Football and profit? Not relevant here

Slovak sport would benefit from more economic sense, says football agent Jozef Tokos

Only a few hundred spectators attend many matches of the Slovak football league. Why?

How do fans choose? They consider whether the ticket price will give them a worthwhile experience, ideally a quality performance by their favourite team in a pleasant setting with a great atmosphere. If a match comes close to that ideal, many are happy to travel, perhaps for a weekend at an English Premier League game. The market is quite saturated, many will choose top-level football on TV over the league. On a single weekend, you can watch up to 15 matches.

What is more important to the fan – the atmosphere mentioned, or the quality of the sporting performance?

Most fans will say performance first, but surveys suggest it is not entirely decisive. If it were, then for sports in which Slovak athletes truly achieve world-class performances – for example, canoe slalom or shooting – masses of people would attend. And that is not entirely the case.

What role, then, does the stadium and infrastructure play?

There is not a completely direct correlation between fan interest and the quality of the offer. In the early 1990s, Bratislava’s Inter often played to full stands despite having few supporters and offering little comfort. On the other hand, for Slovan’s Good Friday match this year, only a few hundred people showed up. Another example – the mere modernisation of Ondrej Nepela Winter Stadium did not make it automatically sold out. That happened only when Slovan joined the KHL.

Slovan’s hockey team is an example of the “multiply the budget and leave a small league for a bigger one” model. What are the chances of such a model in football?

In theory, it should lead to buying higher-quality players and increasing the attractiveness of at least some matches. At the moment, there is no star in the league who clearly stands out. But even if that were achieved, it would not solve the shortcomings of the overall system. In the 1990s, for example, Kosice tried to “pour” money into the club in the short term, but it didn’t last long. Here, football is more about long-term investment and patient work with fans and advertising partners. We cannot quickly increase the overall financial strength of the clubs and the level of the league.

Is this a constant dictated to the league by the small size of the market it plays in?

Certainly, both football and hockey would benefit from some form of expanded league into a “federal” model. Whether that is realistic, however, is a completely different question.

Does the European football federation UEFA still block the merging of leagues?

The discussion in UEFA is evolving somewhat. There have been quite a few ideas, but they often stumbled on obstacles such as determining the qualification key for European competitions. Even a guest at the Forbes conference from the leadership of Anderlecht Brussels said he expects greater openness from UEFA in the near future.

What do the European numbers say about the connection between the size of a city or region’s market and the strength of a football club?

In Deloitte’s club revenue rankings, you can see there is no direct link. The first two clubs are from large cities – Madrid and Barcelona – followed by Manchester and Munich. After them come two London clubs, Chelsea and Arsenal, but then, seemingly against logic, another club from Manchester – a city of half a million people and a metropolitan area of two million. It has two clubs in the top seven.

Once true in Manchester, does it still apply – that football is mainly a sport for blue-collar fans?

Today, the number of blue-collar workers in a city has no major impact. It is more a question of tradition. In Slovak football, for example, tradition dictates that fairly large towns like Martin, Poprad, Topolcany, or Levice have never had a significant role.

How does the economic crisis affect football?

In general, sport is becoming increasingly economically important. The numbers in Forbes’ rankings of the world’s highest-earning athletes do not decrease year after year. In football this year, we have already seen five of the 50 most lucrative transfers in history; since 2011, there have been 18 of the 50. The amounts for television rights are rising, and the sporting elite is coping with the crisis very well. They are thriving.

Does this apply in the USA or also in Europe?

In the Premier League, a new deal worth £5.5 billion over three years will take effect next season, with the champion earning around £100 million. In 2006, Arsenal secured £90 million over 15 years for the naming rights to Emirates Stadium, and in 2011 Manchester City got about £350 million over 10 years from Etihad Airways for what was once the “city stadium.” Crisis or not, these are record numbers.

Back to Slovakia – the league currently has only one real derby match – Slovan against Trnava – and even that essentially only when it’s played in Trnava, since Slovan has no home stadium. Can this be compared to anything in Europe?

Similarly – in the sense that the league lacks big clubs and is filled with many small ones – you can see it in Scotland or Croatia. Dinamo Zagreb is a big club with a much larger budget than Slovan Bratislava. It has repeatedly reached the Champions League qualifying rounds and has repeatedly transferred players to big leagues, especially in Italy, for millions of euros. Croatia can be compared economically to Slovakia.

What is the realistic potential of the Slovak league – what is theoretically possible?

With the right conditions, Slovakia could become a country where many quality matches are played, where there are several nice stadiums, and where the champion fights every year for a place in the Champions League or for success in the Europa League. Just as it was in the 1990s, when Slovan played against AC Milan, Real Madrid, or Dortmund.

Is it realistic today to achieve the performance of the 1990s?

Today it feels like a distant past; contact with European football is usually limited to just a few weeks or months in the summer. This is understandable – even this year Slovan will almost certainly meet an opponent with a significantly higher budget, even if it’s an unattractive opponent from the Caucasus. (Slovan eventually drew Bulgarian champion Ludogorets Razgrad, owned by businessman Kiril Domuschiev – editor’s note.) The gap between the numbers describing the top five leagues and Slovak conditions is vast – as if we were from another world.

Abroad, major football clubs operate on the “three-part formula” – revenue comes fairly evenly from three sources: one is ticket sales, another is income from television rights, and finally commercial income – advertising, merchandising, and more. In Slovakia, the three-part formula doesn’t work. Why?

Quite simply – income from ticket sales is minimal, television rights revenue is also small, and income from player transfers comes to clubs only occasionally. The main motivation for club owners and patrons today is to enjoy football and experience it from a different perspective – from the inside. When you call the owner of a Slovak club, it might happen that he starts discussing line-ups and tactics. He’s often a football “fanatic,” a supporter.

And his business plan is often the dream of experiencing success in a European competition.

Of course – for example, Artmedia came very close to advancing from the Champions League group stage; on a muddy pitch against Porto, they needed just one more goal. They achieved a 5–0 win over Celtic Glasgow, while Slovan advanced past AS Roma. These are huge successes that probably made owners say: it’s worth it. The main motive common in Europe – to achieve long-term and repeated profit with a club – is simply not relevant in Slovakia.

On which part of the “three-part formula” could club owners add the most? In developing talent or in reconstructing stadiums?

Systematic work with youth is essential for any slightly larger club – that’s clear. But we have to realise that results will come only in ten years. The relationship with the fan and improving the environment – there should be no doubt about that. It’s almost a Slovak cliché to say that toilets and refreshment stands should not have long queues.

Another area where Slovak sport is still in the Stone Age is jersey sales. Why?

What jerseys are worn in Slovakia? Jerseys of the ice hockey national team – fans pull them out a few times a year, perhaps when they gather in town squares. Football national team jerseys are seen occasionally, and club jerseys are worn only by the hardcore supporters.

Wouldn’t Slovak fans buy jerseys? Elsewhere, it’s completely normal.

When you realise that some Slovak league clubs had a total attendance of 50,000 spectators for the whole season, you see the huge gap even in starting numbers. In many Premier League clubs, that’s one match’s attendance. That may be one reason why the gap between merchandising in Slovakia and abroad is so enormous. The regular cycle of annually updating three jerseys – home, away, and a third kit – with a big marketing push, which exists abroad, simply doesn’t exist here. Elsewhere, it’s a significant part of the budget – wearing an old jersey is “not in.”

In Slovakia, Szilárd Németh once had his own collection on sale, still as a Middlesbrough player. Why haven’t others followed?

When we prepared a collection for Szilárd ten years ago, we felt like pioneers. We obtained official approval from Middlesbrough, negotiated with the financial director to use the club badge, and cooperated with the daily Šport. I haven’t noticed anything similar being repeated on a bigger scale since then. It seems we don’t have the tradition of buying club jerseys or player collections.

Does Slovan’s hockey team in the KHL have a chance to change the trend – possibly in football as well?

I don’t think the scale Slovan has in the KHL will carry over into league football. Slovan sold 5,000 season tickets; these numbers are far beyond what football achieves here. It would probably be a surprise if 10,000 people came to Slovan’s very important Champions League qualifying match – unless the opponent was particularly attractive. For the national team against Greece, a high-profile opponent, fewer than 8,000 people attended.

Ice hockey in Slovakia is helped a bit by the return of successful NHL players to domestic stadiums. Is that not realistic in football? Among big players, perhaps only Miroslav Karhan in Trnava is an exception.

Karhan must have a big Trnava heart to return after his experiences in Germany and Spain, knowing he might not be met only with positive reactions. He knew there was also a certain effect of ill will. NHL hockey players can tell similar stories about being criticised by their own fans.

Is ice hockey currently more popular than football?

Surveys confirm it. The emotions caused by ice hockey championships here are unmatched by anything else. Although football has incomparably more fans worldwide – and even the success of the national team in beating Italy at the World Cup resonated globally – I don’t recall any significant celebrations here, apart from the not-very-successful welcome of the footballers.

In ice hockey, people often say, “we used to be top-level, but the world is getting away from us.” After the collapse in Liechtenstein, what could be said about the football national team?

(thinks) The youth national teams haven’t achieved success for a long time, except for the recent Under-17 European Championship, which we hosted – that helped us greatly. We’ve fallen in the country rankings; the senior team in Liechtenstein lost on shots on target. We are really “at the bottom.” We’re not heading in the right direction – nothing else can be said about the last three years since the success in South Africa.

How can the development of football over the past ten years be summarised? With the word stagnation, or decline?

In Africa, the national team achieved a huge success. Many people say it might not be repeated for many years, even decades. Clubs played in the Champions League three times – a market like Poland hasn’t managed that. We’ve had such “swallows” of success. Realistically, for a five-million country and the strength of our league, it could have turned out much worse.

Your qualification opponent, Bosnia and Herzegovina, also doesn’t have a significantly stronger league and is an even smaller market – yet they play excellently.

The team brought together exceptionally good players, including Premier League stars like striker Džeko and goalkeeper Begović. An even better example might be Belgium, which has a very strong team with players from Bayern Munich, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, Everton. They could be very strong at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Their last success was at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico; after that, they really fell very low for a time.

Can Slovakia produce 25–30 players of sufficient quality for the national team to be competitive?

For young footballers, there are basically two paths: leave for foreign academies or try to break through here and go abroad later. It’s not possible to say definitively which approach is better. The boom of academies here came after joining the European Union, but there are also arguments against it. We have examples of successful early departures abroad, such as Stoch, Weiss, Hamsik, and Mak, but also cases of boys who were in the academies of big clubs and, upon moving into adulthood, didn’t even make it into our league.

For the Ministry of Education, you prepared a reform of sports subsidies. Yet you claim that Slovak sport has become far too accustomed to state money. Will that change?

It’s right that Forbes framed the discussion about sport and money from a business perspective. The vast majority of the debate about sports funding here is still about public money – it’s repeatedly said that there isn’t enough of it, people look for ways to get more of it into the system, and so on. Sport needs a broader economic perspective. It is also an economic activity, capable of generating profit, making up more than three percent of the European Union’s GDP and employing more than five percent of people. And on top of that, it often offers fantastic experiences.

Profile

Jozef Tokos (37)

Sports lawyer, manager, and licensed football agent. The most well-known of the players he represents is former national team goalkeeper Jan Mucha; he has also worked with a dozen other national team players and several youth internationals. He has arranged transfers and trials for players in more than 20 countries worldwide. He has long been involved in sports law, good governance in sport, and its financing. As an external adviser to Minister of Education Eugen Jurzyca, he helped draft a proposal for a new system of state sports funding. During the second Dzurinda government, he led the Viktoria project, aimed at developing and popularising sport. He is the founder of the sports think tank Centre for Sports Analysis and Projects – CENSAP.