Football in many ways is an haphazard mess, lots of different sized leagues in different sized countries, with different financial rules and different rules with regards to ownership, it is only now clear to most observers that some sort of standardisation is necessary. UEFA president Michel Platini has just announced his financial fair play rules, that is he wants clubs to only spend what they make from footballing activities (something I agree with in principle). To be more specific he wants spending to be capped at a percentage of that revenue which sounds good in practice, but when you look at the differing levels of revenue within even the same leagues you can see that although it may solve the problem of over spending it won't solve that of competitiveness.

The first question is are why do clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool make more revenue per annum than say West Ham United? The easy answer would be that they are bigger clubs, but that in no way paints the full picture. The facts are that there are many reasons (some for another blog) but (in this one) I want to focus on shirt sponsorship. Liverpool have just signed a new 4 year sponsorship deal worth £21 million a season (1 million more than Manchester United's new deal), many clubs in the premier league make less than £2 million a season for example Portsmouth make £800,000 and Aston Villa in fact give free advertising to a charity. .

Looking at the clear disparity in sponsorship income, the second question is why do shirt sponsorship in the first place? As far as I can tell it was down to the fact that in the past revenue streams weren't as stable as now, we have to remember that TV contracts didn't really explode until the late 1980s/early 1990s and shirt sponsorship far pre-dates that. From my research Uruguayan club Peñarol are considered the first club to dabble in the 1950s and within Europe the French league and it's historically disproportionately small crowds (when you consider population) was the first to allow it in Europe (1960s). In Germany it was only legalised as clubs began to incorporate sponsors names into their badges. Thus despite the resistance of the authorities (largely banned in UEFA finals until 1995) it was unfortunately inevitability. The real facts are that the on field disparity and the fact that the increase has generally been accelerated over the last 10-15 years we can assume that the difference in deals wasn't significant. However in 2009 we have TV revenue and the difference in sponsorship revenue is now very significant.

So the final question must be why in 2009 do we still have an tolerate shirt sponsorship? It seems so simple abolishing it would lead to a levelling of the playing field, in that depriving Manchester United of £20 million may have more impact than depriving £1 million from a smaller club, without making it totally levelled. The problem is that the playground that English clubs play in isn't just the premier league, we have the champions league (and Europe league) to consider also. The fear is that if English clubs ban shirt sponsorship then the less money in the game (for the big clubs) would lead to the best players heading to Italy or Spain. Here in lies the problem, the premier league won't commit to something which would put it in a worse standing when compared to it's contemporaries, therefore as with everything in life the solution requires a little bit of joined up thinking and working together for the greater good.

By now I hope it's clear that in at least one area (shirt sponsorship) disparity is not necessary. However it isn't as simple as that, the larger wealthier leagues could theoretically take the hit, but what about the smaller leagues? Maybe shirt sponsorship does have a place, and maybe in the smaller leagues revenue sharing would be more beneficial. That facts are there is no one size fits all solution, we know the problems it's about finding the case specific solutions to them. Michel Platini's plan is admirable, but the facts are it doesn't solve the real issues which have caused the over spending, financial disparity and that is the point shirt sponsorship is just one area but if we can solve as many as possible then allied to “financial fair play” we can have footballing fair play too, because on it's own it really is nothing.