Ipswich Town's promotion to the Premier League opens up huge financial opportunities for the club which last played top-flight football 22 years ago, but there are many pitfalls too, according to a leading football finance expert.
How important is it to have Ed Sheeran as a shirt sponsor for the club's merchandising and commercial opportunities?You’ve only got to see what has happened at Wrexham with Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in turning Wrexham into a global brand. It’s got the TV programme to support it, of course, which is going out on streaming services.
You could easily add another zero once you hit the Premier League. The average deals that are going through are probably in the region of £6m or £7m a year, as far as front-of-shirt is concerned. The worst case scenario, if Ipswich don’t manage to stay up, they’ll get two years of parachute payments which are worth a further £75m, should the club return to the Championship straight away.Do Ipswich have to invest heavily in order to survive in the Premier League?I don’t think speculation is necessarily the right approach to take, because as we saw in the case of Nottingham Forest and Fulham, if you have a scattergun approach to recruitment that can come back to haunt you.
I can assure you that contact will already have been made with those players who are being targeted and their representatives and the clubs they play for. There is no reason why Ipswich will want to spend that level of cost in terms of wages. When Brentford first went up they were averaging £30,000 a week, but in their second season that increased to £45,000, so it is a gradual process.I suspect that every player in the squad will have a step-up clause in his contract which will substantially increase their weekly remuneration.
With the significant American investment in Ipswich Town, what difference will this have on the club's approach to competing in the Premier League?What the owners will have done is they would’ve looked at clubs that have managed to get to the Premier League and stay there and they will be asking what have those clubs done that sets them apart.