LEICESTER: As Leicester City’s supporters awoke on Tuesday, fuzzy of head and bleary of eye after celebrating their fairytale Premier League triumph, the club were already entering a new sporting and financial dimension.

It is estimated that Leicester’s 5,000-1 success could be worth around £155 million ($227.5 million, 196.4 million euros) in revenue to the modest east Midlands club, up from £104.4 million for last year.

The title, the first in Leicester’s 132-year history, means Champions League football next season and access to lucrative global sports markets, but it also brings with it a dizzying change of status.

“This is going to really elevate them, at least for one season, to the next level commercially and you would expect that they’ll be able to attract commercial sponsors that previously weren’t available to them,” Tim Bridge from financial consultants Deloitte’s Sports Business Group said.

“But there is a financial cost — they’ll have to invest in players in order to compete in the Champions League, they’re going to pay out financial bonuses for winning the league — so it isn’t just upsides.”

The improbability of Leicester’s achievement in winning the world’s most popular domestic football championship, a year after narrowly avoiding relegation, is laid bare by the financial statistics.

At around £57 million, their squad cost an eighth of Manchester City’s — the most expensive in the division — and their estimated wage bill of £48.5 million ranks 17th out of the Premier League’s 20 clubs.

Their ticket prices are concordantly low, with a BBC study last year revealing that Leicester’s lowest-priced £22 match-day ticket was the cheapest in the division.

They were already guaranteed a slice of the Premier League’s eye-watering new £8 billion television rights deal and Champions League participation will bring in up to £35 million, rising to around £50 million if they reach the knockout phase.

Leicester’s surge to the Premier League summit saw their Facebook page grow by 540 percent, according to sports data and marketing firm Repucom, which made it one of the fastest-growing accounts in global sport.

‘NEVER EXPECTED’

After partying late into the night, groggy-eyed Leicester players reported for duty at the training ground as usual on Tuesday morning.

And training ended only after the club’s Thai owners landed by helicopter at the facility surrounded by tightly packed rows of houses. The players will surely never get tired of having to pose with “Champions” banners and sing “Champione.”

For Vichai Raksriaksorn, who also owns Thai duty free giant King Power, it is a group picture he never expected to pose for when he bought Leicester in 2010 in a deal that valued the club at 39 million pounds (now about $57 million).

The Foxes had only just climbed out of the third tier back then, and took until 2014 to end their 10-year exile from the Premier League, where they now tower over every other team in England.

Before Leicester, the last first-time champions of England were another modest east Midlands team, Nottingham Forest, back in 1978. Forest followed that pre-Premier League era triumph by winning the European Cup not once, but twice.

The magnitude of Leicester’s feat will be measured by what happens next.

“We made a lot of dreams come true,” Leicester midfielder Danny Drinkwater said. “It doesn’t sound right, but we’ve done it. We’re here to stay. We’re not going to drop off. We’re going to push on.”

To ensure this season isn’t a one-off taste of glory at the highest level, Leicester will have to fend off interest in players such as Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez, both of whom recently signed new contracts.

“We are not a team who produces players to be developed later by other teams,” said the owner’s son, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha. “All players want to stay and keep on fighting together to see how far they can go. So selling players is not on our agenda.”

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2016