Peter Lawwell was the highest paid director in British football for the 2018/19 season.
A report in The Times revealed that Ed Woodward of Manchester United was the top paid director in England with earnings of £3.16m but that is £400,000 short of what Lawwell collected as Chief Executive of the Scottish champions. According to Celtic’s 2019 report their chief executive was paid £3,549,026.
For the year ending 30 June 2019 United had turnover of £627.1m, for the same period Celtic had £83.4m, a drop from the previous year of £101.6m.
Both Woodward and Lawwell come from an accountancy background with no hands-on football experience. Since becoming United’s Chief Executive in 2014 the club has failed to win the EPL or Champions League but have won the League Cup, FA Cup and Europa League.
The Times reports:
Manchester United’s Ed Woodward remains the highest-paid club director in the Premier League after earning £3.16 million last season — and despite earning £1 million less than the year before, according to latest figures.
Woodward is the executive vice-chairman of United and the man who effectively runs the club on a day-to-day basis. He has also been a regular target of criticism from those fans who are unhappy with the club’s performances in recent years.
Accounts registered at Companies House detail the overall payment to the 12 club directors — who include Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Bobby Charlton — totalled £6.8 million for the year ending June 30 2019, a season when United finished sixth in the Premier League.
Of that, Woodward earned £3.16 million as the highest-paid director. That is £1 million less than the previous year when a right to shares was activated to reflect his service to the club that he has worked for since the Glazer family’s takeover in 2005.
The only other Premier League executive on the same level is the Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy. Spurs’s most recent accounts show he earned £3 million a year, but the north London club’s accounts for last year have yet to be published.
Woodward can point to the fact that Manchester United continue to see revenues grow and they made a profit last year of £19 milllion. However the club have warned investors that a lack of Champions League football this year is like to see revenues fall overall this season.
It is not known how much the Manchester City chief executive Ferran Sorriano earns because he is not a director of the club — only the highest-paid director’s salary is detailed in company accounts.
Since joining Celtic in 2003 on a salary of £166,000 Lawwell’s package has grown 20 times during a period when income has largely been stagnant on most fronts with fluctuations caused by reaching the Champions League group stage or player sales.
Celtic have only reached the group stage of the Champions League four times in the last 10 years but the sales of Victor Wanyama, Moussa Dembele and Kieran Tierney have all been for club record fees.
European football however has been a major disappointment for fans with unseeded opponents AEK Athens and Cluj knocking Celtic out at the third qualifying round of the Champions League in each of the last two seasons. Just reaching the Play-Off round is worth €5m with the guarantee of a similar sum for participating in the Europa League.
