SPFL Annual report year ending May 2024
The SPFL are responsible for bringing money into the game and distributing it as prize money to the clubs
The SPFL accounts have been released for the year end May 2024. It was a record year for turnover, an increase of 6% from £41.9m to £44.3million. This increase was primarily down to a £1m increase in TV revenue received from Sky Sports. After £3.5m admin expenses such as marketing, advertising and auditing, as well as the referee expenses and the increased cost in match production (6 cameras per non televised match instead of 4, to improve the VAR system) are accounted for there was just under £38m left in the pot to distribute across the 5 main streams.
The main one - prize money paid to the 42 SPFL member clubs - also increased by the same 6% to give a total SPFL pot of £33.7million. Although £33 million divided by 42 teams is a drop in the ocean compared to some other leagues - the bottom team in the English Premier League receives over £100m – it still is trending in the right direction as that’s a £4m increase in the last 2 seasons.
The English Premier League prize money from 2 seasons ago (2022/23). The right hand column shows the total payments - relegated Southampton received £103.6m. The SPFL had only £33.7m to divide between 42 clubs.
As per the SPFL articles of association, the payments to clubs are distributed on a fixed percentage based on finishing position in the 42 team SPFL pyramid. The finalised payments to the SPFL member clubs for season 2023/24 were therefore:
Premiership champions Celtic receive 13.40% of the entire prize money pie - £4.5m, while Dundee United, the winners of the Championship receive only 2.25% (£758k).
Dundee United will also receive an additional £300k in parachute payment following their relegation from the SPFL the previous year, to take their earnings over £1m.
Total parachute payments of £360,000 were paid out in the year – mainly £300,000 to Dundee United following their 12th place finish in 2022/23. However as they were promoted straight back to the Premiership they will not receive the second payment of £125,000 payable only if they remained in the Championship for a second season. The other £60,000 was to two other teams – firstly £20,000 to Cowdenbeath in their second season in the lowland league since dropping out of the pyramid. The other £40,000 went to Albion Rovers as the parachute payment they receive after they too exited the pyramid, joining the Blue Brazil in the LL following their relegation from League Two in 2022/23. The Scottish FA deals with the prizemoney for the Scottish Cup, so the SPFL’s only other prize money distributions into the men’s game were for the League Cup (£2.9million total pot) and the Challenge Cup (£592k total pot).
The last part of the £37.94m prize money pot goes to the Scottish Women’s Premier League (SWPL). They were given £389,000 to distribute to their clubs, which although a very small figure, at least represents a 13% increase from the £344,000 prize money in the previous year, in what is only the second season since the SPFL took over the women’s league.
Onto figures greater than £389,000 - the salary of the SPFL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster. Last year he was paid four hundred and fifty three thousand pounds (£453,000). That's 27% of all staff costs for the 22 staff employed by the SPFL and 1.01% of total SPFL turnover (£45 million)
For comparison, the English Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Masters, received a salary of £1.87m in 2023 - 0.053% of total EPL turnover (£3.59 billion). The SPFL CEO salary has risen 163% since 2011, a significantly higher percentage increase than the increase in turnover over the same period (98.5%). The rise in SPFL turnover (blue line) and rise in CEO salary (red line) since 2011 can be demonstrated in the below chart.
A graph documenting the rise in SPFL turnover (blue line, left hand axis) from £22.7m in 2011 to £45m in 2024 Vs the rise in CEO salary (red line, right hand axis) from £172,000 in 2011 to £453,000 in 2024.
The rest of the annual report summarises the happenings in the SPFL divisions last season, and so I won’t repeat that here – but there was some interesting data regarding the TV viewing figures. 12.5 million people legally watched Premiership matches on Sky Sports (up from 10 million the previous year) and the average viewership was 285,000 (an increase from 228,000 the previous year). The 3-3 Old Firm thriller at Ibrox in April had 1.44million legal viewers – a new record.
SPFL's summary of Sky Sports TV viewing figures in season 2023/24 - including reference to the most watched game in SPFL history.
The annual report references the importance of the UEFA coefficient – something I obviously document in great detail throughout the season, but you can read the SPFL’s take on the importance of our place in the rankings here:
The SPFL annual accounts talk about the importance of the UEFA Coefficient ranking. I will provide detailed analysis of this and the implications, throughout the season.
The league measures itself on some non-financial KPIs’ - namely the UEFA coefficient ranking (we finished 11th, down from 9th; that’s why we lost the automatic Champions League place for this season’s Champions) and the total attendance at all matches (league only) – which was 4.76m, up from 4.673m. Including cup matches and the attendance figure was well over 5m people, the best supported top flight in Europe on a per capita basis; which is again something you can read about throughout the season on my page.
All Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that the SPFL measures itself on were up - except for the UEFA country ranking as Scotland's Coefficient slipped from 9th to 11th, mainly due to the absurd European form of the Turkish and Czech Republic teams.
The SPFL refer to future developments and reasons for optimism, including the long term broadcast contract – which has us tied in to, in my opinion, an undervalued Sky Sports contract until 2028/29. Although they still haven’t revealed the exact figure that Premier Sports are paying for the deal agreed this year to show an additional 20 live games per season, we know that the option for Sky to buy extra games was £8m per season. Premier Sports picks are the second choice matches each week and so they will have paid significantly less than that. The SPFL have described the deal as “an additional eight-figure sum over the next 5 years”. My middle name is ‘cynical’ and as they are not specifying a number – to me that means £10 million over 5 years and so only £2m extra per year. That is just my own speculation, and personally I would hope it is more than that; we should be able to see the increase in next year’s accounts - where I will give you more of my analysis instead of just my guesswork. As we all want to see continued growth in the Scottish game, I believe it would be wise to address our income from overseas markets – as this could grow significantly. We receive only £2.6m from abroad, which for me is a key aspect the SPFL could do better at in it’s principal activity – which they themselves describe as being to “manage and commercially exploit the premier football league competitions in Scotland”.
Get exploiting.
