It was a contest between the elegance, experience and individual brilliance of Milan against the grit, determination and innocence of Liverpool. Surely there was no contest. But sports allow people to dream. It casts a magic spell over the spectators. The potential for a shock was there. The British press believed that the trophy would come back to Britain for only the second time since the new Champions League format was invented nearly a decade ago. And indeed, it brought the second largest viewing audience to ITV, with 14.6 million watching the game at home. The record home audience of 19 million happened during another football match, the 1999 victory of Manchester United. All in all, this year’s version is estimated to have got 20 million glued to a screen, at home and in pubs, in Britain alone. And this does not count the millions of others tuned in around the globe, not least in Mauritius.

No wonder then, that ITV is fighting hard for the lucrative contract of showing the game in Britain. In a joint deal with Sky, ITV paid £83 million for the exclusive broadcasting rights in Britain. A similar amount can be expected to be paid in the other EU countries, especially Italy and Spain, who regularly produce winners. For the broadcasters, the Champions league is a pot of gold, bringing in millions of pounds in advertising. But the money does not stop here. The clubs themselves can count on bumper pay cheques at the end of the tournament.

Liverpool is believed to have raked in £30 million for their efforts in the Champions League according to Deloitte’s sports business group. Winning the final itself was equivalent to a £4.5 million bonus from UEFA. But the biggest share came from the other games of the competition. Before the final, the Merseyside team had already pocketed £20.2 million in performance bonuses and television rights. Qualification for the group stage of the Champions League guarantees a cool £10 million. Such massive revenues put the games into perspective. For a club, finishing in the top qualifying spots of their domestic leagues means massive revenues, the second, third and fourth spots becoming as coveted as first place.

<B>EU Cup inflates Liverpool’s coffers</B>

But on Wednesday night, the drama on the pitch was the last concern of the advertising industry. The longer the match progressed, and the more the tension rose, the more viewers it attracted and thus a bigger exposure to ads. Carlsberg, the Danish beer producers and sponsors of Liverpool, had been reconsidering their investment in the club. But, within hours of Jerzy Dudek saving Shevchenko’s penalty to gift his team with the trophy, the beer company announced a new £15 million three-year deal with the new European champions. Added to that, the club will make millions more from the spin-offs: replica shirts, DVDs of the final and various merchandising. The romanticism fed to spectators on the pitch is only a façade for the big transactions in the boardroom.

In the 2002 season, the top ten leagues in Europe earned nearly £1.8 billion, almost half the GDP of Mauritius, in broadcasting contracts alone. The English Premier League’s revenues in TV deals, since its creation in 1992, reached £3,675 billion last year. Football is now big business, with top players expecting to earn as much as £100,000 a week. This is the cosy sum that the Liverpool captain, Steven Gerrard, is rumoured to have been offered to stay at the club. When the BBC/ITV duopoly was broken in 1992, and BSkyB was brought in, the football clubs smelled big money deals. Gate receipts, once the lifeblood of a club, became small change in comparison.

To compete at the highest level, good players, a strong fan base or a good manager are not enough. Money talks. Chelsea is a prime example. Bought by a Russian billionaire, whose fortune stems from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent selling-off of the countries’ assets to a few Boris Yeltsin’s protégés, the club is now English champions. Trophyless in his first season, he went out and bought an almost entire new team, whose starting eleven is valued at £135 million. Compare this to the two other clubs, which finished in the top three and the figures speak for themselves. Manchester United is valued at £105 million while Arsene Wenger is said to be performing a miracle at Arsenal with ‘only’ a £46 million team.

<B>TV rights and the big money deals</B>

No wonder the first four or five league positions are always taken by the same team. TV money has deepened the financial gulf between the top and bottom clubs. In fact some teams are more like corporations than anything else. It is not the fans’ love of their club, but rather the stock market, which is indexed to performance. The recent purchase of Manchester United by Malcolm Glazer is more an investment in a highly successful brand than a love-affair with the club. His intentions are not yet known, whether he wants to milk the United cash cow or build a team with the best players like Real Madrid. But, he will surely try to recoup the £870 million that he spent for the club.

The pressure of money on football has on the one hand stifled competition, helping to kill the spirit of the game. Even Barcelona, a club with a rich tradition as the team of the people during Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, is finding it hard to cope. Next season, for the first time in their 106 year history, they will bear the name of sponsors on their jerseys. However, despite the inequality, such emotional nights like last Wednesday’s can only be good for the game. How long it can last is a different question.

<B>Diren valayden</B> <I>Outlook Correspondent in Dublin</I>