Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

SportsProMedia.com looks at the legal challenges that must be passed for the Super LEague to start

European Super League: What legal hurdles stand in the way of a breakaway competition?
As opposition to plans for a new European Super League intensifies, Darren Bailey, a consultant at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, tells SportsPro how a legal battle over the proposed breakaway competition could play out and why the outcome is “50-50 under the current approach”.

By Sam CarpPosted: April 20 2021

Concrete plans for a JP Morgan-funded European Super League (ESL) might have only just reached the surface, but a subsequent legal battle between the founding members and soccer’s outraged ruling authorities could run for several years if both parties stand their ground.

That is according to Darren Bailey, a consultant at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys and the former director of football governance and regulation at English soccer’s Football Association (FA), who believes that each side could argue that the other is breaching competition law.

Bailey points out that some of the grievances likely to be aired by the two parties should the fallout eventually make its way to court can already be seen in cases involving other sports. The ESL can take confidence from a recent ruling involving the International Skating Union (ISU), which in December last year was found by the European Union (EU) General Court to have breached the EU’s competition law by prohibiting athletes from taking part in competitions not sanctioned by the global governing body.

The objections of soccer’s major powerbrokers, meanwhile, are similar to those that have been put forward by the Union of European Leagues of Basketball (ULEB) and the International Basketball Federation (Fiba) in their complaint against Euroleague Commercial Assets (ECA). ECA is the organiser of the EuroLeague, another breakaway that has become Europe’s most prestigious club basketball competition, but which the two dissenting parties have accused of ‘anti-competitive behaviour’ and ‘abusing a dominant position in the market’.

With the proposed 20-team ECL now posing a direct threat to the Uefa Champions League, European club soccer’s existing top level of competition, Bailey says cases that have not received as much publicity previously could play a part in what happens next.

“I think one of the things in the past that hasn’t been realised is the implications of cases involving ice skating or basketball or swimming,” he tells SportsPro. “They’ve actually created the legal framework, and people weren’t keeping an eye on it.

“This is where you end up, with the biggest sport in the world citing an ice skating case in order to create a Super League. You wouldn’t really have thought that, would you?”

What legal hurdles have to be cleared for the ESL to come to fruition?
Bailey explains that there are “three levels of issues” that the founding members of the ESL will have to overcome if they want their multibillion dollar dream to become a lucrative reality.

“There will be potentially a disciplinary situation,” he says. “There’s potentially a commercial contractual position. Then there’s also avoiding the sanctions that will be being imposed by the football authorities on their conduct.”

Bailey notes that there are “a whole series of approvals and requirements” that the ESL would need from the likes of Uefa, which has shown no appetite whatsoever to give the green light to the new competition in its current form. Indeed, European soccer’s governing body responded fiercely in the face of the breakaway plans, releasing a joint statement with various leading national leagues and associations saying they will ‘consider all measures available to us’ in order to ‘stop this cynical project’.

“What that really sets up is the real essence of this argument,” Bailey continues, “which is going to be: is this a competition law position insofar as its relates to a typical market, or can you find a persuasive argument that says sport should be treated differently and the monopoly structures should be allowed to continue?

“I think what the ESL will argue is that the prohibitions that are seeking to be applied on it and the sanctions that are seeking to be applied on it are abusive of a dominant position, because [the football bodies are] acting as regulator and commercial rival, and it’s wrong for them to be in a position to stop a new event being opened, because they have a commercial interest in stopping it, and it’s a misuse of their monopoly powers to do so.”

Bailey argues that competition law should not be applied to sport in the same way that it is to industries like shipping or steel, instead suggesting it requires a “more nuanced approach” that acknowledges that sport is designed to create a level playing field. However, because of the way the regulations are now, he believes the ESL “will feel quite emboldened” and says it could be “more difficult” for the soccer authorities because they have to “change the weather of the European courts”.

He continues: “The question is whether the sports bodies and football authorities could demonstrate that the overriding needs, the specificity of sport, the cultural and social significance of football, means that there should be a much more sporty approach to the application of competition law that allows them to say: ‘this is important, the European model of sport is predicated on an open pyramid, it’s predicated on social dimension, clubs, regions, history and heritage, it’s not the American model which is predicated on the basis of profit and entertainment.’

“So I see this as being a challenge between those two interpretations of the European legal framework.”

Who holds the upper hand?
As well as saying that they plan to block the formation of the ESL, soccer authorities have threatened the rebel teams and their top talent with several sanctions. The likes of Uefa and the Premier League have warned the breakaway clubs that they will be thrown out of domestic competitions, while players have been told that they face a ban from flagship national team tournaments such as the Fifa World Cup if they play in the ESL.

It was reported on 19th April, though, that the ESL has already taken ‘protective steps’ to prevent those sanctions from being handed down. A letter addressed to Fifa and Uefa, which was seen by the Press Association (PA), said that the ESL has ‘filed a motion before the relevant courts in order to ensure the seamless establishment and operation of the competition’.

“The interesting thing for me is what you’re seeing now is a strategy from what I would say are those that are potentially being sanctioned in any sport setting to take preemptory action,” says Bailey. “So rather than wait for me to impose a sanction on you, you almost say, ‘well we think they’re going to do this and we want you to stop it happening.’

“So that’s the gameplan, and that’s potentially quite clever, because it draws it out and gets you an accelerated and potentially preemptive protection, so that you’re actually protective of yourself.”

How long could a potential legal battle drag on?
The ESL has said that its inaugural season ‘is intended to commence as soon as practicable’, which feels like it could be some way off given the level of immediate opposition and the various issues that need to be resolved.

The question is, though, precisely how long might that process take?

“The slight problem is here if you go through to the end of this process it’s going to take a long time,” Bailey says. “There’s a case in basketball at present where there’s a challenge by the league associations to say two things. One is that it’s not right that you’re not selecting teams on sporting merit, even when they’re doing well in their domestic competitions, but moreover they think that the franchises are all enjoying competitive and commercial advantages that they construe as being anti-competitive.

“That case hasn’t been heard yet, but you could foresee the football authorities swinging behind the basketball case, which is not yet decided, the ESL swinging behind the ISU case, which has been decided, and no party saying, ‘we can give up here’. If that goes long that will be five, six, seven years.”

Bailey adds that it is “unlikely” that soccer could deal with that period of disruption and it will more likely come down to whether the courts are prepared to deal with the case “on a highly expedited basis”. He also cites an “expedited mediation” and a “longer term transitional arrangement” as possibilities.

“For me, because of the significance of it, it could go fast,” Bailey continues. “The question of whether it can go fast enough, I think next year seems very ambitious. I think the legal arguments are reasonably straightforward. You might have a bit of an argument and some of these cases get bogged down in detailed economic reports, but my sense is because of the nature of the case and the impact that it has that they would seek to wrap an expedited process around it and they would seek to drive it through.”

So is a European Super League likely from a legal perspective?
European soccer has been shaken to its very foundations by the news that has emerged in recent days, with governing bodies, clubs and fan groups united in their anger at what many perceive as a betrayal by some of the richest teams in the game.

In terms of whether a legal battle will result in the ESL getting what it wants, Bailey believes the outcome is “50-50 under the current approach”.

“Mainly it’s quite finely balanced,” he adds, “but I think if the courts go to a more sports-specific approach, which I think they should, and they do start to raise questions over the commercial side of the deal, in terms of the founders taking a lot of private money out, then I think it goes 60-40 in favour of a football family victory.

“And all I would say is it’s a very, very big decision, a huge decision for any court to make.”

Indeed, whatever the outcome may be, Bailey expects that the case will have profound implications for sport as a whole. Soccer is not the only sport whose traditional decision makers have faced the threat of a breakaway in recent years, and Bailey believes the ESL ruling can be treated “a little bit like a test case”.

“It warrants that to happen,” he asserts. “More broadly, even beyond this narrower football setting, it’s something that all sports really need. They all need to get clarity of the scope of their powers, because if you don’t know the scope of your regulatory authority, you will continue to act in a defensive way, and you will start to see more and more breakaways.

“Sports are now all suffering from potential challenges and breakaways, so this is not all about football, it’s about the wider need for sports to understand what they can and can’t do.”

[Chester Perry]

The following is a link to a chapter to a book that is being touted by a chap called Rob Francis - this single chapter provides so much history to the financial changes in football that I thoroughly recommend you give it a look as a reference point to events, wider research should give a more rounded perspective

https://rob-francis.medium.com/good-of- ... afcdd19316

[Chester Perry]

Throughout the last few days I have argued that the fundamental argument for the Super League was based in the research published by the ECA last Thursday (linked further up this page), yes there was greed, entitlement and protectionism, the essence however was growing the engaged audience, that is pretty clear from the interviews of Florentino Perez and Andrea Agnelli. I am no supporter of the project but I do believe that throughout the mass hysteria little has been done to properly understand the driver, and the more serious journalists of the game have been deeply complicit in this.

You may or may not be aware that on Tuesday morning, shortly before he acknowledge that the Super League was not going ahead, Andrea Agnelli had an interview published simultaneously in La Repubblica and Corriere dello Sport - here Juvecanal.com and English Language fans distil what was said. There is little doubt it is flawed in execution but the detail backs up what I have repeatedly said

Agnelli explains why The Super League is needed
APR 21, 2021Juve Canal

Juventus president and vice president of The Super League, Andrea Agnelli spoke to Corriere Dello Sport, in an exclusive interview about the new project.

Here’s what he had to say.

The Super League in 5 points:

“First: no threat to domestic leagues. Indeed, the firm will, apart from the group of twelve cluhs, continue to participate in national competitions, both in the championship and in the cups. Therefore total adherence to what is tradition.”

“Two: since the establishment of the Super League, dialogue with institutions has been encouraged, in our case FIFA and Uefa.”

“Three: what we are doing is perfectly legal. We are exercising a freedom provided for by the Treaty of the European Union, and I consider this to be particularly important.”

“Four: football is experiencing an enormous crisis of appeal that affects the new generations.

“Stadiums closed for a year have recorded. For those with children aged ten, fifteen, twenty, the disaffection is more than palpable: young people are interested in other things. Evidently – and here we enter a macroeconomic sphere – this sad phenomenon has accelerated due to the pandemic.”

“Fifth: and it is perhaps the key point, what we are trying to organize is the best competition in the world.”

But only the rich would benefit from this?

“It is absolutely not like that. Our will is to create a competition that can bring benefits to the entire football pyramid, substantially increasing what is the solidarity distributed to other clubs.”

“A competition, I emphasize, which remains open and provides for five places available to the other clubs.”

Sporting merit to join the league?

“This is part of the dialogue we have requested of the institutions.”

“The biggest problem in the football industry is stability, the reforms of national and international demonstrations are themes that I have heard re-launched during every election campaign of every federal president and of international regulatory bodies.”

“Once they get to occupy positions of responsibility, however, they think about maintaining positions of privilege and monopoly.”

“The crisis is not just financial, but one of loyalty. The younger ones want big events and are not tied to elements of parochialism. My generation was much more so.”

“Some data: 1/3 of world fans follow at least two clubs and often these two are present among the founders of the Super League.”

“10% are fascinated by great players, not clubs. 2/3 follow football for what is now called ‘fomo’, fear of missing out, fear of being cut off. And now the most alarming percentage: 40% of children between 15 and 24 years old have no interest in football.”

“We need a competition capable of opposing what they reproduce on digital platforms, transforming the virtual into real. Through Fifa you create your own competition, that competition has to be brought back to the real world.”

“Let’s leave out the effects of the competition of the various Fortnite, Call of Duty etc., authentic catalysts of the attention of today’s kids destined to be tomorrow’s spenders.”

My response to Čeferin?

“I worked for almost ten years in international sports institutions. Well, these hold the control of the demonstrations, a de facto monopoly, without however facing any economic risk.”

“The economic risk falls exclusively on the clubs. I was unable to make those institutions understand the enormity of the entrepreneurial risk for clubs that generate value for all football stakeholders. Or maybe they had no interest in understanding it. It was necessary to change things.”

The media and Čeferin’s reaction?

“I had assumed that there would be such a reaction. As for the details and dynamics of personal life, I would prefer not to comment because they comment for themselves.”

“The political will for a change in the direction of the league of the strongest has been manifesting for twenty, thirty years. We didn’t invent hot water. What has not been understood is the terrible impact of the pandemic on the world of football.”

“The highest institution of European football in December 2020 thought that the pandemic would not do any damage, if you don’t believe it, go and read the statements again.”

“I reiterate that Uefa does not run any risk in the activity it regulates, it only benefits from it. They manage our rights, sell them, decide how many to redistribute, and regulate us. The 2019 reform was a Uefa proposal, as soon as they heard a minimum of noise they ran away. They talk about distributing and redistributing the revenues we generate and this can be done in a much better way.”

“They choose what they want to be. All of us are born as a game and have statutes and rules of the game, but we can no longer roll the dice and see what number comes out, today we are a 25 billion industry.”

Serie A?

“Before the last letter sent, I called Dal Pino, as an act of courtesy. “Paolo, we found ourselves in a stalemate” I explained to him “this stalemate derives from the management of the funds proposal.”

“Never having brought that issue to the agenda from February 3rd to March 26th led to a split in fact. The president is a guarantee figure and in our opinion he did not play this role in the good and healthy management of the League.”

TV rights?

“The Championship playoff to access the Premier is worth about 150 million, that gives stability.”

“The top clubs transfer wealth, pay me the balance of the year-over-year transfer campaign and see how much we affect. We also live with the pressure of the result. If we lose two games in a row, you will see titles as”Photonic Crisis”.”

“In Germany for eight years in a row Bayern have won, in France it’s always PSG. In Italy in 100 years of Serie A, the title has been won 80 times by Juve, Inter and Milan.”

“These are statistics, I could organize a symposium on the evolution of the market and the impact of television rights on the geography of European football.”

“I do not deny the dream, but I underline an aspect that I find absurd. I have been in football since 2010 and in 2010 Juve received 100 million euros from the system. In 2020-21 it always took 100 million euros, the same figure in eleven years of development, while we went from a turnover of 170 to one of 550, investing 450 million in infrastructure.”

“We brought Cristiano to Italy and his presence alone guaranteed the other clubs 4 million at the box office. We wish to continue importing more champions with benefits for all levels of football, from the youngest to the amateurs.”

“I never thought I was wrong to get Ronaldo, I would do it again in the morning. Same goes for Pirlo.”

[elwaclaret]

Madrid acted and are continue to act as though they are entitled. You notice the Liverpool chairman only apologised to Liverpool fans and you think anything they have to say is trustworthy. They can say what they like, but if it was for the good of football and the clubs why did they do it all in a covert operation from their colleagues in their leagues and the fans?

They are simply no longer credible, and need punishing as they clearly learned nothing from all this.

[Chester Perry]

Madrid acted and are continue to act as though they are entitled. You notice the Liverpool chairman only apologised to Liverpool fans and you think anything they have to say is trustworthy. They can say what they like, but if it was for the good of football and the clubs why did they do it all in a covert operation from their colleagues in their leagues and the fans?

They are simply no longer credible, and need punishing as they clearly learned nothing from all this.

I think you missed the point of the post

[elwaclaret]

I think you missed the point of the post

Quite possibly as I only scanned it, I will read it properly... and avoid reading this stack I have piled up for work lol

[elwaclaret]

Just read it again... most of it I could agree needs discussing, but the source is a busted flush... in the same way I need to make arguments to be taken seriously in my historical study. If it was such a genuine attempt to reconfigure football for the future, why do it all in clandestine meetings. I am reading about JFK and Laos 1961... they ran similar covert campaigns, and even as the truth comes into view as official documents are released, JFK supporters continue to try to accommodate the covert dirty tricks.... Laos it was to create ‘freedom’... but only a Western facing freedom... I see not difference in this football attempt to force change.

[Chester Perry]

Just read it again... most of it I could agree needs discussing, but the source is a busted flush... in the same way I need to make arguments to be taken seriously in my historical study. If it was such a genuine attempt to reconfigure football for the future, why do it all in clandestine meetings. I am reading about JFK and Laos 1961... they ran similar covert campaigns, and even as the truth comes into view as official documents are released, JFK supporters continue to try to accommodate the covert dirty tricks.... Laos it was to create ‘freedom’... but only a Western facing freedom... I see not difference in this football attempt to force change.

I don't disagree too much and a major flaw is that younger people get older and tend to want something to sit and watch om the tv at some point - the risk is that they have never been that engaged with football, whereas games effectively involve being sat in front of a screen for extended periods and already involves the social aspect of remote multiplayer games. There are also a growing number of people making a living playing a game and having people watch them do it on livestream.

The clandestine (it wasn't that much everyone new this is what has been in the works for a long time) and closed shop elements essentially talk of fear (not of losing market share but of the pool of interest diminishing) and of childish stroppiness of I am right you are wrong. The latter of course has been heavily clouded by these clubs other stroppiness on the it is our interest generation and therefore should be our money. It has just been too difficult for many to sort out the real useful stuff from the crap that surrounds it.

As for it being the greatest competition ever, the format they created was effectively in place in the summer ICC cup, the desire was simply to make it more competitive than a series of glorified friendlies

[elwaclaret]

I don't disagree too much and a major flaw is that younger people get older and tend to want something to sit and watch om the tv at some point - the risk is that they have never been that engaged with football, whereas games effectively involve being sat in front of a screen for extended periods and already involves the social aspect of remote multiplayer games. There are also a growing number of people making a living playing a game and having people watch them do it on livestream.

The clandestine (it wasn't that much everyone new this is what has been in the works for a long time) and closed shop elements essentially talk of fear (not of losing market share but of the pool of interest diminishing) and of childish stroppiness of I am right you are wrong. The latter of course has been heavily clouded by these clubs other stroppiness on the it is our interest generation and therefore should be our money. It has just been too difficult for many to sort out the real useful stuff from the crap that surrounds it.

As for it being the greatest competition ever, the format they created was effectively in place in the summer ICC cup, the desire was simply to make it more competitive than a series of glorified friendlies

When the likes of EA Sports burst onto the scene... football clubs should have been secured for at least a generation. There was huge new money sloshing in clubs coffers... did they think that’s a bonus? No they thought like a kept partner.. spend spend spend. Now they look to the good of football? Ahead of a possible next bonanza from digital, but they only want what is best for everyone... maybe we should have bells attached to football socks, so we hear more distinctly as they try to pull the other one.

[Chester Perry]

When the likes of EA Sports burst onto the scene... football clubs should have been secured for at least a generation. There was huge new money sloshing in clubs coffers... did they think that’s a bonus? No they thought like a kept partner.. spend spend spend. Now they look to the good of football? Ahead of a possible next bonanza from digital, but they only want what is best for everyone... maybe we should have bells attached to football socks, so we hear more distinctly as they try to pull the other one.

Spending and the continuous upward drive in fees and wages is also part of the fear of not being at the forefront of the market and of losing revenue share, what they are doing feels more like renaissance Europe than free-market capitalism - this is a reasonable attempt at detailing why it was anti-free market capitalistic https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ech-giants.

This from the telegraph (using work from the chaps at Vysyble) gives part of the reason why I talk about fear (no real return on investment) being the underlying driver.

The financial forces behind football's Super League abomination cannot be ignored
BEN WRIGHT APRIL 21, 2021

The European Super League is now collapsing under the weight of its own hubris with all six English clubs pulling out and club executives falling like ninepins. However, the financial forces that gave rise to this abomination have not been addressed and aren't going anywhere.

The sport's governing bodies have gained an undeserved reprieve. They had better learn from this crisis or it won't be football's last. The Super League may have got a straight red but it won't be long before something a lot like it starts warming up on the touchline.

The proposed breakaway by 12 leading European clubs was not (just) about greed. It was certainly not driven by profits. In fact football's problem is quite the opposite.

Vysyble, a financial strategy and analytics firm, has charted how the economics of the Premier League have deteriorated over the past decade despite two huge increases to TV broadcast contracts. For five years it has been publishing an annual report called: We’re So Rich It’s Unbelievable! The Illusion of Wealth Within Football. The clue’s in the title.

Revenue decrease across Europe's 'big five' leagues (2018-19 to 2019-20)
Premier League clubs achieved record revenues in the 2018/19 season – the last before Covid hit. Nevertheless, they suffered a collective accounting loss of £169m. And that’s not the worst of it. Pretax profit and loss provides only a partial measure of business performance.

Accountants do not attach a cost to the equity capital injected into the clubs by their owners (either directly or through loans that then get converted into equity). Clearly there is an opportunity cost because they could do something else with that cash – like stick it in the bank and earn interest.

And owners have been pouring money into their clubs hand over fist for the past five year. Between 2016/17, the first year of the then-record breaking TV deal, and 2018/19, the level of invested capital in the Premier League, has risen by £2.1bn to £6.8bn.

Add the cost of this capital (financed by equity and debt on the balance sheet) into the mix and the top 20 clubs in the country suffered an economic loss of almost £600m in the last full year before Covid, according to Vysyble’s analysis. Over half a billion quid! And that was a good year.

This is merely the culmination of a long-running trend. For years now, English football clubs have been spending money far faster than they can make it. “On paper Manchester United has been making pretax profits of £20m to £30m a year,” says Vysyble’s John Purcell. “But by our calculations the club has made steady economic losses ever since Alex Ferguson walked out of the door in 2013.”

The problem is even worse elsewhere in Europe. The net debts of the 20 teams in Italy’s Serie A hit €2.2bn last year. In March, the European Court of Justice ruled that four of Spain’s biggest clubs, including Barcelona and Real Madrid, were being propped up by illegal state aid.

There is next to no chance of the situation improving. TV audiences are showing signs of waning as the battle for the attention spans of younger generations intensifies (even before saturation coverage of closed doors matches made matters worse in recent months). This is why pay-TV companies are becoming more reluctant to partake in ruinous bidding wars for broadcast rights.

Football executives are increasingly emphasising social media interactions, giving a clear indication of where they are searching for future growth. How they will monetise this audience remains an open question.

Purcell argues that the issue is less that clubs are chasing a profit than that there are no proper rules compelling them to make one. This has led to a clearly discernible cycle of boom and bust through the three years between the triennial broadcast rights auctions as the clubs spend their new riches with increasing profligacy in an attempt to best each other.

It does not matter whether you class football clubs as out-and-out businesses or "community-based assets" – they still need to remain solvent. “It always seemed obvious to us that football’s new American owners in particular were not going to fund continuous losses, inject capital into the business each year and do nothing about it,” says Purcell.

As the hope of making future profits becomes increasingly quixotic, club owners are searching for new ways to crystallize the value of their investment. As far back as 2016 Vysyble predicted that a European competition based on the US closed-league model was all but inevitable, but was widely ignored.

Purcell believes that football has got itself into this mess because of weak regulatory oversight and a lack of proper governance. No individual club could afford not to take part in the spending arms race for fear of underperforming on the pitch. It was up to those in charge of the sport to call a halt to the collective madness.

It remains to be seen whether the Super League still has a future. Compromise was always unlikely because opening up the league would defeat its primary purpose. “Promotion and relegation flies in the face of the one thing these guys want to achieve, which is the elimination of risk,” says Purcell.

And herein lies the rub. Greed isn’t good or bad. It just is. The only way to temper it is with an equal and opposite emotion: fear. It has rightly been pointed out that sport without jeopardy isn’t really sport; it’s athletic endeavour reduced to the status of social media content. But capitalism without risk, without the cleansing power of creative destruction, isn’t capitalism either.

The new Super League is not rampant commercialism; it is mutant commercialism. If it doesn't collapse of its own accord and the football authorities are powerless to prevent what looks, swims and quacks like a cartel, all sorts of future distortions to the once beautiful game will inevitably follow. Moral hazard isn’t Eden’s promising younger brother.

[Chester Perry]

This thread by the Independent's Economics Editor Ben Chu is also well worth a read on the subject

https://twitter.com/BenChu_/status/1385161130532814848

[Chester Perry]

This week's Business of Sport Podcast from the Athletic has some interesting background history and detail from Peter Kenyon on European Football - though he is still talks about the G14 as a good thing, necessary may be good in how it has performed, questionable

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e ... 0518051451

[elwaclaret]

Maybe I am becoming old a cynical, but I have very little time for football clubs financial strife at the top level. If I bought everything on HP and lived well beyond me means I would eventually be taken to court and lose it all as a lesson. I would not expect the national press to run in-depth analysis of how I could fund me out of my stupidity.. so I do not accept those with most power are victims. They are idiots, rich idiots but idiots nonetheless.

Independent management for me is what is required to re-shape football, not just businessmen but supporters groups, ex-managers, players and club owners... the German system for example spits out Dortmund for a period, Bayern remain largely dominant, even in Europe without getting involved in ridiculous high jinks... I’m not saying they have it nailed but it far closer than the rest of major European football.

[Chester Perry]

Interesting piece on Florentino Perez from the Financial Times

Florentino Pérez: Spain’s football king faces his greatest challenge
ARASH MASSOUDI APRIL 22, 2021

As Europe’s top football clubs deserted the continent’s planned Super League this week, the exodus was a rare humiliation for the competition’s mastermind: Florentino Pérez, president of Real Madrid.

It was Pérez’s ambition to use the Super League to multiply revenues for the clubs involved, locking in cash flow for a decade and providing relief for those that were struggling with debts even before the pandemic struck.

But it was not a playbook confined to Real Madrid, Europe’s biggest clubs, or even football itself.

Instead, Pérez has been pursuing a similar strategy — and working with the same tightknit group of financial advisers — to try to transform his Spanish construction group ACS into the world’s biggest toll road operator.

Earlier this month he unveiled a plan that could provide ACS with a steady stream of income for years to come — through a €10bn bid to buy Italy’s largest motorway network from Atlantia.

His vision for the Super League and ACS is the culmination of a decade or more of planning and positioning from a businessman who managed to survive the 2007-2008 Spanish property crash that sunk many rivals.

For both deals, the 74-year-old turned to Key Capital, a little-known Madrid-based brokerage and advisory boutique, to help execute them. One of the firm’s partners, Anas Laghrari, was tapped as the prospective general secretary of the newly formed company intended to run the Super League, under Pérez as chair.

“There is a step-change going on in the way Florentino organises his investments,” said Jonathan Amouyal, a partner at London-based hedge fund TCI. “He probably wants more stability, more predictability and more visibility of his businesses . . . A lifetime in doing construction projects is very difficult.”

Spain’s power broker
But, as Pérez is discovering, the fierce backlash over his attempt to remake football is proving even more trying.

“I am a little sad and disappointed because we were working on this for three years,” Pérez told Spain’s Cadena Ser radio late on Wednesday night, as he criticised what he labelled the “aggressiveness” and “orchestrated” response of football organisations such as Uefa and suggested that the English clubs’ decision to pull out had “infected” the others involved.

As the desertion of almost all of the 12 founding members lands a seemingly fatal blow on the league, the question is not just how Pérez and Real Madrid will react — but whether his ambitions for ACS will fare any better.

“I'm sure he [Pérez] will come back with something,” one person close to the Real Madrid chief said of the next chapter in his quest for a Super League. “You don’t work four years on something like this and just drop it.”

For decades, Pérez has been one of Spain’s biggest power brokers, because of his overlapping roles in business and sport. Long before his arrival, the box at Real Madrid was where the country’s executives and politicians struck their deals. The club is so close to the heart of the ruling elite that the former King Juan Carlos used to begin meetings with ministers by discussing its latest results.

But under Pérez, first elected as the club’s president in 2000, three years after forming ACS, Real Madrid became a commercial proposition as never before.

This was initially through its signing of “Galactico” star players such as David Beckham and Luis Figo, purchases largely financed by a half billion euro property deal in which the club’s old training ground was transformed into some of Madrid’s most prestigious office space.

“There they are,” Spain’s ABC newspaper once quoted Perez as saying of the four towers raised on the ground, on whose construction ACS helped, in a reference to his star signings. “The Figo tower, the Zidane tower, the Ronaldo tower and the Beckham tower.”

Although the Galactico project failed initially to produce a cohesive team, over Perez’s time at the club, Real has won the Champions League five times.

“He has never dissimulated. He has always linked his business image to that of Real Madrid,” said Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quirós, president of Freemarket, a Madrid-based consultancy.

ACS rejects the idea that Pérez has linked his personal fortunes to Real. “ACS is present throughout the world,” said someone close to the company, pointing out that the sprawling group has 180,000 employees. “But if Real was following ACS’s areas of businesses, it would have an Australian player, a Canadian player — this is nonsense.”

As Pérez found himself at the centre of the outcry over the Super League, he told Spanish television this week: “I don’t own Real Madrid. Its members do. What I am doing is for the sake of football.”

Dealing with debt
Another feature is shared by Real Madrid and ACS: debt. Real Madrid, whose revenues Pérez said this week have been €400m short of budget over the past two seasons, has an outstanding loan of €575m for the redevelopment of its Bernabéu stadium and a reported €200m in emergency government-backed coronavirus loans.

Like rival construction groups, ACS, which has a market capitalisation of €8.4bn, borrowed and bought significantly in the run-up to the financial crisis. At present it has €8.4bn in long-term financial liabilities and €2.9bn in short-term debt.

ACS characterises its most recent deals — including a €5bn agreement this month to sell industrial services businesses to Vinci of France — as part of a decade-long effort to strengthen its financial position and focus more on the toll road and renewable energy industries.

“They have a very good base business, but it is cyclical and they took on too much debt before the financial crisis,” said an ex-banker who worked with the group. “Florentino hasn’t had the balance sheet to match his ambitions, and perhaps he didn’t have the corporate governance to restrain them.”

Just as ACS hopes that a steady stream of toll road cash — the ultimate prize in his pursuit of Atlantia’s motorways — will provide the basis for its future business, so Pérez has expressed similar ambitions for Real Madrid.

“Television pays: we, the big clubs, have fans in Singapore and China, everywhere. You see it in social networks . . . This is what generates money,” he said this week. “I got into the world of football in 2000. It has to evolve, as life and businesses evolve . . . it has to change, to adapt . . . What we want to do is save football, so that at least for the next 20 years it can live peacefully, without losing €200m.”

The trusted advisers
By many accounts, Perez prepared the groundwork for the Super League for years, through work with JPMorgan, the financial backers of the competition, and other leading clubs. He argues that the economic damage wrought on football by the pandemic was the catalyst for the project, which Key has been central to.

“Key Capital is not someone I had ever heard about until a few years ago and then suddenly they are everywhere,” says one senior Madrid-based banker. “Florentino is a guy who takes a lot of importance in who he trusts.”

It was Key, founded in 2010, that helped design a previous ACS transaction with Atlantia, in which the two groups jointly purchased the Spanish toll road group Abertis in 2018 — without calling on ACS’s cash-strapped balance sheet. Instead, ACS handed Atlantia a stake in its German subsidiary Hochtief.

Key, alongside Société Générale, is now also helping Pérez in his bid to seize Atlantia’s toll road business, which the Italian establishment favours handing to a consortium led by the country’s state investment fund.

While the Atlantia deal would be transformative for ACS, it is Key’s role in the Super League that has put the firm in the spotlight.

In particular, two of Pérez’s closest advisers are shareholders and senior partners at Key.

One is Laghrari, a 37-year-old Moroccan-born French national who worked as an equity derivatives banker at SocGen until he left for Key in 2013. Pérez has known Laghrari since he was born, having worked with his father on construction projects in Morocco.

One person who has worked closely with both men said Laghrari has become like family, spending hours with Pérez every week: “Anas has Florentino’s entire trust. If Anas doesn’t like something or doesn’t trust something, Florentino will not do the deal.”

Pérez, who can lack confidence in his command of the English language, turns to Laghrari for everything from reading contracts to advice on structuring transactions.

The other trusted Pérez adviser is Borja Prado, a 65-year-old patrician who is the third-biggest shareholder in Key, with almost 15 per cent, after Laghrari, with 17 per cent, and the group’s founder Alex Matitia, with more than 43 per cent.

Prado, who has advised Pérez for decades during stints at Rothschild, Lazard and Mediobanca, also served as chair of Endesa, the Spanish electricity group acquired by Italy’s Enel in a 2009 deal in which ACS played a crucial role.

“You can go back in time and find Borja getting votes for Pérez to become chair of Real Madrid,” said one Spanish executive who knows the men well. “They are as close as it gets.”

The two have lived through past reverses — such as 2006, when Pérez quit as Real Madrid president following a poor set of results, or the financial crisis, after which ACS had to sell assets to shore up its position.

Pérez has bounced back after such setbacks, reshaping ACS, and, on his 2009 return to Real, making the club more of a juggernaut than ever.

But now, with the Super League seemingly in tatters and the fate of ACS’s bid for Atlantia yet to be decided, the Madrid boss faces two of his toughest tests yet.

With additional reporting by Murad Ahmed in London

[Chester Perry]

The Financial Times again with detail that Perez has repeated over the last few days, they have a legally binding contract with expensive exit clauses - true but not until the competition actually starts - details details details, there is still the possibility of legal proceedings but it may prove difficult

Clubs signed up to punitive exit clauses for Super League
ARASH MASSOUDI APRIL 21, 2021

Super League clubs would have faced financial liabilities worth hundreds of millions of euros for leaving the breakaway competition once it began, according to leaked documents that reveal measures designed to lock Europe’s top teams into the now unravelling project.

The ambitious plan to redraw elite European football has unleashed a wave of criticism from rival clubs, players, politicians and fans since it was announced on Sunday.

Six English clubs late on Tuesday bowed to the pressure, saying they would no longer participate in a contest that was aimed at shattering the existing power structures in the world’s favourite sport. On Wednesday, Spain’s Atlético Madrid and Italy’s AC Milan and Inter Milan also announced they will withdraw.

The Super League’s founding clubs had agreed so-called “exit clauses” designed to keep them in the competition once money was raised to fund the project, according to leaked documents confirmed by the Financial Times.

As part of the clauses, the clubs agreed not to abandon their new competition before June 2025, and thereafter would have to issue notice to leave at least a season in advance.

Super League clubs would also have been liable to pay back money received from an initial “infrastructure grant”, the €3.25bn intended to be shared between 15 founding Super League clubs and provided through a debt-financing deal underwritten by US bank JPMorgan Chase.

The measures show the high stakes involved in joining the Super League, but the sanctions related to exit clauses also appear dependent on money flowing to the teams, which has not yet happened as the breakaway plan was first announced just two days ago.

However, legal risks remain for the clubs as the project flounders. The dozen teams that agreed to play in the competition signed binding contracts to join the competition, according to several people familiar with the terms of the deal.

The remaining Super League clubs have the option to sue those who are quitting in an attempt to enforce the deal, and it remains unclear what liabilities the clubs face for choosing to withdraw.

The Super League obtained an interim injunction in a Madrid commercial court on Tuesday preventing the game’s governing bodies from blocking the new competition.

After that early legal victory, English club officials spent Tuesday night preparing documents announcing their intention to withdraw, but a person involved in the decision said “there are legal complexities for the exiting clubs to navigate”.

The remaining Super League clubs, led by Spain’s Real Madrid, have affirmed their commitment saying “we are going to reconsider the appropriate measures to redesign this project”.

Currently, the competition would make 15 out of 20 clubs “permanent” members and the clubs have projected they would raise upwards of €4bn a season from broadcasting and sponsorship deals.

But fierce opposition gathered over their plan to replace the Champions League, the continent’s existing club contest that any team, through strong on-pitch performances in their respective national league, can qualify for.

Aleksander Ceferin, Uefa president, on Monday unveiled a counter proposal — a radical new format for the Champions League, including 100 more matches and more ties between the biggest sides.

After the English clubs withdrew from the Super League, he said: “The important thing now is that we move on, rebuild the unity that the game enjoyed before this and move forward together.”

Manchester United and Chelsea declined to comment. Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur and the Super League did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[Chester Perry]

Maybe I am becoming old a cynical, but I have very little time for football clubs financial strife at the top level. If I bought everything on HP and lived well beyond me means I would eventually be taken to court and lose it all as a lesson. I would not expect the national press to run in-depth analysis of how I could fund me out of my stupidity.. so I do not accept those with most power are victims. They are idiots, rich idiots but idiots nonetheless.

Independent management for me is what is required to re-shape football, not just businessmen but supporters groups, ex-managers, players and club owners... the German system for example spits out Dortmund for a period, Bayern remain largely dominant, even in Europe without getting involved in ridiculous high jinks... I’m not saying they have it nailed but it far closer than the rest of major European football.

I suspect the Bayern side of things re super league was more to do with senior executives being ex footballers - the reaction of those with football's history ingrained within them has been extremely consistent in coming out against this.

[elwaclaret]

I suspect the Bayern side of things re super league was more to do with senior executives being ex footballers - the reaction of those with football's history ingrained within them has been extremely consistent in coming out against this.

Agree... but I am also sure I have read that German football is by default joint owned by the interested parties, and if I read that it was most likely on your own superb thread.

[Chester Perry]

It has taken longer than expected, but the French Ligue has a club enter administration - I am not sure how the fact it is American owned Bordeaux will be viewed -

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... ue-du-club

Private Equity group Fortress Investment had lent Bordeaux over Euro 50m, they are currently in talks to lend a large sum to Inter Milan, It will be interesting to see if that goes through and at what rate of interest. I suspect financing in European football is about to get quite a bit more investment.

[elwaclaret]

It has taken longer than expected, but the French Ligue has a club enter administration - I am not sure how the fact it is American owned Bordeauz will be viewed -

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... ue-du-club

Terrible and it isn’t a small one either, plenty of past glory there.

[Chester Perry]

Terrible and it isn’t a small one either, plenty of past glory there.

The fact that major shareholders have refused to continue the funding is the intriguing issue from a public reaction perspective, these guys bought out Joe DaGrosa, who was there for a year and initiated this mess - this is the guy who has ambitions to set-up a large multi-club franchise and has been sniffing around Southampton for well over a year

[elwaclaret]

The fact that major shareholders have refused to continue the funding is the intriguing issue from a public reaction point, these guys bought out Joe Dagrosa, who was there for a year and initiated this mess - this is the guy who has ambitions to set-up a large multi-club franchise and has been sniffing around Southampton for well over a year

I know we differ on the way forward but this again shows, yet again clubs up and down Europe need protecting and not governing bodies only interested in chasing the money.

[Chester Perry]

I know we differ on the way forward but this again shows, yet again clubs up and down Europe need protecting and not governing bodies only interested in chasing the money.

This is a bit different given that clubs
- were forced to end last season by the government,
- have lost around Euro 35m a club as a result of TV deal (which was a 60% increase on the previous deal) collapse that, they will have budgeted for (think contracts)
- have lost a full year of matchday revenue

[Chester Perry]

I have listened to a number of podcasts about the collapse of Super League (Matt Slater seems to have been on most of them) this I think has been the best of them - from SportsProMedia featuring Tariq Panja and Matt Slater (of course)

https://podfollow.com/689306502/episode ... 993b7/view

[Chester Perry]

The Independent with a different perspective on how the Super League was brought down and a statement of the obvious as to why the 12 are likely to get off rather lightly

Did we just get lucky over Super League collapse?
The games governing bodies have received a wake-up call to how close they were to disaster

Vithushan Ehantharajah
Sports Feature Writer

21 minutes ago


The saying goes that experience is something you get right after you need it. Across the last six days, you could argue the football community had the best of both sides.

Fans, for instance, now know their true power. How their noise can intimidate the 12 who saw themselves above the rest. How cross-club anger can combine to shake the foundations of the ivory tower. And while the European Super League was a step too far in a familiar inching of the game away from the people, the brazenness of this particular scheme was so easy to call out that none of the pain it threatened to cause needed to be endured.

Those previously unknowing or ambivalent to the darker workings of football are more au fait and emboldened. In an industry like football, knowledge and distrust rise in sync. Thus a heightened awareness to the moves boards make, not just the Shameful Six in the Premier League, will breed greater vigilance. And what we might have lost in romanticism by seeing the game used as a means to nefarious ends, the bond with it has ended stronger with the realisation it is still within our control.

Any temptation to revel in this victory has been discouraged from all quarters. Like horror flick aficionados, the warnings are that the threat is never really gone, even if this last battle felt like a show-stopper. There were 12 Halloween movies, and Michael Myers was present in all of them.

But as the dust begins to settle on a tumultuous week, it is hard not to wonder how different things could have been. Because amid the jokes about Andrea Agnelli and his clown car of executives and owners lies an uncomfortable truth. Considering how far they were allowed to stumble before being tackled, who knows what they might have achieved with even a degree of competence and self-awareness they now have?

That seems to be the prevailing sense behind the scenes at Fifa and Uefa. A week that began with defiance looks to end in relief. The kind of relief that suggests the European Super League possessed the clout to fight and win if they were better-organised.

Both governing bodies were brought together by a common enemy. Even having to work together on Monday, which was supposed to be a public holiday for the canton of Zurich before Sunday’s drip-feeding of the Super League, was further common ground.

Statements from Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin and his Fifa counterpart Gianni Infantino were coordinated to pack a punch. A combination threat of expulsion from European club competition and players from rebel clubs banned from taking part in international tournaments worked. That was underpinned by the prospect of leagues considering points deductions and other sanctions to their rebel teams.

And yet the whispers suggest the majority will get off the hook. On Wednesday the Premier League’s remaining 14 were divided on whether The Six should face punishment. La Liga president Javier Tebas said Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid would get off altogether, beyond the public shaming all three have endured.

Similarly, the comfort Uefa and Fifa feel deep down is that their threats would have been tough to execute. At a time when associations and entire nations are looking to recoup losses incurred through the pandemic, banning marquee players from competing would be the last thing they need.

The 2018’s men’s World Cup, for instance, generated almost $5.4 billion, of which around $3billion was broadcast rights. The provisos on that figure relate to having the best of the best on show.

Uefa were wary of cutting off their stars from a Euros that had already been delayed by a year. Quietly, there was a feeling that had this been in any other odd number year - one without a delayed competition - they’d be able to punish completely, knowing there would be some contrition from the 12.

But with two high-profile international money-spinners in 18 months, following through on this threat would have been tough to justify. Even in the corridors of Fifa, 2022’s Qatar World Cup is being mooted as the finale of the Cristiano Ronaldo-Lionel Messi rivalry. Just imagine the marketing opportunities that would emanate from such a Godzilla versus Kong showdown.

Justification of those thoughts comes with the knowledge that by acting as they have, the Premier League’s top six have already damaged things for the rest by lowering the prospective value of the competition.

This was outlined by Conrad Wiacek, head of sport analysis at GlobalData, when it was reported some broadcast companies were looking to pay big money for the first set of media rights. “While good news for the teams involved, this will be a disaster for the English Premier League, which is due to go to market with its new media rights tender in the months ahead – and with its current multi-billion-dollar deal is expiring at the end of the 2021/22, no less.

“With six of its top clubs contemplating potentially joining the Super League, the collective bargaining position of the English Premier League will be severely weakened, leading to a cratering of the value of media rights for the Premier League, which currently generate in excess of £5bn domestically.”

Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur will take time to recover from the body blow of this week. They may never be trusted implicitly by their fanbases, wearing this blemish for a generation.

But the onus is on how they are allowed to recover. Not just in their contrition and how they learn their lessons, but how they are kept in check. Because the powers that be can only be so forceful without harming themselves. As one insider puts it, “it’s not even about the apology, it’s about time”. Those in power, even those on the right side of this particular argument will hope people forgive but will rely on people forgetting.

Whether it is the Super League or the Champions League reform, the fear is these clubs will be able to re-emerge as they once were. The only mistake they will learn from is what to do better next time, rather than what to do right. By over-estimating their power, they have merely set a marker for how powerful they are now and how much more powerful they could be.

[Chester Perry]

Naturally the FSA have taken this weeks events as an opportunity to further their cause and seek significant involvement in the review of the game

https://thefsa.org.uk/news/fsa-statemen ... ce-review/

I have no issue with that, fans must be equally involved as should all the other stakeholders (and that includes billionaire remote owners). My issue with this review is that almost everyone is approaching it from within their own narrow perspectives with solutions that suit them. I would also add that this level of government interest and commitment appears to result from the slight the Prime Minister feels after being in a meeting with Ed Woodward just days before the Super League announcement

My experience (and I used to do this for a living after first getting a MSc that was hugely focused on the subject) is that no right and proper solutions (it will not be a single of solution but a range of solutions) can be found to a problem without first defining it clearly, that in itself will require extensive input from all stakeholders, and more importantly no one dismissing any of that input, This is a time for empathy not recrimination.

Today's announced terms of reference for this review https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... governance are in my view overly defining. Many will say years of DCMS hearings have provide structure to this review, I have watch a number of those hearings. and nothing I have seen has significantly contributed to the overall problem definition

I fear for any outcome when so many are approaching this with pre-determined notion of problem and solution, which is what I am seeing a lot of.

There is also something else to remember, acting in isolation can have a detrimental effect internationally, what about the power brokers at UEFA, FIFA and the other confederations? We saw on Monday that UEFA ignored the European Leagues, by ratifying an agreement with the the ECA, an agreement brokered by club executives that resigned from the ECA and UEFA roles that very morning. It was also significant that FIFA President Gianni Infantino who has previously spoken openly of working with Florentino Perez on a Global Super League/World Club Cup and has been championing African and North American Super Leagues this year did not speak on the subject until the direction of travel was known. With populist isolationism being a theme of our current government there is so much to be wary about.

[Chester Perry]

In the US the New York Times is known as a newspaper of record, this account by Tariq Panja and Rory Smith of the Super League's rise and fall shows why

How the Super League Fell Apart
APRIL 22, 2021

LONDON — For 48 hours, soccer stood on the brink. Fans took to the streets. Players broke into open revolt. Chaos stalked the game’s corridors of power, unleashing a shock wave that resonated around the world, from Manchester to Manila, Barcelona to Beijing, and Liverpool to Los Angeles.

That internationalism is what has turned European soccer, over the last 30 years, into a global obsession. The elite teams of western Europe are stocked with stars drawn from Africa, South America and all points in between. They draw fans not just from England, Italy and Spain, but China, India and Australia in numbers large enough to tempt broadcasters across the planet to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to show their games.

But while soccer is now the biggest business in sports, it remains, at heart, an intensely local affair. Teams rooted in neighborhoods and based in small towns compete in domestic leagues that have existed for more than a century, competitions in which the great and the good share the field — and at least some of the finances — with the minor and the makeweight.

An uneasy truce between the two faces of the world’s game had held for decades. And then, on Sunday night, it cracked, as an unlikely alliance of American hedge funds, Russian oligarchs, European industrial tycoons and Gulf royals sought to seize control of the revenues of the world’s most popular sport by creating a closed European superleague.

How that plan came together and then spectacularly collapsed is a story of egos and intrigue, avarice and ambition, secret meetings and private lunches, international finance and internecine strife. It lasted just two frantic, feverish days, but that was more than enough time to shake the world.

The Secret
Last Thursday, Javier Tebas and Joan Laporta were supposed to be having a cordial, celebratory lunch. A few days earlier, Laporta had been elected to a second term as president of F.C. Barcelona. Tebas, the outspoken, unashamedly bellicose executive in charge of Spain’s national league, wanted to be among the first to congratulate him on his victory.

It did not turn out that way. Laporta revealed to Tebas that Barcelona was almost certainly joining a dozen or so of Europe’s most famous, most successful teams in a breakaway competition, one that would effectively unmoor its members from the game’s traditional structures and, crucially, its multibillion-dollar economy.

The threat was nothing new. There has long been a perception, at least among soccer’s rich and powerful teams, that since they have the most fans, they generate the bulk of the sport’s revenue. It follows, then, that they should be treated to a greater slice of its income. Like clockwork, every few years they would float a plan to group the best teams together in a single competition. And, like clockwork, the grand plan would fail to materialize, the big clubs bought off by promises of more power and more money if only they would agree to stay.

But Tebas felt this new effort was more serious, more real. Laporta told him that a half-dozen teams had already committed. Several more had been told that they had until the end of the weekend to decide.

Tebas raised the alarm. He called officials in leagues across Europe. He called executives of powerful clubs. And he reached out to Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, the organization that Tebas knew had the most to lose.

Ceferin, a lean, plain-spoken 53-year-old lawyer from Slovenia, was baffled. Only a few weeks earlier, his close friend and ally Andrea Agnelli, the president of the Italian league champion Juventus, the scion of one of Europe’s great industrial families and the leader of the association representing European soccer clubs, had assured him that whispers about a new round of breakaway talks were only “a rumor.”

Just a day earlier, in fact, Agnelli and his organization had recommitted to a suite of reforms to the Champions League, European soccer’s crown jewel and its biggest moneymaker. Everything was set to be approved on Monday.

Still, the drumbeat of rumors continued, and Ceferin felt he needed to be sure. So as he slid into the front seat of his Audi Q8 on Saturday to start the eight-hour drive from his home in Ljubljana to his office in Switzerland, he decided to get to the bottom of things. He placed a call to Agnelli. His friend did not pick up.

Ceferin — the godfather to Agnelli’s youngest child — texted the Italian’s wife and asked if she might get the Juventus president to call him urgently. He was three hours into his journey when his cellphone rang. Breezily, Agnelli reassured Ceferin, again, that everything was fine.

Ceferin suggested they issue a joint communiqué that would put the issue to rest. Agnelli agreed. Ceferin drafted a statement from the car and sent it to Agnelli. An hour later, Agnelli asked for time to send back an amended version. Hours passed. The men traded more calls. Eventually, the Italian told Ceferin he needed another 30 minutes.

And then Agnelli turned off his phone.

The Revolt
The reason that the threat of a superleague had carried so much menace for so long is that much of soccer’s vast economy rests on a fragile bond.

Both domestic championships — like England’s Premier League and Spain’s La Liga — and Pan-continental tournaments like the Champions League to some extent rely on the presence of the elite clubs to attract fans and, through them, broadcasters and sponsors. Without them, the revenue streams that filter down to and sustain smaller teams might collapse.

For decades, the system rested on appeasing the rich teams just enough to encourage them to retain their loyalty to the collective. All of a sudden, that trust was fraying.

As he arrived in Switzerland, Ceferin fielded two more calls that made clear how real the threat to European soccer’s future had become. Two teams, one English and one Spanish, informed him that they had been pressed to sign up for the breakaway league. They had decided to accept, but wanted to remain on good terms with European soccer’s governing body.

Ceferin’s response was polite, but blunt. If they allied with the rebels, they should prepare for an all-out attack.

With his inner circle, Ceferin got to work. They broke the news to some board members of the European Club Association, the umbrella group of about 250 European teams. Its president, Agnelli, and senior executives like Manchester United’s Ed Woodward had misled them about supporting the Champions League reform plan, they said.

They told the clubs that, even though the breakaway clubs intended to remain in their own domestic leagues, too, the plan would see the value of those competitions’ broadcast deals collapse. Sponsorships would evaporate. It would decimate the rest of soccer’s finances. “They were outraged, they couldn’t believe it,” Ceferin said in an interview on Wednesday. “Even mafia organizations have some sort of code.”

By lunchtime on Sunday, the roster of the insurgents was known. Ceferin started referring to them as the Dirty Dozen. As well as Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid had signed up from Spain. There were six from England: Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. In Italy, Juventus had been joined by A.C. Milan and Inter Milan.

Not all of them were equal partners. Executives at Manchester City and Chelsea, for example, had only learned on Friday that the plan was in motion. They had been told that they had no more than a day or so to decide whether they were in or out. Either way, they were warned, the train was leaving the station.

City quickly succumbed, but others proved more resistant. Bayern Munich and Paris St.-Germain, the dominant forces in Germany and France, had both been approached. They had declined the offer, preferring to stay — at least for the moment — aligned with the rest of Europe.

They supplied some of the intelligence that allowed UEFA and national leagues in Spain, Italy and England to plan their counterattack. When the group learned that an official statement revealing the creation of the new competition, called the Super League, would be made late Sunday, they made plans to issue their own — disavowing the project.

But before they could, the news leaked. The public outcry, particularly in Britain, was immediate. Fans hung banners outside their teams’ stadiums, and lawmakers took to the airwaves to denounce the rebels for their greed and disrespect toward soccer’s traditions.

Gary Neville, a former Manchester United captain, unleashed a several-minute tirade against his former team and Liverpool, English soccer’s two most popular teams. The screed went viral, and it was soon being shared by opponents of the project via the messaging application WhatsApp.

This was precisely what some of those involved with the project had feared. There had been doubts that the plan was ready to go live; insiders worried that it might not survive a fierce initial backlash. “This is not the time to do it,” an executive involved in the project warned. The executive suggested holding off until summer.

By then, it was hoped, the clubs might have found a frontman for the breakaway. Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, had been the driving force behind much of it; it was, to some extent, his brainchild. But his peers were aware that he would struggle to convince an English audience, in particular.

The Manchester United co-chairman Joel Glazer, whose family also owns the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Chelsea’s Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich; and Arsenal’s Stan Kroenke, who controls nearly a dozen professional teams, almost never speak publicly. Manchester City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, doesn’t speak to reporters at all. And others considered for the role — like Liverpool’s majority owner, John W. Henry — were unwilling to accept it.

There were also concerns that the rebels’ communications strategy — marshaled by Katie Perrior, a political operative close to Boris Johnson, the British prime minister — was too focused on winning governmental, rather than popular, support. There had been no effort to consult, involve or win over fans, players or coaches. An outcry might destroy everything before the lobbying effort could begin in earnest.

Those concerns were not heeded. Agnelli, theoretically a voice for all of Europe’s clubs in his governance roles and a close friend of Ceferin, was feeling the strain of being, in effect, a double agent. He had protected the rebels’ secret for weeks, shading the truth — or worse — in talks with friends and allies. On Monday morning, though, he would have to sit on the dais with the rest of the UEFA board as it voted to approve changes to a Champions League that would be under mortal threat from the Super League.

He knew the league was happening. With the signatures of Chelsea, Manchester City and Atlético Madrid in hand, the founding members were set. The financing, delivered by the Spanish advisory firm Key Capital Partners and backed by the American bank JPMorgan Chase, would mean billions in new riches. Agnelli simply needed the news out.

Glazer, one of Manchester United’s co-chairmen, agreed. He was adamant it was time to press the button.

And so, despite all the doubts, the clubs showed their hand just after 11 on Sunday night in London. An official announcement, published simultaneously on the 12 teams’ websites, revealed that they had all signed up to what they called the Super League. But by then, the narrative that the project was driven by the greed of a few wealthy clubs and their leaders had taken shape.

“It was dead in the water by 11:10,” the executive involved in the plan said. “Everyone had climbed their hill and would not be able to come down.”

Uncivil War
By first light the next day, the battle lines had been drawn. And it was quickly clear that the breakaway 12 had next to no support.

But rather than mount a public defense, sending out a phalanx of officials to make a case that the league was good for soccer’s entire pyramid, arguing that it would shower millions on the teams and leagues left behind, the Super League’s first act was to deliver a letter to Europe’s governing body, UEFA, and soccer’s global leadership at FIFA.

The league, the letter informed the governing bodies, had already filed motions in several European countries to prevent anyone from blocking the project.

Ceferin, meanwhile, was back to working the phones to rally opposition. He sought the support of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, even though the men rarely saw eye to eye. He also had a lengthy call with Oliver Dowden, the lawmaker responsible for sport and culture in Britain. Dowden said the British government would do everything in its power to stop the breakaway clubs from “stealing” the game.

Soon Johnson, the British prime minister, was being interviewed on television, staking out a position against the plan in a savvy play for public support. His French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, issued a statement condemning the plan. Prince William posted a tweet expressing his “concerns” about the Super League.

By the time he appeared in public on Monday, Ceferin had led a UEFA executive committee meeting where Agnelli was notable by his absence. Agnelli had resigned his board post — and his role as head of the European clubs group — minutes after the Super League’s late-night announcement. With his seat empty, the remaining members voted through changes to the Champions League, and then got back to work in their effort to crush the new league that was threatening it.

Ceferin, stern-faced, then excoriated the breakaway group in his first comments to reporters. He reserved specific vitriol for Manchester United’s Woodward, who he felt had misled him, and for Agnelli. Ceferin called the men “snakes” and “liars,” and described how they had led him to believe he had their full support for the Champions League revisions.

“Agnelli is the biggest disappointment of all,” Ceferin said. “I have never seen a person who would lie so many times and so persistently as he did.”

By then, the acrimony was spreading across the European soccer landscape. The Premier League held a meeting without its six rebel teams, and the remaining 14 clubs discussed what punitive measures to take against those who had signed up for the Super League. Daniel Levy, the chairman of Tottenham, one of the rebel clubs, asked Paul Barber, the chief executive of Brighton, to share a message of regret at the meeting. He did, but few seemed interested in Levy’s sentiment.

In Italy, a hastily arranged meeting was even more febrile. Owners and executives of the teams in Serie A, the country’s top league, turned on officials from Juventus, Inter and Milan. Tensions were already soaring; cash-poor teams, their budgets devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, had been arguing with their richer rivals over television contracts and whether to accept investment from a consortium of private equity companies.

Now Agnelli, who had quickly become a lightning rod for the Super League, was called a traitor by the chairman of Juventus’s crosstown rival, Torino. Agnelli, in a typically pugnacious manner, was said to have retorted with an expletive, saying he did not care if Juventus remained in Serie A.

“It’s a betrayal,” the Torino president, Urbano Cairo, told reporters. “It’s what a Judas does.”

English teams, notably Liverpool and Chelsea, had other reasons to be concerned. Their fans were already gathering outside the stadiums from which they had been barred by the pandemic, hanging banners denouncing the Super League on walls and entry gates.

Late in the afternoon, hundreds of angry supporters surrounded Liverpool’s team bus as it made its way to Leeds United’s Elland Road stadium for a game. Inside the stadium, the Leeds players wore T-shirts expressing solidarity with soccer’s current system during warm-ups. When Leeds scored a late goal to secure a 1-1 tie, its official Twitter account mocked the visitors.

Players, too, were starting to make their views known. Manchester United’s squad had demanded a meeting with Woodward to express not only their fury at being forced to find out about the plan through the news media, but their disapproval of the idea itself. Several other high-profile stars, playing for teams not involved in the breakaway, had posted messages disavowing the plan on social media.

On Monday evening, after his team’s game with Leeds, Liverpool’s most senior player, James Milner, revealed that he and his teammates had not been consulted about the club’s involvement in the plan. “I don’t like it, and I hope it doesn’t happen,” he said.

Inside the clubs, unease was mounting. The plan had been kept secret even from high-level executives — “It was an ownership thing,” said one executive at one of the teams involved — and there had been little warning of what was to come. At some clubs, an all-staff email flashed around just before the statement was released.

At others, high-profile figures were left to read about it on social media. Paolo Maldini, a legendary former player and now an executive at A.C. Milan, had heard nothing until it was announced. Michael Edwards, Liverpool’s sporting director, was blindsided. Some started to worry about the safety of their families as the outrage spread.

In Switzerland, Ceferin was in his hotel room, drafting and redrafting a speech he was to make the next day at UEFA’s annual meeting. He had already started to field calls from Super League clubs, mainly from England, concerned about the growing backlash and the possible consequences they — and their players — could face by signing up for an unsanctioned tournament.

In January, FIFA had warned clubs and players that anyone taking part in a breakaway league risked banishment from events like the World Cup. Earlier Monday, Ceferin had repeated the threat, but now his tone was softening.

“I had a feeling they wanted to repair this mistake and they didn’t know how to do it,” Ceferin said. So he changed his speech. Now, it offered an olive branch to those teams he knew were searching for one.

He inched closer to winning them back when Pérez, the Real Madrid president, made what was in hindsight the disastrous — if brave — decision to defend the Super League plan on a flashy, late-night television show.

Largely unchallenged by the hosts, he pledged that the league was an altruistic venture even as it funneled ever more billions to a handful of rich teams, and to lambast the Champions League reforms that Agnelli, now the Super League’s vice chairman, only weeks earlier had described as “beautiful.”

In the headquarters of the other Super League clubs, executives held their heads in their hands. Still, though, they remained mute, unwilling to go public to defend a plan that Pérez claimed had been designed expressly to “save football.”

The Collapse
As Ceferin prepared to deliver his keynote address on Tuesday morning in Montreux, reports began to emerge that several teams — Chelsea and Manchester City among them — were considering dropping out. Television networks and sponsors had come out against the breakaway plan, and the British government was threatening official action to block it.

Any doubts among the teams hardened as FIFA’s Infantino dispelled growing speculation that he secretly harbored hopes the project would succeed.

“If some elect to go their own way, then they must live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” Infantino said, raising again the possibility that the renegade clubs and their players could face excommunication. “Concretely this means, either you are in, or you are out.”

Then it was Ceferin’s turn. He talked about greed and selfishness, but also about soccer’s importance in the fabric of European culture, and in the lives of the millions who follow the game across the Continent. He then made his direct pitch to the English clubs, the one he had written into his draft hours earlier.

“Gentlemen, you made a huge mistake,” he told them, staring directly into the cameras. “Some will say it is greed, others disdain, arrogance, flippancy or complete ignorance of England’s football culture. It does not matter.

“What does matter is that there is still time to change your mind. Everyone makes mistakes.”

Within hours, the project’s demise started to snowball. In a meeting with the Premier League chief executive Richard Masters and fan groups from all six English teams, Johnson said he was considering detonating “a legislative bomb” to halt the putsch. More and more players came out against the idea. Marcus Rashford, Manchester United’s homegrown striker, posted an image on Twitter that read: “Football Is Nothing Without Fans.” Liverpool’s entire squad released a simultaneous message disavowing the project.

The team captain, Jordan Henderson, had convened a meeting of his counterparts at every Premier League team to discuss a concerted response. Manchester City’s respected coach, Pep Guardiola, declared his opposition to the mere idea of a closed league of superclubs, saying that “it is not sport if you cannot lose.” It was a turn of events that the rebel clubs had not foreseen.

As evening drew near, hundreds of fans gathered outside Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s home stadium, to protest the plan before the team’s game with Brighton. They blocked streets, and surrounded the bus carrying the players when it arrived. Petr Cech, a club legend, went out to try to speak to the protesters. Inside, team officials leaked the news that Chelsea was exploring ways to exit its Super League contract.

But it was Manchester City that was the first to break ranks officially, releasing a short statement saying it was pulling out.

The Super League executives were stunned, unsure of what was happening. That night, Arsenal and its North London rival Tottenham announced their departures within minutes of each other. Manchester United confirmed that Woodward — its top executive and one of the main architects of the Super League — would leave the club at the end of the year. Then came a statement from the club that it was withdrawing, too. Almost immediately, Liverpool confirmed it was out.

The Super League, having lost half its members, and its entire foothold in England, was finished. Inter Milan dropped out a few hours later, and then, as the clock ticked to the 48-hour mark since its grand announcement, the Super League released an unsigned statement acknowledging that the plan was no longer viable.

By then, Ceferin was back in Slovenia, having completed the eight-hour return trip from Montreux. He stayed up until about 2 a.m., digesting the news. He released a statement welcoming back the English teams into the European fold. He started to respond to the thousands of messages that had swamped his phone over the previous two days.

Then he closed his laptop, and helped himself to a double whiskey.

[Chester Perry]

Aston Villa have announced their 2019/20 Financial Results (in a season where a historically unique goal line technology failure at Villa Park meant they avoided relegation) - nothing to see here though just a £99m loss

https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2021/april/ ... -Accounts/

the full accounts can be found here https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

[Chester Perry]

Finally someone acknowledges that ECA "fan of the Future" report from last Thursday

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 5035957250

[Chester Perry]

There are some interesting reports emanating from Germany around the Super League - here is one that underlines the soft power/sports washing/legitimisation theme on this thread

From @TariqPanja

There is an interesting line in a story published SDZ newspaper in Germany (translation attached) that Vladimir Putin told Roman Abramovich that It was not in Russia’s interest for Chelsea to join Super League. Coincidentally Euro 2020 host St. Petersburg got extra games today.

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 90/photo/1

[Chester Perry]

There has been a lot in the last few months on this thread about American Investors in European football, little has looked at the investment in the lower leagues - here the BBC look at 3 such investors in the English lower leagues and they do seem a little different to those that have been in the headlines this week

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56674024

[Chester Perry]

Intriguing stuff from Rick Parry tonight - apparently the Championships watchword is sustainability, as he jumps on the back of the weels events to justify his position in Project Big Picture - from the Telegraph

Rick Parry: Super League collapse means Project Big Picture should be back on the table
TOM MORGAN APRIL 23, 2021

The "best of Project Big Picture" should be back on the table after the collapse of the European Super League, the domestic breakaway's main architect has declared.

Rick Parry said the fiasco of the past week underlines why the English Football League chairman held extensive talks with Manchester United and Liverpool last year.

Like the European scheme which collapsed just 48 hours after launch, Project Big Picture, a domestic plot uncovered by Telegraph Sport, was derailed amid national uproar.

Parry has consistently argued that the clandestine talks he held, primarily with Liverpool, United and Greg Clarke, the former FA chairman, would have helped safeguard the future of the pyramid.

The reforms would have given the "Big Six" increased voting rights on commercial decisions, with the Premier League trimmed to 18 clubs. However, Parry had championed the prospect of a cash injection that would have seen the EFL given £250 million immediately, plus 25 per cent of revenue from future top-tier TV deals.

At the time the plot was perceived as a power grab by the big clubs, but Parry has told Telegraph Sport that some of Project Big Picture's merits must be brought back to the negotiating table as the Government triggers its fan-led review.

"We want to input the best of Big Picture to the Premier League strategic review and we'll import it to the Government's review," Parry said. "It's very simple - we (the EFL) want 25 per cent of the total TV revenue, we want an end to parachute payments, we want a narrowing of the cliff edge between the Championship and the Premier League, because our watchword, our entire focus, is on sustainability."

The loathed Champions League breakaway led by United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester City, along with six of their richest European rivals, comes after the most punishing of years for Parry and the stricken football league.

With Championship clubs on the edge of a financial abyss during the pandemic, Parry was forced to personally secure a £117.5m loan from the private sector after a deal with the Treasury collapsed over player bonus demands.

An emergency funding package from MetLife Investment Management amounts to around £8m each for Championship clubs on the brink of collapse, but the loan would have been unnecessary under ideas in Parry's plan.

"One thing that the pandemic has reinforced is how important our clubs are at the heart of their communities," Parry said, as he reflected on the dismay caused by the biggest clubs this week.

"The genuine communities clubs have been magnificent during the pandemic, not just in terms of keeping alive and getting the season finished, which was a huge challenge, but above and beyond that they've been working with the NHS, they've been delivering food parcels, they've worked on mental health issues. I mean, the community efforts have been enormous."

The collapse of Big Picture left the EFL with little bargaining power with the Premier League and Government, who repeatedly said football should find its own financial solutions during the pandemic.

England's top tier signed off a potential £50m grant package for League One and Two in December, but promised £15m towards covering only the fees in the alternative loan sought by Parry.

The payouts to Championship clubs will help cover estimated £150m losses in gate receipts and other matchday revenue streams. Relations between the EFL and Government remain strained.

Ministers on Thursday night announced new ownership structures at clubs will be assessed as part of its review brought forward by the Super League debacle.

It will also assess if an independent regulator may have a beneficial impact, with sports minister Nigel Huddleston saying it "must be a watershed moment in our national game". Tracey Crouch MP will chair the review and report its recommendations back to the Government and FA. The review will consider ownership models including those used in Germany, where the 50+1 rule means clubs cannot play in the Bundesliga if one commercial investor owns more than a 49 per cent stake. Such a plan is likely to face stiff opposition from owners across the four tiers of elite football.

[Chester Perry]

You may have noticed that there were a few protestors outside the Emirates Stadium tonight wanting amongst other things for the Kroenke's to sell up, well someone who can actually afford them and has been a long time fan has chucked his hat into the ring - Spotify founder Daniel Ek

https://twitter.com/eldsjal/status/1385667437929062403

[Chester Perry]

Meanwhile the Red Knights who tried to buy Manchester United off the Glazer family a while ago have offered their thoughts in an open letter the the Glazers as to how they might begin to ear the trust of the fans (as they said they wanted to after pulling out of Super League - somehow I don't think the suggestions are going to be taken up

https://news.sky.com/story/red-knights- ... w-12284461

[Chester Perry]

Some financial news we missed on Monday as we were distracted by events surrounding the Super League. The Premier League posted their financial results for the 2019/20 season, a season that saw the beginning of a new rights cycle that was to have generated am 8% up lift in overall revenues but for various reasons actually witnessed a 10% drop

the accounts can be found here

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

This report from SportsProMedia gives you a summary overview

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/pre ... s-covid-19

[Chester Perry]

UEFA also released it's 2019/20 financial accounts on Monday

financial report

https://editorial.uefa.com/resources/02 ... -20_en.pdf

financial report annex including full Accounts

https://editorial.uefa.com/resources/02 ... 020_bd.pdf

again there is a report from SportsProMedia

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/uef ... ons-league

[Chester Perry]

The new head of the European Leagues speaks to OffthePitch.com about the events of the past week - he brings up a number of issues that I have also been talking about particularly the coefficient payments and qualification

https://offthepitch.com/a/european-leag ... -alliances

European Leagues chair calls for increased dialogue after Super League collapse: "Depending on alliances with individual big clubs has proven to be an unsustainable model"
21 April 2021 9:00 PM

• Claus Thomsen, the recently appointed chair of the European Leagues, speaks to Off The Pitch after plans for a breakaway Super League collapsed.

• Recognising fans' and stakeholders' response to the proposal, he calls on the industry to further take base in its European values.

• That means UEFA's club competitions reform mustn't give additional Champions League spots to the top four leagues.

• In addition, solidarity payments for non-participating clubs should be doubled to increase the competitive balance.

EMIL GJERDING NIELSON nielson@offthepitch.com

It's still hard to grasp the events that have unfolded since Sunday. The full extent and implications of the breakaway Super League, which now seems to have entirely collapsed, will likely not be known for some time.

What is clear, however, is that the project has yet again forced the industry to take a hard look at itself. And most hope this will lead to changes for the benefit of the whole system.

That's because many of the feared consequences of the Super League are already present in the current football pyramid, and many expect UEFA's 2024 reform of its club competitions only serves to further embolden these structural issues of a sport unequal in so many ways.

It's somewhat of a surprise that it has come at this point

One of those hoping for change is Claus Thomsen, the chief executive of the Danish football league, who was recently elected as chair of the European Leagues, a lobby organisation representing 37 professional football leagues and associations from 30 countries counting more than 1000 clubs.

Thomsen, who was earlier this month appointed to lead a newly formed management board replacing outgoing president Lars-Christer Olsson, spoke with Off The Pitch following a tumultuous week for European football. This is what he had to say.

Big clubs already get their share

What are your thoughts on the process of the past few days?

"It's hard to have an opinion about – I wouldn't call it a process. In comparison to 2016 in particular and 2019 there has been a sensible dialogue over where to take European competitions and their effect on national leagues. That's why it's somewhat of a surprise that it has come at this point."

Why did the sensible dialogue stop?

"Cheekily I could say it's because some clubs have not performed proper costs controls. That's what it's about. These clubs have seen the opportunity to build a franchise which they believe could grow their revenue considerably. And they've executed on that at a somewhat odd moment."

Isn't it fair that big clubs want to grow their businesses and earn more on their considerably larger fan bases?

"Yes, that could be argued. But they already get their share. When FC Midtjylland qualify for the Champions League they earn about €24 million. When Real Madrid do they are guaranteed about €100 million. It's not that they haven't been taken care of.

Of course, they bring more to the table in terms of commercial value, but they do benefit more from it than most others. Unless they have a really crappy team one year and lose out, but that's life and the nature of the European sporting model.

If I were them I would have solved that issue in another way. By entering a dialogue about how to implement costs controls in the system. And I recognise that would be extremely difficult but that's a dialogue the biggest clubs could have had."

Are you now certain the Super League will never happen?

"Never say never. The clubs are legally within their right to establish a Super League. But what you've seen is that fans, clubs and leagues want to keep the European model. Where it's sporting performance that decides moving from one level to another, and where European tournaments are European and not a closed shop."

Still a lot of issues with UEFA's reform

Speaking about sporting performance, is the proposed two access spots for UEFA's club competitions from 2024 a sensible idea?

"No, I don't think so. And it's my expectation that will be discussed further in phase two where everything is arranged more specifically. That's what European Leagues has proposed. Speaking about access, it makes little sense to give the four additional Champions League spots to the big five leagues. It's very unfortunate for the national tournaments – also that you're increasing the number of participants from each country from five to six. The big leagues are not happy with that either.

It's fair that the fifth largest league, the French, receives another spot because they also help pay it down the system in the same way that the top four leagues do. But you should let three out of the four spots go to national champions through the champions path to increasingly make the tournament European."

What about the increase in matches?

"The other issue is the four additional match days in the calendar. It's too much and it is going to hurt. It will push the national leagues and cups, and it will especially hurt the big clubs' willingness to release national team players for the national team.

The Swiss model does allow for adjustments. You can scale it up or down because it's not bound to the number of matches. You can have a structure where you have six or eight match weeks instead of ten as proposed."

What expectations do you have in terms of working out solidarity payments and revenue distribution under UEFA's 2024 reform?

"The most important thing in terms of revenue distribution is raising the share for non-participating clubs. And there have been some positive messages for the 2021-24 cycle. It's important that you move further in that direction after 2024. Whatever it's 100 or 56 additional matches it will take an increased share of the media revenue from the national markets. You should compensate for that."

How much are your aiming for?

"Right now it's four per cent. What's unacceptable is cutting it further because it's already been cut for this cycle from five to four per cent. In my view it would be fair to double that."

Do you think there is a healthy competitive balance at the moment?

"It could easily be better, and I think you should aim for that. That could be by changing the compensation for clubs not participating in European competitions, making it fairer. Because they deliver the value and keep the match days open. You can't be blind to that.

And then you should, for the same reasons, look to invest more in the Europa League and the new Conference League to have a more equal distribution in those tournaments.

It's incredible what the historic coefficient does in the Champions League where you don't have to perform to get a big share of the distribution. And there has to be a difference because some contribute more than others. But the way football Europe reacted to the Super League tells me more fair compensation and distribution is what's wanted."

Don't force our hand

Why is competitive balance important?

"You need to have an adequate competitive balance in all tournaments or they lose their value. Nobody is saying you can't have big clubs – neither in national nor international tournaments. The issue is if they start winning – especially in the national tournaments – without a real challenge.

Smaller clubs euro for euro are much more efficient at creating a good team. The price of increasing the performance of a big team by just five per cent compared to a smaller team is much greater.

Some want a closed system and if they want it they can go make it. That's how it is, the EU is a free an open economy. But don't tell the rest of the football world that this is how it's going to be and try to force them to accommodate to that."

How does the European Leagues plan to position itself in the future?

"We want to be responsible for a range of principles including transparency and openness of why we do what we do and believe what we believe. We'll always defend sporting performance as the thing that carries this system more than anything else. And then we'll keep pushing to keep a sensible competitive balance."

How do you repair the relationship with the Super League clubs?

"To start off with you shouldn't reward someone for stepping out and wanting all the money for themselves and then coming back again. Everyone is welcome back, of course, but you have to move in the direction football Europe has asked for. Not the direction of how we make these 12 clubs happy again. They should be really happy that football is welcoming them back with open arms.

Then UEFA has to move in the direction of taking basis in the leagues and associations who are its members. Depending on alliances with individual big clubs has proven to be an unsustainable model. It's not that you shouldn't take them into account, but you already do that in a considerable way.

If the big clubs can't live with that they can drop out as they've been trying, but they obviously saw that was a bad idea when it came to the point. They wanted to partly drop out and partly be in, and obviously you are not going to be allowed to do that."

[Chester Perry]

A powerful and emotive thread by Rory Smith aimed at those fans calling on billionaire owners involved in the Super League to show contrition by showering even greater largesse on their clubs

https://twitter.com/RorySmith/status/13 ... 2447831043

It is a subject he tackles again in this long and detailed piece in the New York Times about what comes next following the collapse of Super League, but are fans really ready to accept the consequences of their demands

The Super League Is Gone. What Now?
APRIL 23, 2021

Sign up for Rory Smith’s weekly newsletter on world soccer, delivered every Friday, at nytimes.com/rory.

After all that, there is one thing we still do not know. We know what the dozen venture capitalists and industrialists and petrochemical princelings behind the Super League intended to do. We know what the future they had mapped out would have looked like. We know, or we can at least imagine, the damage they might have done.

What we do not know, not really, is why.

We have the platitudes, of course, the blandishments offered by Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, in that brash appearance on a gaudy Spanish talk show: that this was the only way to save soccer, that the rising tide lifts all boats, that there was no other option.

And we have the presumption, too, the Occam’s razor explanation: that deep down this was about nothing more than money, the relentless, insatiable, metastasizing pursuit of it, a cynical and grasping attempt to hoard as much of it as possible, made by those who already have far more than most, and far more than they need.

But while one of those points is considerably more valid than the other, neither quite satisfactorily explains what united these 12 disparate club owners behind a single, slapdash scheme like the Super League. They have, after all, spent much of the last decade quarreling among themselves. Their motivations, priorities and concerns are all quite different. They are, in the cold light of day, not so much one another’s solutions as they are one another’s problems. So the question stands: Why?

It is easiest, perhaps, to divide the 12 into three groups. In one, there are the English teams under American, or American-inflected, ownership: Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham. Their aim is not just to make more money, it is also to spend less of it. They want cost controls, salary caps, financial regulation. They want stable income, and restricted expenditures.

Their issue is the presence, in European soccer, of the second group: the outlier teams, Manchester City and Chelsea, backed by owners who would favor the abolition of such limitations. Their principal interest is in using their private wealth to gain a competitive edge. They are not involved in soccer to make money. They care little for the bottom line. They are here to win popular acclaim, and, through it, obtain cultural and political legitimacy.

And then there is the third group, comprising the six Spanish and Italian teams. Their problem is not only the bottomless wealth of Manchester City and Chelsea and a few others, but also the existence of the first group. The financial juggernaut that is the Premier League has inflated salaries around Europe. It has placed Real Madrid, Barcelona and the rest at a disadvantage in the transfer market. It has forced them to build up mountains of debt, leaving teams that believe themselves to be in soccer’s front rank facing a second-class future.

Clearly, they all decided — some with rather more consideration than others — that a superleague was their way out. The first group could write in various cost-control measures, denting the power of the second group, leveling their private playing field; in exchange, City and Chelsea would get the prestige that made their projects work. The third group, meanwhile, would no longer have to gaze longingly at the Premier League’s broadcasting deals.

That it did not work is a blessing, of course. That it was scuttled within 48 hours of its launch — undone, almost immediately, by a startling combination of amateurish planning, botched communications and underestimated backlash — was greeted as a victory for the sport as a whole, a blow delivered by the masses to the aristocrats, a bloody nose for the forces of global capitalism.

And, to some extent, that is precisely what it was. The threat of a superleague, in one form or another, has hung like a cloud over European soccer for decades. It has been wheeled out every few years, surfacing in every negotiation over how the money generated by the Champions League, in particular, should be divided.

Now that has gone. It is possible that, by the end of this weekend, as either Manchester City or Tottenham celebrates winning the League Cup, as Bayern Munich inches ever closer to yet another Bundesliga title, as Inter Milan closes in on a Serie A crown, all of this will feel like a fever dream. On the surface, it will be behind us. The insurrection will have been defeated, condemned to the past. Everything will be back to normal.

But that is an illusion, because though the Super League never had a chance to play a game — it barely had time to build out a website — it may yet prove the catalyst to the salvation of soccer. It has, after all, stripped the elite of their leverage. They played their cards, and the whole thing became a bluff. Now, for the first time in years, power resides in the collective strength of the game’s lesser lights.

They will need to use it. The Super League was wrong on almost every level, but though its architects never quite had the nerve to come out and say it, they did get one thing right. Soccer’s economy and ecosystem, as they stand, do not work.

This was recognition of what ultimately explains how 12 teams, in those three distinct groups, could stand together under the same flag, albeit briefly, albeit without seeming to notice that it was adorned with a skull-and-crossbones.

The status quo does not work for the American owners who need cost controls. It does not work for the grand old houses of continental Europe, who cannot compete with the Premier League’s riches. And infinitely more important, it does not work for almost everyone else.

It does not work for the teams condemned to life as cannon fodder for Manchester City or Paris St.-Germain, or for the domestic competitions withering in the long shadows of the Premier League, La Liga and the Bundesliga, or for the famous names — Ajax and Benfica and Red Star Belgrade — reduced to bit-part roles in European tournaments, ever farther from a return to their glory days.

Aleksander Ceferin, the president of UEFA and the man who led the counterattack in what will come to be known as the Sunday-Tuesday War, knows that. The issue of competitive balance is the one that animated his rise to his current position. One of the many ironies of this whole sorry farrago is not only that those whom Ceferin fought know it, too, but that they have given him the perfect opportunity to do something about it.

Those governing bodies that resisted the Super League make for unlikely heroes. UEFA has, after all, been no less complicit than the domestic leagues and national federations in selling out soccer to the highest bidder. It has, for decades, not only sat by and watched but also actively encouraged the influx of money into the game, never once questioning where it might all be heading.

A charitable interpretation would be that all of them were in thrall to, or in fear of, the elite teams. Suddenly, though, there is no longer need to be afraid. Behind Ceferin there is a confederation of governments and executives and players and fans, all of whom have made plain their objection to soccer’s inexorable journey down this same path.

Now there is the impetus and the appetite for change: not their change, the kind that would barricade the elite in their palaces, insulating them from the currents and the crisis outside their gates, but change that might allow more teams to benefit from the rewards the breakaway clubs sought to cordon off for themselves.

What form that might take is open for discussion. The rolling back of the reforms to the Champions League, passed this week while soccer was engulfed by civil war? A rebalancing of the way money is shared in the Premier League, after years of gradual erosion of the egalitarian principle that stands as the competition’s bedrock? Increased solidarity payments from UEFA across the Continent?

Whatever the next move is to be, it requires more than the commitment of all of those who stood against the Super League and the willingness of lawmakers to take action, rather than just to score cheap political points. It also needs fans to establish, among themselves, quite how far they are willing to go, exactly what they mean by change.

In those first few hours after the Super League was announced, a narrative took hold, particularly in England. This was, it went, an attempt by American owners to remake soccer in their own image: They wanted a closed league, one more like the N.F.L. or the N.B.A., one in which stability of place brought security of income.

The parallel was imperfect, of course; it was, really, nothing more than a shorthand to explain and to demonize the structure of the proposed breakaway. Indeed, if anything, it is the suggestions for changes made in the aftermath of the Super League’s launch and swift collapse that might remake European soccer along more American lines.

The prime difference between sports in the United States and soccer in Europe is dynasty. Dominant teams will, occasionally, surface in the major leagues of North America: The Golden State Warriors will win three championships in four seasons; the New England Patriots will sustain their success over nearly two decades.

But as a rule, there are checks and balances in place — through player drafts and the presence of a salary cap — to ensure that today’s weak have at least a chance to become tomorrow’s strong.

Soccer has no such mechanisms. It is, instead, driven by a desire not just for success now, but for success in perpetuity. It is a sport defined by dynasty. It is that which encourages not just teams like Barcelona and Real Madrid — owned, in theory, by members, and therefore run by presidents who must seek re-election — but also private entities, like Juventus and Manchester United, to spend recklessly in the pursuit of success.

It is not possible, the executives of those teams know, to sit out a season. It is not possible to rebuild slowly and carefully toward some distant aim. Teams are expected to compete now, to contend now, to win now. If they do not, managers are fired and players are sold and new managers are hired and new players are bought.

A season in which Bayern Munich does not win the Bundesliga is a disaster. Juventus, this summer, might fire a rookie coach because he has not won Serie A — not just in his first season at the club, but in his first season, full stop. Liverpool has been treated, at times, as a laughingstock because a lengthy injury list stopped it from winning a second Premier League title a year after claiming its first in 30 years.

This is the sport’s dominant ethos: That, as Alex Ferguson used to put it, once a trophy is won, you forget about it and seek to win the next. But while that is part of soccer’s appeal — that one victory is never enough — it gives those that run its clubs a problem: There is always another triumph to plan, always another peak to conquer, always another player to buy. That is, ultimately, what fans have been conditioned to expect, and so that is what they demand.

Pérez, instinctively, understands that. It is why, in his second television appearance of the week, he mentioned that, without a Super League, Real Madrid could not countenance signing players like Kylian Mbappé or Erling Haaland. The finances, in his eyes, simply do not work (though that has, in fact, never stopped him before).

It was a transparent ploy, a form of emotional blackmail. Pérez knows that what matters most to Real Madrid fans is that the club should be making the sort of signings, building the sorts of teams, that can win the Champions League — not just this year, but next, as well. Give us what we want, he said, and we can give you what you want.

But that approach is not sustainable in a model where wealth is spread more evenly. That does not make it bad; it does not even make it worse than what soccer has now. But that does make it different and, without changes in the way the sport is governed and in fan expectations, might also make it unsustainable.

It would not be possible, of course, for the elite to be forced to relinquish more of their revenue in a game that was still open to investments of the sort that supercharged the rise of Chelsea and Manchester City. It would not hold: All that would happen is that Everton or Newcastle United or Harrogate Town, with the aid of new backers, would trample unencumbered across the landscape.

More complex is that fans would have to redefine what success looks like. When Manchester United fans ask for the introduction of the admirable 50+1 rule — borrowed from German soccer — are they prepared to tolerate what follows? A watering-down of their own team’s chances of trophies?

Will the Liverpool fans sincerely decrying their owners’ greed be happy to have a year or two of seventh-place finishes as the team rebuilds? Do the Chelsea fans on the streets want a world where a good decade means one league title? It is this that Pérez was driving at: He has to spend money because his fans demand it, so to meet that demand, he needs more money.

The desire to share more of the lavish fruit of soccer’s growth is sincerely held, and it is morally sound. The idea of a dozen or more teams harboring genuine championship hopes at the start of every season — rather than the handful of clubs that do so now — sounds faintly idyllic, like a return to soccer’s roots.

But it would come at a cost: It would mean that at the end of the campaign, your traditionally elite team would be less likely to be the one standing tall. The redistribution of wealth means the redistribution of success, too.

Here, then, is another thing we do not know: Do those fans who stared down their owners this week for their greed and their ambition and their hubris want this to be the start of something new, or simply the safeguarding of the old? How much soccer can ever change will depend on the answer.

[Chester Perry]

Sky Italia take a leaf out of Canal+ book and are seeking to block Serie A's deal with DAZN in the courts - from SportsBusiness.com

Sky appeals award of Serie A rights to DAZN
Martin Ross April 23, 2021

Italian pay-television broadcaster Sky Italia has moved to block the recent award of domestic Serie A broadcast rights to DAZN, the subscription streaming broadcaster, in an appeal lodged with a Milan court.

The appeal is to be heard on May 5, according to Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, with Sky said to be arguing that Lega Serie A has disproportionately allocated the rights packages and placed the balance of power with a single operator.

Last month, DAZN secured the majority of domestic rights to Serie A from 2021-22 to 2023-24 after finally receiving the necessary backing from clubs. DAZN will hold rights to seven exclusive fixtures per matchweek and co-exclusive rights to three matches after submitting the leading offer of €840m per season.

DAZN has teamed up with Telecom Italia, the Italian telecoms operator, on the Serie A project and will also end its linear carriage deal with Sky for the DAZN1 satellite channel before the new rights deal kicks in.

Ahead of the award of rights to DAZN, Sky sought to increase pressure on the clubs by flagging concerns over the effect on market competition of the DAZN-TIM proposal.

A letter from Sky, seen by the Italian news agency Ansa, claimed that TIM would “benefit from preferential treatment in the distribution of DAZN, despite TIM being the incumbent operator with greater market strength in Italy, in particular in the broadband segment”.

Maximo Ibarra, the Sky Italia chief executive, wrote that “such a preferential distribution agreement could therefore generate potential competitive and compatibility issues with the Melandri Law”.

Lega Serie A clubs were meeting this afternoon as they looked to award a second package comprising non-exclusive live rights to three fixtures per matchweek.

A recent offer from Sky worth an average of €87.5m per season failed to secure the necessary backing from the clubs. The league said at the end of last month that it would issue a new invitation to tender for that second package of rights.

Serie A’s existing domestic rights deals with Sky and DAZN (from 2018-19 to 2020-21) are worth €973m per year.

Following on from the loss by Sky of the majority of domestic Serie A rights, Ibarra has resigned to take up a new role at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, the Italian technology company backed by private equity firm Bain Capital.

Jobs cuts at Sky Italia were also communicated by national unions in Italy earlier this month.

It is thought that Sky is preparing to cut its total workforce by 25 per cent as part of a wider four-year transformation plan. The unions said the job cuts intend to save Sky around €300m at a time when the broadcaster is facing increasing competition in the Italian market from streaming services such as DAZN, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

[Wile E Coyote]

A truly great read. Informative and thought provoking.much better to be concise than listen to arsenal fans chanting "what do we want" ad infinitum. Admirable post.

[Chester Perry]

Regular readers of this thread in the last few months will be aware of the 11 - 9 splits in Serie A over the Domestic TV rights deal and the the proposed commercial partnership with Private Equity. Well it has emerged again as one side seek retribution against Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan.

https://twitter.com/_GIFN/status/1386037416360808450

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Sorry if I've missed it, but have you seen what's going on at Bordeux?
Owners have announced they're no longer bank rolling the club and its been placed into administration

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/bor ... nistration

[Chester Perry]

Sorry if I've missed it, but have you seen what's going on at Bordeux?
Owners have announced they're no longer bank rolling the club and its been placed into administration

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/bor ... nistration

yes posted late on Thursday night, no problem with that - there was a big protest about it in the centre of Bordeaux yesterday

[Wile E Coyote]

during todays match on BBC, the commentator mentioned how we had spent just 2 million during summer.
He was referring to our presence in the premier league .
Just out of interest, can anyone shed a bit of light on how we compare with our peers in this division and even in the championship. It seems beyond incredible that with the imbalances financially, we can muster a decent showing considering how little we have at our disposal.
Brings into focus that the super league fiasco is not the only debacle regarding clubs spending powers.

[Chester Perry]

during todays match on BBC, the commentator mentioned how we had spent just 2 million during summer.
He was referring to our presence in the premier league .
Just out of interest, can anyone shed a bit of light on how we compare with our peers in this division and even in the championship. It seems beyond incredible that with the imbalances financially, we can muster a decent showing considering how little we have at our disposal.
Brings into focus that the super league fiasco is not the only debacle regarding clubs spending powers.

Sean Dyche said this week we only spent £750k last summer

West Ham and Brighton made profits on last summers trading and officially Wolves broke even

West Ham have since completed the transfer of Benrhama taking them into a positive transfer net spend

[Chester Perry]

There are reports suggesting that Ed Woodward's meeting with Downing St officials in the week prior to the Souper League announcement included discussion of Super League and that he was given an ok by then - you always hope in these circumstances that someone was actually recording the conversation

https://twitter.com/cazjwheeler/status/ ... 5871827970

[Chester Perry]

Sometimes it is useful to get a distant perspective on events that are close to home - The article from ABC news Australia's The Ticket does a good job of bring the events of last week into the wider web that we have been following for years now on this thread

ANALYSIS
The European Super League may be on hold, but it will be back
By Tracey Holmes for The Ticket - Posted 2 days ago, updated 15hours ago


There was a time when British cricket authorities described Australian media mogul Kerry Packer as the brash leader of a sporting circus.

That was because under their noses he devised, signed, sealed and delivered a rebel competition called World Series Cricket that revolutionised the game.

He had hit on something that has grown in value every year since – a sporting contest designed for television audiences.

Twenty years later, war was proclaimed in rugby league.

Packer’s rival, Rupert Murdoch, bankrolled a rebel competition called the Super League, designed to attract subscribers to his Fox pay-TV network.

It was in opposition to the established competition backed by Packer and Optus Vision.

The two sides faced off in drawn-out court battles that ended lifelong friendships.

The negotiated peace was the highly successful NRL competition that has been in existence since.

The outcry was loud and predictable
This past week, 12 of the most successful and powerful football clubs in Europe announced they had formed a made-for-television competition called the European Super League (ESL).

The outcry was loud, swift, and effective. It was also predictable.

People, generally, do not like change – sports fans especially.

If the ESL went ahead, said fans and other critics, it would signal the "death of football". They claimed it was akin to "a declaration of war", and the game was being "stolen by the rich", led by a group of "liars and snakes".

It was emotional stuff providing the type of fertile ground politicians crave, allowing them to be painted as a man or woman of the people.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson seized the moment.

The new competition, he said, offended "the basic principles of competition" and he would take "whatever action necessary" to prevent it from taking place.

"These clubs, these names, originate from famous towns and cities in our country," he said.

"I don't think that it is right that they should be somehow dislocated from their home towns, home cities, taken and turned into international brands and commodities that just circulate the planet, propelled by the billions of banks, without any reference to fans and to those who have loved them all their lives."

Could this be just another power play?
The cheering was so loud it was difficult to find a pause long enough to consider what had actually been said.

The English Premier League clubs the British PM was referring to were Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham — half of the 12 teams named as "foundation members" of the ESL.

All of them, with the exception of Tottenham, have been owned by foreigners for years.

The clubs have been "international brands and commodities" for some time owned by Americans, a Russian and an Emirati, who have injected millions of dollars into making them the most successful teams in the world’s number one domestic football competition.

They have fans and supporter groups right around the world.

The ESL had made no mention of ripping the teams away from their loyal fans.

“Our 12 founder clubs represent billions of fans across the globe and 99 European trophies," a statement read, adding the plan was to create “a regular flow of headline fixtures”.

It said little else, leaving many close observers to wonder whether this was just another power play on the twisting road of football politics designed to eke out a greater share of the next broadcast deal being negotiated by the European governing body, UEFA.

Away from the headlines, a different story was unfolding
What was at stake, if the new league actually went ahead, was the certain relegation of the top-tier English Premier League — itself created from top teams breaking away from the Football League as they chased a more lucrative television deal.

Fans, convinced their teams were being hijacked by billionaires in private jets tearing them from the clubs they’d been reared to support, became the public face of the latest in a history of so-called rebel leagues.

They have since been congratulated widely for the collapse of ESL only hours after it was floated.

Privately, away from the media headlines, a different story was unfolding.

The full facts might never be known, such is the multi-billion-dollar reality of opaque sports governance where conflicts of interest are the norm rather than the exception.

While the UK Prime Minister was at one with the fans during the week, some of his staff and trusted advisors were busy behind the scenes.

According to The Times, Mr Johnson’s most trusted aide and envoy to the Gulf, Lord Udny-Lister, told officials in the United Arab Emirates that participation in the ESL would damage bi-lateral relations.

The Emiratis were quick to respond.

Almost immediately, Manchester City, owned by the UAE’s Sheikh Mansour, announced it was withdrawing from the ESL.

Rumours began circulating that European Super League signatories would not be welcome at certain grounds, that security and policing at games would not be provided, and visas for international players would be difficult to obtain.

One by one, each of the Premier League teams that had signed up, withdrew.

It won't be 'the last chapter'
Dr Katarina Pijetlovic, author of EU Sports Law and Break Away Leagues in Football, believes anybody involved in the formation of the ESL "would have instantly foreseen practical, legal and political risk".

She told The Ticket it was "partly, at least, a hoax".

“This wasn’t a serious or genuine attempt because any serious breakaway league or alternative league of any kind, particularly the Super League where the money involved – we're talking billions and we’re talking powerful investors such as JP Morgan behind them – everybody would do their due diligence," she said.

“[This] hasn't happened, not even the basics were covered.

“I can’t see that this was a genuine attempt … if this was a serious project then it was extremely badly planned, organised, executed, communicated … and so on every level it has not been thought through."

Dr Pijetlovic said that while it would not be the "last chapter we are going to see", it was unlikely the ESL would go ahead "in the form that it was proposed".

Now, a government review into English football might consider restricting foreign ownership of teams and hand some of the power to fans, as is the norm in Germany where clubs operate under what is known as the "50+1 rule".

Put simply, investors can buy into German teams, but more than 50 per cent of the shares must always be held by the club's members.

The Law in Sport knowledge hub, with more than 21,000 members globally, held a two-hour webinar midweek discussing the European Super League with experts from commercial law, employment law, broadcast deals and more.

Almost without dissent, the panellists agreed the ESL proposition was not dead and there was more to come.

Asked whether he could dispel the idea that the ESL announcement was a stunt designed to wrestle power from the controlling body UEFA, Law in Sport CEO Sean Cottrell said: "I’m not sure you can".

“I wouldn’t dispel anything at the moment," he said.

“One of the problems in all of this, for me, has been the lack of transparency across the board.

“Most of the analysis … is based on a lot of assumptions … as we see who does or does not take [legal] action on either side we will have a much clearer idea of what’s actually happened.

“I do think there's real tensions between ownership, between clubs in the ECA (European Clubs Association) structure, the ECA’s power and influence in UEFA, and power and influence in world football. I think that’s part of the story.”

Household names in Australia
Until this week, the Chairman of the ECA had been Andrea Agnelli, the president of Italian club Juventus, recognised as the driving force behind the ESL cartel.

At the same time he was representing the collective of European clubs in negotiations with UEFA, he was plotting with 11 others to announce the European Super League.

His position being untenable, he resigned.

The void was filled by Qatari Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the president of French powerhouse club Paris St Germain, fanning geo-political flames further.

Khelaifi is the chairman of beIN Media, with a large portfolio of global football rights, including the UEFA Champions League.

He is the chairman of Qatar Sports Investments, the Qatar Tennis Federation and is a member of the organising committee for the Club World Cup.

His country will host the FIFA Men’s World Cup in 2022 but it is also at the centre of a diplomatic crisis and blockade with other Gulf States, notably the UAE – owners of Manchester City.

Gulf entities have become household names in Australia, too, through sports investments and sponsorships.

It’s not unusual to see the logos of Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad Airways on team uniforms and sponsors boards at Australian sports grounds.

But it’s not only the Gulf region making inroads.

Sport is 'low-hanging fruit'
China has stated its intention not only to host a future edition of the FIFA Men’s World Cup, but to win it.

The chairman of Chinese conglomerate Suning, Steven Zhang, owns Inter Milan – another one of the clubs that signed up to the ESL.

China is waiting on the sidelines, according to Professor of International Security Studies at the USAF Air War College in Alabama, Dr Amit Gupta.

He says the amount of money China plans to spend will dwarf anything else in sport.

“If you're talking money, [President] Xi Jinping has laid out a sports plan for China," he said.

“He said, ‘we want to set up an 850-billion-dollar sports industry’.”

That is double the size of the current worth of the global sports industry.

China is strategically going about its World Cup plans, Dr Gupta says.

“They have gone to Portugal, which is a country that punches above its weight in European football, and they’ve told the second division 'take two Chinese players into each team, and three coaches, so that we can raise our standards'," he said.

“They are pumping money in there just as they are pumping money into Portuguese telecommunications and ports and so on.”

According to Gupta, sport is "low-hanging fruit".

“These things can be picked up quite easily and I know the Chinese are looking for sports, the Qataris are looking, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are looking because this is part of soft power and brand imaging," he said.

Clubs are global commodities
Gone are the days when players belonged to a local club for life. Now, they are bought and sold as global commodities and supporters essentially follow the club shirt, more than those who wear it.

Back in the 1970s when Kerry Packer was looking for made-for-TV sport and hit on World Series Cricket, he went about shoring up three things – the players, the venues and, crucially, the support of influential politicians.

Former Australian player Bruce Francis was part of the inner sanctum at the time working for Packer.

“The difference between the government and the ESL, and Kerry Packer, is that Kerry Packer had [Prime Minister] Malcolm Fraser in his pocket and he had [NSW Premier] Neville Wran in his pocket, so he knew there wasn’t going to be interference," he said.

“One time I was sitting in the office with Kerry, and I asked how the visas were going with players coming into Australia and he said, 'Look I don’t know, I’ll make the phone call'.

“He phoned and asked to speak to Malcolm Fraser who was tied up. I think Phillip Lynch was the deputy PM at the time and he wanted to speak to him, but he wasn’t available either.

At the time, South Africa was banned from international sport because of its apartheid regime.

Francis says the voice at the end of the line was then foreign affairs minister Andrew Peacock.

The concept is far from dead
While much has changed in global sport since then, some truths remain the same.

In his 1979 book, A Pitch in Both Camps, author Alan Lee recalled what Packer had told him about the value of a television audience.

“The crowds at the ground are of secondary importance," he said.

“Certainly it’s great when they come, but it’s television that counts.”

It’s an observation that has been given new life as sport emerges from the global COVID pandemic playing in mostly empty stadiums.

UK broadcaster of the English Premier League, Sky, reported increased interest in "big games".

The proposed ESL was all about the "big games".

While the proposal has been put on ice, for now, the concept is far from dead.

[Chester Perry]

There are reports suggesting that Ed Woodward's meeting with Downing St officials in the week prior to the Souper League announcement included discussion of Super League and that he was given an ok by then - you always hope in these circumstances that someone was actually recording the conversation

https://twitter.com/cazjwheeler/status/ ... 5871827970

No surprise that the story of Ed Woodward's meeting with Downing St officials is getting more press and political scrutiny - this from the Guardian

Boris Johnson urged to reveal if he endorsed Super League plans
PM pressed to explain nature of meeting with Manchester United CEO days before ill-fated launch

Aubrey Allegretti

Sun 25 Apr 2021 22.30 BST

Boris Johnson has been urged to reveal whether he signalled his endorsement of the European Super League (ESL) when he met the chief executive of one of the English football clubs leading the breakaway in Downing Street days before it was unveiled.

After the ESL plan was officially announced, the prime minister said he was firmly against the idea of what he said amounted to a “cartel”, and has said he found out the surprise news at the same time as everyone else.

However, it was later revealed that Ed Woodward, the chief executive of Manchester United, was invited for a meeting with the prime minister’s chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, in No 10 days before the announcement, and briefly spoke to Johnson.

After the Sunday Times reported that sources said Woodward departed with the wrong impression that Johnson was in favour of the proposal, Labour has said the prime minister has “questions to answer”.

Jo Stevens, the shadow culture secretary, has written to the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, to renew her call for any minutes and correspondence concerning the meeting to be made public.

She has asked when the meeting was arranged, why, who else was present, and whether Johnson or other government figures have recently met representatives of the other five clubs that were poised to join the Super League before they pulled out following a fierce public backlash: Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.

Stevens said: “Yet again, Johnson’s integrity and honesty are in question,” adding: “The public has a right to know what exactly was promised to Manchester United by both officials and the prime minister.

“If Johnson gave the European Super League his backing and then publicly turned on the plan then the British people deserve a full, clear and immediate explanation and apology.”

Government sources have strenuously denied Johnson had any knowledge of the plan and said the prime minister’s conversation with Woodward was a short, chance encounter as they bumped into each other in a corridor in No 10.

In the days of controversy before the six clubs U-turned on their breakaway, Johnson was keen to burnish his opposition to the idea, threatening to drop “a legislative bomb” to forcibly prevent one of the biggest challenges ever seen to the footballing pyramid.

He said: “How can it be right when you have a situation where you create a kind of cartel that stops clubs competing against each other?”

Johnson condemned the idea that clubs could be “dislocated from their home cities, taken and turned into international brands and commodities that just circulate the planet, propelled by the billions of banks, without any reference to the fans and those who have loved them all their lives”.

Downing Street also said Johnson had sent his “unwavering support” to football authorities over the issue, and condemned the ESL’s “closed shop” plan, under which 15 of the 20 league members would have permanent status and be free from the risk of relegation.

It added that the prime minister “was clear that no action is off the table and the government is exploring every possibility, including legislative options, to ensure these proposals are stopped”.

Labour had stood poised to support plans to introduce legislation, if it were necessary and the clubs had refused to heed the wishes of an overwhelming number of fans. “If the government is determined to do something about it, we will back them,” said the Labour leader, Keir Starmer. “There is no block in parliament to action if action is needed.”

[Chester Perry]

A key financial stat of the weekend for the Premier League

Immediate promotion of Norwich and Watford from the EFL Championship will result in a saving of about £83 million in parachute payments by the Premier League over two years. This will be shared by clubs in the Premier League.

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 0640683010

once of a day this money would have been added to the EFL distribution pot, that was stopped quite some time ago. You wonder if the Premier League will:
- be rooting for Bournemouth to come up via the play offs so that figure rises to over £130m
- be using those monies to offset the losses on the China deal now rather than distributing them to the Premier League next season and the season after (which is how it would normally work)

[Vegas Claret]

A key financial stat of the weekend for the Premier League

Immediate promotion of Norwich and Watford from the EFL Championship will result in a saving of about £83 million in parachute payments by the Premier League over two years. This will be shared by clubs in the Premier League.

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 0640683010

once of a day this money would have been added to the EFL distribution pot, that was stopped quite some time ago. You wonder if the Premier League will:
- be rooting for Bournemouth to come up via the play offs so that figure rises to over £130m
- be using those monies to offset the losses on the China deal now rather than distributing them to the Premier League next season and the season after (which is how it would normally work)

is that equal distribution or 70 million between the super league clubs and 13 for the rest of us ?

[Chester Perry]

is that equal distribution or 70 million between the super league clubs and 13 for the rest of us ?

Equal distributions that should be paid over the seasons the parachute monies were to be paid, it is one of the things that has regularly confused us about published central distributions and TV revenues in the annual accounts down the years (an occasional discussion point on this thread), along with UEFA solidarity payments, EPPP Academy payments and FA Cup/League Cup payments.