Few operate under a viable business strategy according to finance-minded observers and if they don’t work out a sensible model soon they’ll face crushing consequences. We think the following quote was originally a Richard Branson comment in relation to the airline business but it serves the same purpose:

“How did you become a millionaire?” the football club owner was asked. Answer: “Simple, I started off as a billionaire and then I bought a football club.”

According to Peter Sargent at Accountancy Age, therein lies the problem, fans’ expectations force the business entrepreneur who buys a football club to leave all his sound business principals outside the boardroom. Hello emotion, goodbye logic and business savy – “the chase for the league title and promotion becomes the fixation, not just of every fan, but the directors too”. Ever decreasing circles of profit are spun by ever increasing circles of cost.

Accountancty Age: Which successful business spends more on salaries than it gets in turnover each year? Where some of the employees earn more in a year than the customers – or supporters – earn in a lifetime?

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And find out why football clubs are run like a second-rate socialist democracy in the Med. Tails wagging dogs and all that.