By David Owen
April 3 – Up and coming South London club Crystal Palace have become the latest Premier League outfit to report exceptionally strong earnings for 2013-14, the side’s first season back in England’s top-flight.
By David Owen
March 31 – Tottenham Hotspur, the North London Premier League football club, have reported one of the biggest profits in Premier League history – as foreshadowed by Insideworldfootball in August 2013. A concise announcement on the club website notes that profit for the year ended June 30, 2014 after interest and tax was £65.3 million, compared with just £1.5 million the previous year.
By Paul Nicholson
March 27 – English Premier League clubs have agreed to share at least £1 billion of league income in the period 2016/17-2018/19. The money will be shared through the English football pyramid as well as to good causes.
By David Owen
March 26 – Premier League clubs generated their first pre-tax profit in 15 years in 2013-14, Deloitte, the business advisory firm, has confirmed, as increased revenues from the current, more lucrative broadcasting deal far outpaced any rise in costs.
March 18 – The police chief in charge at the 1989 English FA cup semifinal at which 96 Liverpool supporters were crushed to death has admitted that his failure to close a tunnel was the “direct cause” of the disaster.
March 18 – Premier League Liverpool have added a Malaysian stop to their 2015 pre-season tour. On the return leg from two games in Australia, the Reds will stop off in Kuala Lumpur to play a Malaysian XI at the Bukit Jalil National Stadium on Friday July 24.
March 17 – English Premier League club Hull City have been given the go-ahead to change their name to Hull Tigers next season – a move that seems bound to infuriate diehard fans of the club.
March 17 – Manchester United have launched their own on-line casino in partnership with the club’s online gaming and betting partner bwin. Played online and via an app, the 3D casino is set against the backdrop of Old Trafford.
March 12 – Five men are to appear in court in connection with the racist abuse by Chelsea fans prior to the Champions League first-leg last-16 game against Paris St Germain last month.
March 11 – Football is full of cases of misfit superstars failing to adapt to new surroundings. But few in recent years feature such a stark fall from grace as that of Manchester United’s on-loan Colombian striker Radamel Falcao.
By Mark Baber
March 10 – Manchester City are poised to sign a massive £80-million-a-year sponsorship deal with Etihad, according to rumours in the British press. The new deal would mean a renegotiation of the current £400 million deal.
March 10 – Premier League Tottenham Hotspur activated the next stage of its participation in the regeneration of the local area around its stadium with the opening of the University Technical College of Tottenham by the club’s former Chairman and star of the TV series The Apprentice, Alan Sugar (now Lord Sugar).
March 9 – English football authorities are investigating disgraceful scenes at the end of an FA Cup quarterfinal between arch-rivals Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion that were reminiscent of the dark days of the domestic game.
By David Owen
March 8 – The 2013-14 season is set to go down as a major milestone in the business annals of the Premier League, with the 20 clubs on course to record an aggregate pre-tax profit – perhaps a substantial one – for the first time in over a decade.
March 6 – For the third week running Manchester United have topped the Insideworldfootball Premier League Twitter ranking putting on more than 43,000 new followers. Chelsea, who were third in the table last week, showed (perhaps depressingly) that fans behaving badly (racism and sexism incidents) do not effect popularity when it comes to putting on followers, but a League Cup win does. Chelsea put on 5,000 fewer fans than Man Utd, but 2,000 more than overall Twitter table topper Arsenal.