GRAPHS: Revenue of European Football Leagues

I found this interesting graph on The Economist. For some reason, it is difficult to find data on salaries and revenues of European soccer leagues, teams and players. On the contrary, similar data is readily available for American professional sports leagues.

As a big Serie A fan, I am disheartened to see the Italian league losing out on the revenue race. Serie A is not only trailing in terms of money, but also talent and level of competition. The English Premier League and Spanish La Liga are clearly the best in Europe with Serie A being third. Despite the large revenue, the German Bundasliga is probably a distant fourth. Why is that? My suspicion is that Germany does not have the appeal of an Italy or Spain. May be the fact that Bayern Munich is leaps and bounds above all the other lubs in Bundasliga has had an adverse effect on the league as a whole. In England, you have four teams( Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal) always closely competing for the top spot. In Spain, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletico Madrid and Sevilla all contend for La Liga. In Italy, Juventus, AC Milan, Intermilan and AS Roma always have credible chances of winning the Scudetto. In Bundasliga, Bayern Munich is the undisputed number one. It has won the German League five of the last eight years. The lack of serious competition in Bundasliga has probably hampered its development despite its large revenue.

Comments

Correlation Between Taxes and Social/Economic Programs

I have always wondered if the taxes people pay correlate with the availability of social and economic programs and safety nets, not to mention the military programs that protect them. This idea comes in light of the notion that Europeans are highly taxed compared to their American counterparts, but they seem to have access to free (or almost free) education and health care while the US provides neither. The Europeans live and work at a more leisurely pace than Americans and they have the comfort of knowing that their government has put safety nets in case a disaster. The Europeans do a lot to ensure that all their citizens have comparable opportunities, and thus you are less likely to see a huge gap between the poor and the rich. Perhaps the lack of incentive to excel has stifled entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe to some extent. In fact, Europe has historically high unemployment rates than the US and the size of government there is significantly larger than that of the US....

2001 Recession Deferred for 2008?

Most people remember the Dot-Com bubble of the 1990s that peaked in 2000 before bursting in 2001-2003. Considering how the NASDAQ composite lost more than 60% of its value by 2001 alone, the country was about to go into a recession. The 9/11 attacks made things worse too. As the impact of 9/11 and Dot-Com bust were about to pull the country into a recession, another bubble came to the rescue. It was the housing bubble that deferred a sure recession and kept the US in an era of faux prosperity. It gave Bush a reason to soldier on with flawed economic policies as the housing bubble gave the impression that the good economic progress of the Clinton years were being sustained through Bush's years. This time though, there does not appear to be another bubble ready to bail the US out of the recession it is in. After suffering through the I.T. and housing bubbles in just a decade, I don't think investors and people in general will be adventurous enough to create another bubbl...

Linux Tips and Solutions

PROBLEM: Audacious on K/Ubuntu Doesn't play my mp3s:: On my kubuntu 8.04.1 audacious is not playing any audiofile. I've tried to run my mp3s with amarok and it works. Also audacity is playing mp3s. SOLUTION: Click on Preferences in Audacious; Select Audio Tab; Set the 'cCurrent output plugin' to 'aRts output plugin'. __________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: File associations in Firefox 3.0 disappear in Kubuntu SOLUTION: Install firefox-3.0-gnome-support . . . more to come

Random Thoughts

Search This Blog