Football's Magic Money Tree

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Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:06 pm

Anyone not understanding how economic issues are affecting advertising revenues at Broadcasters, should note this Coca Cola and Pepsi have both decided not to take advertising slots in CBS's coverage of the Superbowl next month in a bid to save money - this is the biggest view event of the year. It is the combination of advertising revenue and and subscriptions that fun the tv rights of sports, such concerns will feed though to the deals for the next cycle that are currently out for tender for a huge number of sports and leagues at the moment

https://www.sportico.com/business/spons ... 234620521/

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:25 pm

A new blog post from the chaps at Vysyble -


The Football Factory

18th January 2021

Amidst a pandemic-affected market, third-party product promoters are adhering to a rigid schedule based primarily on a contractual agreement with the Manufacturers’ Commercial Association reached in 2018. Manufacturers had been forced to shut down production as the first wave of the pandemic passed through before restarting lines in June. However, factory visits have not been restored since the March shutdown thus depriving manufacturers of a valuable source of income, especially the smaller and more localised producers.

The third-party promoters had threatened financial consequences if production was not restored to their satisfaction. Given the lack of factory visit revenue and the possibility of serious financial problems in an industry not known for its financial forward-planning, the manufacturers have had little choice but to comply.

Product managers have since bemoaned the quality of output given the intense production demands dictated by product promoters and industry commercial sales staff. Consequently, market share and performance data is showing some unusual trends as manufacturers try to adapt to the new production requirements and conditions with varying degrees of success in terms of quality and volume.

However, product managers continue to voice concerns about worker health and safety given the condensed production schedules required under the new conditions. Indeed, some factories have had to halt production following viral outbreaks and positive tests by production line workers thus putting further pressure on maintaining production. Unfortunately, the overall production deadline for the 2020-21 quota does not seem to be flexible due to the demands of a major European distributor. Quality output is therefore likely to suffer further as schedules become increasingly congested and worker productivity is inevitably reduced.

Meanwhile, Government has expressed increasing concern at the behaviour of workers on production lines, particularly the gathering of more than two people for team meetings, reviews and celebratory occasions such as hitting production targets. Executive management has expressed some sympathy with the production workers but recent comments from the Head of the Manufacturers’ Commercial Association have laid bare the potential consequences of not complying with Government edicts with threats of severe penalties and a second production shutdown. This would be catastrophic for a number of manufacturers and their workers.

Additionally, indiscretions outside of the workplace from a small number of workers continue to cause concern with regard to the social distancing and quarantine rules.

Results from the 2019-20 financial year are beginning to emerge. With four manufacturers producing the same class of product in both 2018-19 and 2019-20 having already released accounts, the early year-on-year results from 12 months of production disrupted by the March – June shutdown are as follows:

Total Revenue – down 14.08%

Third Party Promoter Revenue – down 34.57%

Factory Visit Revenue – down 6.26%

Commercial Revenue – up 13.68%

Pre-Tax Losses – up 698.63%

Economic Losses – up 116.68%

The general financial picture for the industry is one of doom and gloom. The rise in commercial revenues reflects new agreements procured by Everton and Tottenham Hotspur along with a modest 1.45% increase year-on-year for the biggest manufacturer in the country, Manchester United, but it is expected that overall commercial revenues will fall as product sponsors enact penalty clauses for non-production at other manufacturers.

Losses have increased at an alarming rate year-on-year. Whilst 2018-19 was a record for economic losses for those manufacturers engaged in the most senior class of product, the following year is expected to be significantly worse. Current indications show economic profits declining at a rate of 3x that of 2019-20. This decline in profitability is unfortunately part of a longer-term trend. The industry has been experiencing a rapid decline in profitability since the 2015-18 third-party promoter agreement which has since been replaced with another three-year agreement for 2018-21. The latter agreement guaranteed a modest single-figure % increase in promotion revenues rather than previous and significant double-digit % uplifts.

Manufacturers have continued to invest heavily in production process upgrades and workers with net monetary investment in new workers for the summer of 2020 reaching the second highest level ever recorded. Given the difficult market conditions at the time, this near-record net investment generated a significant amount of criticism from the Government in addition to that already levied as a result of the apparent lack of collective industry support. Eventually, the larger maufacturers agreed to a predominantly loan-based solution for the smaller entities.

We believe that the senior class of manufacturers will achieve economic losses close to £1bn for 2019-20 as a result of the March-June production shutdown. 2020-21 could well be even worse as factory visits have been banned to date since March 2020, although the third party promoters will be paying out commissions in full if a full production schedule is completed. However, any serious disruption in this regard could push a number of manufacturers into reducing secondary product lines and the disposal of assets such as factory apprentice training academies.

Indeed, some manufacturers have sought extended lines of credit to bolster already-fragile finances with the bigger manufacturers engaging with the major investment banks as the smaller manufacturers have been forced to go to specialist and more expensive lenders given their higher level of risk.

Despite this, international investors remain interested in acquiring certain manufacturers with Burnley being the latest example to transfer into American ownership. We suspect that the business strategy for most American owners is to attempt to revamp existing distribution channels in order to get their products to wider international markets and in a much more efficient and profitable manner. However, some manufacturers have expressed a preference for more traditional and existing distribution networks.

As we have mentioned in previous reports and analyses, it is our view that the football industry is in dire need of reform, as much as anything to reflect the very challenged economics. Manufacturing is becoming increasingly expensive with little return as losses deepen and costs become increasingly uncontrollable. Inevitably, product quality will suffer. And the factory visit experience will be all the worse for it when it returns.

vysyble

SouthLondonexile
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by SouthLondonexile » Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:38 pm

My advice to BFC stay in the premiership this season at all costs. Most of all try not lose games and play strikers who score goals. From our goalkeeper to our midfield we are a formidable force. Beyond that our strikers are not scoring.
Get that right we should have least a good chance of remaining where the money is. Covid is going to throw the whole game upside down next season, a healthy bank balance will enable us to pay sensible money for exceptional players next season.

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:59 pm

SouthLondonexile wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:38 pm
My advice to BFC stay in the premiership this season at all costs. Most of all try not lose games and play strikers who score goals. From our goalkeeper to our midfield we are a formidable force. Beyond that our strikers are not scoring.
Get that right we should have least a good chance of remaining where the money is. Covid is going to throw the whole game upside down next season, a healthy bank balance will enable us to pay sensible money for exceptional players next season.
It is a small but significant nuance - but neither the Gallagher Premiership (Rugby) or the Scottish Premiership (football) are competitions we enter or sources of the finances generated by the Premier League.

Covid has already thrown the game upside down, the killer next season, will be the risk of further lockdowns, finances will stabilise, clubs will manage budgets to cover the additional borrowings and be assessing the long term implications of rebates and values (which will then be known to them) of the next rights cycle. That will be further complicated by the push from the EFL, DCMS and Fans groups to increase monies paid to the football family and reduce parachute payments and the Premier Leagues own review of how it distributes monies following up it's promise when binning Project Big Picture. Commercial incomes for the 14 and EFL will be threatened by the potential ban on gambling sponsorship.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 19, 2021 6:25 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Jan 18, 2021 3:48 pm
FIFA publishes it's 2020 Global Transfer Market Report - lowest spend since 2016 which should come as no surprise

media release
https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fi ... 20amateurs.

the full report
https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fi ... 20amateurs.
It seems that @KieranMaguire has found this - he has pulled at a few charts you may be interested in

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 2027294723

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 19, 2021 7:43 pm

The warning signs have been there all along - Derby are investigating other options as they fear the takeover deal is about to collapse according to the Mail

Derby hierarchy make contingency plans amid fear proposed takeover is about to collapse
JANUARY 19, 2021

Derby County's hierarchy are making contingency plans for the collapse of the proposed takeover by the Derventio Holdings Group, Sportsmail has been told.

Chief executive Stephen Pearce told the BBC last week that the deal would 'absolutely go ahead' after several delays. EFL approval was given in November.

However, sources close to the club say senior staff are now working on a plan in the event of the Dubai-based group, fronted by Sheikh Khaled bin Zayed Al Nehayan, failing to complete the £60million buyout.

They are said to be losing patience with the proposed new owners and there is a growing feeling the deal is about to fall through.

Some figures are also concerned after learning from sources close to Manchester City that Sheikh Khaled is not a direct cousin of their owner Sheikh Mansour, as is widely claimed.

Confidence of a resolution is fading inside the Championship club, whose owner Mel Morris wants to end his five-year stewardship of the Rams, and they are now trying to procure other investment.

It is believed another loan was sought last week from MSD Holdings, the investment group linked to US billionaire Michael Dell.

But they are also looking at other ways to cover a cash shortfall of around £500,000 - players are still waiting for an outstanding sum of December's wages - and the sale of 16-year-old Kaide Gordon is seen as a potential source of funds.

It is hoped Gordon would bring in a fee in excess of £1m plus future adds-ons. However, there is a difference in Derby's valuation and that of interested clubs such as Manchester United and Liverpool.

But beyond this month it is not known how the club will be funded with Morris reluctant to invest any more of his own money.

Wayne Rooney was appointed Derby manager last week after a caretaker spell and has indicated he received assurances about the club's financial future before signing a two-and-a-half-year deal.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 20, 2021 12:15 am

it seems Derby have had more bad news - from the Mail

Derby must pay sacked captain Richard Keogh £2MILLION after he won an appeal over his dismissal following career-threatening knee injury suffered in drink-driving crash with team-mates in October 2019
- Derby could have to pay their sacked former captain Richard Keogh around £2m
- The defender won an appeal at a tribunal over his dismissal following a car crash
- He suffered serious knee injuries following alcohol-fuelled team bonding night
- However, the club are preparing their own appeal against the tribunal’s verdict
By MATT HUGHES FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:30, 19 January 2021 | UPDATED: 23:00, 19 January 2021

Derby face having to pay their sacked former captain Richard Keogh around £2million after he won an appeal at a tribunal over his dismissal following a car crash.

Keogh was left with a career-threatening knee injury following the accident and Derby terminated his contract.

But Sportsmail has learned that the former Republic of Ireland centre back has had his appeal upheld by an employment tribunal. So Derby have been ordered to make a financial settlement to Keogh, who had 21 months left on a contract worth £1.3m a year when he was dismissed.

Derby are understood to be preparing their own appeal against the tribunal’s verdict, although it has been claimed the club could be stalling due to financial problems as owner Mel Morris seeks to complete a proposed takeover by Derventio Holdings.

There are fears the takeover could collapse as Sheik Khaled bin Zayed Al Nehayan is reportedly yet to provide proof of funds.

Keogh had his contract terminated by Derby in October 2019 following the car crash that also involved team-mates Tom Lawrence and Mason Bennett.

The 34-year-old Keogh, who did not play for over a year after the crash in which he was a passenger, had appeals rejected by both Derby and the EFL before his success at an employment tribunal.

Derby’s decision to sack Keogh contrasted with their treatment of the drivers of the two vehicles involved in the high-speed crash, Lawrence and Bennett, who were fined six weeks wages and ordered to do 80 hours of community service and rehabilitation.

The pair were also found guilty of drink-driving at Derby Magistrates’ Court, a verdict which resulted in them being given a further fine, a two-year driving ban and another 180 hours of community service.

Keogh sustained cruciate knee ligament damage in the smash in which he was in the back seat of Lawrence’s Range Rover, which crashed into the rear of Bennett’s Mercedes before skidding across a roundabout and hitting a lamp-post on the A6 near Allestree, Derby.

His contract was terminated when he did not accept Derby’s offer of a substantial reduction on his £1.3m-a-year deal. Keogh had made more than 300 appearances for the club.

He signed for MK Dons on a free transfer last summer and made 18 appearances this season before joining Huddersfield Town on Tuesday. Derby declined to comment.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 20, 2021 12:27 am

the Mail is also reporting that the Championship clubs are about to reject a salary cap next season - partly because they believe the rules are too porous - I must say that it is shocking that some Championship clubs are still in the thrall of Project Big Pictures false promises

Championship set to reject £18m salary cap for next season... with almost HALF the clubs now opposing proposals amid claim that one finance director 'found 30 ways' to cheat them
- Sportsmail understands nearly half of Championship clubs oppose the plans
- The salary cap proposals need at least two-thirds backing to go through
- Brentford, Bournemouth and Norwich picked apart the proposals in a letter
- One club official branded the potential cap proposals as 'absolute nonsense'

By MIKE KEEGAN and MATT HUGHES FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:31, 19 January 2021 | UPDATED: 23:30, 19 January 2021

Plans for a new £18million salary cap in the Championship next season appear to be dead in the water.

Sportsmail understands that opposition to the proposals is now held by almost half of the second-tier clubs. The backing of two-thirds of the teams would be needed to vote it through.

A letter sent to the other clubs by promotion-chasers Brentford, Bournemouth and Norwich City — seen by Sportsmail and discussed at Tuesday's Championship meeting — picked apart the proposals and featured a claim that one finance director had found '30 ways' to cheat them.

Following the meeting, a number of club officials have confirmed that they have no desire to see the cap proposals introduced, with one branding them 'absolute nonsense'.

In what amounted to an exhaustive, eight–page destruction of the proposals which appears to have won the day, Brentford, Bournemouth and Norwich City said if introduced the cap could 'end the Championship as a competition' and make the league 'impotent'. As many as 10 clubs are thought to share that view and insiders are saying a vote to bring the cap in for next season is 'unlikely'.

'It's a rushed, nonsensical move,' said one source. 'You can't slap an £18m cap on each club. Some have much higher turnovers than others and much wealthier owners. Why should they be penalised? And where is the incentive for any new investment when potential new owners can't spend their own money?'

Another source disclosed that there was a widening divide. 'It's almost split in half,' said the source. 'You have the three clubs who wrote the letter, and the likes of Stoke who have a wealthy backer against it.

'Then you have the smaller clubs who just want vengeance on those who can spend more money than them but there isn't enough of them to get it passed.'

The open letter, from Brentford chairman Cliff Crown, Bournemouth counterpart Jeff Mostyn and Norwich business and project director Zoe Ward, called for more research. They said that should the cap be introduced 'in haste' it would be something 'clubs and the EFL may regret in years to come'.

The group suggested that the plan seems more about creating a level playing field rather than dealing with profit and sustainability.

The authors also said they had seen a document that indicates those in the second tier could receive between £18m and £24m from the top flight following the Project Big Picture review rather than the current £8m.

It added: 'Many of the financial problems in the Championship arise due to the chasm between our division and the Premier League. However, instead of helping, a salary cap model will only create a larger chasm.

'Picture a scenario where almost every season the three teams who come down go straight back up. That would be the end of the Championship as a competition. We truly believe the brand would be devalued if a salary cap is implemented and the League would become impotent.'

The letter added that one Championship financial director has found '30 ways to beat the salary cap rules'.

'Is that what we want?' it asked, before giving an example of how a club buying a player could discreetly pay the selling club an inflated transfer fee and the selling club could pay the player a termination bonus in lieu of any lower salary at his new club.

'We believe there are so many issues with this (salary cap) proposal it needs a fundamental rethink,' it added. 'Clubs are simply not in a position to make a well thought through and considered decision.'

Further meetings are planned, with a single-issue summit, rather than a vote, likely.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 20, 2021 12:35 am

This is exceptionally cheeky by QPR - they are trying to get their fine reduced - from the Mail

QPR chief executive Lee Hoos sends heartfelt letter to fellow Championship clubs in attempt to cut £42m FFP fine... but request is met with some opposition in 'short, terse debate' at Tuesday's meeting
- QPR were handed a £42m in 2018 for breaking Financial Fair Play regulations
- CEO Lee Hoos says the punishment for breaking spending limits is too harsh
- Opposition was voiced - yet Hoos says there was a positive reaction to the plea
By MIKE KEEGAN FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:31, 19 January 2021 | UPDATED: 23:11, 19 January 2021

Queens Park Rangers have launched an audacious attempt to have their Financial Fair Play penalty reduced.

The club wrote a heartfelt letter to other Championship sides, claiming the £42million punishment dished out in 2018 is too harsh. But opposition to the request was voiced in what was described as a 'short, terse debate' at Tuesday's second-tier meeting.

The letter, sent by chief executive Lee Hoos, compares the punishment handed out to QPR with lesser penalties given to Manchester City, Inter Milan and PSG.

QPR were sanctioned after they spectacularly broke spending limits on their way to winning promotion to the Premier League in 2014.

As part of the punishment, around £22m in shareholder loans was written off, leaving the club to pay around £20m over 10 years.

Hoos cites the impact of Covid and asks rivals to 'consider the fairness of payments from a club competing in the second tier of a football competition compared to the fines and structure of the sanctions meted out to clubs competing at the top end of the football structure'.

He adds: 'We ask you to consider the fairness against a club who has already been severely punished having already made hefty financial payments and underwent a transfer embargo.

'We ask you to consider the fairness against a club that has been compliant every year since the advent of a three-year reporting cycle. And finally, we ask that you note we have been nothing but transparent — in fact probably too transparent.

'We have never tried to cloud the issues. We have not used cross-company charges, sale and leaseback or any other accounting mechanisms which would have materially affected our return nor were we non-cooperative with a view to dragging out proceedings.'

Hoos believes there was a positive reaction to the plea. He said: 'The document was well-received within the room. There was only one club who expressed their disagreement. In conversations with my colleagues afterwards there appeared to be a great deal of sympathy with QPR.'

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 20, 2021 2:39 am

The French Ligue has issued a new tender for the remainder of this season and the next 3 seasons and needs it settling in ultra quick time - this is the press release - you have to say to say , Good luck with that

LFP PRESS RELEASE
Published 19/01/2021 at 20:10 - LFP

The Professional Football League launched on Tuesday 19 January 2021 two market consultations on the audiovisual rights of the Ligue 1 Uber Eats championships on the one hand and Ligue 2 BKT on the other.

These consultations relate to the exploitation of the rights originally allocated to Mediapro for the remainder of the 2020/2021 season (as of February 5, 2021) as well as for the 2021/2022, 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 seasons.

The consultation on Ligue 1 Uber Eats includes 4 lots:

Lot A: 1 match per league day including 10 choice matches 1 (Top 10) and 28 choice matches 3 with the big Sunday magazine and the magazine review.

Lot B: 7 matches per league day including 38 choice matches 2, 38 choice matches 5, 36 choice matches 6 and 152 choice matches 7 to 10 with the presentation magazine of the day and the Sunday morning magazine.

Lot C: The 3 multiplexes of the 19th, 37th and 38th championship days, the 2 play-off matches and the Champions Trophy.

Lot D: weekday magazines.

The consultation on League 2 BKT includes 2 lots:

Lot A: 8 matches per championship day, the 2 multiplex days of the 37th and 38th championship days with the stadium tour magazine and the Sunday morning magazine.

Lot B: weekday magazines.

Depending on the terms of the consultation organised by the LFP, the consultation document can be sent electronically on request by e-mail before 21 January 2021 to the President of the LFP, Vincent Labrune at the following address: consultation@lfp.fr

Offers must be submitted on Monday, February 1, 2021 between 10 a.m. and noon in their own hands at the LFP headquarters located 6 rue Léo Delibes, 75116 Paris.

Excluding matches already played for the 2020/2021 season and those to come until February 5, 2021.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 20, 2021 7:14 pm

Bristol City's 2019/20 Financial results remind everyone just how bonkers the Championship is from a financial perspective - in case you had forgotten since last nights posts on the salary cap and QPR trying to wriggle out of their fine

https://www.bcfc.co.uk/news/city-announ ... -accounts/

Annual Report and consolidated financial statements
https://www.bcfc.co.uk/media/53969/bris ... 019-20.pdf

:KieranMaguire has a look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 8453799938

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 12:44 am

This is a bit strange - yes MSD are a private company but the service they are offering and the security they are receiving is not much different to other financial offerings - from the Mail

Championship clubs write to the EFL over fears that US company has increasing grip on their rivals after equity firm MSD Capital lent money to Derby and Sunderland
- MSD Capital have become significant players across the English game
- They have lent money to Southampton , Burnley, Derby and Sunderland
- Firm could gain control of clubs that fail to keep up with repayments
By MATT HUGHES FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:55, 20 January 2021 | UPDATED: 23:26, 20 January 2021

Championship clubs have written to the EFL raising concern over conflicts of interest that could arise from MSD Capital’s investment in some of their rivals.

The American private equity firm have become significant players across the game over the last 12 months, lending money to Southampton, Burnley, Derby and Sunderland.

Under the terms of the loan agreements, they could gain control of clubs that fail to keep up with repayments.

Derby appear most at risk of defaulting given the club’s financial problems — which led to them failing to pay their players in full last month as they wait for a proposed takeover by Derventio Holdings to be completed.

The Championship club have borrowed around £30 million from MSD over five years at an interest rate of nine per cent.

Derby owner Mel Morris is understood to have offered Pride Park, the training ground and shares in the club as security against the loan, which would result in MSD effectively taking control if the repayment terms are not met.

The arrangements are believed to be similar at other clubs.

A source who has dealt with MSD told Sportsmail: ‘The security they have gained against the loans is a very long list. They basically take the lot.’

Derby’s financial plight has alerted clubs to the possibility of MSD’s influence extending further.

In the letter sent to the EFL, it is pointed out that any default could result in MSD having a controlling interest in several clubs, raising the possibility for conflicts of interest.

The EFL are understood to view MSD’s investment as similar to an ordinary bank loan and have no immediate concerns.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 2:51 pm

You can tell we are getting to the final stages of planning for the post 2024 football calendar and competition structure - FIFA/UEFA pull out their Trump card (probably too early) to prevent talk of a super League either at European or global level - We are miles away from being at the Kerry Packer stage = this from the New York Times

Players in a New Super League Would Be Barred From the World Cup
JANUARY 21, 2021

Top players will be barred from playing for their national teams in events like the World Cup if their clubs join a breakaway league, the major governing bodies warned on Thursday.

The announcement by FIFA and soccer’s six regional confederations follows weeks of talks and months of disquiet after the revelation of plans hatched by some of the world’s richest and most popular clubs — led by Real Madrid and Manchester United — to create a so-called Super League. That competition, which would be controlled by the teams, could at a stroke render irrelevant the Champions League, European soccer’s immensely popular club competition.

Talks about a new league come as discussions with European soccer’s governing body UEFA over a new format for the Champions League beginning with the 2024 season are close to completion. Some senior leaders at UEFA are hoping to announce the changes, the biggest to the event in a generation, as soon as the organization’s annual meeting next month.

FIFA said in a statement that a Super League “would not be recognized by either FIFA or the respective confederation. Any club or player involved in such a competition would as a consequence not be allowed to participate in any competition organized by FIFA or their respective confederation.”

According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, plans for the breakaway European Super League, a project that has been mooted for decades, gathered pace since the summer. Top clubs sought to take advantage of uncertainty in the soccer industry caused by the coronavirus pandemic to forge a new path that would insure a degree of financial stability for them but almost certainly lead to a loss in the value and revenue for teams excluded from the project.

Under the proposals, the Super League, which would be played in the middle of the week, would have 16 top soccer franchises as permanent members and add four qualifiers from domestic competitions. The clubs would be split into two groups of 10 with the top four teams in each group qualifying for the knockout stages, culminating in a final that would take place on a weekend. The event would, according to the documents, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue for the participating teams, already the richest clubs in the sport. (An alternative version of the plan has 15 permanent members and 5 qualification spots.)

The group has already entered into discussions with JPMorgan Chase&Co. to raise financing for the project, according to people with knowledge of the matter. A spokesman for the bank declined to comment.

The clearest public indication of how advanced the talks among the clubs are came when Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former president of Barcelona, announced in October that his team had agreed with the leaders of what he described as Europe’s other “big clubs” to participate in a European Super League. Bayern Munich, Germany’s biggest team, spoke out this week against a breakaway, but should other top teams find an agreement it would be unrealistic for that club not to be involved as well.

The project has long been the brainchild of Florentino Perez, the president of Barcelona’s rival Real Madrid. Leaked documents from 2018 revealed he had drawn up plans with a Spanish consultancy for a new competition and then held a meeting with FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino in 2019 to discuss the plans further, telling him that teams from the Super League competition would be willing to participate in FIFA’s expanded World Cup for clubs, a quadrennial event that Infantino believes could grow to become one of the most important properties in all of sports.

Since the summer, Perez found a new ally in Joel Glazer, the chairman of Manchester United, who has also joined forces with the American owners of Liverpool in an effort to force through changes to the Premier League that would benefit his team. Glazer has been promoting the idea of the Super League, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. A spokesman for United said the team would not comment.

The joint announcement by FIFA and the six confederations follows talks on Monday between Infantino and his counterpart at UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin. The two men have had a bumpy relationship since 2018 when Infantino announced his ambitions for FIFA’s own club competitions and growing suggestions of his involvement in the breakaway talks. Infantino has always publicly denied any interest in supporting a European breakaway.

Ceferin has frequently launched broadsides against the Super League discussions. “It would be hard to think of a more selfish and egotistical scheme,” he said after one iteration of a breakaway was discussed. “It would clearly ruin football around the world; for the players, for the fans and for everyone connected with the game — all for the benefit of a tiny number of people.”

UEFA’s proposals for the new version of the Champions League go a long way to meeting the demands of the biggest clubs for an expanded tournament. If agreed, the tournament will feature 36 teams instead of the 32 it currently does, with two of those places reserved for teams that have been historically successful in European competition but failed to meet the qualification criteria. That would mean the possibility of a return to top tier action for the likes of A.C. Milan, a soccer heavyweight that has fallen on hard times. UEFA’s reforms would also scrap the current opening stage in which teams are separated into eight groups of four, and instead place them into one table, with qualifiers for the knockouts determined by results after each team has played as many as 10 games.

Access to the competition, unlike the Super League, would largely be from the domestic leagues, ensuring they remain relevant.

The European Leagues, an umbrella group for many of the continent’s leagues, issued a statement endorsing the declaration against the Super League by the governing bodies.

“The European Leagues’ board of directors has discussed the initiative of some European football clubs to create a closed European Super League for a limited number of clubs similar to those franchise models operating in North America,” the group said.

“UEFA and the other football Confederations from all over the world have, together with FIFA, published a strong statement against this initiative and our member leagues are unanimously supporting that statement.”

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:16 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 5:31 pm
Fascinating article in The Athletic today from Matt Slater - it is important to remember just how much of the football economy is built on the transfer market and how many clubs entire financial model is centred on it

Should football scrap transfer fees?
Matt Slater Jan 14, 2021

Professional cycling had rolled merrily along for more than a century without anyone trying to do something as underhand as buy a rider from another team. Fixing races, paying bribes, taking drugs? Sure! But financial inducements to break a contract? Pah, we’re all gentlemen here and we have shaken hands!

But then, in 2009, new money arrived and it wanted a star to lead its grand project. And it wouldn’t wait.

Bradley Wiggins, now Sir Bradley, had just finished fourth in that summer’s Tour de France. It was his breakthrough performance on the road after a decade of success in the velodrome. That fourth place was later upgraded to third when Lance Armstrong’s career was cancelled but Wiggins’ result was already a tie for the best Tour finish by a British rider, making him the obvious leader of the new British flagship coming down the slipway, Team Sky.

The lovechild of performance guru Sir Dave Brailsford and Sky chairman James Murdoch, Team Sky were determined to compete from the gun when the 2010 season started, which is why they needed Wiggo. There was one problem, though. He still had one year on his contract with US team Garmin-Slipstream and they wanted to keep him.

What followed was cycling’s first transfer saga. And it finished the way these things often finish in football, with the bigger team getting their man and the smaller team wondering if they got enough for him.

“Cycling contracts are typically short enough that it’s more efficient to just wait until the contract is up,” remembers Jonathan Vaughters, Wiggins’ old boss at Garmin and now manager of the team they have become, EF Education-Nippo. (Cycling might be behind football when it comes to transfers but it is has nothing to learn on naming rights).

“But with Wiggins, it was a combination of things. One, you had the wealth and personal interest of James Murdoch wanting him at Sky, ASAP. Two, the team was branded ‘Britain’s team’ — not having the best British rider would have looked bad. And three, our inability to financially match the compensation levels.

“So, it was a rare moment when a transfer made sense. Legally, we had no choice.”

Wiggins would win the Tour de France for Team Sky two years later but a decade after cycling’s first transfer tug-of-war, his move remains the exception to the rule. Contracts are getting a bit longer and small fees are sometimes paid by the richest teams to smaller ones for hot prospects, but the majority of riders go from one season to the next, eager to earn a bit more from their next contract while they’re on the up, and desperate to eke out another season on their way down.

It is the same story in almost every other professional team sport in the world. Rugby league, one of the UK’s oldest professional sports, used to have transfer fees, usually when one of its best players was being poached by rugby union, but they have dried up in recent years, with the last notable fee being the world-record £700,000 the New Zealand Warriors paid Wigan for Sam Tomkins in 2013.

There is no tradition of transfer fees in cricket, either, while rugby union, professional for the last 25 years, mainly lives without them. High-profile transfers such as Louis Picamoles’ move from Northampton to Montpellier or English stars George Ford and Jonny May joining Leicester are rare, and they involve tiny fees by football standards.

Of course, North American sport, with its closed leagues, collective bargaining agreements and draft systems, has no need for transfer fees. And this is where many in European football believed the game was heading after it received the biggest shock to its way of doing business, the Bosman ruling in 1995.

Jean-Marc Bosman is an unlikely revolutionary. Like so many other players before and since, his early promise had faded somewhat and he found himself out of favour at RFC Liege. He was only 25, though, and Dunkerque, just over the border, were convinced the former Belgian youth international could do a job for them in France’s second division.

Unfortunately, Liege wanted £500,000 for the player, despite his contract expiring, a sum Dunkerque could not afford. The impasse left Bosman stranded and, to make matters worse, Liege promptly cut his pay by 75 per cent and sent him to train with the reserves.

Bosman bit back, suing Liege, the Belgian FA and eventually UEFA, too. It took more than four years but by the time he was done with them, he had heralded the start of football’s free agency era and ended UEFA’s limits on the number of overseas players teams could use, which had been deemed a clear breach of the European Union’s single market.

In a classic case of justice delayed being justice denied, Bosman’s win did little for his career but made millions for fellow professionals, and their agents, who realised they now just had to wait for contracts to expire before they could take their pick of suitors willing to put what they would have spent on a fee into the player’s wage and signing-on bonus.

The transfer market was dead, right? Players had all the power, clubs no longer had any incentive to develop talent and the end of the world was nigh. Wrong.

Seven months after the Bosman ruling was delivered, Newcastle United paid Blackburn Rovers £15 million for Alan Shearer — double what Arsenal had sent Inter Milan for Dennis Bergkamp a year before. By 2000, the record was Luis Figo’s £37 million price tag for moving from Barca to Real Madrid. In 2009, Real paid Manchester United £80 million for Cristiano Ronaldo’s services and then, in 2017, Neymar set the bar at a shade under £200 million when he went from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain.

“What happened after Bosman is the European Commission investigated the rules of the entire transfer system and forced some substantial changes,” explains Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, general secretary of global players’ union FIFPro, which helped Jean-Marc Bosman fight his landmark case.

“But that process established new mechanisms and restrictions, which, according to the famous words of the then-European competition commissioner Mario Monti, were meant to strike a balance between the interests of the sport and the players’ right to free movement.”

Through a series of subsequent rulings, the most notable involving Brazilian playmaker Matuzalem and his attempt to force a move from Shakhtar Donetsk to Real Zaragoza in 2007, the pendulum swung back towards the clubs. A compromise was struck between the European Commission and FIFA based on the idea that football was different to other industries, and therefore footballers could not be allowed to just up sticks and leave whenever a more lucrative opportunity came calling.

It is a compromise FIFPro threatened to blow apart in 2015, when it announced a fresh challenge to the system. Frustrated at the authorities’ failure to address the problem of players being paid late, or not at all, the union told FIFA and UEFA that transfer fees impeded their members’ ability to find better employers. It also pointed out that fees were not trickling down the pyramid but had instead become a barrier to entry that only the richest clubs could clear. And, with that in mind, FIFPro also wanted to cap agents’ fees, limit loans and reduce the size of squads.

If it was a bargaining tactic, it worked, as FIFA started talks with FIFPro on reforms to its “regulations on the status and transfer of players” and the union agreed to drop the challenge. So far those talks have produced some tweaks to the rules that should benefit players but the most high-profile proposal — limiting the amount agents can earn from deals — is likely to result in another round of fierce legal argument.

Baer-Hoffmann is happy to continue trying to change the system for this 65,000 members’ benefit from inside the tent for now, but he does not sound like a man willing to wait for the sunlit uplands forever.

“FIFA has accepted the system doesn’t obtain its stated objectives and that raises questions about the restrictions it creates,” he says.

“There’s a misconception in football that we try to regulate this market by restricting the labour market for players but if you’re concerned about reimbursing clubs for training players, you don’t have to do that via a transfer system. You could put a tax on any of your revenues and say: ‘You know what? The clubs further down the pyramid do such a good job developing players, we’re going to share some of our money’.

“We talked about that at the time of Bosman. The advocate-general of the European court said the goals the clubs and federations wanted to obtain could be much better achieved by other mechanisms. That’s still the case today.

“The transfer system stabilises the power structure because only a few clubs will be able to pay the fees you need for certain players. Yes, it does redistribute money but not to a degree that will ever outweigh the competitive advantage the big clubs get.”

Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan and the author of the best-selling Soccernomics, agrees. In fact, he wrote a paper to support FIFPro’s planned assault on transfer fees in 2015 and is rather disappointed the union agreed to an armistice.

For him, the argument is very simple: transfer fees are illegal.

“If The Guardian offered you a staff job, but The Athletic said, ‘You can only move jobs now if they pay us a fee, otherwise you have to work for us for another two years’, you would be in court like a shot,” he explains.

“Everyone in Europe has the right to move freely, except footballers. No law has ever been passed exempting football clubs from labour law. So it is illegal and it breaches a right that everyone else takes for granted.

“If it’s illegal, it should stop. Full stop.”

What is the alternative, then?

“Players would negotiate contracts with teams, just as the rest of us negotiate contracts with our employers,” says Szymanski. “Most people are happy to stay with their current employer as long as they feel they are being treated fairly and only leave if a) they get a better offer or b) they don’t like their work environment.

“Clubs would need to treat players a bit more like human beings and less like horsemeat. It’s not difficult: every other employer has to do it. And it isn’t necessarily more expensive. It’s a state of mind.”

The counter-argument, however, is that so-called selling clubs — which, let’s face it, is nearly all of them — would either be unable to compete without transfer income or would go bankrupt without it. Szymanski rejects this.

“I’ve researched the financial performance of clubs over the last half-century and there is no evidence that small clubs obtain substantial benefits from transfers,” he says. “Teams do better when they can spend more on players, not when they sell them and spend less.

“Active trading in the transfer market is not a means of challenging the dominant clubs. In fact, I would argue that small clubs would have a better chance of challenging if transfer fees were not an obstacle to hiring stars.

“Financial failure is a valid concern but you need to understand why it happens, and to realise that the transfer system does not help. Most financial failures are a result of failure on the pitch, usually connected to relegation. Fire sales of players by teams in crisis do little to solve the problem, precisely because the buyers know it’s a fire sale.

“Very few small clubs are ever able to generate substantial revenues from player trading — it’s the big clubs that control the development of talent. The best players are cornered by the age of 15. What the clubs need is an insurance scheme to guard against financial failure.”

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? But how do you get there from here?

Dr Giambattista Rossi is a lecturer in sports labour markets at the University of London’s Birkbeck College and he isn’t so sure you can.

“When we talk about transfer fees in football, we’re really talking about compensation: good players make you win games and that means revenue,” explains Rossi. “But you cannot take 10 players and make a Messi. So there is scarcity value for the top players.

“North American sport doesn’t have (transfers) because they have closed leagues and the owners pool all of the game’s resources and say, ‘OK, the players get half’. Nobody can interfere as they have legal protection from US anti-trust rules.

“Transfer fees are implicit to global football’s system. Media interest has created the rise in fees because, don’t forget, you buy players to win and winning equals revenue. Football, unlike US sport, has a winner-takes-all approach to revenue.

“Economists often talk about human capital. Take our jobs: we know how to write and explain things but lots of people can do that. But there are some jobs — sport, music, surgery — that require a huge amount of specific training to acquire a high level of skill. And when you are a little bit better than everyone else, you can earn much, much more than the rest.”

For Rossi, the problems that Baer-Hoffmann and Szymanski identify have easier solutions than scrapping something as fundamental to the game as transfer fees, although to be fair to FIFPro, it has been calling for these ideas, too.

“It always strikes me as strange that people complain about the negative impact of transfer fees but do not talk about how financial fair play rules have entrenched the status quo or how the big clubs stockpile talent in feeder clubs, giving them huge power and influence,” says Rossi.

“We should criticise (leading agents) like Jonathan Barnett and Jorge Mendes if they don’t pay their taxes, not for doing their jobs. There is a lot of myopia about where the power really resides in football. You would think, in a sport where there are a fixed number of players, you would have to release anyone you don’t use, but the biggest clubs hold onto and control these players.

“And people often talk about money going out of the game to agents but what economic sector is there that is hermetically sealed? Money leaks in every sector. Look at image rights. Does that money stay in football?

“Transfer fees are here to stay because they are entwined in the system: most clubs use them to generate revenue. If you took them away, you would have to replace them with a mechanism that compensated clubs for that lost revenue. It’s not impossible but I do not see how you do it without a closed league.”

Daniel Geey is a leading British sports lawyer and the author of Done Deal, the definitive guide to the transfer market’s legal framework. He agrees with Rossi that scrapping transfer fees would be very difficult, as players are the club’s most valuable intangible assets and any new system would have to address that immediate loss of value.

He also believes the system has more benefits for players than its critics are willing to admit.

“When a player is in demand, the interests of the buying club and player are aligned in that they want security,” says Geey. “The club wants to lock in that value and the player gets the benefit of a life-changing contract.

“Why don’t players want to sign shorter contracts? Simple: one bad injury and it’s all over. So there are upsides in the current system that the unions tend to gloss over. I would argue that for players contractual stability will usually outweigh the restrictive effect of high transfer fees.”

This point makes perfect sense for Daren O’Leary, a former rugby union professional who is now a leading agent in the sport.

“Rugby union is going in this direction and the simple reason is length of contracts,” says O’Leary, who retired in 2005 after making more than 200 appearances across stints with Harlequins, Gloucester and Worcester.

“When I started as an agent, about 75 per cent of the players were on two-year deals, with the rest on one-year contracts and maybe a handful on three-year deals.

“But now about a third of the players are on three-year contracts and we’re even seeing four and five-year deals coming in, although they tend to be very much in the club’s favour and I would never advise a young player to commit that long.”

The complicating factor with rugby union is the hard salary cap, a cost-control mechanism that should work in the opposite direction of a vibrant transfer market, where, theoretically, the talent goes up the pyramid and money filters down. Salary caps, on the other hand, are meant to stop all the best players automatically going to the biggest teams, more evenly distributing talent throughout the league.

But the older professional club rugby union gets, the more like football it becomes. O’Leary says it is now fairly common for clubs to make small payments — £30,000 or so — to instantly get a player they want, rather than wait until his contract is up. And players are less willing to play out final seasons with their current clubs, risking injury, when they know there is a longer contract awaiting somewhere else.

O’Leary listed several other trends in the game — fixed development fees to compensate smaller teams when their best youngsters are poached, competition for talent from overseas and clubs separating recruitment from coaching — that he believes are lessons professional rugby is learning from football.

So perhaps it is not the case that football’s “illegal” approach to human resources is so out of step with the rest of sport. It is more that football — or, more accurately, top-flight football — is simply much richer than any other team sport outside North America, and if draft systems, trades and collective bargaining agreements are your thing, you cannot have promotion, relegation and transfer gossip, too.

Open or closed, total free agency or contractual stability. You cannot have both. Choose one, always read the small print and enjoy.
Matt Slater is talking about this on today's Sports Business Podcast from the Athletic

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

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:21 pm

Speaking of Podcasts - the latest from Unofficial Partner looks at the recently published FA Strategic Planoday we look at the role of The FA following the publication of its Strategic Plan covering the next four years to 2024.

The blurb
Today we look at the role of The FA following the publication of its Strategic Plan covering the next four years to 2024.

The FA is the governing body for football in England, with a remit that goes from the England teams, World Cups and Euros, St George’s Park and Wembley Stadium to the grass roots, coaching, youth football and safeguarding.

We invited two people to come on and dissect the strategy document. First of all, Alex Horne who held a number of leadership roles within The FA including CEO, COO and General Secretary. And then following Alex, we have Matt Rogan, one of the co-founders of Two Circles, the agency that works with many governing bodies both in the UK and around the world.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... tegic-plan

You can read the actual document here

https://www.thefa.com/about-football-as ... o/strategy

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 4:43 pm

It is not just football per se - but this links strongly to my "the vultures are at the door" posts about Private Equity - The Financial Times on...

Private equity’s new bet on sport: buy the league
JAMIE SMYTH JANUARY 21, 2021

When the All Blacks next take to the rugby field to perform the prematch haka, a ceremonial war dance invoking New Zealand’s ancient Maori culture, they will do so in a battle for sporting glory — while also, perhaps, pursuing profits for one of the world’s most powerful private equity groups.

New Zealand Rugby, the governing body which runs its successful men’s rugby union team and manages competitions, is holding investment talks with Silver Lake, a $75bn Californian buyout firm better known for its bets on technology groups from Dell to Airbnb.

The proposed deal is the latest sign of how rugby is following the trajectory of other sports, such as football, baseball, motor racing and basketball. A decades-long process, with teams once forged as local institutions morphing into major global businesses, is entering a new phase: the entrance of private equity firms seeking financial returns from the emotional highs sport can provide.

While the business of buying sports clubs is long-established, with super-rich individuals snapping up teams as trophy assets, the difference now is institutional investors not just acquiring individual teams, but stakes in the governing bodies that run the competitions. In the process, they are taking on the risk of a political and popular backlash in the countries where the tournaments are held.

“There is increasing interest for many different private equity firms . . . and that interest is falling on receptive ears in the world of sport and rugby as well,” says Brett Gosper, the outgoing chief executive of World Rugby, the sport’s global governing body. “There will be more conversations and more deals that are done.”

Silver Lake, which is seeking a 15 per cent stake in a new entity that would hold NZ Rugby’s $2bn broadcasting, sponsorship and ticketing rights, has been among the quickest to pounce. It acquired a $500m stake in the parent company of English Premier League football club Manchester City in 2019 and is an investor in the mixed martial arts league Ultimate Fighting Championship.

But the pioneer in private equity investing in sporting tournaments has been CVC Capital Partners, a Luxembourg-based buyout group that previously owned Formula One and MotoGP, and is in talks alongside fellow buyout group Advent International over a €1.6bn investment in Serie A, Italy’s top football league.

CVC has triggered the recent scrum for rugby deals. It has spent the past two years hoovering up stakes in club contests such as the English Premiership and Pro14, and is in the final stages of acquiring a £300m share in the Six Nations, Europe’s leading national team tournament.

Hamish McLennan, Rugby Australia’s chairman, said he has held exploratory investment talks with CVC and Silver Lake, as well as rival firms Providence of the US and Tattarang, the vehicle of Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest. The body behind world champions South Africa has also held talks with CVC.

Many of these discussions began even before coronavirus wreaked havoc on the finances of rugby’s authorities. They have looked enviously at the growth of other sports, such as football and basketball, and sought external funding to emulate their success at selling TV and sponsorship deals globally. Rival private equity groups, even those with little previous experience in sport, are now seeking to muscle in on the action.

Yet, if sports bodies end up being overtaken by commercial concerns, they could lose touch with the interests of fans, the audience that attracted financiers in the first place. There is form in this regard. While CVC made a healthy profit by selling Formula One in 2016 for $8bn, followers and industry executives complained the buyout firm’s 10-year tenure in charge of the motorsport led to its domination by rich teams, predictable racing results and a poorer sporting spectacle. Bernie Ecclestone, the former F1 boss who ran the sport for CVC, said in 2017 that he was “embarrassed” at “selling this shitty product”.

Mr Gosper argues that rugby union’s new owners must be asset builders, not asset strippers. If private equity’s goal is to “simply come in and milk what’s there over a period, and not contribute to the growth of the sport overall, that would be problematic,” he adds.

Real-time proposition

Private equity’s opening into sport has widened due to the drastic revenue crunch during the pandemic. Football leagues such as Italy’s Serie A, Germany’s Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga have proposed creating vehicles that own their commercial rights, which can then be marketed to buyout groups as an investable proposition.

Sports investing “used to be quite a niche area” but more private equity firms are “looking at it now saying, maybe we can do that”, says William Jackson, chief executive of Bridgepoint and president of Dorna, the company that runs the MotoGP motorcycling championship.

Nikos Stathopoulos, a partner at BC Partners, adds that as traditional bank financing is hard to come by “private equity is now becoming the funder of choice” for sports bodies. For buyout groups “the focus here is around content . . . it’s unique and you need to have it real time, and that is what makes it valuable.”

Many buyout groups are also under pressure to get money out of the door. Years of low interest rates have led investors from sovereign wealth groups to rich families and pensions to allocate ever larger sums to their funds. The outbreak of the pandemic last year caused some to put the brakes on dealmaking in other sectors. “These guys can afford to be still for a year, but no longer,” says a banker advising the industry. This year, “they’re forced to put money to work”.

At the heart of such deals is often a power struggle. Buyout groups, whose traditional model relies on taking majority stakes in companies, can be reluctant to invest if they expect to have little say in the governance of leagues.

That forces sports’ governing bodies to confront a difficult question: how much control they are willing to relinquish in exchange for cash. Executives at two of the more than 20 private equity groups that initially considered investing in Germany’s Bundesliga say they have since been put off because they believe they would have little influence over the league itself.

Still, the chance to buy stakes in Covid-hit leagues has proven attractive because demand to watch games is “recession-proven”, says a senior dealmaker at a large private equity firm: “Previously, these assets were not available; [governing bodies] were self-sufficient and had no interest in our professional advice. Now, they’re still not interested in our advice, but they need the cash.”

Winning brand

In October 2015, Dan Carter lifted the Rugby World Cup at London’s Twickenham stadium. Following a man-of-the-match performance in the final against Australia, the All Blacks fly-half led New Zealand to a then record third victory in the sport’s biggest tournament.

Such domination is nothing new. Since the All Blacks played their first Test match in 1905, they have a win rate of 77 per cent, among the highest in global sport and a source of deep pride in the island nation of just 5m inhabitants.

The Silver Lake deal appears to have generated little public opposition, with politicians such as prime minister Jacinda Ardern appearing silent on the move to cash in on one of the country’s cultural assets, although former All Blacks coach Laurie Mains said “the New Zealand rugby brand is sacrosanct” and should remain under the full control of the country’s rugby association.

“Just as the game itself has changed, so it is inevitable that the funding of the game will change also,” says Justin Murray, chairman of Murray & Co, an investment bank in New Zealand. “This is natural progression, not a sellout.”

What’s unusual about the Silver Lake deal though is that it will not just buy a stake in the All Blacks, one of the game’s participants, but also in NZ Rugby, one of its rulemakers.

The governing body runs the All Blacks team but also manages the sport across New Zealand and is a key shareholder in Sanzaar, a partnership that manages Super Rugby, a competition between many of the best clubs in the southern hemisphere, and the Rugby Championship, a national contest between New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and Argentina.

The scrum for rugby deals

NZ Rugby is in deep financial trouble. It made a quarter of its 180 staff redundant in June, when it forecast a NZ$120m ($86m) slump in revenues caused by the pandemic, which shut down fixtures for months. Mark Robinson, NZ Rugby chief executive, said in November that “we know we’re in a fight for the survival of the game” and has forecast losses in 2020 would balloon to NZ$40m-45m.

Its financial challenges predate coronavirus, though. The organisation has notched up three successive years of losses and only reliably turns a profit in the years it hosts a Rugby World Cup or a British and Irish Lions Tour.

Similar issues have been seen across rugby ever since it turned professional in the 1990s. Many national “unions” are reliant on money gained from the quadrennial World Cup. Lossmaking clubs often need wealthy benefactors to stay afloat. Costs, such as player salaries, tend to outweigh income.

Despite these problems, rugby union’s authorities have found willing investors because of the newfound appetite for sports deals, as well as seeing growth potential in its affluent fan base in a handful of big markets such as the UK, France and Australia.

There have also been farsighted efforts to raise interest elsewhere, such as holding the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan, and successfully lobbying to enter the Olympic Games in an attempt to increase participation in the US, China and beyond.

People familiar with CVC’s thinking said its executives want to bundle together its rugby holdings, selling the commercial rights to broadcasters and sponsors collectively, or even launching an online streaming service that can screen matches from multiple different competitions.

The belief is the sport is undervalued by broadcasters in particular. In rugby union’s largest market in England, the total value of annual media contracts, including for club and national team games, is estimated at £145m according to Nielsen Sports, a market research group. This compares with the £180m a year earned by Formula One or the £220m earned by English cricket, despite rugby commanding “similar or higher interest levels” to those sports.

Private equity groups could be entering at the top of the market. Enders Analysis, the media research group, has warned that the pandemic-induced losses have led broadcasters to scale back spending on sports rights — particularly outside the most valuable leagues that command the biggest audiences, such as the US National Football League and English Premier League.

Meanwhile, Silver Lake’s proposed investment will need the All Blacks to retain their allure. However, many of the side’s recent greats, such as Dan Carter, have retired from international rugby. The team lost in the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup and slipped to third in the global rankings behind South Africa and England. It could be investing in a side in decline.

“This is only a little blip,” says Alan Whetton, a World Cup winning flanker who played 65 games for New Zealand. “The All Blacks are the best known brand in world rugby and we are a bit of a factory here. We have talent. Let’s just wait for the next World Cup. Hopefully we can do it then and then people will be saying the buggers are back.”

Rugby, then, will offer a case study on how sports groups are run once private equity groups have disrupted the sector. With its stakes in the English Premiership and Pro 14, CVC envisages using its investments to help create “Club World Cup”, a money-spinning tournament involving the best sides on the planet.

There are discussions over expanding the number of teams in the English Premiership, while also eliminating relegation from the division to ensure consistent revenues for top teams. Rugby executives say other big ideas are being floated, such as merging competitions to create a “British and Irish League” or South Africa abandoning the Rugby Championship to join the Six Nations.

Such grand plans jar with the debate over player welfare and an already stuffed global calendar. Last month, former England hooker Steve Thompson, alongside seven former rugby players, began legal proceedings against governing bodies over claims years of collisions and concussions had left them with permanent brain damage.

While taking large cheques today, sports groups also face losing control over their destinies. Private equity groups, which typically seek returns for their investors within five to 10 years, are likely to sell their holdings — meaning the likes of NZ Rugby and the All Blacks cannot be sure who will be their commercial partners in future.

Sports deals will force private equity to reckon with passionate forces not present in many of the leveraged buyouts that they are more used to: this time, the product is rooted in a sense of identity, community and shared histories.

“If you forget the importance of the quality of the sport, your investment won’t be worth much,” says Bridgepoint’s Mr Jackson. “Investors may have the share certificates, but nobody feels ownership of a club like a fan.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:15 pm

The Daily Mail is getting a bit hot under the collar about the prospect of a new super league

European Super League clubs 'would be offered £310M EACH' to join as it emerges Man United chief Joel Glazer 'is a leading champion of the idea' despite FIFA issuing World Cup ban threat to players
- Europe's elite clubs to be offered huge windfall to join new Super League
- Premier League 'big six' reportedly among 15 founders in the proposals
- Manchester United owner Joel Glazer 'has been promoting the plans'
- Wall Street giant JP Morgan would finance the competition with £3bn package
- It comes as FIFA and UEFA threaten to ban players from top tournaments
By ADAM SHERGOLD FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 11:59, 21 January 2021 | UPDATED: 16:29, 21 January 2021

Europe's elite clubs 'would be offered up to £310million' to become founder members of a proposed European Super League - as it emerges Manchester United chief Joel Glazer 'is driving the idea'.

United would reportedly be one of six Premier League clubs among 15 permanent founding members of the breakaway competition, which would replace UEFA's Champions League.

Liverpool, Real Madrid and AC Milan are also involved in the Super League plans, according to The Times.

It comes after the New York Times reported the Glazer family 'are promoting the idea of a Super League'.

But FIFA and UEFA are attempting to block the move by threatening any player who participates in the competition with a ban from future World Cup and European Championship finals.

According to an 18-page proposal document for the Super League, there would be 15 founder members and five other clubs who would qualify on an annual basis.

Split into two group of 10, they would play between 18 and 23 European fixtures a season.

The potential revenue for taking part could potentially be enormous and club would have the rights to show four games a season on their own digital platforms.

The Times report the document does not provide a specific breakdown of the 15 clubs or which countries they come from but it could be the English 'big six', three from Spain, three from Italy, two from Germany and one from France.

Wall Street giant JP Morgan Chase is understood to be in talks to finance the project, with the 15 clubs sharing an initial £3.1bn 'infrastructure grant' with which to make stadium improvements and replace lost revenue caused by Covid-19.

As with the current Champions League, matches would be played in midweek and clubs would still participate in their domestic leagues.

The new Super League would link it with FIFA's proposed expanded Club World Cup with 12 teams qualifying for the competition set to be held in China.

A salary and transfer spending cap amounting to 55 per cent of revenue would be imposed with a 'financial sustainability group' monitoring club spending.

The New York Times reported how a European Super League has long been the dream of Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and he has now found an ally in United owner Glazer.

He joined forces with Liverpool's American owners to try and force through the Project Big Picture reform to change the English football landscape last year.

The detailed proposals came as world football's governing body FIFA distanced itself from any Super League idea and introduced the deterrent that any player involved would be barred from flagship international tournaments.

A statement released jointly by FIFA and its six confederations read: 'In light of recent media speculation about the creation of a closed European 'Super League' by some European clubs, FIFA and the six confederations (AFC, CAF, Concacaf, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA) once again would like to reiterate and strongly emphasise that such a competition would not be recognised by either FIFA or the respective confederation.

'Any club or player involved in such a competition would as a consequence not be allowed to participate in any competition organised by FIFA or their respective confederation.

'As per the FIFA and confederations statutes, all competitions should be organised or recognised by the relevant body at their respective level, by FIFA at the global level and by the confederations at the continental level.

'In this respect, the confederations recognise the FIFA Club World Cup, in its current and new format, as the only worldwide club competition while FIFA recognises the club competitions organised by the confederations as the only club continental competitions.

'The universal principles of sporting merit, solidarity, promotion and relegation, and subsidiarity are the foundation of the football pyramid that ensures football's global success and are, as such, enshrined in the FIFA and confederation statutes.

'Football has a long and successful history thanks to these principles. Participation in global and continental competitions should always be won on the pitch.'

Shortly plans for this breakaway Super League first emerged last year, plans to revamp the Champions League along the lines of a 'Swiss system' were revealed.

From 2024, this would mean all 32 Champions League group stage participants playing 10 group games against teams of differing strengths supposedly to make things more competitive.

All 32 teams would be in one big group with the top 16 qualifying for the knockout rounds, the next eight going into the Europa League and the bottom eight eliminated.

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FIFA statement in full
In light of recent media speculation about the creation of a closed European 'Super League' by some European clubs, FIFA and the six confederations (AFC, CAF, Concacaf, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA) once again would like to reiterate and strongly emphasise that such a competition would not be recognised by either FIFA or the respective confederation. Any club or player involved in such a competition would as a consequence not be allowed to participate in any competition organised by FIFA or their respective confederation.

As per the FIFA and confederations statutes, all competitions should be organised or recognised by the relevant body at their respective level, by FIFA at the global level and by the confederations at the continental level. In this respect, the confederations recognise the FIFA Club World Cup, in its current and new format, as the only worldwide club competition while FIFA recognises the club competitions organised by the confederations as the only club continental competitions.

The universal principles of sporting merit, solidarity, promotion and relegation, and subsidiarity are the foundation of the football pyramid that ensures football's global success and are, as such, enshrined in the FIFA and confederation statutes. Football has a long and successful history thanks to these principles. Participation in global and continental competitions should always be won on the pitch.
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:23 pm

Didn't someone at Bayern recently come out and dismiss the idea of a super league, saying it wouldn't be in their best interests?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:46 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:23 pm
Didn't someone at Bayern recently come out and dismiss the idea of a super league, saying it wouldn't be in their best interests?
Yep - club Chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 6:15 pm

A really interesting piece from SportsBusiness.com as the Premier League opts to delay the tendering on the next cycle, a move that notes the caution in the marketplace but also the sheer volume of tenders that are out there currently for globally watch sports - it could lead to less money being available when their turn comes, but It could mean that rivals are bid less if the Premier League is the high value Premium asset in the marketplace most would have you believe.

The Premier League waits for sun to shine on chilly UK media market
Callum McCarthy, Europe office - January 21, 2021

- Premier League domestic media rights tender expected to be delayed until April or May
- Experts believe limited UK competition is producing ‘downward pressure’ on value
- Amazon, Disney and DAZN thought unlikely to battle with Sky and BT

UK sports rights experts say the English Premier League will delay its domestic media rights auction until April or May with a view to having deals in place prior to Euro 2020, which begins on June 11.

Experts say the league made the call to delay in the hope that lockdowns and vaccinations will reduce the prevalence of Covid-19 in the UK, thus yielding a clearer picture of when normal matchday attendance – and Saturday 3pm blackouts – might resume.

This is crucial for the Premier League to package its rights with confidence. In the current three-season cycle, from 2019-20 to 2021-22, the league intended to make 200 matches available to broadcasters in each season. However, since matches have been played behind closed doors since May 2020, the league has been forced make all matches available via their broadcast partners at no extra cost.

If there is any doubt whether a similar situation could occur in 2022-23, this would leave bidders uncertain about the number of matches that would eventually be made available to the market and doubtful over the true value of the packages on offer. Any bidder would be hesitant to pay for a package containing fifth-pick matches should sixth, seventh and eighth pick matches later be made available for free.

By bumping the auction to the spring, the league is looking to avoid any additional factors that could negatively affect the process, especially given the existing pressure on the value of its rights. Competitive tension between key UK sport broadcasters Sky and BT is at an all-time low as both telcos are thought to be satisfied with their current inventory.

Sky reduced its spend to £1.193bn (€1.349bn/$1.638bn) per season at the last Premier League auction in 2018, a reduction of almost £200m per season while retaining roughly the same amount of matches as in the 2016-19 cycle. BT’s overall outlay of £325m per season for the 2019-22 cycle remained roughly the same as the previous cycle, once all packages were sold.

UK market experts say there is little motivation for Sky or BT to increase their spend on Premier League rights or fight to take packages away from one another. A cross-carriage agreement between the two telcos in 2017 all but nullified any ambition to do so at the previous auction and, providing that alliance remains intact, most UK broadcast industry executives expect the per-season value of Premier League rights will either remain flat or decrease by between five and 10 per cent.

In the current cycle, the overall value of domestic media rights to the Premier League fell by about 10 per cent, from £1.712bn per season in 2016-19 to about £1.533bn in 2019-22.

The law of diminishing returns
Barring another resurgence of Covid-19 in the UK, it is thought unlikely the Premier League will significantly increase the number of matches made available to the domestic market from 2022-23. Most experts predict little change at all.

The 200 matches per season the league intended to offer in the current cycle was 32 per season more than in the 2016-19 cycle. At the time, experts said even this increase was a defensive measure to relieve pressure from the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, which was pushing for all 380 games to be made available.

Most experts argue the league sees additional television games as subject to the law of diminishing returns, and the evidence of the last tender bears this out.

The league had difficulty selling two smaller packages, F and G, that each contained an extra 20 matches across two match weeks. BT acquired one of the packages for £30m per season, while e-commerce giant Amazon acquired the other for a price now thought to be as low as £15m per season.

After striking deals for Packages A to E, the per-match value of Premier League rights stood at £9.3m. The deals for Packages F and G brought this down to £7.67m.

The league is also mindful of the brief, unsuccessful attempt to monetise the extra matches broadcast while Covid-19 kept fans out of stadia in autumn 2020.

While broadcasters initially received rights to show extra games for free, the Premier League clubs wanted to maximise revenue and an agreement with the broadcasters saw matches that would not have been included in the original broadcast packages made available via pay-per-view at £14.95.

The first 10 pay-per-view fixtures shown in October 2020 were reported to have earned a total of £5.8m, an average of just £580,000 per match. And the consumer backlash at the high price point brought the experiment to a swift end.

One broadcast industry veteran tells SportBusiness: “In the past, the league’s trick was to add more games. The fact Sky and BT didn’t really want the extra games this season and put them on PPV at a price nobody would pay for, effectively took them out of the marketplace. If you have more Wolves vs West Broms, it doesn’t really add any value. There’s a risk it’s oversaturated and it certainly feels like Covid burst the bubble.”

Another expert with extensive experience of Premier League rights auctions says: “You could say, with some confidence, that the cost per game will go down either by virtue of an increase in the volume of matches sold, or even if they sell the same amount of matches. Either way, the cost per game is going down, or the total absolute sum goes down, depending on how many games they sell.”

Could Amazon yet inject life?
With Sky and BT’s ambitions largely identified and the value of additional matches considered negligible, experts believe any hopes of an overall increase in value lie with Amazon, the Premier League’s third rights-holder.

In the current cycle, Amazon acquired 20 matches per season at a cut price in a deal finalised four months after the league’s initial auction. The e-commerce giant acquired the rights as a cheap method of driving Amazon Prime subscriptions, of which there are now thought to be between eight and nine million in the UK.

Despite entering the sports broadcasting space in 2017, the company’s overall UK sports rights strategy remains the subject of fevered speculation among sport business executives. It is clear, however, that Amazon has thus far been happy to make focused acquisitions in key sports, testing the response among different demographics rather than making a big splash.

Premier League football is by far the most appealing regular sports content in the UK, but one expert said that as Amazon Prime’s churn rate is incredibly low in comparison to pay-television, it has little need to make the major content acquisitions – and bid the commensurate fees – that have underpinned the UK’s pay-television business since the 1990s.

Another broadcast executive thought Amazon would seek to renew a small package of rights should one be available, but doubted it would reach for a bigger piece of the pie.

“Why does Amazon really need any more games? They got their marketing benefit out of it,” the executive explains. “They seem more likely to pick up bits and pieces from other sports that bring in different demographics. We saw what they did in rugby union, acquiring the autumn internationals. Does that mean they’re going to bid big for the Six Nations? I don’t think so.

“I can’t see why Amazon would throw huge amounts of money at a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Despite the likely limit to Amazon’s interest, keeping a third player in the game – or at least the threat of one – will be crucial if the Premier League is to keep Sky and BT honest in their bidding for the bigger packages. But while the league would ideally want to stoke competition between the three incumbents, experts say it needs to be careful in doing so.

“It’s risky to pit Amazon against Sky and BT, because the telcos might just say ‘OK, we know what’s happening here, let them have it,” one agency executive notes. “Vice versa, I don’t think Amazon would come in to bid at high levels for a package that would attract competition between Sky and BT. I think you can sometimes be a bit too clever for your own good.”

The three Ds
In auctions past, the spectre of competition has often provoked Sky and BT into bidding against phantom foes: for example, the fear of aggressive entries by pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports or media conglomerate Discovery helped fuel aggressive bids in 2015, when the value of Premier League rights increased by 70 per cent.

This time around, it appears the left-field possibilities are simply too green to have any significant impact on the auction – the likes of Disney, Discovery and DAZN are all considered highly unlikely to bring a serious threat to Sky and BT’s doors.

Disney is looking to bolster its Disney Plus offering in the United Kingdom, but experts say any involvement in the auction would be opportunistic.

“They would only pay Amazon-type levels for Premier League content,” says one UK-based executive. “They’ve had to sacrifice so much cash from dissolving their channels across Europe and have no money coming in from carriage. They’ve put everything into Disney Plus, so I can’t see them being aggressive.”

Discovery also has a nascent streaming service, Discovery Plus, that could use a small Premier League package to promote the service. Like Disney Plus, Discovery Plus focuses on distributing content owned and produced by the parent company rather than aggregated content from other sources. Industry executives believe that like Disney, Discovery would not bid aggressively.

Global streaming service DAZN is considered the likeliest non-incumbent to enter the fray, but insiders say it is highly unlikely to bid aggressively. Its global boxing platform, which launched in the UK in December, is currently priced at £1.99 per month. While its primary purpose is to show boxing content, experts say its secondary purpose – to collect data on consumers around the world – is almost as important.

Ultimately, none of these platforms are considered a threat to Sky and BT but could compete for smaller packages with Amazon, creating a separate category of competition for platforms wanting to use the Premier League as a marketing tool.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 21, 2021 10:19 pm

David Conn with the story the story that Europes big clubs are pushing a Super League - from early this afternoon

Covid impact puts European super league plan back in play
- Liverpool and Manchester United among clubs discussing plan
- Fifa threatens to ban clubs which join breakaway league

David Conn
Thu 21 Jan 2021 13.23 GMT

Concrete proposals for a European super league are being discussed by top clubs including Manchester United and Liverpool with more seriousness because of the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Guardian understands.

A document has been circulating setting out potential plans for a competition that would replace Uefa’s Champions League but not domestic leagues, restricted to 20 clubs who would share revenues in the billions.

The talks, which have developed momentum since first reported in October to have been initiated by Real Madrid, prompted Fifa and all six of football’s continental confederations to issue an emphatic public rejection of any such move. In a joint statement, they said a breakaway European super league would not have official ratification from Uefa or Fifa, so any players and clubs that did participate would effectively be football outlaws.

Their statement, made by the presidents of Fifa and Uefa, Gianni Infantino and Aleksander Ceferin, and those of the other five international confederations, said: “In light of recent media speculation about the creation of a closed European super league by some European clubs, Fifa and the six confederations … once again would like to reiterate and strongly emphasise that such a competition would not be recognised by either Fifa or the respective confederation.

“Any club or player involved in such a competition would as a consequence not be allowed to participate in any competition organised by Fifa or their respective confederation.”

Hours later the EU expressed support for Uefa’s opposition, with Margaritis Schinas, the European commission vice‑president, saying: “The European way of life is not compatible with European football being reserved for the rich and powerful.”

The super league proposal document, first reported by the Times, apparently sets out a 20-club competition starting in the 2022-23 season, with 15 permanent members including the Premier League’s “Big Six”: United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal. The plans are reported to include the 15 founding clubs sharing an initial £3.1bn “infrastructure grant”, which could include replacing revenues lost since the pandemic first stopped football in March, particularly from the absence of crowds.

Neither United nor Liverpool made any comment in response to the reports or the Fifa statement, but they are understood to be giving the proposals serious consideration. None of the other four clubs commented either and, although they are said to have been consulted, they are not thought to be as actively involved yet.

Few major European clubs have previously professed any interest in a breakaway super league publicly, and via the European Club Association they have been engaged in discussions with Uefa about expanding the Champions League format in 2024, when the agreed football calendar ends.

There were nevertheless reports in October that the bank JP Morgan had been asked to examine the financial possibilities of a “European Premier League”, a project said to have been initiated by Real Madrid. Then the outgoing president of Barcelona, Josep Maria Bartomeu, dropped a bombshell in his final speech, saying the club had “accepted a proposal to participate in a future European super league”.

Ed Woodward, vice-chairman at United, is involved in the discussions with Uefa as an ECA board member, and he told a fans’ forum in November that he is “focused on … the strengthening of existing Uefa club competitions”. However, particularly given the financial slump caused by the Covid restrictions, United are also understood to be discussing the breakaway proposals.

Some reports originally suggested Fifa, which is revamping its Club World Cup format, was supporting a move to back a European super league, although Fifa sources said at the time they were baffled by that and knew nothing about the initiative.

Now it has escalated, Uefa and Fifa have moved to make their opposition explicit, in an effort to ensure the big clubs, and all clubs, remain within football’s official governing body structures, with Fifa securing the renewed Club World Cup.

Some clubs are understood to believe the threat to ban players is empty due to a recent European legal case, but senior Fifa figures believe the authority of the governing bodies would stand up to a legal challenge.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:37 am

This is likely to become a big story - from the Times

Major police inquiry into football ‘fraud’
Integrity of evidence in 12 cases investigated
exclusive
Matt Lawton, Chief Sports Correspondent
Thursday January 21 2021, 10.05pm, The Times
Premier League

A major police investigation has uncovered evidence that suggests legal disputes in football and other sports may have been corrupted by the submission of misleading documents.

The North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) launched a national inquiry, which began with the arrest of two men and the search of premises, after a Times investigation last July into how records of customer bills could be changed by a private phone retailer.

The Times has now learnt that police have found evidence suggesting that various criminal offences have been committed, including conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, perjury and breaches of data protection laws.

It is understood that the cases under scrutiny include legal disputes between players and their agents, transfer wrangles involving agents, players and clubs, and disputes between managers and clubs.

For the past six months the NWROCU has had 14 investigators working on Operation Peony. They have interviewed more than 50 witnesses and it is believed that they have secured evidence from mobile phone networks, as well as sports bodies such as the Football Association (FA) and the British Horseracing Authority. It is understood that the police are looking at as many as 12 separate incidents across sport.

In football, arbitration hearings for the FA or the Premier League are normally chaired by at least one QC and are conducted in private. Participants in football, be they managers, players, agents or club officials, are obliged to resolve any legal disputes in these hearings.

But the police investigation has raised serious concerns that, compared with criminal cases, there may be a lack of scrutiny when it comes to testing the integrity of evidence in such arbitrations.

Sources have told The Times that, in a criminal case, the police accept mobile phone data and billing from one of the four main network providers in the UK: Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three.

The police are now understood to be concerned that, in sports arbitration hearings, bills may have been accepted as evidence that have been provided by retailers who produce their own billing using data often supplied by an intermediary “virtual” provider, which buys numbers and airtime in bulk from one of the four main networks.

Last July The Times reported that the retailer Sport Mobile, which had a commercial agreement with the League Managers Association (LMA) and provided phones for hundreds of leading figures across British sport, was able to edit bills provided to customers.

One former member of Sport Mobile’s staff signed a witness statement in which he claimed that he helped a top football agent to change phone numbers on his bills before an arbitration hearing in which he was in dispute with a prominent Premier League footballer. There was no suggestion that the footballer had been aware of the claimed action.

The staff member alleged that the agent’s phone bills were altered for a hearing that explored how often the agent had spoken to senior figures — a chief executive and two heads of recruitment — at three other clubs. The staff member also claimed that he travelled to the London office of the agent to collect a list of numbers that had to be inserted, and provided names in his statement He said that the agent wanted the bills to look like he had tried to call other clubs on his client’s behalf.

The staff member, who showed The Times text exchanges between himself and the agent requesting the bills before the hearing, claimed that the changes were made by a colleague. While the agent still lost the legal case, the former employee believed that the bills were accepted as evidence.

John Shepherd, the co-owner of Sport Mobile, denied the claims.

A police statement, issued to The Times today, read: “Detectives from the NWROCU continue to investigate allegations of corruption in relation to legal disputes within sport. The investigation started after a number of allegations were made relating to conspiracy to defraud, perverting the course of justice, perjury and Data Protection Act offences in sporting adjudications.

“The investigation team have spoken to more than 50 witnesses and are following up a number of positive lines of inquiry.”

A police spokesman added: “The investigation is continuing and we have been able to trace and interview witnesses, which will help the investigation team to determine the veracity of the allegations made. We continue to work closely with the respective bodies who regulate sport with a view to expediting the inquiry.”

Sport Mobile has boasted a client list containing some of the biggest names in British sport, and claims to provide an exclusive, bespoke service that includes “secure mobile billing” to players and managers at as many as 16 Premier League clubs. Senior members of the England cricket team and stars from racing and other sports have also been clients.

Former staff claimed that changing bills had been a service offered to clients — a unique selling point for the company.

In August last year the LMA, an organisation that represents England’s elite football managers, suspended its commercial partnership with the phone company. No charges have been brought against Shepherd or Sport Mobile.

When approached, the FA and the Premier League declined to comment on a continuing police investigation.

Anyone with any information that could assist police is asked to call the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:40 am

yet more on that European Super League doc - Remember the Glazers were behind Project Big Picture

https://twitter.com/martynziegler/statu ... 6117409792

and here - - you have to respect the sheer brass balls of Barcelona and Real Madrid

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 5518473225

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 2:20 am

I often talk about the Premier League acting like Diplomats when it comes to International relations. well now they have recruited a very senior civil service official - remember they are dealing with our own government a lot these days not just International business - always useful to have an insiders view - especially one that has managed to make the switch while still being highly regards in Whitehall and Downing Street.

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 0635017219

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by The esk » Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:23 pm

Apologies I know this thread is for football finance but I don't go elsewhere on the board other than here.

Well done last night!!!!!!! :)
These 2 users liked this post: randomclaret2 Nonayforever

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:23 pm

The esk wrote:
Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:23 pm
Apologies I know this thread is for football finance but I don't go elsewhere on the board other than here.

Well done last night!!!!!!! :)
thought you would enjoy it Paul

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 1:05 pm

The Athletic with their take on the FIFA statement and the latest plans for a Super Legaue

Explained: Why UEFA is ‘rattled’ over the latest European Super League plan

Matt Slater, Adam Crafton and more 7h ago
Other contributor: Phil Buckingham

For football fans the announcement appeared to come from out of the blue. A “closed European Super League”, FIFA and the six international confederations said in a rare joint statement on Thursday morning, “would not be recognised by either FIFA or the respective confederation”. Top players participating would therefore be barred from representing their national teams in events like the FIFA World Cup or UEFA European Championship.

In reality, the statement reflects just how nervous FIFA and the confederations have become. For months now, they have watched on as the most powerful clubs in the world have talked among themselves about the future of football post-2024, when European football’s current broadcast and sponsorship deals expire. This week, there have even been reports of proposal documents circulated between clubs.

As one source told The Athletic on Thursday: “UEFA is rattled.”

There is a lot at stake. FIFA and UEFA are determined to quash talk of a breakaway tournament and press ahead with plans to expand the FIFA Club World Cup and UEFA Champions League. Some clubs, however, are determined to ensure that they shape the future of football rather than the governing bodies. Something has got to give.

But what would a European Super League really look like? Why have the world’s most powerful clubs been so frequently meeting in private this season? And what do Premier League clubs not involved in the clandestine talks really think? Here, we attempt to answer some of your most pressing questions.

What happened on Thursday?
Football’s major governing bodies issued a statement warning players they would be barred from future World Cups and other major international tournaments were they to play in any breakaway European Super League.

A letter signed by FIFA, UEFA and the world’s other confederations emphatically rejected any proposal for a European Super League, which have been gathering steam in recent months.

A joint statement read: “In light of recent media speculation about the creation of a closed European ‘Super League’ by some European clubs, FIFA and the six confederations once again would like to reiterate and strongly emphasise that such a competition would not be recognised by either FIFA or the respective confederation.”

The statement added that “any club or player involved in such a competition would as a consequence not be allowed to participate in any competition organised by FIFA or their respective confederation.”

The statement was notable for two reasons. One: FIFA and UEFA rarely agree. Two: FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, had not categorically opposed a Super League until that point, previously remarking that he was “not interested” in such proposals. Infantino was even claimed by one source to have been privy to European Super League discussions. FIFA said that Infantino speaks to clubs on a variety of matters, but that his opposition to a Super League, as the signed statement showed, was clear.

Why has this come around again?
There are several ways to answer this question but they all boil down to the same thing: one day it will probably happen. That means stories about secret plans for the creation of a European Super League will never be wrong.

As The Guardian’s former sportswriter Arthur Hopcraft wrote in his seminal book, The Football Man: “There was a general expectation a little while ago of what was called a Super League, in which all the leading European clubs would play, breaking away from the domestic leagues in their own countries.” That was in 1968. “It has not materialized, and is not likely to,” he added.

There is one good reason why it has not happened yet and that is because every time the richest clubs have let it be known they are discussing such a move, UEFA has changed the format, financial distribution or both of its main club competition, the old European Cup. What was once an unseeded, knockout tournament between domestic champions, has become the Champions League, Super League in all but name.

That is why this story has come around again.

Why did FIFA and UEFA bite?
UEFA, the elite clubs and the big leagues have been arguing about how to carve up the money generated by UEFA’s club competitions between 2021 and 2024, and then the entire format of those club competitions after 2024, which is when the broadcast and sponsorship deals expire.

The 2018-21 distribution deal massively favoured the richest clubs, as the biggest slice of the pie was reserved for the 32 teams that make the Champions League group stage. A prize so rich it gives those clubs a huge head-start on their domestic rivals in the race to qualify for the following season’s Champions League. And so and so on until those positions are entrenched and Bayern, Juventus and PSG grow bored of winning their leagues.

That sweet deal for the aristocracy was signed off, with almost no consultation, by former UEFA president, and Juventus legend, Michel Platini. His successor Aleksander Ceferin, however, got the UEFA gig thanks to the votes of small and medium-sized countries annoyed at that carve-up. He promised there would be no clandestine agreements in backrooms on his watch.

UEFA has also belatedly realised that its prize money has killed the competitive balance in leagues across the continent. Which is why Ceferin would like to take some money from the Champions League pot and sprinkle it over his new Europa Conference League, a tournament intended to give the type of team normally turfed out of the Champions League play-offs in August a longer run in Europe, and to increase the amount of “solidarity” money it dishes out to clubs not good enough to qualify this season but eager to do so in the future.

Here is the first reason Hopcraft’s “general expectation” was resurfaced.

The big boys, the ones the world logs on to watch, are telling Ceferin to get his hands off their money. But that is just the start of it because what they really want is what takes us to the second big debate and reason to play the European Super League card.

The biggest clubs do not just want as much money as they have now, they want more.

Who can blame them: none of them really makes any money. And that was before COVID-19 struck, which has resulted in elite club after elite club announcing nine-figure losses for last year. The solution to their short and long-term cash worries is more games, particularly against each other, ideally on weekends.

At one point, when this chapter in the eternal saga started in 2019, they also wanted to do away with the inconvenience of qualifying for the Champions League again via their domestic leagues.

That demand and the weekend land grab have been quietly dropped — for now — and UEFA is keen to shake hands with the clubs on a new Champions League format next month. The plan is for the eight groups of four to become a 36-team league in which the clubs play 10 games, five at home, five away, with the top 16 progressing to the knockout rounds. Known as a “Swiss model” league, it is widely used in chess.

This move, however, will still upset the domestic leagues, who worry that these extra European games will hoover up scarce media rights money and might just be the start of something, not the end. After all, Swiss model leagues are famously flexible and some chess tournaments have hundreds of players.

What’s new?
There is one key difference that explains why FIFA was so willing to leap to the aid of UEFA, an organisation with whom, in football parlance, it has history.

As the body that sits atop the system, FIFA is always going to have an interest in preserving the status quo. But having watched the Champions League help UEFA become far richer than it is, and European teams dominate the World Cup, FIFA wants a piece of the lucrative club game.

It knows its current offering, the Club World Cup, is only really of interest to fans of the European and South American teams that nearly always contest the final, and even then, the European teams’ fans do not always care that much.

So, FIFA president Infantino, a former UEFA man, wants to replace that with a four-yearly, 24-team, summer Club World Cup that really would find the best club team in the world and excite fans everywhere. He had hoped to get that started in China this summer. But unfortunately China got something else started in late 2019, scuppering Infantino’s plans and pretty much everyone else’s, too.

What have the clubs been getting up to?
The governing bodies are all too aware that powerful clubs have been holding discrete meetings and there is a fear that the European Super League may have been on the agenda.

Earlier this week, the Real Madrid president Florentino Perez flew to Turin. There he was a guest at La Continassa, the lavish 18th century building that Juventus recently renovated into their new headquarters. Perez was hosted by Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli, and the two men enjoyed a three-hour meeting about matters pertaining to the European Club Association (ECA) and the politics of the game. The meeting did not go unnoticed at UEFA.

Other clubs have been talking. The Athletic has been told that Manchester United co-owner Joel Glazer is another key figure in discussions, as he was in the previous “Project Big Picture” talks, while sources say JP Morgan, the American bank, could finance the project.

Manchester United’s executive vice chairman, Ed Woodward, told a fans’ forum in November 2020 that the club was “at the centre of discussions about the future of European club competitions”. He added, however, that he was focused on strengthening existing UEFA competitions through his position on the European Club Association.

Why would those clubs support a European Super League?
Any breakaway European Super League would be controlled by the teams that create it. The tournament would also result in Europe’s elite clubs playing more matches against one another, guaranteeing hundreds of millions of pounds in additional revenue.

As one source told The Athletic on Thursday: “The big clubs believe the money will always follow them. They are the big attractions and so why should they subsidise small clubs when they can keep even more money for themselves?”

A European Super League would almost certainly lead to a significant loss in value and revenue of the numerous teams excluded from it, while also lowering the value of football’s existing national leagues and tournaments.

Why might JP Morgan be interested in bankrolling this?
It is pretty simple, really. Interest rates and yields on bonds never really recovered after the global financial crisis a decade or so ago but they have absolutely tanked as companies and governments have thrown money at COVID-19.

This means there is an awful lot of money swilling around out there and nowhere to put it.

The Bank of England’s base rate is 0.1 per cent — a historic low. If it gets any lower, we will be paying banks to look after our money. So JP Morgan has not suddenly discovered a love for the beautiful game or even decided that football is a particularly amazing investment. It is, though, happy to effectively print whatever it takes to get a European Super League off the ground because it is sure there are enough investors out there desperate for something to have a punt on.

This also explains why so many private equity firms are queuing up to lend European football clubs money or buy stakes in entire leagues.

Why it is JP Morgan in the frame, as opposed to HSBC or Bank of America, can probably be explained by its longstanding relationship with Manchester United owners the Glazer family. That bond, cemented in football, has been profitable for both parties.

So … what would the football actually look like?
On Thursday evening, The Times reported that a proposal document circulated between clubs outlined the structure of the latest iteration of a potential European Super League. The tournament would involve 20 clubs, with 15 permanent members and five qualifying annually. Six English clubs — the same six clubs that comprise the Premier League’s so-called “big six” — would be among 15 permanent founding members.

The Times reported that founder members of a proposed European Super League would be offered up to £310 million each to join the competition. Champions League qualification is worth about £100 million.

The 20 clubs would be split into two 10-team groups. Each team in a group would play home and away matches against one another. The top four teams in each group would then play a knockout play-off across the two divisions to decide the champion for the season.

There would be home and away legs in the quarter-finals and semi-final, with a final played at a neutral venue.

It would also see a best versus worst approach to the knockout matches, with the team with the best record playing the team with the eighth-best record. This would also apply to the semi-finals.

Matches would take place in midweek, with the exception of the final. Clubs would still play in their domestic leagues.

The top five clubs in each group and two further qualifiers would also qualify for and play in FIFA’s revamped World Club Competition, to be played annually.

How has the Premier League reacted?
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said “change is coming” when he addressed a parliamentary hearing in November. That was in reference to a strategic review of the game, due to be completed by the end of March and in the wake of Project Big Picture failing to garner the necessary support.

Tellingly, though, Masters also said: “We know change is probably coming in Europe. And I suspect if we don’t come up with a unifying plan, someone else will write it for us.” The Premier League has previously taken a hard-line stance against any major European reform and that has not altered.

In the summer of 2019, when the ECA put forward plans to change the Champions League structure from 2024, the Premier League said the “domestic game should continue to be the priority for professional clubs” and that proposals would be “detrimental” to the top European leagues.

That outlook has not changed. And why would it? The Premier League boasts the most popular football competition on the market and will never welcome competition for that mantle.

A European Super League would also serve to dilute the broadcast market and, in all probability, reduce the TV income for the Premier League and its 20 clubs. There is only ever so much cash to go around when broadcasters around the globe bid for live sport and a shiny new league including Europe’s elite would have clear appeal.

What about Premier League clubs not involved in the planning?
The Athletic discussed the mooted European Super League with numerous Premier League clubs on Thursday.

One Premier League side outside of the “big six” told The Athletic that this sounded like another version of the Champions League and therefore they would not feel likely to be affected by it.

But they did voice concerns that more European football would give the “big six” scope to earn more money, giving them more power. There was an awareness, though, that European football is at a crossroads and there will likely be major change at some point.

Others questioned exactly what teams would be involved and how the “big six” should be defined at a time when some of the largest clubs in the country are falling down the Premier League table. Arsenal finished eighth last season and currently sit tenth this season, for example, while Tottenham Hotspur have never won a Premier League title.

Some clubs voiced their opposition to the plans and viewed it as outside of their interests. They see the Premier League as the best league in the No 1 sport in the world, with a fantastic product. They doubt whether this is necessary or in the wider interests of the game and see the Champions League as providing an opportunity for the top clubs to come together.

Another Premier League club speculated that the plans were simply mischief-making, at a time when FIFA and UEFA are under considerable political pressure.

One figure dismissed it simply as: “owners who are detached from the process having fun in the USA. The people here know it will never happen.”

And how do the broadcasters feel about this possibility?
BT Sport have been the exclusive rights holders to European football in the UK since 2015 and in 2019 they secured an extension running all the way through to 2024. BT pay £400 million a year for the Champions League and Europa League, as well as the Europa Conference League beginning from next season.

BT regard European football as the crown jewel of their live sport packages, alongside their smaller number of Premier League games.

It is unclear if a European Super League would have the same appeal or if other suitors, such as the new kid on the block Amazon Prime, would declare an interest in any newly-launched competition.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 1:14 pm

The Athletic again - this time looking at the debts accrued as a result of Covid - it uses a very dodgy looking set of figures provide by @Kieran Maguire

The COVID debt that means Premier League clubs are desperate for money

Matt Slater 7h ago 21
You may have missed this milestone — what with all the other exciting things you are doing right now — but the UK’s national debt hit a new high last month, £2.1 trillion.

I bet you are thinking, “That’s a big number but everything is more expensive these days”, and you would be right, which is why economists usually think of the national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product, which could be defined as UK plc’s annual turnover.

That number is almost 100 per cent, give or take a few billion, and has not been that high since the 1960s, when we were still paying off the Second World War. So, however you look at it, we are in the red.

Football is in the same boat and for the same reason: COVID-19.

While the government has had to add millions of furloughed staff to its payroll, throw money at the NHS and give thousands of companies tax holidays, the national sport has shelled out for deep cleans and tests, given rebates to broadcasters and is approaching a year without having fans at games.

Pandemics are pricey affairs and the full cost of this one to the Premier League will not be known for at least a year, if not longer, as football clubs do not have to provide running commentaries on their finances in the way governments do. Even so, we know it is hurting.

Only this month, we have learned that Arsenal borrowed £120 million from the Bank of England to ease their cash-flow concerns and that Leicester City and Sheffield United both borrowed undisclosed sums from the Australian bank Macquarie, secured against future Premier League broadcast payments.

Southampton also confirmed, via their 2019-20 accounts, they borrowed the best part of £80 million last summer to help them through this crisis. Their lender is MSD Holdings UK Limited, the British arm of computer billionaire Michael Dell’s investment firm. Southampton’s accounts also revealed that the going rate for MSD’s money is just over nine per cent a year, plus fees.

Going back into 2020, Leicester registered two further charges (the security companies provide to lenders) at Companies House, both for loans from Macquarie. West Ham United did likewise for loans from Barclays. And then there was the £175 million Tottenham Hotspur took last summer from the same Bank of England crisis fund that Arsenal have now tapped into.

Roger Bell is the co-founder of Vysyble, a London-based financial analysis firm that has been tracking English football’s numbers since 2016. He believes the Premier League was already overheating a tad before any of us had heard of R numbers, lateral flow tests or Zoom.

“It doesn’t take a genius to work out that things were getting a bit sweaty on football’s treadmill even before the pandemic struck,” says Bell. “Football was running too quick.”

Vysyble uses a metric called economic profit to measure how well companies — or in this case, clubs — are doing. Economic profit accounts for all the costs incurred by a business, including the cost of capital, or what is often called the opportunity cost. In other words, the cost of investing in this particular business, as opposed to in another business or leaving your money in the bank or under the mattress.

“Economic profit is a better surrogate for a company’s share price than the basic accounting profit you get in the annual accounts,” Bell explains. “If you were running Marks & Spencer and you wanted to get your share price up, you’d work on your economic profit.

“But when we look at the Premier League, we typically see big economic losses. For 2018-19, the most recent season we have a full set of accounts for, the league had an economic loss of £600 million. If we include the headlines Chelsea recently released, we’ve now got 2019-20 numbers for five clubs, a quarter of them, and we’re already up to £480 million in economic losses.

“Simply put, the clubs aren’t covering all their costs. Now, there are only two ways to fill that gap: you borrow it or your shareholders cough up. That’s why the league’s debts are rising.

“But the other point to make is that the numbers we’re getting for 2019-20 only go up to the end of June, which means they only cover the first three months or so of the pandemic. Next year’s numbers will be worse.”

That @KieranMaguire Table https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 3440263170

Kieran Maguire, the University of Liverpool academic behind the popular Price Of Football blog, book and podcast, does not dispute that prediction. He just does not think economic profit is the best way to measure football clubs’ financial performance or agree that the Premier League is hurtling towards a cliff edge.

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with debt: most of us have it — students loans, mortgages, credit cards…” says Maguire. “The issue is servicing those debts and I don’t see any signs that Premier League clubs can’t do that.”

That said, it was Maguire who helped The Athletic look at the clubs’ individual debt figures and most of the numbers speak for themselves.

If we take the scariest number first — the total gross debt of nearly £5.7 billion — that is about 120 per cent of the league’s record annual turnover of £4.8 billion in 2018-19. We have already seen enough from those clubs who have got their accounts out early to know the league will not beat that figure in 2019-20, or in 2020-21 for that matter.

But £5.7 billion is all of the bad stuff with none of the good. A fairer figure, then, is the one UEFA’s bean counters call “football net debt”: total borrowing less cash in the bank, plus transfer creditors less transfer debtors. This balances your IOUs against what you have in your pocket and the instalments you have coming in and out for transfers.

Spurs, for example, had £226 million in cash in the bank last summer, largely thanks to the loan they had just taken from the Bank of England, while Arsenal and Manchester City were also sitting on big cash reserves as of the previous summer. And on the transfer instalment front, four clubs were in credit: Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Leeds United and Newcastle United.

When we take all this into account, the Premier League’s football net debt is just under £4 billion, or 83 per cent of annual revenue.

That is certainly a lumpy figure if you are paying nine per cent interest or more in interest but Macquarie and Barclays are lending at more like seven per cent and those lucky enough to qualify for the Bank of England’s loans, which are reserved for companies big enough to make “significant contributions” to the UK economy, are paying only 0.5 per cent.

But even then, the Premier League’s debt number is a bit deceptive, as more than £2 billion of it is money the clubs’ owners have already said goodbye to.

“Sure, if we look at the total amount of debt on club accounts, it’s a big number,” explains Maguire. “But a big chunk of that is money clubs owe their owners, which is really quasi-equity.

“(Chelsea owner) Roman Abramovich and (Brighton benefactor) Tony Bloom are not asking for it back, and even Mike Ashley will wait to get his money back until he sells Newcastle. If you add up all these soft loans from owners, that’s half the league’s gross debt.”

See, it’s not so scary now, is it? Just like the national debt. A bill somebody else might pay at some point in the future, long after I have stopped watching the game. I think. Right?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 2:01 pm

The Telegraph on

How Sheffield Wednesday became the Championship's most chaotic club
MIKE MCGRATH JANUARY 22, 2021

The FA Cup is supposed to be an enjoyable distraction for most clubs - a break from the relentless slog of league campaigns in the depths of winter. But for Sheffield Wednesday it has simply added to the chaos which has blighted a season featuring two managerial sackings and players not being paid on time.

In the Cup, Wednesday won their third-round tie at Exeter City two weeks ago but caretaker manager Neil Thompson and his assistants Lee Bullen and Steven Haslam missed the game after testing positive for Covid-19. The club has not played a game since due to the virus outbreak at Hillsborough. All of which has overshadowed a match which - in usual circumstances - would be one of the fourth round's plum ties. It is 21 years since Wednesday played Everton in the Premier League and an upset should not be ruled out, given the Merseysiders' struggles in the third round against Rotherham and Wednesday's run of three straight wins since the departure of Tony Pulis, who lasted just 10 games before he was sacked.

But even victory at Goodison Park would not disguise the sense of crisis at Hillsborough. Wednesday chairman Dejphon Chansiri, the Thai tycoon whose family wealth comes from tuna, has said he takes ultimate responsibility for the plight of the club, which has been managerless for three weeks and which remains embroiled in a relegation scrap after a points deduction at the start of the Championship campaign.

Chansiri has been the focus of much of the anger of fans, although his family has also been targeted. He condemned alleged abuse of his 12-year-old son on social media in the latest episode in his fractious relationship with supporters. Earlier in the season he claimed their negativity towards him on Twitter cost the club an “eight-to-nine figure” sponsorship deal. “They almost agreed in principle but their team went and found information on social media and asked, ‘why in social media is it all negative to you and the club?’” Chansiri said. “In the end they refused me and made me very upset. If you don’t support, don't damage. Keep quiet.” Chansiri says losing that sponsorship deal was pre-Covid, before football closed its doors and the turnstiles were closed at Hillsborough.

After Garry Monk kept them in the Championship, finishing eight points above the relegation zone last season, Wednesday started 2020-21 with a points deduction for breaking spending rules. This included the sale of the stadium in their 2017-18 accounts despite the sale being completed after that period.

What started as a 12-point penalty was reduced to six in November after an appeal headed by sports lawyer Nick De Marco. That was worth two wins in their battle to get out of the Championship relegation zone and appointing Pulis, with his perfect survival record, to succeed Monk offered renewed hope.

But Pulis managed just one victory in his 10 games in charge, with some players not being paid their salaries on time. Chansiri decided on another change and they have been managerless - but also undefeated - ever since. Chansiri, along with his advisers and his head of recruitment David Downes, has drawn up a shortlist of managers who the club intends to speak to next week. Initially, it was thought a foreign appointment was favoured but now the list is more comprehensive.

The chairman has strongly defended the structure at the club, where there is no CEO or director of football. He says it gives his manager the final say on players, while he has the final say “financially”. Intermediaries who have done deals at Hillsborough say Chansiri meets players and emphasises his philosophy to them.

"What is the perception of a director of football or sporting director?” he said. “A lot say a director of football would plan and control the player recruitment but a lot say the manager should always have the final say, which is a direct contrast.

"The way we operate is the manager having the final say on the players he wants and I believe this is the correct way. My policy is that I do not believe in a director of football position. I believe in the team and we have a team that equals a director of football.

"This is a collective from our team and I make the final decision financially as chairman. To involve a director of football in that process, above the manager, is not my policy as the manager should decide who he wants to recruit."

He also says the role of CEO differs from club to club. He is happy without one as his heads of each department are the most important people to help the club function. The job will be to find the right manager to work in his structure, which Pulis could not.

"We were talking about him leaving and the statement would say it was mutual consent," Chansiri said. "But his lawyer sent me something that made him look good and me bad.

"On Monday morning, my lawyer had to go to the hospital, so my people told him we would talk after Tuesday's game. He said it had to be now. In the end, I sacked him."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 4:36 pm

I am going to be really interested to see how this works with a recently expanded, European Championships, the next edition which is supposed to take place in 8 countries, a recently introduced new international competition - the nations league, a third European club competition - Europa Conference and talks of increasing the numbers of games for clubs in the Champions League and Europa League.

UEFA signs up to UN Sustainable Development goals

https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/mediase ... of-unders/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 4:41 pm

A depressing blog-piece on the state of financial play at Birmingham City

https://almajir.net/2021/01/22/bcfc-cre ... -and-ccjs/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 5:17 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Jan 22, 2021 4:36 pm
I am going to be really interested to see how this works with a recently expanded, European Championships, the next edition which is supposed to take place in 8 countries, a recently introduced new international competition - the nations league, a third European club competition - Europa Conference and talks of increasing the numbers of games for clubs in the Champions League and Europa League.

UEFA signs up to UN Sustainable Development goals

https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/mediase ... of-unders/
that is not to say that the Environment is soon going to be one of the key defining issues for sport as highlighted by this in yesterday's Guardian

'Our futures are at stake': sport's climate crisis weakness and how to change it
Jonathan Overend
Athletes don’t want to be accused of hypocrisy but the changing environment is already having an impact on many sports

Thu 21 Jan 2021 12.43 GMT

For a sector of society so adept at harnessing communities, cities, even entire countries, sport is strangely weak at empowering action on the issue which matters most. Perhaps the pace of sport, the relentless rotation of preparing, travelling and performing, restrains us from stopping, breathing and thinking about the existence of sport as we know it.

Having globe-hopped for 25 years, reporting on Olympics, Paralympics, World Cups and tennis grand slams, I know I’ve taken sport for granted. When it stops – rain delay, postponement, pandemic – we notice. At other times, it’s just there. Silly games, essentially, for escapism and entertainment.

Striking is how rarely we consider the impact of the climate crisis on something we love to play and watch. We need to pause.

That tennis match we watched; have we considered the impact of the surface and surroundings on the real heat and impact on the human body? Forty degrees in the air, perhaps, but radiant temperature more likely into the 60s. If those numbers keep rising, for how long is it sustainable?

That cricket match we enjoyed; how much water was required to maintain the pitch? Are we aware how even a small temperature increase affects evaporation of fresh water, impacts on topsoil and implications for farmers growing our food?

These, I must confess, often appear questions to park away for another day. But making the new documentary series Emergency on Planet Sport has opened my eyes to the scale and urgency of the challenge. As Steve Isaac, the sustainability director of the R&A, says: “My main concern is the lack of recognition of golf clubs and sports clubs in general about what’s coming our way. Unless you’re aware of that, how can you prepare?”

We need to present this conversation in more stark terms. Some links golf courses, for example, face an existential threat not in the future, but now. Before lockdown I visited Montrose, on the east coast of Scotland, to witness first-hand the voracious North Sea eating alive the fifth oldest course in the world. Only a small portion remains of the old 3rd tee, the rest is on the beach in morbid clumps of turf. A path, connecting tee with fairway, simply disappears off the cliff face. They’re losing two metres of coastline a year. The scale of erosion really shook me.

Impacts of the climate crisis, in particular, increase in extreme weather patterns, rising seas and temperatures, resonate throughout the series. Will Gadd, the ice climber who scaled Kilimanjaro in 2014 and 2020, recalls: “Everything was half the size it used to be or just gone. Imagine if you walked downtown to your office and your whole office was gone, in fact the whole of downtown was gone. I’ve got to find a different way to do my sport.”

The former Australian rugby union international David Pocock wants more engagement: “As athletes, we all have a role to play because the climate crisis is a challenge we have to face. Our futures are at stake and I think there’s some sort of moral obligation for everyone to be playing their role. We need to up our ambition.”

Among athletes, I’ve discovered an understandable fear of hypocrisy. Sport is global and we all fly, whether to participate, watch or, yes, report. But, as Pocock says, reassuringly: “The idea that because you drive a car or fly means you have no right to talk about action on climate change doesn’t sit well with me. Athletes speaking out really does lead to important conversations among young people and who knows where that can lead.”

The Southampton midfielder Oriol Romeu admits he’s no expert but has a willingness to learn: “We are the ones living on this planet. We have to react before we’re too late. I hope we don’t regret afterwards, saying: ’We should have done this or should have done that.’ I’d rather do it now.”

The 2015 French Open runner-up Lucie Safarova has concerns for the future of tennis in some parts of the world if warming continues. Heatstroke can end a career; just listen to Amy Steel, a former Australian international netballer who collapsed after a match in 2016, never to play again, even struggling to get out of bed some days. Remembering her match with Li Na in Melbourne in 2014, Safarova says: “I looked up during a changeover to see burnt leaves falling on to the court from outside, and at that moment I thought: ‘This is insane, are we really playing tennis in this weather?’”

Many governing bodies are examining renewable energy, food provision and recycling efforts. But this should be standard and things need to move quicker. The GB Olympic rowing hopeful Melissa Wilson believes we can learn from Covid‑19 adaptability: “Even last year the conversations I was having on the rowing team were more along the lines of: ‘Can we have a compost bin in the team room.’ Now it feels like the scale of the conversation that can happen is so much greater.”

Look at Formula One. A two-year plan to end on-site TV production at every race, shipping tonnes of freight every week, happened for eight weeks because of the pandemic. A London base, rather than a flying circus, has significantly reduced their carbon footprint and they won’t stop there. F1 innovation, vital in the fight against Covid, intends to work for the climate fightback too.

Making this series has been a journey of discovery for me. I love sport and I love the planet – probably, I admit, in that order. I’ll be switching those priorities. As one of the commissioned pieces of performance poetry which start each episode says: “Before the TVs and the phones can display it, what use is sport with no world on to play it?”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 5:24 pm

You may have read a lot about the state of pitches in the last few days, everything from the gap between the end of last season to this not being enough to resurface through to the potential of stadiums being refused to host the European Championships as clubs want to resurface this season and Leeds buying Spurs unused surface for NFL games to fix their own problems temporarily - wait until the summer when prices and club size will be used to sort out just who will get new pitches and who won't - there has been a whole year lost and with limited available skills and specialist equipment that means the problem is likely to reoccur next season and beyond.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 22, 2021 10:34 pm

For those who used to get angry about Sean complaining he had no budget - from the BBC

Liverpool: Jurgen Klopp says 'somebody else is making transfer decisions' at club
Last updated 6 hours ago

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp says "somebody else is making the decisions" when it comes to transfer deals.

The Premier League champions have not signed anyone in the January transfer window despite several injuries.

Defenders Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez are long-term absentees, while forward Diogo Jota was ruled out for "at least six weeks" in mid-December.

"I cannot decide if we do something in the transfer market or not," said Klopp.

Following Liverpool's 1-0 defeat to Burnley in the Premier League at Anfield on Thursday night, the German manager said "these decisions are not my decisions".

When asked on Friday to clarify what he meant, before Liverpool's FA Cup fourth-round tie with Manchester United on Sunday, Klopp added: "Of course somebody else is making the decisions. It was always like this.

"We discuss the situation pretty much on a daily basis, could we improve something or not and we make recommendations but I cannot spend the money. I never did.

"I don't want to confuse anybody. I just said what I said."

Liverpool travel to Old Trafford to face Manchester United at 17:00 GMT on Sunday, before a trip to take on Tottenham in the Premier League on Thursday, 28 January.

The transfer window closes on Monday, 1 February for Premier League and English Football League clubs.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:08 am

Interesting move in the USA for long time Premier League partner NBC - the story is that is is going to close down NBCSN and move it's sports to more premium services such as Peacock - it is difficult to tell at this stage if it will improve the bidding for the next cycle of Premier League rights

https://twitter.com/Ourand_SBJ/status/1 ... 8800579588

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:28 am

Mediapro fresh from losing it's domestic rights for French Football, is now experiencing problems elsewhere - from SportsProMedia

Jaume Roures admits “rethink” is required for Mediapro
Barcelona-based media company seeking to renegotiate deal to air La Liga in commercial premises.

Posted: January 21 2021By: Tom Bassam

- Mediapro CEO says we are now in an era “where we know nothing”
- Roures raises concerns that pandemic could cause fans to permanently disengage from soccer

Jaume Roures, the founder and chief executive of Spanish media giant Mediapro, has admitted that Covid-19 is forcing a “rethink” of his business.

The company is now seeking to renegotiate its deal to air La Liga in commercial premises in Spain following the breakdown of its domestic French broadcast partnership with the Professional Football League (LFP) for its Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 soccer competitions.

In April last year, Roures criticised Canal+ and BeIN Sports' decision to suspend payments because the money owned covered some matches that had already been played and broadcast, telling L'Equipe: “It is not a case of being a good samaritan but paying what you owe. That is our attitude towards the Spanish league. We work together and help.”

Now, after nine months of turmoil in which Mediapro has seen its credit rating cut and its biggest media rights contract in soccer cancelled, Roures is less bullish about sports media.

He told Radio Marca: “Covid makes you rethink everything, not only in football - in bars, radio, advertising, health and the whole of society. We are in a new era of which we know nothing, not even when we will have won.”

He added that with soccer now a broadcast only product that the long-term impact of the pandemic needs to be assessed, saying: “We have to analyse to what extent this situation disengages people from football. From not consuming it in the same way to disengaging, there is a step. At least this season we will finish [without fans], in soccer and in all sports. Soccer has more strength and therefore this disengagement could be more dangerous.”

On renegotiations around the La Liga commercial premises broadcast deal, he added: “Before all this happened, the renegotiation of the contract was already being discussed. The bars are closed. It's as if they sell you an electric car and you can't charge it.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:39 am

Just how bad is it at Barca?

I see they're requesting more time to make a payment of £178 million on some loans/debts etc.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:40 am

The ambitious deadline for Serie A rights tenders has been pushed back a couple of days, they may be trying to drum up renewed bids to get closer to their targets or (if they are very lucky) have bidders coming in very close to one another and are encouraging to blow one another out of the water - from SportsBusiness.com

Serie A pushes back deadline for domestic broadcast rights bids
Martin Ross - January 22, 2021

Italian football’s Lega Serie A has pushed back the deadline for first-round bids in its domestic rights auction for the 2021-24 cycle.

The deadline had been set at 10am (CET) on January 26 after the tender was launched at the start of the month but has now been put back 48 hours to January 28.

The new deadline is in place for the separate invitation to tenders for “communication operators” and also “independent intermediaries”. The bid deadline for companies looking to create a thematic Serie A channel has also been pushed back by two days.

Bidders may lodge their offers with the league from 10am on January 25 onwards.

The league is aiming to raise a minimum of €1.15bn ($1.4bn) per season from the sale of its domestic broadcast rights from 2021-22 to 2023-24. That represents an 18-per-cent increase on the €973m currently brought in annually through deals with pay-television broadcaster Sky Italia and subscription OTT platform DAZN.

The shifting of the bid deadline moves it closer to the deadline for bids in Fifa’s recently-issued invitation to tender for broadcast rights in Italy to the 2022 men’s World Cup and 2023 Women’s World Cup. That deadline falls at 1pm on February 16.

International rights to the Italian top tier are already on the market following the issuing of an ITT (also from 2021-22 to 2023-24). That tender also includes rights to the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana.

The league recently entered into private negotiations with agencies and broadcasters who submitted first-round bids for the international rights (excluding the Middle East and North Africa).

Domestic rights packages
In the Serie A tender, the rights for communication operators have been split up into three main packages, covering exclusive satellite platform rights (Package A), exclusive digital terrestrial platform rights (Package B) and co-exclusive internet, IPTV and mobile platform rights (Package C).

An optional ‘Gold’ package of ‘accessory rights’ has also been made available and can only be acquired by the purchaser of (at least) one of the main packages.

Package A commands a minimum reserve price of €500m per season, with reserve figures of €400m and €250m per season set for Packages B and C, respectively. A minimum reserve price of €20m per season has been attached to the Gold package.

Alternatively, three packages of ‘mixed’ marketing packages are included in the ITT document. Package 1 includes rights across all platforms exclusively, while Package 2 comprises rights across all platforms but with only co-exclusivity for internet, IPTV and mobile rights. Package 3 includes the internet, IPTV and mobile rights held co-exclusively with the winner of Package 2.

A minimum reserve price of €750m per season has been set for Package 1, followed by prices of €250m and €150m per season for Packages 2 and 3, respectively.

The ITT for independent intermediaries offers a global package of rights and also carries a minimum reserve price of €1.15bn per season.

Sky Italia’s broadcast rights for the current rights cycle are comprised of two packages, the first of which, Package 5, includes rights to three matches per weekend for a total of 114 per season, including the 8:30pm game on Sunday. Sky also acquired Package 6 – four matches per weekend or 152 per season, including the 8:30pm match on Mondays.

Sky Italia was recently left reeling after its appeal against a ban on it acquiring exclusive digital media rights was thrown out by Italy’s Council of State. The decision means Sky’s ban on acquiring exclusive digital rights to sports properties is upheld and will extend through to 2022.

Sky Italia’s inability to target exclusive digital rights is expected to damage the level of bid that Lega Serie A could expect.

The launch of the domestic tender came just weeks after Serie A clubs accepted an offer from private equity companies including CVC Capital Partners for a 10-per-cent stake in a new entity that will manage its media-rights business. That proposal, which is worth €1.7bn and also involves fellow private equity firm Advent International and Italy’s state-backed investor Fondo Strategico Italiano (FSI), is still to be fully signed off.

In February last year, Italy’s antitrust authority (AGCM) cleared the way for the domestic rights auction after approving the guidelines set out by the league. The approval followed the green light given by Italy’s communications authority (AGCOM) and covers the sale of centralised rights to Serie A, the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa, along with the ‘Primavera’ youth league, cup and Supercoppa.

Within its approval, the competition watchdog backed the “preparation of packages that stimulate competition in the pay-television market, allowing more pay-television operators to be able to broadcast a large part of Serie A”.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:43 am

meanwhile Portuguese football is desperately trying to keep football going, to prevent a financial meltdown - it is a story familiar to these shores just the money numbers are vastly different - from SportsBusiness

Portuguese football facing losses of €266m, warns of ‘collapse’ if league is suspended
Adam Nelson, Europe office - January 22, 2021


Sónia Carneiro, executive director of Liga Portugal, has warned that the teams in the top two divisions of Portuguese league football are facing collective losses of over €250m ($304m) for the 2020-21 season due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The absence of fans from stadiums and a decrease in investment from sponsors has led to a situation where clubs are set to see a shortfall of €266m for the season – though Carneiro said that another enforced shutdown, as the leagues saw between March and June last year, would be even more catastrophic.

A fresh suspension of Portuguese football while Covid cases continue to rise in the country is “not an option”, Carneiro told the country’s Rádio Observador, adding that it would mean “the economic collapse of all sports organisations.”

She added: “The possibility of stopping competitions is not even considered”.

Revenues from media-rights deals are currently the primary lifeline helping to support Portuguese clubs, and Carneiro argues that suspending competition would mean payments from broadcasters being stopped and lead to “an absolutely insolvent economic situation” at many clubs.

She added: “The losses would increase if the sport is stopped and television rights are frozen. As we know, a large part of the budget of sports in Portugal lives on what television rights are. If the competition is stopped, it would prevent the payment of these amounts, which would be absolutely catastrophic.”

Carneiro went on to defend the Liga Portugal’s conduct in regards to its Covid prevention measures, saying it “continues to comply with all protocols” and that it had received a vote of confidence from the national government to continue.

“No coach, no president, came to say that the competition must be stopped. For us, this is absolutely unthinkable,” she said.

The ‘final four’ of the Taça da Liga – the Portuguese league cup – is underway this week, with the final to be played between Sporting Clube de Portugal and Braga on Saturday, but the competition was almost cancelled amid a flurry of positive tests among the four teams involved. Carneiro praised “the commitment and exemplary behaviour” of the players and staff involved who worked to allow the tournament to be played.

Portugal this week became the country with the highest seven-day average of new coronavirus cases in the world, overtaking the UK, and has recorded a total of almost 600,000 infections and 10,000 deaths since March last year. The country is in the midst of a second national lockdown, with elite sport having been given special permission to continue.

Earlier this month, the Portuguese government said that it was readying legislation which will see the centralisation of broadcast rights to the top-tier football league.

The move would drastically alter the nation’s current model of selling rights to its top tier of domestic football which presently sees clubs sell their rights individually. The leagues in Portugal and Cyprus are among the few to still adopt individual rights sales.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 1:02 am

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:39 am
Just how bad is it at Barca?

I see they're requesting more time to make a payment of £178 million on some loans/debts etc.
I was just getting ready to post about that - I have been post for a long time on this thread about how they had stretch the model financially - the ego that went into some of their for deals good players not great ones is ridiculous - they could end up having to pay out another £20m for Coutinho yet

any how that tale you mention - from the Mail

Cash-strapped Barcelona 'beg banks to delay huge repayments of £178m amid fears club could go BANKRUPT' after LaLiga giants' debts doubled in a year due to Covid-19 pandemic
- Barcelona have reportedly asked major banks to delay debt repayments owed
- Club accounts last year revealed debt has doubled in the space of 12 months
- Spanish reports say the club have asked for £178m repayments to be delayed
- Interim club president Carlos Tusquets says the wage bill consumes the budget
By OLLIE LEWIS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 17:01, 22 January 2021 | UPDATED: 19:31, 22 January 2021

Barcelona have reportedly asked a host of major banks to delay debt repayments so that the club can avoid insolvency, in an alarming development for the club's supporters.

According to El Confidencial via Football Espana, the Catalonians have requested from Goldman Sachs, Allianz, Barings, Amundi and Prudential a dispensation for failing to financially comply, which points to a non payment of approximately £178m.

The LaLiga side reportedly have a negative working capital of £535m, with a further £89m owed to other lenders.

Barcelona announced during the 2019-20 season that it expected to be the first club to break the £1bn barrier for income in a single year in football, however that figure was blown off course by the coronavirus pandemic.

And last October, the club announced that the club's debts had doubled in worrying new financial results for the 2019-20 season.

Marca revealed that the club's debt had skyrocketed from £193m to £434m in the space of 12 months, from June 2019 to June 2020.

As a result, the club have made cuts to its first team squad in a bid to reduce the wage bill, with a reported £71m slashed from the books after the sales of Nelson Semedo, Arthur, Ivan Rakitic and Marc Cucurella.

There has been considerable turmoil at the club since last summer, in which Lionel Messi's feud with Josep Bartomeu exploded into the public domain with the Argentine looking to force his way out of the club.

The club hierarchy disputed the eligibility of a release clause in his contract and, in a bid to avoid a lengthly legal battle with the club, Messi opted to stay this season.

Bartomeu has since resigned as president, and interim president Carlos Tusquets revealed to Catalonian radio station RAC1 that the club have failed to pay players for their pre-agreed January salary.

Player wages have consumed most of the club's budget, with Tusquets previously revealing that the salary of the squad was at 70 per cent of the total budget available at the club.

Barcelona were set to elect a new president early this year but that has been delayed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The next president and his board will have to deal with the situation as a priority, with €420m of that debt owed in the next 12 months.

That is something the club cannot currently afford, and so a expensive restructuring of those debts will likely be needed, throwing the club into a further financial hole.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 1:27 am

Rory Smith in the New York Times with a sorry tale of a youn talented and exciting South American player from a large family and poor background and rabid agents

Moisés Caicedo and the Perils of Too Much Interest
JANUARY 21, 2021

Nothing stays secret for long in soccer. So thorough is the game’s hunt for talent and so desperate its thirst for players that no territory goes uncharted, no stone unturned, no prospect unobserved. Distance is no barrier. Remoteness is not a factor. The searchlight is so bright that there is no such thing, any more, as obscurity.

And so, over the course of the last year, the powerhouse clubs of Europe’s major leagues have been turning their attention to Sangolqui, a suburb to the south of the Ecuador’s capital, Quito. They have focused on a club that hardly uses its own tight, compact stadium, and on a teenage midfielder not yet two seasons into his senior career.

Moisés Caicedo would not have known it — not until recently — but his name has been playing on the lips of scouts and technical directors across Europe for months.

Few, if any, clubs from the old world have a dedicated scout for leagues like Ecuador’s. Instead, emerging players are spotted in South America's continental competitions — the Copa Libertadores and the Copa Sudamericana — or tracked through international youth tournaments.

When a player of interest is identified, members of the recruitment staff trawl through footage of his domestic displays, and the corresponding performance data, on platforms like Wyscout, InStat and Scout7. Only then, if the numbers add up, will scouts — either club employees or trusted freelancers in specific markets — be sent to watch the player in person.

An energetic and composed midfielder, Caicedo, now 19, passed every test. Manchester United’s South American scout alerted his employers to Caicedo’s ability. A.C. Milan found that the data and the assessment of their talent spotters tallied up. Club Bruges, the Belgian champion, noticed him, too. So did a phalanx of teams from England — Brighton and Chelsea among them. Nothing, after all, stays secret for long.

All, independently, determined that Caicedo was an interesting proposition. Many of them started making discreet enquiries, performing the due diligence on both the player and his club — Independiente del Valle — to work out how a deal might be done. And they all heard precisely the same warning: Finding Caicedo was the easy bit. Working out how, exactly, to sign him would be much more difficult.

A Rapid Rise
Even at Independiente del Valle, there was some surprise at just how quickly the teenager the club had found playing in Santo Domingo — a small city a few hours west of Quito — had developed.

When he moved to Sangolqui, Caicedo was not one of the standouts on the under-16 team that he joined, but he was quiet, determined, a fast learner. That squad contained several players who would represent Ecuador at the youth level, but by late 2019, Caicedo had outstripped them all.

He made his league debut for Independiente in October that year, as a substitute against Liga de Quito; by the end of the month, he had his first start. In February 2020, he captained the club’s youth side to victory in the under-20 Copa Libertadores. When he returned, he went straight to the first team: He appeared in his first senior Libertadores game in April.

If the speed of his success was a touch unexpected, it was treated within Independiente as vindication of the club’s model. Though the team had been founded in 1958, its modern incarnation came into being only in 2007, when it was taken over — and turned into a private enterprise — by a group of entrepreneurs, led by Michel Deller.

“There was a clear vision,” said Luis Roggiero, the club’s sports manager. “There is a pool of talent in Ecuador that had not been given an opportunity to develop: The players that had come through had done so on their own merit, not because they found a club or federation that helped them. The idea was to construct a club to compete at national and international level by finding our own talents, finding them early, and developing them our way.”

To do that, the club commissioned a study of the districts in Ecuador that produced the most players, Roggiero said, and then constructed training bases in each of them: dragnets to capture whatever talent came through. The best prospects would then be recruited to the club’s main training facility in Sangolqui — which contains accommodations for 120 young players and an on-site school — to be inculcated in the team’s style of play.

“We built an idea of how we wanted to play, and then designed training — technical and physical and mental — to help them produce that,” Roggiero said. It was a long-term plan that has born fruit: In 2016, less than a decade after Deller and his associates found the club in Ecuador’s third division, Independiente reached the final of the Copa Libertadores, where it lost to Colombia’s Atlético Nacional. The club is now a regular sight in the latter rounds of South America’s biggest club competition.

Roggiero attributes that success to the fact that — unlike many teams in Ecuador, and across South America — Independiente is privately owned. “We are not subject to elections, so we can have long-term horizons,” he said. “We can be responsible financially, we can maintain the same administration. The club can be sustainable. The idea has been reinforced by the results we have had in our short history. It shows the road we have chosen is valid.”

Success on the field, though, is not the only gauge of the club’s success. So, too, are the players it has produced. Graduates from Independiente’s finishing school are now a regular sight on Ecuador’s various national teams: Seven members of the current men’s squad came through the club’s system, as did six players on the women’s national side. Scouts, agents and technical directors now flock to Sangolqui to scour its youth teams for signs of promise; an annual international under-18 tournament it hosts has become compulsory viewing for those in the recruitment business.

In recent years, Independiente has been able to sell players not only to the leagues that have some tradition of importing from Ecuador — those in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil — but also, increasingly, to clubs in Europe: Players have left for Granada and Real Valladolid in Spain, for Italy’s Atalanta, for Brighton in England, for Genk in Belgium and for Sporting Lisbon in Portugal.

As Caicedo’s star rose, it became clear that he would be the next to make that journey.

But while more European teams might be aware of Independiente — and Ecuador as a whole, after a run of success for its international youth teams — as a source of talent, the country remains an unfamiliar market for most.

Its clubs, generally, prefer to sell to other South American leagues, where the initial fee can often be higher; the most powerful agencies in the country tend to have well-established links with Brazil, Mexico and the United States. Few European teams have a presence, or a way in. For them, it can be uncertain, unfamiliar ground.

And there are always plenty of people, in soccer’s transfer market, ready to capitalize on any uncertainty at all. Unfamiliarity, for some operators, means opportunity.

The Squabble
Most of Europe’s clubs received the same feedback when they started to delve a little deeper into Caicedo’s situation: It was not immediately clear, they were told, precisely who was representing the player, who had the power to agree to terms on his behalf. “Too many agents involved,” as the note sent to one recruitment department read.

A transfer deal should, on the surface, be a straightforward thing. The buying club should — strictly speaking — contact the selling team, establish a price, and then contact the player’s agent in order to work out the personal terms.

If that is a little naïve, then the pragmatic alternative — contact the agents first, find out if the player is interested, ask what a deal would cost, and then present the selling club with a fait accompli before haggling over price — might be more cynical, but it is not substantially more complicated.

The reality, though, is much messier. Teams frequently give an agent a mandate to sell their own player, in order to retain a degree of negotiating power. Often, different agents will be given mandates to sell players to different countries: One will do the deal if an Italian team is interested, someone else if it is a Spanish club. Those mandates can then be traded and sold between agents.

As soon as a talented player emerges, a suite of agents will typically descend on him, offering exclusive access to a particular team or league, or simply an ability to negotiate a better deal. Sometimes players sign multiple agreements with multiple agents, based on nothing more than promises.

Most of those involved in recruitment accept this as the way things are, and the way they have always been across the world, though many find it especially difficult to untangle deals to take players out of South America. The sporting director at one major European club, though, believes the problem has become much worse since FIFA moved to deregulate agents in 2015. “Now, you can basically do anything you like,” said the director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the issue publicly.

It is precisely that sort of free-for-all that engulfed Caicedo. For much of his nascent professional career, he has been represented by Kancha, an Ecuadorean agency with a roster of young players and a cohort at Independiente. As clubs’ interest in him grew, though, so too did interest from agencies, eager to profit not only from his promise but also from teams’ comparative inexperience in buying players in Ecuador.

Members of the Caicedo’s family — he is the youngest of 10 siblings, and has 25 nephews — were inundated with offers from agents seeking a mandate to sell him. Those close to the dealings, though not authorized to speak on the record about private business arrangements, said they believed that relatives had reached agreements with two of them: a German-based firm, PSM Proformance, and a company in Argentina. PSM Proformance did not respond to a request for comment.

All of a sudden, there were three agencies — including Kancha — claiming to speak for Caicedo, to have the power to do a deal. Independiente, the club that had nurtured him, was effectively rendered irrelevant in the sale: It will receive roughly the same fee regardless of which agent strikes a deal, and is expected to ask for a clause that will bring the club a 30 percent cut on any future transfer, too.

But if his club is unaffected, the same cannot necessarily be said of Caicedo. With multiple agents not only touting him across Europe but also peppering the news media, in Ecuador and farther afield, with tips about his potential destination, many clubs that had been enticed by Caicedo’s enormous promise chose to walk away. Manchester United and Milan both decided not to become embroiled in a situation they deemed too knotty to unravel.

Others stayed the course. Brighton — currently considered his most likely destination — had the advantage of a pre-existing relationship with Independiente and Kancha, having signed a player from both in 2018. Caicedo will get his move: His talent, ultimately, guarantees that.

What concerns those who have watched him flourish over the last couple of years is whether it will be the right move, for the right reasons. Caicedo’s rise, so far, has been unexpectedly, almost impossibly smooth. Being exposed to the perils of the transfer market, though, means the road ahead is littered with obstacles. He has been found. The risk now is that he might yet be lost.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by RammyClaret61 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 3:39 am

Doesn’t all that sound murky, discussing, human trafficking, almost slave trade like. All with the leaches of agents wanting to make a quick buck by any means they can think of.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Vegas Claret » Sat Jan 23, 2021 4:02 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:08 am
Interesting move in the USA for long time Premier League partner NBC - the story is that is is going to close down NBCSN and move it's sports to more premium services such as Peacock - it is difficult to tell at this stage if it will improve the bidding for the next cycle of Premier League rights

https://twitter.com/Ourand_SBJ/status/1 ... 8800579588
the NBC coverage pi$$es all over anything the other broadcasters put out, picture quality makes Sky look like SD and the commentators are top notch

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 6:30 pm

More on those financial woes at Barcelona - from AS.com a Spanish outlet - it is an old article but fits in with recent reports

Barcelona: economist warns members could lose control of club after Goldman-Sachs deal
Leading economist Marc Ciria has painted a bleak picture for Barcelona, warning a €800mn loan deal with Goldman Sachs could lead to members losing majority control of the club.
Santi GiménezSanti Giménez@acaradeperro Update: 13/10/2020 18:09
1
Barcelona: economist warns members could lose control of club after Goldman-Sachs deal
FC Barcelona’s finances are in an alarming state which could lead to members losing control of the club, a leading economist has warned.

In an interview with Spanish news agency EFE, Marc Ciria, founding partner and CEO of Diagonal Investments who in 2015 was the financial manager of Joan Laporta's presidential candidacy, has painted a bleak financial picture for Barcelona, in which he highlighted the Espai Barça project to remodel Camp Nou would not go ahead as planned.

"The club is using the 30-year debt for Espai Barça, the final cost of which the club is clearly inflating, to pay wages for this year. And Goldman Sachs is fine with that because it is charging interest of between 3 and 4%. And if Barcelona doesn’t pay it, Goldman will come knocking,” said Ciria.

“The question is how the non-payment of the debt will be executed: With the club's assets? With the stadium? Because when there is a loan from an investment bank, the clauses are much firmer than those of a traditional bank.

“The board needs to do what it is doing to fix the numbers before leaving and they don't care about Espai Barça because they won't be the ones to undertake it.”

He added: “The next board of directors will not be able to develop Espai Barça with this loan. It will need other financing and the project will have to be converted into something much cheaper, which will consist of refurbishing the stadium. And for 10 or 15 years the club will not be able to consider building the Nou Palau Blaugrana and the rest of the infrastructure.”

Ciria: Coronavirus pandemic not to blame for Barça financial woes
According to Ciria, “Covid-19 has nothing to do with Barcelona’s financial situation. It is a lie of the board of directors, which claims that a club that will bill €700 million is in debt with €1.6 billion. This is unpayable under the current mechanisms of the club.

“The two viable solutions proposed by this current directive are the conversion of the club into a public limited sports company or the entry of an international investment fund that would leave the membership as the owner of 30 or 40 percent of Barcelona.”

Ciria warns against Barcelona-Goldman deal
Regarding the investment fund option, the economist warns of the danger of signing the €800 million loan with Goldman Sachs which the board under current president Josep Bartomeu is ready to approve.

“Goldman Sachs is not known for lending money, but for making entry operations in companies to then later get out of them by reselling the shares it has bought,” he told EFE.

“It is an investment bank, not a money-lending bank like La Caixa or BBVA (Spanish banks). The appearance of Goldman Sachs means that Barcelona has not been able to go to national institutions to increase its debt. The reason is obvious: the club already owes them almost €500 million in short-term debt.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:36 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:21 pm
Speaking of Podcasts - the latest from Unofficial Partner looks at the recently published FA Strategic Planoday we look at the role of The FA following the publication of its Strategic Plan covering the next four years to 2024.

The blurb
Today we look at the role of The FA following the publication of its Strategic Plan covering the next four years to 2024.

The FA is the governing body for football in England, with a remit that goes from the England teams, World Cups and Euros, St George’s Park and Wembley Stadium to the grass roots, coaching, youth football and safeguarding.

We invited two people to come on and dissect the strategy document. First of all, Alex Horne who held a number of leadership roles within The FA including CEO, COO and General Secretary. And then following Alex, we have Matt Rogan, one of the co-founders of Two Circles, the agency that works with many governing bodies both in the UK and around the world.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... tegic-plan

You can read the actual document here

https://www.thefa.com/about-football-as ... o/strategy
This is an interesting read even though it does not mention football, though worthwhile considering gen that the FA are still in the process of selecting a new Chair. there is no doubt the previous incumbent was not upt o date with the modern world

Michael Ask: Sport’s outdated approach to governance is no longer sustainable in 2021

By Michael Ask Friday, 22 January 2021

I work in the sport integrity industry. I say industry because, as sport has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry itself, this has urged the need to maintain a sense of fairness and protect sport’s integrity. One of the reasons I work in this industry is because I love sport. Sport brings people together, transcending social, cultural, religious and language boundaries. It teaches young people to exercise and use their body, to train and compete, to win and lose, to be determined and focused, to cooperate with other people, to set goals and work hard to reach them and many other valuable virtues. In many ways, it can be argued that sport is one of the best avenues to bring up young people and teach them skills and values that are ever-more-important in broader society.

So, why is it then that international sport organisations do not always reflect society’s accepted norms, values and standards when it comes to democracy, transparency, good governance principles and separate check and balance mechanisms between the authorities? Why is it that often international sport organisations lag behind modern-day business principles?

If we are to take a look back at why we, at least in democratic societies, have institutionalised good governance principles, we can draw a line back to the French writer Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu and his principle of the tripartition of power: the legislative, the executive and the judiciary power. Each of these powers, he argued, should be taken care of by individuals, who have no influence on the execution of the other two powers. In this manner, the respective powers have their limits and control each other, which naturally prevents any abuse of power. If this principle is not enforced, he argued, the legitimacy of a regime erodes, and corruption would prevail. Montesquieu’s viewpoint is widely accepted in so many realms of our society, yet when it comes to organised sport - not least in the Olympic Movement - it feels like it’s one set of rules for society and another for international sport.

Take, for example, the Russian doping scandal that developed, exploded and has continually simmered over the course of the last six years. This scandal revealed not only the biggest doping plot since the East German doping regime, but it also exposed the fact that the Word Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) did not live up to the principles of tripartition of power. Now, WADA has two governing bodies: the Foundation Board - the legislative, and the Executive Committee - the executive branch. Both bodies consisted only of members appointed by the two "shareholders" as we would term them in other sectors - the Governments and the sports movement.

These two bodies have overlapping responsibilities and a complete absence of independent members which would have allowed objectivity to prevail and good governance principles to be enforced. In the aftermath of some strange and weak decisions - veering drastically from the prevailing athlete and public opinion - the flaws of the governance system of WADA were exposed and a working group was created to advise how WADA could strengthen its governance structure and live up to good governance principles similar to those we see across other global sectors. The group involved not just Government and sports movement (IOC) representatives, but also from stakeholders like athletes and National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs).

One of the suggestions raised by the NADO representatives in the working group - NADOs being arguably the most involved day to day in anti-doping operations - was to broaden representation in the Foundation Board to include a broader body of opinion, not least athletes and NADOs, but also anti-doping laboratories, sponsors and broadcasters in order to ensure a broad church of views would be represented in the highest decision-making body of WADA. In order to separate the powers, and to avoid conflicts of interest, the NADO representatives also suggested an Executive Committee mainly composed of independent representatives, who should have the authority to decide and carry out decisions directed against signatories who had violated World Anti-Doping Code rules. Unfortunately, and bewilderingly to most, the sports movement, and indeed some Government representatives too, found the suggestions much too radical for their taste.

So, as industries outside sport continue to adopt and embrace good governance principles today, where does WADA stand today? Regrettably, I have to say that there has been no change to the Foundation Board. The composition of the Executive Committee is also in status quo mode, although it did handpick two additional so-called independent members: Gabriella Battaini-Dragoni, deputy secretary general of the Council of Europe (intragovernmental organisation holding two seats at the Foundation Board of WADA), and Patricia Sangenis, former member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Medical and Scientific Commission. Both highly respected persons, but completely independent from governments and sport? Certainly not.

The buck doesn’t just stop with WADA, however, even though perhaps it should. We also have the judiciary body of the global anti-doping system named: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The President of the Board is John Coates. He is also a vice-president of the IOC. The circle is now complete: we have the sport movement, led by the IOC, represented in all three powers of the governance structure of the anti-doping system: sport organisations now wield huge influence in making the rules, carrying them out and casting the verdict when some of their sport friends break the rules.

Then, when we add factors such as ambiguous procedures in selecting the arbitrators for the cases and closed hearings, it is no wonder that the trust in the objectivity of decisions rendered by CAS in anti-doping cases is scarce. This is especially the case when it comes to decisions where major political or financial interests are at stake, as we have just seen with the latest controversial decision in the Russian doping saga. Despite clear evidence submitted by WADA and even acknowledged by CAS, for unknown reasons CAS decided to reduce the package of sanctions from four to two years, and furthermore water-down the additional suggested sanctions substantially.

As Montesquieu taught us, all regimes or organisations need legitimacy to function well - otherwise, they lose stakeholder support, and their days become numbered. Sports organisations are no exception to this, as they rely on the backing of their stakeholders: athletes and their entourage, leaders and officials, spectators and TV viewers, sponsors and broadcasters. If the trust vanishes, then sport, as we know it and love it, for its magnetic pull for people across the world, could disappear, too.

The risk of splitting stakeholders behind what was fundamentally a genius idea to have a common set of rules across sport disciplines and nations - the WADA Code - is growing, when the system is increasingly regarded as biased towards economic interests and political influence. It creates obvious conflicts of interest that are not acceptable in other responsible and respected sectors of society. Therefore, it is incomprehensible that the sports movement itself cannot see that they need to relinquish some power to uphold their legitimacy in the long run. Just as regimes, organisations and private companies are constantly forced to work with their governmental structure to uphold legitimacy within their population, members or consumers.

Since the sports movement has so far not "seen the light", the calls over the last five years from athlete groups, sports fans, NADOs, media and some governments for the sports organisations to reflect the 21st century world in their governance structure to more contemporary standards will continue to grow and grow. And as the outer pressure increases, it will eventually force the sports organisations to adjust and acknowledge the need for change.

As we begin the Olympic year with more optimism than we ended 2020, my hope is that progressive forces within the sports movement will start to see the direction of travel from other industries and start to collaborate with athletes, NADOs and other stakeholders to embrace Montesquieu’s principles on tripartition. That, surely now in 2021, must be the sports movement’s guiding light.

Only by changing the governance structure of sports organisations can we hope for continuous trust in the system which began with such good intentions and ambitions. We in the NADO community, in the meantime, will continue to focus on where we can positively promote and influence anti-doping, which is with the global regulator, WADA. Only once sports organisations realise the need to change their governance can we focus on what our fight against doping should really be about: the sportsmen and sportswomen who we all love to watch perform at the highest level. In fair competition. In a trustworthy system.

We have not a moment to waste.

About the author : Michael Ask

Michael Ask is chairman of the Board of the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations (iNADO) and the chief executive of Anti-Doping Denmark.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:43 pm

This is an interesting take from the Financial Times and in partly in line with a previous post on this thread

Scoreboard: English football gets a government bailout behind closed doors
JANUARY 23, 2021

English football’s secret government rescue

Long before US billionaire Stan Kroenke acquired the football club, Arsenal was known as a Bank of England club — a nod to its past backing by Britain’s financial establishment.

In recent weeks, the Gunners reclaimed the moniker by borrowing £120m through the central bank’s emergency Covid-19 lending scheme.

English Premier League rivals Tottenham Hotspur, owned by Bahamas-based billionaire Joe Lewis, has also borrowed £175m through the so-called Covid Corporate Financing Facility. The Football Association, the national governing body that has suffered huge losses because of the pandemic, took on the same amount of debt through the CCFF.

Here’s the thing. The UK government made a point of excluding professional football from a £300m bailout to support the country’s ailing sports industry last year. Ministers did not want to be seen subsidising the wages of multi-millionaire footballers and losses of super-rich owners, like Kroenke and Lewis.

But clubs are benefiting from a taxpayer-funded rescue after all, and there are further complaints about how the government intervention is working in practice.

Stringent criteria exclude weaker companies from obtaining cheap credit from the Bank of England. Smaller Premier League clubs have complained to the FT that low-cost borrowing for Arsenal and Spurs distorts the competition.

Clubs in the Championship, which is run by the English Football League, must work even harder to secure financing. These teams, which play in the tier below the Premier League, are propped up by their owners, who pay 107 per cent of revenues in wages to their players in pursuit of promotion.

They are also far more reliant on match day revenues, which have been wiped out by the pandemic, than Premier League clubs, which benefit from billions of pounds in broadcast contracts.

The UK government has piled pressure on the Premier League to bail out Championship clubs.

But as revealed by the FT this week, instead of providing cash itself, the top tier will cover just £15m of interest payments to help the EFL obtain financing from the CCFF, with the Bank of England money then passed to Championship clubs. It’s a piece of financial wizardry straight from a banker’s playbook.

In front of the cameras, the government often attacks the profligacy of football. Behind closed doors, through a convoluted form of state aid, it supports the game.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:49 pm

Also in today's Scoreboard from the Financial Times is this on Private Equity's move into leagues rather than teams - the extensive feature the FT did on this is further up the thread) but for those that missed it, this is a good introduction

Sports leagues seek private equity cash: at what cost?

Private equity groups have a new strategy: don’t just buy the player, buy the game.

Buyout firms are increasingly seeking deals in sport, not just by acquiring teams, but in the governing bodies that run competitions themselves.

In a FT Big Read this week, we turned to what happens after such deals are signed: a battle for control over how leagues are run.

Here’s the context. The financial crisis from the coronavirus pandemic has opened up sports governing bodies to private equity investors. California’s Silver Lake is in talks with the body that runs New Zealand’s All Blacks rugby union team; Luxembourg-based CVC Capital Partners is closing in on investments in the Six Nations, Europe’s top rugby competition and Italy’s Serie A football league.

One characteristic of these deals is that the buyout groups are being offered only minority stakes in new commercial vehicles created by sports governing bodies. That structure prevents private equity executives also gaining control of how their sports are run.

These restraints are off-putting to some. Next month, Germany’s Bundesliga football league will launch an auction seeking investors for its international and commercial business. There have been more than 20 expressions of interest from private equity firms.

A person close to the process said only a handful are expected to make an offer. One leading private equity executive said they were reluctant to pursue the Bundesliga deal due to the “messy” prospect of negotiating with teams individually to approve future decisions.

Still, once buyout groups get inside a league, there is disruption.

This week, The Times reported that the English Premiership, another rugby competition which CVC has invested in, is seeking to expand the competition with two new teams and abandon relegation for at least one season.

One of the sides set to gain entry is Saracens, already a shareholder in the group that runs Premiership Rugby. But the other is Ealing Trailfinders, a West London team that must reportedly pay £20m for entry, money that would then be split between the existing other Premiership teams.

Without the cash, such expansion makes little sense. Ealing’s average match day crowd is around 800 people, so the club hardly drags a big fan base into the league. And more teams means more matches. That risks player welfare at a time of increasing concern that repeated concussion in rugby causes long-term brain damage.

Even without giving up full control to private equity, the sport knows its new partners' focus on the bottom line trumps sporting considerations.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:56 pm

I am expecting the 24th edition of the Deloitte Football Money League report this coming week, it should make for an interesting, if not apocalyptic read as the the pandemic lockdowns continue to shakedown the fragile financial landscape in the game - I expect we may have climbed a bit and picture painted for Barcelona is not likely to be as rosy

this is last years report if you want a refresher

https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/s ... eague.html

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jan 24, 2021 12:53 am

Sam Wallace in The Telegraph on the threat the European Super League posed to the Premier League and how upsets like our result at Anfield are what makes the Premier League so absorbing to audiences around the world - he should have also pointed out that Burnley played in the European Cup before Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal

If proposed European super league is such a great idea why are its advocates so secretive?
SAM WALLACE JANUARY 23, 2021

Every time the beast peers out at us, in another working document, or the leaked meeting of two mediocre men who happen to have control of a famous football club, one asks the question: how many people on the planet genuinely want a European super league?

Not a percentage, or the kind of delusional survey that football clubs like to estimate global fanbases, but quite simply: how many people? Could they all be accommodated, for instance, in the Old Trafford directors’ box? Those various club chief executives and assorted financiers; Andrea Agnelli; Florentino Perez; Florentino Perez’s PA; Florentino Perez’s driver; Florentino Perez’s tennis partner; Gazprom. In no time at all it becomes hard to fill the seats.

The idea of a European league has no popular groundswell of support or loyal base. Among the paying club fans - either matchgoing or, as we find ourselves now, television subscriber - it is almost universally rejected. Football fans want the rivalries and familiarity of their domestic competitions, promotion and relegation, and then the stardust of an elite European competition, with qualification via league position, as the midweek amuse-bouche. Not a relentless serving of Bayern Munich against Benfica from here to eternity.

Yet with the disclosure this week of more plans for a lucrative European league, all but closed off to those not considered historically glamorous enough, here it is again. This great scaly leviathan which Real Madrid and Juventus and others consider inevitable and in which Manchester United and Liverpool, we are told, are taking an indecent interest. The super league only a relatively tiny group of men in suits want. If we were to put it to the people could a super league muster 200 votes? Would it even get its deposit back?

That it is backed by such a small minority is an inequality as severe as any of those proposed in the latest documents that lay out the destruction of 65 years of meritocratic European competition, and pose a grave threat to domestic league football. A small group of men whose clubs have, in the case of Perez and Agnelli, sucked dry the resources of their own leagues and are now scanning the football galaxy for a new donor planet to ravage.

Remarkably, the likes of Ed Woodward, the Manchester United executive vice-chairman, and Liverpool’s Fenway Sports ownership are listening to European rivals who have turned their own leagues into one or two club dictatorships. There will be a cost. There is no limitless broadcast revenue, and however much faith is placed in the likes of Netflix or Apple TV entering the market, a closed European league will deprive domestic leagues of broadcast revenue.

Most of all, it will affect the earning power of the Premier League. Broadcasters who have paid premium prices for the Premier League, the globe’s most popular sport league, will be forced to redirect resources towards the auction for European league rights. The advantage that the Premier League has over European rivals will be wiped out and the biggest English clubs will have been complicit in it. Complicit in the long-term plan of big European clubs, who have spoiled their own domestic leagues, to eliminate the Premier League’s financial hegemony.

The clues were in Project Big Picture (PBP) – supposedly a plan to distribute more of the Premier League’s wealth around the lower leagues. At first glance it was an act of generosity, but as the details for a European league emerge one can see what the biggest clubs were conceding with PBP. That is to say, ultimately a much-reduced Premier League broadcast deal, and thus for everyone else a share of much less. For those 14 Premier League clubs not invited to the new super league, it would be their income that would have taken the greatest proportionate hit under PBP.

Liverpool 0, Burnley 1. This was the result of the week, a game so much more compelling and widely-discussed than, for instance, Liverpool 0, Manchester United 0. If the American ownerships of our two most famous clubs did not realise the significance of Thursday’s result, then they are already two steps behind Isiah Whitlock Jr, the US actor, most notably of The Wire, whose Twitter commentary on it was testament to the enduring reach of English football. It was like Mary Berry offering a scorching hot-take on the Baltimore Orioles.

The Premier League is built on its potential for jeopardy, and while Covid-19 has introduced that on some scale to all European leagues, these are the games that are truly its brand. The research shows that the likes of Liverpool and United and Arsenal have more supporters than others, and those supporters like to see their teams win as they have done for the most part, over the last three decades. But what really sends shockwaves through the game and its audience, what refreshes interest and establishes the great plotlines, is the competitiveness that leads to nights like Thursday at Anfield. Lose that and you lose the Premier League.

As for the Champions League and its precursor, European club competitions were established as a dream open to everyone. Bayern Munich did not compete in the European Cup until 1969, 14 years after its inception. Paris Saint-Germain played in it for just five seasons in their first 41 years. Manchester City played in it once between 1955 and 2011. Barcelona waited 37 years to win it. Under the new proposals all these clubs would be permanent members of a super league, and the chances of a club like Feyenoord or Nottingham Forest or Steaua Bucharest ever winning it again would feel absurd.

This is what they want – this small group of powerful men who are barely willing to give their opinion in public. It is their dream at the cost of everyone else and everything else.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jan 24, 2021 1:05 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:16 pm
Matt Slater is talking about this on today's Sports Business Podcast from the Athletic

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cH ... Q&hl=en-GB
GameofthePeople.com take up the ban transfer fees bandwagon

Banish transfer fees – and see what happens
JANUARY 22, 2021NEIL FREDRIK JENSEN

IN THIS time of global upheaval, football soldiers on, playing to empty stadiums in deserted towns. The tumbleweed continues to roll in the streets surrounding football grounds, but the grandstands echo to the sound of the dugout. The longer this prevails, the financial structure of the game will surely be seriously compromised.

The 2019-20 season only touched on the problems that lay ahead, 2020-21 is in danger of having a long-term and somewhat existential threat to many clubs.

However, the transfer market continues to boil away, albeit at a lower temperature than in the past. There’s a moral question or two to be answered about the persistence of the market, although in 2020, activity was lower than in the previous year.

Laws
A recent article in The Athletic suggested transfer fees are actually illegal and the way forward may be to abolish them. Football finance expert Stefan Szymanski, the co-author of the excellent Soccernomics, said everyone has the right to move jobs except footballers, adding no law has ever been passed to exempt clubs from labour laws.

Szymanski, whose paper in July 2015 (The economic arguments supporting a competition law challenge to the transfer system) questioned the post-Bosman transfer market, said clubs need to treat players less like horsemeat. “It’s not difficult, every other employer has to do it.”

While Szymanski believes very few small clubs are ever able to generate substantial revenues from player trading, it cannot be denied player trading has become an essential part of many business models. The question is whether there is an alternative and if there is, how do you wean clubs off a system they feel reliant upon? Removing transfer fees would require a huge recalibration of the industry, which actually might take years to achieve.

When he issued his paper, Szymanski felt at worst there would be no change to a world where big clubs dominate and the rest are constantly on the brink of financial collapse. At best, he added, smaller clubs might attempt to match the big clubs by hiring top players on short-term contracts. “After Bosman, the football authorities sat down to create a new system, which is what we have today. If this system were now to be abolished, no doubt there would be negotiations and a new system created. It is not necessary to pre-judge that new system in order to accept that the current system is unjust and illegal.”

As far as FIFA are concerned, the current level of transfer activity reflects the game’s resilience and strength of football’s employment market. In the governing body’s Global Transfer Market Report, FIFA confirmed transfer market activity fell by 5.4% in 2020 to 17,077 transfers. It was the first time in 10 years the volume declined.

Food chain
Transfer fees totalled US$ 5.63 billion in 2020, the lowest since 2016 and a decrease of 15% on 2019. Surprisingly, only 13.3% of all transfers have fees attached to them. Furthermore, of those transfers with a fee, 51.4% include a sell-on clause in the agreement. In deals with no transfer fee, only 2.8% have a sell-on clause, a figure which probably affects clubs lower down the football food chain. Over 60% of transfers involve players that are out of contract.

The pandemic has not stopped clubs from spending and there has been a number of sizeable transactions, although only 130 over US$ 10 million. Naturally, the biggest deals have included Chelsea (Kai Havertz), Juventus (Arthur), Napoli (Osimhen), Manchester United (Fernandes), Manchester City (Dias), Paris Saint-Germain (Icardi), Barcelona (Pjanic), Bayern Munich (Sané) and other members of the elite.

Premier League clubs dominated the top 10 spenders in 2020, Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City in the top three. In fact, English clubs spent more than any other country – US$ 1.6 billion – in 2020. The highest amounts went to Spanish clubs (US$ 340 million), and Portuguese clubs (US$ 261 million). The Premier League has accounted for a third of all European top division spending over the past few years.

The absence of transfer fees would not just affect individual clubs, but would also impact domestic football in countries that rely on a flow of international transactions. Brazil, which accounted for over 2,000 deals and over US$ 300 million in fees in 2020, is responsible for the most frequented transfer route. In 2020, 274 deals featured movement of players between Brazil and Portugal, the busiest trade path. Spain received the highest amount of transfer income, almost US$ 800 million.

As we have seen, some clubs have become very proficient at player trading, providing a steady flow of players to the market. The leaders in this field are Benfica, Porto and Ajax, but other clubs, such as Red Bull Salzburg, Sporting Lisbon and Genk are on the rise. In 2019-20, Ajax and Benfica each generated over € 200 million of transfer income. It is likely these player trading clubs will not make as much from this important revenue stream in 2021 as the pandemic hits home.

Development
Removing transfer fees would also have an indirect effect on the game in that it would curtail some of the activity that acts on the periphery of the industry. Intermediaries may find their income goes down dramatically. Conversely, with expenditure on player acquisition no longer an issue, it is not out of the question that player wages might increase – if the money is still there, of course.

The transfer market in women’s football is only just getting underway and in 2020, international transfers broke the 1,000 mark for the first time, an increase of 24%. A new world record was created when Chelsea signed Pernille Harder from Wolfsburg for £ 250,000. At this stage of its development, the women’s game could easily implement a ban on fees in the future.

One unforeseen consequence could be a rise in illegal activity in order to encourage transfers. Given the football industry is now a global business that has begun to ape other corporate sectors, the eradication of transfer fees is unlikely to be endorsed by clubs, associations and even governing bodies – unless, of course, there is a huge disaster waiting to happen. It will be a case of “turkeys don’t vote for Christmas” even if it delivers longer-term benefits. Question: When did football ever think long-term?

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