Daniel Levy, (Mr Tottenham), has suggested that Premier League players and managers should accept lower pay. The club has also placed 20% of its staff on furlough.
This is the sort of thing that Untold has been predicting through this crisis, while the blogs and newspapers have been outshouting each other with tales of the various very expensive players Arsenal are planning to buy.
So in itself the move is not that important. Except that the accounts for Tottenham for the last financial year show that Mr Levy took £7,000,000 from the club last year. £4m was salary and £3m was for completing the new stadium, despite doing that rather late, as I recall.
Mr Levy noted that Tottenham’s “operations” had “effectively ceased” as he suggested that coaches and players should take action to protect jobs. As we have noted, there is no agreement with the unions over this. Indeed I rather think that negotiations with the two main unions are not ongoing.
What is interesting is that both Mr Levy and Mr Taylor, whose combined take from football related matters in the last financial year was £9,820,000 have raised the issue of player salaries. Mr Taylor warned that sum clubs will try and cut salaries and Mr Levy said they ought to.
And I suppose that is fair in a way, because who better to know about salaries than people who get enormous ones. The average salary in the UK is £29,000, less than one half of one percent of Mr Levy’s salary.
Meanwhile Tottenham have applied to the government’s coronavirus job protection scheme, which allows staff can claim 80% of their wages, up to a maximum of £2,500 per month. Newcastle have placed their whole staff excluding the first team on furlough, thus also accessing this scheme.
But of course laying off the staff who run all the day to day affairs of the club will actually save under 1% of a club’s salary. The bulk of the money goes to the chief executives, owners (usually as dividends) and top players, not to the people who are now having their salaries stopped. In effect these moves will cause maximum hardship to the people who are laid off, but make less than 2% difference to the finances of the clubs.
Mr Levy continued, “The club’s operations have effectively ceased, some of our fans will have lost their jobs and most will be worried about their future. Our sponsors will be concerned about their businesses and our media partners have no certainty when we may play games again or whether we will be allowed to play in front of our fans. In the meantime, the club has an annual cost base running into hundreds of millions of pounds.” Hmmm, asking us to feel sorry for BT Sprout is pushing one’s luck, I feel.
Of course it is not just the clubs themselves that are getting into trouble – even the advertising and sponsorship agencies which broker the deals are in trouble. This includes the world’s largest advertising agency WWP which recently noted that its revenue from China was down nearly a quarter – and China is the second largest advertising market in the world.
As a result advertising agencies are also laying off staff wholesale. Although rather amusingly in a recent statement WWP also say it was cutting spending on travel, hotels and award shows. I just wonder quite where, in a world of total shutdown, its executives and managers have been travelling to, which award shows they have been watching, and come to that which hotels they have been shacking up in. Better not ask, I guess.
But looking at WWP figures there was one more thing that struck me. In the past two years WWP has got rid of over 50 businesses and investments, which has brought in £3.2bn.
I wonder, did they know something was on the way?
But still, let us applaud Mr Levy for taking decisive action about the salaries of the lower paid workers at Tottenham. After all, one has to start these things somewhere, and it would be churlish to suggest he could have started at the top.
And of course the same could be said of Arsenal – but Arsenal’s owner has his accounts hidden away not just in the USA but in the USA’s most secretive state when it comes to finances, so getting details is harder. If you have got them, do write in.
5 Replies to “How the richest men in football are telling the poorest staff to take pay cuts”
It just had to be a spud millionaire who was the one taking money out of the pockets of others. Now would surely be the time to make gestures of empathy however this spud appear to favour robbery.
Slightly off topic but thought the readers would like to see what Arsenal’s rich owner is about in the States:
The shame of these rich b******s has no bounds, whether they be British or American, Spurs or Arsenal affiliated.
I have no issue with Capitalism, Per Se, or people being rich.
Like it or not money does make the World go around. There will always be rich and poor. But what gets my goat is greed. Pure unbridled greed.
You do not need to screw the poor to be rich, so why do they do it? Is it simply because they can?
Honestly, how these people look at themselves in the mirror without throwing up is beyond me.
I have mixed feelings about all of this.
1) If I understand correctly, Arsenal has made some gestures to the local community – this is good. but so far the amount is not very big. Some lower league teams have paid out sums approaching what Arsenal has done – from a much lower starting point.
2) Unless I am mistaken, unlike Spurs, we have undertaken to keep paying our non-playing staff. This is also good.
3) I am disappointed that the ownership, administration and the ‘talent’ haven’t been able to get together and ahead of the rest of the league on the business of their remuneration. It would have been a coup had we been able to show ‘Victoria Concordia Crescit’. I totally get that players are loath to take pay cuts if their paymasters and owners continue to take money out of the club. Also, there is a difference between the top earners losing 20% or 80% or whatever and what the U23s could afford to forgo.
I for one continue to have a job. However, I fully expect that a pay cut is in the offing. Fortunately, my spouse also works (though accounts receivable remain uncomfortably large). I hope that Arsenal and its players come through this in creditable manner.
What I find incredible is that most large enterprises seem overdrawn , and have not put awaybsomething for a rainy day.
While I can understand medium sized firms feeling the immediate pinch,and irs attendant shortfall , still the mind boggles.
One month, and it all unravels ?
The big boys ought to take cuts first, at least as an example , then the lower ranks will do so.
It just had to be a spud millionaire who was the one taking money out of the pockets of others. Now would surely be the time to make gestures of empathy however this spud appear to favour robbery.
Slightly off topic but thought the readers would like to see what Arsenal’s rich owner is about in the States:
https://sports.yahoo.com/coronavirus-sofi-stadium-workers-construction-site-225313081.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=1_04
The shame of these rich b******s has no bounds, whether they be British or American, Spurs or Arsenal affiliated.
I have no issue with Capitalism, Per Se, or people being rich.
Like it or not money does make the World go around. There will always be rich and poor. But what gets my goat is greed. Pure unbridled greed.
You do not need to screw the poor to be rich, so why do they do it? Is it simply because they can?
Honestly, how these people look at themselves in the mirror without throwing up is beyond me.
I have mixed feelings about all of this.
1) If I understand correctly, Arsenal has made some gestures to the local community – this is good. but so far the amount is not very big. Some lower league teams have paid out sums approaching what Arsenal has done – from a much lower starting point.
2) Unless I am mistaken, unlike Spurs, we have undertaken to keep paying our non-playing staff. This is also good.
3) I am disappointed that the ownership, administration and the ‘talent’ haven’t been able to get together and ahead of the rest of the league on the business of their remuneration. It would have been a coup had we been able to show ‘Victoria Concordia Crescit’. I totally get that players are loath to take pay cuts if their paymasters and owners continue to take money out of the club. Also, there is a difference between the top earners losing 20% or 80% or whatever and what the U23s could afford to forgo.
I for one continue to have a job. However, I fully expect that a pay cut is in the offing. Fortunately, my spouse also works (though accounts receivable remain uncomfortably large). I hope that Arsenal and its players come through this in creditable manner.
What I find incredible is that most large enterprises seem overdrawn , and have not put awaybsomething for a rainy day.
While I can understand medium sized firms feeling the immediate pinch,and irs attendant shortfall , still the mind boggles.
One month, and it all unravels ?
The big boys ought to take cuts first, at least as an example , then the lower ranks will do so.