The Deloitte Sports Business Group presents the Football Money League 2012

"Breaking Down The Deloitte Football Money League Report" was originally published at The Republik of Mancunia.

The transfer window report from business advisory firm Deloitte calculates that Premier League clubs spent around £60m, a decline of 70 per cent on the record level of £225m in January 2011 (admittedly something of an aberration).

Dan Jones, a partner in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, saw Uefa's financial fair play rules as a factor in the comparative restraint of clubs and a more sober level of spending among Premier League clubs.

As we discussed through Twitter on Tuesday and was officially announced on Wednesday, the Dynamo's new home will officially become BBVA Compass Stadium. The new sponsor is a strong banking presence in Houston, with 80 branches in the city area and its corporate headquarters also nearby. BBVA is also the official naming sponsor of Spain's La Liga and has a long history of involvement with soccer on a global scale.

By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Oct 24, 2011) US Soccer Players -- Barring an open fan revolt pushing for a change, there's a tendency to side with a coach when a team decides to move in another direction. In the modern era of wide interest in sports business, most fans know problems go far beyond the influence of the person standing on the sidelines.

FOX has won the English-language TV rights in the United States for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, says several sources to Sports Business Daily. "FIFA has informed the bidders and is planning to announce the winners at some point today...
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Liverpool Football Club is today heading for New York to showcase the Tactics 4 Families initiative after the project was shortlisted for a prestigious Beyond Sport award.
The program has been nominated for the Sport Team of the Year accolade and as a result, Tactics 4 Families project manager Mark Chester will give a presentation at the world famous Yankee Stadium on Tuesday as part of the Beyond Sport United summit.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber met with the press on Wednesday evening to discuss more details about the announcement earlier today that NBC Sports Network will begin broadcasting MLS games from 2012-2014.

According to Sports Business Daily, the deal is worth close to $10 million per year to MLS -- far less than the $20 million per year that MLS asked FOX Soccer for just last December.

It's been a few months since Opta and MLS announced their partnership so I thought it would be a good time to take a look at how the partnership is doing. Opta is fantastic at leveraging Twitter so I thought examining the popularity of their different Twitter personas would be a good way to compare how much fans of different leagues engage with Opta.

Time for some attendance numbers for you attendance geeks out there. The Sports Business Daily released current attendance figures to date in comparison to this time last season. As expected the league has enjoyed a 6.3% raise in folks at the gate with only five clubs seeing negative percentages (The Union are one of those teams in the negative and its largely due to them playing their first two games at the Linc in Philly).

*Soccer in insignificant compared to the misery inflicted by earthquakes and other natural disasters. But the power of sport is its ability to inspire, uplift and unite as the Japanese well know in the wake of their magnificent World Cup win. I'll have more on the tournament in Tuesday's column.

*How much did this tournament capture the public's imagination?

Ian Ayre, Liverpool's MD, is an honest and refreshing man with a good commercial pedigree and thus far has proved himself to be the ideal man at the helm of Liverpool FC.
In a candid interview today he discussed the proposed new stadium, the former disasterous previous owners Hicks and Gillette and he praised current custodians FSG.

Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre admits the failure of former owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett to build a new stadium "set the club back several years".
And Ayre, promoted from commercial director late last season by new owners Fenway Sports Group, said had it not been for huge strides made in off-field business during that time the finances would have been in a bigger mess than they were just before FSG assumed control.

The talk today is all about ratings with Fox Soccer issuing a self congratulatory press release because of its outstanding ratings from the Gold Cup Final. The FSC broadcast reached more than 950,000 viewers, crushing the previous FSC record set during the last Gold Cup Final. The Nielsen rating for the match was a solid 1.

The collective turnover of the English Premier League clubs hit a record £2.03 billion in the 2009-10 season and is expected to exceed £2.2 billion in the 2010-11 campaign, according to Deloitte Sports Business Group's 20th Annual Review of Football Finance. In comparison, the total European football market grew to a record £13.

I recently added an interactive graph of MLS salary info to the site but I haven't done much with the data since then. With the summer transfer window opening and fans debating whether or not it is worth it for their MLS club to import expensive Designated Players, I decided to take a look at how the top earners in MLS compare to their European counterparts.

Since IMS reported over a week ago that the Viking owners have made acclamations that they would like to bring Major League Soccer to Minnesota IF they could get a new domed stadium, nothing new has developed from an official standpoint. However, lots of things have been going on behind the scenes.

Some quick business hitters from around the league. We'll start with the announcement that the 2011 MLS Cup will be held at the Home Depot Center for the first time since 2008. Los Angeles is a favored location for the championship game because of the allure of the City, the importance of the AEG owned venue and the typically sizable crowds that turn out.

J Hutcherson writes of some lessons that EPL clubs can draw from North American sports teams in regards to ticketing for matches.

A couple of English Premier League clubs decided to give their fans and the rest of the League a reminder that winning costs money. Manchester United and Arsenal raised ticket prices for next season.

By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Mar 24, 2011) US Soccer Players -- Once upon a time, the role of manager in English club soccer meant as much control as that person could carve out for himself. Manager versus chairman still plays itself out at the highest level, but it's normally over transfer money rather than the manager trying to usurp roles intended for others.

A respected sports-business analyst, Sport+Markt, has claimed that the green and gold campaign has made a significant impact on the revenue of the Glazers'.

"Our data show the club has lost retail revenue from the year 2009 to 2010 by around 10%," said Dr Peter Rohlmann, the report's author.

Amazingly enough, it has been two years since Footiebusiness first hit the web. When we started the site, we had no idea how long it would last, whether there was any interest in the business aspects of American soccer or whether anyone would read what we wrote. Two years later, we couldn't be more pleased with how things have evolved.

In Thursday's Soccer Daily, we discuss what the North American pro sports really have to teach England's Premier League from a sports business perspective. By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Jan 20, 2011) US Soccer Players -- Too much of the time, cross sports business comparisons end up downplaying the peculiarities and day-to-day realities between codes.

Of all the figures I've encountered in soccer over the years, Terry Byrne is right near the top of my most intriguing people list. A 44-year-old Englishman, Byrne has gone on a remarkable life journey from London taxi driver to massage therapist for Chelsea and England to David Beckham's best friend and personal manager to a sports business career of his own.

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Dynamo Press Release

Davis, Brad's Brigade among finalists for Jefferson Award for Public Service
Houston Dynamo midfielder Brad Davis was announced as one of All Stars Helping Kids' 10 Dream Team For Public Service finalists from 36 nominees selected for the prestigious Jefferson Awards for Public Service.