The Premier League will have lost almost £2 billion by the end of this season, according to it’s chief executive.
Richard Masters said England’s top clubs have lost tens of millions of pounds in revenues each since the start of the pandemic.
Today marks a year since top level football matches were suspended in England. Games resumed behind closed doors last June.
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Earlier this month Manchester United – battling for second place in the league with Leicester City – revealed that matchday earnings in the second half of 2020 slumped to £3.2 million from £55.2 million a year earlier.
Mr Masters said the big financial losses had not just affected the top flight clubs, but the whole “football pyramid”.
He said: “Towards the end of this season, we’ll get towards £2 billion lost since the start of the pandemic in match day revenue and broadcast revenue.”
But he hoped the vaccine roll-out would see grounds full to capacity again next season, and confirmed the league hoped to be able to play the final two rounds of the current season in front of up to 10,000 spectators under the Government’s roadmap for the easing of coronavirus restrictions.
Mr Masters attended the last Premier League match before the suspension, Leicester v Aston Villa, on March 9, 2020.
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On the evening of Thursday, March 12 the league stated its intention to carry on playing but immediately afterwards, he was informed that Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Chelsea winger Callum Hudson-Odoi had tested positive for coronavirus.
The decision to suspend the season came the next day, but right from the start the plan was to complete the season when the time was right.
He said: “Those were the first positive tests in the Premier League cohort that we knew about, and that changed everything.” Masters said.
“As early as that first meeting, the primary objective of the Premier League and its clubs was to finish the season,” he said.
“That collective will never really wavered throughout.”
Project Restart gathered momentum in May when clubs returned to training, after players were given assurances over safety from deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam among others.
He said surge in new cases at the turn of the year, driven by a more transmissible variant of the virus, threatened to derail what was already proving to be a “pretty brutal” 2020/21 season, as some matches were postponed.
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To try and keep matches on track the league tightened safety protocols and introduced new ones, including reminders to players around over-exuberant goal celebrations and contact before and after matches.
Mr Masters believes those two areas have “dramatically changed” and pointed to the reduction in positive tests as proof – they have been stable at just two per week for five weeks in a row now.