User:Oldelpaso/Finance in English football

The Economy of English football is one of the largest sporting economies in the world, with a value totalling billions of pounds.

History

When the rules of football were formally codified by The Football Association in 1863, football was solely an amateur pursuit. In 1885, the FA legalised professionalism in response to the practice of making secret payments to players which had become commonplace among the stongest teams. In 1888 the world's first professional fooball competition, the Football League was created. At this time a maximum player wage was in place, and directors of football clubs were not permitted to draw salaries. The maximum player wage was maintained until 1961, when it was abolished following campaigning from the Players' Union.

The first English club to float on the stock market were Tottenham Hotspur in 1983. At the time FA rules forbade stock market floatations, but Tottenham circumvented this by forming a holding company.

The economic landscape of English football was transformed by the formation of the FA Premier League in 1992. A television rights deal worth £304 million over five years was agreed with satellite broadcaster BSkyB, introducing unprecedented sums of money into the English game. In 1996, Newcastle United broke the world transfer record by signing Alan Shearer from Blackburn Rovers for a fee of £15 million, the first world record fee to be set by an English club since 1928.

In 2003, the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich purchased Chelsea, and proceeded to make hundreds of millions of pounds available for transfers.