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It is a refrain that many Premier League executives have become resigned to – at least in some areas of the country. As part of summer negotiations with foreign players, they have been repeatedly told “he’d prefer to live in London”. The internal research of one Championship club even found that, on average, those outside the capital had to offer an estimated £2,000 more a week to persuade signings to go outside London.
This is a modern and more widespread version of what used to be known as the “Newcastle United premium”. Over 20 years ago, when the St James Park club were trying to properly compete with rivals from London and the northwest, they became renowned for some of the highest contracts in the Premier League. Kieron Dyer was at one point believed to be the division’s best-paid player. That dynamic has now dramatically evolved, to almost split the Premier League.
It is not just that players gravitate towards London. The competition’s geographical centre has completely shifted, too.
For the third successive season, the Premier League will have seven clubs from London, as well as a further three from either the counties around the capital or further south.
It has been part of a longer trend, and a much more pronounced shift. To fully grasp it, you only have to consider how it was as recently as 2012 that England’s top division had just five clubs from London or the surrounding area. The proportion generally hovered around this level, between 25 and 35 per cent of the 20, for most of the Premier League’s existence. Now, half the competition has a distinctive southern flavour, with The Clash’s predictably-used song London Calling being heard more than ever.
This genuinely represents a huge change from modern football history, but also grander football history. England’s cradle of football going back to the mid-19th century was the north, with its 20th-century heartland the northwest. Lancashire alone offered six of the 12 founding members of the English Football League in 1888.
By 1892, all of the 28 clubs came from the Midlands or the north. It could almost be said we are now simply seeing clubs like Brighton, Brentford, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Fulham replacing those such as Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Wigan Athletic, Sheffield Wednesday and Sunderland as “Premier League fixtures”. Except, there are far bigger reasons for that.
The book Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, famously found that the historic conditions of football in England favoured regional industrial centres. That was largely down to those cities having big enough working-class populations to support one or two successful clubs, while London was more fragmented.
Similar forces have now started to invert this. Government staff who work with football, especially as regards community influence, have already likened the current dominance of football’s super clubs to how globalisation has created vast urban centres like London or New York that attract exponential numbers of people and wealth. It is extreme centralisation. Now, however, that same dynamic is influencing the game as much as echoing it.
The greater money that flows to London is inevitably flowing into London football.
Clubs in urban centres where the population have greater wealth inevitably offer advantages. Far from fragmenting fanbases, in the way London’s demographics did for its clubs for a century, they now strengthen their support.
Premier League meetings have already seen rival clubs complain they have to raise ticket prices specifically to keep up with the capital. That’s also important for investors and potential owners, who are naturally more willing to put their money into financial centres, where there are more sophisticated networks. Those in football finance circles say an increasing number only want to buy around London.
One of the reasons that Clearlake Capital was so interested in buying Chelsea was because they understood that a big match night in the capital could attract some of the most powerful figures from all of the most influential industries. Hence they quickly put together blueprints for an open-plan executive box area at Stamford Bridge, in the way many American sporting franchises have. Rival executives meanwhile constantly laud Tottenham Hotspur for maximising the commercial potential of their location through the stadium. The view is that it’s a deeply impressive exploitation of an advantage for a club that doesn't necessarily have the historic profile to generate such income.
While these factors all represent wider financial benefits connected to the game’s modern commercial outlook, there are also advantages directly linked to the players themselves.
Those transfer negotiations have gone beyond foreign signings simply wanting to live in an English city that has a more continental feel, and more flights to their home countries. There’s also London’s exact status as a global alpha-plus city.
Social media is genuinely important in this regard. One chief executive of a London club talks about how more of his players are genuinely driven by putting up Instagram posts from fashionable locations. London is perfect for that. It is cited as a surprisingly influential factor for a younger generation, and why Barcelona and Real Madrid will always have an attraction, to go with their historic statuses.
On the other side of that, all of Fulham, Brentford and West Ham United have attempted to further leverage their location. Fulham for a long time pitched themselves as a friendly club that tourists could enjoy a day trip to, complete with a neutral end. West Ham United specifically decided to put “London” in their crest for that reason. There are a lot more potential floating football fans to attract, as well as an immense and ever-changing population of ex-pat workers, who might well be interested in following a local team.
Even clubs such as Brighton have enjoyed the benefits of this, to complement their recruitment model. Negotiations are much smoother when they can tell players they are so close to London.
Reading are similarly seen in football circles as having huge potential if Dai Yongge ever decides to sell. They have readymade facilities but also a distinctive proximity to Heathrow. That’s hugely appealing if you’re an investor with a lot of international business.
This is why some in the game are talking about a Premier League shifting to the south as much as just as the capital. The city’s expanse is so vast.
Those at Arsenal would doubtless say that a neat evolution of this trend would be for the north London club to finally win their first title in 21 years, and the capital’s first in eight years. This is the longest the city has gone without a league since Arsenal’s own drought between 1971 and 1989.
Football doesn’t necessarily follow such trends so neatly, of course.
Liverpool and Manchester United have been able to transcend their locations through their historic legacies and global fanbases. Manchester City are seeking to do the same through the ownership’s ambition. The trophy may well end up in the northwest again, and continue to stay there for some time. If it does, however, the journey to winning it is likely to involve a lot more fixtures around London.
