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The North/South Divide

11 years ago
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When we usually talk about the North/South divide it is normally in relation to the south of England but on this occasion a story caught my eye with regard to our friends on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall.

Making the news north of the border have been the latest financial figures of Scottish Premier League club, Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

Their chairman has been commenting on the global economic recession impacting on football and which has contributed to Inverness doubling their losses in the latest financial figures up to May 2012.

However, when you look at the actual amounts of money involved it makes you realise just how massive the gulf is between clubs in Scotland’s top league and those like Newcastle in the English Premier League.

Inverness’ turnover was just over £3.4m and bear in mind they are currently fifth in the Scottish Premier only five points behind Celtic, while their losses rose to £378,487…in other words, their season long losses aren’t much more than a week’s pay for a Rooney or Tevez.

A massive change in England has obviously been the TV money going up and up but what doesn’t get talked about much is how far it helps clubs like Wigan to compete at the lower end.

It isn’t that long ago that they were a non-league club playing in front of a handful of people but the SKY money means that if you make it into the Premier League then any team has a fighting chance of competing.

Last season the bottom club (Wolves) got over £40m (plus guaranteed minimum of £48m in parachute payments) from TV for finishing bottom, from next season when the new TV deals kick in – it is projected that the figure for that team who finishes 20th could rise to £60m!

With Inverness having a turnover of not much more than £3m their TV deal must be worth literally ‘peanuts’ in comparison.

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