Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

Like me @UglyGame has a long held dislike (putting it mildly) of the concept of Socios fan tokens - in this thread he raises a excellent point in regard to it's indirect yet apparently consequential links to crypto currency Bitcoin - It could be that fans are being sold a pup in terms of the investment angle

https://twitter.com/uglygame/status/1395017399578112002

@UglyGame continues this theme by looking at what has happen to the Socios fan tokens at Athletico Madrid since they won La Liga

https://twitter.com/uglygame/status/1397929031157227524

[Chester Perry]

Mike Ashley may be much more bullish of late about the possibility of Newcastle finally being sold to the Saudi's as the arbitration and Court case loom - however the Saudi's themselves are still maling life difficult for the Premier LEague by persisting with their piracy of BeIN sport

https://twitter.com/mjshrimper/status/1 ... 7343659009

[Chester Perry]

On Tuesday I posted NBC's media release on the subject of it's view figures for the Premier Leagues 2020/21 season - here SportsProMedia helps us make some sense from them - the headline does not make for good reading, though it does follow a general trend in the US for sports viewing during the pandemic and that includes the NFL

Premier League viewership on NBC falls 10% for 2020/21 season
Comcast-owned network buoyed by rise in games averaging more than 1m viewers.

Posted: May 27 2021By: Tom Bassam

- Eight matches top 1m average viewers, the most since 2015/16 season
- Premier League matches on NBC’s commercial network up 2%

US broadcaster NBC Sports saw its linear coverage of English soccer’s top-flight Premier League suffer a 10.3 per cent year-over-year fall in average viewership.

The Comcast-owned broadcaster averaged 414,000 viewers per match window for its coverage this season, which is NBC’s lowest mark since acquiring Premier League rights ahead of the 2013/14 season. That number, however, does not factor in Spanish-language or Peacock digital broadcasts.

The total audience delivery (TAD) for games aired on NBC’s commercial network broadcast channel actually saw a two per cent YoY increase to 879,000 average viewers. The network appears to be encouraged by the figures overall, with eight NBC and NBCSN matches averaging a TAD of at least one million viewers. That is the most games averaging more than one million viewers since the 2015/16 season.

That includes a 1.06 million TAD for Liverpool v Manchester City on 7th February, the second-highest audience for a Premier League match on pay-TV ever.

The fall in average viewership can be partially explained by the late start to the season and increased match windows due to the Premier League’s need to air almost every match in its own time slot for domestic audiences in the UK. This meant more early kick-off times in the US.

The five matches aired as part of the last gameweek of the season saw a combined TAD of 1.4 million viewers, a figure that does not include Peacock figures where all ten fixtures were streamed.

In addition, more than one billion minutes of NBC Sports’ Premier League content was consumed on its YouTube channel, which is a single-season record.

With the closure of the NBCSN pay-TV network, the bulk of NBC’s Premier League coverage will transition to Peacock and the linear USA Network.

The 2021/22 season will be the last of NBC’s six-year, US$1 billion broadcast partnership with the Premier League. An NBC spokesperson told Front Office Sports that the network is keen to renew that deal, but the Premier League will be seeking to extract an increased fee with ESPN and CBS reportedly keen on adding a deal to bolster their burgeoning streaming platforms.

[Chester Perry]

Blackpool have released their 2019/20 financial results - the fans have returned in large numbers since the takeover, but there are significant losses

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

and @KieranMaguire has been have a look here https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 7303268355

[Chester Perry]

A thought piece from Private Equity firm Blackstar Capital and their head of Sport Finance James Paul for Sports Business.com on why buyers are still queuing up to invest in European football - yes the vultures are still at the door

James Paul | Buying low: Why investment will continue to flow into football
James Paul, head of sport finance at Blackstar Capital, discusses why investors will be regarding European football with interest in the coming months – even with the flattening of the ESL project
James Paul
May 28, 2021

James Paul, Blackstar Capital
It has been a turbulent 12 months for professional football, from the initial postponement of the major European leagues last year to the recent announcement and subsequent collapse of the European Super League project.

However, while it is a reasonably uncontroversial assessment to say that the period has been largely negative for the sport itself, assessing its impact on the potential for investment into football is considerably more complex.

First off, the demise of the ESL is undoubtedly positive for all clubs outside “the twelve”. The significant valuations enjoyed by the central contracts (particularly broadcast) for the major leagues rely heavily on the presence of their top clubs, and any uncertainty around their future participation would have had a highly damaging impact on future bids from broadcast partners.

For clubs on the fringes of the existing European competitions, the potential fall in the valuation of these contracts would have been even more significant, and as a result the potential uncertainty even greater.

In both cases, clubs would have been left with significantly lower future revenues than currently projected, and at a time when many could ill-afford such an outcome. Uncertainty is among the most unattractive qualities in a potential investment, and thus the ESL undoubtedly would have dampened investment across the sport at least in the short term.

Statements from those involved that the revenues generated by the new league would allow for a substantial increase in the ‘solidarity’ payments which prop up the wider football pyramid below the top tiers seem (at best) unsubstantiated and optimistic, particularly if you consider that many of the major potential broadcast partners were quick to distance themselves from the project.

It is unlikely that any potential investor in a non-ESL club would take such an analysis at face value when considering an investment. The quick demise of the breakaway project should therefore afford most clubs some much-needed predictability of income in the short term, even if that income continues to be lower than projected.

As with many industries, the pandemic has left professional football clubs with a significant gap between their original budgets and actual income, primarily due to matchday restrictions and broadcast rebates. Therefore, the vast majority of clubs are seeking some form of investment, whether it be a long-term loan or an outright sale of the club.

Perhaps counterintuitively, interest from potential investors (particularly American) is as high as ever, as demonstrated by recent sales both up and down the pyramid and across the continent, such as Roma, Burnley, Ipswich, Lille, Derby, Sunderland and others. The old adage of “buying low” is undoubtedly part of the attraction for the new owners, but there is more at play here.

In the US, all major professional sports follow a franchise model which removes the main performance-related financial risks for teams (such as relegation or missing out on competitions). Each league also includes a salary cap system, which puts significant controls on each team’s yearly costs. Therefore, financial strategy in US professional sport has historically been significantly more focused on commercial revenue streams (sponsorship, hospitality and events, merchandise, etc.) than is seen in European football. Accordingly, European football teams are typically much less sophisticated on the commercial side than their American counterparts, and to potential US investors this lack of sophistication represents a significant growth opportunity.

Regardless, the current financial predicament facing many teams means potential buyers currently have most of the leverage in negotiations. Club valuations remain at discounts to their pre-pandemic levels (with reasonable justification, as the financial impact of the pandemic is likely to stretch over several years), but many existing owners are reticent to sell now at below what they consider to be the club’s long-term value. This is why, for example, Burnley remains the sole Premier League club sold during the period, despite the fact that there are other clubs up for sale in the league.

However, as losses from the pandemic continue to pile up (especially at clubs outside the top tier) the burden of supporting the club financially until the pre-pandemic “normal” is achieved may well prove too much for some owners. Investors remain waiting in the wings.

[Chester Perry]

Rory Smith for the New York Times brings together a number of themes related to the both the event holder, the even and the protagonists in tomorrows Champions League final - It is a great piece of writing, much like the work of Tariq Panja is great writing for the same publication, which is reassuring because word has it that the New York Times is in talks to buy The Athletic which despite having reached it's strategic targets that were to make it profitable is still losing money.

The Game of Tomorrow, Today
MAY 27, 2021

The shadows are drawing in across Europe.

Inter Milan must shed millions of dollars from its salary bill. One or more of its brightest lights will have to be sold. Antonio Conte, the coach who only a few weeks ago ended the club’s decade-long wait for an Italian championship, does not intend to stick around to see his title-winning team broken up.

Barcelona, a billion dollars in debt, must build a squad to meet its princely ambitions on a pauper’s budget. The club’s wish list does not extend much beyond the giveaway aisle: Sergio Agüero, Georginio Wijnaldum, Eric García and Memphis Depay are all out of contract, all available for nothing, a cut-price cavalry.

Juventus must strip back in order to retool. Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, knows his fans crave a Galáctico but also that he cannot afford one. The usual delirium of transfer rumors swirls around Manchester United and Liverpool, but some players will have to go in order for others to arrive.

It is not just the grand houses that are feeling the pinch. The Lille team that won the French title will be stripped for parts. The rest of Ligue 1 faces a fire sale. Spending in the January transfer window was a fraction of its normal level across all of Europe’s top five leagues.

After years of plenty, money is tight, and times are straitened, for everybody. Almost everybody.

There remain a handful of bulls in soccer’s bear market, not just immune to but liable to benefit from the recession unfurling all around them. Saturday’s Champions League final features two of them.

A little more than a decade ago, it seemed certain that the 2010s would be dominated by the coming of Manchester City and Chelsea. Between them, they represented soccer’s new dawn: Chelsea, bankrolled by the wealth of its billionaire Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, and City, transformed by the functionally bottomless riches of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. For a while, their meetings were referred to as El Cashico, always with the slight ghost of a sneer: a confected nickname for an ersatz imitation of an authentic rivalry.

Indeed, when Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan first arrived at Manchester City, it was Chelsea where he first trained his sights. Chelsea had been so confident of signing Robinho, the Brazil forward, from Real Madrid that its website had started selling jerseys emblazoned with his name. When the Spanish club noticed, it withdrew from the deal. City, eager to make a statement of intent, duly stepped in.

The next summer, City tried to go a step further, identifying John Terry — Chelsea’s captain — as its priority transfer target. The club was, it was reported, prepared to pay him a then-unthinkable $300,000 a week. He chose not to accept, eventually, but City at least managed to bloody Chelsea’s nose: Abramovich was forced to reward Terry’s loyalty by making him the club’s highest-paid player.

It took much longer for an on-field rivalry to develop. The clubs did, as predicted, emerge as the prime forces in English soccer in the 2010s: Between them, they have won eight of the past 12 Premier League titles. But rarely did they find themselves in direct opposition. More often than not, one waxed as the other waned, and the greatest threats to their immediate ambitions came from the ranks of the established elite both were seeking to usurp.

Now, though, the situation has changed. Over the last year, the landscape of both English and European soccer has undergone a fundamental shift, one that has diminished almost all of their peers and leaves both Chelsea and City in a position of almost unparalleled strength. This Champions League final is not the culmination of a rivalry. It is, instead, a harbinger of what the future might hold.

They owe their prospects of uncontested primacy to a confluence of factors. Foremost, of course, is the economic impact of the pandemic, and the year of empty stadiums and balance-sheet black holes.

Estimates vary, but most suggest that the pandemic has cost Europe’s clubs somewhere in the region of $5 billion, almost half of it borne by the 20 richest teams on the continent, some of whom — Real, Barcelona and Juventus in particular — were already struggling under the weight of mismanagement.

City and Chelsea, because of the largess of their owners, seemed blissfully unaffected by that contraction. City spent $140 million on central defenders alone at the start of this season as its payroll hit an English-record high: almost $500 million-a-year, at a time when most of its rivals were trying to limit their spending.

Chelsea spent more last summer than any other team in Europe, and almost as much as all 18 teams of the Bundesliga combined. Chelsea paid out more in fees, in fact, than it had at any point under Abramovich, taking advantage of being a rare predator in a world of prey to acquire the likes of Timo Werner and Kai Havertz effectively unopposed.

There is little reason to believe, given the limited horizons across much of the rest of Europe, that this summer will prove any different. Among their peers, there is a growing acceptance that competing for talent with Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris St.-Germain is no longer feasible.

Combating that, of course, was part of the rationale behind the short-lived and unmourned Super League. Buried in the aborted competition’s founding document were a set of specific provisions on spending that went way beyond the Financial Fair Play regulations that govern the Champions League.

There would be “zero tolerance” for the manipulation of balance sheets. Expenditure on players, coaches and salaries would be strictly capped — at 55 percent of club revenues, or 27.5 percent of the highest-earning club, an effort to favor those teams with the largest fan bases — and clubs would have to commit to being profitable over a three-year period.

The rules would be overseen and enforced by a monitoring body, responsible for auditing member clubs’ finances, ruling on sponsorship agreements and sanctioning anyone who transgressed. It was to be called the Financial Stability Group.

City was part of the project, of course, but it was also, as those involved in its creation admit, its target. The Super League was not just a power play to grab a greater share of soccer’s revenues; it was also, for some of those involved, the only way to level a distorted playing field.

Its collapse, though, has weighted the dice ever further in the favor of the new elite.

Manchester City and Chelsea had already, in effect, been given a free pass when UEFA announced, last year, that it was suspending the financial regulations that previously prevented both teams from making full use of their owners’ wealth. The losses across Europe were so broad and so great, it said, that barely any teams would be able to meet its criteria.

UEFA is adamant that the system is not defunct. It says it is currently examining how to redraft and improve its cost-control rules to give them a “stronger focus on the present and the future.” European soccer’s governing body has said that it believes “wages and transfer fees, which represent the majority of clubs’ costs, must be reduced to acceptable levels.”

But in their current absence there are benefits for those in a position of strength. First, by stockpiling talent now, they can in effect get in before the door closes. Second, and most important, they have an opportunity to shape the new rules to their needs.

City, Chelsea and P.S.G. had long felt that the previous system of Financial Fair Play did not so much apply to them as apply at them. The original idea, their logic ran, of ensuring European soccer did not take on too much debt had been co-opted by a cartel of the game’s established powers to prevent clubs from investing in their teams, an effort to set in stone their position at the pinnacle.

This time, though, as a consequence of the Super League, it is City — who in withdrawing started the collapse of the breakaway — and P.SG. — which never joined it — who can expect to have a seat at the table when the new rules are discussed. Whatever form of financial regulation is introduced, it is more likely to represent their interests than the ostracized old elite. Chelsea, its ambitions aligned with those two, will benefit by proxy.

That, of course, is what those clubs who find their positions of power under threat fear: not that the collapse of the Super League will lead to some utopian, egalitarian vision of soccer’s future, but that one set of vested interests will be exchanged for another.

Privately, owners admit there is little prospect now of holding back City, in particular. Some in England believe the club could win the Premier League for the next decade if it continues to use its wealth as adroitly as it has. In Europe, the fear is that the Champions League will become the exclusive preserve of the new elite, rather than the old.

To some, of course, that may be a good thing, a welcome change after years of dominance by a handful of entitled and presumptuous superclubs. To others, it will have the feel of yet another step toward some grim vision of soccer’s future, where the global game becomes the plaything of oligarchs and plutocrats and nation states.

Either way, the path from there to here has been laid, irrevocably, over the last year as the pandemic hit and the money dried up and the regulations loosened and the establishment crumbled. The new future is here, and it starts on Saturday.

[Chester Perry]

It appears that the Premier League has been listening to Claire Enders in the last 12 months - following the success of it's domestic rights rollover (all other european leagues have experienced downturns in their domestic rights, the Premier League is putting tenders to 40 european markets inviting bids for threw and six years terms. SportsBusiness.com with the exclusive

EXCLUSIVE: Six-year bids, live rights to all matches in Premier League’s European ITT
Martin Ross - May 28, 2021

The Premier League has invited bids for broadcast rights in over 40 European and Central Asian countries from 2022-23 onwards, calling for offers over three or six seasons and making additional live packages available in some major markets, SportBusiness understands.

The launch of the European sales was approved at a Premier League shareholders meeting yesterday (Thursday).

Broadcasters and rights agencies have now been informed of the start of an ITT process that includes 23 different ‘Broadcast Territories’ and offers live rights to all 380 matches per season.

In offering bidders the chance to submit offers over the longer contract period, the Premier League is replicating its strategy in the Nordic region. Having gone to market at the start of 2020, the league agreed a lucrative deal with Nordic Entertainment (Nent) Group in its first direct six-season deal with a broadcaster in Europe.

Companies taking part in the new European ITT have been asked to lodge bids for both the three-season (2022-23 to 2024-25) and six-season (2022-23 to 2027-28) contract periods.

Bids must be submitted between midday (BST) and 2pm on June 24.

SportBusiness understands that a total of four different live rights packages are on offer in seven of the Broadcast Territories. In the remaining 16 territories, which comprise individual countries and also regions such as the Balkans, Baltics or Central Asia, only one live package of 380 matches per season is available.

The seven territories in which four live packages will be offered are: Belgium (plus Luxembourg non-exclusively); Iceland; the Netherlands; Poland; Portugal; France and Monaco (plus Andorra, Luxembourg and Switzerland non-exclusively); and Spain (plus Andorra non-exclusively).

Along with a package of live rights to all 380 matches (‘Live Package A’), bidders in these seven territories can also bid for three other live rights packages.

‘Live Package B’ contains rights to a maximum of 34 matches per season, namely one Friday evening or Saturday fixture per matchweek. The Saturday match in question cannot be among the 3pm kick-offs. A single match on the final weekend is also included.

Meanwhile, ‘Live Package C’ also comprises rights to a maximum of 34 live matches per season. These would take place on Sunday or Monday, while a single final weekend fixture is again included.

‘Live Package D’ includes live rights to the remaining matches, including the Saturday 3pm fixtures. This equates to between 312 and 314 matches per season. Should the A package be awarded, then there will be no award of the B, C or D packages in the relevant territory.

The Premier League sold up to 233 live matches available in European markets in the 2019-22 cycle, while it sold 380 live matches outside of Europe.

Additional digital clips rights are also being offered, for the first three-year term at least.

Both Germany and Italy are not among the territories on offer.

It is understood that the Premier League will not entertain bids in the opening round from agencies for rights in the countries among the seven named Broadcast Territories, unless the agency in question has its own channel or OTT streaming service to showcase the rights. Therefore, this discounts agencies with the intention of selling on the rights to broadcasters in the relevant territory.

The IMG agency acquired Premier League rights for the current 2019-22 cycle across 26 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, plus Central Asia. IMG went on to sell rights in some countries to Saran Media Group, which separately acquired rights in Turkey.

Following on from its bumper agreement with Nent in the Nordics, the Premier League continued its early international sales by agreeing a three-year deal in sub-Saharan Africa with pay-television broadcaster SuperSport. A renewal was also agreed in the Middle East and North Africa with pay-television broadcaster beIN Media Group in a deal that includes live rights to all 380 matches each season.

Domestically, the Premier League has ensured the same level of revenue from its existing broadcast agreements. Earlier this month, the league voted to roll over its existing deals with Sky, telco BT, online retail giant Amazon and public-service broadcaster the BBC for the 2022-25 cycle.

The league currently earns a total of £1.53bn (€1.78bn/$2.17bn) per season for its domestic media rights, out of total media-rights income of about £2.82bn per season.

[Vegas Claret]

On Tuesday I posted NBC's media release on the subject of it's view figures for the Premier Leagues 2020/21 season - here SportsProMedia helps us make some sense from them - the headline does not make for good reading, though it does follow a general trend in the US for sports viewing during the pandemic and that includes the NFL

Premier League viewership on NBC falls 10% for 2020/21 season
Comcast-owned network buoyed by rise in games averaging more than 1m viewers.

Posted: May 27 2021By: Tom Bassam

- Eight matches top 1m average viewers, the most since 2015/16 season
- Premier League matches on NBC’s commercial network up 2%

US broadcaster NBC Sports saw its linear coverage of English soccer’s top-flight Premier League suffer a 10.3 per cent year-over-year fall in average viewership.

The Comcast-owned broadcaster averaged 414,000 viewers per match window for its coverage this season, which is NBC’s lowest mark since acquiring Premier League rights ahead of the 2013/14 season. That number, however, does not factor in Spanish-language or Peacock digital broadcasts.

The total audience delivery (TAD) for games aired on NBC’s commercial network broadcast channel actually saw a two per cent YoY increase to 879,000 average viewers. The network appears to be encouraged by the figures overall, with eight NBC and NBCSN matches averaging a TAD of at least one million viewers. That is the most games averaging more than one million viewers since the 2015/16 season.

That includes a 1.06 million TAD for Liverpool v Manchester City on 7th February, the second-highest audience for a Premier League match on pay-TV ever.

The fall in average viewership can be partially explained by the late start to the season and increased match windows due to the Premier League’s need to air almost every match in its own time slot for domestic audiences in the UK. This meant more early kick-off times in the US.

The five matches aired as part of the last gameweek of the season saw a combined TAD of 1.4 million viewers, a figure that does not include Peacock figures where all ten fixtures were streamed.

In addition, more than one billion minutes of NBC Sports’ Premier League content was consumed on its YouTube channel, which is a single-season record.

With the closure of the NBCSN pay-TV network, the bulk of NBC’s Premier League coverage will transition to Peacock and the linear USA Network.

The 2021/22 season will be the last of NBC’s six-year, US$1 billion broadcast partnership with the Premier League. An NBC spokesperson told Front Office Sports that the network is keen to renew that deal, but the Premier League will be seeking to extract an increased fee with ESPN and CBS reportedly keen on adding a deal to bolster their burgeoning streaming platforms.

it's because they keep ******* about with channels, there are weeks when we have no idea which channel is showing which game, they have the build up on one channel then you have to switch for kick off. The coverage is exceptional, it puts the image quality broadcast by Sky to shame - but they have to sort this issue out, it's really annoying.

The last few years they had NBCSN Gold which enabled you to stream games..........great if it worked on all devices but it didn't.
They've now decided to put it on Peacock, no idea if it will work tbh

[Chester Perry]

it's because they keep ******* about with channels, there are weeks when we have no idea which channel is showing which game, they have the build up on one channel then you have to switch for kick off. The coverage is exceptional, it puts the image quality broadcast by Sky to shame - but they have to sort this issue out, it's really annoying.

The last few years they had NBCSN Gold which enabled you to stream games..........great if it worked on all devices but it didn't.
They've now decided to put it on Peacock, no idea if it will work tbh

The Premier League will be hoping that Comcast believes that Peacock works out for them as that will drive Price increases for the next tender.

With ESPN buying up all the other top European Leagues, CBS starting to make a real play for European football with the Champions League rights and Warner who are partnering with Discovery showing an interest in sport this summers tender is set fair for the Premier League to have the competition for the rights they have been longing for in the US market. I expect it will be another 6 year cycle though it would be interesting to see if someone pitches for 9 years - the Americans love that certainty and will bid for it - I suspect that the Premier League will have expectations of equal or more than Nent have paid for the Nordic deal £2 billion + for six years. If they get that then the Premier League will be likely to further distance themselves financially from the rest of the big leagues and as Stefan Szymanski said in the interview I posted yesterday

"The English Premier League’s revenues are almost double those of the next biggest league, enabling them to attract a significantly higher quality of player than rival leagues. In a global market, this advantage will tend to grow, since in sports there is a general trend toward the dominant league."

or as I put it we won't need a super league we already have it and it is currently known as the Premier League

[Chester Perry]

....."The English Premier League’s revenues are almost double those of the next biggest league, enabling them to attract a significantly higher quality of player than rival leagues. In a global market, this advantage will tend to grow, since in sports there is a general trend toward the dominant league."

or as I put it we won't need a super league we already have it and it is currently known as the Premier League

I see the Financial Times today has been effectively sending the same message

https://outline.com/2g7DZV

[Pstotto]

Who wants football to die?

Landowners.

How to do it?

Have 300,000 immigration a year from non-football parts of the world to put pressure on land-use to build on green space and starve the kids of footy space as well as streets.

Remember these plans are 100 years in the making not just one year.

USA, Brazil, China and India don't want that land use for football pitches.

We're now seeing the end game via an international political attempt to derail the whole English football world with hyper inflation and the breakaway league clubs have not gone away and nothing has changed and they are in cahoots to their own destruction for a bancruptcy finale at foreign hands and Priti Patel and Rishi Sunak I doubt have the interests of football as their economic rationale for UK growth, to name but two of divers cultural people screwing the majority culture.

Football is all for football

There plan is change football for diversity so instead of diversity following football, football follows diversity and is robbed of itself, going on now.

The rich list are on the side of land ownership, methinks.

If 'THEY' can down England and stuff their sport and their country AND get their own to do it, quids in by the non-football world to make a laughing stock of us at the behest of UK Gov.

[Chester Perry]

The thing is mate, there are plenty of people willing to do just that and they do not need additional immigration to do it, this is the kind of thing that led to clubs moving their grounds out of town and also what has seen the loss of thousands of grass root's pitched up and down the country, it is a cycle that has been going on since the war, and is far from a recent phenomenon.

[Chester Perry]

Jonathon Wilson with an interesting take on the current managerial merry-go-round at the top of European Football

Managerial carousel mirrors the desperate crisis enveloping Europe’s elite clubs
Jonathan Wilson

Exits for Conte and Zidane, together with talk of Pochettino returning to Spurs, epitomise the chaos of modern football

Sun 30 May 2021 08.00 BST

At first glance, Antonio Conte leaving a club in dispute with the owners soon after leading them to a league title may not seem particularly significant. This is what he does. His departure from Internazionale follows ostensibly similar departures from Juventus and Chelsea, and he left the Italy national job early as well.

But this is about far more than Conte. What is happening at Inter is emblematic of the chaos of modern football and the struggles of an industry that had become a stage for the soft-power machinations of various states and oligarchs and was in need of major financial recalibration even before the pandemic hammered revenues. And as crisis looms, the distressed securities investors begin to hover.

Conte and Inter are just one part of a much larger picture: this summer will see a great reshuffle of managers with at least two other clubs who committed to the European Super League having vacancies to fill. There will be consequences, and they could be profound. A time of flux is always a time of opportunity. But the reshuffle is just the most visible consequence of far deeper financial rumblings, of which the breakaway proposals were just the most obvious eruption.

Inter’s debts were reported in March to be €630m. Their majority shareholder is the retail conglomerate Suning, which holds 68% of shares. Suning itself is 23% owned by investors tied to the Chinese government. But whereas the involvement of Abu Dhabi and Qatar in football club ownership has so far been a guarantee of security, offering investment that is not reliant on results on the pitch – which is what makes them such a threat to the traditional elite – the Chinese government is more concerned with balancing the books.

It has sought to curtail excessive loans, which is why lucrative transfers to the Chinese Super League clubs have all but ended. Suning owned Jiangsu FC, who won the Chinese title last season for the first time in their 63-year history before being wound up because they were considered too great a drain on Suning’s resources.

That will not happen to Inter, but they did take out an emergency loan of €275m from the US asset firm Oaktree Capital Management earlier this month. They do not have to look very far to see the possible consequences of that: Elliott Advisors Limited took charge of Milan in 2018 after their owner Li Yonghong defaulted on loan repayments.

For Conte, as he sought further investment to consolidate a first scudetto in 11 years and propel a serious Champions League campaign, this meant he was asked to raise €80m from player sales. Given his personality and past record, the surprise would have been if he hadn’t walked. He will be replaced by Simone Inzaghi, who left Lazio on Thursday.

Conte is a major presence on the managerial merry-go-round. He may be difficult, but he has a sustained record of success, from taking Bari to the Serie B title in 2009 to three league titles with Juventus and one each with Chelsea and Inter. The only real doubt, beyond his combustibility, is his record in Europe. Both Real Madrid and Tottenham are viable destinations, not least because his ability to impose and aggressive pressing style is exactly what both need.

Madrid over the past two seasons have looked increasingly weary, playing a slow, old form of football in desperate need of rejuvenation. Zinedine Zidane essentially acknowledged he could not face that rebuild when he quit after the 2018 Champions League success; three years later, the situation has barely changed other than that Cristiano Ronaldo has left, everybody is older, and the supposed solution of buying up young Spanish talent has failed so catastrophically that, for the first time in history, there will be no Real Madrid player in the Spain squad for a major tournament. Debts exceed €900m and the club president, Florentino Pérez, is at war with Uefa, having been exposed as a buffoon across Europe – if not quite yet Spain – by his self-pitying vacuity in discussing the Super League.

But however ludicrous Pérez’s bleating may be, it does expose the basic fact that Real Madrid’s finances are shot and that they desperately need to offload about a dozen players into a depressed market just to be able to begin their rebuild.

There is a reason they have not made a major signing since Eden Hazard and Luka Jovic in 2019 – and it is not that they have learned their lesson after splashing £150m on two forwards who have totalled 27 league starts and scored six goals. The salary and prestige would offer some compensation, but it’s hard to think of a worse time to take the Madrid job in the past 70 years.

And then there’s Tottenham, their spectacular new stadium at risk of becoming a gleaming monument to the hubris of the pre-pandemic era, the cost of paying for it leading to the reduced investment that led to the squad going stale that led to Mauricio Pochettino’s dismissal that led to José Mourinho’s appointment that led to a seventh-place finish and Harry Kane wanting to leave. The road to the Europa Conference is paved with the best of intentions.

Pochettino returning would make sense from both a sentimental and a practical point of view, particularly given a relatively disappointing first season at Paris Saint-Germain – though many of the problems were inherited. That potentially opens another vacancy and there could be another one at Barcelona – who are massively in debt but do have plenty of young talent. Massimiliano Allegri is returning to Juventus to replace Andrea Pirlo, but that still leaves Maurizio Sarri, the man who initially replaced him, without a job.

But as the tiles are frantically shuffled around the table, it may be that what really matters is what is going on beneath and the ramifications of the economic disruptions of the past year – which themselves are the result of much deeper problems in the financial structure of modern football.

[Chester Perry]

Tottenham apparently follow Arsenal in refinancing their BoE loan with a longer term loan from the commercial markets - why? because their are now able to use the monies on squad strengthening which the BoE loan and it's hugely favourable interest rates would not allow

https://twitter.com/JackPittBrooke/stat ... 8926892038

[Chester Perry]

anyone spot a recent theme - the telegraph with an article outlining German fears of English dominance because of economic dominance, it still requires good management throughout the clubs though

German clubs preparing for era of English dominance in European football
STEFAN BIENKOWSKI MAY 31, 2021

Oliver Kahn is no less terrifying in a business suit than he was in the goalkeeping kit of Bayern Munich. Standing tall at 6ft 2 and with a wing span to match it, the incoming CEO of Germany’s biggest club rarely struggles to get his point across when tasked with answering questions in front of a pack of reporters or the studio lights.

When Kahn talks, Bayern fans tend to listen. And in an interview with German broadcaster Sport1 just a few days before the all-English Champions League final, the former shot-stopper laid bare some economic truths about Bayern’s struggles to keep up with the power and dominance of English football.

“Whoever will be able to add to it is the English,” muttered Kahn when asked if any of Europe’s top clubs will be immune from the financial impact of the pandemic. “They had €2.7 billion in television revenue. We in the Bundesliga had €1.3 billion. This gap will remain the same for the time being.”

Khan quickly corrected course and reassured fans of the Munich side that the club would continue to compete thanks to their “winning culture” but his warning was as true as it was stark. While Manchester City and Chelsea battled it out for Europe’s crown on Saturday night, German football’s biggest clubs were drawing up contingency plans to get through the summer transfer window in one piece. It is a fear of an era of English dominance reflected across Europe.

Bayern, to their credit, have tried to compensate for a €100 million deficit by getting their summer business out of the way as quickly as possible. Rather than get dragged into an off-season bidding war with Premier League rivals for defensive target Dayot Upamecano, the Munich side bought out the French talent’s minimum-fee release clause in early February and rushed his agent to their offices to conclude the deal.

Such was the speed of Bayern’s movement that sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic confirmed the deal was signed and sealed on live TV before Upamecano’s club, RB Leipzig, even had a chance to find out for themselves. And the Bavarian giants didn’t stop there.

When Hansi Flick announced his intention to step down as head coach at the end of the season, it took Bayern just 10 days to identify, negotiate and then confirm the future German national team manager’s successor would be Julian Nagelsmann. Similarly, new signing Omar Richards from Reading, officially joined the club this week on a free transfer after agreeing terms months ago.

However, it won’t all be clear sailing for the German champions. While they may have signed two new defenders, they’ve had to bid farewell to three, as David Alaba, Jerome Boateng and Javi Martinez have all left the club. The former was tempted away by higher wages at Real Madrid, while the latter two, somewhat surprisingly, were never offered contract extensions despite their previous success and standing within the club.

Despite Bayern’s careful planning, the club still have to fill a Thiago Alcantara-shaped hole in midfield from last summer and desperately need a new right-back. But any solutions to those problems will have to come from thrifty solutions. “There will be no big transfers,” confirmed honorary president Uli Hoeness this week. “You can forget that.”

Indeed, if Bayern are able to get by with careful planning then their nearest rivals, Borussia Dortmund, are just slightly behind them with simple hopes of limiting the damage that will be caused in the summer window.

“Even against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic situation, no one has to worry about Borussia Dortmund’s existence,” confirmed club president Reinhard Raubal to ease concerns after financial results for the first half of the year pointed to a €26.3 million loss. Dortmund aren’t in perilous financial trouble but the club will be severely limited in what it can do next season.

Rather than entertain the idea of an influx of new players, Dortmund will instead batten down the hatches and do their best to keep a hold of the remarkable talent they already have within their ranks.

In Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho, the club have two stars that could net significant profits but Dortmund would seemingly prefer to keep the former at all costs and only sell the latter for the right price, rather than rip up another team just for the sake of posting healthier financial numbers.

“We do not have to sell a player. That is important,” confirmed chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke in an interview with the BBC last month. "The rich clubs in the world, they must know when they want a player from Borussia Dortmund there are two possibilities. The first is that I tell them they have no chance. Other times, I will tell them 'this is the price'.”

Rather than make a courageous charge for the Champions League next season, it seems far more likely that the largest fee Dortmund will spend in 2021 will be the €5 million compensation fee Dortmund had to pay Borussia Mönchengladbach for new head coach Marco Rose in February.

The only German club that may have the capital to challenge English dominance in the transfer market are RB Leipzig, who will not only have the backing of their Red Bull owners but also an unexpected influx of cash from selling key players and their own head coach.

Upamecano and Nagelsmann were joined in the departure lounge by Ibrahima Konate this week, when the young defender made his expected move to Liverpool. Together, the three individuals have netted Leipzig at least €100 million in sales over the last four months, which the Saxony club will undoubtedly invest back into the team under new head coach Jesse Marsch. Yet there’s no doubt that the “plastikklub” will be starting from scratch and a risky transition period awaits them next season.

The Bundesliga is in better financial shape than most European divisions, but even they will struggle to challenge the economic might the Premier League showcased in the Champions League final.

[Chester Perry]

I have railed against co-efficient payments that UEFA make to legacy clubs (particularly during the heated period of Super League) for past performance. here is the Telegraph telling us that not only are they staying but as of next season they are paying out even more - If UEFA were serious about reform and listening to fans and Leagues this would be one of the first things to go - though you will notice that it has been introduced to stop the English clubs getting even greater financial advantage from the market pool - so that theme, again!

Despite the Super League revolt, Uefa's reforms help the rich get richer
SAM WALLACE MAY 31, 2021

In the best hotels on Champions League final weekend, it can feel that the match itself is just a brief and pleasant diversion from the real business of dividing up the spoils of the elite European game: he who wields the power, controls the money.

Never more so in Porto this weekend little more than a month since the European Super League insurrection and with some of the reputations involved still being carried off the battlefield. On Saturday night, Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin, and his general secretary Theodore Theodoridis were happy to be seen deep in private conversation with Bayern Munich president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge on a sofa in the Sheraton hotel lobby.

The German has been on the right side recently, as far as Uefa is concerned, although in 2018 when the first reports of the Super League surfaced, Bayern were portrayed as being considerably more enthusiastic. The splenetic response of their fans then informed their caution this time and thus they avoided the humiliation that befell others. For the moment Rummenigge and Ceferin must feel like friends. Bayern stayed loyal and for now Uefa have the upper hand in shaping the competition’s future, with Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus still on the outside. Yet power and influence shifts quickly with new alliances.

What will the Champions League look like next year? At the end of another memorable competition that has seen fans back in the stadium for a final between two English clubs, the way in which Uefa divides its vast revenue is changing next season. While the embers of the Super League rebellion still flicker, the effects of that decision can easily be forgotten.

In the weeks before April’s brief Super League putsch, analysis by European Leagues (EL), the body representing domestic European leagues including the Premier League and Football League, modelled that future. It was presented by the Swede Lars-Christer Olsson, then the chairman of EL and a firm opponent of the expansionist ambitions of the elite. The results were stark.

The change in distribution of revenue means that much greater importance will be assigned to the Uefa coefficient – a dull way of saying that the better a club’s historical performance the more it takes of the pie. Or put even more simplistically, the rich get richer.

Take the example of Barcelona and Ajax – the former a Champions League giant of the last two decades with five titles overall and four since 2006. The Dutch club were a great 1970s European Cup club and have one Champions League from 1995 but not the recent success to boost their coefficient. Based on their respective performances in the 2018-2019 competition – in which both reached the Champions League semi-finals – under next season’s rules Barcelona would earn €40 million more than Ajax.

That would include a payment of €35 million for the Catalan club for their co-efficient rating – historical performance – as opposed to €19 million in that category for Ajax. The market pool payment, which is based on the size of each country’s Uefa broadcast deal, would see Barcelona out-earn Ajax by €23 million to €1 million. The two clubs' start fee of €16 million would be identical, and their performance fee would be close: €2 million extra for Barcelona’s slightly superior group stage record taking it to €47 million against Ajax’s €45 million. But overall Barcelona would earn €121 million to Ajax’s €81 million.

As a sporting competition, all play by the same rules. As a financial distribution mechanism there are huge disparities.

Thirty per cent of overall revenue in the Champions League will be distributed to clubs next season according to Uefa coefficient. That is the same share – 30 per cent - assigned to how they perform. The market pool share – a club’s domestic television deal with Uefa – dictates 15 per cent of earnings and the rest, 25 per cent, is shared equally.

It is a model that is expected to have an effect right through the hierarchy and will play out in domestic leagues across Europe. For instance, on the basis of their respective 2018-2019 Champions League campaigns, under the new proposed revenue distribution, CSKA Moscow would earn €15 million on their Uefa coefficient compared to just €5 million in that category for their less historically significant neighbours Lokomotiv. For domestic competitors, in leagues around Europe, that makes a big difference.

Had Leicester City qualified for the Champions League next season, their coefficient earning would have been well below the Premier League regulars in that competition. These big differences in revenue extend to the Europa League too where the figures are not so large but the effect on competition in smaller, less-wealthier domestic leagues would be just as profound.

Why such a large share of revenue distributed according to Uefa coefficient? It was changed at the behest of the Spanish, Italian and German clubs to reduce the percentage distributed according to the market pool. That was because Uefa’s deal with BT Sport is by far the biggest individual contract and thus ensured a greater pay-out for the Premier League clubs. By diminishing its importance in the calculation, so they cut the size of the payments to Premier League rivals

This is the Champions League next season, already a competition that feels set-up to offer greater reward to the established powers and we have not reached 2024 when it will be rewritten again. The model that preceded the Super League storm included those two infamous coefficient places for the new 36-team competition – a safety net to boost under-performing elite clubs. Much talk of that being struck out now Uefa no longer needs to appease big clubs. As things stand it is still on the table.

Much else that was fascinating in the report from Olsson, a former Uefa chief executive and a perceptive critic of the inequalities in the elite European game. For the period 2014-2018, research showed that 72 different clubs won domestic titles across Europe, down from 84 for 1992-1998. The same periods saw a rise in the average points domestic league champions earned per match. So too a rise in the percentage of games remaining after the league title was decided. In short, fewer clubs winning titles with more points, in less time.

What happens at the very top of the game, in the Champions League, and Europa League affects the rest of the game. How the revenue is distributed there reverberates down the hierarchy. Power begets money and, more often than not, on the pitch itself, money begets success.

[Chester Perry]

It has been a while since the last "The Bundle" podcast from Unofficial party so there is a lot to talk about in the Sports media space - it has all been discussed on here in the last 6 weeks or so - the opinions I have expressed on the news items seem to be matched here

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... -bundle-11

[Chester Perry]

It has been a busy day for the Telegraph football writers - next up is an exclusive interview with Aleksander Ceferin

Exclusive: This is the future of football - by European game's most powerful man
JASON BURT MAY 31, 2021

It was when Aleksander Ceferin returned to his native Slovenia having seen off the plan for a European Super League that Uefa’s President was reminded just how seismic a moment it had been for the game - and the widespread opposition to it from across the continent.

The position of Ceferin – a 53-year-old Slovenian lawyer who took over at Uefa in 2016 when he succeeded Michel Platini - appears to have been strengthened by the ESL crisis. Certainly, to his credit, he quickly plugged into public sentiment.

“When I came back to Slovenia an old lady with a stick stopped me on the street and said ‘thank you for fighting those bastards’. And she doesn’t watch football. It is a societal thing,” he said in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Telegraph Sport.

“A friend of mine in Switzerland, his son came home from school and said ‘Daddy, are we for Super League or against Super League?’ and his father says ‘we are against the Super League’. And his son, nine years old, said ‘thank God. Everybody in school is against the Super League’.”

Ceferin feels that the aborted proposal by a group of 12 clubs, including the Premier League ‘Big Six’, will be to football’s benefit. Not the idea, of course, but the fact that it placed the elite’s agenda firmly in the open.

“In a way it is very good that this happened because it was always in the air – big clubs against the rest,” Ceferin said.

“It was a question: can I come to your house and say ‘how much is it worth?’ and you say ‘£500,000’ and I say ‘I’ll give you £1million, now leave’. But it’s ‘no, no, this is my house.

“This was big and the threat has now gone. And from the other point of view it is clear how much football means to Europe.

“I think that the three clubs [Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus] who still think we have a Super League have helped us in a way because now it’s much easier to speak about solidarity and everything else because we can say to them ‘just go to your Super League if you don’t like it’. People were saying ‘American owners’ [of three Premier League clubs are to blame] but don’t forget that the only three who think the earth is flat are an Italian and two Spanish.

“Before, for many years, it was hard because there was always some kind of threat and now it’s clear that whoever has any common sense would never try this again. It was tough, it was stressful, for 48 hours, but it is good that it happened.”

Villarreal’s victory over Manchester United in the Europa League final is, Ceferin said, a prime example of why it is important to “keep the dream alive and even bigger than before” that any club can win a trophy. “Villarreal from a city of 50,000 people won the Europa League,” he said. “They won it on the pitch. It’s a clear sign.”

So, where does the European, domestic and international game go from here? This is the future of football, according to the man with the most power in the sport in Europe:

The Super League
Ceferin said the European Union will look at introducing laws to “protect the sports model of promotion and relegation” and kill off any future attempts by clubs to launch a breakaway Super League.

Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are ploughing ahead with legal action against Uefa and also against the nine clubs (the six English clubs, the two Milan clubs and Atletico Madrid) who dropped out of the ESL plans. At the same time the three ‘rebels’ are applying to be in next season’s Champions League competition.

“Even the most clueless people in the world understand that it [the ESL] is over,” Ceferin said.

He revealed that Uefa “will speak with the European Union” in support of a proposal from the French president Emmanuel Macron to outlaw any attempt to change the “model… which is promotion, relegation. You have national leagues, you have European competitions and you have to qualify. It’s the essence of football”. France assumes the EU council presidency in 2022.

Ceferin said he was also pleased that the UK government was planning similar legislation. “I am glad that the British government is thinking of some laws to protect the future to prevent the self-proclaimed Super League happening,” he said.

English clubs
Ceferin said that he has received a personal assurance and apology from Manchester United’s co-chairman Joel Glazer that the club will “never again” try to join such a venture.

In fact Ceferin claimed that he did not think any English clubs would ever be involved in breakaway plans and said: “Without English clubs it’s hard to say it’s a serious competition. I spoke with Joel Glazer and he was honest when he said ‘look we made a mistake. We know we have to suffer sanctions and we will never do it again’. I believe him.”

Ceferin was in Gdansk last week and met with United’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, who has resigned in the wake of the ESL debacle, and who he labelled a “snake” for apparently lying to him about his club’s involvement. Woodward has since privately suggested that he, too, was caught out by the extent of the ESL plan.

“He said he didn’t know that it was happening,” Ceferin concurred. “But, I don’t know. I don’t want to accuse him or not. I have not said anything about him to anyone else. I just said he called me and said the reforms [of the Champions League] are good. Maybe he was honest back then, I don’t know. But he [later] wanted to explain that he didn’t know it [the ESL] was ever happening. That’s as much as I know.”

It was, of course, two would-be Super League clubs in Chelsea and Manchester City who met in the Champions League Final and this interview takes place hours before that game kicked off in Porto on Saturday evening. “I am happy that they are now on our side, they are members of Uefa. I don’t know why we should now haunt them for the rest of their lives,” Ceferin said. “For me, for the nine, the story is over and I treat them exactly the same as all the others.”

Those nine, from the original 12, swiftly pulled out of the ESL, bringing it down, and later apologised and have already been dealt with by Uefa – a financial sanction of a combined 15million euros (£13.4million) with the money going to children’s and grassroots football – although disciplinary proceedings are ongoing against the outstanding three rebels.

Ceferin remains particularly grateful for the powerful response from England – where half the rebel clubs came from – with fans and the government mobilised. “It helped a lot, for sure,” he said. “I still think that we shouldn’t now judge them too harshly, those six English clubs, because they understood they did a mistake. For me it’s quite a big surprise that they didn’t know what they were stepping into. But you also have to show some greatness to admit you made a mistake and come back.”

Crucial was a video conference call with Boris Johnson and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden with the Prime Minister threatening a “legislative bomb” to prevent the breakaway. “I can’t say I was surprised but I was impressed,” Ceferin said. “I saw that they were backing our view, the view of the fans and all the football community strongly which was very, very important.”

Nevertheless it did not help when it came to trying to move the all-English Champions League Final to Wembley – after Turkey was placed on the UK’s ‘red list’ – with Ceferin admitting although it would have been “the easiest” to play in London no agreement could be reached and Uefa had “contractual obligations to sponsors, broadcasters. We simply could not do it”.

UK World Cup bid
Neither does the UK’s backing particularly aid the idea of a British Isles-bid being endorsed as Uefa’s European candidate for the 2030 World Cup. “It’s a bit too simplistic [to say that],” Ceferin said. “In any case I appreciate their support very much. It helped a lot that we all stood together. It’s not a help to Uefa; it was a help to football. It was a question: can 12 billionaires come and buy football? And the answer is clearly ‘no’. They misjudged that football is part of our heritage, part of our culture, our history and it’s not for sale. It was very good, very important that we all stood together. To connect this with any bids, for me, would be a problematic thing.”

Three remaining rebels
Understandably Ceferin remains angry with the three remaining ESL clubs. “Look, they are some of the strangest subjects that I have ever seen in my life,” he said. “They went with a press release ‘Super League still exists, we still have a Super League’. Two days later they sent an application to play in the Champions League.

“So they are in the Super League and out of the Champions League but they want to be in the Champions League? They said the Champions League is over but they still want to play in it? Now they are threatening, sending letters that they will sue us – criminal court, this court – they obviously have too much money. They should invest into women’s football and youth football.

“I think they are threatening the other nine clubs as well. I mean, is this the way to come back to the family? To threaten? There was a press release a couple of days ago ‘if the Super League doesn’t happen football is over’ or something like that. How delusional.”

But does he think they should take part in next season’s Champions League?

“Look for me the ideal situation is that everybody that qualifies plays,” Ceferin said before adding: “But, of course, it is strange to communicate with them when they disappeared overnight and didn’t come back until now. All we get are some letters. I didn’t read them but our legal division say there are letters threatening in every way. When I speak to 244 clubs of the ECA [European Clubs Association] they [the rebels] are not the most popular in the world. They sue everyone; they threaten everyone. Their view is ‘we play our elite competition and we give some charity to everyone’. Nobody wants charity.”

Uefa confident they will come out on top in legal dispute with the three remaining ESL members

Supporter power
Ceferin welcomed the UK government’s fan-led review but said it may be difficult to introduce the German “50+1 model” where the majority stake in a club is owned by supporters. “It will be very hard to implement it in England,” Ceferin said. “It’s working in Germany but it was never different. When you buy a club for one billion, two billion how can they take away 51 per cent?”

Although certain issues are clearly ongoing Ceferin does believe the episode can accelerate reform with greater fan engagement and the distribution of money.

“It’s much easier now because we stood together and have a chance to discuss everything,” he explained. “From one point of view we have to improve our competitions about revenue. When fans are shouting all the time about ‘Uefa, money, this, that…’ but 93.5 per cent of all the money goes to the clubs which is a huge number.

“From the other point of view we want to respect the leagues. We have better relations than ever with them. Now the new ECA without those three is much more honest – I hope I am not naïve but I doubt it – so I am optimistic.”

British competitions
British football is out-of-line with the rest of Europe by continuing with two domestic cup competitions – and Ceferin thinks it would make sense to scrap the League Cup in England.

“It’s not my decision but I think that English football would not lose much if you lose that cup,” Ceferin said. “There are some financial incentives for the lower tier teams but they should compensate that in another way. The thing is whatever we want to do we have to change the ecosystem.

"We cannot say that Uefa does financial fair play and the leagues don’t. We cannot say there is a limited squad for the Champions League but in the league you can have 150 players. These are things we have to align. I don’t want to force it too much because it’s not my jurisdiction to push the leagues but we try to present our arguments.”

Champions League
Ceferin believes it would be a “good idea” to have a Champions League “week of football” with the semi-finals and men’s and women’s finals all played in one venue despite the limited number of European cities capable of hosting it.

“Imagine if four teams come to London and you play the semis and the final. You play some youth competitions, women’s Champions League, maybe a concert or something. You could connect tickets and put the women’s final in the biggest stadiums,” Ceferin said. “Of course then it can only happen in maybe five cities in Europe, no more. Because it has to be a big city to host, I don’t know, 150,000 fans and clubs and everything.”

Uefa will reconsider reforms to the Champions League format from 2024 and, in particular, the controversial plans to award two places based on historic ‘co-efficients’. This change will most likely benefit clubs from the so-called ‘Big Five’ European leagues who do not qualify via their finishing position, although they would need to have qualified for the Europa League or the new Europa Conference League to be considered.

“After this Super League crashed I have had some talks with the clubs and there are different views,” Ceferin said. “Quite a few clubs now think that it might be better to leave those two positions to the champions of the smaller leagues or countries. But it’s time to discuss and I am personally not sure what would be better.”

Uefa may also re-examine whether it is worth increasing the number of group games from six to 10 with 36 teams competing (up from 32) as has been agreed.

Ceferin agreed with the recommendation made by Uefa’s club competitions committee to scrap the ‘away goals’ rule in European cup competitions: “there will be more goals, more extra-time and even more penalties.”

The World Game
Uefa are unconcerned by Fifa’s intention to expand its Club World Cup tournament and believe it will never be a rival to the Champions League.

“It can never be as interesting as the Champions League, that’s one thing and the second thing is it was a clear agreement with Fifa that it happens every four years and that eight European clubs out of 24 compete which – for me – can also be a quite interesting competition and we can promote each other,” Ceferin said. “I don’t see there being a problem. The calendar would never allow them to play more often than every four years and if they play every four years it’s not a problem.”

At the same time Ceferin was dismissive of the proposal, which is going through a Fifa feasibility study, to hold the men’s and women’s World Cups every two years.

“This doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s a completely irrational idea. It’s football politics and that sometimes is even more problematic than the normal politics. All of a sudden two or three federations propose a World Cup every two years. I mean the calendar is full. After Qatar the next World Cup is 2026. 2028 is the Euros and the Copa America. When the hell do you play and can we allow the players to play every summer a one-month tournament? This is irrational.”

Ceferin has also “never been completely comfortable” with next month’s Euros being played across 12 countries. “It was decided [by Uefa] before I came [as president] and I think it’s a very complicated model with different jurisdictions, different currencies, different countries, visa/ non-visa systems,” he said.

“And fans travelling – I don’t know, the group with Italy, Turkey, Wales and Switzerland is in Rome and Baku. That’s a very long flight and on top of it we have Covid. So it’s tough, really tough. Then there are red zones and amber and green and it’s changing every day. I don’t know how it will be next month. It’s very challenging for us. It’s been the worst year in my life but if I survive this one I think I might survive some more.”

[Chester Perry]

A statement from Germany's competition authorities is making people sit-up as it says there are issues that prevent it backing the country's 50+1 rule in football

https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedD ... nn=3591568

Bundeskartellamt provides preliminary assessment of DFL’s 50+1 ownership rule
Date of issue:31.05.2021

The Bundeskartellamt has today informed the Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL, German Football League) of its preliminary assessment under competition law of the so-called 50+1 rule. In the authority’s view the basic rule is potentially unproblematic under competition law because of the sport policy objectives it pursues. However, the Bundeskartellamt considers it problematic that the rule’s uniform application and enforcement is currently not ensured.

The 50+1 rule was introduced in 1999 on the one hand to provide the clubs of the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 with new funding possibilities and on the other to limit the influence of investors and retain the club character of the sport. The rule laid down in the statutes of the DFL stipulates that if the professional soccer division is outsourced into a capital company, a not-for-profit parent club has to retain the majority of the voting rights in that company (basic rule). However, the executive committee of the DFL can grant an exemption to this basic rule if an investor has substantially supported the parent club’s football activities for a continuous period of more than 20 years (benefactor exemption).

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: “Competition law does not stand in the way of the sport policy objectives pursued by the 50+1 rule. However, DFL must ensure that the rule is consistently applied and enforced for all clubs.
Professional sport is for good reasons subject to competition rules. The economic activities of associations and clubs are subject to German and European competition law. Restricting participation in league matches to entities controlled by not-for-profit clubs undoubtedly constitutes a restriction to competition. However, restrictions of competition can in certain cases escape the prohibition of anti-competitive agreements. With the 50+1 rule DFL intends to maintain the club character of the sport and ensure a certain even balance in sports competition. These sport policy objectives can also be recognised under competition law. In its basic form the 50+1 rule seems appropriate and proportionate for achieving such goals. On the other hand we have doubts about its combination with the current benefactor exemption. Exemptions to the basic rule are generally possible. Such exemptions should be clearly defined and not directly countervene the sport policy objectives which DFL itself pursues with the 50+1 rule.”

The appraisal of the 50+1 rule by the Bundeskartellamt goes back to an initiative of the DFL. The decision requested by DFL that there are no grounds for action by the Bundeskartellamt in this matter (Section 32c of the German Competition Act, GWB) cannot be issued at this stage. The DFL now has the opportunity to comment on the Bundeskartellamt’s preliminary assessment of the matter. The clubs and investors admitted as third parties to the proceeding can also give their comments.

The Bundeskartellamt currently assumes that the 50+1 basic rule can potentially escape the prohibition provisions under competition law.

Although the rule constitutes a restriction of competition as it sets certain conditions for participation in the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2, DFL is nevertheless pursuing legitimate objectives, i.e. to ensure the organisation of competition between membership clubs and an even balance in sports competition. Requirements of sport associations regarding participants in a contest can escape competition law if these serve the purpose of furthering certain aspects of the sports competition, but also if they serve ethical/social objectives.

DFL’s argument that it wishes to maintain the club character of the sport can be considered such an objective: It offers the public at large the possibility to co-determine a club's affairs by becoming a member and hence to participate in Bundesliga activity beyond their role as consumers.

With the 50+1 rule DFL also intends to help strike an even balance in sports competition in the Bundesliga. This is also an objective which can be recognised under competition law and the 50+1 rule in principle appears suitable to attain that objective. In its basic form the 50+1 rule prevents clubs from being able to secure more funding for sports competition by giving up control over their professional soccer division to investors, as compared to clubs which maintain their members’ power of influence.

After conducting a preliminary assessment, the Bundeskartellamt however has concerns about the current combination of the basic rule with the benefactor exemption.

If the benefactor exemption in its current version is included in the consideration, the restriction of competition appears disproportionate. This raises doubts whether the overall combination of the basic rule and exemption is suitable to achieve the objectives of the 50+1 basic rule. With the allowance of a benefactor exemption the controlling influence of the not-for-profit parent club in the Bundesliga participants affected will be eliminated and the sports activity detached from the club model. This would risk the loss of key characteristics such as membership participation in the clubs and transparency for members. Club football and an even balance in competition, which are DFL’s objectives in retaining the rule, will no longer be uniformly assured in all football clubs. This also results in a competitive disadvantage for those clubs which do not benefit from the exemption. Membership-owned and investor-financed clubs compete alongside one another. This raises doubts whether the overall rule is suitable for organising fair competition between clubs. If some clubs have better possibilities to secure equity funding than others, this is more likely to distort rather than create an even balance in sports competition.

The 50+1 rule was adopted in 1999 in the statutes of the Deutscher Fußball Bund (DFB, German Football Association, then governing Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 as predecessors of what is now DFL), together with the possibility to outsource the professional football division into a capital company. Until then only registered not-for-profit associations could take part in Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2. The majority of the currently 18 Bundesliga clubs have outsourced their professional soccer division into a capital company, which continues to be controlled by the not-for-profit association. Only four clubs continue to be fully organised as registered not-for-profit associations, including their professional soccer divisions (Mainz 05, Schalke 04, SC Freiburg, Union Berlin). Three clubs were granted a benefactor exemption (Bayer Leverkusen, TSG Hoffenheim, VfL Wolfsburg).

[GodIsADeeJay81]

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 92769?s=19

Something odd happening with Derby /Mel Morris

[Chester Perry]

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 92769?s=19

Something odd happening with Derby /Mel Morris

I strongly suspect it is linked to the fact Derby have not posted accounts for the same periods - due to the legal wrangles with the EFL

Having looked through the records at companies house
https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history
it looks like an idea that didn't really get off the ground (Medical and Sporting Technology Research Trust) though it had seed loans of £500k (probably from a few of Mel's other businesses). For someone who has been so active in stretching interpretations of accounts at the football club he does seem a bit sloppy in in his other interests

[Chester Perry]

Some intriguing stuff going on at Rochdale - seems to a battle for ownership, though not sure what American investors see in the club (can't see spotland being worth all that much).

It started with this - that former Swansea shareholder Dan Altman had invested in the club

https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/ ... ews/52441/

after some questioning the club's board released this statement

https://www.rochdaleafc.co.uk/news/2020 ... directors/

but that did not seem enough for one director who is highly suspicious of the new investors it would appear - and has been wary of takeover for some time - I find it surprising that such a long and loaded statement was allowed on the clubs web-site

https://www.rochdaleafc.co.uk/news/2020 ... rew-kelly/

just what is going on with clubs in the northwest? this all sounds quite worrying

Things have not been going well behind the scenes at Rochdale for some time now - last night however has appeared to have drawn a few things to a head - from RochadelAFCnews.com

https://rochdaleafcnews.com/2021/06/02/ ... lder-meet/

Major decisions made at Rochdale AFC shareholder meet
Jun 02 2021

The Rochdale AFC board of directors has withdrawn the four resolutions proposed for releasing new shares in the club and has agreed to instead explore alternative ways of generating new investment.

The decision was made at tonight’s host of Annual and Extraordinary General Meetings.

Rochdale AFC shareholders also voted to remove club chief executive David Bottomley and Graham Rawlinson from the board of directors during the five-hour marathon event.

The collective shareholders expressed concern at a proposed resolution that would have seen them waive their rights to purchase new shares for the next five years, as well as those to issue unlimited, 697,042 and 397,042 shares respectively.

Should the resolutions have been passed, it was revealed that the board had already identified preferred investors for the club, who intended to acquire a 51% stake. The identities of these investors were not revealed due them having signed Non-Disclosure Agreements.

However, after several compelling presentations from shareholders, the board agreed to withdraw the resolutions and explore alternative ways of raising funds and attracting investors.

It was then down to the other business of the evening.

Part of the Supporters’ Trust’s call for an EGM concerned the reversal of shareholders Dan Altman and Emre Marcelli’s decision to join the board of directors, claiming this was based upon “serious internal issues” at the club and their dissatisfaction at the club’s handling of those concerns. The attending board members were grilled by attending shareholders on key issues such as the extending of first-team manager Brian Barry-Murphy’s contract by a further year, and not informing the supporters, as well as questions around pay rises awarded to unnamed executives.

As a result, the two members put forward prior to the meetings, David Bottomley and Graham Rawlinson, were voted off the board of directors. This leaves only interim chairman Andrew Kelly, Tony Pockney and the newly elevated Nick Grindrod as full board members. Bottomley does, of course, retain his employed position as chief executive.

What remains now is for the shareholders and remaining board members to collectively decide on the future of the football club. Investment is desperately needed and that is not up for debate, but not at the risk of the club’s long-term future. Fresh leadership is needed too, with Kelly stepping down in the coming months.

Chairman of the Supporters’ Trust, Colin Cavanah, said: “I am personally delighted that the club’s share proposals have been withdrawn this evening. Had they been approved, we’d have been giving authorisation to sell the club to a board consisting of three people with a combined shareholding of less than 15% of the club. We are not averse to the club asking shareholders to approve the sale to a named individual or group, but it cannot be acceptable for shareholders being asked to approve a ‘blind’ sale.

“Under no circumstances should any of the outcomes from tonight’s meeting be considered personal or a vendetta, and it is both hurtful and offensive to the Dale shareholders to even suggest that. You only have to look at the number of people who have voted the same way as the Trust tonight.

“Dale fans share a common concern about the governance of any football club, and it is without doubt that there is a genuine pride among the fanbase that we remain the one EFL side in the Greater Manchester area to have never been in administration. Tonight’s outcomes indicate a real need for the club to engage with the fanbase and ask what supporters want from their football club.

“We will provide a full update to our members and fellow supporters via our website on Wednesday.”

The club has also been approached for comment.

[Chester Perry]

An extensive piece from the Financial Times on the relentless search by football for the 'Asian fan' - personally, I feel that many are already tied to clubs and those that are interested in the game and are not tied to a club are tied to one or more players

Football’s relentless search for the ‘Asian fan’
SAMUEL AGINI JUNE 02, 2021

Moments after Leicester City beat Chelsea to win the FA Cup on May 16, millions watching around the world were treated to a flourish of sporting theatre. The club’s 35-year-old Thai owner, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha — inheritor of an airport duty-free monopoly and one of the youngest billionaires in Asia — was yanked on to the pitch by the players, bear-hugged by each in turn and allowed to lift the trophy as one of the team.

Club owners in Manchester, Liverpool, Madrid, Paris and beyond, remarked one TV pundit, would be burning with jealousy.

Few would question the Leicester City owner’s status among Asia’s most devoted fans of the English game. But elsewhere the attitudes and feelings of fans of European football in Asia are much harder to pin down.

The “Asian fan”, as a concept, was prominent in the business plan for the attempted breakaway European Super League. Its giddying projections about the potential audience for the sport in the world’s most populous continent was seen as a driver of the initiative.

The breakaway proposal — made by a handful of leading European clubs — was shortlived, collapsing after large-scale fan protests. But even without the anger it generated, the plan was misjudged, and failed to understand both the Asian market and the power of stadium-going local fans, say advisers to clubs that would have been involved in the ESL. Its failure, says the head of one Asia-based broadcaster, should force European clubs, owners and leagues to more effectively define Asian audiences.

The Asian market has long been attractive to football club commercial directors — many of whom claim their teams have millions of supporters across the continent of 4.5bn people — but just how big is the market for the sport in Asia? And is it as deep as it is large?

For many years, say broadcasters, investors, rights owners and academics, Asian fans of European football have had an almost mythical status in the globalisation of the sport. They are often complacently viewed as a single block and their potential has often been overestimated.

Efforts by clubs to convert new generations of Asian fans have evolved, often unevenly, from occasional tours and local deals to more targeted marketing. The French club Paris Saint-Germain sells exclusive Asia-only merchandise through boutiques in Tokyo and Seoul, while Manchester United has commercial deals with the likes of ecommerce giant Alibaba and games company Konami. You then have longer-term investment tie-ups of the sort made between the City Football Group, which owns Manchester City, the English champions, and Yokohama Marinos in Japan.

Some fans in Asia are already fiercely devoted to one club, like their counterparts in Europe, while others are far more promiscuous, supporting teams across different leagues; some view the sport purely through the lens of gambling, others through status and branding; some follow particular superstars such as Ronaldo and Lionel Messi and will change club loyalties as their heroes roam.

“People’s loyalties in Europe are established very young and people don’t switch” says Simon Chadwick, a professor of Eurasian sport at EMLyon Business School, adding that while many Asian fans are “diehard”, the sport can be seen as a “consumer product laden with status”.

“[The clubs are] selling a kind of lifestyle, they’re selling a vision of Europe or London or Madrid or Milan,” he adds, “not just a kickaround between 22 players”.

Spanish giant Barcelona claims 165m Asians are “very interested” in the club based on Nielsen SportsDNA data. But researchers urge caution, and say these numbers should only ever be seen as rough guides. For all their commercial potential, say broadcasters, only a tiny fraction of these Asian fan bases are financially valuable.

Losses due to the pandemic have forced clubs to boost their digital profiles on Weibo and Douyin, the Chinese social media platforms, as they look to attract more commercial partners. Between 2018 and 2020, European teams increased their followings on Weibo from 60m to 93.3m and from 2.5m to 19.2m on Douyin, according to Mailman, the sports digital agency. In commercial terms, says a senior adviser to one Japanese J-League club, Asian fans are a “giant opportunity, with the world’s longest tail”.

Yet the clubs’ understanding of Asian fans is still only slowly improving from the amateurish, halfhearted version of a decade ago, says Jonathan Sullivan, a director of the Asia Research Institute at the University of Nottingham.

For those fans who are interested in spectacle, celebrity players and the “experience” of football, the current approach probably doesn’t make that much difference, he says. “But if clubs want to convert this kind of fan into a long-term supporter, and [also] keep the other kind engaged, they still have a lot of work to do to demonstrate that they respect and value them as supporters, not as an abstract source of revenue.”

Television dictates
The battle for a permanent place in the hearts and wallets of Asian football fans, say industry analysts, lays bare the complacencies and flaws of European football. Before its collapse, the super league proposal by 12 of Europe’s top clubs — including Chelsea, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Juventus and AC Milan — detonated a time bomb that has ticked quietly beneath the game for decades. The question is where will the next generation of football fans come from?

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, who led the business plan for the super league, has explicitly cited the opportunities in Asia. “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 in April when defending the super league idea. “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 world has globalised and with that has come commodification and fundamental economic change that has left western Europe less powerful, says Chadwick. The super league proposal, he says, painfully stabbed at the idea that the identity of traditional stadium-going fans was being eroded and that they were being left behind by great economic forces beyond their power to repel. “It was the moment where football found itself on the global front lines of an ideological debate that you found behind Brexit and the rise of Trump,” he adds.

The super league debate, he says, crystallised a series of questions about the future growth of the game now that domestic markets are saturated and the role of Asian fans at the heart of that. Clubs will have to make compromises, he says, with their traditional fan bases if they are serious about building new ones in China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India and elsewhere in the region.

That process has, in some cases, begun: Spain’s La Liga has altered kick-off times to better suit Asian time zones and clubs such as Barcelona have opened academies in Asia, including four in Japan, where its shirt sponsor Rakuten is based, four in India and two in China.

Clubs talk enthusiastically about big data and the granularity of the information they have managed to capture through social media engagement, says Timothy Bridge, the director of Deloitte’s sports business practice. But most are some distance behind the curve just at the point where sophisticated tech giants, like Amazon, are entering sport with infinitely more powerful tools of engagement.

The typical Asian football fan may be someone whose only financial outlay on the game is through their TV or streaming subscription and who doesn’t normally interact with an individual club. If they do, they will most likely do so on platforms not controlled by the club, such as Facebook, Twitter or Weibo, sites that do not typically share the data the clubs most need.

“The problem for clubs is that they really don’t know who those people are. They don’t know their habits. They don’t know their attitudes. They don’t [even] know their favourite players,” says Bridge. “It’s that direct interaction that they crave.”

Gambling on the fans
Wang Ruizheng, from Shanxi province, is an example of the rapid rise of Chinese football fans. Now 30, Wang became enraptured with the sport two decades ago, when China first qualified for the World Cup finals in 2002.

Soon after, he discovered the major leagues in Europe, eventually becoming a fan of Real Madrid, the record 34-time Spanish champions, and a convert to the drama of the European game. He was originally drawn to individual characters, such as José Mourinho, and later Cristiano Ronaldo.

He points to the victory of the Portuguese club Porto, in the 2004 Champions League, Greece’s triumph at the European championship in the same year, and Leicester winning the 2016 premier league as examples of the sport’s charm. “Any miracle can happen,” he says.

Wang, who watches around two live broadcasts a week, is just one of millions of Chinese to fell in love with the game over the past few decades. But his passion should not be taken for granted, says Donna Wong, an associate professor at the graduate school of sport sciences at Waseda University in Tokyo.

There is a sometimes confusing duality in Asian consumption of European football — many fans do not necessarily care too much about the individual leagues and the week-to-week rivalries between clubs so long as there is a good show and, crucially in one of the world’s largest betting markets, a good game to gamble on, she says. Clubs are slowly realising that they have to do more, says Wong, given that Asian fans are now letting it be known that they will no longer be treated simply as cash cows.

The success story most often cited as the exemplar of how to win and keep the support of Asian fans is the American National Basketball Association — which has imprinted itself on multiple generations of followers without appearing to be solely out to exploit the fans as customers. It did this, in part, by offering to build courts in every Chinese city, playing key games of the main season in China — not just exhibition matches, regular tours and, through investment it has nurtured players that have gone on to play in the NBA. For all that success, however, the NBA has also provided other sports leagues with a salutary lesson of expanding in China. The league’s relations with Beijing were soured by a 2019 tweet in support of the Hong Kong protests.

Yet the differences between the NBA and European football are critical. The NBA was able to act as single negotiator and business unit and dictate the behaviour of the individual teams. In contrast the European leagues have only loose control over their clubs. And many of those clubs are deeply suspicious of one another and in open conflict over finances and competing for player transfers.

It means, says a large investor in Asian clubs, that long-term investments in programmes that might create Asian football academies that are more than licensed branding exercises and, ultimately, deliver European clubs with a stream of young players, are too often sidelined in favour of short-term demands for ever bigger transfer budgets.

Competing for consumers’ attention
As streaming companies such as Amazon Prime, make inroads into sport, football executives and existing broadcasters are faced with the challenge of changing audience habits. Fans in Asia are already more likely to watch matches on their phones than European counterparts.

Gao Da first started watching football with his father, again, during the 2002 World Cup, — the only time the finals have been held in Asia. The resident of Sichuan began to follow AC Milan, which he says was the most popular team in China at the time. The Italian club’s first office outside of its home country opened in Beijing in 2017. This year, the club added a second, in Shanghai.

“There is no magic formula when it comes to fan engagement — you have to do a lot of things right consistently — but at AC Milan we believe it is all about local engagement and prioritising attention towards important markets like China,” says Casper Stylsvig, chief revenue officer at AC Milan.

Gao began to pay more attention to the English Premier League in the mid-2000s. After flirting with Arsenal, he switched allegiance to Liverpool. But he also follows Germany’s Bayern Munich, which claims 110m followers or sympathisers, but not necessarily fans, in China. The idea that Gao’s consumption of the sport is typical in Asia will have propelled the thinking behind the super league, says Deloitte’s Bridge.

Although top-level European clubs may broadly see Asia as the greatest long-term opportunity for growth, the window for securing and monetising that may be smaller than many realise. Interest in European football in Japan has always been comparatively low because of the strength of the domestic J-League. That points to a moment of maturity, say academics, at which Asian fans might ultimately favour a successful domestic league over European ones.

It has never been more urgent for clubs to make the compromises with their traditional fan bases that they have been avoiding, says the Asian head of one global broadcaster. The clubs are not just competing among themselves but with other claims on the attention of young audiences.

“They are facing this kind of crisis just as the gravy train is coming to an end,” he adds, “The younger generation everywhere is not as interested in football — or at least, not as interested in consuming it the way their parents did.”

Additional reporting by Wang Xueqiao in Shanghai

[Chester Perry]

Bloomberg with an article about Bordeaux and it's reported dale price - which should prove be a challenge to find I would expect

With Hedge Fund Out, Bordeaux Club’s Suitors Need $120 Million
By David Hellier and Angelina Rascouet
29 April 2021, 15:38 BST Updated on 29 April 2021, 17:50 BST

- French club was placed in hands of administrators this month
- Rothschild working to help find buyer for Ligue 1 soccer club

FC Girondins de Bordeaux will require at least 100 million euros ($121 million) of fresh investment if it’s to survive financial collapse amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter.

The club is looking for new owners after being placed in the hands of administrators and potential buyers have been told they will need to pay this initial amount to cover debts as well as projected losses for the next two years, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Bordeaux President Frederic Longuepee last week put the club under the protection of the City’s commercial court until a “sustainable solution” can be found. Court administrators have hired Rothschild & Co. to advise on a sale process, one of the people said.

Deliberations are ongoing and the value of any rescue deal could still change, according to the people. Representatives for Rothschild and the Tribunal de Commerce de Bordeaux declined to comment, while a spokesperson for Bordeaux didn’t immediately provide comment.

Soccer clubs across Europe have been dealing with the financial impact of the Covid-19 crisis, which has forced the closure of stadiums for more than a year. In France, the situation has been exacerbated by the breakdown of a lucrative media rights deal with the Spanish broadcaster Mediapro, which has seen clubs suffer further declines in revenue. Earlier this month French club AS Saint-Etienne was put up for sale amid these pressures, Le Progres reported.

Bordeaux said in a statement last week that its position became perilous when backers King Street Capital, a U.S. hedge fund that gained control of the club in 2018, took the decision to stop investing in the team. Bordeaux competes in France’s top Ligue 1 division, making it the first club in any of Europe’s top five soccer leagues to have had administrators called in before the end of the pandemic.

Founded in 1881, Bordeaux has won France’s top division title six times in its history. Over the years it has been home to some of the country’s most celebrated players, including World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane.

Its plight has already caught the attention of French billionaire Francois Pinault, a major investor in luxury conglomerate Kering SA who also owns Chateau Latour, one of Bordeaux’s premier vineyards. In a letter made public in French daily Sud Ouest this week, 84 year-old Pinault urged other Bordeaux wine estate owners to help rescue the soccer club, saying he’d been “moved” by the thought it could disappear.

While he can’t buy Bordeaux because he already owns Stade Rennais FC, a team in his home region of Brittany, Pinault said he’d be willing to participate in any rescue led by others. Pinault’s fortune is estimated at $50.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

— With assistance by Myriam Balezou

(Adds Bordeaux history in seventh paragraph)

Apparently there is a bidder for Bordeaux who has got to the data room stage - somewhat unfortunately it may seem, is the fact that it is the former CEO of the LFP (French Ligue) who oversaw the Mediapro TV contract (the one that most neutral, but informed observers thought was doomed to fail) that collapsed so spectacularly within it;s first 3 months last season

https://twitter.com/GFFN/status/1399820744788430848

[HitchinClaret]

It looks like the money has fallen out of the championship and below... extracts from an email I just received:

"We have an opportunity for FRONT of Shirt available with a top English Championship club for the
upcoming 2021/2022 season.

Price requirement; £450,000 for the season which includes your company logo on home and away jersey as well as a full package of rights including TEN minutes of LED advertisement for every home match.

Other options include;
English Premier League club; Official Financial Services Partner; £250,000.
La Liga club; Official Financial Services Partner; €275,000.
Serie A club; Official Financial Services Partner; €275,000.
Ligue 1 club; Official Financial Services Partner; €200,000. "

Can only imagine what that would have been 2 or 3 years ago...

[Chester Perry]

It looks like the money has fallen out of the championship and below... extracts from an email I just received:

"We have an opportunity for FRONT of Shirt available with a top English Championship club for the
upcoming 2021/2022 season.

Price requirement; £450,000 for the season which includes your company logo on home and away jersey as well as a full package of rights including TEN minutes of LED advertisement for every home match.

Other options include;
English Premier League club; Official Financial Services Partner; £250,000.
La Liga club; Official Financial Services Partner; €275,000.
Serie A club; Official Financial Services Partner; €275,000.
Ligue 1 club; Official Financial Services Partner; €200,000. "

Can only imagine what that would have been 2 or 3 years ago...

My first thought was Blackpool - I may be right as the last couple of seasons have been VISIT Blackpool which is the local council, I cannot see a local authority stretching to that at this current time

the financial services partner in the Premier League looks about right for half the clubs in the league, that does not seemed to have dropped

[Chester Perry]

Soccerex is owned by Joseph DaGrossa who has been sniffing around Southampton for a long time, but still cannot get to an agreement on the price it seems

https://twitter.com/mjshrimper/status/1 ... 9750978562

so naturally he has also been looking in the Premier League too, which he refers to as the "big grandaddy" for some reason, and is not too worried by a club that is generating debt. so that makes Crystal Palace and West Ham understandable considerations (remember they fall into the Project Big Picture 9 who have the longest current tenure in the Premier League).

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/07/foot ... index.html

Of course he has been a tyre kicker at Newcastle United too

https://www.skysports.com/football/news ... s-unlikely

he was talking about Newcastle again as recently as September last year

It is not just Premier League clubs he has been linked with, he is known to favour a multi-club model, last year he was reportedly considering partnering in a takeover at Roma.

https://www.chiesaditotti.com/2020/6/3/ ... ed-in-roma

Previously he has also talked up opportunities in La Liga too during the early stages of the Pandemic (you can see why these guys are referred to as vultures)

https://soccer.nbcsports.com/2020/04/21 ... etafe-mls/

He has actually owned a football club for the total of 1 year - his time in charge at Bordeaux is remembered for his over estimation of the value of the club and how much it could grow

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/gac ... et-capital

this is perhaps a caricature of what American Investors in football are like, but is this really what our game wants or needs, now or ever?

I think Southampton fans should be relieved that Joe DaGrosa has finally decided to walk away from taking over at Southampton - was his interest really serious?, he has continued to twitch over the price and seems to be of the worst kind of Private Equity "vulture"

The Athletic with the news he has finally pulled out

https://theathletic.com/2627597/2021/06 ... ed_article

[Chester Perry]

Today's Business of Sport podcast talks to Tracey Crouch MP who is leading the governments fan led review of the game (which has actually started - though unfortunately much of it does not look like much of it will take place in the public sphere as none of it yet has been on Parliament tv, which I find scandalous)

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cH ... IBBAF&ep=6

I will listen to it later

So I have now listened to this, takeaway's
- Tracey Crouch comes across really well and explains the role of the panel really well (it is a sounding board to test the points that are be raised to her) and that now makes sense if still a fair bit arbitrary and "friendly" to her way of thinking.

- I am greatly alarmed by the fact that she believes that a regulator is a de facto given (solutions based not problem based thinking) and that her report is about determining her recommendations about what it is the regulator would regulate.

A piece from the Guardian on the apparent agreement that there will be an independent football regulator

Independent regulator for football edges closer after breakaway fears
The government and the game are more receptive to change as Conservative MP Tracey Crouch leads a ‘fan-led’ review

Paul MacInnes
Thu 3 Jun 2021 11.24 BST

The football season may almost be over, but a busy summer awaits. The Euros, of course, a transfer window distorted by Covid and plans – not to mention hopes – for the full return of fans next season. But in the background something equally important will be bubbling away, the consequences of which could have a much greater impact.

The Conservative MP Tracey Crouch recently confirmed the star chamber of experts who will help inform her “fan-led” review of the game. Roy Hodgson is on it, as is Clarke Carlisle, media executive and chair of the Women’s Super League Dawn Airey and Everton CEO Prof Denise Barrett-Baxendale.

It’s a high-powered list, albeit light on the being-led-by-fans bit. The only supporter representative is Kevin Miles of the Football Supporters’ Association, though it is intended that the panel will help Crouch in consulting fan groups on their thoughts.

The history of parliamentary scrutiny into the form and future of the national game is long, or at least some of the reports’ names are. In the past decade alone there has been the 2011 DCMS Select Committee report into domestic football governance and the 2016 Expert Working Group on Football Supporter Ownership and Engagement. Both were thorough and well-intentioned, neither resulted in any meaningful change.

People burned before are concerned that change will not happen this time either, and some are senior figures within the game. But there are also good reasons to think that the latest process may be different and that one idea in particular, an independent regulator, may come to pass.

When fan groups argue for a regulator, as the FSA has done for years, they do so for many reasons; from making sure bad owners don’t drive a club into the ground, to looking for a more equitable distribution of the money that sloshes around the game. That these calls have never been heeded are partly because of a Conservative government’s reluctance to intervene in the sacred functions of the marketplace and because the clubs themselves (in the shape of the leagues of which they are part) wouldn’t countenance it.

At last, that may be about to change. In an interview with the Business of Sport podcast last week Crouch said that, when it comes to a regulator, the “genie was out of the bottle”. Under the terms of reference of her report, she will be expected to make a recommendation to the government about a regulator that they will have to either accept or reject. It can be understood from Crouch’s remarks that her recommendation will be positive.

How the government responds will likely depend on the detail. But as has been seen in recent months, not only over the European Super League, but in talking up Wembley for the Champions League final and launching research into a World Cup bid for 2030, this administration sees football as something that can win the favour of the public. This is underscored by the fact that, thanks to their “Red Wall” victories, more Tory MPs have a league club in their constituency than for many years.

It’s not only that the government is more receptive to the idea of change, however, the game is too. The EFL, forced into taking commercial loans to keep clubs afloat during the Covid crisis, is upfront in declaring the current system – whereby Championship clubs regularly spend more than 100% of their income – as unsustainable. It wants regulation.

The Premier League, meanwhile, is sticking publicly to the line that the game can regulate itself perfectly well, thank you very much. The problem with that position is the small matter of the whole game nearly collapsing in April, with opinions split over whether the league would have been able to stop the breakaway league had the matter gone to the courts.

Recently the FSA held a meeting with the Premier League’s senior strategist, Bill Bush, who offered a tweaked position in light of the ESL. The league, he said, supported self-regulation but “this only works if everyone plays fairly within the rules”. It would appear therefore that a regulator, appointed by government with legal powers to prevent a future split, may be of interest to the Premier League.

If it got that, what else might it accept? Not much, you’d think, but other stakeholders seem to be coming round to an idea that would see a regulator enforce rules which are already there but which the game’s authorities have struggled with: namely financial stability, and making sure owners are fit and proper people.

If a regulator could make sure a club’s finances were above board and that a club’s owner was in funds, there may also be a role in making sure the same owner didn’t want to change the club’s name or move it to Guadeloupe.

The process has yet to begin, with Crouch expected to deliver a preliminary verdict by the end of July and a full report in October. The ultimate landing ground for any deal could shift. At this point, it seems that big hopes for a financial reset, or of fans controlling clubs in a 50+1 style scenario, will not come to pass. But real tangible change appears possible, and it only took an existential crisis to get there.

[Chester Perry]

Is it only me that thinks this is a bonkers development from Newcastle fans

https://twitter.com/NCSL1892/status/1400192435255484422

[Chester Perry]

Things have not been going well behind the scenes at Rochdale for some time now - last night however has appeared to have drawn a few things to a head - from RochadelAFCnews.com

https://rochdaleafcnews.com/2021/06/02/ ... lder-meet/

Major decisions made at Rochdale AFC shareholder meet
Jun 02 2021

The Rochdale AFC board of directors has withdrawn the four resolutions proposed for releasing new shares in the club and has agreed to instead explore alternative ways of generating new investment.

The decision was made at tonight’s host of Annual and Extraordinary General Meetings.

Rochdale AFC shareholders also voted to remove club chief executive David Bottomley and Graham Rawlinson from the board of directors during the five-hour marathon event.

The collective shareholders expressed concern at a proposed resolution that would have seen them waive their rights to purchase new shares for the next five years, as well as those to issue unlimited, 697,042 and 397,042 shares respectively.

Should the resolutions have been passed, it was revealed that the board had already identified preferred investors for the club, who intended to acquire a 51% stake. The identities of these investors were not revealed due them having signed Non-Disclosure Agreements.

However, after several compelling presentations from shareholders, the board agreed to withdraw the resolutions and explore alternative ways of raising funds and attracting investors.

It was then down to the other business of the evening.

Part of the Supporters’ Trust’s call for an EGM concerned the reversal of shareholders Dan Altman and Emre Marcelli’s decision to join the board of directors, claiming this was based upon “serious internal issues” at the club and their dissatisfaction at the club’s handling of those concerns. The attending board members were grilled by attending shareholders on key issues such as the extending of first-team manager Brian Barry-Murphy’s contract by a further year, and not informing the supporters, as well as questions around pay rises awarded to unnamed executives.

As a result, the two members put forward prior to the meetings, David Bottomley and Graham Rawlinson, were voted off the board of directors. This leaves only interim chairman Andrew Kelly, Tony Pockney and the newly elevated Nick Grindrod as full board members. Bottomley does, of course, retain his employed position as chief executive.

What remains now is for the shareholders and remaining board members to collectively decide on the future of the football club. Investment is desperately needed and that is not up for debate, but not at the risk of the club’s long-term future. Fresh leadership is needed too, with Kelly stepping down in the coming months.

Chairman of the Supporters’ Trust, Colin Cavanah, said: “I am personally delighted that the club’s share proposals have been withdrawn this evening. Had they been approved, we’d have been giving authorisation to sell the club to a board consisting of three people with a combined shareholding of less than 15% of the club. We are not averse to the club asking shareholders to approve the sale to a named individual or group, but it cannot be acceptable for shareholders being asked to approve a ‘blind’ sale.

“Under no circumstances should any of the outcomes from tonight’s meeting be considered personal or a vendetta, and it is both hurtful and offensive to the Dale shareholders to even suggest that. You only have to look at the number of people who have voted the same way as the Trust tonight.

“Dale fans share a common concern about the governance of any football club, and it is without doubt that there is a genuine pride among the fanbase that we remain the one EFL side in the Greater Manchester area to have never been in administration. Tonight’s outcomes indicate a real need for the club to engage with the fanbase and ask what supporters want from their football club.

“We will provide a full update to our members and fellow supporters via our website on Wednesday.”

The club has also been approached for comment.

It seems that the new investors being linked were Matt Southall of recent Charlton Athletic notoriety and the the Bury Chief Executive who helped ovesee their demise according to todays Price of Football Podcast

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cH ... g&hl=en-GB

[Chester Perry]

This analysis of the Premier Leagues Domestic TV rights roll over from PP Foresight founder Paolo Pescatore for SportsProMedia reads a lot like my own analysis of the deal, it does however carry the warning of a potential sting in the tail of the distributions, regardless of the deal struck withthe government over the extra £100m

Jamie Gardner | The Premier League’s renewed domestic rights deal suits all parties, for now
After the Premier League agreed to extend its domestic broadcast deals, PA Media's chief sports reporter speaks to PP Foresight founder, Paolo Pescatore, about the implications for English soccer.

By Jamie Gardner Posted: June 2 2021

The renewal of the Premier League's existing domestic television deals for a further three years allows time for the "digital divide" to be bridged which might allow the league to consider a more revolutionary approach to selling its rights next time around.

Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon Prime Video and BBC Sport have an agreement in principle to roll over the three-year deal which began in 2018 for a further three years from 2022 to 2025, subject to the UK government issuing a special order under the Competition Act to allow the private sale to proceed.

Paolo Pescatore, a technology, media and telecommunications analyst who is the founder of PP Foresight, sees very few negatives for those involved in the deal, given the current market conditions.

Some analysts I have spoken to had expected the Premier League and its clubs to consider at least a small direct-to-consumer element in this new domestic deal. Pescatore believes the infrastructure is not there this time, but could be next time.

"Any approach is reliant on having a reliable and robust telecoms infrastructure," he said. "There are still concerns of delivering live sport at scale without technical issues such as lag, buffering, pixellation.

"People still struggle in getting a signal on their smartphones which remains one of the biggest obstacles to adoption. More needs to be done to bridge the digital divide and ensure robust and reliable connectivity for all users."

The Premier League need look no further than the difficulties experienced in streaming Glastonbury's 'Live At Worthy Farm' event recently for evidence of how perilous an area this can still be. But Pescatore believes it is almost certainly a space the Premier League is ready to move into.

"There is a fine delicate balance of maximising the value compared to cannibalisation," he said.

"Change is imminent and over the next cycles we will see the Premier League pivot towards a new approach. While Netflix has paved the way, success is not guaranteed, and there have been casualties."

While an extension of the deal clearly suited Sky Sports and BT Sport, whose business models are built around these rights, the benefits to Amazon Prime of extending its ten per cent share of live matches seemed less obvious. After picking up a small package three years ago, the online retail giant was arguably well placed to have bid for a bigger stake this time around.

However, Pescatore felt it was the perfect outcome for Amazon too.

"The current set of rights suits Amazon to a tee," he said. "For Amazon, the focus is on driving value for Prime subscribers. Amazon has been steadily increasing its coverage of sport, driving people towards Prime.

"The financials underpinning Premier League are significantly different compared to its other sports rights such as ATP tennis. It’s one thing to pay UK£10 million for ATP rights, and it’s another thing to pay millions on a per Premier League match basis; this excludes the production costs as well.

"Furthermore, Amazon’s current set of Premier League TV rights fits nicely around bundles and packages around the key Christmas trading period. It’s a win-win scenario for Amazon in driving further value among customers."

Digital sports specialist DAZN has not commented since the private sale was announced, but might have been expected to bid had there been an open auction.

The fact that BT Sport remains a right holder could make it an attractive acquisition for DAZN, after BT confirmed it was in discussions with selected parties over the future of its sports television arm.

Pescatore said: "The outcome puts BT in a far stronger position in forging a strategic deal with DAZN. In light of this current arrangement, the streamer is forced to wait another three years at a minimum to get these lucrative sports rights."

One thing the league must be wary of, Pescatore believes, is splitting the cake too many ways.

"Fragmentation is a big issue and is an inhibitor to adoption," he said.

"Currently there are too many players that offer different ways of accessing services which require separate billing relationships. The Premier League, along with other sporting associations, need to be wary not to force users to watch events illegally. Piracy is an ongoing problem that is showing no signs of easing up and will only continue to proliferate with further fragmentation or price rises."

The English Football League (EFL) said the renewal was a 'missed opportunity' on the part of the British government to use its leverage in the deal to address what the lower-tier league body sees as the financial divide between the Premier League and everyone else.

The deal includes a further UK£100 million (US$141.6 million) over four years to the English soccer pyramid.

It is understood the EFL will not make representations to the government as part of the consultation over the special order, but will make its feelings known as part of the fan-led review.

It feels the arrangements for the split of revenue between 2022 and 2025 are not yet set in stone.

Pescatore added: "We live in challenging times and the future remains uncertain.

"Arguably, the [UK] government should have driven a harder bargain to get this over the line. The additional amount is a drop in the ocean compared to the billions secured for the next Premier League cycle."

[Chester Perry]

More woe for Swindon Town Supporters Trust after they provided a witness statement for the legal proceedings against the club's owner - this statement from them gives us the detail

NEW ARTICLE April 14, 2021 James Spencer
PRESS RELEASE FROM TRUSTSTFC – Swindon Town FC Cease all Communications with TrustSTFC

SWINDON TOWN CEASE ALL COMMUNICATIONS WITH TRUSTSTFC

TrustSTFC were today informed by Steve Anderson, CEO of Swindon Town FC, that the football club are to stop all formal communications with the Trust.

On being made aware of current chairman Lee Power preparing an application to enable placing the club into administration, the Trust decided to put on record for the courts that there is a viable alternative to the current ownership of Lee Power and that it is supportive of Clem Morfuni’s response to our open letter and his commitment to provide the plans, vision and commitment to openness and transparency that the Trust has been asking for.  The Trust provided a witness statement via the Axis legal team regarding the viable alternative to the current regime running STFC.

Following our positive support for Clem Morfuni at today’s hearing in respect of Lee Power’s application to put the club into administration or sell to “Able” (a company we still know nothing about or have not heard anything from) we have been informed by the current management of STFC that they will no longer have any communication with TrustSTFC.

After weeks of public silence from the club, punctuated by multiple futile private communications between Mr Anderson and the Trust, we are now left with no official comment re the critical issues the club is facing, both in terms of its financial viability and its future prosperity. It also leaves the community at a loss regarding more day-to-day issues that impact fans, such as the situation regarding season tickets for this season and next.

We have regularly encouraged the current management of STFC to respond to our open letter and provide financial transparency to the Trust and the wider supporter base but to date this has been ignored. 

The Trust are obviously extremely disappointed but not surprised that all formal channels of communication with the current ownership of Swindon Town are now closed to us.

TrustSTFC has always been and remains owner-agnostic provided that the owners are working for the long-term best interests of STFC, its supporters and the local community. 

This latest update on Swindon Town's proceedings looks far from positive, from the Swindon Advertiser

5 hrs ago
Questions over £4m ‘missing from Swindon Town directors’ account’

By Tom Seaward
Crime & Court Reporter

QUESTIONS have been raised over an alleged £4m missing from the Swindon Town directors’ loan account.

Lawyers for Michael Standing, the football agent who has staked a claim to 50 per cent of the County Ground club, say their client is still owed £3.7m from around £6m he invested.

In papers filed with the High Court, they say the amount outstanding on the directors’ loan account – essentially money they are owed by the club – should be £7.5m rather than the £3.2m shown on club records.

Colin West QC, counsel for Mr Standing in his court fight with Swindon Town chairman Lee Power, suggested in a skeleton argument prepared for the High Court hearing in May that the balance between the two figures had been taken out by Mr Power – and could have been used to buy out debentures held by former club owners.

He wrote: “The question to which this gives rise is: what has happened so as to reduce the amount owed under the Director’s Loan from £7.5m (on [Michael Standing]’s calculation) to the figure where it currently stands of just over £3m?

“The answer to this appears to be that the difference has been drawn out by [Lee Power] and retained by him. This is of course entirely contrary to the terms of the Agreement between the parties, which was that any sums taken out of the Club by means of working capital surpluses from time to time were to be shared on a 50/50 basis with [Michael Standing].

“That therefore amounts to a further sum of approximately £4m, half of which [Lee Power] was bound in equity to account for to [Michael Standing], which he has failed to account for and which remains unaccounted for as things stand.”

Mr Power has said that, if the club is sold to American buyers Able, he will write off the debt owed to him in the directors’ loan account. But if Clem Morfuni’s Axis buys the club he would “require repaying in full on any completion of a sale”.

However, if Mr Standing’s calculations about the amount in the directors’ loan are correct, it could be Mr Power who owes money to his alleged Swindon Town co-owner, the football agent’s lawyers claimed.

Mr West QC suggested that the money his client claims is missing could have been used to buy two debentures – or loans against the club – held by former owners Andrew Black and Sir Martyn Arbib.

“[Mr Power] has never explained where he obtained the money to purchase the debentures,” Mr West QC wrote in his skeleton argument, which the court has now released to the press.

“Throughout 2020 his position was that he was impecunious and would before too long run out of money to keep funding the club. Yet he was nevertheless able to purchase the £3m debentures from their previous owners, Black and Arbib.

“[Mr Power] has never said where he sourced such finance. In the circumstances, the obvious inference is that he used money he had obtained from the club by way of repayments of his director’s loan.”

Rob Angus of STFC Supporters’ Trust said he could not comment on the specific allegations. He said: “The Trust is deeply concerned about the governance of the club and the ongoing uncertainty as to ownership and the club’s financial position.

“After due diligence on Axis, the Trust believes the only way to secure the short and long term future of the club is a sale to Axis and urges Lee Power to do the right thing and sell to Axis.”

Mr Power was approached for comment via Swindon Town FC.

[Chester Perry]

Valuations of MLS Franchises continue to surge (despite the loss making and miniscule TV deal) just look at that last paragraph - from Sportico

D.C. UNITED VALUED AT $710 MILLION AS NFL’S MARK INGRAM INVESTS
BY SCOTT SOSHNICK, EBEN NOVY-WILLIAMS JUNE 3, 2021 3:36PM

Houston Texans running back Mark Ingram II is buying a minority stake in D.C. United in a deal that values the club at $710 million, among the highest totals ever for an MLS franchise, according to people familiar with the deal.

The former Heisman Trophy winner is one of a trio of investors taking equity in the team controlled by Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan, said the people, who were granted anonymity because the matter is private. The $710 million valuation is among the highest ever for an MLS franchise during a minority stake transaction. Last year a handful of LAFC owners bought out the stake of the team previously owned by Malaysian businessman Vincent Tan at a valuation that exceeded $700 million.

It’s the latest sign of escalating values of MLS teams. In the past month, the Houston Dynamo and NWSL’s Dash were bought by Ted Segal for around $400 million, and the Wilf family purchased Orlando City SC and its stadium for $400-450 million. By contrast, D.C. United was valued at roughly $60 million, a then-MLS record, when Levien invested back in 2012.

D.C. United and MLS declined to comment. Ingram’s agent, Paul Bobbitt, said he could neither confirm nor deny the running back’s involvement. The identities of the other two investors aren’t known.

Ingram won the Heisman Trophy in 2009, the same season Alabama won the national title. He was drafted by the New Orleans Saints in the first round and has been named to the Pro Bowl three times over his 10-year career.

He is just the latest professional athlete to invest in MLS. Brooklyn Nets star James Harden, for instance, is a stakeholder in the Houston club, while his teammate Kevin Durant owns a piece of the Philadelphia franchise. NFL quarterback Russell Wilson is a part owner of the Seattle Sounders, and LAFC’s ownership group includes Magic Johnson, soccer star Mia Hamm and her husband, former MLB shortstop Nomar Garciaparra.

D.C. United is one of MLS’s original teams, with league titles in 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2004. The team plays in a 20,000-seat, soccer-specific stadium that opened in 2018.

MLS is engaged in a rapid expansion push that has seen the price to join the league—and valuations overall—jump significantly. Toronto FC paid $10 million to become the league’s 13th team back in 2007, and those fees have jumped into the hundreds of millions, with MLS expecting to be at 30 teams within the next few years.

[Chester Perry]

Barcelona have proposed a rapid fix to help address their financial situation, add more members (potentially millions of them) - this requires the existing members to agree to it and will bring with it a nightmare scenario when putting votes to the members at election time - but imagine what that annual fee of euro 185 could do for their finances with just 1 million additional members

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 2893877250

[Chester Perry]

In preparatory research for an article I am writing for the London Clarets magazine "Something to write home about" in regards to our clubs's accounts and financial outlook pre and post takeover I came across this advisory from PWC: "Accounting for typical transactions in the football industry - Issues and Solutions under IFRS", for a non accountant like me it was a bit of a godsend in helping to understand things. I was particularly intrigued by the treatment of Agents fees, given that for the most part they are paid on behalf of the work they do for the player's interests - I had assumed that would fall under wages (as players are taxed for cost of the services enacted on their behalf) but it transpires that the agent fees are treated as part of the transfer fee and spread across the life of the contract via amortisation, same with subsequent contract extensions/upgrades.

Always learning it seems

https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/audit-service ... dustry.pdf

[Chester Perry]

Interesting move from Joel Glazer at today's fan forum, promising fans access to an unspecified number of the family's "high vote" Class B shares rather than the Class A ones available on the NYSE - from the Telegraph

Joel Glazer attempts to appease fans as Manchester United propose ‘Fan Share’ ownership scheme
The American promised to issue an unspecified number of “high-vote” shares for fans to purchase, giving them a bigger stake in the club

By Mike McGrath
4 June 2021 • 5:44pm

Joel Glazer has opened talks over a “Fan Share Scheme” to give supporters a bigger stake in Manchester United following the fallout from the disastrous attempt to join the European Super League.

Glazer, United’s co-chairman who instigated the ESL plot, attended his first fans’ forum via Zoom on Friday and proposed a share issue before the start of next season where an unspecified number of “high-vote” shares would be available.

The club’s American owners control the club with their Class B shares, while investors with Class A shares have a tenth of the voting power. The new class of fan share is proposed to have the equivalent of Class B.

United will now hold consultation meetings with the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST), who have wanted to see actions to accompany Glazer’s grovelling apology over the ESL and vow to involve the fans with future key decisions.

Fans, who protested at Old Trafford following ESL and forced the postponement of the Liverpool fixture, are likely to push for the biggest allocations of shares but were not given an answer on the exact amount during an emotional meeting with Glazer which lasted two hours and 20 minutes.

“The club has been in discussions with MUST regarding a fan share scheme for a number of months and has already sought external legal advice on options,” said Glazer. “Discussions will now intensify, with the aim of agreeing a plan before the start of the new season.”

Glazer has also set up a Fan Advisory Board to create a link with owners, as a response to supporters’ complaints of the American family not consulting them over key decisions, culminating in trying to join a new European competition where qualification would be guaranteed every season regardless of where United would finish in the Premier League.

But the Glazers issuing new shares will be seen as a victory for fans, although MUST are “cautious”.

Joel Glazer faces Manchester United fans for the first time in 15 years on club’s fan forum
Manchester United fans have vocally protested the Glazer ownership for over a decade, most vociferously following the ESL debacle CREDIT: Pool via REUTERS /LAURENCE GRIFFITHS
“MUST is cautious about whether this Fan Share Scheme will meet their own tests before they give it approval as despite the huge concession on voting rights that this proposal signals as ever the devil is always in the detail,” read a statement from MUST.

“In particular, despite Joel Glazers’ assertion that this will be ‘the largest fan ownership group in world sport’, MUST is concerned that there is a risk that the scheme will limit the number of such Fan Shares made available so reducing the opportunity for this to achieve a meaningful collective fan ownership stake.”

Glazer is said to have answered all questions at the fans’ forum but did not commit to paying off United’s debt built up during the 16-year period of ownership under the Americans. He confirmed the family would pay all fines relating to ESL and also insisted he wanted to invest in Old Trafford and the club training facilities.

“Our goal is to win every competition we compete in, and we will continue to invest in our academy and in the transfer market to support the manager in an effort to meet the club’s goals,” said Glazer.

“Old Trafford is at the heart of Manchester United and while we have spent over £100m over the last 10 years on infrastructure projects, we will now accelerate the process of planning much more significant investment and upgrades to the stadium…rest assured, we will consult with supporters throughout the process to end up with a result we can all be proud of.”

“The same goes for our training ground. Preliminary planning work is already under way and there will be significant funding available to further enhance our facilities and ensure they remain world class.”

United have also announced the departure of goalkeepers Sergio Romero and Joel Pereira, and confirmed that the club are in talks about extending the contract of midfielder Juan Mata as well as third-choice stopper Lee Grant.

[Chester Perry]

A question for the accountants, I am struggling to understand if outstanding transfer payments (particularly those due within 90 days of the accounting date) can be treated as cash equivalents for the cash in hand declaration within end of year accounts) and if so how would you distinguish that sum from the trade creditors falling due within one year

[Newcastleclaret93]

Chester do you have any more info Checketts/ Paces past? I had a look into Checketts after your post the other day and it all seemed a bit like deja vu

[Chester Perry]

Chester do you have any more info Checketts/ Paces past? I had a look into Checketts after your post the other day and it all seemed a bit like deja vu

I know what you mean and that was the reason I mentioned it

For the most part it is on the takeover thread - all the posts on that thread mentioning him are here search.php?keywords=checketts&t=49975&sf=msgonly

sorry I cannot be of more help at the moment, I am busy working on another long article for the London Clarets which needs to be submitted tomorrow

[Newcastleclaret93]

I know what you mean and that was the reason I mentioned it

For the most part it is on the takeover thread - all the posts on that thread mentioning him are here search.php?keywords=checketts&t=49975&sf=msgonly

sorry I cannot be of more help at the moment, I am busy working on another long article for the London Clarets which needs to be submitted tomorrow

Thanks Chester, I wasn’t aware of his previous failings in sports.

I read some quite concerning fan message boards about Checketts. It reads very similar to the Messageboard when the Egyptian was trying to take over the club.

Interesting to read about anyway.

[Chester Perry]

Philippe Auclair has been writing for Josimar.com again, about FIFA and the African football federation CAF, Again! you think can things get any more messed up, Again!

this is what Auclair posted in a tweet linking the article

My investigation on the brutal purge which has hollowed CAF of most of its senior administration. And if you think it has to do with Fifa carrying on its hostile takeover of the African confederation, you may not be wrong.

The turn of the screw
07/06/2021

African football will long remember 24 May 2021. Early that day, over a dozen CAF employees, many of them senior executives, learnt that they had lost their positions. No warning had been given. No explanation was provided.

By Philippe Auclair

This sweeping purge, which was executed by the confederation’s new Secretary General, long-time Infantino ally Véron Mosengo-Omba, came on the heels of a confidential report into the Confederation’s administration by the PwC consultancy, which Josimar has seen, which listed numerous failings and advocated radical change. This report, however, is riddled with glaring factual errors, to the point that it can be accused of bias, and calls into question the motivation behind what was dubbed CAF’s ‘Night of the Long Knives’.

As soon as it had become clear that Fifa-backed Patrice Motsepe would replace disgraced Ahmad Ahmad and become CAF’s new president, everyone in Cairo and beyond knew that there would be many substantial changes within the administration of the world’s second-largest confederation. It was not unexpected and it might even have been necessary. Nobody denies that CAF was a right mess.

But not like this. Not to that extent. Not so brutally. Not so cruelly, even.

Early in the morning of Monday 24 May (some say as early at 3 a.m.), emails written and signed by CAF Secretary-General Véron Mosengo-Omba landed in the inboxes of seventeen of CAF’s most senior administrators, informing them that their contracts had been terminated with immediate effect. CAF’s Chief of Staff and Heads of IT, Legal Affairs and Compliance, Finance, and Human Resources, among others, had been told that their services were no longer required. A number of their subordinates also received a similar message. According to information received by Josimar this Monday (June 7), two more high-ranking CAF officials had tendered their resignations over the preceding forty-eight hours. Commercial Director Ali Assaoui and Vice-Secretary General Anthony Baffoe, who was until then in charge of competitions – and this, a matter of days after the Confederation announced that it was postponing the draw of its 2022 World Qualifiers, originally planned to take place on 25 June. While Assaoui’s resignation was accepted, it is not yet clear whether Baffoe’s was or not. Everywhere one looks around African football, it is upheaval and chaos.

No warning had been given to the sacked personnel. No interview had taken place. No personal explanation was given, no apology either. Two weeks later, many of the sacked CAF employees still haven’t been able to collect their personal belongings from the offices they occupied until a few days ago. All of them had to sign draconian non-disclosure agreements to be entitled to severance payments. Those who would speak out would be liable to pay huge financial penalties.

Josimar was told by several sources that at least one of the employees who’ve been fired was abroad in the middle of a CAF mission when he learnt of his dismissal. Others discovered their fate through a third party. Almost nothing but a shell was left of the CAF administration. Why take such a drastic measure at a time of unprecedented crisis in the Confederation? And who decided it had to be taken?

Infantino’s Unknown Enforcer
All of the numerous inside sources that Josimar has spoken to in the past couple of weeks agree on one thing: CAF’s newly-installed Secretary General Véron Mosengo-Omba signed the emails, yes, but this didn’t mean that he oversaw the details of the purge. “He is not a born administrator”, as one of them rather mischievously put it. “He is a political appointee, Gianni’s man in Africa, he doesn’t take care of the running of the organisation and I don’t think he’d be able to”, said another. “He’s a smart guy, but he lacks some very basic management skills”, chimes a third one, who adds, “and I’ve been told he’s not enjoying it himself”.

The fact is that it was not Mosengo-Omba who drew the list of ‘indesirables’ who were dispensed with so suddenly. Neither was it his Swiss-Italian assistant Sandra Lattore, who was already working with him in Zurich when he was Fifa’s global Chief Member Associations officer. Lattore, who previously spent over seven years as a low-level commercial manager with luxury goods brand Hugo Boss, joined the legal department of the organisation in 2017, to become Mosengo-Omba’s private assistant in November 2019. Described to us as ‘pleasant and capable’, Lattore deals with her boss’s correspondence and diary – but her mission goes no further.

Still, her appointment illustrated how Fifa now filled positions in African football administration with its own people, something which would have been impossible before the Confederation’s statuses were quietly modified – at Fifa’s behest, it seems – to allow non-Africans to occupy official roles within CAF. Véron Mosengo-Omba, for example, might have been of Congolese origin, but held a Swiss passport; and as the Democratic Republic of Congo doesn’t recognise double nationality, it was as a Swiss citizen that he became CAF’s Secretary-General, something which would have been impossible beforehand. But neither Mosengo-Omba nor his assistant held the knife when the time came to bleed the Confederation of most of its senior executives, even if the execution orders bore Véron’s signature.

Deciding who would have to go was the task of someone whose name has barely ever appeared in print before, but who was described to us as “one of Gianni’s most loyal soldiers”: Luca Piazza. “Piazza doesn’t serve Fifa”, we were told by someone who saw him at work from close, “he serves Gianni”.

Piazza rose from almost complete obscurity in early 2016, when he was hand-picked by Fifa’s new president to join the Fifa Audit & Compliance team, then still under the control of Domenico Scala. Which qualifications Piazza had to be given this position is unclear. Until then, he’d worked in an administrative capacity for Switzerland’s Touring Club (an association which mostly serves motorists) as well as for SGS, a company specialising in quality control, best practice evaluation and certification.

Josimar has learnt that he grew up only a few doors from Infantino in the vaudois village of Trelex, where families of Italian heritage compose the smallest linguistic community in a total population of 1,400. After Scala left Fifa in May 2016, citing the loss of independence of the organisation’s watchdog committees as the reason for his resignation, Piazza’s job was described as ‘Director of Implementation of Governance Reforms’, a job in which capacity he visited Venezuela in 2017, and oversaw the election of the Nigerian FA’s Executive Committee a year later. Interestingly, figures who occupied senior positions in Fifa’s own administration at the time told us that they had no idea that such a position even existed, or what its prerogatives might have been. Neither had any of them dealt directly with Piazza – or, in one case, even knew who he was.

What is known is that Piazza worked closely with Fifa’s Secretary General Fatma Samoura. He followed her to Cairo when she began her six-month mission as ‘Fifa General Delegate For Africa’ on 1 August 2019, also assisted by key Infantino aide Mario Gallavotti, Fifa’s Director of Independent Committees

“The SG [Samoura] did very little work herself”, a CAF executive told Josimar. “People felt it wasn’t worth bothering her most of the time, certainly not before 3 p.m., and went to Piazza and Gallavotti when they had questions to ask, and it’s also to them they answered”. Another added: “Mouad [Hajji, then CAF Secretary General] did not validate any decision which Piazza had not personally approved. Piazza was copied in all the emails, and it is still the case today” – quite a powerful position to be in for a Fifa employee who was never given a specific role or title during his six-month stay in Africa.

“He’s a very cold guy”, we were told by one insider who dealt with Piazza at the time. “He saw his mission with CAF as putting in place structures and a chain of command which are directly copied on Fifa’s”. Piazza’s direct involvement in CAF affairs ceased when Samoura’s mandate expired on 1 February 2020 and was not renewed by CAF as originally planned – a direct challenge to Fifa’s authority, which effectively sealed the fate of then-president Ahmad, later found guilty of breaches of the Fifa Ethics Code and suspended, preventing him to stand in the 2021 CAF presidential elections. But Piazza’s mission was not over yet.

Ensuring that Infantino’s friend and ally Patrice Motsepe won this election in March (a story which Josimar has told in great detail here) was only the first step in Fifa’s de facto takeover of the 54-nation strong organisation. Wholesale changes at the top of every single department of the confederation were required if Fifa were to assume complete control over it.

Heads had to roll, and Piazza, brought back in the African fold by the new Secretary General Véron Mosengo-Omba, was given the task to choose who they belonged to. But he needed grounds on which to base his selection, just as Patrice Motsepe would need to give good reasons to justify the sweeping shake-up of his administration to his Executive Committee. If he wanted to declare war on the structure he’d inherited from Ahmad, he needed a casus belli.

Fortunately, the giant accountancy and ‘professional services’ firm PricewaterwaterhouseCoopers would provide him with just that.

The Report
15 May 2021. Gianni Infantino has travelled to Rwandan capital Kigali, where, according to the official agenda, CAF’s Executive Committee is meeting to discuss matters such as “the implementation of the Pan-African Schools Football Championship, the CAF/FIFA Refereeing Agreement and the FIFA-CAF USD 1 billion Infrastructure Development project”.

But Patrice Motsepe has another message to pass on to the members of his Executive Committee, a message he delivers in a calm, unhurried voice. But there is also an edge to his delivery, almost as if what he was issuing was not a warning, but a threat.

“Sometimes, we have to discuss things that are…unpleasant. And we have to deal with them. I want to ask one final question: has anybody not received a copy of the PwC report? Can you raise your hand? [pause] So I’m happy that you’ve seen it, and there’ll be issues we will discuss later privately. But what I want to emphasise is…I have now spent so much time, with the help and guidance of Gianni, in almost all of those meetings with people we need to work with, and the message I received over and over again is […] “you’ve got to clean your house”…We are going to do what is required.”

The ‘report’ Motsepe is referring to bears little resemblance to the forensic dossier the same PwC had compiled in November 2019, which laid bare the haphazard, incompetent, if not downright corrupt running of CAF’s financial affairs. The new ‘analysis’, which Josimar has seen, consists of seven pages of ‘observations’ and eleven pages of ‘recommendations’, which read more like an indictment than an accountant’s report. That is the most striking feature of the document: it is as remarkably light on factual detail as it is remarkably heavy in innuendo.

Quite extraordinarily, PwC made its conclusions and recommendations without interviewing any of the individuals it accuses of incompetence and worse; neither were these individuals given the opportunity to read the report once it had been finalised. The analysts also acknowledge that they might well have not had access to all of the relevant information and documents, and that they, in fact, made no attempt to check whether the elements on which they based their analysis gave a full picture of the situation or not. Neither did they make any verification of the authenticity or validity of the documents they had access to.

PwC themselves were aware of the limitations of their work, as they took the precaution to add in their conclusion that what they compiled was not an audit ‘in the legal sense’, as it had not conformed to the generally accepted norms and standards of such work. They also reminded their readers that ‘PwC [did not offer] opinions’, a breathtaking statement in view of how much of what they’d stated in their report is little more than that: ‘opinions’, judgments often based on flimsy evidence and riddled with factual errors.

Yet it is these flawed findings and recommendations which CAF used as a basis to purge its administration – and to give it a semblance of legitimacy.

The most astonishing claim – which was greeted with derision by all of the insiders Josimar has spoken to – is that it is CAF’s previous Secretary General (and then-commercial director) Abdelmounaïn Bah who instigated the unilateral cancellation, in November 2019, of the infamous $1bn TV contract which CAF had signed with French media giant Lagardère Sport in October 2016, a saga which Josimar explored in great detail in this investigation, one of the, if not the most momentous event of the Ahmad presidency.

How PwC could come to this conclusion stretches belief, when the minutes of the meetings which took place between CAF and Lagardère Sport (LS) clearly show that the discussions were led by then-Secretary General Hajji and Fifa’s Mario Gallavotti (the true architect of the cancellation), and that it was at the request of Hajji – and certainly not Bah – that CAF’s ad hoc Committee took the momentous and, with hindsight, catastrophic decision to part with LS.

Remarkably, Gallavotti’s name does not appear once in PwC’s report, despite the fact that he was the instigator and, by common consent, the main driver of the move. PwC wouldn’t have acted otherwise if their aim had been to exonerate Fifa of any implication – or wrongdoing – in the shambolic affair.

Some of the statements in PwC’s report verge on the libellous. Thus, Bah – the whipping boy, it seems – is said to have established contact with a number of companies in order to sell TV rights for several CAF competitions without opening a tender. PwC adds – nod-nod, wink-wink – that Bah had worked for Lagardère from June 2013 to May 2018, and that the individuals he’d contacted were former colleagues of his.

Now, apart from the fact that almost anyone who is involved in televised sport in Africa today will have had a connection of some kind to the giant of this industry at some point in their career, some basic fact-checking would have shown that precisely none of six companies mentioned in the PwC document were involved in the marketing of TV rights for the Confederation as a result, and that two of them, in fact, never had any contractual relationship of any kind with CAF. It is also Josimar’s understanding that Fifa vetted and validated CAF’s choice of service providers at the time, without ever raising questions of propriety or impropriety. We could go on and on like this.

Another striking feature of the PwC report is that a number of recommendations it makes in its second section had already been implemented within CAF in the wake of the first PwC audit; yet it is based on these recommendations that Piazza and Mosengo-Omba decided to wield the axe almost indiscriminately within the Confederation. A number of departments in the CAF administration had put new practices in place, something which PwC was aware of, as they’d been partnering CAF along the way. Irony of ironies, they had even privately complimented some CAF staff on their work, in several cases the same staff they would give the green light to sack a matter of weeks later.

That CAF was in sore need of a shake-up is not contested. Some departments were chronically understaffed, leading junior personnel to sanction decisions which they had no statutory authority over. Some CAF employees had been working without proper contracts for months. Yet PwC’s recommendations, whilst acknowledging those facts, drew conclusions which put the blame on individuals rather than on structural faults. A recurrent recommendation in their report, for example, is the necessity to “evaluate whether current executives and key personnel are fit to occupy their positions [or not]”, a wording which needs no decoding.

Another recommendation (point 4.3 in the PwC document) caught the eye: the PwC analysts advised CAF to recruit its new ‘qualified personnel’ ‘beyond the local market’ and open each position to ‘international candidates’. We were told that the ‘local market’, in this case, is meant to refer to the whole continent, not just to Egypt, a country in which the Cairo-based confederation had picked a large proportion of its employees until recently. This opened the door to doing away with the traditional model of hiring Africans to take care of African football. “Really? As if we couldn’t find the right people on a continent which has a population of over 1,3 billion?”, observed a CAF administrator when we mentioned this recommendation to him. “This is an insult to us”.

It is hard not to notice that it is also giving carte blanche to CAF to appoint personnel who’d been in Fifa’s employment until then, in Zurich or elsewhere.

In the meantime, Josimar has learnt from third parties that contracts worth millions of dollars have been sitting unsigned in Mosengo-Omba’s inbox. CAF, which is in sore need of resources, is bound to pay a very heavy price for its re-organisation. But in Fifa’s eyes, the price is worth paying if the end result is almost complete control over the confederation’s affairs. The screw has been tightened – but it is African football which is left gasping for air.

[Chester Perry]

I missed this yesterday - Venky's continue their generous support of the charity tea, down the road by buying another £5.25m of shares that are not worth the paper they are printed on.

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 58/photo/1

There used to be a manager in the Premier League who referred to this practice as financial doping, no one really seems to care anymore

[Chester Perry]

The Independent are reporting an Intriguing move from the Premier League that is giving Mike Ashley encouragement about the Saudi Takeover of Newcastle United

Newcastle takeover: Mike Ashley receives boost to Saudi buyout hopes
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is part of a consortium which retains an interest in buying the north-east club.
Jamie Gardner
1 hour ago

Newcastle owner Mike Ashley has drawn encouragement from the Premier League’s decision not to call for Saudi Arabia to be kept on the American government’s piracy watchlist this year.

Ashley remains determined that a £300million Saudi-led takeover of the club should be allowed to proceed and is involved in arbitration over the matter with the Premier League

Sources within the consortium say they remain committed to a takeover if the arbitration goes in the club’s favour.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is the dominant 80 per cent partner in the consortium looking to buy Newcastle. The apparent link between the PIF and the Saudi state was widely reported as one of the key barriers to the takeover progressing last summer, in particular because of the country’s record on piracy. The PIF’s chair is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

The Premier League described the Gulf kingdom as a “centre for piracy” in a submission to the US Trade Representative (USTR) in February 2020 and a World Trade Organisation report later that year said the Saudi government had facilitated the activities of now-defunct pirate network beoutQ.

However, in its latest submission to the USTR in January of this year, which has been seen by the PA news agency, the Premier League did not call for Saudi Arabia to be kept on the watchlist – even though fellow rights holders UEFA and LaLiga did.

The Premier League has declined to comment on the letter, which states the league had chosen in its 2021 submission to focus on copyright over the internet, calling for China to be kept on the priority watchlist and for Iraq and Hong Kong to be added to it.

Other sources say the league is no less angry about Saudi piracy and has not dropped its guard in any way, but Ashley’s camp has been encouraged by Saudi Arabia being left off the submission.

Though the Premier League states its focus is online piracy in its 2021 submission, the USTR’s Special 301 Report published at the end of April says it “continues to remain concerned about high levels of online piracy in Saudi Arabia”.

The report, which keeps Saudi Arabia on the US government’s priority watchlist, adds that illicit streaming devices “are widely available and generally unregulated in Saudi Arabia”.

However, the report did acknowledge some of the steps taken by Saudi Arabia in combatting piracy and intellectual property theft.

There remains no legitimate way to watch Premier League football in Saudi Arabia, with regional rights holder, Qatar-based beIN SPORTS, still barred from broadcasting in the country despite the ending of a blockade between the two nations in January.

The Premier League agreed a new deal with beIN in December last year covering the Middle East and North Africa region from 2022 to 2025. The deal is understood to be worth around £350million over three seasons, with the broadcaster praising the league’s dedication in the fight against piracy as it renewed.

PA reported last summer that Saudi businessmen made a rival offer to the Premier League to screen matches there, on the basis that beIN was not recognised in Saudi Arabia. The offer was understood to have been rejected out of hand by the Premier League.

The consortium, fronted by Amanda Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners and also including the Reuben Brothers, withdrew from the takeover in July last year, blaming among other things the “prolonged process” after they had waited 17 weeks for approval.

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters wrote to Newcastle Central MP Chi Onwurah the following month to say that his organisation had made “a clear determination” in June 2020 of the entities involved in the takeover and had sought additional information.

Masters said the consortium disagreed that one of the entities the Premier League had identified would fall within the criteria, and that the league then offered to have the matter determined by an independent arbitral tribunal.

The matter is now the subject of arbitration proceedings, with Ashley instructing lawyers last September. Documents related to a separate Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) claim by St James Holdings Ltd against the Premier League stated that the arbitration was due to start in July.

The Premier League has until Friday to respond to the CAT claim.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Norwich City: Premier League club says sorry and cancels controversial sponsor deal - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57424206

Didn't like the suggestive /lewd adverts of its sponsor apparently

[Chester Perry]

Norwich City: Premier League club says sorry and cancels controversial sponsor deal - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57424206

Didn't like the suggestive /lewd adverts of its sponsor apparently

given a number constituted soft porn it is no surprise - I have posted a number of times before on this thread about how it is necessary to do the right background work and get working practice agreements in place when signing commercial partners, particularly those from vastly different cultural backgrounds

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Screenshot_20210611_191336_com.theathletic.jpg (156.47 KiB) Viewed 9338 times

Interesting move, wonder how cheap they got that..

[Chester Perry]

the answer is very cheap GIADJ, it actually may cause more problems than LFP can deal with Canal + who rescued them this last season have reacted very quickly and very negatively. It could also benefit the Premier League as well , which set to become Canal + prime football offering at the weekends - from SportsBusiness.com

Amazon’s acquisition of Ligue 1 rights prompts Canal Plus to pull out
Martin Ross
June 11, 2021

Online retail giant Amazon has established a stronger foothold in the French marketplace by landing a package of domestic rights to eight Ligue 1 matches per week across the next three seasons after submitting a late bid.

Ahead of the French Professional Football League (LFP) board meeting today (Friday), Amazon lodged an offer thought to be worth €250m ($302.7m) per year for the eight Ligue 1 matches per week previously held by Mediapro, the agency and production group.

That offer was accepted today but has prompted pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus, the league’s long-standing broadcaster, to pull out of its agreement to broadcast the other Ligue 1 matches.

Going into the decisive LFP meeting, it was expected that Canal Plus and fellow subscription broadcaster beIN Sports would be successful in negotiating a new agreement.

The LFP is intending to hold Canal Plus to its existing agreement for two Ligue 1 fixtures per matchweek, a deal worth €332m per year.

This comes after France’s competition watchdog, the Autorité de la concurrence, today rejected the complaint submitted by Canal Plus against the LFP over its decision to exclude the broadcaster’s rights to two matches per week in an earlier unsuccessful auction of Mediapro’s rights.

However, Canal Plus issued a statement that bemoaned the LFP’s award of rights to Amazon, describing it as to “the detriment of its historical partners Canal Plus and beIN Sports”. The Vivendi-owned broadcaster warned that it will “therefore not broadcast Ligue 1”.

Instead, Canal Plus said that it would focus its programming next season on its newly-acquired Uefa Champions League rights, the English Premier League, Top 14 rugby union and motorsports’ Formula 1 and MotoGP.

Maxime Saada, Canal Plus’ chief executive, had previously warned that he was unwilling to see a new entrant come in and acquire rights to top Ligue 1 matches for significantly less outlay, while Canal is left with what now looks like an onerous rights commitment.

Within its proposal, an additional €25m per year is thought to have been set aside by Amazon for the production costs. Amazon, which is this week celebrating its entry into the French sports broadcast sector with live coverage of tennis’ French Open, has also acquired rights to eight matches per week from Ligue 2, for which it bid €9m per year.

In bringing in Amazon and holding Canal Plus to its agreement, the LFP was expected to generate €663m per season for domestic broadcast rights to the top two divisions from 2021-22 to 2023-24. Along with the Amazon and Canal Plus fees, this includes the €42m per year paid by telco Free for mobile rights and €30m per year paid by beIN for two weekly Ligue 2 matches.

The rights acquired by Amazon include the flagship Ligue 1 Sunday evening matches. The package includes rights to the ten top pick matches per season, as well as 66 second and third picks, along with a weekly highlights show featuring interviews and analysis.

In awarding rights to Amazon, the LFP opted for higher fixed guarantee sums than those on offer from the combination of Canal Plus and beIN, while also bringing a new entrant into the football rights market after clubs were left reeling by the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Canal Plus’ rights, namely the Saturday 9pm and Sunday 5pm games, were originally acquired by beIN, which then sublicensed them to Canal, with the latter covering the former’s entire outlay to the LFP. That deal is part of a five-year exclusive distribution deal between Canal Plus and beIN, which began last year.

Canal Plus’ claim to the French competition body called alleged that the LFP committed anti-competitive discrimination with the launch of a partial tender acting to destabilise the pay-television market. In previously going to market in January, the LFP only re-tendered the broadcast rights previously held by Mediapro, which closed down its Téléfoot subscription service in France, despite having acquired rights over four seasons.

However, in its ruling issued today, the Autorité de la concurrence said that it had dismissed Canal Plus’ case and the “associated request for provisional measures”, considering them to be “not accompanied by sufficiently convincing elements”.

An initial offer from Canal Plus and beIN was improved ahead of today’s LFP meeting. This came after the LFP rejected the first proposal.

It is reported that Canal Plus offered €370m per season for rights to the first- and third-choice matches each week, with the remaining matches, plus Ligue 2, to be aired on a pay-television service co-financed by Canal and beIN. This financing equated to a fixed amount of €165m per year, plus bonus payments.

Should it have accepted this offer, then the LFP was in line to receive a total of between €595m and €673m per season for its domestic rights, depending on the level of the bonus payments, according to L’Équipe.

Canal Plus broadcast all Ligue 1 matches during the second half of the 2020-21 season after the collapse of Mediapro’s ill-fated deal for the 2020-24 cycle.

Departure from Amazon’s hitherto football strategy
Amazon’s capture of rights to 16 French football matches per week marks a departure from its existing strategy of only targeting specific strategic packages in its football acquisitions made to date in the UK, Germany and Italy.

Indeed, Alex Green, Amazon Prime Video’s managing director of sport in Europe, told L’Équipe at the end of January: “[Amazon] Prime is not just a sports broadcast platform. I don’t need to offer live sports every week to subscribers because they also have movies, entertainment series, music, and shopping benefits…

“Sports events are only part of a huge overall package and we don’t have a specific subscription service for sport, it’s not our model.”

However, he did underline that Amazon does already show live sport every week through its deal in the UK to broadcast men’s tennis’ ATP Tour. Amazon made its move into the French market with the acquisition of rights to tennis’ French Open (from 2021 to 2023).

Green said today: “We are excited and privileged to begin our partnership with the LFP to bring the best of French club football to Prime Video in France. Ligue 1 is the country’s most watched domestic football competition and we’re incredibly happy to bring every club and the most thrilling matches to Prime Video each week for the next three seasons.

“We have seen a great response to our recent coverage of Roland-Garros and will build on that to provide a world-class viewing experience as live football arrives on Prime Video in France.”

[Chester Perry]

the answer is very cheap GIADJ, it actually may cause more problems than LFP can deal with Canal + who rescued them this last season have reacted very quickly and very negatively. It could also benefit the Premier League as well , which set to become Canal + prime football offering at the weekends - from SportsBusiness.com

Amazon’s acquisition of Ligue 1 rights prompts Canal Plus to pull out
Martin Ross
June 11, 2021

Online retail giant Amazon has established a stronger foothold in the French marketplace by landing a package of domestic rights to eight Ligue 1 matches per week across the next three seasons after submitting a late bid.

Ahead of the French Professional Football League (LFP) board meeting today (Friday), Amazon lodged an offer thought to be worth €250m ($302.7m) per year for the eight Ligue 1 matches per week previously held by Mediapro, the agency and production group.

That offer was accepted today but has prompted pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus, the league’s long-standing broadcaster, to pull out of its agreement to broadcast the other Ligue 1 matches.

Going into the decisive LFP meeting, it was expected that Canal Plus and fellow subscription broadcaster beIN Sports would be successful in negotiating a new agreement.

The LFP is intending to hold Canal Plus to its existing agreement for two Ligue 1 fixtures per matchweek, a deal worth €332m per year.

This comes after France’s competition watchdog, the Autorité de la concurrence, today rejected the complaint submitted by Canal Plus against the LFP over its decision to exclude the broadcaster’s rights to two matches per week in an earlier unsuccessful auction of Mediapro’s rights.

However, Canal Plus issued a statement that bemoaned the LFP’s award of rights to Amazon, describing it as to “the detriment of its historical partners Canal Plus and beIN Sports”. The Vivendi-owned broadcaster warned that it will “therefore not broadcast Ligue 1”.

Instead, Canal Plus said that it would focus its programming next season on its newly-acquired Uefa Champions League rights, the English Premier League, Top 14 rugby union and motorsports’ Formula 1 and MotoGP.

Maxime Saada, Canal Plus’ chief executive, had previously warned that he was unwilling to see a new entrant come in and acquire rights to top Ligue 1 matches for significantly less outlay, while Canal is left with what now looks like an onerous rights commitment.

Within its proposal, an additional €25m per year is thought to have been set aside by Amazon for the production costs. Amazon, which is this week celebrating its entry into the French sports broadcast sector with live coverage of tennis’ French Open, has also acquired rights to eight matches per week from Ligue 2, for which it bid €9m per year.

In bringing in Amazon and holding Canal Plus to its agreement, the LFP was expected to generate €663m per season for domestic broadcast rights to the top two divisions from 2021-22 to 2023-24. Along with the Amazon and Canal Plus fees, this includes the €42m per year paid by telco Free for mobile rights and €30m per year paid by beIN for two weekly Ligue 2 matches.

The rights acquired by Amazon include the flagship Ligue 1 Sunday evening matches. The package includes rights to the ten top pick matches per season, as well as 66 second and third picks, along with a weekly highlights show featuring interviews and analysis.

In awarding rights to Amazon, the LFP opted for higher fixed guarantee sums than those on offer from the combination of Canal Plus and beIN, while also bringing a new entrant into the football rights market after clubs were left reeling by the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Canal Plus’ rights, namely the Saturday 9pm and Sunday 5pm games, were originally acquired by beIN, which then sublicensed them to Canal, with the latter covering the former’s entire outlay to the LFP. That deal is part of a five-year exclusive distribution deal between Canal Plus and beIN, which began last year.

Canal Plus’ claim to the French competition body called alleged that the LFP committed anti-competitive discrimination with the launch of a partial tender acting to destabilise the pay-television market. In previously going to market in January, the LFP only re-tendered the broadcast rights previously held by Mediapro, which closed down its Téléfoot subscription service in France, despite having acquired rights over four seasons.

However, in its ruling issued today, the Autorité de la concurrence said that it had dismissed Canal Plus’ case and the “associated request for provisional measures”, considering them to be “not accompanied by sufficiently convincing elements”.

An initial offer from Canal Plus and beIN was improved ahead of today’s LFP meeting. This came after the LFP rejected the first proposal.

It is reported that Canal Plus offered €370m per season for rights to the first- and third-choice matches each week, with the remaining matches, plus Ligue 2, to be aired on a pay-television service co-financed by Canal and beIN. This financing equated to a fixed amount of €165m per year, plus bonus payments.

Should it have accepted this offer, then the LFP was in line to receive a total of between €595m and €673m per season for its domestic rights, depending on the level of the bonus payments, according to L’Équipe.

Canal Plus broadcast all Ligue 1 matches during the second half of the 2020-21 season after the collapse of Mediapro’s ill-fated deal for the 2020-24 cycle.

Departure from Amazon’s hitherto football strategy
Amazon’s capture of rights to 16 French football matches per week marks a departure from its existing strategy of only targeting specific strategic packages in its football acquisitions made to date in the UK, Germany and Italy.

Indeed, Alex Green, Amazon Prime Video’s managing director of sport in Europe, told L’Équipe at the end of January: “[Amazon] Prime is not just a sports broadcast platform. I don’t need to offer live sports every week to subscribers because they also have movies, entertainment series, music, and shopping benefits…

“Sports events are only part of a huge overall package and we don’t have a specific subscription service for sport, it’s not our model.”

However, he did underline that Amazon does already show live sport every week through its deal in the UK to broadcast men’s tennis’ ATP Tour. Amazon made its move into the French market with the acquisition of rights to tennis’ French Open (from 2021 to 2023).

Green said today: “We are excited and privileged to begin our partnership with the LFP to bring the best of French club football to Prime Video in France. Ligue 1 is the country’s most watched domestic football competition and we’re incredibly happy to bring every club and the most thrilling matches to Prime Video each week for the next three seasons.

“We have seen a great response to our recent coverage of Roland-Garros and will build on that to provide a world-class viewing experience as live football arrives on Prime Video in France.”

More detail from the Financial Times as to why Canal + are unhappy with that Amazon deal for the French Lique - amazon are paying less for 8 live games a week than Canal+ agreed for 3 games a week when the other bidder was Media Pro - Canal + were not allowed to bid for all the rights that Amazon won because of European competition law preventing a broadcaster owning all the domestic rights - this is developing into a right mess

Canal Plus threatens French football blackout over Amazon deal
MURAD AHMED JUNE 11, 2021

Amazon has agreed to buy the broadcast rights to most of France’s top-flight football matches for the next three seasons, in a significant expansion of its ambitions in live sports in Europe.

The ecommerce giant beat Vivendi’s pay-TV unit Canal Plus in a competitive auction held by France’s Ligue 1 governing body, Ligue Professionnelle de Football (LFP), on Friday in Paris. Up for grabs were eight matches a week, as well as the second-tier Ligue 2.

One media industry executive close to the deal said Amazon had agreed to pay about €275m a year to screen roughly 80 per cent of French top-flight matches.

But the deal has infuriated Vivendi executives because Canal Plus had previously agreed to pay €330m for the remaining 20 per cent, or just three games a week.

Canal Plus said in a statement on Friday that it would stop screening Ligue 1 games altogether starting next season, but did not specify whether it would continue paying as agreed under its existing contract.

The surprise auction result is the latest twist in a difficult stretch for French football since its choice of a new broadcaster for 2020 to 2024, the Spanish-Chinese company Mediapro, proved disastrous.

Mediapro stopped paying and then went bust barely six months into a four-year, €780m deal.

That left the league without a broadcaster, mired in legal battles, and put French clubs under immense financial strain just as the pandemic brought sports to a halt last year.

The arrival of Amazon will be seen as a saviour by some in Ligue 1.

The US technology company has steadily bought up the broadcast rights for major sporting events in big markets, seeking to tie viewers to its Prime subscription services. In recent years, it has secured rights to stream National Football League matches in the US, is among the broadcasters of the English Premier League and the ATP men’s tennis tour in the UK.

This week in France, Amazon has been broadcasting live French Open tennis matches, the first time the tournament has not been free to air on the country’s state-backed TV channels.

Some users on social media have reported technical problems while watching the night sessions on Amazon Prime. But Amazon said there had been “no technical issues whatsoever” with its coverage of Roland Garros tennis. The company does not disclose viewing figures.

Alex Green, who leads Amazon’s sports business in Europe, said: “We’re incredibly happy to bring every club and the most thrilling matches” to its Prime video platform.

But the league’s choice has alienated Canal Plus and could threaten its existing broadcast contract with France’s biggest pay-TV operator.

“After the failure of the Mediapro’s choice made in 2018, Canal+ regrets the LFP decision to choose Amazon over its historic partners Canal+ and beIN Sports [The Qatar-based broadcaster]. Thus, Canal+ will not broadcast Ligue 1,” it said.

Canal Plus may now seek to challenge the terms and process of the auction in court. In recent months, it had been pushing the league to start over with a new auction for all the TV rights from 2021 to 2024, and had also filed an antitrust complaint to seek to force their hand. French regulators rejected that effort earlier this week, paving the way for the league to hold the auction on Friday.

The LFP did not respond to a request for comment.

[Chester Perry]

Missed this during my stepping away from the board this week - La Liga has signed the biggest ever overseas league deal in the US with ESPN - note the length, 8 years, exactly what Claire Enders has been talking about as necessary to bring in the larger numbers (hence the Premier League role over deal domestically) - You would imagine that this will have the Premier League hopeful for their own deal which should be sealed in the next few months. This deal for la Liga comes in the week after spanish courts came down on La Liga's side after Real Madrid tried to block the collective agreements (https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/la- ... management) - from SportsProMedia

ESPN secures ‘US$1.4bn’ La Liga US rights deal until 2029
Eight-year agreement sees Spanish soccer league buyout BeIN Sports’ contract.

Posted: May 14 2021 By: Sam Carp

- ESPN+ to stream 380 top-flight games per season
- Deal is the most valuable US media rights contract for an overseas soccer league, reports Sportico
- La Liga’s US broadcast partnership with BeIN originally due to run until end of 2023/24 season

Disney-owned sports broadcaster ESPN has secured rights in the US to La Liga until the end of the 2028/29 season.

Financial terms of the eight-year deal were not made public, but Sportico reports that ESPN will pay the Spanish soccer body US$175 million a year, equal to some US$1.4 billion over the duration of the agreement. The sports business outlet added that it is now the most valuable US media rights contract for an overseas soccer league.

Starting from the 2021/22 season, the deal will bring live and on-demand coverage of 380 top-flight matches a year to ESPN+, the broadcaster’s subscription streaming service. ESPN+ will also show a selection of games from La Liga SmartBank, Spanish soccer’s second tier, including five promotion playoffs. All fixtures will be available in both English and Spanish.

Select matches will air across ESPN’s linear networks each season, while coverage and highlights will also be available on SportsCenter and other ESPN studio programmes, as well as on the broadcaster’s digital and social platforms.

The expansive deal also includes a variety of surround programming, including match previews, highlights and magazine shows.

“We are absolutely thrilled to bring La Liga to ESPN in the US,” said La Liga president Javier Tebas. “This is an historic eight-season agreement in US soccer broadcasting that speaks to the power of La Liga and its clubs in the largest media market in the world and will bring the world’s best soccer league to American screens in a more comprehensive and modern way than ever before.”

The deal further bolsters the lineup of soccer on ESPN+, which also includes Spain’s Copa Del Rey knockout tournament, Germany’s top-flight Bundesliga and Major League Soccer (MLS), among others.

Burke Magnus, executive vice president of programming and original content at ESPN, added: “As the sport of soccer continues its ascendance in the US market, we are incredibly excited to work with La Liga to establish a deeper connection to American fans through our company’s industry-leading streaming platforms, television networks, and digital and social media assets.”

In order to agree the deal with ESPN, La Liga had to buy back its US media rights from Qatar-based broadcaster BeIN Sports, which was due to be the league’s exclusive broadcast partner in the country until the end of the 2023/24 season.

BeIN said in a statement that the arrangement is ‘strategically and commercially beneficial’ to the two parties, who remain partners in markets such as France, Australia, and the Middle East and North Africa.

Commenting on the move, Richard Verow, chief sports officer at BeIN Media Group, said that the broadcaster still has “significant ambitions” for the US market, where it holds rights to properties such as French soccer’s Ligue 1, South America’s Copa Libertadores and the Africa Cup of Nations.

“Like broadcasters all over the world, we are constantly assessing our rights portfolio across all our markets to ensure financial discipline, commercial and strategic sense, and – crucially – long term growth,” Verow added. “This arrangement with La Liga in the US and Canada reflects that, sacrificing a short-term gain for long-term wins and sustainability in North America.

“Financial discipline has never been more important in the current context, where you have a ferociously competitive US market, coupled with constantly changing viewing habits, all complicated further by the pandemic and rampant piracy.”

North America is an important strategic market for La Liga, which in 2018 signed up to a 15-year joint venture with US sports and entertainment company Relevent Sports to grow its brand in the region. The league’s new deal with ESPN will put it alongside a number of other premium sports properties and also expose it to a broad US audience, with Disney reporting this week that ESPN+ now has 13.8 million subscribers.

Some really interesting background to that La Liga - ESPN US broadcast deal. it comes from the partnership with Relevent who run the international summer pre-season tournament ICC and who also have agreements with UEFA - from SportsBusiness.com

How LaLiga-Relevent Sports partnership in US led to record $1.4bn ESPN media rights deal
Bob Williams, US office
June 10, 2021

• Joint venture partnership has transformed league’s presence and commercial fortunes in region

• Two parties aligned following overwhelming success of El Clasico Miami in July 2017

• Following Mexico expansion, model could now be expanded into further international territories

LaLiga’s recently-secured, record-setting $1.4bn (€1.16bn) media rights deal with ESPN in the United States is the resounding high point thus far in the three-year history of LaLiga North America, the joint venture between LaLiga and Relevent Sports Group.

In August 2018, Relevent Sports – the US-based global soccer promoters best known for running the International Champions Cup tournaments – entered into a 15-year partnership with LaLiga, primarily designed to expand the brand awareness and commercial fortunes of the Spanish top-tier professional soccer organization and its clubs in the US and Canada.

At the time of the announcement, the joint venture’s controversial plans to stage official regular-season LaLiga matches on US soil – an initiative still yet to achieve fruition due to widespread global opposition – understandably grabbed most of the headlines.

One of the key parts of LaLiga North America’s five-pronged business plan, though, was to achieve far greater broadcast distribution for the league in the US, as well as significantly increased media rights revenues.

During the past three years, the organization’s executives and employees have worked tirelessly behind the scenes developing relationships with senior media executives at all the major US networks, creating English- and Spanish-language digital content and original programming, staging a multitude of events and securing sponsorship deals, among other initiatives, all designed to enhance LaLiga’s presence and stature in the crowded and competitive US sporting landscape.

Their hard work has paid off in spades. In May, ESPN and LaLiga announced a wide-ranging long-term media rights deal that will make streaming service ESPN+ the principal English- and Spanish-language home for LaLiga in the US from 2021-22 through 2028-29.

The agreement, which begins in August, is worth $175m per year or $1.4bn total. As such, it is the most lucrative soccer media rights deal ever secured in the US, eclipsing the $1bn paid by NBC Sports for rights to the English Premier League, a six-year deal which runs through the 2021-22 season.

The agreement was made possible after current rights-holder beIN Sports and LaLiga agreed to a “strategic buy back” of rights in North America in order to facilitate the deal with the Walt Disney Co., ESPN’s parent company. The Qatar-based broadcaster described LaLiga’s repurchase of the rights from 2021-22 to 2023-24 – the final three seasons of the existing beIN contract – as “significant.”

The new rights deal will give LaLiga a far greater platform to grow its brand in the US due to ESPN’s far stronger position in the US media landscape than beIN Sports, which has struggled to maintain its presence in the region in recent years after it was dropped by Comcast Xfinity and AT&T’s DirecTV in a dispute over carriage fees.

ESPN is already the home of the Copa del Rey, Copa de la Reina, and Supercopa de España, and has an expansive international soccer portfolio on streaming service ESPN+, which is now up to approximately 13.8 million subscribers.

The achievement is all the more remarkable considering LaLiga North America had just one employee when it started in August 2018 – the former Televisa and Univision executive Boris Gartner – and a highly-optimistic business plan that had been laid out by Relevent Sports.

“This didn’t happen out of chance or we were in the right place at the right time…we really worked our ass off for the past three years to get to this point,” Gartner, LaLiga North America’s chief executive, tells SportBusiness. “I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to go back to the first board meeting we had with the proposed plan and you look back three years later how it’s played out exactly as we planned. We knew that the theory was the right one and that execution would be key to it.

“Now we have a [media rights] deal that goes through the 2028-29 season, we’re now adding Mexico, we have 15 years (plus a possible five-year extension) of the joint venture that’s going to be incredibly good for LaLiga, the clubs and for soccer in the US, for Relevent…and it’s opening up a whole new set of opportunities in this business throughout the world,” Gartner says.

El Clasico Miami cemented relationship
The origins of the LaLiga-Relevent Sports partnership can be directly traced back to El Clasico Miami, the first staging of the iconic Real Madrid v FC Barcelona rivalry in the US, which took place at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida, in July 2017, as part of the ICC men’s tournament.

More than 66,000 fans attended the high-profile global event, which generated a reported $38m in direct revenue, and was, notably, given widespread coverage by ESPN, the US media rights holder of the ICC.

From December 2016 until July 2017, Relevent Sports worked tirelessly with LaLiga president Javier Tebas, his management team and both Real Madrid and FC Barcelona to secure their blessing to allow the ICC to stage El Clasico on American soil.

Through that process, Relevent Sports began to build a close relationship with Tebas and with the management team of LaLiga.

In turn, Relevent executives began to better understand and appreciate what Tebas and his team had done to professionalize and commercialize LaLiga business operations, which included the introduction of centralized TV rights and international growth through the LaLiga Global Network, which has placed around 45 business associates across international territories.

At the time, LaLiga used a traditional agency model to sell its media rights globally and was committed to a long-term US broadcast relationship with beIN Sports, which remains a valued global partner of the league.

Relevent executives, though, felt that LaLiga stood a far greater chance of securing broader distribution in the valuable American market, as well as increased media revenues, with the help of a local partner with extensive experience of the local market and widespread contacts.

“We felt that there was an opportunity to find a local partner who would have boots on the ground that could help [Tebas] grow the audience and ultimately find wider distribution and dollars, which his clubs would want, in a better way that was done in a traditional agency model,” explains Danny Sillman, Relevent Sports chief executive.

“Rather they could [utilize] someone like Relevent who could be a catalyst to grow through activations, youth events, grassroots, content development and distribution…but effectively getting LaLiga closer to its fans,” he says.

In April 2017, Relevent Sports pitched the idea of a joint venture partnership to Tebas, which was favorably received by the league and its clubs.

As part of this process, Stephen Ross, the billionaire owner of Relevent Sports as well as the National Football League’s Miami Dolphins, provided crucial in-depth detail to LaLiga executives into how the NFL had grown its brand internationally through regular-season games in London and how the ICC had helped European clubs grow in the US.

Relevent thought it had a deal with LaLiga. Spanish regulators, however, ruled that a request for proposal (RFP) was required for such a deal. In a further surprise, LaLiga executives then informed Relevent that the agency would have to compete with major rivals such as Endeavor, Wasserman, CAA, and Elevate for the joint venture partnership.

Two days before El Clasico Miami, all the interested parties met with LaLiga in the US to pitch their case for the venture. Thanks in large part to the success of the Real Madrid v FC Barcelona fixture, Relevent was awarded the deal shortly afterwards.

The two parties then had to negotiate the agreement and in August 2018 a 15-year partnership, with potential for a five-year extension, was finalized. Gartner was brought in to run the entity, with the full support of Relevent staff.

Relevent’s plan to move beyond events into media business
LaLiga North America is a 50-50 joint venture partnership between Relevent and LaLiga. It currently covers the US and Canada, and recently announced plans to expand its business operations into Mexico.

As part of the agreement, Relevent Sports provided start-up capital – believed to be around $10m – and the pulling power of the ICC tournaments, as well as the experience and expertise of its staff. LaLiga, for its part, contributed its wider intellectual property including original programming, content, licensing, merchandising, sponsorship rights, and grassroots activations.

Notably, LaLiga North America also secured the rights to broker LaLiga media rights deals in the region. Previously, the Mediapro agency provided this service.

After costs are covered, LaLiga and Relevent split the revenues of sponsorship deals – for example with Camarena Tequila, Verizon, and PointsBet. LaLiga North America also earns a commission on media rights sales, which is split 50-50 between Relevent and the league. The media rights revenue itself goes to the LaLiga and the clubs.

Starting with just one staff member in August 2018, the New York City-based LaLiga North America now has 25 people on staff – 10 employees on the business front, including one in Toronto, and 15 employees operating its English- and Spanish-language content unit in Guadalajara, Mexico. Soon, three more staff members will be added in Mexico.

In the build-up to El Clasico Miami, Relevent Sports had been looking to expand its business operations beyond events and into the media industry. It was natural, then, that Relevent executives looked to seize on the opportunity to develop a wider, more meaningful partnership with LaLiga as the two parties forged strong ties in late 2016 and early 2017.

“It was an opportunistic relationship that developed through El Clasico with LaLiga where we were able to grab the bull by the horns and partner with them to grow a media business,” Sillman says.

“It was always part of our growth plan but it was really serendipitous in the relationship with LaLiga in 2017 in seeing how progressive their management team was, how thoughtful they were with international growth that it was the right time and the right partner,” he says.

Making transition from beIN Sports to ESPN
To some surprise, in August 2019 LaLiga signed an extension to its long-standing partnership in the US and Canada with beIN Sports through to the end of the 2023-24 season.

At the time, beIN Sports was suffering from a series of carriage issues, which severely hampered its distribution across the US, and it was believed that LaLiga would seek a new broadcast partner.

But due to the fact that beIN is a valued international media rights partner of LaLiga and offered lucrative renewal terms in the States – believed to be $130m per season – LaLiga decided to stay with the network.

As part of the deal with Relevent to establish LaLiga North America in 2018, LaLiga also retained the right to renew with beIN in the US when their agreement ended in 2020, a deal that was eventually struck a year early.

“The renewal terms at the time were great [financially]. Beyond the renewal option that LaLiga had, we collectively decided at that moment that it was the best decision we could make,” Gartner says. “At that point we had also created the content studio in Guadalajara and were cranking out content every week in English and Spanish and we thought that was a patch where we could overcompensate for the lack of distribution.”

According to Sillman, the beIN Sports deal also served a purpose “because of the value that it established for the league in this territory.”

From the outset of the creation of LaLiga North America, its staff members were constantly speaking to executives from the likes of CBS, ESPN, NBC, DAZN, and Turner Sports trying to gauge their interest in LaLiga and global soccer rights in the build-up to the 2026 Fifa World Cup, which is being held in the US, Canada and Mexico.

When LaLiga executives came to the conclusion that the league would be better off moving on from beIN, and arranged a deal to buy back its rights from the network and try to sell them to another major US broadcaster, there was no shortage of offers.

“There was no one who said they weren’t interested, it was just a matter of finding the right fit and the right price,” Gartner says. “One of the key pieces was not having the rights split by language [English and Spanish] on different networks.”

SportBusiness understands that ESPN sought to acquire LaLiga rights for two main reasons.

Firstly, streaming service ESPN+ is believed to be lagging behind on its Hispanic subscriber targets and LaLiga offers immense strategic value to secure these goals.

Secondly, ESPN is doubtful that it will succeed in acquiring US rights to the English Premier League next year and, after recently losing the rights to Serie A to CBS Sports, LaLiga acts as something of an insurance policy.

Joint venture partnership could be replicated in other markets
According to Sillman, Relevent Sports has the capacity to partner with other global soccer leagues in a similar venture in the US but will instead focus on growing its successful partnership with LaLiga internationally.

“Right now we’re really focused on LaLiga,” Sillman says. “We have a great partner. We found someone in Javier Tebas and the clubs and the management team that we trust, which is paramount to everything. For now we’re very focused on how do we scale that relationship into Mexico and Central America and other territories?”

The success of the LaLiga North America operation has proven that it is a model that could be replicated in other markets. Following LaLiga North America’s recent expansion into Mexico, it is possible that the joint venture could expand into other international territories depending on the nuances of those local markets.

“We made significant commitments to LaLiga in 2017 and 2018 and to look back now and to have over-delivered to those clubs is just fire for us to keep growing the model,” Sillman says. “We had always had interest in scaling the business but we couldn’t do it until we proved that it had worked.

“When you’re successful it doesn’t mean anything but give you the opportunity to do the next thing – and that is how we see it. This is a proof of concept to keep scaling and expanding. It’s the start line for what we can do for LaLiga and the sport and gives us the credibility to go explore expanding our media business,” he says.

[Chester Perry]

There is some intriguing and useful insight here in this article from the Guardian's Sean Ingle about the lessons that can be extracted that showpiece Mayweather v social media somebody event last week

Purists hated Mayweather v Paul but traditional sports can learn from its success

• Other sports watched with interest at how today’s tools were used for a fight with narrative, hype, personalities and jeopardy

• The Guardian’s report on Logan Paul’s fight with Floyd Mayweather was the second most-read story on the website last week.

Sean Ingle

Mon 14 Jun 2021 08.00 BST

Some food for thought. Last week, the Guardian’s report on the “special exhibition” between the Hall of Fame boxer Floyd Mayweather and the celebrity YouTuber Logan Paul, was the second most-read story on our entire website. Millions read it, shared it, devoured it. A million Americans also paid $49.99 to watch on pay-per-view. Beforehand Mayweather had described it as “legalised bank robbery”. And it was. Yet people still willingly stuck their hands in the air and handed over their cash.

It is easy to sneer. But picking over the bones of the fight with the US sports agent Leigh Steinberg, who is often credited as the real-life inspiration for the Oscar-winning film 1996 Jerry Maguire, it was clear there were lessons for traditional sports too. “Of course the fight was largely about people loving novelty,” Steinberg tells me. “Remember when Bobby Riggs played Billie Jean King? It’s fish out of water, it’s man bites dog. But I can’t stress enough how they did a remarkable job of making people really care.”

That’s the first lesson right there. Say what you like about the contest but it had narrative, hype, personalities and jeopardy. For purists, it is enough for the best to go head to head. Casual fans need more. Too often I have heard media-trained stars talk about “executing my race” or “taking one game at a time”. It is the sporting equivalent of the Geneva conventions, designed to give nothing away. But without buzz, how can a sport fly?

“It helped that Mayweather is as good a salesperson as there is in boxing, and I say that having worked with Lennox Lewis and Oscar De La Hoya,” Steinberg adds. “But it also shows something else, the growing power of social media to drive eyeballs to an athletic event.”

That’s the second lesson. As Charlie Beall of the digital consultants Seven League – whose clients include the NBA, the Football Association, Barcelona and Juventus – can and should do more with “creator networks” such as Twitch, TikTok and YouTube.

“We often use the analogy of hunting versus farming,” Beall says. “Big sports with massive fanbases like to farm their audience. They can sell big TV deals, sponsorships and demand high ticket prices. But if you farm for too long, it becomes a diminishing and lazy resource. So you have to keep hunting newer and younger audiences. And if you’re not engaging them on the channels where they’re spending a lot of their time, you as a sports property start losing relevance among that target audience.”

That’s the third lesson. It is notable that the Spanish streamer Ibai recently broke the sports streaming record on Twitch by hosting a boxing event, which attracted an average audience of 1.1 million viewers during a four-hour broadcast. And that the Brazilian Twitch streamer Gaules now hosts NBA games on his own channel. Meanwhile Paul was able to leverage his 23 million YouTube subscribers to make millions against Mayweather.

The fourth? While it is often assumed that young people have lower attention spans, Beall says that is a lazy stereotype given how long they stay on the likes of Twitch, Minecraft or Roblox. It’s just that with social media, live streaming and more, they have greater competition for their time. Shorter formats such as T20 cricket, help. But sport also has to wrestle with the fact that it’s not about holding the audience’s attention for a full 90 minutes, but ensuring it has sufficient audience interest that when a big moment happens they swarm there. “That is where the platform Buzzer is very interesting,” Beall says. “They’re trying to direct audience attention to major moments as and when they’re happening.”

A fifth and final lesson is about sports finding novel ways to increase their audiences while not upsetting traditional fanbases. Novelty can work – if Usain Bolt raced the NFL star DK Metcalf, for instance, it would surely do huge PPV numbers. However Racing for Change’s Rod Street says many sports are unconvinced that events such as Mayweather v Paul “build a meaningful connection between the sport and a new audience, or are just a PT Barnum-style curio”.

Instead Street believes the answer is to combine top-tier events, such as racing’s British Champions Series, with new formats, such as the Racing League to attract young and tech‑savvy audiences. “But the competition in this space is beyond fierce,” he says. “Every sports executive I speak to is trying to reach that same audience.”

Incidentally, Steinberg reminds me that the infamous Tyson v Lewis brawl nearly scuppered their fight. “I negotiate what at that time would have been the biggest fight contract of all time and we head to the press conference,” he says. “When Tyson was on his meds he was pretty good, but off them he was a bit crazy and not really safe. So I’m standing in the wings watching Lennox, and Tyson runs over, tackles him and they go rolling around on stage. Later we went upstairs to Lennox’s room, and he pulls up his pants and there’s blood running down his leg. And he says: ‘Oh my god, the geezer bit me!’

“We had to give him a tetanus shot from the hotel doctor – and everyone was paranoid because they thought if the story leaked the fight would have to be cancelled.”

Of course it did leak. Yet, ultimately, it was just more fuel on the pay-per-view fire.