool (64 euros) and Manchester United (61 euros). At the other end, performing worst among the top European leagues, are Italian clubs. “That doesn’t surprise me at all. Apart from Juventus Turin, attendance is falling everywhere else, and clubs suffer from stadiums that aren’t very attractive for fans,” said football agent Juraj Vengloš for the Economic Daily. According to him, the biggest problem is stadium ownership on the Apennine Peninsula, where cities refuse to give up their share in favour of club owners. “It’s the same in Naples. The owner would like to modernise for millions of euros, but he won’t invest in a stadium he only rents,” says Vengloš, agent of our national team player Marek Hamšík, who plays for the club under Mount Vesuvius. Low ticket revenues are best illustrated by the example of Milan’s Inter and AC clubs. In the KPMG study, the former earns only eleven euros per seat, the latter twelve.