The rescue that awaits at the box office: The top playoff is worth millions | Israel today

In all the major leagues in Europe, promotion to or relegation to the top league is equivalent to a profit or loss of tens of millions of dollars.

In Israel, the picture is a little different, but if you look for imagination, the battle for the top playoff in the next month and a half is mainly a battle for tens of millions of shekels for the teams that will qualify for it, with guaranteed home games against Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel B'Shlosha.

Assuming the top three places had already secured their place in the playoffs, we were left with the remaining teams in pursuit of the millions guaranteed by the top playoffs.

Take, for example, Hapoel Tel Aviv, the team that sells the most expensive tickets in the league (NIS 125 for goal 13 in the upcoming derby, for example). The Reds sold 20,000 tickets for the upcoming derby, in addition to the 8,000 subscribers the team already has, Until the end of the round.

Qualifying for the top playoffs is worth another such derby for the Reds, whose income is estimated at two million shekels, another game against Maccabi Haifa to which 20,000 tickets will be sold and a similar amount, and another game against Hapoel B'Shlosha with a minimum of 5,000 more tickets for sale in the playoffs.

For a club like Hapoel Tel Aviv, which is mired in economic fog, two consecutive years in the top playoffs and covering the debts of the International Sports Court of Famous will suddenly become realistic.

A drop to the bottom playoffs could lead to further financial entanglement.

For Hapoel, qualifying for the top playoffs can completely change the economic mood at the club, probably after the early relegation from the state cup, which cost the team one million shekels net.

Hapoel Haifa players.

In Sami Ofer they can make big money, Photo: Udi Citiat

One can think far: six million shekels for Hapoel Hadera

And what about Hapoel Hadera, for example?

The team's budget for the current season is NIS 14 million.

Qualifying for the top playoffs if the top quartet remains as it is, guarantees Hadera an expected income of six million shekels.

In other words, the top playoff is for Hadera an opportunity to cover 45 percent of next season's budget already this season.

This is a budget change that will allow the group to strengthen with much stronger foreigners and Israelis.

Bnei Sakhnin, Hapoel Haifa and Maccabi Netanya are vying for the last ticket to the top playoffs.

As for Sakhnin, it is clear that if it is allowed to host the playoff games in a larger stadium - certainly if the game is unimportant, for example the championship game of Maccabi Haifa or Hapoel B'Shlosha - it will be happy to transfer the game from its small stadium.

Netanya knows that in the top playoff its 13,000-seat home stadium will be blown up once every two weeks, and then fans will be surprised to find that Eyal Segal, the owner, will not be in a hurry to leave again.

Hapoel Haifa - if it qualifies for the top playoffs - is equipped with a 30,000-seat stadium that is expected to host one derby for sure, but also games against Maccabi Tel Aviv and BS that will be hosted in Haifa when they still have something to play for, worth thousands more tickets for sale.

All the calculation we have shown here is even before we have talked about revenue from placement grants and advertisements.

In other words, after two long years of Corona, the Premier League teams that qualify for the top playoffs are likely to break revenue records.

Were we wrong?

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