ALL 72 LOWER DIVISION clubs could share the same perimeter advertising during live televised games under an innovative centralised inventory system being developed by the Football League. The rotating boards, which would be moved around the country, would give five companies the opportunity to market nationally across 71 games to the League’s average TV audience of 400,000 per match.

Clubs would be guaranteed a minimum payment on top of the local advertising hoarding that would remain in place for non-televised fixtures. The cost of buying and storing the equipment is about £350,000, so League officials would have to attract substantial money from the three new sponsors to sit alongside Coca-Cola and BSkyB.

So far there has been one firm offer and two expressions of interest, according to League insiders. Championship club chairmen have already given the green light to the idea while League One and League Two clubs are expected to be in favour because they stand to benefit from association with bigger brands that would not normally advertise within their grounds. Concessions will be offered in the case of conflicts with existing club contracts. The new system could be in place by the start of next season although the season after is more likely.

The League is also expected to announce soon that it has appointed a central procurement specialist, which will allow all member clubs to buy items such as pens and grass seed from a single online source at a reduced cost. A presentation to Championship clubs will take place this month and to League One and Two clubs next month. Finding economies of scale is one way the League is trying to improve the financial situation of clubs outside the Premiership.

THE AVERAGE FIFA employee earns an annual salary of more than £58,000, according to the 2004 accounts of world football’s governing body. It is still barely the weekly wage of a top Premiership footballer, but the organisation’s burgeoning staff, now numbering 240, collectively managed to run up expenses totalling SwFr49 million (about £21.5 million). While Fifa did reinvest more than two-thirds of its SwFr740 million income in the game, operating expenses still amounted to SwFr155 million.

Fifa’s operational expenses budget for next year’s World Cup is SwFr105.3 million, of which SwFr3.6 million is set aside for the office of Sepp Blatter, the president.

THE SCALE OF Chelsea’s £55 million five-year sponsorship contract with Samsung warranted a dig around the archives for a history of shirt deals. The Money Game discovered some real gems that show how far the club have come. The first company name to feature on a Chelsea shirt was Gulf Air, which signed a £150,000 deal with Ken Bates, the former chairman, midway through the 1983-84 season. The liaison was short-lived and had disappeared by the start of the next season.

The 1986-87 season offered an array of random sponsors from Grange Farm Ice Cream to Bai Lin, a bogus “slimming tea” later exposed to be English Breakfast, to Simod, the Italian shoe manufacturer, before the club settled on one brand. Commodore, the computer maker, stayed on the shirts until 1993. Amiga, a Commodore computer, featured until 1995 to be followed by Coors, Autoglass and Emirates, the Dubai-based airline that from the 2006-07 season will feature on Arsenal shirts.

FORMATION GROUP, the sports company founded by Paul Stretford, the football agent, is close to acquiring a general insurance company to bolster the wealth-management services it can offer clients such as Wayne Rooney and the England cricket team. The move would be an extension of efforts to reduce the publicly-quoted company’s reliance on income from player representation.

ashling.oconnor@thetimes.co.uk

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