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 » Fri Jun 04, 2021 10:48 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 11:42 pm
More woe for Swindon Town Supporters Trust after they provided a witness statement for the legal proceedings against the club's owner - this statement from them gives us the detail

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

SWINDON TOWN CEASE ALL COMMUNICATIONS WITH TRUSTSTFC

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

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

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

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

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

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

TrustSTFC has always been and remains owner-agnostic provided that the owners are working for the long-term best interests of STFC, its supporters and the local community. 
This latest update on Swindon Town's proceedings looks far from positive, from the Swindon Advertiser

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

By Tom Seaward
Crime & Court Reporter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Power was approached for comment via Swindon Town FC.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 04, 2021 11:26 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:33 pm

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:46 pm

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

Always learning it seems

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:51 pm

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

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

By Mike McGrath
4 June 2021 • 5:44pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:48 pm

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Newcastleclaret93 » Mon Jun 07, 2021 9:36 pm

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:00 pm

Newcastleclaret93 wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 9:36 pm
Chester do you have any more info Checketts/ Paces past? I had a look into Checketts after your post the other day and it all seemed a bit like deja vu
I know what you mean and that was the reason I mentioned it

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Newcastleclaret93 » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:16 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:00 pm
I know what you mean and that was the reason I mentioned it

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

sorry I cannot be of more help at the moment, I am busy working on another long article for the London Clarets which needs to be submitted tomorrow
Thanks Chester, I wasn’t aware of his previous failings in sports.

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

Interesting to read about anyway.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:29 am

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

this is what Auclair posted in a tweet linking the article

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

The turn of the screw
07/06/2021

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

By Philippe Auclair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 09, 2021 8:24 pm

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 09, 2021 9:17 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:26 am

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:51 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:26 am
Norwich City: Premier League club says sorry and cancels controversial sponsor deal - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57424206

Didn't like the suggestive /lewd adverts of its sponsor apparently
given a number constituted soft porn it is no surprise - I have posted a number of times before on this thread about how it is necessary to do the right background work and get working practice agreements in place when signing commercial partners, particularly those from vastly different cultural backgrounds
This user liked this post: GodIsADeeJay81

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Fri Jun 11, 2021 7:15 pm

Screenshot_20210611_191336_com.theathletic.jpg
Screenshot_20210611_191336_com.theathletic.jpg (156.47 KiB) Viewed 3834 times
Interesting move, wonder how cheap they got that..

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:03 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:32 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:03 pm
the answer is very cheap GIADJ, it actually may cause more problems than LFP can deal with Canal + who rescued them this last season have reacted very quickly and very negatively. It could also benefit the Premier League as well , which set to become Canal + prime football offering at the weekends - from SportsBusiness.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We have seen a great response to our recent coverage of Roland-Garros and will build on that to provide a world-class viewing experience as live football arrives on Prime Video in France.”
More detail from the Financial Times as to why Canal + are unhappy with that Amazon deal for the French Lique - amazon are paying less for 8 live games a week than Canal+ agreed for 3 games a week when the other bidder was Media Pro - Canal + were not allowed to bid for all the rights that Amazon won because of European competition law preventing a broadcaster owning all the domestic rights - this is developing into a right mess

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The LFP did not respond to a request for comment.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:14 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sat May 15, 2021 11:50 pm
Missed this during my stepping away from the board this week - La Liga has signed the biggest ever overseas league deal in the US with ESPN - note the length, 8 years, exactly what Claire Enders has been talking about as necessary to bring in the larger numbers (hence the Premier League role over deal domestically) - You would imagine that this will have the Premier League hopeful for their own deal which should be sealed in the next few months. This deal for la Liga comes in the week after spanish courts came down on La Liga's side after Real Madrid tried to block the collective agreements (https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/la- ... management) - from SportsProMedia

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

Posted: May 14 2021 By: Sam Carp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

North America is an important strategic market for La Liga, which in 2018 signed up to a 15-year joint venture with US sports and entertainment company Relevent Sports to grow its brand in the region. The league’s new deal with ESPN will put it alongside a number of other premium sports properties and also expose it to a broad US audience, with Disney reporting this week that ESPN+ now has 13.8 million subscribers.
Some really interesting background to that La Liga - ESPN US broadcast deal. it comes from the partnership with Relevent who run the international summer pre-season tournament ICC and who also have agreements with UEFA - from SportsBusiness.com

How LaLiga-Relevent Sports partnership in US led to record $1.4bn ESPN media rights deal
Bob Williams, US office
June 10, 2021
  • Joint venture partnership has transformed league’s presence and commercial fortunes in region
  • Two parties aligned following overwhelming success of El Clasico Miami in July 2017
  • Following Mexico expansion, model could now be expanded into further international territories


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:49 pm

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

Purists hated Mayweather v Paul but traditional sports can learn from its success
  • Other sports watched with interest at how today’s tools were used for a fight with narrative, hype, personalities and jeopardy
  • The Guardian’s report on Logan Paul’s fight with Floyd Mayweather was the second most-read story on the website last week.
Sean Ingle

Mon 14 Jun 2021 08.00 BST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:02 pm

In regard to the Canal + withdrawal following Amazon's successful French Ligue domestic rights bid - there is mention but not emphasis of the fact that Canal+ failed in two court cases to get their initial agreement annulled so they wouldn't over extend themselves in fresh bidding (without being tied to the existing package you would believe that they would have outbid Amazon on this deal

There is also the problem for PSG in particular of what this new total deal means for them and FFP when it returns - they started the cycle with the expectation that the domestic deal was worth over euro 1 billion now it has effectively been halved - in some ways it is surprising that Bien- did not offer more support to Canal +, but that would have meant giving money to their rivals - you would expect a major new sponsorship deal being announced shortly to help with the shortfall - in the meantime it is of no surprise that new signings are occurring without transfer fees though the wages are still colossal

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:17 pm

I have posted many times about Saudi Arabia's sporting ambitions and it's efforts to get very close to FIFA - this latest effort can only be described as a long short - they want to host he Centenary World Cup (8 years after Qatar) and think doing so in partnership with a European nation will give them the best chance = it may help pay towards the cost of staging but I am not sure UEFA would allow it - ftom the New York Times

Saudi Arabia Mulls Bid for 2030 World Cup
JUNE 10, 2021

Nothing is off the table. Not a bid to buy one of England’s biggest soccer clubs. Not rich offers for multimillion-dollar broadcast packages. Not even an improbable bid to secure the hosting rights to the 2030 World Cup.

As Saudi Arabia sets course to spend its way to the top table of global soccer, the heart of those efforts is a bid to land the sport’s biggest prize. To accomplish its goal, Saudi Arabia has hired Boston Consulting Group to analyze how it could land the quadrennial tournament — one of the most watched events in sports — only eight years after Qatar will become the first country in the Middle East to stage the event.

Several other Western consultants have been asked to help with the project, according to one of the advisers exploring the feasibility of a Saudi bid, and acknowledge that it will require “out of the box thinking” — including, potentially, an agreement to share the hosting rights with a European partner. And despite Saudi Arabia’s growing influence in soccer, the bid, particularly in its current form, is considered a long shot.

A spokesman for Boston Consulting Group, citing company policy, declined to comment.

Sports has fast become a central pillar of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 program — a strategic effort to pivot the nation away from oil dependency — but more recently, the country is making a concerted effort behind the scenes to join its regional rival Qatar as a major power broker in soccer.

The strategy has had mixed success. Saudi Arabia has enticed leagues in Italy and Spain to sign lucrative contracts to bring domestic cup finals to the country. But efforts backed by its sovereign wealth fund to acquire an English Premier League club and the broadcast rights to the Champions League have so far failed.

Regardless of the results, its ambition remains untrammeled. Saudi Arabia is determined to be in the ring for all of soccer’s major properties, and at the heart of those efforts most recently is the World Cup.

Human rights groups have long been vocal opponents about staging major sporting events in Saudi Arabia, particularly since the country was accused of complicity in the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

But perhaps the most pressing difficulty to bring a World Cup to Saudi Arabia is a technical one. Since Qatar will stage the first Mideast World Cup next winter, any Saudi Arabian bid would require soccer’s global governing body, FIFA, which runs the tournament, to change its policy of continental rotation in order to bring the event back to the region.

One option under consideration is to join with a major European nation also hoping to host the World Cup. So far, only Britain and a partnership of Portugal and Spain, a country whose soccer federation has forged close ties to Saudi Arabia, have publicly announced their intentions to enter the bidding process. Italy, another of Saudi Arabia’s soccer allies, is also considering an effort to host the event for the first time since 1990.

Such a cross-continental offer would also require a change of policy from FIFA, which has never staged a tournament on two continents. The 2002 World Cup was shared by the Asian neighbors Japan and South Korea. And the joint United States, Mexico and Canada competition in 2026 will be the first time the World Cup, which by then will have expanded from 32 to 48 teams, is staged in three countries.

For a Saudi bid to be successful, organizers could once again have to be persuaded to shift the dates of the tournament from their traditional June-July window to November-December to account for hot weather in the Gulf. The global soccer schedule had to be upended to ensure Qatar could stage the tournament safely, and European leagues whose schedules would be upended might be reluctant to repeat the interruption.

Saudi Arabian hopes, though, are boosted by its close links to FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, who recently drew criticism from human rights groups after playing a starring role in a promotional video for the Saudi ministry of sport.

In January, Infantino held talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the architect of Vision 2030. And FIFA’s membership agreed last month to a motion offered by Saudi Arabia’s soccer federation to study the possibility of holding the World Cup every two years instead of its current quadrennial format.

That change could allow even more countries to enter the bidding.

“It is time to review how the global game is structured and to consider what is best for the future of our sport,” the president of Saudi Arabia’s soccer federation, Yasser al-Misehal, said at the time. “This should include whether the current four-year cycle remains the optimum basis for how football is managed both from a competition and commercial perspective.”

A spokesman for the Saudi Arabian soccer federation declined to comment on a possible World Cup bid, but did point out that the country was fast becoming a destination for high-profile sporting events. In recent years, it has staged major boxing matches, motor races and golf events.

“We’re keen to take the stage in the global game as well, turning our passion into on-pitch success, as well as greater collaboration with the international football family,” the Saudi soccer federation said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia, despite its largess, also needs to rebuild bridges with a soccer economy still smarting from the effects of a sophisticated pirate television network based in the country that for years stole billions of dollars worth of sports content, repackaged it and sold it to Saudi subscribers. FIFA, as well as major competitions like England’s Premier League and Spain’s Liga, were blocked from filing legal claims in Saudi Arabia to protest the piracy.

The network that broadcast the stolen matches, BeoutQ, formed during a regional dispute with Qatar, is now off the air. And while the conflict with Qatar has largely been healed, beIN, the Qatari-owned sports broadcaster, remains banned in Saudi Arabia. That means the only way soccer-mad Saudis will be able to watch this summer’s European soccer championship, and a parallel event in South America, will be through illegal broadcasts.

European soccer’s governing body on Wednesday rejected a Saudi offer of around $600 million to broadcast the Champions League regionally, preferring to stick with its current partner, beIN.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:30 pm

Ever since an Ian Rush backed scheme by IRAMA a Singaporean based organisation to buy up grassroots football pitches came to wide attention the scenario that it may be a property development scheme has loomed large - we may have our first example of it at Whyteleafe where the football club has had to withdraw from the Isthmian League after having their lease of their ground terminated

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 8941197315

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:01 pm

Simon Chadwick and Paul Widdop on the non European interests in the Euros for theConversation.com

https://theconversation.com/euro-2020-a ... -us-162622

Euro 2020 – a football tournament where the big players come from China and the US
June 11, 2021 5.37pm BST
Authors Simon Chadwick Paul Widdop

With Euro 2020 now under way after a year of pandemic delay, football fans will be hoping for great performances from Europe’s finest players. Some of us will watch the tournament unfold on our Hisense televisions, and many will choose to order in some half time refreshments, maybe via the Just Eat delivery service, possibly sent using a Vivo mobile phone.

Sustained by cans of Heineken, as goals are scored, supporters will upload celebration clips on to TikTok. And after the final, what better way to recharge than by arranging a holiday on Booking.com, perhaps flying on Qatar Airways.

For while fans will have their eyes firmly fixed on the efforts of players worth billions of pounds on the field, another big money game will be taking place off it. The Euros is one of the world’s biggest sport events, and a bonanza for corporate sponsors and partners (just a few of which are mentioned above).

In return for being exposed to the eyes of the world, Euros sponsors pay huge amounts of money. Just how much is difficult to say, as fees are commercially sensitive data. But in one case – that of Alipay (part of the Alibaba empire) – it is believed the Chinese company paid £176 million for an eight year deal.

UEFA has sold these deals in three ways: National Team Football Official Sponsors, Euro 2020 Official Sponsors, and Euro 2020 Official Licensees. And the origins of the companies and brands sponsoring this year’s event are a clear indication of how the beautiful game is valued by the corporate world.

Alongside UEFA partners such as FedEx and Konami, each of the national teams bring their own roster of sponsors, which makes for quite a cluttered selection of brands competing for attention. There’s England’s £50 million, five-year contract with BT, for example, while the Germans will bring Lufthansa to the tournament, Carlsberg will promote its association with Denmark and South Korea’s Hyundai will be represented by the Czech Republic.

The list goes on (and on). To capture the complex network of sponsors at Euro 2020 we created a network graphic of some of the most prominent and significant deals on show over the coming weeks. For reasons of clarity, we wern’t able to include every sponsor, but the range on display is revealing.

What becomes immediately clear is that although the UEFA European Championship is a continental tournament, its commercial reach is truly global. A significant number of sponsors are either not European or else have divisions that operate way beyond the borders of Europe.

At the same time, the sponsorship portfolio shows us that football is at the heart of the entertainment, lifestyle and digital economies. Gone are the days of motor-oil and office photocopier sponsorships. Instead we see a profusion of drinks brands, confectionery products and airlines.

In addition, the sponsorship of teams appears to go hand-in-hand with the promotion of national identity and national industry. “Brand Germany” for instance, is strongly represented by some of the country’s most important corporations, including Adidas and Volkswagen.

The appearance of Gazprom meanwhile, reflects the increasing use by nations of sponsorship as a geopolitical instrument. Indeed, the state owned Russian gas company has recently put its associations with UEFA and others to influential use.

Europe’s own goal
Equally, “Brand China” is now a major industrial and political power, and home to five of UEFA’s biggest tournament sponsors (Alipay, Antchain, Hisense, TikTok and Vivo).

Corporate America continues to endure too, represented by the likes of Coca Cola and IMG. The US has always been the home of contemporary sport sponsorship, and the country’s businesses continue to derive significant commercial value from it.

In fact, the underdogs in this big-money corporate competition appear to be the Europeans themselves. For an event being staged in countries including England, Italy, Spain and Romania, UEFA draws very few of its sponsors from the continent. Instead, it is clear that organisations from China and the US have both the financial muscle and the tactical brains to successfully dominate the tournament.

This reflects broader global trends which indicate the declining presence of European industry. European companies account for a falling percentage of global output. The market capitalisation of European firms is way behind that of American corporations and is fast being caught by Chinese firms. And the world’s technological hot spots are found in places such as Shenzhen and Silicon Valley, not in Europe.

Whether the footballing squad from France, Portugal or Switzerland lifts the trophy in July, there is no doubt that the UEFA tournament will be an on field triumph for Europe.

But the forces of globalisation, digitalisation and politico-economic change, reflected in the Euros’ portfolio of sponsors, will keep on playing long after the final whistle blows. And European industry could pay the penalty with a swift exit from the global industrial competition.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:45 pm

This is an interesting twist on what Simon Chadwick was saying in that article in the previous post - and how the British government are using football again to pursue their own ends

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 9803872264

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:49 pm

I missed this last month from Citywire.co.uk

Private equity financing of sports met with resistance after Super League fiasco
Following the failure of the European Super League, fans and regulators are paying more attention to how clubs and competitions are financed at a time when sports need more capital than ever.

by SELIN BUCAK
Posted 25 MAY, 2021

Private equity financing of sports met with resistance after Super League fiasco
Private equity has been playing in the world of sports for several years now, but the fiasco that was the European Super League has turned the spotlight on how teams and competitions are financed more than ever before.

‘There has been a massive and very powerful push back to the announcement of the European Super League. It’s not PE-backed but it has put financial investment into sport in quite a negative light,’ said Dan Parr, commercial director at InSport Education.

‘But given some challenges that exist in the world of sport at the moment, private equity will play a significant role in helping rights holders and teams get through the challenges of the pandemic and position themselves well for future growth and development in the modern world of sports and entertainment,’ he said.

The most high-profile deals in recent years include CVC Capital Partners’ £365m investment in the Six Nations Championship, and Silver Lake’s $500m stake in the owner of Manchester City football club. Both of these were for minority stakes.

Silver Lake has also recently made a $270m bid for a 12.5% stake in New Zealand’s famous All Blacks rugby team’s commercial rights, which has been met with resistance both from the fans and players. In fact, New Zealand Rugby has agreed to meet with the nation’s Rugby Players’ Association to discuss a potential public share float instead.

But private equity’s involvement in sports goes far beyond these headline-grabbing deals. US investment group Oaktree Capital took over struggling French club Caen last year; Italian football club Catania was bought by Sport Investment Group Italia; US-based women’s basketball team Atlanta Dream was sold to Northland Investment; and South African rugby team The Sharks was acquired by MVM Holdings.

Many of the deals taking place behind the scenes are not for majority stakes, according to Adam Sommerfeld, managing partner at Certus Capital. Instead, most clubs are opting to sell minority stakes, preferred equity or do debt deals, where they retain control over management.

Meanwhile, the failure of the European Super League has helped remove some uncertainty for private equity buyers, according to Sommerfeld, who had potential investors in some transactions he’s worked on concerned following rumours.

Debt deals
Mark Yeo, partner at Squire Patton Boggs, also added that debt-only plays have become more prevalent, as some private equity houses see an opportunity to fit somewhere between a bank and a traditional buyout group, in terms of the interest rate offered on their debt.

‘This model offers sports businesses a way of getting access to money at a cheaper rate than offered by traditional PE houses but without psychologically feeling that they’re giving away a chunk of the pie,’ he said.

But, some fans will still be concerned with a club taking on such loans, given the leverage that a lender can exert over the club. ‘What happens if a payment is not made on time, does the lender than have certain control or leverage?

‘Fans may be concerned that the lender could ultimately put the club into administration if they are not repaid. You wouldn’t have that concern without that debt. But if they don’t get investment in they may not have a club,’ Yeo added.

There is so much activity currently because this is a perfect time for private equity to invest in an industry that is only expected to grow. Many teams and organisations were hit hard by Covid-19 and the restrictions that came along with it.

It has created an opportunity for outside investment, needed to prop up clubs unable to generate their expected revenue for months, and has pushed down prices. Clubs that may have previously shunned private equity capital are now open to it.

Although there have been ones that have rejected the attentions of private equity, such as the German Bundesliga. CVC Capital Partners, Bridgepoint, Intermediate Capital Group and KKR were reportedly among bidders for the league’s international media rights, according to the Financial Times. But last week, the football clubs in the country’s top two divisions voted against a deal.

Fans have also not been so forgiving.

Private equity’s reputation as vulture funds that strip assets to their bare bones and then sell them off for profit has raised concerns for fans who don’t want buyout groups to have control over their favourite sports.

This outcry from fans over private equity ownership is set to be tested further, particularly in European football, as American buyout funds enter the fray with a view to moving the focus from the game itself to entertainment.

Clash of cultures
For Darren Bailey, a consultant at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, there is an unseen battle between the American model and the European model of sport brewing. In the US, there is greater focus on profitability and the entertainment value of games, and this approach is expected create some tension.

Yeo agrees. ‘Many US PE houses believe they have a sophisticated model and strategy for commercialising sport and commercialising football,’ he said.

‘A lot of these people have worked in organisations like the NBA, NFL, MLS and MLB and can see opportunities in European sport to improve the commercial revenue including, for example, by getting more out of the women’s team, setting up an e-sports team and other ideas on how the business can do better commercially to increase the value of what they’re investing in.’

Regulatory change on the horizon
Many agree that this increased attention from private equity and the discussions concerning the European Super League will lead to some regulatory change.

‘There is a wave of interest in campaigning for better regulation over the ownership of football clubs at the moment,’ Yeo said. ‘The sport will want to strike a balance between ensuring there is more control over who can invest in clubs, and how they can do so, whilst also ensuring that it is not too closed and difficult to find investors and owners.’

He added: ‘From an investor’s perspective, they will be keen to ensure that their list of potential suitors on an exit is not substantially reduced so as to make the proposed initial investment less attractive. If ownership of clubs is properly and fairly regulated the whole football environment will be more stable.’

But any regulatory change should not completely block investment into sports, in Parr’s view. Private equity can provide access to much needed capital for organisations, in addition to bringing expertise and management skill that can help propel businesses forward, Parr said.

‘I think in a lot of sports history and tradition are a huge part, but they can also be a hindrance to progress and there is a general resistance to change in sport and often you need an outside agency to come in and shake things up a big and make that change that can’t be delivered internally,’ he added.

‘They [private equity] can do that, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What the ESL has shown us is that fan power and respect of history is important and needs to be considered and should be part of that process.

‘But that should not be allowed to prevent progress and evolution and the development of sports, teams and organisations. There is a huge role for private equity to play, it can play a positive role if it is delivered and managed with the right motivations in mind.’

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:55 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:32 pm
More detail on the news that Chinese authorities have expelled a further six clubs from the CSL for economic failings such as not paying wages - from Xinhuanet.com

Six clubs disqualified from 2021 season of Chinese football leagues
Source: Xinhua| 2021-03-29 19:16:41|Editor: huaxia

BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Football Association (CFA) announced on Monday that six clubs, including reigning Chinese Super League (CSL) champions Jiangsu FC, have been disqualified from professional leagues due to financial difficulties.

Jiangsu FC, which ceased operation in late February, will officially leave the league on Monday, with Cangzhou Mighty Lions filling in the vacancy. Another CSL side the Tianjin Jinmen Tigers eventually met the CFA's qualification requirements despite being reportedly on the brink of dissolution.

The other five disqualified clubs are Taizhou Yuanda, Inner Mongolia Zhongyou, and Beijing Renhe who competed in the second-tier China League One last year, as well as two franchises from the third-division.

"Compared to the 2020 season (when a total of 16 clubs were disqualified from professional leagues), the numbers of disbanded clubs have decreased largely this season," the CFA noted, saying that club investors' financial crisis, the change of the business environment during the pandemic and bubbles in the professional leagues are three main reasons that led to the dissolution of the six clubs.

Last December, the CFA announced the strictest ever expenditure and salary cap in all levels of professional leagues as a CSL Club may only spend a maximum total of 600 million yuan (about 91.44 millon US dollars) every year. The Chinese football governing body said on Monday that "the dissolution of six clubs" will not destabilize the foundation of the professional leagues, which will grow healthier and more sustainable under new expenditure policies.

The 2021 CSL season is scheduled to kick off on April 20 in two host cities Suzhou, in east China's Jiangsu province and Guangzhou, in southern Guangzhou province.
The Chinese Government have not wasted any time in removing traces of Jiangsu FC

https://twitter.com/titan_plus/status/1 ... 2309612546

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:36 pm

A sadly understandable finding from a study in the economist - I put it on this thread in the hope that it will not go the way of a slanging match if it was on it's own thread, even perhaps being removed


Daily chart
Non-white footballers played better when stadiums were empty during the pandemic
White players fared worse, implying that racist heckling may have an impact
Jun 10th 2021

Graphic detail can be seen here https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... e-pandemic

“TO THE ‘PEOPLE’...who made the monkey noises: Shame on you. Shame on you”, posted Mario Balotelli, then a striker for Brescia, on Instagram in late 2019. He was referring to fans of Hellas Verona, a rival football club, who hurled racist abuse at him that exceeded even the typical taunts from overheated “ultras”. At one point during the match, play was suspended as a distraught Mr Balotelli punted the ball at jeering hecklers and threatened to walk off the pitch.

Mr Balotelli did manage to score a goal that day, though Brescia still lost 2-1. However, recent research by Fabrizio Colella, an economics graduate student at the University of Lausanne, suggests that the striker’s strong performance in the face of racist abuse was more an exception than a rule.

By forcing sports teams to play games without fans, the covid-19 pandemic created a compelling natural experiment that has unleashed a flurry of academic research. Many studies, including one published last year in The Economist, have sought to measure how much of home teams’ advantage comes from the presence of supporters. Mr Colella, however, made use of the new data to examine a question with broader social implications.

All footballers get heckled, but not all of them suffer the same types of insults. At least in European stadiums, fans single out non-white players for racially tinged attacks. Do such barbs sting more than the standard battery of non-racial abuse suffered by white players?

The pandemic allowed Mr Colella to find out. For each player in Serie A, the top tier of Italian football, he compiled individual performance scores in every match during the past two years ranging from zero to ten, which were generated by an algorithm used for fantasy-sports competitions. (These numbers take into account contributions in all aspects of the game, not just offensive statistics like goals or assists.) Next, he classified over 500 players as either white or non-white using the Fitzpatrick scale for human skin color, which is commonly used in dermatology research. Finally, he compared how each player fared, on average, in matches played in front of fans against their performances in empty stadiums. Although fans may affect results in many ways, only racist chants could plausibly have a different impact on white players than on non-white ones.

The results were striking. On average, white players scored slightly worse without fans than they did in packed stadiums. In contrast, non-white footballers’ performances improved to a statistically significant degree when fans were absent, by an average of 1.2%. Mr Colella built a mathematical model that tried to account for these differences using other variables, such as players’ nationalities and teams’ overall quality. However, none of these controls eliminated the impact of skin colour. The effect was greater for the darkest-skinned players than for brown- or olive-skinned ones.

The quadrennial UEFA tournament for European national teams begins tomorrow, and will be the most prestigious international team sporting competition to occur since the start of the pandemic. Any hopes that the long hiatus of in-person events might have led to better behaviour from sport-starved fans have been dashed: just this week, Romelu Lukaku, a striker for the Belgian national team, said that “racism in football right now is at [an] all-time high.” Perhaps the only thing more dispiriting than the probable return of racist abuse to top-flight international football is the notion that it might actually work.
Last edited by Chester Perry on Tue Jun 15, 2021 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:44 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Jul 31, 2019 10:11 pm
There were whispers of this at the FIFA Congress in Paris at the beginning of June - FIFA examining the possibility of leaving Switzerland - at that time France were said to be keen to provide a home for them - @TariqPanja strikes again for the New York Times

FIFA Quietly Considering Plan to Leave Switzerland
World soccer’s governing body is weighing a move away from Zurich, its home since 1932, saying Swiss law has made it difficult to hire employees from outside Europe.

By Tariq Panja - July 31, 2019

Senior executives at FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, are giving serious consideration to leaving Switzerland, the organization’s home for nearly 90 years and where in 2015 some of its most senior officials were arrested in connection with a major corruption scandal.

Under Gianni Infantino, a Swiss administrator who was elected as president in 2016 after the fall of FIFA’s longtime leader Sepp Blatter, FIFA has tried to move away from its past. Top leaders have been purged and efforts have been made to reform the organization and its decision-making processes, with varying degrees of success.

But after he was re-elected to a second term as president in June, Infantino tasked his top lieutenants with studying the viability of FIFA’s leaving its glass-and-steel headquarters in Zurich. The discussion, which is still in its early stages, is driven by many factors, but two primary reasons are difficulties in hiring staff members from outside Europe and an acceptance that continuing to base its operations in a country with a reputation for corporate secrecy might not align with the goals of an organization trying to win back the public trust.

While FIFA has not made any public statements on the discussions, or the motivations behind them, two people familiar with the organization’s plans told The New York Times that the organization is studying options for leaving Zurich. The plans could include leaving Zurich entirely or a partial relocation of operations, which could see FIFA open subsidiary offices in different parts of the world to give it better access to, and oversight of, its 211 member associations. Officials also have not ruled out maintaining the status quo, with all global operations handled from its current office.

The discussions with potential host countries and cities could be similar to those held by international corporations like Amazon, and just as in those competitions, a final decision most likely would depend both on practical concerns but also on what concessions FIFA can win.

FIFA was established in Paris in 1904 but moved to Zurich in 1932 because of Switzerland’s location in the center of Europe, its political neutrality and because “it was accessible by train,” according to a timeline on FIFA’s website. In 2007, FIFA moved into its headquarters building on a hill overlooking Zurich, built at a cost of more than $200 million. The building, known as FIFA House, has several subterranean levels, including the marble-floored, soundproof room where its governing council holds its meetings.

Among the possibilities under consideration is a return to Paris, according to one of the people familiar with FIFA’s thinking. But other locations are also under consideration with a number of factors expected to factor in any outcome, including proximity to a major international airport; what tax and visa status FIFA would be granted; and how local employment laws would affect FIFA employees and visitors. In recent years, FIFA officials have complained that Swiss law has made it difficult to recruit from overseas.

For Switzerland, which over decades has grown into the location of choice for international sporting federations, the departure of FIFA would represent a major loss, even with the organization’s recent embarrassing scandals. Switzerland has long boasted of its ability to attract major sports organizations — Lausanne, the home of the International Olympic Committee, actively recruits such organizations and has labeled itself “the Silicon Valley of sports” — and highly paid employees provide a boost to the local economy.

Along with FIFA and the I.O.C., dozens of other regional and international sports bodies, both large and small, call Switzerland home. Their world here has been largely independent: they are lightly taxed, and for years they were exempt from Swiss anticorruption laws. The country even has its own arbitration court, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which is based in a chateau in Lausanne.

Sports organizations bring more than a billion dollars to Switzerland annually, according to a six-year study published in 2015.

“For a long time, we didn’t have to do anything to attract them,” Sabrina Attias, the city official charged with luring sports bodies to Lausanne, said in an interview with The New York Times in 2016. “Then we realized the opportunities and decided to be proactive.”

Leaving Switzerland also may come as a relief to Infantino, who has found himself under siege in the Swiss news media recently over private meetings he held in 2016 with the country’s attorney general, Michael Lauber. Revelations of the meetings led to the removal of Lauber from oversight of a Swiss investigation into corruption at FIFA that began in 2015 and has yet to result in any trials, much less a conviction.

The failure of the Swiss authorities to act in the corruption case has frustrated elements in FIFA’s current leadership, who have privately expressed incredulity at the inaction given the amount of evidence obtained in raids on FIFA’s headquarters.

Officials said they would not rush to make a decision on a possible move, though they acknowledged they did not feel any need to remain in Switzerland.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You would have to say that Cyprus would given them absolutely anything that they would want - it is an accommodating place like that as many from the former USSR can testify
I don't suppose many of you would remember the story of FIFA considering leaving Switzerland from two years ago, I suspect more of you will remember this prediction from Simon Chadwick that it will be based in China by 2040

"By 2040, FIFA's new global HQ will be on Hainan Island, China's new global free trade hub...beyond the scrutiny of Western governance practices"

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 9099559939

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jun 15, 2021 12:47 am

an opinion piece from SportsProMedia on the rise of clubs as media content providers and what they can do in that areana

Opinion | The rise of soccer clubs as media content distributors
Charles Kraus, Limelight Networks' senior product marketing manager, offers eight streaming technology innovations that could help rights holders generate deeper interaction and drive revenue.


By Charles KrausPosted: June 8 2021

Media plays a hugely important role in strengthening how soccer clubs engage with their supporters. The key, for those who do it successfully and effectively, is sharing content that simply cannot be seen anywhere else.

Clubs have access to hundreds and hundreds of hours of exclusive material on their website that includes match footage, highlights, interviews and press conferences. Given the competition for holding onto their fanbase, and growing new supporters beyond the local region, soccer clubs have had to become media content distributors as a way of engaging with their fans, attracting new supporters, as well as adding new revenue streams.

To stay ahead of the competition, soccer clubs and rights holders must be constantly innovating when it comes to the fan experience. Broadly, increasing fan engagement with interactivity, providing more stats or data analytics will contribute to greater understanding and therefore enjoyment of a match. Crucially, it also creates brand engagement and more opportunity for promotion. Let us consider eight practical ideas to drive more fan engagement and increase the fanbase.

Start with the basics
Fans accustomed to traditional broadcast sports coverage expect a similar experience when watching a live stream of a match. This means a broadcast quality picture with no rebuffering, with the ability to watch from anywhere, on any viewing device of their choosing. Make sure options for tuning into matches are easy to find on your website, and any late, breaking team news or updates are prominently displayed.

Video on demand
When clubs provide access to video on demand archives (VOD) of match highlights they have the opportunity to extend the ways those clips can be enjoyed by fans. You can get creative in how the clips are organised and the metadata captured for each of them. For example, as match footage is reviewed for highlight potential, increase the types of plays that qualify as a highlight – top goals, most acrobatic saves by the keeper, great pieces of individual skill, beautiful passing sequences, etc.

Whether a match is streamed live from your website, or broadcast by a sports network, post highlight clips to your platforms as they occur so viewers can refer to them while watching the match live. This not only creates interaction but also benefits fans who tuned in late by enabling them to catch up on what they missed.

Personalisation
Various forms of personalisation are being offered as another way to drive engagement and could be structured as a premium tier subscription option. Popular offerings include key moment alerts during matches (such as goals), in-game statistics about favourite players, results, highlights, targeted relevant ads, and augmented reality overlays. There is also an ecommerce opportunity here, such as a single click offer ordering of kit tied into a key moment.

Watch together apps
Fans enjoy watching matches with their friends. This is easy if they are all locally based and can attend in person or meet in their favourite pub. To include fans living further afield, travelling, or away for various reasons, watch together apps allow small groups to enjoy a familiar comradery during a game. These apps also provide another revenue stream. It has a small delay built in to assure all participants see the match action at the same time, even those with longer stream latency than others. They can live chat with each other via a low latency connection between them, such as WebRTC links.

Support fans around the globe
Many clubs have broad support around the world. Consider offering match commentary and content on your website in a few languages with the largest population of supporters. Share information about the watch groups with overseas supporters so they may reach out to each other and be invited to join a watch group.

Innovations in the viewing experience
Broadcast coverage of sports usually includes highlight playback from multiple camera angles, but the broadcaster chooses which camera view is shown. With the right technology in place, digital coverage via a club app can now offer viewers a premium option to choose which camera angle to watch during the match, or even provide split screen views of multiple camera angles.

This concept can be extended further with the option to watch multiple matches at the same time on a split screen. This could be a popular premium option, especially during playoff tournaments with multiple games on at the same time. An additional feature for rights holders to consider is key moment alerts with a streaming cut-ins to that other live match stream.

Augmented reality overlays
With the advent of 5G, there have been successful attempts at presenting individual player statistics during live play by overlaying small data points near a player on screen. Viewers could request specific players to be tagged when they are on the field, for example the odds of them scoring a goal.

Microtransactions
It goes without saying that some of the most exciting moments in sports come near the end of a match, with a tied or close score, overtime periods, or penalties to decide the winner. Some rights holders and platforms are experimenting with small fee access late in matches, triggered by key moment alerts to fans who may not have been watching the match.

Conclusion
These ideas can be implemented with technology that is here today and already being discussed or tested for driving better engagement with existing fans. Either in combination or tailored to suit individual demands, they can help rights holders to reach new markets globally, and potentially add revenue streams. Offer your supporters the best possible streaming experience and they will keep coming back for more.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jun 15, 2021 11:13 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:30 pm
Ever since an Ian Rush backed scheme by IRAMA a Singaporean based organisation to buy up grassroots football pitches came to wide attention the scenario that it may be a property development scheme has loomed large - we may have our first example of it at Whyteleafe where the football club has had to withdraw from the Isthmian League after having their lease of their ground terminated

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 8941197315
Abingdon Town join Whyteleafe in having to resign from their League as they lose the lease for their ground - Irma who bought the ground last year have made "impossible demands" - this is a story that is only going to get bigger

https://twitter.com/theabbotts_1870/sta ... 4430251008

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jun 15, 2021 11:17 am

There is a presentation to the DCMS backed fan led review of football going on at the moment, but you would not know because once again it is not being made available for public consumption - open and transparent this review is not

I am only aware of it because one of those making a presentation has tweeted about it

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 4039987200

but it is not to be shown on parliamentary TV

https://parliamentlive.tv/Guide

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jun 15, 2021 11:37 am

Deloitte are trailing their annual review of Football Finance (due next month) with this statement about a first ever revenue drop in the Premier League - they like us have seen 17 the financial reports - we are still waiting for 3 to be released for the 2019/20 season - Crystal Palace announced theirs some weeks back but still haven't published Newcastle and Watford have said nothing - in a side note for some reason even though Burnley published their accounts in early April they are yet to be filed at Companies House

includes charts

https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/p ... -ever.html

Press releases
Premier League club revenues fall - for the first time ever - to cause the largest pre-tax loss in Premier League history

Save for later
15 June 2021

- Premier League clubs’ combined revenues for 2019/20 fall for the first time, to £4.5 billion, down 13% from 2018/19 (£5.2 billion);
- Due to the relatively fixed nature of Premier League club costs, the decline in revenue had a significant impact on operating profits, falling by 95% to £42m (2018/19: £0.8 billion);
- Clubs’ combined wage expenditure increased marginally by 3% to a record high £3.3 billion in 2019/20;
- The combined wages-to-revenue ratio for Premier League clubs rose to a record high of 72% as a result of the revenue decline;
- Premier League clubs recorded the largest aggregate pre-tax loss in the league’s history, increasing to just under £1 billion (2018/19: £0.2 billion) as the immediate revenue shortfall coupled with an inflexible short-term cost base hit the bottom line
- Premier League clubs generated £4.5 billion of revenue during the 2019/20 financial year, according to analysis from Deloitte’s Sports Business Group, a decline of 13% compared to 2018/19 (£5.2 billion). This is the first time that Premier League clubs have cumulatively reported a year-on-year fall in revenue.

Under normal circumstances, clubs have a financial year-end that aligns with their domestic season. However, the disruption to the 2019/20 football season has resulted in club revenues for that season being spread across the two financial years ending in the summers of 2020 and 2021.

As a result, clubs have seen some of their revenue for the 2019/20 season being deferred into the 2020/21 financial year as matches were delayed from spring into summer of 2020, beyond their 2019/20 year-end and other revenue, primarily matchday revenue and broadcast rebates, permanently lost. Overall matchday and broadcast revenue decreased by 13% and 24% respectively compared to the prior year. In terms of broadcast revenue deferred from the 2019/20 financial year into 2020/21, while this will provide a boost to 2020/21 revenues, the gains will be outweighed by the near total absence of matchday revenues for that season.

Dan Jones, partner and head of the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, commented: “The decrease in revenue in the 2019/20 season is, unsurprisingly, down to the global economic and social disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to have a heavy impact on the 2020/21 season’s financial results when available.

“The absence of fans, postponement of matches and rebates to broadcasters had a significant impact on the revenue clubs have been able to generate. Nonetheless, whilst this has been the most challenging period for all concerned in the football industry, Premier League clubs showed impressive resilience in mitigating the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. By completing the 2019/20 season in full, live football provided a great boost to the public and valuable content for broadcasters.”

The analysis reveals that Premier League clubs’ aggregate wages-to-revenue ratio increased to a record high of 72% in 2019/20, as a result of the decrease in year-on-year revenue.

Tim Bridge, director in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said: “Despite the record high wages-to-revenue ratio, Premier League clubs’ combined wage expenditure increased by just 3%, the lowest percentage increase in wages since the 2004/05 season.

“In this extraordinary year it is difficult to read too much in to whether this marks a shift in clubs’ approach to wage spending, or one-off elements such as the absence of end-of-season bonuses, which will have been deferred to the next financial year, or the impact of temporary wage cuts or deferrals. With wages always representing the largest cost for football clubs we will watch with interest in years to come to understand whether this financial shock will come to be seen as having caused a change in approach and greater control over wage expenditure.”

With the decrease in revenue and a general inability to reduce costs that clubs had committed to incur, Premier League clubs made a collective pre-tax loss of almost £1 billion, (2018/19: £0.2 billion loss) which is the largest pre-tax loss in Premier League history. Less than a quarter of the Premier League clubs reported a pre-tax profit and those that did had generally extended their financial year-ends to become a 13-month accounting period, thus bringing in another month of the delayed season’s matches and reducing the revenue deferred to the next financial year.

Jones added: “The full financial impact of the pandemic on the Premier League will depend on the timing of the return of fans to stadia in significant numbers and the ability of clubs to maintain and develop their commercial relationships, in particular at a time when many other industries are suffering. Matchday operations are a cornerstone of a club’s business model and fans’ absence will be more fully reflected in the financial results of the 2020/21 financial year, covering a larger period of the pandemic.

“Nonetheless, and with the recent announcement of a renewal of the Premier League’s domestic broadcast rights on similar terms to those currently in place, once fans are able to return in full, hopefully during the 2021/22 season, Premier League clubs have the potential to again return to record revenue levels.”

Full analysis of football clubs’ finances will be published in the next edition of the Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance in July 2021.

-Ends-

Notes to the editor

The analysis of the financial results of Premier League clubs for 2019/20 has been based on figures extracted from the latest available company or group financial statements in respect of each of 18 clubs and informed estimates for the remaining two, which at the time of writing, have not released their financial statements or produced a press release.

In general, the financial figures are extracted from the annual financial statements of the legal entity registered in the United Kingdom which is at, or closest to, the ‘top’ of the ownership structure in respect of each club. In some cases Deloitte has made adjustments to club’s figures to enable, in our view, a more meaningful comparison of the football business on a club by club basis and over time.

The published financial statements of clubs rarely split wage costs between playing staff and other staff. Therefore, references to wage costs relate to total wage costs, including both playing staff and other staff. For the purpose of this analysis, references to operating result (profit or loss) is the net of clubs’ revenues less wages and other operating costs, excluding player trading (amortisation of transfer costs and profit/loss on disposal of players) and certain exceptional items.

Deloitte has a long track record of documenting clubs’ business and commercial performance in the Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance, applying consistent methodologies. The 30th edition of the Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance will be published in July 2021, shortly after the end of the European Football Championship, and will include more in-depth analysis including financial analysis on a club by club basis. More information about previous editions of the Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance can be found on www.deloitte.co.uk/arff

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jun 15, 2021 3:54 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 2:32 am
The Premier League will be hoping that Comcast believes that Peacock works out for them as that will drive Price increases for the next tender.

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

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

or as I put it we won't need a super league we already have it and it is currently known as the Premier League
I am not the only one who is seeing a positive uplift for Premier League rights in the US this summer when they go out to tender - this from SportsProMedia (perhaps the American owners were right to be optimistic)

OTT Newsletter 04/06: Why the Premier League looks set for success with its next US rights deal

By Tom Bassam Posted: June 4 2021
OTT Newsletter 04/06: Why the Premier League looks set for success with its next US rights deal
Why the Premier League looks set for success with its next US rights deal

There is good news emanating from North America: sports viewership appears to be trending back up. In recent weeks the NBA, WNBA, MLB and the PGA Championship have all reported increasing audiences.

There was good news for one property in particular, with the Premier League also recording strong figures in a season which has not favoured the overseas viewer. English soccer’s top flight started in September which meant that it was up against college football and the NFL. There were also more midweek and early kick-off windows, which are not favourable to US audiences.

While the top-line figure was that average match viewership fell 10.3 per cent from the 2019/20 season, eight NBC and NBCSN matches topped an average total audience delivery (TAD) of at least one million viewers – the most since Leicester won the title in 2016. The figures, from NBC, also do not count viewers on Peacock (more on that shortly).

This demonstrates a certain resilience for the Premier League in the US market and shows that its big games draw broad interest. The five simultaneous fixtures on the last day of the season scored a TAD of 1.4 million viewers across NBC’s networks. That is only slightly behind the numbers MLB is getting for Sunday night games on ESPN (1.56 million).

The man rubbing his hands the most will be Richard Masters, who is quickly forging himself a reputation as a savvy chief executive. In a world of falling rights values, Masters has either maintained or grown Premier League broadcast revenues in the key MENA and Nordic markets, as well as securing a landmark rollover deal at home.

Both CBS and Disney have been linked with bids for the upcoming Premier League tender in the US, which will drive up the price. NBC is not going to give up the contract easily and having let the NHL go it has the budget to go beyond its US$1 billion, six-year deal that expires at the end of next season.

Also in the Premier League’s favour is that its most passionate US fans are in the tech savvy 18 to 34 and 35 to 44 age demographics. Peacock, ESPN+ and Paramount+ have been embarking on a furious battle to build out their live sports portfolios in recent months. Both La Liga, which signed a US$1.4 billion deal with ESPN until 2029, and Serie A, which will receive around US$233 million from its three-year pact with CBS, have reaped the financial reward so far, but with the Premier League having a clear market lead it should expect to trump both.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 16, 2021 11:20 am

The Chinese Government freezes all of Suning's, Inter Milan major shareholder's. assets in mainland China - that fire sale that upset Conte so much may just get bigger

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 7629772802

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 16, 2021 10:28 pm

The Premier League has produced a review of the season 2020/21 it even includes some football related content - for the most part though it tells a tal of all that is great about the Premier League - did some one say their have been debates about the future of the came by MP's and that there is a review going on

it appears that some parts of the press have been briefed in a particular way

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sport ... eason.html

this is how they introduce it on the Premier League Website

https://www.premierleague.com/news/2168586

https://resources.premierleague.com/pre ... igital.pdf

the accessible version is here - no pictures and complex graphics https://resources.premierleague.com/pre ... ssible.pdf

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jun 17, 2021 12:11 pm

Jorge Mendes watch - @Tariq Panja on the case again, with Fiorentina refusing to have anything to do with him or any agent connected to him

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 7104531459

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:43 pm

this is an interesting move - Uefa warns teams could be fined if they move drinks at news conferences

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57517337

of course UEFA also demands that the players who are the biggest stars also be at those conferences - Ronaldo has been an ambassador for Coca Cola (and KFC) in the past. They are on more difficult territory with Pogba and his faith based objection (even when the actual bottle was alc0hol free, not everyone is to know that.

from this weeks Unofficial Partner Newsletter -
Liquid assets pt1
Quite the week for sugary drinks and beer.

The Euros press conference stage has led the news agenda, as first Cristiano Ronaldo and then Paul Pogba moved aside the bottles of UEFA sponsor brand products Coke and Heineken respectively.

Cue a veritable smorgasbord of hot takes, including Ronaldo as fatally flawed health ambassador and the fantastically inept news cascade linking the incident to Coke’s share price.

My working theory is that the audience is always at least two steps ahead of the media when it comes to parsing the meaning of this type of story.

By the time journalists have written up the first bounce - ‘Ronaldo disses Coke’ - the reader has moved on to question Brand Ronaldo’s credentials on healthy messaging and made an accommodation that two things can be true at the same time.

For example: you probably don’t get to look like Ronaldo by drinking full fat Coke on a regular basis AND Ronaldo has taken money from Coke, KFC and other brands, so yes he’s a flawed voice but he’s not wrong that water is a better alternative.

For similar reasons, I find the Pogba story more interesting.

Twitter avatar for @TheAMF
Muslim Footballers
@TheAMF
Respect to @paulpogba for not wanting to advertise the 🍺 at the press conference
💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽 Image
June 16th 2021

92 Retweets301 Likes

I’m betting there are plenty of people who saw this story who hadn’t noted Pogba’s journey to embracing the Muslim faith.

This from The Times podcast in 2019 changed my view on the brand and the person behind it.

Pogba: Islam is not the image that everyone sees – terrorism… What we hear in the media is really something else, it's something beautiful.
You get to know it. Anybody can find that he feels connected with Islam. It came because I have a lot of friends who are Muslim. We always talk. I was questioning myself in a lot of things, then I started doing my own research. I prayed once with my friends and I felt something different. I felt really good.


Drink beer, don’t drink beer. That’s not something I need guidance on (and I quite like Heineken’s 0.0 btw).

But Pogba’s views on Islam are by far the most powerful endorsement message of his career.

And this week’s Euro press room snafu took that message to a far wider audience.



there have been some other interesting takes on it all and indeed wider questions about particular types of sponsorship and why it is being used

Euro 2020: football’s promotion of unhealthy consumption must end
https://theconversation.com/euro-2020-f ... end-162552

Why we should be concerned that cancel culture is coming for sponsorship
https://www.sportspromedia.com/opinion/ ... w-28330466

one I have posted before - Euro 2020 – a football tournament where the big players come from China and the US
https://theconversation.com/euro-2020-a ... -us-162622

and I have not bothered with the whole Gazprom thing which is on another level

Then you remember that the players normally charge fortunes for their endorsements, UEFA are effectively trying to get a free ride in insisting that those same players appear in the press conferences absolutely submerged in marketing and product placement for which they may not endorse, are certainly not getting paid to promote yet now being told to keep in view of themselves when they are speaking

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 5915584512

so when players start to elevate themselves above this noise it is time for UEFA and sponsors to recognise that things must change

EURO 2020: 'The balance of power is shifting from sponsors to athletes
https://www.euronews.com/2021/06/17/eur ... o-athletes

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:16 am

Manchester United release their Q3 results - currently running at break even for the season (thanks to all those restart TV revenues

Press release
https://ir.manutd.com/press-releases.aspx

Somehowhow they are still booking matchday revenues (they have dome this every quarter) and the total for the season will be greater than our club will earn in a normal season - I suspect it is some kind of hosting fee but as yet it has not been explained,

@KieranMaguire has been having a poke through the results

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 9896439813

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:22 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 10:28 pm
The Premier League has produced a review of the season 2020/21 it even includes some football related content - for the most part though it tells a tal of all that is great about the Premier League - did some one say their have been debates about the future of the came by MP's and that there is a review going on

it appears that some parts of the press have been briefed in a particular way

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sport ... eason.html

this is how they introduce it on the Premier League Website

https://www.premierleague.com/news/2168586

https://resources.premierleague.com/pre ... igital.pdf

the accessible version is here - no pictures and complex graphics https://resources.premierleague.com/pre ... ssible.pdf
More Premier League moves in their quest to stave off an Independent Regulator - they are to appoint a couple of non-executive directors - welcome but maybe a tad late - from the Daily Mail

Premier League plot boardroom shake-up to foil regulator threat with appointment of two independent non-executive directors planned... but top flight chiefs claim it is NOT a case of keeping the Government at bay
By Mike Keegan For The Daily Mail
22:30 17 Jun 2021, updated 00:58 18 Jun 2021

- Premier League will appoint two new independent non-executive directors
- It is seen as an attempt to stop the creation of an independent regulator
- The Premier League strongly deny that is the case and say it's been pre-planned
- Such a regulator would be hired by the Government to hold league to account

The Premier League are seeking to appoint two new independent non-executive directors in what many believe is a desperate attempt to stop the creation of an independent regulator.

Sportsmail understands that the body are taking the steps in a move insiders have claimed is aimed at stopping the growing movement for reform in its tracks.

The Premier League strongly deny that is the case and have said that the development — agreed by clubs last week — has been on the cards for some time. They add that one of the new arrivals will replace a departure.

The Premier League are seeking to appoint two new independent non-executive directors
However, officials at a number of clubs have described the pending appointments as 'a pre-emptive strike' against 'the league's worst nightmare'.

Last month, more than 100,000 people signed a petition calling for a regulator following an open letter signed by the likes of Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Rio Ferdinand and Gary Lineker.

They argued that April's failed European Super League breakaway illustrated the need for reforms to football's governance.

Such a regulator would be appointed by the Government and potentially see the top-flight held to account across multiple areas.

The Government are also carrying out a separate fan-led review of the game's governance in England. Its chair, Tracey Crouch MP, recently said that she thought an independent regulator would soon be in place, 'Because it's been called for for too long'.

The nine-person panel are examining ways to bring reform, regulation and financial stability to the sport. More sessions are due next week.

Pundit Gary Neville was one of the driving forces behind a petition calling for a regulator
'This is being seen as a pre-emptive strike against the league's worst nightmare,' one official explained.

The Premier League have denied this is the case.

They say that one of the new arrivals will replace Claudia Arney, who left in December, and add that the second post was agreed on some time ago.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:49 pm

For those of you who want to get their teeth into a bit of deep reading, this has academic study been made freely available during the Euro;s

Football’s emerging market trade network: ego network approach to world systems theory
Alexander John Bond,Paul Widdop ORCID Icon & Simon Chadwick

ABSTRACT: The football transfer market is a billion-pound industry, traditionally dominated by the European market. This has been challenged by the rise of relatively new markets emerging from China, Brazil, Turkey and Russia. Important countries within the market, they also challenge the traditional status order. While classical international trade theorists suggest that capital or resource advantage predicts trade, economic sociologists argue that a world-systems perspective economic relationships are a core component. Therefore, we analyse the football trade network of these emerging markets to understand the structure, specifically in relation to the world-systems perspective. Using social network analysis, we identify the network is structured analogously to a world-systems perspective with a core of European countries, a semi-periphery of developing countries and a periphery containing countries where football is less developed. Furthermore, Turkey and Brazil occupy structural holes acting as brokers between the core, semi-periphery and periphery positions which can be advantageous.

the full article is here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 18.1481765

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:00 pm

It seems that the extension of lockdown could have an impact on the Euros - quite possible that the semi-finals and finals will not be at Wembley, same may apply to the knock-out stages to be held in the UK

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 2259205120

More here from the Associated Press

https://apnews.com/article/europe-healt ... 826bcc4a8c

UEFA still in talks about foreign fans for Euro 2020 final
By ROB HARRIS
2 hours ago

LONDON (AP) — UEFA is in talks with the British government about allowing foreign soccer fans to fly into London for games in the latter stages of the European Championship to avoid moving them from Wembley Stadium.

The competition’s organizers have a contingency plan which involves taking the semifinals and final to Budapest if an agreement cannot be reached with authorities in London about exempting fans from quarantine.

The Euro 2020 semifinals and final are scheduled to be played at Wembley Stadium from July 6-11.

Because of a rise in coronavirus cases, plans to lift more coronavirus restrictions in England this month were paused until July 19. But UEFA did still secure a rise in attendance from about 22,000 to at least 40,000 for one round of 16 game, the semifinals and the final at Wembley.

“UEFA is delighted that the capacity at Wembley will go up to at least 50% for the knockout round matches,” European soccer’s governing body said in a statement.

“At the moment, we are in discussions with the local authorities to try to allow fans of the participating teams to attend the matches, using a strict testing and bubble concept that would mean their stay in the U.K. would be less than 24 hours and their movements would be restricted to approved transport and venues only.”

UEFA has already requested that some broadcasters and representatives of sponsors are allowed to attend the games, abiding by restrictions on movement.

Tourists from all participating countries have to quarantine for at least five days when entering Britain at the moment.

“We understand the pressures that the government face and hope to be able to reach a satisfactory conclusion of our discussions on the matter,” UEFA said. “There is always a contingency plan but we are confident that the final week will be held in London.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:21 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Mar 25, 2021 5:47 pm
The saga of Northampton Town's loan to the football club continues - this time as the council (about to become part of a unitary authority attempts to claw back it's money - from the BBC

Northampton Town: Ex-chairman's wife must repay £418k or lose home
Published3 hours ago
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Incomplete football stand
IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGES
image captionNorthampton Town's East Stand remains unfinished
The wife of a football club's former chairman must repay more than £418,000 to a council by June or face eviction, a meeting was told.

Northampton Borough Council has attempted to recover £10.25m loaned to Northampton Town in 2013 and 2014, which has since disappeared.

Some of the money meant for the stadium redevelopment was spent on a property belonging to Christina Cardoza.

Leader Jonathan Nunn said the loan had "cast a cloud" over the council's work.

Northampton Town Football Club, under David Cardoza and his father Anthony, borrowed the money for the proposed redevelopment of Sixfields stadium and nearby land.

David Cardoza

However, work on the stadium was not completed after contractors went unpaid.

A police investigation into what happened to the money from the loan has been completed and the Crown Prosecution Service is considering what action to take.

In 2019, the High Court heard how some of the money was used to remodel David Cardoza's house in Church Brampton, Northamptonshire.

He transferred ownership of the house to his wife in 2015, which a High Court judge ruled was an attempt to avoid potential future creditors when the loan money disappeared.

'Very difficult situation'
The property has since been sold, but Mrs Cardoza must pay the new West Northamptonshire Council £418,709 by 2 June or the current family home will be put up for sale by the authority, after it was granted an order.

Northampton Borough Council is set to be replaced by the new unitary authority on 1 April.

It was one of multiple "recovery streams" the council has used to attempt to recover some of the loan amount, according to a report presented to the borough council's cabinet on Wednesday.

The report said more than £131,000 had been secured from the sale of a property, with an estimated £280,000 expected from the sale of another.

The authority also hopes to receive money from the bankruptcy of Anthony Cardoza and from the liquidation of 1st Land, the company which was set up to rebuild the stadium.

Mr Nunn told the cabinet meeting recovering the money had been "fairly hard work", and not as "far reaching" as he wanted.

He also conceded the sums received "don't go anywhere near recovering the full amount" but hoped the council would be able to recover more following any court case.

Labour's Danielle Stone asked Mr Nunn whether it would be "more prudent to wait until after police action" to recover the money.

Mr Nunn replied it was a "very difficult situation", adding: "There was a need to act fairly promptly. I would feel uncomfortable to say to residents we didn't do anything."
The Northampton Town saga roles slowly on, with the suggestion that a political donation is relevant to the case, there is much of that going on at the moment in the general news, it is absurd how little the donations need to be to get the decisions that generate so much wealth for so few - this from the BBC

Northampton Town: Seven people charged in missing loan probe
By Matt Precey
BBC Look East

Published 1 day ago

Seven people have been charged with electoral offences by police investigating a missing £10.25m loan to Northampton Town Football Club.

The six men and one woman have been charged over donations made to Northampton South Conservative Association in 2014.

It is alleged they failed to ensure the true source of the money was disclosed.

They are due to appear before Northampton Magistrates' Court on 16 July.

The hearings will take place almost six years after the launch of Operation Tuckhill, the police inquiry into the disappearance of money loaned by Northampton Borough Council to the football club to pay for the redevelopment of its East Stand and nearby land.

The stand remains uncompleted.

The defendants have been charged under a section of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 which requires donors of over £500 to a political party to give details of the source of the funds.

The seven due to appear before Northampton Magistrates' Court are:

- Nutan Bhimjiyani, 60, and Sharad Bhimjiyani, 65, both of Headstone Lane, Harrow
- Nirav Vinodray Sheth, 47, of Uppingham Avenue, Stanmore
- Gary Platt, 65, of West Drive, Harrow
- Alan Mayfield, 64, of Hill Farm Road, Chalfont St Peter, Gerrards Cross
- Leonard Western, 70, of Holmside Rise, South Oxhey, Watford
- Parekh Brijkumar, 65, of Broken Gate Lane, Denham

It is alleged that they "without reasonable cause, being the principal donor of a donation of more than £500 to a registered party, namely Northampton South Conservative Association, failed to ensure that, at the time when the donation was received by the party, the party was given all such details in respect of the person treated as making the recordable donation as were required by virtue of paragraph 2 or 2A of Schedule 6 to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000".

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jun 20, 2021 11:04 am

A really interesting piece from Josimar.com (translated from the original Norwegian) about a debate that took place this week hosted by the Norwegian Football Federation in regard to the Qatar World Cup and the many issues around it that are leading to calls for boycott

the original https://www.josimar.no/artikler/stillhe ... rmen/6690/

Silence before the storm
18.06.2021

When NFF this week arranged a panel debate on Qatar, the leader of the Qatar committee, Sven Mollekleiv, was a self-described participant. But he does not want to be interviewed.

Text: Lars Johnsen

On Wednesday 16 June, four days before the extraordinary Football Parliament, the NFF arranged a panel debate on Qatar with the theme How can Norwegian football best contribute to international football taking greater social responsibility before, during and after the 2022 World Cup? NFF's director of communication and society Gro Tvedt Anderssen was the moderator. Participants were Sven Mollekleiv (leader, Qatar committee), Erlend Hanstveit (union leader, NISO), Ane Guro Skaare-Rekdal (vice president, NFF) and Ole Kristian Sandvik (spokesman, Norwegian Supporter Alliance).

After the debate, Josimar wanted to interview Sven Mollekleiv, among other things, about what he had stated in the debate. Mollekleiv replied to an SMS that he had a "full calendar" both on Wednesday after the debate and all of Thursday and therefore could not ask for a telephone interview. But he could answer email.

Through several text messages, we asked for an oral interview so that we could ask relevant follow-up questions - and pointed out that this would take less time than answering emails.

We informed Mollekleiv that we are very flexible regarding time. We also told Mollekleiv that after an oral interview he could read his quotes before publication. Mollekleiv, through a two-day SMS exchange, insisted on replying to emails. Josimar believes the head of the Qatar committee, appointed by the organization which advocates "ruthless openness", and which emphasizes the importance of a "broad debate", should present an oral interview.

When Mollekleiv is available for NFF-directed debates, we believe that he should also make himself available for an oral interview. We have informed Mollekleiv that if he cannot find time for an oral interview within two days, we will publish the questions without his answer.

The oral interview is the most important methodological tradition in the Norwegian press. We think Sven Mollekleiv should respect that.

"Independent" organizations
Mollekleiv started the NFF-directed debate by saying that the allocation of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was a "collective failure" in football, and claimed there had been no opposition to giving the Qatar 2022 World Cup "before, during or after the award, and it took several years before the debate on that award took place ».

As in the Qatar report, he did not mention that the 2022 World Cup was awarded to Qatar after massive corruption.

Mollekleiv also listed the reforms that should have been implemented in Qatar. On several occasions in the debate, Mollekleiv spoke about the "independent" organizations the Qatar Committee has spoken to.
"Who is present to ensure that workers' rights and human rights are safeguarded? It has been important for the committee to speak to the International Building Workers' Union (BWI), which has been present in Qatar since its award in 2010. "

"We have also spoken with the UN's independent organization, the ILO, which has the responsibility and mandate to ensure compliance with the ILO conventions - what regulates the relationship between employers and employees in a proper manner."

"So what has happened since the award? It is important to be aware that we have seen restrictions on working hours. We have seen that laws have been introduced that say that you can not work outside between 1 June and 15 September between 10 and 15:30 or at all to work outside if it is hotter than 32.9 degrees . We have seen that maximum working hours, minimum wages, daily breaks and weekly holidays and paid days off have been introduced. We have seen that a maximum of four have been introduced in the room, separate working committees that will follow up and that fines and even imprisonment have been introduced if some employers do not pay the wages they are obliged to pay. The most important thing: legally and formally, the kafala system has been abolished, which means that employers take away your passport and decide when you can travel and that you cannot change employers.

"Therefore, the challenge for these reforms, which the Qatar Committee has been concerned about and is unanimous in, is compliance, follow-up at all levels. There is considerable agreement on improvements for those who work at the stadium facilities, but we see an enormous need for this type of follow-up to also apply to hotels, on roads, on service, on safety, on all other terms. Therefore, the main challenge is to continue to do what these independent organizations ask us to do; be involved in demanding, putting pressure and following up on compliance, and address every violation of both human rights and workers' rights. "

Towards the end of the debate, Mollekleiv believed that a mobilization in football with demands on Qatar could start a snowball effect of reforms in the region.
"Perhaps we can experience an incredible paradox. A country that should never have won the World Cup, if the kafala system was not only formally and partially abolished, but eventually real, could help push the other countries in the region - the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and so on further. Then this will actually be able to make a difference. But then we have to mobilize all the countries that are going on the road to Qatar, and then we can hope that our team is able to qualify. "

Here are the questions we wanted to ask Sven Mollekleiv:
What do you put in the word "independent"?

You claim that the ILO is an independent organization. Their presence in Qatar is fully funded by the Qatari authorities. How independent are they really?

On NRK, you claimed that 78,000 foreign workers in a few months have changed jobs as a result of reforms in Qatar. In what way are those numbers verified?

Do you have any documentation on that?

Which industries does it apply to?

Azfar Khan, former ILO special adviser to foreign workers in Arab countries, believes the ILO's reports from Qatar contain what the Qatari authorities want to be there. What do you think about it?

The Qatar report states that BWI has been in Qatar since 2010 - something you repeated during the panel debate under the auspices of the NFF on Wednesday. Where have you been since BWI has been in Qatar since 2010?

We just talked to BWI on the phone. They say that they are not allowed to have an office in Qatar - and have thus never had an office in Qatar. Only in 2016 was BWI allowed to enter the country to have inspections.
What is your comment?

According to Lise Klaveness, you have more than 50 years of experience from human rights work. Is that correct?

What does "broadly composed" mean?

Eight out of 14 in the Qatar committee have a relationship with the NFF. That is a majority. Is it broadly composed?

You work for Oslo Energy Forum. It is a closed forum where tops from the oil and gas industry meet without any outsiders having access. Can you say something about why you take assignments for such an organization?

Have representatives from Qatar been participants?

Companies and states in the Middle East have been present at the Oslo Energy Forum - countries that practice the kafala system. Do you have any concerns about working for such a forum?

Are there any industries you could not have worked for?

What did you receive in compensation for lost earnings in connection with the work of the Qatar committee?

Can you say something about the calculation of the compensation?

How long have you been working with the Qatar selection?

How long have you known Sigmund Loland?

What type of relationship do you have?

In your eyes, is Fifa a credible organization?

At the last Uefa congress, Gianni Infantino spoke negatively about the proposed super league. We have documented that he, on the other hand, worked for a super league. Is this a management football can trust?

What do you think about Gianni Infantino replacing leaders in Fifa's independent committees with their own loyalists?

What has Fifa really achieved in Qatar, point by point?

We have good sources in international football policy. Everyone says the same thing: Fifa does not care about foreign workers. They care about money. Why is Fifa and how that organization works a bigger part of the Qatar report?

You started Wednesday's panel debate and said that it was a "collective failure" of football that Qatar won the World Cup. You did not mention that this happened through gross corruption. Corruption was barely mentioned in the Qatar report. It says: "And it has been claimed by various media that corruption took place in connection with the award."

Do you think that the corruption that caused the Qatar World Cup has not been documented?

In the panel debate, you listed several reforms that have led to a better life for foreign workers in Qatar - that the kafala system was legally abolished, a maximum limit on working hours, a minimum wage, breaks, days off, etc. It is well documented that these reforms are not implemented, that these are only paper reforms, including by Amnesty. What is your comment?

In the same debate, you said that a mobilization in football against Qatar could create a kind of snowball effect, that neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia and the Emirates would be able to abolish the kafala system. Do you believe in it yourself?

Representatives from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have been to the Oslo Energy Forum. Through it, do you have the impression that such reforms are imminent in those countries?

At the same time as Belarus is imprisoning and torturing pro-democracy activists, including athletes who raise their voices, the country was rewarded with a U19 European Championship for women at the last Uefa Congress. What do you think about it?

That it happens, what does it say about international football organizations?

Should the NFF, which sits on UEFA's women's football committee, have raised their voice when Belarus was to be awarded the U19 European Championship for women?

One of the premises for the Qatar committee's report and the 26 points is that the NFF will raise its voice in football's international organizations. While the Qatar committee was in the middle of its work and formulated the 26 measures, the allocation to Belarus took place without the NFF reacting. But this very recent example, at a time when human rights are on everyone's lips, the NFF did not respond. How credible is it that the NFF will work to influence Uefa and Fifa?

The NFF says they have been against Qatar ever since the country was awarded the World Cup in 2010. We have documented that this is not true. They have reported a sponsorship flight in the event of a boycott. We talked to the biggest sponsors. They stood behind what football Norway had to decide in the Qatar question. NFF says a boycott must also mean a boycott of the World Cup qualifiers, a premise they themselves have made. What do you think about the fact that the NFF has consistently served untruths and false premises in the Qatar debate?

Sources in grassroots football in Norway tell us that the football circles, ie NFF's regional departments, work very aggressively to turn around clubs that have decided on a boycott. "There is no point in boycotting a championship we do not qualify for anyway," it was said by a circuit leader in conversation with clubs. "Broadband football is going to lose a lot of money", is a recurring argument in these conversations. What do you think about the NFF apparatus exposing clubs that have decided to boycott to such pressure? The panel debate on Qatar on Wednesday was moderated by NFF's director of communications and society, Gro Tvedt Andersen, a pronounced boycott opponent, Is it tidy?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jun 20, 2021 11:10 am

They would not do it if there wasn't money to be made from it Paddy Power launch sitcom based on Stockley Park home of VAR for the Premier League - does this mean there is a whole new book opening around VAR - from SportsProMedia

Paddy Power launches own sitcom on Amazon Prime Video
‘The VAR Room’ is written by the betting brand’s own content team.

Posted: June 18 2021By: Tom Bassam
Paddy Power launches own sitcom on Amazon Prime Video
Paddy Power

- Sitcom takes ‘tongue-in-cheek’ look at Stockley Park’s VAR setup
- Series airing on Virgin Media’s Irish linear network, as well via Paddy Power’s YouTube channel
- Flutter-owned betting brand Paddy Power is launching its own sports-based sitcom on Amazon Prime Video.

‘The VAR Room’ series, which is airing on Irish terrestrial television via Virgin Media’s linear network, will take a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ look at what happens behind the scenes at Stockley Park, where English soccer’s video assistant referee (VAR) is based. Former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg will be a guest star, along with retired England internationals Teddy Sheringham ad Paul Ince.

The four-part long-form content series will also be streamed via Paddy Power’s own YouTube channel.

Paddy Power’s creative content managers, Steven Quick and Noel Slevin, have been credited as writers on The VAR Room.

‘The shambles at Stockley Park last season gave our brilliantly talented writers enough creative ideas to fuel an entire sitcom series, which Virgin Media and Amazon Prime wanted a piece of too,’ said Paddy Power.

‘We have long been renowned at Paddy Power for our content – and we really feel we’ve raised the bar with The VAR Room, which we hope is our first sitcom series of many from our team.’

Expanding beyond its regular content production for its own social media channels, the 23-minute show debuted on Irish TV on 16th June and is set to hit Amazon Prime later in the month.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jun 20, 2021 11:22 am

Anyone know what Digital Inventory is - essentially it is the online content you own and as people are starting to realise though the rapid market increase of technology such as Non Fungible Tokens there is money to be made from it. A recent study has shown that the Premier League could generate over $400m from digital inventory this year, though it is currently behind La Liga in this sphere. Naturally such numbers are provoking interest and there is likely to be some explosive growth as teams/leagues seek to exploit this area, 5 Premier League teams have now signed deals with Horizm to help them grow and manage this area, Everton being the latest this week - from SportsProMedia

Study: Premier League could generate US$432m from digital inventory in 2021
Online assets of world’s top sports leagues worth more than US$1.3bn, says Horizm.

Posted: May 12 2021By: Sam Carp

- Premier League’s digital inventory worth nearly as much as La Liga (US$256.8m) and NBA (US$172.3m) combined
- Manchester United have most valuable online inventory worth estimated US$128.6m
- NHL most efficient league at generating value from its digital assets on a per capita basis

The world’s leading sports leagues could stand to generate more than a combined US$1.3 billion in 2021 from their online inventory across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, according to a new study by digital asset valuation firm Horizm.

The study, titled The Digital Value of Fans, found that English soccer’s Premier League has the most valuable digital inventory, which by the end of this year will be worth a projected €356 million (US$432 million). That figure is almost as much as La Liga (US$256.8 million) and the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) US$172.3 million combined, which ranked second and third, respectively.

Rounding out the top five leagues for predicted annual total inventory were the National Football League (NFL), whose online assets will be worth an estimated US$132.3 million this year, and Italian soccer’s top-flight Serie A (US$121.3 million).

The report found that the world’s leading 20 sports teams, which the study refers to as ‘global brands’, account for two thirds of the total amount, with their digital inventory worth US$889.4 million.

European soccer clubs dominated the top 20, with Manchester United taking top spot with digital inventory projected to be worth US$128.6 million this year. Barcelona’s digital assets are valued at an estimated US$122.6 million, while the La Liga side’s rivals Real Madrid stand to generate US$110.4 million from their online inventory.

Horizm, which said TikTok will be considered for future reports, calculated the predictions in the study using publicly available audience data across the three primary social media platforms. The forecasts were also based only on data from the first quarter of 2021, with seasonal considerations also applied.

“This is arguably the single biggest revenue opportunity in sports right now,” said Horizm chief executive Pedro Mestriner. “If you can demonstrate value in your digital inventory, you have the opportunity for diversification, to create different and more targeted properties and in essence to make your sport timeless.

“We are no longer reliant on a single audience tuning into a single platform and this has become even more pertinent for rights holders in today’s climate with covid-19 disruption. Money no longer needs to be concentrated on TV for example, but can be distributed much more widely, sport can be packaged in different ways and there are new revenue opportunities being created.”

In addition to predicted annual total inventory, the study also calculated the value per fan (VPF), which Horizm described as a ‘new industry metric’ that measures the ability of a league or team to generate value from its digital assets on a per capita basis.

On a league level, the analysis discovered that the National Hockey League (NHL) was the most efficient at generating value from its social audience during Q1, with a VPF of US$0.20. That was followed by the Premier League, which had a VPF of US$0.18, while the NBA and Serie A posted a VPF of US$0.13.

Manchester United had the highest VPF of the global brands with US$0.23, which bettered the US$0.21 achieved by Inter Milan, the Golden State Warriors and Liverpool.

However, Horizm found that ‘elite teams’, which the company classified as those with a social audience between two million and 20 million, are able to generate a significantly higher VPF than the global brands.

The study found that 13 of the top 20 so-called elite teams had a better VPF than Manchester United, with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers leading the way with a VPF of US$0.61. North American franchises accounted for 15 of the top 20 elite teams by VPF.

In terms of platforms, the study says that Instagram is the most valuable of the three primary social media channels for leagues and teams, accounting for 49 per cent of the total value generated. Facebook, meanwhile, accounts for 36 per cent, with Twitter responsible for 15 per cent.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jun 20, 2021 11:34 am

The French Ligue President, Vincent LaBrune, has what looked to be a very interesting and wide ranging interview in L'Equipe on Friday, unfortunately that is behind a paywall, so we have to make do with snippets from elsewhere like this on the Amazon deal and the fall out with Canal+ at SportsBusiness.com

LFP president calls for ‘common sense’ from Canal in Ligue 1 broadcast spat
Reginald Ajuonuma
June 18, 2021

The president of the French Professional Football League (LFP) has called on pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus to show “common sense” after the latter decided to cease coverage of Ligue 1 matches in response to the LFP’s award of rights to internet giant Amazon from 2021-22 to 2023-24.

Speaking in an interview with L’Équipe, Vincent Labrune said: “Statements of intent, threats or political fiction are all very good, but at some point, there are the facts and the real world… It would be healthier and more constructive if common sense and reason prevail.”

The LFP accepted a €259m ($309m)-per-season offer last week from Amazon for rights to the French Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 matches originally held by Spanish agency and production group Mediapro. Canal Plus and pay-television broadcaster beIN had been in talks with the LFP to acquire the same rights.

The league expects to generate a total fixed fee of €663m per season from the top two divisions, for 2021-22 to 2023-24, from all its existing deals, compared with a total fixed fee of €607m per season if it had accepted the Canal/beIN offer. The latter offer included an additional performance-related component of up to €78m per season.

But Canal Plus’ decision to withdraw from Ligue 1 broadcasting potentially complicates the LFP’s calculations.

Canal holds rights to two high-profile Ligue 1 fixtures per match week for the 2020-24 cycle, which it sublicenses from beIN in a deal worth €332m per season. That agreement was struck as part of a renewable five-year exclusive distribution deal between beIN and Canal Plus.

BeIN acquired those Ligue 1 rights directly from the LFP in 2018. Consequently, Canal Plus’ decision to no longer broadcast or pay for those rights does not technically affect the LFP’s income stream.

Labrune told L’Équipe: “We have a contract with beIN Sports, which has not yet expressed its desire to terminate it.”

SportBusiness understands beIN is waiting to see what legal avenues Canal Plus will explore regarding the matter before deciding on its next move. BeIN’s next fee instalment to the league is due on August 5.

It is understood beIN backs Canal Plus’ view that all LFP rights should have been put back to the market when the league launched an unsuccessful tender for the rights previously held by Mediapro. However, Labrune notes that judicial and regulatory rulings on the issue have both been in LFP’s favour.

He added: “If you buy an apartment and, two years later, the real estate market collapses, you cannot tell whoever sold it to you that it was too expensive… You have to be serious. So, from our point of view, there is no chance that this contract will be called into question.”

Amazon choice
According to Labrune, the LFP had not expected to reach a deal with Amazon in the current rights cycle; it had, instead, targeted bringing the retailer on board from 2024. Amazon had bid to acquire Mediapro’s rights in the LFP’s unsuccessful tender.

“I imagine they saw a short-term opportunity linked to our situation, the fact that talks with Canal Plus have more than dragged on. They figured the best way to prepare for the [next rights cycle] was to save time and come now,” he told L’Équipe.

Amazon uses sports rights as a way of raising engagement with its Prime marketplace. Its acquisition of French league football rights follows its purchase in 2019 of domestic French Open rights from 2021 to 2023.

Labrune accepted that the league might see some reduction of visibility in the short term from moving the bulk of matches to Amazon. However, he argued the LFP is adopting a medium-term horizon on the issue.

“We are looking at 2025-2030… [Amazon] is a partner that all leagues around the world would snap up and dream of having for the future. You’d have to be crazy to refuse Amazon, let this train pass, and risk it not coming back next time,” he said.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jun 20, 2021 12:16 pm

The Euro's has brought to the for the summer transfer season for our fans as they talent spot players they wouldn't normally see - of course signing European players in a post brexit world - here offthepitch.com look at the issue and recognise that the problem is also going to affect clubs in Spain, Portugal and France

Column: Brexit seems like a major headache for English clubs – but Spanish, French and Portuguese clubs could be hurt too
13 June 2021 12:59 PM

- The new immigration rules post-Brexit were designed to help young homegrown British talent prosper. But the new rules will create a real hurdle for numerous clubs.
- With many deals now prohibited and transfers also being scuppered by post-Brexit restrictions, it remains to be seen whether this will effect the Premier League’s pre-eminence.
- Due to the new immigration rules after Brexit English clubs could be forced to search for talent in South America. Moreover signing these players may be much more straightforward than it was in the past.
- If there’s increased competition from Britain in recruiting top talents from countries like Brazil and Argentina, will clubs elsewhere in Europe be able to compete?

DARRYL RIGBY, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AT THE IMMIGRATION ADVICE SERVICE contact@offthepitch.com

With football clubs struggling to come to terms with the financial implications of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, the 2020/2021-season’s January transfer window went down as one of the most uneventful on record.

Take the Premier League, for instance, where many of the world’s wealthiest clubs play their football. Here, despite the vast riches on display, even these super-wealthy clubs aren’t immune to the economic issues brought about by the pandemic, as England’s top flight recorded its lowest ever number of deals in a transfer window.

Indeed, throughout the entire Premier League – undoubtedly the richest in global football – there were just 26 signings in January, which amounted to a little more than half the number of transfers in the same period last season.

Considering the financial hit football clubs have taken as a result of lost ticket sales, the fact they’re choosing to stick with what they’ve got rather than splashing the cash on new players shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

But as well as the economic issues the pandemic is causing for many of our football clubs, was there another reason that explains why even the Premier League’s big boys failed to get new recruits through the door in January?

Brexit Britain and its impact on transfers

Throughout the Brexit debate, much of the conversation was about the economic impact leaving the European Union would have.

Questions about the fishing industry, food regulations and the price of medicine from abroad were all hot topics, but one thing hardly anyone stopped to consider – at least not publicly – was how an exit from the trading bloc would affect the trade of football players to and from Europe.

This appears to have been a major oversight, as new rules and regulations brought in on January 1st have changed the way clubs conduct their transfer business, and these adjustments are already causing recruitment issues for some managers.

Take one Sam Allardyce, for instance. Perhaps no manager embodies the failure to grasp exactly what leaving the EU would mean for the trade of Premier League footballers quite like the former West Brom boss.

Back in 2018, while in charge at Everton, Allardyce was asked how he’d voted in the EU referendum. Pulling no punches, Allardyce was critical of the EU and said he believed it was time the UK withdrew.

“I am out,” Allardyce told the Sun. “My feeling is that the European Union isn’t doing the United Kingdom any favours.”

However, after getting his wish and seeing the UK complete its formal withdrawal, Allardyce was surprised to find the new rules and regulations in place have made purchasing players from Europe much more difficult.

And to Allardyce’s dismay, the new red tape put in place torpedoed his January transfer plans, making his already-difficult job of rescuing the Baggies from relegation even more of an uphill task.

“I have found three players already who were capable of coming here and were not allowed,” he told reporters after watching his side post another defeat.

“It’s a shame. Due to new regulations in terms of the permit they were unable to come to this country, whereas previously they would have done. I have to look at that and think ‘can he qualify?’”

Impact on the Premier League’s product

The new rules, which were agreed by the FA, Premier League and UK government, were designed to help young, homegrown talent prosper, but one of the side-effects of the changes is they’ll create a real hurdle for some transfers moving forward.

In the past, Premier League clubs could complete transfers with relative ease, but now every player arriving from Europe must be in possession of a work permit, which can only be obtained once the player has met a number of requirements.

This will undoubtedly result in the collapse of some transfers that in the past would have gone through without any hiccups.

Additionally, while every transfer will now require more paperwork, some deals are off the table all together. Take the signing of international U-18s, for instance, which are now banned completely under the new rules that state any player signing to or from a European club must be over the age of 18.

Just think of the deals that wouldn’t have happened over the years if these directives had been in place longer: Cesc Fabregas to Arsenal, Jadon Sancho to Borussia Dortmund, Paul Pogba to Manchester United – all historic transfers that would no longer be permitted, which would undoubtedly have an impact on the Premier League’s product.

It’ll be interesting to see how this will affect the viewing figures of the Premier League. With an annual audience of 4.7 billion viewers watching from 643 million homes around the world, the English top flight is by far the most popular football competition on the planet.

However, this popularity has been, at least in part, built by the young and promising overseas talent English teams raided their European neighbours for over the years.

With those deals now prohibited and many transfers being scuppered by post-Brexit restrictions, it remains to be seen whether this will have an effect on the Premier League’s dominance moving forward.

Will clubs start to look elsewhere?

With Europe becoming an increasingly difficult market to sign players from, pundits and football experts have predicted Premier League sides may start to look further afield, with South America and Africa muted as likely destinations.

For fans of the Premier League who enjoy watching these skillful, technically gifted players with magic in their boots, these could be exciting times.

Although British clubs will still need to wait until South American and African players turn 18 – this rule was always in place, and the exemption only existed when signing from other European countries – once they reach their eighteenth birthday they’ll be immediately eligible for transfer.

...British sides preferred to sign players who had already proven themselves elsewhere in Europea, so the vast majority of South Americans in the Premier League came via another league

Moreover, judging by the new system used for granting the work permits, signing these players may be much more straightforward than it was in the past.

Points are awarded for international appearances, and due to the fact competition in some of these countries – particularly African nations – isn’t as high as it is in some parts of Europe, not only do talented young players have a better chance of making it into their respective national sides, but they may already have international caps under their belt. This would make obtaining a work permit for a proposed transfer much easier.

Additionally, the Brazilian and Argentinian leagues are viewed highly by the permit system, and the Copa Libertadores has been given equal weighting to the Champions League.

This means straight away there are 32 sides whose players automatically meet the GBE threshold, while the Copa Scudamericana – the second-tier South American club competition that’s equivalent to the Europa League – also racks up the same number of points, providing another 32 sides to monitor for potential signings.

Add to that the fact youth players are now viewed much more favourably and suddenly we have hundreds of previously ineligible players who are now gettable, making South America a very viable and increasingly attractive option for British clubs.

With Premier League sides expected to turn their focus to these continents, this could well send shockwaves around Europe as many French sides rely on African imports, while the Spanish and Portuguese leagues always have a steady stream of South American talent coming in.

If suddenly there’s increased competition from Britain, will many of the clubs around Europe be able to compete? At a time when the majority of them are seriously struggling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, given the financial muscle of the Premier League’s biggest sides, the answer might well be no.

Scouting improvements necessary

Despite an increase in competition from British clubs, one advantage teams from elsewhere in Europe have at the moment is in the area of scouting.

Many Premier League clubs simply don’t have the scouting networks in place to upset the order just yet, but with some heavy investment over the next couple of years or so, they could soon start to pick up some of the best talent from under the noses of their continental rivals.

With a significantly wider market, once clubs start to improve their scouting networks then it won’t be hard to find talented players. Whereas in the past it was only permitted to purchase full internationals or those valued above £15 million, many of these players were out the question for most clubs.

However, with the criteria changing, the market is now open to more clubs. Thus, Latin America might be about to receive an influx of scouts from the UK.

...if there’s one thing we can be certain of, it’s that the signing of players from Europe has just been made a lot more difficult for Premier League managers, and this may well result in many of Britain’s sides setting their sights on different markets

In the past, very few players have joined British sides directly from South America. Even fewer have come straight from Africa.

This strategy was viewed as risky, as traditionally players from these countries tended to struggle to adapt to such a different way of life, while the physical intensity of European football can also prove a stumbling block for some.

Instead, British sides preferred to sign players who had already proven themselves elsewhere in Europe, so the vast majority of South Americans in the Premier League came via another league.

There have been exceptions to the rule, though, with the likes of Gabriel Jesus and Richarlison among those plucked directly from their homeland. These two players have proven particularly successful, and the hope will be that more players can adapt to life in the UK as well as those two have.

What’s the conclusion?

With Britain’s exit from the EU only a few months old, it’s still difficult to predict exactly how the divorce will affect the transfer dealings of Premier League clubs, and what subsequent impact this will have on the world’s most popular league.

As time goes by and the dust begins to settle on the pandemic and its economic ripple effect, the picture should start to become a little clearer.

However, if there’s one thing we can be certain of, it’s that the signing of players from Europe has just been made a lot more difficult for Premier League managers, and this may well result in many of Britain’s sides setting their sights on different markets.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jun 20, 2021 12:46 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:51 pm
given a number constituted soft porn it is no surprise - I have posted a number of times before on this thread about how it is necessary to do the right background work and get working practice agreements in place when signing commercial partners, particularly those from vastly different cultural backgrounds
following the Norwich story this from the Athletic gives a decent overview of what does and doesn't happen when clubs sign Asian betting partners

https://theathletic.com/news/premier-le ... PgsrOzKXN3

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jun 20, 2021 12:57 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:14 pm
Some really interesting background to that La Liga - ESPN US broadcast deal. it comes from the partnership with Relevent who run the international summer pre-season tournament ICC and who also have agreements with UEFA - from SportsBusiness.com

How LaLiga-Relevent Sports partnership in US led to record $1.4bn ESPN media rights deal
Bob Williams, US office
June 10, 2021
  • Joint venture partnership has transformed league’s presence and commercial fortunes in region
  • Two parties aligned following overwhelming success of El Clasico Miami in July 2017
  • Following Mexico expansion, model could now be expanded into further international territories


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LALIGA’S JOINT VENTURE WITH RELEVENT IS EXPANDING TO MEXICO
Eben Novy-Williams
BY EBEN NOVY-WILLIAMS

June 3, 2021 5:55am

AP / MEHANIQ TWENTY20 / DESIGNED BY MARIO PAULIS
LaLiga North America, the 50-50 joint venture between Spain’s top soccer league and Relevent Sports Group, is expanding its relationship to include Mexico.

LaLiga clubs have voted to extend the scope of the group, which spent the last three years growing the league’s commercial footprint in the U.S. and Canada. That include media rights—the joint venture negotiated LaLiga’s new $1.4 billion deal with ESPN, the richest U.S. TV deal for a European league ever.

The plan will be similar in Mexico. LaLiga’s media deal with Televisa’s SKY Sports expires in a few years, so that will be top priority, but the group will also focus on studio shows, corporate partnerships, grassroots efforts, and possibly hosting a LaLiga regular season match in Mexico—all things it believes will make those live rights more valuable.

“In Mexico, soccer is the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 sport,” LaLiga North America CEO Boris Gartner said in an interview. “So the opportunity is a little different than in the U.S. We don’t have to build that momentum for soccer. We just need to make sure we are getting the league and clubs closer to the fans.”

Top European clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona, and the leagues they play in, have hit a saturation point in their home markets, creating a desire to grow fan bases and revenue in new places. The U.S., with its 331 million people and robust media infrastructure, is LaLiga’s most important market outside of Spain, and the league believes Mexico could develop into another critical region.

Not only is soccer the most popular sport in Mexico, but Spanish is also its native language. Adding Mexico will also give LaLiga North America a presence in all three countries co-hosting the 2026 men’s World Cup, generating synergies that will help the joint venture work across the region.

“It allows you to have much larger conversations with brand partners and media partners in terms of how they can promote the league, the players and the clubs directly,” said Daniel Sillman, CEO of Relevent Sports Group and a LaLiga North America board member. “A brand may have interest now in promoting across all the key territories, instead of just being hyper focused in one, and we’ll benefit from the tailwinds of the World Cup as well.”

LaLiga North America was formed in 2018 in partnership with Relevent, a soccer media and event organizer backed by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. Relevent, which has positioned itself as a conduit for the sport in North America and Asia, also runs the International Champions Cup, an annual summer tournament featuring soccer’s biggest club teams.

The joint venture has helped LaLiga behave in North America more like a media company than a league. And if live game rights are the measuring stick, the first three years in the U.S. and Canada have been a success. The $1.4 billion deal with ESPN, announced last month, is both a big revenue increase and a transition away from a partnership with beIN Sports that many believed was holding the league back.

Revenue from corporate partnerships has also grown, including U.S. deals with Verizon, PointsBet and Herbalife. Sponsorship money was $0 in the group’s first year, $2 million in its second and $4 million in its third. The joint venture has already booked $7 million for the upcoming season, Gartner said.

In some ways, LaLiga North America is already well-positioned for expansion into Mexico. The group started the 2020-21 season with 14 weekly shows, a combination of English- and Spanish-language programming specifically for fans in the region. Much of that content comes from the group’s studios in Guadalajara, and the joint venture has a handful of executives (including Gartner, a former Televisa exec) with prior professional experience in Mexico.

“We have a team that’s been built, the investment is there, and our content team is already based in Guadalajara,” Gartner said. “This isn’t something we need to stand up again from scratch, so any revenue that we generate will be incremental for the joint venture.”

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jun 20, 2021 1:51 pm

We know that Crystal Palace have effectively been up for sale for about 4 years - it appears they may have a taker - but is this complicating the search for a new manager - from the Mail

Crystal Palace 'targeted for £220MILLION takeover by American consortium'... with eagle-eyed fans spotting hologram pioneer John Textor referring to 'we' on social media in recent weeks amid takeover talk
Crystal Palace are the subject of a £220m takeover bid by an American investor
John Textor is said to be leading a consortium of individuals to buy the club
Negations between Palace and the interested party are in the advanced stages
By CHARLOTTE DALY FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 00:34, 20 June 2021 | UPDATED: 00:50, 20 June 2021

Crystal Palace are said to be the subject of a £220million takeover bid by American investor John Textor.

Textor - who is a pioneer in hologram technology - is reportedly leading a consortium of wealthy individuals and companies that will look to buy the club.

According to The Sun, negations between Crystal Palace and the interested party are in the advanced stages.

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Crystal Palace's future has been hanging in the balance for quite some time as Steve Parish, along with American duo Josh Harris and David Blitzer, have been actively seeking out investments.

Parish holds an 18 per cent stake in the club and should the consortium decide to buy him out along with more minor shareholders, the total figure of purchase could reach the £200m mark.

The Eagles have had several bidders in the past - including former Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra - but have failed to secure a concrete deal.

Therefore, they could be eager to push the deal with Textor and his consortium over the line. However, Crystal Palace supporters are sceptical over his suitability for the job.

Doubts over the investor's financial means have begun to creep in and questions have been raised over Textor's compatibility with the club.

Textor made his fortune in the hologram industry – having generated three-dimensional images of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur for the Coachella Music Festival in 2012 and Michael Jackson for the 2014 Billboard Music Awards.

However, he was previously the chief executive of the visual effects company Digital Domain - who fell into administration in 2012.

Textor and DD looked to change the company’s business model but ended up filing for bankruptcy with debts of around £160m.

This came shortly after the company had won Oscars for their work on high profile films including the Titanic.

Textor has not yet confirmed a deal with Crystal Palace and needs the support of his consortium to make it over the line.

However, Eagled eyed fans saw that Textor had shared a clip of Eberechi Eze scoring and referred to Crystal Palace as 'we'.

The investor's caption read: 'After 18 shots, we Finally breakthrough with the clincher… 2-0'

Some fans were quick to respond saying: 'Who are you and what do you want with my football club?' while another added: 'Are you taking us over John?'.

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