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  "description": "Leicester City's relegation to League One is a football story. What it leaves behind is a civic one",
  "path": "/who-pays-for-the-fall-of-lcfc/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-28T07:00:44.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.leicester.news",
  "tags": [
    "Click here for membership",
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    "exploiting migrants",
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  "textContent": "This story was published by ****the Leicester Gazette**** : a local, independent newspaper about Leicestershire. 1,000 people have already joined our mailing list. Just use that button below to ****sign up for free.****\n\n__No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Want to support our work?__ Click here for membership__.__\n\nSubscribe for free\n\nLeicester City’s relegation to League One in April represents a tragic, and somewhat comically absurd, ending to one of the most historic periods in sporting history. A decade ago in 2016, Leicester City won the Premier League despite the bookmakers pricing them at 5,000-1. That little joke ended up costing them approximately £20m in payouts. A comparatively small English football club became, briefly, the most talked-about team on the planet.\n\nIt was a major civic and economic event. According to one accounting firm, the Premier League win added a staggering £140m to the local economy.\n\nTen years on, the club finds themselves in one of the biggest crises in the club’s history. Relegated to the third tier of English football for only the second time, grappling with hundreds of millions in losses over the previous five years, and many fans in open revolt against the ownership.\n\nMuch of the reporting on the club’s decline has inevitably focused on the team’s performances, but what of the impact on the city of Leicester itself? Football clubs are not vacuums. They are not just stadiums that exist on scraps of land in random geographical spaces; they are woven from a city’s fabric indelible.\n\nAs football historian David Goldblatt wrote in 2020, football clubs are “the collective web of stories, memories, and identities woven between supporters and the team.”\n\nIf the city of Leicester benefited greatly from the club’s historic rise, there will be a cost to this unprecedented fall – whether financial, civic or both. But to understand what that cost may be, you first have to understand what Leicester City’s ascent to the summit of English football meant in the first place.\n\nLeicester has always held a strange place in the international perception of Britain. It’s the country’s 10th biggest city, but not particularly well-known globally, especially in a post-Empire context. During the 19th century and early 20th, the city was well known for its clothing manufacturing, leading to the famous slogan ‘Leicester Clothes the World.’ Now, of course, that industry that once held a community together has been replaced by fast fashion conglomerates exploiting migrants on poverty wages.\n\nThe city is known for its high levels of multicultural integration, and has built a reputation as one of Britain’s most successfully diverse cities. However, Leicester had minor global recognition compared to London, Manchester, or even Nottingham. When I would explain to foreign friends I was from Leicester, they would look at me blankly until I said it was near Nottingham and mentioned Robin Hood, upon which the gleam of recognition would light their face. In Fearless: The Amazing Underdog Story of Leicester City, former Leicester Mercury football journalist Jonathan Northcroft described the city as ‘such a neutral place, with no accent, no character type, no landmark, no quirk, no historical event, to latch on to.’\n\nWhen a city lacks that kind of cultural shorthand, a football club can become something more than sport – it becomes the story the city tells about itself. In Leicester’s case, that story went global.\n\nGiven in 2016, the Premier League was broadcast in 212 territories and reached over 730 million homes worldwide, making it one of the most internationally watched sporting competitions on the planet – Leicester’s title victory brought unprecedented attention to the city.\n\nA 2016 study by the accounting firm EY found that the Premier League win had added a staggering £140m to the local economy. This was drawn primarily from increased prize money awarded to the club, an estimated 120,000 visitors through match day tourism, and £6.5 million spent on local transport and hospitality. The increase in the city’s visibility saw an additional 2,500 jobs created and £78 million generated in tax revenue.\n\nHowever, the global interest in Leicester was more than just raw economics. It was visible in metrics such as Google Trends and international university admissions. De Montfort University reported in 2016 that international admissions had risen by 60 per cent following the club's title-winning season. The same study also reported that in the same year, there were 127 million Google searches for Leicester, twice as many as any other regional UK city. Analysis of Google Trends data by the Leicester Gazette found that average search interest in Leicester was 85 per cent higher in 2016 than in 2014, when Leicester City were competing in the Championship.\n\nCrucially, interest did not immediately return to pre-title levels. Search activity remained significantly elevated in the years that followed, suggesting that Leicester City’s success permanently increased international attention towards the city.\n\nThe club and the city were gliding higher than ever in their history: record revenues, visibility and on-the-field success. However, from atop the peak, the future usually travels in only one direction. Down.\n\n## Join the conversation\n\nOur app is more than just a way to keep up – it's a gateway to award-winning journalism and the local community.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n__Want to support our work?__ Click here for membership__.__\n\nLeicester City’s relegation to the third tier of English football – only the second time in their 142-year history – was confirmed in a 2-2 draw against Birmingham City, entirely maintaining the season’s banality. The club’s slide down the table was, given the historical context, bizarrely undramatic. It just sort of… happened; the way that sideboards are suddenly covered in dust.\n\nThe impact on the city’s economy is, in its simplest terms, a question of spending power. The average fan attending a League One fixture has approximately £3,000 less disposable income than those attending a Premier League match. Since both hospitality and public transport prices have risen with inflation over the last two years, this translates directly into reduced income for local businesses. Fans with less money are less likely to stay overnight in hotels or eat in local restaurants.\n\nThis is compounded by the size of the visiting fan base. As Dr Dan Plumley, senior lecturer in sport finance at Loughborough University, explained to the Gazette: “economic impact for the city is mostly down to the quality of away opposition and the quantity of fans that they bring; a drop in away fans in terms of number means less money being spent by out-of-town attendees in the local economy.”\n\nPart of the reason for this outsized economic impact was the club’s three European campaigns between 2016 and 2022. Fans travelling overseas are most likely to stay overnight in the city and use local infrastructure.\n\nThe Premier League’s global popularity also results in large numbers of football tourists, where fans travel from abroad with the specific intention of watching a Premier League game. This tourism attracts more than 500,000 international visitors to the UK each year, while VisitBritain estimates that 1.5 million overseas visits in 2019 included attendance at a live football match. While the majority of these tourists would attend games at bigger clubs, Leicester will no longer benefit from any part of this substantial market.\n\nThe wider concern is shared across the city’s business community. A spokesperson for Leicestershire Business Voice told the Gazette: “Leicester City’s relegation will impact a range of areas including the visitor economy, local supply chain volumes and civic pride.”\n\nThe Foxes Trust, the independent supporters’ society, identified the same people at risk: ‘pubs, cafés, retailers, taxi drivers, programme sellers, security staff and many others whose income is linked to the club.’\n\nThe Trust’s concerns extend beyond the immediate match day economy. “There could be a knock-on effect on community initiatives”, they told the Gazette. “Leicester supporters have demonstrated strong community spirit, including food bank collections and local fundraising, but these activities rely on energy, engagement, and attendance. If supporters become increasingly disengaged, community efforts may become harder to sustain.” It is difficult to quantify precisely how much the club generates for the local economy. But the direction of travel is clear, it will be negative, and it could be considerable.\n\nThe reduction in global visibility carries its costs. Rob Wilson, Professor of Applied Sport Finance at the University of Football Business, suggested that relegation to League One is ‘likely to harm city economics with LCFC out of the global spotlight.’ The potential impact on international student numbers – one of the clearest gains of the title era, as the De Montfort figures show – is particularly significant given the current pressures on university funding.\n\nAll those contacted by the Gazette for this article have been keen to stress that it is difficult to quantify exactly how much income Leicester generates for the local economy. However, it is clear that there will be a knock-on effect, it will be negative, and it could be considerable. But beyond that, the relegation has created a despondent atmosphere about the club; supporters are angry, with many actively calling for a change of ownership.\n\nThe monetary fallout from further relegation is just part of a wider sense of regression for this city. The football team’s unimaginable success gave the city a brand-new story to tell to the world; one of ingenuity, bravery, and resilience. Being Premier League champions gave that story a global stage. If Leicester City's rise helped put the city on the map, its decline may reveal just how many people had come to depend on it being there.\n\n* * *\n\n**Before you go…** We’ve recently surpassed 1,000 subscribers, which is amazing considering we’re a small team on a shoestring budget.\n\nNow, we’re ready for the next stage of the Leicester Gazette. **Download our new app and get all of our journalism anytime, anywhere.**\n\nThe app connects with **Bluesky** , **Mastodon** and **Threads** , giving you access to a network of around 60 million people. It’s a safer, more meaningful alternative to mainstream social media – owned by the community.\n\n\n \n\n\n* * *",
  "title": "Who pays for the ‘fall’ of Leicester City Football Club?",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-28T09:00:46.628Z"
}