Gerry Sutcliffe, the sports minister, on Thursday prompted a furious response from Chelsea after singling the club out in remarks about football’s highest earners being paid “obscene” wages by teams losing touch with economic reality and their working class roots.
He singled out John Terry, the England captain who commands a salary from Chelsea of more than £130,000 a week, making him the Premier League’s highest wage-earner. Speaking at an FT sports industry conference, Mr Sutcliffe said: “It’s obscene. To be paid [about] £150,000 a week, in relation to the ordinary man in the street – people can’t understand that.” While accepting that professional sportsmen had a relatively short career, the minister said it was unsustainable for clubs such as Chelsea to be heavily in the red. “That’s not living in the real world, in my view. Fans move away from that. Fans can’t understand that level of funding.”
Chelsea, owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is understood to have demanded the minister retract his remarks, claiming some of the financial information he had quoted was inaccurate.
Mr Sutcliffe criticised Manchester United, the club he supports, for increasing season ticket prices by 13 per cent, accusing it of “taking the game away from the ordinary grassroots supporter”. He added: “Ultimately, ordinary working-class people will lose out. They will be priced out.”
In response David Gill, Manchester’s chief executive, said: “The minister is speaking without full knowledge of the facts.” He added that season tickets prices were reasonable and good value for money.
Mr Sutcliffe later met Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chief executive. He told reporters he had raised the issues with several clubs and would air them with Mr Gill. The sports minister added that he had spent his three months in the job listening to the sports industry, and that while it was not the government’s role to interfere in the running of sport, “I have an opinion and I’m entitled to that”.
The Premier League is attracting huge sums from foreign investors buying up clubs and from broadcasters for its domestic and international rights. But Michel Platini, chairman of Uefa, European football’s governing body, is among administrators worried about the commercialism of the game and the gap between rich and poor clubs. Such voices are seeking salary caps and quotas of foreign players in domestic leagues.
Mr Sutcliffe said there was a balance to be struck in sport between commercialism and governance, “and it’s going too far down the commercial route”. He also revealed that he was seeking changes to insolvency regulations to increase transparency in football club ownership.
