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 » Wed May 26, 2021 1:16 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 11:49 pm
Apologies if I've missed it, but what's happening at Wolves?

Reports are they're willing to let Neves go for the right price to help fund rebuilding due to Covid.
The right price varies from £35-45 million.

Have Fosun got issues due to China gov?
Fosun have been toeing the party line in regards to pushing out overseas investment in the last couple of years regarding Wolves, but have always maintained that they are at the club for the long term - Financially they are in a relatively sound position, unlike many other football owning Chinese groups. In part because of the sheer diversification in the group, they were involved in PPE for instance, so some of it's operations have done well.

The rest of it smacks of classic Jorge Mendes have a look at his relationship with Valencia

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Wed May 26, 2021 2:13 pm

IMG_20210526_141157.jpg
IMG_20210526_141157.jpg (159.44 KiB) Viewed 2718 times
I see this story isn't going away

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed May 26, 2021 7:18 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 2:13 pm
IMG_20210526_141157.jpg

I see this story isn't going away
or making any progress, the only winner is Daniel Ek - he is way short of what is required ot buy the club he knows that but the Arsenal fans don't seem too

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed May 26, 2021 7:24 pm

The third interview in SportsProMedia's series inspired by UEFA's Congress on the Future of European Football, there is some solid thinking here, but I must say that Bob Lord was a catalyst for innovation not a benefactor in the sense we now know it, though it was his money that bought Gawthorpe, John Moores at Everton put much more money into that club and team

Turner: Keeping the collective model is football’s biggest challenge
Frank Dunne - May 26, 2021
  • Transfer value ceiling could be next phase of FFP
  • Need to serve the community more inherent to European model
  • Manchester United fans had a chance to own part of the club through pubic listing but didn’t take it
SportBusiness has conducted a series of interviews with senior figures from across European football asking them to define a ‘sustainable’ economic model for the game on the continent. Over the course of this week, representatives from leagues, federations, clubs and confederations, as well as independent economic experts, will outline the challenges facing professional football and the remedies that they would like to see implemented.

In the third article in the series, Frank Dunne speaks to Stuart Turner, the chief executive and founder of the Start Media Services consultancy who also served as the Football Association’s head of broadcast, from 2004 to 2011, and commercial director, from 2011 to 2016.

A wealthy owner or a genius
Football clubs have always been supercharged by one of two things and, very occasionally, both: they’ve either had a wealthy owner or they’ve come across a genius. The broadcaster Elis James had it right when he said all football clubs are waiting for their genius to arrive.

Manchester United had two: Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson. Arsenal had two: Herbert Chapman and Arsène Wenger. Liverpool had Shankly. These clubs were nothing until these people came along and they were supercharged by that. There are still instances where this can happen, but it will become rarer and rarer.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the biggest benefactor in English football was Bob Lord at Burnley. He oversaw a period of massive growth for the club. He was a butcher, like Louis Edwards at Manchester United. In those days, a merchant or butcher could supercharge a club. Now it has to be an oligarch or an American or Asian industrialist. The level has moved up as globalisation has taken hold.

It is increasingly difficult to have a sustainable team. Spurs are a good example. They are saddled with the debt of building a new stadium. They are the most indebted club in Europe right now, with £850m-£900m of debt on the books. They could get to a point where they are seventh, eighth, ninth in the league and their fans will say: ‘What is the point of us if we’re not involved in the top four? And if we get into the Europa League it only affects our ability to get into the top four next year, because of the number of games to be played.’

They don’t want to be involved in relegation, mid-table or the Europa League so the only solution is top four. Look at how Spurs were jeered by their own fans on their return to the stadium. They want to keep Harry Kane and, more than that, want [owner] Daniel Levy to buy players to win them trophies. That’s unrealistic with £850m of debt.

Fans’ demands for success means there is always pressure on owners to improve their playing stock. But things can go wrong when a club is ‘chasing the dream’.

Bolton Wanderers got themselves into huge debt by getting into Europe – what was then the Uefa Cup – bringing in players to finish sixth or seventh in the league. That money wasn’t being provided by the revenue streams of the football club. It was coming from a private investor, Eddie Davies. Fortunately for the club, he wrote off almost £100m of debt at the end of his life. What was left was £15m of debt, and they still very nearly went into administration. If not for an 11th-hour rescue, they would have been a Bury [the League Two club, which went into administration in November 2020].

Being a yo-yo club is probably the most sustainable model there is. For some teams, the height of their ambition is to finish 17th in the Premier League. If they don’t spend a fortune in player wages and transfers, they can go down but the next year they’ll probably come back up. This year, potentially, could be the first season we get all three relegated teams back into the Premier League. And I think that will happen increasingly often.

There is nothing to prevent any football club exercising their own spending restrictions but I worry about any economic model that has a forced element to it. A lot of people say it levels the playing field but I think it can remove competition. The only way you can do it is with an absolutely forced model where you have no relegation and promotion, a franchise system like the NFL. The franchise system works incredibly well. It’s fair in the distribution of players and the distribution of wealth. But US fans are used to that. They are not used to the jeopardy of competition, of relegation. That is what competition is about for fans in Europe.

A limit on transfer fees would prevent a club without any financial limits coming in and upsetting the market completely. A transfer value ceiling would inevitably lead to lower wages, which would make it easier to rely on the traditional income streams of broadcast, sponsorship, attendance and hospitality. I do think this will be the next phase of Financial Fair Play.

Sustainability in the community
From a purely financial perspective, sustainability in business used to mean being solvent. We know that football isn’t like any other business. In football, there is a nod to wealth sharing, commonwealth – the almost socialist ideal where the richer members of society help the more impoverished members of society. That’s a worthy aim in any society but whether it’s more than a nod in football is debatable. Many lower in the pyramid would argue it’s gesture politics.

Going forward, in business generally, I think it will include several other things: sustainability through social responsibility; sustainability in the economy of the wider community; and environmental sustainability.

Anyone who has tried to get investment in a start-up recently knows that those elements of sustainability are high on the agenda for investors. Governments around the world are forcing investors to look at whether the companies they plan to invest in are thinking about these things.

I live six miles away from Nailsworth, where [League Two team] Forest Green Rovers are based. We can look at their business model and say it’s sustainable in this wider sense: their ground is sustainable, the way they water their pitch is sustainable, the way they are a vegan club – it shows there are ways to make it sustainable. But we’re talking about a stadium of 2,500. Whether you can do that on a larger scale is open to question. It hasn’t been done yet.

My club is Bolton Wanderers. As soon as they were promoted this year, they talked about linking back to the community. The owners of Bolton Wanderers have had their most successful periods when they have linked to the community. Andrea Radrizzani did a very smart thing when he took over Leeds United. He bought back Elland Road, Leeds United’s football ground. That was a real sign to the community that he was thinking about them and wanted to include them.

The Milton Friedman model of economics is free markets and profit maximisation and perhaps this is most prevalent in football. It is a branch of economics still preached and practised in America, which is where the European Super League ideas were born. I think it surprised them [the US owners] that it doesn’t truly work in football if you don’t consider the community. The European Super League situation showed us about the importance of thinking about the community.

Super League not dead
I don’t think the idea of a European Super League is dead. If you’re a property developer and you want to build 200 houses, you ask for 300. There’s a natural reaction against the proposal and you demur. Ultimately though you end up with the 200 houses you originally wanted, but it looks like you’ve compromised.

A lot of it [for the six English clubs involved] was a reaction against the number of games in the Premier League and the new format Champions League. Is it a bad thing to want a reduction? Probably not. If you really care about player welfare, having fewer games is important. So let’s say they go down to 18 teams in the Premier League. There are also too many games in Europe now. So do they also get fewer games in the Champions League? Does it go down the route of a smaller, single Champions League for the elite teams, bringing in the French and German teams not involved [in the Super League plan], and a Champions League II for the others? That is, in effect, a Uefa-led European Super League.

I didn’t agree with the Super League but I am in favour of fewer games in the Premier League and fewer games in Europe. If they were two outcomes of the Super League proposal, without resulting in a Super League, I think that would be a good thing.

You have to be careful not to view what happened in England as indicative what the rest of Europe thinks. The English response was probably more in line with how fans see things in Germany, even though they have fan ownership there. But I don’t think Real Madrid fans are as against the idea of a European Super League as some of the English fans were.

I think Manchester United fans would rather play Burnley than the third-best team in Italy. They have a grounding in the history of their club and where it came from. Even though they may see themselves as the biggest club in England, they have a sense of unity with the Bolton Wanderers fan, the Burnley fan or the Forest Green fan.

But I don’t fully buy into some of what is being said at the moment by fans about club ownership. As soon as a club becomes a plc it stops becoming a fans’ club in the traditional way they view it. You could argue, though, that that was the point where it became an opportunity to become a fans’ club and they didn’t take it. United fans could have bought shares, and they didn’t in enough numbers.

Pressure on the collective
The biggest challenge going forward for European football will be maximising traditional revenue streams through the collective bargaining model and that model is going to come under threat as our viewing habits change.

What we are all doing as individuals is creating our own TV channels with content that we want. It will get to the point where you turn on your device and you have your own channel there, based on things you’ve watched and things you’ve saved, with really intuitive personalised content. It won’t be the bland online personalisation we see now, where you get still get an advert for 12 months because you looked at something online and may have even in fact bought it. It will be much smarter than that. The OTT platforms have realised they’ll need to buy almost as much content as traditional linear channels, not less, to cater for this.

As a result of that, some clubs will realise they have more power than other clubs. If I’m Manchester United, I want to sell my product directly to a fan in Singapore. If I’m Liverpool, I want to sell my product to a fan in Japan. This level of personalisation will put a strain on the collective bargaining model and while the overseas Premier League revenue realignment argument was put to bed a few years back, it will inevitably resurface.

Are the regulators regulating?
Fifa should be the global regulator of the game. That is their designated role. We are in a mess partly because we allowed Fifa to become what it is. We have cleared out the yard, to some extent. Not through prosecution but through minor slaps of the wrist and the fact that a lot of those involved have since passed away. Having cleared that up, their role was to go on the front foot and be a better regulator of the game in the world.

If Fifa is not doing it, who is going to remind them? And if it isn’t going to be Fifa, what is an independent regulator going to look like? Who will be on it? We have seen the difficulty of getting independent regulators in sport. It’s a hell of a job. And independent regulators can be influenced so they are no longer independent.

I also think Uefa have taken their eye off the ball of being a governing body for European football. Uefa does do a huge amount of good in football but they are too keenly concentrated on being a commercial entity. There wasn’t a great deal wrong with the old Champions League model. I think the latest iteration is the 13th or 14th version. It needs to adapt. But growing it isn’t necessarily the right way.

The situation for the Football League and the Premier League is that if they play on a night which is a Champions League or Europa League night, they get fined. Uefa increased the number of game nights. It is the only situation where Uefa fines you for a problem that you haven’t caused. They have. That’s over-extending your remit in my opinion, even though they do a great job in terms of the marketing, packaging and selling of the TV and sponsorship rights.

There is a huge tension between Uefa and Fifa. As far as Uefa is concerned, Fifa has parked its tanks on their lawn with the Club World Cup. That’s a club competition and should have nothing to do with Fifa. Uefa tried to park their tanks on Fifa’s lawn by trying to globalise the Nations League, taking it to the other confederations as an idea. A lot of that is down to personalities, not function.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed May 26, 2021 11:47 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 9:21 pm
UEFA open formal disciplinary proceedings against the remaining super League rebels Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, who have all qualified for the Champions League next season

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57249562
A very punchy retort from Real Madrid, Bacelona and Juventus

STATEMENT FROM BARCELONA, JUVENTUS, REAL MADRID
26 MAY 2021

SHARE
STATEMENT FROM BARCELONA, JUVENTUS, REAL MADRID
BARCELONA, JUVENTUS AND REAL MADRID REMAIN COMMITTED TO MODERNIZING FOOTBALL THROUGH AN OPEN DIALOGUE WITH UEFA

FC Barcelona, Juventus FC and Real Madrid CF wish to express their absolute rejection of the insistent coercion that UEFA has been maintaining towards three of the most relevant institutions in the history of football. This alarming attitude constitutes a flagrant breach of the decision of the courts of justice, which have already made a clear statement warning UEFA to refrain from taking any action that could penalise the founding clubs of the Super League while the legal proceedings are ongoing.

Therefore, the opening of disciplinary proceedings by UEFA is incomprehensible and is a direct attack against the rule of law that we, the citizens of the European Union, have democratically built up, while constituting a lack of respect toward the authority of the courts of justice themselves.

From the beginning, the Super League has been promoted with the aim of improving the situation of European football, through permanent dialogue with UEFA and with the objective to increase the interest in the sport and to offer fans the best possible show. This objective has to be achieved in a framework of sustainability and solidarity, especially in a precarious economic situation such as the one many clubs in Europe are currently experiencing.

Instead of exploring ways of modernizing football through open dialogue, UEFA expects us to withdraw the ongoing court proceedings that question their monopoly over European football. Barcelona, Juventus and Real Madrid, all of them more than a century old, will not accept any form of coercion or intolerable pressure, while they remain strong in their willingness to debate, respectfully and through dialogue, the urgent solutions that football currently needs.

Either we reform football or we will have to watch its inevitable downfall.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed May 26, 2021 11:51 pm

In the morning KPMG release their annual club valuation report for Europe's biggest clubs, as is the way these days they have released to to the press early = this is what the BBC have to say about it

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57 ... l/57258468

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Thu May 27, 2021 12:18 am

I see they're still feeling belligerent in Spain and Italy

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 12:24 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 6:23 pm
Speaking of Leicester this is a really interesting thread from Simon Chadwick, which relates to old themes here re Geopolitics, sports washing and legitimisation - it looks at the owning family's beneficial relationship with the Thai government and royal family and how the clubs relative success reflects positively on Thailand but is not really tarnished by some of Thailand's more controversial activities

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 3341728776
When talking about clubs with foreign owners we tend to focus on the US. Russia, the Middle East and China. There has been investment from other countries too but as far as Thailand is concerned only one has been successful - this article from DW.com looks at Thai ownership and why Leicester is a success story - there is much to learn hear for other foreign investors - and perhaps even some heart to be taken for Burnley fans about their new ownership (though they are not billionaires according to the usual sources

Thai ownership of European football clubs sees mixed results
Winning clubs have been able to promote strong investment ties between Europe and Thailand. However, sports analysts say a successful strategy means having realistic goals and building community support.

Date 25.05.2021 - Author David Hutt

It has been a rollercoaster few weeks for the Thai owners of the England-based Leicester City Football Club.

Earlier this month, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, the CEO of travel retail group King Power International, celebrated Leicester City's first victory in the FA cup, the top domestic cup competition in England.

The big win comes after the team finished in the top six for the last two seasons, and Srivaddhanaprabha has become a success story among Thai football club owners.

Simon Chadwick, director of Eurasian sport at France's Emlyon Business School, told DW that Leicester City's story could be an outlier.

"Looking at the picture as a whole, it's not such a positive impression," Chadwick said. "Thai owners haven't been bad, but they haven't achieved the level of success as Leicester, nor have they gone about their business in the same way," he added.

How did Thailand get involved in European soccer?
Rich Thais began eyeing European football clubs after former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who had been ousted by a military coup the previous year, bought England's Manchester City in 2007.

But his tenure lasted just over a year and was tainted by controversy.

Sven-Goran Eriksson, the club's manager during most of Thaksin's brief reign, asserted in his autobiography that the former Thai prime minister "didn't understand football."

Another success story was the Thai chairman and joint owner of Oxford United, Sumrith Thanakarnjanasuth, who bought into the lower-league club in 2018 and saw his side narrowly miss out on promotion to the championship this month after losing a semifinal playoff.

"Generally, I don't think there is a homogeneous approach to ownership based on where investors are coming from," Ben Marlow, a Singapore-based managing director of the sporting analytics firm Twenty First Group, told DW.

What are the keys to success?
"We have tended to see success follow those investors who spend sufficient time up front, defining their objectives and identifying clubs that are suitable through realistically assessing what it would take for a club to achieve those objectives based on full understanding of the situation today," Marlow said.

"The Leicester owners are a good example of that, having been careful in their pursuit of their objectives and through investing over a long term time horizon," he added.

Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the founder of King Power group, who was killed in a helicopter crash at King Power stadium in Leicester, was able to build a "positive ownership legacy with fans at the center," said James Skinner, the director of the Institute for Sport Business at Loughborough University,

"While they have invested in on-field performance, they have also worked off the pitch by building strong links into the community," Skinner added.

In 2017, the King Power Group also bought the struggling Belgium side Oud-Heverlee Leuven, which has since become a mainstay in Belgium's first league.

According to Chadwick, this fits the group's long-term plan to purchase a struggling team from a provincial city but with long-term fan engagement.

Chadwick said the King Power Group could soon expand its ownership to other European countries, targeting clubs similar in stature and history in the Italian or Spanish leagues

Ownership mixes sports with politics
Much attention has been paid to how Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain — essentially owned by the Emirati and Qatari states — are key to the Middle Eastern countries building "soft power" connections in Europe.

But Thai owners of European soccer teams provide similar opportunities for the Thai government, especially as Thai investment in Europe grows.

In mid-2020, the Tourism Authority of Thailand partnered with Leicester City to promote its "Thailand Smiles With You" campaign.

The campaign aimed to boost recognition of Thailand’s tourism industry, which has been decimated by the pandemic. The slogan was printed on the front of the team's jersey for the rest of the season.

The signing ceremony was presided over by Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

Leicester City's "international network provides a strong outlet to promote Thailand to the world," the prime minister said.

In 2020, Thailand’s Tourism Ministry partnered with Oxford United to advertise its "Amazing Thailand" campaign, replacing a sponsorship deal with Singha beer, a Thai brand.

Srivaddhanaprabha's connection with Thailand's military government has drawn criticism during an ongoing clampdown on pro-democracy protesters.

"Essentially Leicester City is funded by and owned by a family that is complicit in civil unrest, military interventions inside Thailand, and nobody says anything about this," Chadwick said.

"If this was Saudi Arabia or Qatar or China, you could imagine it would be labeled 'sportwashing,'" he added.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by aggi » Thu May 27, 2021 11:39 am

Interesting to see that Stoke have written down the value of their players by £30m due to covid. Seems a slightly dubious one, I suspect it's more with an eye on future FFP compliance.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 12:23 pm

aggi wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 11:39 am
Interesting to see that Stoke have written down the value of their players by £30m due to covid. Seems a slightly dubious one, I suspect it's more with an eye on future FFP compliance.
I seem, to think quite a few have done that in the championship, though not by anything approaching that amount. Another reason why Derby's approach to amortisation was decidedly risky, it wiill be interesting when their restated accounts come out - though we have never seen them for 2018/19 and 2019/20.

Such write downs, are likely to be a feature of 2020/21 accounts given the depressed transfer mark (aided by the number of free transfers available), and the huge revenue drops right across the game. Though I doubt it will make the asking price for players more realistic and accommodating for clubs like ours.
Last edited by Chester Perry on Thu May 27, 2021 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 12:28 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 11:51 pm
In the morning KPMG release their annual club valuation report for Europe's biggest clubs, as is the way these days they have released to to the press early = this is what the BBC have to say about it

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57 ... l/57258468
Well here it is: KPMG's 2021 Football Valuation report - Europes Elite

introduction - https://footballbenchmark.com/library/f ... elite_2021

summary - https://footballbenchmark.com/library/p ... pean_clubs

the full report https://www.footballbenchmark.com/docum ... 202021.pdf

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 12:37 pm

Day 4 for the series of Interviews by SportsBusiness inspired by UEFA's imminent Congress on the Future of European Football it is much shorter than those which have come before, but is just as thoughtful - interesting that Stefan Szymanski effectively agrees with my postualtion that the Premier League is on route to becoming the super League by default

Szymanski: Relegation causes most of football’s financial problems, but I wouldn’t get rid of it
Frank Dunne - May 27, 2021
  • There is a general trend towards one dominant league in a global market
  • Football has had ‘thousands’ of failed businesses but the clubs survive
  • Allowing fans to vote for national administrations would help to create more accountability
SportBusiness has conducted a series of interviews with senior figures from across European football asking them to define a ‘sustainable’ economic model for the game on the continent. Over the course of this week, representatives from leagues, federations, clubs and confederations, as well as independent economic experts, will outline the challenges facing professional football and the remedies that they would like to see implemented.

The fourth article in the series comes from author and renowned expert on the economics of football Stefan Szymanski. Szymanski is the Stephen J. Galetti professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan and his books on football include: Soccernomics; Money and Football: A Soccernomics Guide; and Winners and Losers: The Business Strategy of Football.

A proven system
European football dominates the globe. And it has become more dominant in the last 30 years. It has the biggest clubs, attracts the best players, has the best training and development systems. No doubt there are challenges ahead, but this is a proven system that delivers.

Fans were rightly enraged by the European Super League proposal, since it threatened to do away with the promotion and relegation system, which is the cornerstone of the system’s strength. But the biggest problem is that the big clubs from different countries do not play each other often enough. The ESL proposal was just the latest version of an idea that has been around for 40 years, at least, and it keeps coming back, because these games would be very attractive.

The challenge is to find a way to create a competition which enables these teams to compete without abandoning the principle of participation on sporting merit. This is not about the clubs themselves – it’s the players. Seeing them play is what would attract a vast global audience.

If it proves impossible to expand competitions like the Uefa Champions League to incorporate enough of these games, what you are likely to see is the continuation of a trend we’ve seen in the last 20 years, which is the economic dominance of one domestic league.

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.

Sustainability is a bit of a weasel word. It doesn’t have a precise definition, and really can be used to advocate for almost anything you want. As an economist, I don’t think the survival of any particular business is important – what matters is that businesses meet consumer (yes, I do mean fans) demand in a way that is competitive and cost minimising, so that fans get the best possible service given the price, and lowest possible price given the service.

In competitive markets, businesses that do not achieve these objectives exit the market. And I don’t see a problem with this.

I think people often fail to realise that in the world of football there have been literally thousands of failed businesses that have exited the market, while the football clubs have survived. Ironically, most fans will tell you that football is not a business, and they are right, precisely because when the business fails the club survives.

I have undertaken extensive research on financial failure in football over recent decades, and the data leads me to conclude that financial failure is not just a consequence of bad management, although that may play a role. It is a consequence of the promotion and relegation system.

Teams almost never go bankrupt in the top tier, and most financial failure occurs not long after a relegation event. Basically, relegation requires teams to cut their budgets in line with the loss of revenue, and this is incredibly hard to do. Teams in American major leagues don’t go bankrupt because they are never relegated (the LA Dodgers baseball team went bust [in 2011] for reasons related to the owners’ divorce; it is the exception that proves the rule).

I’m not in favour of getting rid of promotion and relegation, but I think people need to accept that a degree of financial instability is an inevitable consequence of the system.

The governance system of football is based around national leagues, subordinated to national associations, which are federated into regional and global administrative systems. This has had two advantages: (1) ensuring effective and open competition among clubs thanks to promotion and relegation within a fixed hierarchy of leagues; and (2) release by clubs of players to represent their national teams.

I disagree with many things Uefa and Fifa say and do, but without the structure we will sink into an American system which will not deliver for the consumer/fan.

The next great step for football is to democratise the governance structures: allowing fans to vote for national administrations which help to secure more accountability and more transparency.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 1:35 pm

This is an excellent article from Matt Slater looking at the rise (and the reasons for it) of Saturday's Champions League finalists. So much to take from it

https://theathletic.com/2611768/2021/05 ... ed_article

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 2:27 pm

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

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

I will listen to it later

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 7:23 pm

A thoughtful piece from Miguel Delaney in the Independent about the politics and discussion that is likely to take place around this weekend's Champion's League final

‘Intensely political’ Champions League final weekend leaves future of European football in balance
This weekend’s showpiece is a “victory lap” for Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin after the doomed Super League, but he must now decide over whether to pursue reforms

Miguel Delaney - Chief Football Writer - 9 hours ago

Aleksander Ceferin will sit down to a series of official meetings around the Champions League final this weekend, but it is the many “unofficial meetings” that might be far more influential. The Uefa president is going to have a lot of people coming up to him when he is at dinner or at a bar in Porto, all looking to whisper in his ear. Champions League final weekend is described by many involved as the most “intensely political” period in football in normal circumstances, akin to a Roman court.

These aren't normal circumstances. All of that has been amplified by the Super League crisis, and its ongoing fallout.

The feeling going into this weekend is that it will be a “victory lap” for Ceferin. He is credited as having saved European football, and the return of supporters to the Champions League final - the fixture that was put under most direct threat by the Super League - will be seen as a crowning moment.

The questions should really start when it comes to crowning the winners. First of all, Ceferin is going to have to personally hand over that historic European Cup to one of the Super League conspirators. Added to that, both have been sanctioned for Financial Fair Play breaches in the last few years, while both have ownership models that many other figures in European football have expressed concerns about.

Manchester City would not even have been involved in the competition, of course, had their lawyers not succeeded in overturning some of the penalties for their last breach at the court of arbitration for sport. That entire episode prompted a public relations war, with the English champions’ hierarchy raging about perceived European agendas against them.

It is highly unlikely Ceferin is any way bitter about that, or the idea of handing City this symbolic trophy. His relationship with the club is said to have greatly improved over the past year - particularly after one meeting at the Etihad - to the point there is a real cordiality. Some of that could be seen in his message of gratitude when they became the first to formally withdraw from the Super League, after Chelsea declared their intention to do so.

His relationship with some of the other super clubs as institutions is as strong as ever.

Most are about to get what they want, after all.

They are about to get what many in European football are describing as a “Super Champions League” - merely an institutionalised Super League, with Uefa’s stamp of approval.

One of the conditions of the “super weak” punishments for the nine restored rebels was that they had to sign up to support the Champions League plans for after 2024. That is what many sources say is “effectively the Super League by the back door”, and what they wanted anyway.

Some at the top of the game have been stunned by how quickly Uefa have just charged ahead with all this, as if nothing has happened - and against the stated wishes of many supporters as well as players and coaches. The spirit of solidarity - so brilliantly articulated by Ceferin on that Monday - seems to have faded at the very top.

It is why this weekend shouldn’t so much be a victory lap, but a forum to again ask the road that European football is on.

The key question is whether a unique opportunity for true reform has already been squandered, to instead only strengthen the status quo, and actually institutionalise the problems that led to the Super League in the first place.

They haven’t gone away. It is why it is timely that one of those official meetings will be Thursday’s end-of-season Club Advisory Platform. Organised by the European Leagues body and hosted by La Liga, it will feature the heads of all the main competitions, from Richard Masters to Javier Tebas.

The issue also goes way beyond some of the more unpopular changes to the Champions League, such as the co-efficient-based qualifying spots, the nature of the group stage or even extra games.

Of far greater consequence is that, as it stands, 30% of the prize money from the Champions League will be based on previous performance. Clubs who have won it a certain number of times will get more just by being in it, in what is described as almost being like “royalties”. It means that the likes of Leicester City and Atalanta would greatly struggle to get as much as the Super League clubs, no matter how they do.

“It’s money just for showing up,” one source says. “It’s insane.”

Added to that is Uefa’s £5bn refinancing proposal from Centricus, which would allow clubs to borrow loans at low interest rates. While that will negate one of the main motivations for the Super League for some of the clubs - the need for short-term cash - it has simultaneously been likened to the JP Morgan fund at the core of the breakaway competition.

It is easy to see what would happen from all of this: more money to the biggest clubs, and institutionalisation of the financial disparity that is so disrupting.

That unequal distribution of resources remains the source of almost all of European football’s problems. That applies to everything from more predictable domestic leagues to outsized clubs looking to break away, as well as the game becoming attractive to interests - both financial and political - that aren't primarily concerned with the welfare of the sport.

It is no coincidence that a pandemic-stretched season has seen the two clubs who spent the most last summer - and who have such well-funded owners - reach the campaign’s showpiece finale.

Rather than attempting to reform such problems, Uefa are in danger of ratifying them.

Through that, the European governing body may go down an entirely different route to the domestic leagues, where the Super League has prompted a genuine spirit of change.

It raises even bigger questions.

Among them is why Uefa have remained so beholden to this “Super Champions League” plan, and why there is still such a strict alliance with the European Club Association [ECA]. Many figures in continental football believe there was also a missed opportunity to restructure the latter body as an organisation run by the small- and medium-sized clubs.

“There might be new names at the top of the ECA, but the nature doesn’t change,” one source says. “Clubs will always ultimately pursue their individual interests. They don’t have the same concern for the ecosystem - and they still have the power.

That still begs the question of why Ceferin isn’t pushing through reforms he is supposed to be in favour of.

Some feel it may be a hangover from his strategic approach to managing Uefa over the last few years, which was mainly to deal with Juventus’ Andrea Agnelli and five or six major clubs. That was despite many people imploring him to consult a wider base of people in football - which is why the unofficial meetings of this week may be so important - only for Ceferin to insist otherwise. The thinking was that he could control the big clubs, redistribute a good portion of the money and keep the rest happy - only for that to blow up in his face. It was just the Super League explosion was quickly followed by an implosion of similar scale. The whole situation ended up working to Ceferin’s advantage, seemingly strengthening his position, but many of the wider forces are still at play.

“He probably doesn’t want to have to do this,” one figure who knows Ceferin well says. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to have funds for the big clubs to bail them out, but he thinks he’s locked into this system.”

The Super League collapse should have offered the opportunity to break that very system. That is why there is such frustration among some key football figures.

The Super League and post-2024 discussions aren’t really watershed moments in themselves, but really reflect the inevitable tremors as the game transitions from the football of now to the football of the future, 10 to 15 years from now. That period will inevitably involve shifts in technology and viewing habits, in terms of how people consume the game. Some of this did come up in the Super League talks, even if figures like Andrea Agnelli and Florentino Perez wildly spun the information for their own purposes.

The key issue is that this is going to lead to another land grab, especially with the “immature” football markets where there is huge scope for growth, like the USA and parts of Asia. There are three major groups eyeing this for different reasons. They are the super clubs, Fifa and Uefa. There are different potential routes to that - a breakaway Super League; a reformed Champions League; an expanded Club World Cup.

So much of the current politics, and principally those around Uefa’s premier competition, come from this.

It is why the schedule and calendar have been such topics of debate. The various groups are essentially fighting over the same spaces: the players and the calendar.

This is also where many in the game raise questions about the roles of Uefa and Fifa. They are governing bodies, but they are also competition organisers, that oddly put them in competition with some of their stakeholders as well as each other - while being able to set rules for the domestic competitions.

“That can lead to contradictions and conflicts,” in the words of one involved figure.

There is still suspicion about Fifa’s view on the Super League, with Tebas the most prominent to articulate the view they actually supported it. It is meanwhile definitively known that the global body see the amount of money the Champions League makes and want their own version in an expanded Club World Cup.

The European competition is responsible for most of Uefa’s revenues, which come in at roughly £3bn a year.

Uefa have creditably set up a ‘Convention on the Future of European Football’ that is set to bring the various stakeholders together to discuss all this. General Secretary Giorgio Marchetti has meanwhile said there is plenty of time to discuss the proposed post-2024 changes before they’re implemented. It would be a huge positive if fan groups can use this convention for tangible actions to be taken.

Others believe the exercise is also an attempt to outmanoeuvre Fifa on the issues of the calendar and the Club World Cup.

The big clubs meanwhile ideally want their domestic league as well as a guaranteed Champions League place - with as much money up front as possible - and also an additional summer competition. Fifa would want that to be a Club World Cup every year.

It is why many in the game see an eventual compromise that involves this expanded Champions League, as well as a watered-down Club World Cup that would almost be the “Champions League on tour” while replacing the International Champions Cup.

It’s easy to see how that would go, too, though. The major clubs would be earning so much money, on top of the Champions League itself, that it only further fosters the sense of a Super League by another name.

No one else would be able to keep up.

Surveying all of this with interest are a number of special-purpose acquisition funds specifically set up to look at opportunities in football. The space will open for private equity.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” one source says.

It is all why there is such a need for regulation, for reform.

The opportunity is there. Whether the will is there remains to be seen. People are going to be coming at Ceferin from all angles this weekend. Whatever happens will decide the direction of the future of European football.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 7:30 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 2:27 pm
Today's Business of Sport podcast talks to Tracey Crouch MP who is leading the governments fan led review of the game (which has actually started - though unfortunately much of it does not look like much of it will take place in the public sphere as none of it yet has been on Parliament tv, which I find scandalous)

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 8:16 pm

Tariq Panja for the New York Times with the seemingly inevitable tale that the Post 2024 Champions League is likely to have one game semi finals and the final in the same week at the end of the season in one city - obvious from a UEFA perspective - there is the calendar space (all those extra games) and it becomes a broadcasting and sponsorship event with the host city also bidding for all those fans to stay in hotels where prices have been jacked up substantially - naturally the fans do not like it it because less fans will see the semi-finals (no home or way game as per current format) and the costs will be substantially higher - also the fans, players and coaches have already said they don't want the extra games in the earler stages.

Champions League Is Considering a Final Four in One City
MAY 27, 2021

PORTO, Portugal — Last summer, with the coronavirus raging through Europe, leaders at European soccer’s governing body huddled to find a way to salvage the Champions League, one of the game’s most popular competitions and among its biggest sources of revenue for its elite clubs.

With borders closed to all but essential travel, the Champions League’s traditional home-and-away format was abandoned and replaced by an eight-team knockout tournament in a single city, Lisbon. The new format, born out of crisis, was a hit, produced thrilling matches, soaked in jeopardy, and huge global television audiences.

The changes proved so popular with Champions League organizers, in fact, that they are giving serious consideration to incorporating some of them permanently.

As Chelsea and Manchester City prepare to meet Saturday in this season’s final, leaders of European soccer’s governing body, which runs the Champions League, are preparing to unveil a plan to change the format of the final stages of the competition. They have alighted on a “champions week” concept in which two winner-take-all semifinals and the final will be played in one city, and supplemented by a schedule of concerts, games and other events.

Champions League officials refused to discuss proposed changes on the record this week, but interviews with several officials involved in the discussions confirmed that the idea is under serious consideration. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not formally discussed the idea with the clubs that would be affected by the changes.

The concept of a so-called champions week, which would produce the focused drama of the final weekend of a tennis major or college basketball’s Final Four, has been under consideration in the past. Soccer’s leaders have for years cast envious glances toward the N.F.L.’s management of the Super Bowl in the hope of emulating its week of pregame festivities for its own blue-ribbon event. But fearful of disrupting soccer’s traditions — and of endangering any broadcast revenue by losing two semifinal games — they have shied away from making any major changes.

Until the pandemic changed everything.

Talks about a champions week gathered pace after the emergency event last year in Lisbon. Executives from the participating clubs spoke positively about the event and — crucially — reviewed data that showed the television audiences held up with a neutral-site, single-elimination format for the biggest games.

For European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, which has already announced the most fundamental changes to the format of the Champions League in a generation, there is an important financial calculation to be made. The Champions League semifinals, which are currently played in home-and-away ties in the participants’ home stadiums, are some of the most sought-after television properties in soccer.

“At the end of the day, you are talking about removing two fixtures between two of the best four teams in the competition,” said Julian Aquilina, a television analyst at the research company Enders Analysis.

According to senior UEFA executives, though, the estimated audiences for the semifinals are large enough to mitigate most of the losses of losing the second legs. The change would most likely be cheered by leaders of Europe’s domestic leagues, who have long complained about the encroachment on the soccer calendar of more and more European games, and possibly even by advocates for the growing women’s game, if their own showcase final was pulled onto a bigger stage as part of a weeklong celebration.

The plan most likely would see other events, including concerts, legends games and a youth final, take place in the host city. The week would culminate, as always, in the final on Saturday night.

“The sponsors will love it,” said Tim Crow, a consultant who has advised several major companies involved in events like the World Cup and the Olympics. “The Super Bowl model is like that, when it’s not about the game, it’s about the week.”

Crow said the event’s current format means attention generally shifts to the Champions League’s denouement only on the day before the final.

“This way you have a much more concentrated and longer period of activation,” he said. “The big thing in sports at the moment is landing somewhere and spending concentrated time there. This is very much of its time — it gives a lot more depth to it.”

Any changes would not come into effect until at least 2024, when the new Champions League format begins. UEFA would not be the first regional body to reshape its biggest club championship; Concacaf, the governing body for soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean, recently announced that it would abandon a two-legged club final as part of a series of changes.

The first signs that UEFA favored a change to the end stages of the Champions League emerged after last year’s matches in Lisbon. The organization’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, said at the time that one-day semifinals like those played last season would lead to more attractive games, arguing that two-legged ties too often produced contests stifled by risk-averse tactics.

“If it is one match, if one team scores, then the other has to score as soon as possible,” Ceferin told Reuters last year. “If it is two-legged system, then there is still time to win the next match.”

Discussions around the future of European soccer have been furiously debated for more than a year, but they grew more urgent last month after 12 top clubs began an aborted effort to break away and create their own competition. Most in Europe saw the idea as a direct attack on the Champions League, and a grab for its huge revenues.

That effort ended in a humiliating retreat for the founding members only 48 hours later, but the repercussions have continued.

UEFA is caught between the demands of the biggest clubs, who want more of soccer’s income for themselves, and the desire of hundreds of other teams, and their fans, who are demanding a fairer distribution of the riches.

On Thursday, Ceferin used a speech at an event to yet again denounce the breakaway clubs, which included this year’s two Champions League finalists, but also to remind the soccer community that its success relies on remaining connected.

“You can rest assured UEFA is committed more than ever to supporting the entire football pyramid,” Ceferin said. “We want to maximize passion, not profits.”

Still, money is at the heart of the game’s ills. The pandemic has exposed mismanagement at many clubs, and many fear its economic consequences will only widen the gap between rich and poor.

UEFA published a financial analysis last week that predicted the continent’s top-flight clubs would sustain losses of more than 8 billion euros (nearly $10 billion) as a result of the coronavirus. Manchester City, the Premier League champion, has attributed a loss of nearly $180 million to the pandemic, while the Italian champion Inter Milan, which recently secured its first domestic title in a decade, now faces a fire sale to make ends meet.

Faced with the continentwide cash crunch, and perhaps as an olive branch to the erstwhile rebels, UEFA has entered into discussions with two private equity funds to raise as much as 6 billion euros in rescue financing for European clubs. The money would be borrowed against future revenues, including the billions produced annually by the Champions League, and provided to clubs through a type of rating system based on their likelihood of repaying it through appearance in the biggest competitions.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 9:04 pm

Sam Wallace in the Telegraph reminding us all of the financial prudence in the air for aging former star players at the end of their contracts - not that many seem to be paying any attention to it, and their agents even less so - but then again since Peter Risdale stopped negotiating contracts no one gets anything they didn't ask for - isn't that right Seth?

Al we need now is for fans to recognise it too.

Bad news Sergio Ramos: the days of luxurious post-peak contracts are a fading memory
SAM WALLACE MAY 27, 2021

Rejected by Spain, soon to be out of contract at Real Madrid, Sergio Ramos, inked-up and hacked off, feels like the pirate captain without a ship or crew to call his own, shaking his cutlass at the gulls on the dock and drawing puzzled looks from the tourists.

It is hard to imagine that the hitherto most feared defender in the world, who would mis-sell his own granny PPI for three points away at Elche, finds himself on the outside of a game which once lionised him and his often breathtaking cynicism. Of course, all great careers must end, but what is notable about the current big beasts of the world game is their reluctance to accept that the party is over. Got a big pre-Covid contract? Treasure it, because the game has changed.

Ramos is holding out for a two-year deal at Real when only one-year on reduced terms is on offer, and you do wonder if the 35-year-old is reading the room right. The Real of Florentino Perez are broke, with more than €1 billion (£865 million) of indebtedness even before the failed European Super League putsch which has lost them more than just their stake. The looming Uefa investigation may recommend a large fine and the financial catastrophe of a two-year Champions League ban. By the end of it they may not be able to afford the services of Juande Ramos, let alone Sergio Ramos.

For their captain, who seems to think that it is still 2018, the renewal has come at the wrong time. The once great assets of the world game, and their attendant contracts, now look absurd on the balance sheets of their struggling clubs. How much Real must wish that the contracts of Marcelo and Gareth Bale did not have another year to run, or that Eden Hazard did not have another three years. Even in the moment Hazard’s deal was agreed in 2019, it felt like it belonged to another era. A tuxedo fitting for the family dog as the bailiffs come up the driveway.

It is not just Real either – at debt-heavy Juventus the pressure of Cristiano Ronaldo’s last year in Serie A weighs heavy. They cannot afford him, especially if the same Uefa sanctions are to befall them as threaten their fellow conspirators, Real and Barcelona. In Catalonia, little to nothing has been heard from new president Joan Laporta since his acceptance speech in early March as he tries to piece together a broken financial model. What kind of pay cut will Lionel Messi have to take to stay? And to make it work what kind of multi-value will have to be wrung from Messi and the Messi brand in the years to come? Veteran playmaker? Commercial powerhouse? Club ambassador? Chief groundsman?

Clubs have often carried once-great players in the last years of major contracts, but never have those liabilities been such a burden as now. Manchester City have dispensed with Sergio Aguero without a second glance and it is no surprise he is yet in a position to announce a new club, given the current market for 32-year-olds. Even Raheem Sterling, with two years on his deal and still just 26, does not feel like he has the upper hand in that conversation. City may decide they can afford to wait another year.

Running a deal that low for a player of that age would be unthinkable two years ago, but the dynamic is changing and now the accent is less on protection of the asset at all costs and rather more on not being left exposed with a declining player on big terms. The question seems not to be simply the length of the contract, but in some cases its effect – signalling to the player the final summit of his financial success in the game. Does that security invite a sense of complacency?

United are taking their time with Paul Pogba, who now seems likely to end this season with just one year left on his current deal. The market for a player of his global commercial appeal and mixed on-pitch track record was always something of a mirage successfully talked up by his agent, but now not even Mino Raiola can conjure the illusion.

At Arsenal, too, it feels like the weather has changed on their big summer 2020 decisions. Knowing what they do, one year on would they give Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang another three-year contract at £250,000 a week? Would they even grant Willian access to the complimentary training ground canteen buffet?

None of the world’s biggest clubs can survive without taking a long-term view on their major assets and in some cases that costs money. There will always be mistakes, and some bigger than others. The seven-year deal that Chelsea awarded to Kepa Arrizabalaga is so long that they might even redevelop Stamford Bridge before he is legally obliged to clear his locker. David de Gea’s last deal at United, agreed with urgency in late 2019, made him one of the Premier League’s biggest earners, but form and finances mean the club would never have agreed to it on those terms one year later.

Real agreed a single year’s extension for Luka Modric which was signed this week after negotiations that seemed to take longer than the duration of the new deal itself. Liverpool are in a dance with Mohamed Salah over his next deal with two years remaining and no serious options for their leading goalscorer. Sadio Mane’s contract expires the same summer and, while the two-year threshold used to be the moment for decisions, now it feels prudent to wait and see how the next eight months unfold.

Of all the big names in play, Neymar got his big deal this month at 29 and the three years left for Harry Kane at Tottenham Hotspur currently represents good value for his club. Although you wonder whether chairman Daniel Levy would agree a compromise that involves a lucrative extension. They would not be the first club pricked into action by fears of a forced departure, only later to wonder why they acted so hastily.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 9:33 pm

Simon Chadwick and his long time research partner Paul Widdop look at the two Champions Leagues finalists with their distinct view of the world for TheConversation.com

Champions League final 2021 – a game of two sides powered by gas and oil
May 27, 2021 4.37pm BST
Authors
Simon Chadwick
Global Professor of Eurasian Sport | Director of Eurasian Sport, EM Lyon

Paul Widdop
Senior Lecturer in Sport Business, Leeds Beckett University

On the night of the 2021 UEFA Champions League Final, Chelsea and Manchester City will battle it out for European glory. Only one of the two English teams will walk away with the trophy – but despite the rivalry on the field, both sides have plenty in common off the pitch.

They were, for instance, part of a doomed attempt to usurp the very tournament they are trying to win, with the establishment of a European Super League. That plan, involving 12 of the biggest clubs in the world, collapsed in the face of unfiltered outrage from fans, pundits and politicians – and crucially, a change of heart at Chelsea and Manchester City.

The Super League house of cards seems to have truly started falling when Chelsea announced its intention to withdraw from the competition. Their move was followed a few hours later by a similar statement from City.

There have been reports that Chelsea’s U-turn was prompted by a telephone call from Russian president Vladimir Putin to his compatriot Roman Abramovich, the billionaire who owns the London club. Some media outlets have even suggested that Putin declared a super league would be “against the spirit of the fatherland”.

But however those decisions came to be made, the reality of the geopolitical and economic basis of European football is clear. And this is where the Champions League action becomes particularly interesting, especially in its associations with oil and gas.

Russia’s Gazprom – a corporation with origins as a state energy producer dating back to the old Soviet Union – has been a major sponsor of the competition since 2012, and has just announced a big new deal with UEFA.

Gazprom was privatised during the early 1990s reform period in Russia, but Putin’s ascent subsequently led to a majority of the company’s shares being taken back into state ownership. Gazprom later acquired a rival energy company, the oil firm Sibneft, owned at the time by Abramovich.

Gazprom, which is based in Putin’s home town of St Petersburg, also owns the local club, Zenit Saint Petersburg. The former president of Zenit is Alexander Dyukov, a man who is also president of the Russian Football Union. In addition, Dyukov is chief executive of Gazprom and, in the middle of the Super League debacle, he was elected to the executive committee of UEFA.

If Putin really did call Abramovich about the Super League, it could be seen as yet another episode in Russia’s engagement with football as a geopolitical and diplomatic tool.

For many years, some observers have wondered why an organisation that sells gas to governments sits alongside the likes of McDonald’s and Coca Cola as a Champions League sponsor. But the answer to this can be found in the way that Gazprom enables Russia to project soft power and build legitimacy through its associations with the world’s favourite game.

During his time as US president, Donald Trump was bullish towards Russian energy suppliers, and even imposed sanctions upon Gazprom. Trump claimed that Europe’s growing dependency on Russian energy supplies, especially in Germany (where Gazprom sponsors FC Schalke 04), constitutes a strategic threat to the continent’s security. The Joe Biden administration holds similar concerns.

But perhaps being a sponsor of the tournament and having a strong relationship with both UEFA and Chelsea isn’t enough. For Gazprom also continues to strengthen its relations with Abu Dhabi, the small Gulf state which, via a member of its royal family, owns a majority stake in Manchester City.

Gas goals
Like Russia, Abu Dhabi owns some of the world’s largest carbon fuel reserves. In this sense, the Champions League final will therefore be a game powered by gas and oil.

Over the last decade, relations between Russia and Abu Dhabi have strengthened, leading to a series of strategic agreements, the most significant of which was signed in 2018. Described as a watershed in bilateral relations, it covered all manner of issues in investment, trade, culture, space, tourism and security.

One outcome of this was the acquisition by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned Mubadala Investment Company of a $US271 million (£191 million), 44% stake in one of Gazprom’s subsidiaries. In 2019, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company then signed a strategic framework agreement with Gazprom to explore for and extract new oil reserves.

This led to a 2020 announcement that Gazprom and Mubadala will engage in technological cooperation in Siberia, where coincidentally Abramovich began building his gas powered fortune.

Come match day, most fans of City and Chelsea will not be overly concerned by the origins of the cash that has fuelled their clubs’ success. And with talk of a super league fading and many football fans hailing its defeat, some will see the Champions League Final as a victory parade for normality.

But this would be naive and misguided. For football has not merely been commercialised and industrialised over the last 30 years. It has also become intensely geopolitical, and sits at the heart of a complex global network of interests and investments. Indeed, for some powerful players, the sport has become a tactically astute means to extremely lucrative other ends – as epitomised by this year’s Champions League final.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 9:48 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 4:33 pm
Like me @UglyGame has a long held dislike (putting it mildly) of the concept of Socios fan tokens - in this thread he raises a excellent point in regard to it's indirect yet apparently consequential links to crypto currency Bitcoin - It could be that fans are being sold a pup in terms of the investment angle

https://twitter.com/uglygame/status/1395017399578112002
@UglyGame continues this theme by looking at what has happen to the Socios fan tokens at Athletico Madrid since they won La Liga

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 27, 2021 10:55 pm

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri May 28, 2021 1:34 am

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

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

Posted: May 27 2021By: Tom Bassam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri May 28, 2021 2:06 pm

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri May 28, 2021 3:08 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri May 28, 2021 11:37 pm

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

The Game of Tomorrow, Today
MAY 27, 2021

The shadows are drawing in across Europe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat May 29, 2021 1:38 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Vegas Claret » Sat May 29, 2021 2:14 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 1:34 am
On Tuesday I posted NBC's media release on the subject of it's view figures for the Premier Leagues 2020/21 season - here SportsProMedia helps us make some sense from them - the headline does not make for good reading, though it does follow a general trend in the US for sports viewing during the pandemic and that includes the NFL

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

Posted: May 27 2021By: Tom Bassam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2021/22 season will be the last of NBC’s six-year, US$1 billion broadcast partnership with the Premier League. An NBC spokesperson told Front Office Sports that the network is keen to renew that deal, but the Premier League will be seeking to extract an increased fee with ESPN and CBS reportedly keen on adding a deal to bolster their burgeoning streaming platforms.
it's because they keep ******* about with channels, there are weeks when we have no idea which channel is showing which game, they have the build up on one channel then you have to switch for kick off. The coverage is exceptional, it puts the image quality broadcast by Sky to shame - but they have to sort this issue out, it's really annoying.

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat May 29, 2021 2:32 am

Vegas Claret wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 2:14 am
it's because they keep ******* about with channels, there are weeks when we have no idea which channel is showing which game, they have the build up on one channel then you have to switch for kick off. The coverage is exceptional, it puts the image quality broadcast by Sky to shame - but they have to sort this issue out, it's really annoying.

The last few years they had NBCSN Gold which enabled you to stream games..........great if it worked on all devices but it didn't.
They've now decided to put it on Peacock, no idea if it will work tbh
The Premier League will be hoping that Comcast believes that Peacock works out for them as that will drive Price increases for the next tender.

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat May 29, 2021 8:54 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 2:32 am
....."The English Premier League’s revenues are almost double those of the next biggest league, enabling them to attract a significantly higher quality of player than rival leagues. In a global market, this advantage will tend to grow, since in sports there is a general trend toward the dominant league."

or as I put it we won't need a super league we already have it and it is currently known as the Premier League
I see the Financial Times today has been effectively sending the same message

https://outline.com/2g7DZV

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Pstotto » Sun May 30, 2021 12:30 pm

Who wants football to die?

Landowners.

How to do it?

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

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

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

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

Football is all for football

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun May 30, 2021 2:02 pm

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun May 30, 2021 2:05 pm

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

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

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

Sun 30 May 2021 08.00 BST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post by Chester Perry » Sun May 30, 2021 3:26 pm

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon May 31, 2021 12:47 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon May 31, 2021 1:18 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon May 31, 2021 5:41 pm

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon May 31, 2021 8:04 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jun 01, 2021 6:27 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Wed Jun 02, 2021 8:50 am

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

Something odd happening with Derby /Mel Morris

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 02, 2021 11:49 am

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Wed Jun 02, 2021 8:50 am
https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 92769?s=19

Something odd happening with Derby /Mel Morris
I strongly suspect it is linked to the fact Derby have not posted accounts for the same periods - due to the legal wrangles with the EFL

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 02, 2021 12:07 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 10:59 pm
Some intriguing stuff going on at Rochdale - seems to a battle for ownership, though not sure what American investors see in the club (can't see spotland being worth all that much).

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

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

after some questioning the club's board released this statement

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

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

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

just what is going on with clubs in the northwest? this all sounds quite worrying
Things have not been going well behind the scenes at Rochdale for some time now - last night however has appeared to have drawn a few things to a head - from RochadelAFCnews.com

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

Major decisions made at Rochdale AFC shareholder meet
Jun 02 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The club has also been approached for comment.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 02, 2021 12:20 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, who led the business plan for the super league, has explicitly cited the opportunities in Asia. “Television pays: we, the big clubs, have fans in Singapore and China, everywhere. You see it in social networks . . . This is what generates money,” he said in April when defending the super league idea. “I got into the world of football in 2000. It has to evolve, as life and businesses evolve . . . it has to change, to adapt . . . What we want to do is save football, so that at least for the next 20 years it can live peacefully, without losing €200m.”

The world has globalised and with that has come commodification and fundamental economic change that has left western Europe less powerful, says Chadwick. The super league proposal, he says, painfully stabbed at the idea that the identity of traditional stadium-going fans was being eroded and that they were being left behind by great economic forces beyond their power to repel. “It was the moment where football found itself on the global front lines of an ideological debate that you found behind Brexit and the rise of Trump,” he adds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additional reporting by Wang Xueqiao in Shanghai

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 02, 2021 12:26 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 6:15 pm
Bloomberg with an article about Bordeaux and it's reported dale price - which should prove be a challenge to find I would expect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— With assistance by Myriam Balezou

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by HitchinClaret » Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:54 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:58 pm

HitchinClaret wrote:
Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:54 pm
It looks like the money has fallen out of the championship and below... extracts from an email I just received:

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

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

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

Can only imagine what that would have been 2 or 3 years ago...
My first thought was Blackpool - I may be right as the last couple of seasons have been VISIT Blackpool which is the local council, I cannot see a local authority stretching to that at this current time

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:22 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 12:06 pm
Soccerex is owned by Joseph DaGrossa who has been sniffing around Southampton for a long time, but still cannot get to an agreement on the price it seems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

this is perhaps a caricature of what American Investors in football are like, but is this really what our game wants or needs, now or ever?
I think Southampton fans should be relieved that Joe DaGrosa has finally decided to walk away from taking over at Southampton - was his interest really serious?, he has continued to twitch over the price and seems to be of the worst kind of Private Equity "vulture"

The Athletic with the news he has finally pulled out

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

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:50 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 2:27 pm
Today's Business of Sport podcast talks to Tracey Crouch MP who is leading the governments fan led review of the game (which has actually started - though unfortunately much of it does not look like much of it will take place in the public sphere as none of it yet has been on Parliament tv, which I find scandalous)

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

I will listen to it later
Chester Perry wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 7:30 pm
So I have now listened to this, takeaway's
- Tracey Crouch comes across really well and explains the role of the panel really well (it is a sounding board to test the points that are be raised to her) and that now makes sense if still a fair bit arbitrary and "friendly" to her way of thinking.

- I am greatly alarmed by the fact that she believes that a regulator is a de facto given (solutions based not problem based thinking) and that her report is about determining her recommendations about what it is the regulator would regulate.
A piece from the Guardian on the apparent agreement that there will be an independent football regulator

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

Paul MacInnes
Thu 3 Jun 2021 11.24 BST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:58 pm

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

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

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:55 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Jun 02, 2021 12:07 pm
Things have not been going well behind the scenes at Rochdale for some time now - last night however has appeared to have drawn a few things to a head - from RochadelAFCnews.com

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

Major decisions made at Rochdale AFC shareholder meet
Jun 02 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The club has also been approached for comment.
It seems that the new investors being linked were Matt Southall of recent Charlton Athletic notoriety and the the Bury Chief Executive who helped ovesee their demise according to todays Price of Football Podcast

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

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jun 03, 2021 6:27 pm

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

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

By Jamie Gardner Posted: June 2 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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