Scottish Football’s £820m Economic Contribution

A summary of the recent Fraser of Allander Institute report

A new report released a couple of weeks ago by the Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI) examined how much professional football contributed to Scotland’s economy in the 2023/24 season. The FAI are an independent economic research institute, who were commissioned by the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL), Scottish Women’s Premier League (SWPL), and Scottish FA.

The study comes at a time when Scottish football is on the rise. Domestically, top flight clubs are posting record turnover figures while playing in front of record crowds. The TV deal continues to rise while the clubs are able to command higher transfer fees for their assets than in previous years. At a national level, the men’s team has qualified for its first World Cup in 28 years, two years before Glasgow will host UEFA Euro 2028 matches.

Summary graphic from the FAI report.

The headline figure is an £820m gross economic contribution, supporting over 14,000 jobs in Scotland. As the season examined was 2023/24, the data is already two seasons out of date. However it’s still useful for highlighting just how important our national game is - not just from a social perspective - but from an attempt to quantify the economic importance. While earlier studies of this nature often focused only on the men’s SPFL, this FAI report takes a comprehensive view of Scottish football - covering men’s and women’s leagues and cups, plus international and European matches.

Of course, those in Scottish football will want to paint the picture of our game as positively as possible - but this is not a report written by the clubs or the governing bodies themselves. Yes, it was commissioned by the football authorities, but it was done ‘at arm’s length’ and the FAI, of Strathclyde University is respected for rigorous economic analysis.

This summary article will delve into the key points, under five headings:

• Record attendances

• How is the economic impact measured?

• The Key Findings of the Report

• Where does the money go?

• Limitations of the report

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RECORD ATTENDANCES

In collaboration with yours truly in September 2024, the SPFL reported how Scotland has by far the highest per-capita attendance of any top division in Europe, with about 18.2 attendees per 1,000 population each week (around 75% higher than the next closest country, Portugal):

Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI) graphic - Average Top Flight Attendances Per Capita.

In total, over 6.8 million fans went to matches in 23/24 involving Scottish professional clubs or the national teams. The Premiership alone contributed more than half, with a total attendance of around 3.76 million.