With a global sports audience currently transfixed by the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, two of Scotland’s leading entrepreneurs have sought to examine more closely the business nature of the ‘beautiful game’.

Speaking on the Go Radio Business Show with Hunter & Haughey, Sir Tom Hunter said: “Manchester United is up for sale, Liverpool is up for sale, Paris St-Germain is up for sale . . . Now these clubs are owned by people who have invested in football to make money.

“It used to be if you invested in football, it was for the love of the game, it was to take care of the supporters. But these are hard-nosed businessmen who want a return.”

If financial reward was the ultimate goal, Lord Willie Haughey was keen to point out football is “not actually a good business in relation to an annual return on your investment, your old ROI”.

However, he added: “Where the American owners and maybe the sovereign wealth funds are being clever is they see a capital receipt as the return. So you’re right. The Glazers, whether we like or not, used the whole power of Man United to buy Man United. They indebted the club, I think, to the tune of about £500 million. So they put very little in and, I think I’m right in saying, they’ve actually had more out in dividends than they actually put in. That’s good, business-wise.

“I just wonder where football’s going to end up when the owners all get fed up with their toys.”

Sir Tom brought the conversation closer to home: “I’ve read in The Herald, which is doing a fabulous series on Scottish football, that the gulf between our domestic game and the English Premier League is colossal. But is it simply the TV rights that are the differentiator?”

Lord Haughey believed Sky has made the Premier League the success story that it is today.

“When Rupert Murdoch set up Sky initially he bet all in on films and content. He spent a fortune and he thought this was the thing that would make people pay to view. However he found out very quickly that sport was way ahead of film,” he said.

“Because of the finances in football today, the only way Celtic or Rangers can show a positive P&L at the end of the year, whether the fans like it or not, is either by getting to the Champions League group stages or by gains on the selling of players.

“This means Celtic and Rangers will always be selling clubs now. If you get the right offers in for players, that’s the only way that you can actually balance the books.

“They have a certain cash flow of 55,000 to 60,000 season ticket holders and that’s great, but the money that it costs today to perform at all at any level means the gulf now between the smaller clubs and the bigger clubs is absolutely huge.”

Sir Tom noted that the current climate also suggested that success has very different criteria for the financial backers than the fans: “The fan wants to know if they’ve got a cup, if they’ve got a championship. So is football a business? Well, I would say it is for a lucky few but most people get involved for the love of the team, for the love of the club.”

Lord Haughey saw huge positives for the game in Scotland, highlighting: “Scottish football and the ownership of a lot of the clubs is probably more stable than it’s been for maybe two or three decades. There’s a lot of stability. There seems to have been a lot of common sense broken out within the Scottish game.

“The problem that happened in Scottish football was everybody tried to keep up with Celtic and Rangers and that was a crazy thing to do.

“You have to find a level and try to do the best that you can with the money you have. But I think Scottish football is in good fettle.”