The first step towards understanding football finances is being able to decipher a set of club accounts. This can be an overwhelming task as they may consist of many pages of technical jargon and so are best broken down into their key components. There are three main financial statements published by all businesses, including football clubs, typically contained in what is usually referred to as an annual report, and consist of:

• 1. The balance sheet, which shows the financial position of the club in terms of what it owns in the form of assets and what it owes to both outside parties (liabilities) and owners (equity, also referred to as capital);

• 2. The profit or loss account (sometimes called the income statement), which deals with revenues, costs and profit; and

• 3. The cash flow statement, which shows where cash has come from and how it has been spent. The most common mistake made by those unfamiliar with finance is to assume that cash and profit are the same, which is not the case in practice.

Most football clubs in the UK are limited liability companies, which are legally obliged to submit their financial statements to the government agency Companies House. The great thing for anyone interested in the finances of the club they support is that this information is freely available to access and download from the Companies House website. Rules vary in other countries as to the extent of financial information in the public domain according to local legislation. The amount of detail shown in the accounts sent to Companies House varies according to the size of the club. There are supporting footnotes that must be prepared as well as the main financial statements. The extent of these is again dependent upon the size of the club's finances. Manchester United plc's annual report for the year ended 30 June 2020 consisted of 782 pages when it filed its accounts with the US authorities, whereas those of Mansfield Town Football Club Limited, currently in League Two of the English Football League, were just four pages of financial information from start to finish.

Financial inclusion is an undeniably powerful and influential term, bringing together a diverse set of actors and shaping policy and practice across a broad array of settings. While its dominance is felt most keenly in develop-ment thinking, its roots lie in academic geography and social policy in the Global North, where issues of financial inclusion and exclusion are mapped over a longer duration of social change.

Rarely in this literature is financial inclusion challenged. Its assumptions about how societal change occurs, about how the lives of the poor can be improved and about where previous development policies and social policy have gone wrong retain an unquestioned status, not only among the key players in the financial inclusion assemblage, but also among governments, international institutions and major financial corporations. Following Raymond Williams’ exploration of keywords, its positive emotional force and semantic flexibility give it a similar socio-cultural role to the term “community”: the “warmly persuasive word to describe an existing set of relationships, or the warmly persuasive word to describe an alternative set of relationships” (Williams 1983: 76). The power of financial inclusion lies less in any specific societal changes it names (indeed, it can refer to a variety of opposing and contradictory policies and transformations). Rather, the influence of the term lies in its conveying of a fuzzy and happy feeling, promising positivity and inclusive change and a progressive project that everyone can agree on. It would seem immoral to argue against financial inclusion; as Philip Mader (2018: 464) asks, who would argue for financial exclusion?

In seeking to pin down the meaning of financial inclusion, I noted in Chapter 2 that the financial inclusion literature can be characterized by a set of key assumptions. The chapters of this book have surveyed the different modalities of financial inclusion: as a tool of poverty eradication; as a market-driven process of creating new markets from formerly excluded groups; as a form of intervention into the financial subjectivity of the poor; as a long-term political project seeking societal transformation; and as the everyday effects of user-generated financial creativity. Another way of stating this is that the book has surveyed a range of contexts in which financial inclusion is at stake. Having explored this diverse terrain, I can now consider and assess these assumptions in a new light.

Thus far in this book I have examined how, under the banner of financial inclusion, new services, interventions and programmes have been created to enable previously excluded groups to enjoy and profit from unfettered access to financial services. In these examples we saw how states, financial institutions, NGOs and the other actors labelled by Schwittay (2011) as “the financial inclusion assemblage” have sought to remove the barriers of geography, discrimination and a lack of financial knowledge that are seen to inhibit people from living a rich and fulfilling financial life. We have explored also the diverse and conflicting ways in which these interventions transformed the lives of their intended targets.

Yet it is important to note that a distinct and important strand of financial inclusion policy involves not the provision of new services or forms of intervention, but rather the use of existing infrastructures and relationships to achieve financial inclusion ends. Of particular importance in this respect is the provision of financial support through welfare payments. While in the previous chapter I addressed welfare reform in the UK as a key con-textual factor in shaping the direction of financial inclusion, in this chapter I address a different way in which these fields intertwine: in the use of welfare provision as a tool of financial inclusion.

An important reason for addressing this relationship is that, following the fall from grace of microcredit as the primary site of financial inclusion in the Global South, many key players in the financial inclusion assemblage turned to a particular form of large-scale welfare provision as an alternative future for financial inclusion policy (World Bank 2018: 7; Lomelí 2008: 478; Kidd 2019). These were conditional cash transfer (CCT) systems: welfare payments made to low-income families where the financial support is conditional upon the family meeting particular conditions. The potential for financial inclusion through CCT was clear. Rather than seeking to create new programmes and systems for identifying and reaching the unbanked, with all the planning and investment this would involve, these would use the existing need for financial support, and the conditionality mechanisms that were central to the provision of this support, to transform their financial practices.

I’m not sure the movie-world is ready for another superhero, but if Disney ever do buy my idea of “Accountoman” – the caped crusader of footballing justice – then only Kieran Maguire would be suitable for the role. Bam! Another club owner is whacked in the intangible assets. Pow! No one truncates accounts on my watch! The irony being, of course, that Disney would run a mile from the actual Kieran Maguire because they are definitely not ready for their first R18-rated film.

Late in 2019, producer Guy Kilty contacted me about a podcast he was planning, to cover the murky world of football finance. I wished him well and said it sounded fascinating (as well as a comedian, writer and author, I am also quite a good liar). It turns out that Guy, knowing that I was a hopeless romantic about football and a total idiot about finances, thought I would be the ideal person to host the podcast alongside football finance expert Kieran Maguire. I would become the slightly dim sidekick accompanying our hero as we took on the villains of the beautiful game, a sort of Batman and Robin against Vatman and Robbing.

And so began my relationship with the author of this book. A relationship that has turned into a close friendship, with a podcast that is already well on the way to its twomillionth download. The close friendship bit is all the more remarkable considering that much of our work has been conducted remotely because of the Covid-19 pandemic and considering which bloody football team the rascal supports.

Kieran and Guy took the sensible decision not to tell me he was a Brighton fan until after we had recorded four episodes, by which time I was obviously hurt and disappointed but had already sussed that Kieran was on the side of the angels and knew, that as a Crystal Palace fan, I held the moral high ground. I decided I would rise above the issue, and, at the same time, mention Kieran's betrayal at every opportunity on the pod. He's from South London, for God's sake! It would have been better if he supported Millwall – at least they’re his local team!

I have described some of the important analytical models that economic anthropologists use when they approach production and circulation, as well as historical changes in these two realms of economic life, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. Now I want to show the kinds of insights that the models and histories can provide by using them to address something that those who read this book are likely to see as familiar: Christmas.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, Christmas is a holiday. The 25th of December is a holy day marked on the church calendar of western Christian denominations, and many believers observe it with special services and ceremonies. But Christmas is also a civic holiday, one that those of any or no religion are likely to observe as well, but in a different sense. They are likely to observe it in the shops as the Christmas displays go up and seasonal items appear on the shelves. They observe it in the office parties and family gatherings that litter December. They observe it on radio and television, as Christmas music and movies appear. Even the online solitaire that I play has a special design for playing cards at Christmas. It is this that makes Christmas a ubiquitous set of activities and experiences in these countries, and it is this civic event that concerns me in this chapter. I want to make that familiar event seem strange by making use of those analytical models and historical changes.

If you think about it, Christmas is full of contradictions for those who experience it. People tell each other that it is a festive season of good cheer, but, equally, they say that the fun is going out of it, swamped by materialism and commerce. Christmas goods seem to appear in the stores earlier every year, as do the advertisements on television telling us to buy more and more things for more and more people. This slights the religious beliefs that many see as an important part of Christmas and conflicts with religious reservations about wealth and its display. In spite of people's concern with the garish commercialization, the stores get more crowded and the websites get slower.

Why would anyone choose to analyse a football club's finances? There must surely be more important and interesting things in life that warrant consideration, and this is the approach taken by most football fans. However, some fans want to know as much as possible about all aspects of the team they support. Alternatively, you may be a supplier to a club and are wondering whether to extend its credit terms. You may even be involved in the world of corporate finance and are seeking a “bargain basement” club for a client to invest in, or indeed many other reasons.

If you do want to analyse finances, then you don't need to be mathematically gifted, most calculations are built around no more than adding, subtracting and calculating percentages. When looking at a football club, the first challenge can often be identifying exactly which company to investigate. This is because there can be a Russian doll-style group set up with a holding company perhaps owning another club (referred to as a subsidiary), which owns the football part of the business. The parent company may also own another company that owns the stadium and training grounds, yet another running the commercial arm. Ideally you should look at the company within the group that ultimately controls all elements of the club, which is usually the holding company.

Table 9.1 lists the various companies controlled by Manchester United Plc, whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It would seem logical for a fan to look at the accounts of Manchester United Football Club Limited in order to analyse the Red Devils, but doing that would exclude most of the commercial dealings of the club. Manchester United Football Club Limited made an operating profit of £57 million in 2018/19, whereas Manchester United Limited made an operating loss of £17 million. Manchester United Plc combines the activities of all group companies into a consolidated set of financial statements. This would be the company that makes most sense to analyse, as it acts as the umbrella for all United's activities. Anyone thinking of buying the club would almost certainly be wanting to buy everything to do with United, so this is an additional reason for reviewing the parent company.

Once you’ve decided on the right company, you can then start on the analytics.

Throughout this book I explore interventions, projects and initiatives that identify an excluded group – whether by geography, gender, knowledge or other factors – and propose and implement ways in which they can be included. In this chapter I turn to the practices of redlining and reverse redlining to display the danger of approaching this inclusion/ exclusion binary as nothing more than a problem to be solved or threshold to be crossed. The chapter describes how the previous exclusion of vulnerable consumers, coupled to their continuing socio-economic marginalization, can itself become factored into calculations of profit and risk, leading to new forms of exploitation and inequality.

The chapter thus adds a vital note of caution to the concept of financial inclusion, urging attention to how structural inequality continues to shape the terms on which groups are included in financial markets. In this spe-cific case, it explores how the opening of mortgage finance opportunities to non-normative consumers, principally African-American, Latino and single-female households, allowed lenders, investors and others to justify amassing considerable profits through the burdening of vulnerable consumers with considerable costs and risks.

The chapter also considers, through the concept of the feminization of finance, what the history of reverse redlining tells us about the specific dynamics of the financial inclusion of women. It notes the forms of financial subjectivity that women are expected to embody, and the considerable burdens single mothers in particular are expected to carry in an era of stagnating wages and the retreat of the welfare state. The chapter notes also, through this focus upon the female financial subject, the specific nature of financial inclusion in mortgage finance. At the heart of the sub-prime crisis was the changing nature of the family home; no longer valued as a space to be lived in, the home became a commodity whose rising value could be drawn upon in a speculative manner.

Redlining

Few histories of financial exclusion are as stark and unambiguous as the systematic withholding of mortgage finance opportunities to non-normative households in the United States. This form of exclusion, running across the middle decades of the twentieth century, is generally brought together under the term redlining: the practice through which geographically demarcated areas, typically inner-city areas with large African-American populations, were defined as being of poor credit risk and unworthy of mortgage-financed owner-occupation.

Football loves television, and television loves football. The English Premier League deal with domestic broadcasters Sky and BT Sport is worth £4.6 billion, and the overseas rights for almost the same sum for the seasons 2019– 22. The Bundesliga comes second to the Premier League in terms of domestic rights, but still trails a long way behind especially after taking into consideration overseas rights too (see Figure 7.1). It was not always the case. Prior to the creation of the Premier League there was a feeling amongst club owners and directors that television was the enemy, not the friend, of football. The common view was that live broadcasts would have a negative impact on people attending matches as people would prefer to watch the game on television from the warmth and security of their homes. Remember that matchday income, prior to the creation of bodies such as the Premier League, was the main source of revenue for clubs.

Table 7.1 shows how Manchester United have grown since the creation of the Premier League. Whilst all elements of the club's income have been significant, broadcast income has shown the fastest rate of growth, albeit coming from a low base prior to the formation of the Premier League.

Why do broadcasters like football so much?

Football, as a live product and a global one, is the most popular team sport in the world in terms of television viewers. In the United States the NFL (American football) had 16 of the 20 highest ratings for any television programme in 2018. People like live television, especially if it relates to a communal experience that can be watched at home or with others in a social environment, such as bars and restaurants. The English Premier League negotiators were quick to realize this and have marketed the game extremely well to broadcasters, both domestic and international. Clubs have worked hand in hand with the Premier League by arranging pre-season tours overseas to increase the interest in both the clubs and the overall EPL product.

This bold statement, presented in the context the 2005 Year of Microcredit, was included in a United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) document emphasizing the role to be played by financial services in eradi-cating extreme poverty and hunger (the first of the Millennium Development Goals). The statement indicates a belief in a complete transformation in how international development could be conceived and approached. Gone would be the paternalistic focus upon eradicating poverty through charities, NGOs and other well-meaning actors telling people what they needed. The financial sector could be considered an ally in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, so long as it was approached on its own terms. As displayed in the second half of the quote, the foundation of this optimism was the apparent success of the microfinance movement.

I begin the stories explored in this book with the area of financial inclusion that has both the highest profile and has been subject to the most consistent criticism. Among these criticisms, as I discuss further in Chapter 8, is the charge that financial inclusion is itself, in large part, a term used to continue the microcredit project while masking its inherent problems. The chapter studies the microcredit and microfinance industry in India, routinely referred to as the leading microfinance market in the world (Navin & Sinha 2019), and in Bangladesh, initially the most widely discussed microfinance market, largely due to the role of the Grameen Bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus.

While I explore further below the difference between the terms microcredit and microfinance, in simplest terms, microcredit denotes the narrow lending of small sums to poor borrowers, while microfinance describes the broader field, including insurance, savings and other services.

Such ambitions, voiced on a global scale in the Maya Declaration on Financial Inclusion (AFI 2012) and the World Bank's Financial Inclusion Global Initiative, play an increasingly important role in current debates on sustainable development. The goal of Banking the World (Cull et al. 2013) not only identifies a form of development that, bringing together the governmental, financial and NGO sectors, benefits from significant support; it also claims solidarity with the dreams and ambitions of the poor. From being a fringe discourse within human geography in the mid-to late 1990s (see Leyshon & Thrift 1994, 1995, 1996), financial inclusion has become a dominant and relatively unchallenged framing of both the problem of poverty and its potential solutions in the developing and developed worlds.

This book serves as an introduction for readers in the social sciences to the concept of financial inclusion. Despite playing a key role in shaping policy decisions across multiple national domains, as well as understandings of inequality and development globally, analysis and critique of the concept has been for the most part confined to the fields of economics and development studies. Importantly for this book, it has rarely been taken seriously as a concept in relation to class, gender and material poverty in different national settings.

The book follows the development and application of financial inclusion within various policy contexts. It introduces readers to the different roles the concept has played as well as the complex and unexpected ways in which initiatives have reshaped socio-economic practices. It traces and analyses key differences of interpretation, notably that between how the term has been used in developing and developed countries, as well as its relation to the sister terms financial exclusion, financial capability, financial literacy and others.

Crises creates opportunities. The global Covid-19 pandemic has hit football because the sport, despite how it may like to think of itself, is part of the entertainment industry, which alongside travel, tourism, the arts, hospitality and leisure, has been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 and football has been caught in the headlights.

Many football clubs, especially those who take a casino-style approach to their finances, gambling on success through promotion or unearthing talented players who can be sold for large sums, have faced significant financial challenges. Whether or not all clubs will survive the fall out from Covid-19 is uncertain, but the historic lack of governance and financial control from both clubs and governing bodies has made clubs highly vulnerable even to a modest economic headwind. What has been experienced in 2020 has been far more than a modest challenge.

The business model used by most clubs of generating revenue through matchday, broadcasting and commercial sales has suffered due to the lockdown rules introduced in many countries. In relation to matchday income, matches which have been played since the pandemic struck have taken place, if at all, behind closed doors. An organization such as the Premier League has some insulation because overall only about 13 per cent of revenue usually comes from this source. Even so, clubs such as Manchester United, Spurs and Arsenal can typically generate £4 million or more from hosting a single game, so matches taking place in eerily empty stadiums are costing clubs significant sums.

Clubs outside of the Premier League are more dependent on matchday income as a proportion of their total income (see Figure 14.1), with much higher percentages of revenue being generated from this source in the lower leagues. These clubs have only managed to survive the initial consequences of the pandemic through a combination of short-term government employment support schemes, advances on broadcasting revenues, generous owners and fans raising money or forgoing refunds for sums due to them in respect of tickets purchased in advance of matches being played.

The UK government had initially insisted that matches take place behind closed doors, but as infection rates decreased the government approved a tentative phased return of fans with some pilot matches – “Project Restart” – when the 2020/21 season resumed.

Footballers’ wages and transfer fees generate huge amounts of media attention as well as moans and groans on message boards, social media and in pubs across the country as fans debate and justify the transfer fees and wages relating to the likes of Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo and Virgil Van Dijk. Football players are employees, just like those in any other industry, or business. The players might not see themselves as such, but in reality, they are no different to mechanics, insurance sellers or healthcare workers. However, what is unusual about players is that they sign contracts of employment for a fixed time period, usually measured in years. This commits the player to play exclusively for a club for the duration of the contracted period. The club holds the player's registration certificate with the national football association and under UEFA and FIFA regulations the player cannot move to a new football club without the registration certificate being transferred.

If the player's registration is held by another club, then a potential employer may have to pay compensation for the player's registration certificate. This is called a transfer fee. The fee may be negotiated by the two clubs or set out in the employment contract. This could be as simple as a buying club asking the existing one for their player valuation of the player and agreeing to pay that sum. If the buying club does not want to pay the quoted price they might make a lower offer, and see if it is accepted or rejected. There then may be a series of offers until a final fee is agreed. When Philippe Coutinho moved from Liverpool to Barcelona in January 2018 the Catalan club initially offered £92 million for the player, this was rejected and followed by a series of higher bids until a final fee of £142 million (including some add-on fees conditional upon achievements) was accepted by Liverpool.

The transfer fee can be paid as a single amount or spread over a period of time and paid in instalments, some of which may be performance related.