Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

It seems that Football is hedging it's bets on gambling sponsorship not being removed, though I think most of us would prefer a significant downturn/outright ban in targeted/club sourced promotions if it had to be an option - from SportsProMedia

Jamie Gardner | Why an outright ban on gambling sponsorship would be a misplaced bet
With English soccer clubs facing the prospect of tighter restrictions on lucrative deals with bookmakers, Press Association’s chief sports reporter separates the possible from the likely when it comes to the UK government’s ongoing review of gambling sponsorship.

By Jamie GardnerPosted: March 10 2021

A new code of conduct for betting firms rather than an outright ban on sports sponsorship is thought to be the "likely way forward" in the review of the UK's gambling laws, according to the former key figure at the Football Association (FA).

A call for evidence is ongoing as part of an extremely broad review of the 2005 Gambling Act. Sports minister Nigel Huddleston has said that allowing betting companies to sponsor sports teams and events could be banned if "evidence of harm" is found.

Darren Bailey, the FA's former director of football governance and regulation and now a consultant with law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, believes complete prohibition is unlikely but envisages stricter controls being placed on sponsors, including the possibility of a cap on the number of betting firms able to operate in a single competition.

"You may see some restrictions on the number of sponsors per league," he told the PA news agency. "It’s extraordinary to see the number from one particular sector. It’s a bit of a sector ambush that you wouldn’t have seen before.”

In France, Bailey said, sports organisations hold an 'event right' over betting firms and are able to have an influence on prohibiting certain markets they deem inappropriate - for instance, gambling on youth matches.

If a similar setup were to be adopted into UK legislation, might the FA use it as an opportunity to clamp down on betting around transfer deals, which have generated a number of high-profile disciplinary cases involving players in recent months?

"It would have to be evidence-based, you can’t just say ‘we don’t like it’ for no apparent reason," Bailey said. "I do think there is a need for there to be an adjustment of the market. It doesn’t have to be excessive, but the argument coming back the other way is that you will just drive those markets underground and you’d have no means of finding evidence [of a breach of the rules].”

A levy on betting companies for football could also be part of any new settlement, Bailey said, in recognition of the data the sport generates which betting companies' customers then take punts on.

In the event of a ban, Bailey envisages there would need to be a lengthy "weaning off" period for clubs, particularly in the English Football League (EFL) where there is a heavy reliance on sponsorship income from gambling companies.

Allowing more advertising, and more targeted advertising, could be a means to replace any revenue lost, or supplement it if the relationship between gambling and sport is permitted to continue.

"In some southern hemisphere countries they’re much more willing to ‘affect the integrity of the signal’ as you could call it – to put adverts on in play," Bailey added. "We’ve got used to seeing all of a match without interruption from whistle to whistle, whereas down there, if there’s an injury, they might be much more relaxed about putting sponsorship in there.

"There could be pressure on the regulators to modify the product placement restrictions to give more rights to lesser entities. It could create a number of opportunities. It won’t be long, for example, before we see sponsorship coming to VAR. You could be on there for four, five, six minutes couldn’t you?

"Here, we wouldn’t put up with that at the moment, but I think it’s that sort of direct product placement that would help to fill that gap.” Certainly, lining up an optician to sponsor VAR checks seems like too good a PR opportunity to miss.

Clubs and leagues will hope for a surge in live attendance when coronavirus restrictions are finally able to be eased, but the widespread uptake of streaming since the pandemic hit also opens up fresh opportunities, Bailey said.

"There could be advertising targeted to the individual consumer if you’re talking about a stream, rather than something collective,” he continued. "The OTT [over-the-top] model suddenly becomes more linked to the subscriber rather than the mass audience. The new sports economy will need new solutions.”

The call for evidence runs until the end of March, but it is likely to be well into next year before we see any changes to the law. Even if there is evidence that licensed gambling creates addiction and other harms, legislators will need to think carefully about the impact of going too hard, Bailey warns.

"You’re potentially going to drive people to the dark market – there will be potentially pirated signals using sport in an abusive way in order to encourage people to bet without there being any regulatory framework around it," he said.

"On the evidence of addiction, the betting companies might argue that there is more to do around the more casino-type gambling where the repetitiveness of the games and the speed with which you’re able to gamble is far faster than on sport."

[Chester Perry]

It is good to see English Premier League clubs speaking out clearly against the proposals for UEFA Club competitions post 2024 - this from the Telegraph

Crystal Palace and Aston Villa lead revolt against 'devastating' Champions League reform
SAM WALLACE MARCH 10, 2021

The Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has led the rebellion of smaller Premier League clubs against the elite’s proposals for an expanded Champions League, warning that it could have a potentially “devastating” effect on the English game.

As opposition grew across Europe, the Aston Villa chief executive Christian Purslow said that proposals for the changes to the competition post 2024 that would see clubs boosted into the Champions League on the basis of historic performance would be “unfair”.

Both were speaking at the European Leagues (EL) conference which saw widespread opposition to the plans created by the likes of Real Madrid, Juventus and Manchester United to expand the Champions League to 36 teams and give the extra four places based on clubs’ Uefa co-efficient. Clubs including Feyenoord and Bayer Leverkusen raised concerns about the changes agreed between the European Club Association (ECA), dominated by the biggest clubs, and Uefa, who run the competitions.

There was also widespread opposition from domestic leagues with Football League (EFL) chairman Rick Parry warning that the proposals to expand the Champions League by 100 games could squeeze the League Cup out of existence. Parry said that it could see EFL revenues fall by a third that would endanger the future of some of the 72 EFL clubs.

Uefa have agreed in principle to the post-2024 “Swiss model” proposed by the ECA which will see the number of Champions League group games expanded to ten, seeing an overall leap in matches from 125 to 225. The EL wants the expansion restricted to just eight games in the group stages and many clubs said they would not agree to any change until they see how the profits will be shared.

The EL presented evidence of the distorting effect on domestic leagues created by the earnings of clubs who routinely qualify for Europe. Since 2009, the payments to clubs in the Champions league and Europa League have risen by 166 per cent, with increased broadcast revenue. The solidarity payments to clubs who do not participate has increased by just 106 per cent.

Parish said that the decision-making process felt “remote” for a club like Palace who have never played in the major European competitions. He said: “There just exists a huge conflict of interest between a governing body that has such control over the game. In a way that no matter how many times it is explained to me I can’t seem to understand on what basis people in the room vote for what.

“That is combined with an organisation in the ECA which seems to be run for the benefit of a tiny amount of members yet has an extraordinarily powerful influence. In the middle of a pandemic these decisions are made which may fundamentally change the view of football forever.”

He added: “We also seem to be expected to accept these proposals because they are not as bad as they could have been. I can’t quite buy into that thinking that we should be grateful that it’s only an extra 100 games. From the point of view of where we sit this will have a quite devastating effect on domestic competition in England. We have three cup competitions … one of which the league cup is the largest financial contributor to the EFL and the 72 clubs.

“My question to everybody is: ‘where does this all end?’. When we began the European Cup was a knockout competition of five games for just the champions. We are now looking at an extra 100 games. This may not be affecting your domestic leagues as much as it looks like it will affect our domestic competitions in this cycle but the creep is never-ending.

“We are seeing the coefficient and the calendar principles that [the proposals] are attempting to get ingrained so that next time things will be changed even more and domestic competition in the end takes a secondary seat to the European super league.”

Purslow rejected proposals that would see teams “boosted” into the Champions League on the basis of their Uefa co-efficient – historical performance. That could mean a Premier League club finishing seventh could, on the basis of historic performance, potentially take one of the wildcard Champions League “access boost” places over another that finished fifth. Purslow pointed out that, given the disparity in earnings between the Champions League and the Europa League, that boost could be worth around €50 million.

“Aston Villa are one-time winners of the pinnacle of European football, the European Cup,” he said. “English and European football has always been about living the dream. Beating big teams, climbing up the ladder, entering European football is what in sporting terms that dream is all about.”

He added: “The ECA principle of stability worries me. I think ‘stability’ is a code word for predictability or reducing sporting uncertainty and for that reason I wholly disapprove of that access method.”

Jacco Swart, EL managing director, warned that under new proposals it would, for example, be possible for Liverpool to leapfrog Everton into the Champions League even if they finished behind them in the Premier League.

He said: “It could mean that this in this new model, while Liverpool and Spurs could qualify for either the Europa League or [the new] Conference League in the next cycle [2024-2027] … it could result in Liverpool, in sixth place and not Everton in fifth, going to the Champions League.”

The EL research showed that domestic leagues across Europe were being affected by the increased revenue earned by teams playing in European competition. There has been a decline in the number of different domestic champions across Europe since 1992: just 72 across 55 countries between 2014 and 2018 compared to 90 between 1999 and 2003 and 84 between 1992 and 1998. Research also shows that titles are being decided earlier in the domestic season than previously.

[Chester Perry]

The Financial Times with it's take on what is happening in China with football and a focus on Suning - also talks about Chinese ambitions for the 2030 World Cup, which I can see opening in Montevideo with half the groups in South America (home of the first World Cup), half the groups in the UK birthplace of modern football and the knockout stages/final in China signalling the future direction of the game - that is just the kind of thing that Infantino likes

China retail king’s woes temper Xi’s football fantasy
EDWARD WHITE MARCH 10, 2021

When Zhang Jindong linked arms with fellow billionaire Hui Ka Yan and downed a glass of baijiu in 2017, the king of Chinese retail had much to celebrate.

His Suning group had over the previous year bought Inter Milan, the prestigious Italian football club, for €270m. His streaming service, PPTV, had clinched a $700m deal to beam the English Premier League into the homes of the world’s most populous country. And back in China, he had picked up local team Jiangsu FC, deepening investment in the country’s fledgling professional league.

The acquisitions placed Zhang at the heart of Xi Jinping’s ambitions to use football — a sport the president loves — as a means to not only animate Chinese youth but to extend the country’s influence abroad.

But four years later and debt problems embroiling Zhang’s expansive conglomerate have rippled far beyond his Suning stores and websites. The unravelling of his football empire signals a starker pivot in Beijing’s approach to soft power at home and overseas: away from reliance on hitherto high-flying tycoons and corporations like Suning and back towards the guiding hand of state control.

Jonathan Sullivan, a China politics expert at the UK’s University of Nottingham, stressed that many of the central pillars underpinning Xi’s “football dream” remained unchanged.

These span scores of Chinese-built stadiums in the developing world, marketing deals boosting Chinese brands’ global exposure, cementing the country’s presence in the sport’s governing bodies and rearing a generation of footballers skilled enough to compete on the global stage.

“All of these things are long-term projects that continue. What has changed is the place of private investment in football,” Sullivan said.

In an early signal that Zhang’s strained coffers would have ramifications for his sports interests, PPTV in September lost its English football broadcast rights. This year, as a dispute related to the broadcast deal spills into the UK courts, Suning has sought $200m in emergency cash and new partners to help shore up the finances of Inter Milan.

With towering debt obligations, Zhang’s potential departure from European football would mark the latest in a string of similar exits since Beijing tightened capital controls in recent years following a torrent of outbound investment. The list includes Spain’s Atlético Madrid, Aston Villa in the UK and Slavia Prague in the Czech Republic.

Suning’s debt problems have also struck much closer to home. Jiangsu FC on February 28 ceased operations, a huge blow for fans and players just months after it won China’s top football competition, further denting the league championed by the president.

The Chinese Football Association shed little light on the development in a public notice but the club’s supporters were less opaque: “Simply put, Suning doesn’t have any more money,” one fan wrote on social media.

Zhang, 57, founded Suning in Nanjing, eastern China, in 1990 as a home appliance retailer. It expanded rapidly, filling up the homes of China’s growing consumer class with air conditioners, washing machines and televisions.

But, like many businesses once dominant on the high street, Suning has struggled to swivel to ecommerce, losing out to Alibaba, JD and Pinduoduo. On the same day as Jiangsu FC’s abrupt closure, Suning confirmed a state-backed investment in its online retail unit, Suning.com. The bailout led to Zhang and other big shareholders selling close to a quarter of their stake in the business for $2.3bn.

Suning declined to comment. Zhang has vowed to refocus on the core retail business, including growing its ecommerce unit, Yunwang Wandian.

Zhang’s cash crunch, however, appears to have intensified as a result of being intertwined with Hui’s Evergrande, the world’s most heavily indebted property developer.

In 2017 — the same year Zhang was photographed drinking the traditional liquor with Hui, then China’s richest man — Suning ploughed Rmb20bn ($3.1bn) into Evergrande’s mainland subsidiary. Last year a stock market listing of the unit did not go to plan, meaning Suning was denied both the benefits of the IPO proceeds and its original cash investment.

Suning’s retreat also coincided with the Chinese Communist party taking greater control over private enterprise.

Simon Chadwick, an expert in the global business of football at Emlyon Business School, said the exodus of Chinese club ownership reflected a change in Beijing, which no longer wanted businesses or entrepreneurs spearheading its football diplomacy.

“What is very clear about China is that there is always a very strong link between the interests of the state, the direction of government, and what these corporations are doing,” Chadwick said. Suning “is not a corporation that has whimsically bought into Italian football, nor [did it do so] for purely commercial reasons”.

Instead, analysts expect Beijing to prioritise exerting influence on governments, especially in the countries where it has built critical infrastructure, and at Fifa, the sport’s struggling governing body. This pressure is viewed as part of China’s strategy to stage the World Cup in 2030, the tournament’s centennial year.

While the hit to private capital in football threatens to temper Xi’s ambitions in the sport, Sullivan was sceptical that the Chinese leader would suffer any fallout.

“Xi’s power is sufficiently entrenched that it would take a lot more than this to damage him,” Sullivan said. “It is damaging to the football reform programme that he encouraged, but it is not hard to shift the blame . . . on to private companies and/or Covid.”

Given booming investment into China, foreign cash might soon reach Chinese football clubs, Chadwick added.

“What China is doing right now is cultivating the conditions in football to draw in investment from overseas,” he said. “We could see Jiangsu resurrected with Volkswagen as the shirt sponsor or a US private equity business as the owner.”

[Chester Perry]

This is a bit of a strange one - though there is little as strange and emotional as Turkish football - Fenerbache are being taken to court by the domestic broadcast BeinSport after a relentless campaign by the Fener president who says the Biensport are influencing VAR decisions against his club, it may cost the league it's TV deal going forward - from CityAM

Exclusive: beIN Sports takes legal action against Fenerbahce over Turkish club's 'beFAIR' campaign
Frank Dalleres

Broadcaster beIN Sports is taking legal action against Fenerbahce over the Turkish club’s high-profile campaign against the network.

beIN is suing Fenerbahce for breach of intellectual property after they displayed “beFAIR” branding on the team’s apparel and pitchside advertising displays.

Fenerbahce and their president Ali Koc have adopted “beFAIR” as the slogan for a public relations war with beIN, even going as far as doctoring beIN’s branding.

Read more: All Premier League games to be televised until fans return to stadiums

They have accused the broadcaster of conspiring against them by manipulating VAR and choosing unfavourable camera angles and highlights. beIN has dismissed the claims.

Lawyers for beIN are set to lodge papers with Turkey’s IP courts in Istanbul in the next 24 hours.

A beIN Media Group spokesperson said: “We will take whatever legal action necessary to protect our rights. As we have shown before, we take an uncompromising approach to the protection of IP, not least because it is the economic foundation of football.”

The club, which signed Mesut Ozil from Arsenal last month, has obstructed media access for beIN and sent players out for interviews and warm-ups in “beFAIR” branded T-shirts and training tops.

Fenerbahce have also displayed the “beFAIR” messaging on advertising boards at home matches.

Referencing the dispute, the club also displayed the message “Fenerbahce cannot be challenged” at yesterday’s 1-0 defeat to Goztepe.

beIN currently pays $370m a year for the domestic rights to Turkey’s Super Lig in a deal that expires next year.

Fenerbahce are one of the three biggest clubs in the country, with Galatasaray and Besiktas, but are more than $700m in debt.

The Turkish Football Federation has announced it will begin the sale process for the next rights cycle soon.

Fenerbahce’s stance is understood to have made beIN question whether to bid again.

The Qatari broadcaster was embroiled in a long-running legal battle over the piracy of its output on Saudi Arabia-based channel beoutQ.

beoutQ, which mirrored beIN’s output, was finally switched off in 2019.
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The Athletic are covering the story this evening with a lot more detail

https://theathletic.com/2403249/2021/02 ... -t-shirts/

The New York Times have more on this tale and how it is putting the Turkish TV deal at risk

The Conspiracy Threatening a $360 Million TV Deal
A feud between a top Turkish soccer team and the league’s broadcaster is rooted in taped chants, time stamps and club rivalry. But the fight’s cost could be enormous.

By Tariq Panja
March 10, 2021, 6:30 a.m. ET

The offending chant had been broadcast during Turkish league matches for months before anyone noticed it. The refrain, a variation of which is often heard in stadiums around Turkey, ends with a profanity directed at Fenerbahce, one of the country’s biggest and richest clubs.

For months, it had been included in the pre-recorded crowd noise that has become the soundtrack to live sports in empty stadiums in the coronavirus era. And for months, no one in Turkey said a thing — until January, when a keen-eared observer noticed the chant in the background of games involving one of the league’s smallest teams.

Now, it is the latest flash point in an increasingly bitter dispute pitting Fenerbahce — a Turkish soccer team which has millions of passionate fans and is led by one of Turkey’s richest men — against beIN Media Group, one of the world’s largest buyers of sports rights.

Fenerbahce has seized on the revelation about the chants as proof of its long-held belief that the Qatar-based broadcaster, through its beIN Sports Turkey subsidiary, had an agenda against the club. The fight has sabotaged interviews and played out in on-field protests, perceived injustices and, most recently, a lawsuit in a Turkish court. It could have serious financial consequences for the entire league, and the club is showing no sign it will relent.

“It would be too naïve to consider all these consecutive incidents as honest human mistakes,” Fenerbahce said in comments it attributed to its secretary general, Burak Caglan Kizilhan. “We believe our arguments are extremely valid and concerning.”

The tension between one of Turkey’s biggest clubs and the league’s official broadcaster has come at a sensitive time for Turkish soccer. BeIN Sports, through its local subsidiary, pays about $360 million for the television rights to the league’s matches.

Now, with most of Turkey’s biggest teams, including Fenerbahce, heavily in debt, the league is planning a new television rights sale. And beIN is wondering if staying involved in Turkish soccer is worth the trouble.

“Why would we deliberately try to disenfranchise one of the biggest clubs in Turkey?” a beIN Media Group spokesman said of Fenerbahce’s accusations. “It doesn’t make any sense, commercially or otherwise.” Like multiple people interviewed for this article, the spokesman asked that his name not be used, to avoid drawing the wrath of Fenerbahce and its fans.

Even before the latest skirmish, the situation had driven beIN executives to distraction. Fenerbahce, through its president, Ali Koc, had been making claims about beIN for months. For example, the team has repeatedly accused beIN of selecting television angles and replays on its broadcasts that cast Fenerbahce or decision for and against the club in a negative light or, alternately, to accentuate the positives of its opponents.

In response, Fenerbahce has mounted hashtag campaigns — amplified by its millions of followers — on social media, dressed its players in anti-beIN gear and even had them wear shirts with a logo doctored to read “beFAIR” to interviews conducted by the network. When the club signed the former Arsenal star Mesut Özil in January, journalists from beIN Sports Turkey — the official league broadcaster — were barred from his first news conference.

The network has tried in vain to lower the temperature. After the chants in the television soundtrack were revealed, beIN officials immediately issued an apology. But rather than dampen the flames, its statement stoked more fury.

The apology, according to Fenerbahce, had intentionally been issued at 7:05 p.m. — 19:05, according to the 24-hour clock. The timing was no accident, according to Fenerbahce; 1905 was the founding year of its greatest rival, Galatasaray. To the club, even the apology served as confirmation of the network’s agenda.

“Conspiracy and paranoia is part of the culture in Turkey,” said Emre Sarigul, a co-founder of Turkish Football, the largest English website solely devoted to Turkish soccer.

Sarigul described machinations in the top division as more akin to W.W.E., the popular American wrestling franchise, where actions are frequently choreographed to elicit maximum reaction. “It’s entertainment,” Sarigul said. “You’re often going there for the drama and not for the football on show.”

“When something goes wrong,” he added, “you blame ‘them.’ But no one knows who ‘them’ are.”

For beIN, a network that has faced challenging situations in its other markets, the experience in Turkey has been bewildering. It conducted an investigation into how the anti-Fenerbache chants had made it onto broadcasts and concluded that human error was to blame.

In what appeared to be a conciliatory gesture toward Fenerbahce, it then fired the two staff members directly responsible. But the two employees turned out to be Fenerbahce fans, prompting the club to revive its claims of mistreatment.

As a result, beIN is considering walking away from the fight, and the league. The network, bankrolled by the Qatari state, has always absorbed losses from its right deals, but in recent years it has withdrawn from several of them and cut its staff amid a long-running, and costly, piracy dispute. It has allowed deals with the top leagues in Germany and Italy to lapse, and recently withdrew from one with Formula 1.

The Turkish dispute has taken a toll on beIN executives. Some of the network’s non-Turkish staff members have been rotated out of the country, and at least one new one, Rashed al-Marri, was brought in from Doha to take charge of operations in Turkey and in particular to handle the relationship with Fenerbahce. But nothing seems to be bringing down the temperature.

In late February, the company went to court to prevent Fenerbahce from continuing a weekslong campaign that had targeted the broadcaster at its stadium and on its social media channels by using the colors of the beIN logo but replacing the words with the slogan “beFAIR.”

A result was that Turkish subscribers to beIN’s matches were presented with a panoply of protest banners, sideline electronic advertising boards and even the Fenerbahce players themselves covered in beFAIR-branded slogans.

The logos forced beIN to change how it broadcast the matches and conducted interviews with Fenerbahce players. Directors were instructed not to display shots of the players in the beFAIR gear during warm-ups or interviews. Keeping the messages out of live-action shots proved more difficult.

Asked by The New York Times to explain the essence of its campaign, Fenerbahce took several weeks to reply before providing a multiple-page treatise that went into great detail about how it had been slighted by beIN’s coverage this season.

Fenerbahce’s response was laced with the language of conspiracy theory. “If our arguments are considered individually, they would not make much sense,” said Kizilhan, the general secretary, “but seeing them as the parts of a puzzle, it shows the big picture clearly.”

Kizilhan acknowledged that some of the nuances of the fight would be difficult to understand for anyone “without having clear understanding and knowledge of local intricacies and ingredients of Turkish football.”

One of those intricacies involves Fenerbahce’s rivalry with Galatasaray. The club continues to argue that beIN’s Turkish operation is stocked with individuals sympathetic to its rival, which it accuses of working deliberately to sabotage its season. (Some of the audience for that charge may be internal: Fenerbahce has not won a league title since 2014, and Koc, one of Turkey’s richest men, will stand for another term as club president next year.)

Some beIN executives have been targeted directly, including Hande Sumertas, a former Galatasaray official who is now responsible for media rights at the network. Sumertas has become a lightning rod for fan criticism to such an extent that her name is regularly a trending topic on Twitter in Turkey.

Things reached a head earlier this year when a referee turned commentator went on television to insult Sumertas as “brainless.” BeIN issued a strongly worded statement at the time, vowing to use all means at its disposal to defend Sumertas and emphasizing that her role gives her no control over the content of the channel’s broadcasts.

But Fenerbahce doubled down, with Kizilhan charging that Sumertas could not work objectively because of her previous work at Galatasaray.

“Our concerns and allegations are not over specific individuals but over a systematic approach toward our club,” Kizilhan said, before adding, “BeIN Sports would be wise to re-evaluate their hiring processes and human resources.”

The Turkish soccer federation, which treads a fine line in order not to inflame the huge fan bases of any of its top teams, has been eager to avoid the issue. But in late January, its chairman, Nihat Ozdemir, was asked about the feud. Ozdemir said he did not believe the anti-Fenerbahce chants had been broadcast deliberately, and said the relationship between Turkish soccer and beIN Sports was mutually beneficial. “I don’t think they would want to get out of here,” he said.

But while beIN’s new emissary, al-Marri, has spoken with Fenerbahce’s management, the relationship shows no signs of improving.

When a court last week ordered Fenerbahce to stop using the beFAIR logo, the team simply changed the language of its protests. On Thursday, in its first home game since the injunction, Fenerbahce’s stadium was festooned with new protest slogans. One message covering the seats at its Sukru Saracoglu stadium implored Fenerbahce fans to “break their games.”

Another, darker one was a warning: “Fenerbahce cannot be challenged!”

[Chester Perry]

This is an interesting and long thread - I have already posted about the European Leagues Meeting on Wednesday but it turns out that the FSE the European Supporters organisation were also there to speak - this is what they had to say about it

https://twitter.com/FansEurope/status/1 ... 3624374273

[Chester Perry]

It is good to see English Premier League clubs speaking out clearly against the proposals for UEFA Club competitions post 2024 - this from the Telegraph

Crystal Palace and Aston Villa lead revolt against 'devastating' Champions League reform
SAM WALLACE MARCH 10, 2021

The Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has led the rebellion of smaller Premier League clubs against the elite’s proposals for an expanded Champions League, warning that it could have a potentially “devastating” effect on the English game.

As opposition grew across Europe, the Aston Villa chief executive Christian Purslow said that proposals for the changes to the competition post 2024 that would see clubs boosted into the Champions League on the basis of historic performance would be “unfair”.

Both were speaking at the European Leagues (EL) conference which saw widespread opposition to the plans created by the likes of Real Madrid, Juventus and Manchester United to expand the Champions League to 36 teams and give the extra four places based on clubs’ Uefa co-efficient. Clubs including Feyenoord and Bayer Leverkusen raised concerns about the changes agreed between the European Club Association (ECA), dominated by the biggest clubs, and Uefa, who run the competitions.

There was also widespread opposition from domestic leagues with Football League (EFL) chairman Rick Parry warning that the proposals to expand the Champions League by 100 games could squeeze the League Cup out of existence. Parry said that it could see EFL revenues fall by a third that would endanger the future of some of the 72 EFL clubs.

Uefa have agreed in principle to the post-2024 “Swiss model” proposed by the ECA which will see the number of Champions League group games expanded to ten, seeing an overall leap in matches from 125 to 225. The EL wants the expansion restricted to just eight games in the group stages and many clubs said they would not agree to any change until they see how the profits will be shared.

The EL presented evidence of the distorting effect on domestic leagues created by the earnings of clubs who routinely qualify for Europe. Since 2009, the payments to clubs in the Champions league and Europa League have risen by 166 per cent, with increased broadcast revenue. The solidarity payments to clubs who do not participate has increased by just 106 per cent.

Parish said that the decision-making process felt “remote” for a club like Palace who have never played in the major European competitions. He said: “There just exists a huge conflict of interest between a governing body that has such control over the game. In a way that no matter how many times it is explained to me I can’t seem to understand on what basis people in the room vote for what.

“That is combined with an organisation in the ECA which seems to be run for the benefit of a tiny amount of members yet has an extraordinarily powerful influence. In the middle of a pandemic these decisions are made which may fundamentally change the view of football forever.”

He added: “We also seem to be expected to accept these proposals because they are not as bad as they could have been. I can’t quite buy into that thinking that we should be grateful that it’s only an extra 100 games. From the point of view of where we sit this will have a quite devastating effect on domestic competition in England. We have three cup competitions … one of which the league cup is the largest financial contributor to the EFL and the 72 clubs.

“My question to everybody is: ‘where does this all end?’. When we began the European Cup was a knockout competition of five games for just the champions. We are now looking at an extra 100 games. This may not be affecting your domestic leagues as much as it looks like it will affect our domestic competitions in this cycle but the creep is never-ending.

“We are seeing the coefficient and the calendar principles that [the proposals] are attempting to get ingrained so that next time things will be changed even more and domestic competition in the end takes a secondary seat to the European super league.”

Purslow rejected proposals that would see teams “boosted” into the Champions League on the basis of their Uefa co-efficient – historical performance. That could mean a Premier League club finishing seventh could, on the basis of historic performance, potentially take one of the wildcard Champions League “access boost” places over another that finished fifth. Purslow pointed out that, given the disparity in earnings between the Champions League and the Europa League, that boost could be worth around €50 million.

“Aston Villa are one-time winners of the pinnacle of European football, the European Cup,” he said. “English and European football has always been about living the dream. Beating big teams, climbing up the ladder, entering European football is what in sporting terms that dream is all about.”

He added: “The ECA principle of stability worries me. I think ‘stability’ is a code word for predictability or reducing sporting uncertainty and for that reason I wholly disapprove of that access method.”

Jacco Swart, EL managing director, warned that under new proposals it would, for example, be possible for Liverpool to leapfrog Everton into the Champions League even if they finished behind them in the Premier League.

He said: “It could mean that this in this new model, while Liverpool and Spurs could qualify for either the Europa League or [the new] Conference League in the next cycle [2024-2027] … it could result in Liverpool, in sixth place and not Everton in fifth, going to the Champions League.”

The EL research showed that domestic leagues across Europe were being affected by the increased revenue earned by teams playing in European competition. There has been a decline in the number of different domestic champions across Europe since 1992: just 72 across 55 countries between 2014 and 2018 compared to 90 between 1999 and 2003 and 84 between 1992 and 1998. Research also shows that titles are being decided earlier in the domestic season than previously.

@RorySmith makes a very valid point about the way this story has developed

https://twitter.com/RorySmith/status/13 ... 5337080832

[Chester Perry]

Nottingham Forest, a club that has long thought it is too big and too good to sell players to little old Burnley, have announced their 2019/20 financial results - another £32m loss

full accounts can be found here

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

@KieranMAguire has a look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 2460520448

[Chester Perry]

This is an interesting and long thread - I have already posted about the European Leagues Meeting on Wednesday but it turns out that the FSE the European Supporters organisation were also there to speak - this is what they had to say about it

https://twitter.com/FansEurope/status/1 ... 3624374273

following on from this the FSE has released an extended document outlining their thoughts on the future of UEFA Club Competitions - make the time it will be interesting reading

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/tr ... #pageNum=1

remember what the ECA Chairman Andrea Agnelli said on Monday, he is not thinking about existing fans in Europe that will see clubs through their current troubles, he is interested in the fans they do not have and have not been able to attract or "monetise"

The ECA are having another Assembly - and President Andrea Agnelli has wasted no time to ruffle more feathers with his opening address

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM8OUuAo9oY

For those of you that may be confused about Andrea Agnelli's comments - he wants the to uproot the traditions of the game to meet the (supposed - determined by way of market research) of non-European fans for more meaningful games - yet that same research will tell him the domestic and European fans do not want these changes

https://apnews.com/article/europe-champ ... 9804c3c46b

Meanwhile I am wondering why the ECA have not broadcast their Press Conference like they usually do for their General Assembly - though given these two tweets on different subject matter from two very reputable journalists you can possibly understand why - Agnelli is all over the place

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 3953469442

https://twitter.com/mjshrimper/status/1 ... 9886665733

EDIT that FSE document is definitely worth a read, it is a shame that neither they nor the European Leagues are likely to be listened too - why? because the commercial organisations for the competitions in question are owned by the ECA Clubs and UEFA on a 50:50 basis

[Chester Perry]

I have often spoken out against the multi-club model I understand the business logic, I just feel it further increases the disparity in the game as well as undermining the leagues subsidiaries are active in, to my mind it is as nefarious and disrespectful as the "B" team discussion - here The Football Today Podcast asks if it is the future of the game - focusing on Red Bull stable - I sincerely hope not, but feel that the authorities are already beaten on this front both legally and mentally.

https://www.footballtodaypodcast.com/po ... f-football

EDIT This is a really interesting discussion, and the first time I have heard the presenters become so animated, occasionally emotional about a subject, a lot of great talking points

[Chester Perry]

SkySports with a lengthy article on the financial impact of Covid on football - it has a number of charts so I will not transcribe

https://www.skysports.com/football/stor ... s-finances

there is an associated podcast too

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0dzztg ... cXtsA&nd=1

[Chester Perry]

I have just come across this newsletter called the Football Fan (you can find it here https://martincloake.substack.com/) produced by co-chair of Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust Martin Cloake - there is some really though provoking stuff on there such as this

Talking a good game
The language used to describe the relationship between fans and the football business is soothing, but there needs to be more substance

Martin Cloake - Mar 5

We’re all fans. That’s a line you get to hear a lot when you’re a fan rep. You go to a meeting with Club executives or senior figures in the game, and you put the fan perspective. And they smile, and they say, “but we’re all fans”.

Not so long ago the idea of senior figures even meeting with fans unless in extreme circumstances was little short of fanciful. But we live in the modern world now. And so we talk of engagement, of structured dialogue, of engaging all relevant stakeholders. But as is the case in so many areas, it is easy to adopt the language of inclusion and consultation, harder to adopt the practices that mean that’s what is really happening.

There’s scarcely a senior figure in football now who isn’t eager to tell you how keen they are to talk to the fans. How they are doing it all the time. It’s a veritable fully engaged structured stakeholder consultation engagement scenario. And almost certainly implemented in an agile manner going forward.

Here’s what actually happens in most cases. The meetings are almost exclusively called by the fans. There is an exchange of views. And then the football executives say why they are going to do what they had originally decided to do. But hey – they’ve listened to the fans. They heard what they are saying. Sometimes there are going to be disagreements. But, and here’s where The Line is deployed – we’re all fans. And that’s when you know They Don’t Get It. Because there’s one word that is rarely used or considered in the vast acreage of talk about talk. And that word is power.

No one can reasonably deny that many of the people who own football clubs, who occupy positions of influence within the game, are football fans. But they have the power to take decisions. And most fans don’t.

This matters because of the unique nature of the football business. (I am conscious, by the way, that the phrase “unique nature of the football business” is in danger of becoming overused in this newsletter. But there’s a reason for that.) Fans are not just customers, consumers. Their loyalty, their identification with the brand, is what makes football businesses so valuable. And this is why the discontent with the way the conversation is going is more than just fan discontent with not getting their own way. Which is what many of football’s great listeners – fans too, remember – imply is being said when there are any complaints.

So let’s set it out clearly. Most fans can’t do the following;

• Sell the club for a tidy sum when they’ve had enough.

• Decide to change the club’s name, stadium or kit.

• Decide what competition the club plays in.

• Set the ticket prices.

• Select sponsors and commercial deals.

• Decide what food and drink is sold in the ground.

• Employ or sack club staff.

• Decide the kick-off times…

There is a big difference between a fan who has the power to do all that and a fan who has to live with the consequences of every one of those decisions. And because football is what it is, there’s also a big difference between customer dissatisfaction at the consequences of these decisions and the consequences of, say, Tesco deciding not to stock a particular brand of doughnut.

What lurks below the surface of much of the response to fans wanting more influence is an objection to fans being able to tell people how to run their business. But, in the main, fans don’t want to have that degree of influence. They just want some influence, because they make the business what it is. Special pleading? Yes, because this is a special relationship.

The influence fans want must amount to more than just being listened to when other people decide they can make the effort to listen. Real influence means having access to real power. Which means being able to block measures that are in the short-term interests of temporary club owners – whether they are fans or not – but not the long-term interests of the club. And being able to instigate things without depending on getting permission to do so. It means securing real gains, not just getting their views heard.

For most, a proper balance would see a mixture of executive and partisan approaches to running clubs and the wider game, with one side balancing the potential excesses of the other. So just as the fan reps would stop the club owners from changing the team’s name, so the business executives would be able to prevent a financially catastrophic splurging of money on wages and transfers. And yes, it is funny how the assumption is so often that, left to their own devices, the stupid fans would overspend for success. Because the business people who know better have never done that, have they?

For the game to get the change it needs in order to have a sustainable future, fans with power need to cede some of that power to fans without. Balance for sustainable business, if you like. If you’re a fan, you know why that’s important.

Now, you may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m here to tell you that I’m not the only one. Because across the world, business is changing the rules of engagement. Notions of growth, progress, profitability and sustainability are being redrawn. Making a buck as fast as possible and then getting out before the consequences kick in is no longer the only game in town. It’s the stuff of vintage movies, like mobile phones the size of housebricks.

And it’s not just so-called alternative currents such as the B Corporation movement, with 3,821 companies in 150 industries across 74 countries. It’s the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, encompassing 200 global businesses with a combined revenue of $8.5 trillion. It’s the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals that include commitments to “build resilient infrastructure… ensure sustainable production patterns… reduce inequality… build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions”.

The definition of what constitutes good business is being reshaped. Sure, there’s going to be a lot of lip service. Some businesses are going to think talking the talk is a substitute for walking the walk. But more and more are beginning to understand that a new approach is needed, not just to do the right thing, but to do business at all.

But football carries on as if things had never changed, fighting yesterday’s battles and sticking stubbornly to the old presumptions. And that’s why the fans need some real power and influence. I’m not going to pretend there aren’t those fan reps who are also fighting yesterday’s battles. But there are plenty more, shaped by years of experience, who are working on good, practical initiatives that could benefit the game as a whole and take it into a brighter future.

This matters even more now because one of the stranger products of these strange times is that a UK government not naturally well-disposed towards intervention seems to have seen that its pledge to institute a fan-led review of the game’s governance might be worth firming up. I’m not convinced any such review should be led by fans, but fans should certainly have as much influence as any other, er, stakeholder. And there’s a chance they might get it this time.

The sticking point will come, as it always does, when those with power have to give some of it up. It will take government to make it clear that has to happen. And smart leadership to embrace the fact that it has to happen. Which is something we can all be fans of.

[Chester Perry]

The squabble over whether to accept the domestic rights deals on offer for Serie A took a new turn yesterday, with 7 clubs nailing their colours to the mast and demanding an agreement be made to secure their futures, and threatening legal action if it doesn't happen -

https://sempreinter.com/2021/03/07/inte ... a-reports/

While the squabbling continues for domestic rights the picture regarding International rights is even worse as the league has now determined to re-package it's tenders to try and get closer to the numbers they were looking for, I just don't see it happening

https://twitter.com/SportBusiness/statu ... 5539351556

Serie A clubs again failed to agree the next domestic TV deal today and the naughty nine gave the stitch-up seven as good as they got by all accounts, it is going to another sequel, from Sports Business

Serie A TV rights impasse remains after ‘group of nine’ hit back at criticism
SportBusiness Staff
March 11, 2021

Italy’s Serie A clubs have once again failed to award domestic broadcast rights for the 2021-24 cycle as a deadlock between clubs persists.

Going into the latest video conference vote, incumbent rights-holders DAZN and Sky Italia had been vying for the contract but no progress has been made in allocating the rights.

The 20 clubs from the Italian top flight have not altered their stance and voted in the same way today (Thursday) as at last week’s meeting, according to Ansa, the Italian news agency, with 11 votes for DAZN and nine abstentions.

Lega Serie A said that clubs would continue discussions over this “important issue” at another meeting next week.

The latest vote came after a group of nine clubs fired back at suggestions they are employing “delaying and obstructive tactics” during talks.

The nine clubs – Benevento, Bologna, Crotone, Genoa, Roma, Sampdoria, Sassuolo, Spezia and Torino – have written to Lega Serie A president, Paolo Dal Pino, and chief executive, Luigi De Siervo, along with other teams, to answer the claims made in a letter released on Friday.

In that letter, a group of seven clubs called for the next broadcast rights deals to be given priority over the potential formation of a new entity to manage the league’s media rights business.

The seven clubs were said to be Atalanta, Fiorentina, Inter Milan, Juventus, Lazio, Napoli and Hellas Verona, with the letter stressing “the need to proceed without delay with the assignment of audiovisual rights for the national and international territory”. The letter added that those engaging in “obstructive and delaying behaviour” leave themselves open to “legitimate claims for compensation”.

In the letter from the group of nine, the clubs described the content as being “unacceptable in terms of tone”.

The letter adds, according to the Calcio e Finanza website, that the group’s concerns over the ability of DAZN and Italian telecoms operator Telecom Italia (TIM) to cover the whole of Italy, as well as a business plan for a proposed Serie A channel, are not being addressed. As part of its support for the DAZN bid, TIM has promised to provide 40 per cent of DAZN’ proposed rights fee investment.

The letter reads: “We believed and still believe that these investigations are necessary before taking a decision that will decide our future in the next three years and that, if it turns out to be wrong, would seriously affect the future of Italian football. We find it inexplicable that these obvious insights have not yet been made and it would be very serious if, in their absence, the assignment would be made.”

A total of 14 votes is needed to approve any deal.

DAZN has submitted the leading offer of €840m ($997m) per season for rights to seven exclusive matches per matchweek and co-exclusive rights to three matches. Serie A’s existing deals with Sky and DAZN (from 2018-19 to 2020-21) are worth €973m per year.

It was reported today that DAZN is in talks with Italian network provider Persidera to rent television frequencies to boost its broadcasting power in Italy.

DAZN plans to rent digital terrestrial frequencies from Persidera if it wins the Serie A rights auction, according to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Such a deal could help alleviate concerns over DAZN’s distribution footprint in Italy.

Sky is thought to have bid €750m for Package 2, one of the ‘mixed’ marketing packages offered by Lega Serie A, comprising rights across all platforms but with only co-exclusivity for internet, IPTV and mobile rights. It recently emerged that Sky has offered an upfront payment of €505m as part of its offer, including the settling of the disputed final instalment for the 2019-20 season.

Should rights be awarded to DAZN on the terms reported, then revenue over and above the €840m per year would come from the sale of non-exclusive rights to the three matches. The league would also be saving a commission payment of between €50m and €60m per season to the Infront agency, its outgoing media-rights adviser.

Private equity
The launch of the domestic tender came just weeks after Serie A clubs accepted an offer from private equity companies including CVC for a 10-per-cent stake in a new entity that will manage its media-rights business.

The proposal is worth €1.7bn and also involves fellow private equity firm Advent International and Italy’s state-backed investor Fondo Strategico Italiano (FSI). The private equity issue was last week pushed back once again.

Regarding the new entity, the nine clubs added: “Linking the assignment of TV rights and the operation of the entity (as it appears evident from your letter and which we would like to avoid) is indeed obstructive and delaying conduct, evidently dictated by particular and non-collective interests of the league.

“It is incredible that those who implement it are so directed to accuse others, with threats that would be serious and out of place in any context and are more so in the associative sphere.”

[Chester Perry]

Meanwhile the latest in a long line of disputes between Canal+ and the LFP is to be heard on March 2nd - from SportsBusiness.com

LFP and Canal Plus handed March date for hearing
Martin Ross = February 19, 2021

The legal case put forward by pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus against the recent broadcast rights auction run by France’s Professional Football League is to be heard on March 2.

The date was handed down today (Friday) by judge Nathalie Dostert at Paris’ commercial court.

Neither Canal Plus nor fellow pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports took part in the latest tender process with the Vivendi-owned broadcaster challenging the LFP’s move to only go to market with rights previously held by the Mediapro agency and production group.

Speaking in court, representatives from Clifford Chance, the LFP’s law firm, asked that the case was heard in a week’s time given financial pressures on French clubs.

Quoted by AFP, they said: “We are in a very much in a rush to defend,” adding that the matter is “very urgent” and “carries considerable interests” among the clubs.

However, lawyers from Canal Plus requested an additional week.

Canal Plus has three outstanding challenges against the LFP. The broadcaster also submitted a complaint to the Autorité de la concurrence, France’s competition watchdog, and also has a historic legal case over the knock-on effect of the ‘Yellow Vest’ match postponements in late 2018.

It is expected that there will not be a ruling in the competition case for at least six months.

The legal challenge to the tender was maintained by Canal Plus despite the broadcaster negotiating a rights deal with the LFP for the remainder of the 2020-21 season after the auction, which covered the 2020-24 cycle, did not yield satisfactory bids.

Canal Plus secured rights to eight Ligue 1 fixtures per matchweek, adding to its existing rights to two live matches per round, sublicensed from beIN. In addition, Canal Plus secured rights to eight Ligue 2 matches per matchweek and a sweep of midweek and weekend magazine programmes. The Ligue 2 rights have duly been sold on to beIN.

The deal with Canal Plus means a marked reduction in domestic rights fees for the LFP and its clubs this season, with a total of between €650m ($788m) and €670m now expected to be paid over the course of the season. The rights for the 2020-24 cycle were originally sold for €1.15bn per season in the initial 2018 auction.

Canal Plus acquired exclusive rights to two top-pick Ligue 1 fixtures per matchweek in the sublicensing deal with beIN after the latter acquired its rights from the LFP in a deal worth €330m per season (from 2020-21 to 2023-24).

Mediapro had agreed to pay €780m per season and €34m per season for its Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 rights, respectively for the 2020-24 cycle. But both contracts were terminated in December and the rights returned in a dispute over fee instalments.

The French Ligue have won the case lodged against them by Canal +, but it is likely to go to appeal - from SportsBusiness.com

Commercial court backs LFP in TV rights case, Canal Plus to appeal
Martin Ross
March 11, 2021

Paris’ commercial court has ruled in favour of France’s Professional Football League (LFP) in a case brought against it by pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus over a recent broadcast rights auction.

The court today (Thursday) dismissed the challenge from the Vivendi-owned broadcaster and instructed Canal Plus to pay €50,000 ($59,800) in legal costs, according to RMC Sport, the French sports broadcaster.

Canal Plus reacted to the decision by saying that it will appeal “as soon as possible”.

Canal Plus, which was joined by fellow pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports in its legal action, challenged the LFP’s move to issue an invitation to tender for only the rights previously held by the Mediapro agency and production group.

The tender excluded the package of rights held by Canal Plus, sublicensed from beIN, for two live matches per matchweek.

Pending an unsuccessful appeal, it now appears that the LFP will be able to continue to benefit from the terms of Canal Plus’ rights deal and could also launch a new invitation to tender for the other rights (from 2021-22 onwards).

Canal Plus maintained its legal challenge despite having recently agreed a deal for Ligue 1 rights for the rest of the 2020-21 season. This came after the LFP’s tender for 80 per cent of the matches failed to attract appealing bids as both Canal and beIN refused to submit offers.

Quoted by AFP, Yves Wehrli, the LFP’s lawyer, said in court on March 2: “The [rights] packages were separate, they were autonomous at the time of their commercialisation.”

Wehrli also denounced the “absolute bad faith” on the part of Canal Plus.

In its new deal for the remainder of the season, Canal Plus secured rights to eight Ligue 1 fixtures per matchweek, adding to its existing rights to two live matches per round (sublicensed from beIN). In addition, Canal Plus secured rights to eight Ligue 2 matches per matchweek and a sweep of midweek and weekend magazine programmes. The Ligue 2 rights have duly been sold on to beIN.

Canal Plus acquired exclusive rights to the two top-pick Ligue 1 fixtures per matchweek in the sublicensing deal with beIN after the latter acquired its rights from the LFP in a deal worth €330m per season (from 2020-21 to 2023-24).

Canal Plus has two other challenges against the LFP.

The broadcaster also submitted a complaint to the Autorité de la concurrence, France’s competition watchdog, and also has a historic legal case over the knock-on effect of match postponements due to the Gilet Jaunes [Yellow Vest] protests in late 2018. It is expected that there will not be a ruling in the competition case for at least six months.

The deal with Canal Plus represented a marked reduction in domestic rights fees for the LFP and its clubs this season, with a total of between €650m and €670m now expected to be paid over the course of the season. The rights for the 2020-24 cycle were originally sold for €1.15bn per season in the initial 2018 auction.

Mediapro had agreed to pay €780m per season and €34m per season for its Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 rights, respectively for the 2020-24 cycle. But both contracts were terminated in December and the rights returned in a dispute over fee instalments.

[Chester Perry]

The other day I commented on a Telegraph article about the relegation clauses at West Brom and wondered about the surprise the article seemed to show, it may have been because of this Times article which claims Newcastle's 1st team squad does not have relegation clauses in their contracts - maybe helps to further explain that Jeff Hendrick switch

Newcastle United’s relegation clause gamble could cost dear if relegated
Martin Hardy
Tuesday March 09 2021, 12.01am, The Times

The financial cost of relegation to Newcastle United would be even more devastating because the club’s first-team players do not have relegation clauses in their contracts.

The Times understands that Newcastle’s policy has been to avoid such clauses to prevent potential signings from being put off. It means that Newcastle, who are only one point outside the relegation zone, would have to carry their full Premier League wage bill into the second tier next season, if they go down, with top earners such as Miguel Almirón on £80,000 a week.

In their most recent published accounts, for the financial year ending June 2019, Newcastle had a player wage bill of £96.8 million. Since then they have signed Joelinton, Allan Saint-Maximin, Callum Wilson and Ryan Fraser.

Relegation clauses have become an important device for clubs to manage the dramatic income drop without Premier League TV money. Some clubs make players agree to a 40 per cent pay cut if the club are relegated.

Newcastle’s accounts showed a difference of £92.8 million in turnover from being a Championship club in 2016-17 to a Premier League club for the following campaign. They had a wage bill of £81 million for that promotion campaign, and the managing director Lee Charnley later admitted that there had been a one-year gamble on an immediate return. He said that there would have been “bloodshed” had they not gone up under Rafa Benítez.

Newcastle have won only two of their past 18 games, while Fulham have cut a ten-point gap between the teams to a single point after their win over Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday, while Newcastle drew with West Bromwich Albion. Yet Newcastle have given no indication that Steve Bruce’s position as head coach is in danger, despite his bust-up last week with the winger Matt Ritchie.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

No relegation clauses just shows they haven't learnt a thing about running a tight ship until they've stabilised the ship accordingly in the PL.

[Chester Perry]

On the subject of Newcastle, long time suitor Amanda Staveley has an expensive legal bill to pay following her failed attempt to get the courts to force a £600m introduction fee from Barclays - that sum would have paid for the 10% stake in Newcastle United that she thought she was going to get last year when fronting the Saudi bid - even then it was believed she could only afford that stake with the proceeds from a court win

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... attle.html

[Chester Perry]

This thread started with the financial accounts of the money making machine that is Manchester United, it regularly turns back to them and does so once again - It has been announced that Avram Glazier is intending to sell 5 million shares in Manchester United, just under 5% with the hope of raising around £70m or so - These would the same type of shares to those listed on the New York Stock Exchange the common Class A shares, that offer little power at the club but do come with the benefit of a regular dividend payment. It just goes to show that for the Glazer family at least - Manchester United is Football's Magic Money Tree

https://londonnewstime.com/manchester-u ... es/123727/

[Chester Perry]

It is something that I have posted about a number of times in relations to our own club - Manchester's two Premier League clubs have been urged by local food banks to commit to paying a real living wage to their staff and more significantly/symbolically get accreditation for doing so from the Living Wage Foundation

https://www.skysports.com/football/news ... iving-wage

[Chester Perry]

Preston North End have released their 2019/20 Financial Accounts - another £10m loss after player trading

Preston North End Football Club Limited

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

Preston North End Limited

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

Deepdale PNE Holdings Limited

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

@KieranMaguire has had a look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 4592700419

[Chester Perry]

As you can see - West Ham have released their 2019/20 financial results - making them the 9th Premier League club to do so - that is a lot of extra and costly debt - making them the biggest football client of MSD

Official Statement

https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/202 ... -announced

Annual report and financial statement

https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/202 ... -announced

@Kieran Maguire talks to West Ham supporter forum KUMB about their financial results

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUEAmqIZhdE

and @SwissRamble does his usual thorough analysis of the same here

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 9188421632

with a summary here

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 6767655938

for those who subscribe the Athletic have had a good look at those West Ham Accounts too

https://theathletic.com/2440436/?source=twitteruk

[Chester Perry]

Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian witha scathing takedownof Andrea Agnelli for his work at Juventus and his plans for the Champions League


New-look Champions League is a pointless waste of time that will destroy the drama
Jonathan Wilson

Swiss system pushed by Juventus’s Andrea Agnelli will generate meaningless matches and worsen football’s inequality

Sat 13 Mar 2021 20.00 GMT

After being eliminated by Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-final in 2018, Juventus took decisive action. What was needed, they decided, was a guarantee of goals who could transform their two defeats in finals in the previous three years into gold. So they bought Cristiano Ronaldo for €100m, paying him more than the next four highest-paid players at the club put together, even though he was 33 and even though his individualistic immobility made him anachronistic at elite level.

Given the choice between structural reform that might have tackled the recurring problems and signing big names, of course, executives almost always plump for the latter. It’s glamorous, makes them feel important and doesn’t require any real work or understanding of football. And it will have a far greater short-term impact on social media eyeballs than overhauling the data analysis department, or improving scouting or recruitment, or any of the other vital unseen aspects of infrastructure.

Since when Juve have gone out of the Champions League to Ajax (annual revenue 39% of Juve’s), Lyon (45%) and, on Tuesday, Porto (22%).

At the same time, they have got rid of the manager who had won five league titles in a row and taken them to those two Champions League finals and, after a flirtation with a grumpy, cigarette-chewing ideologue, perhaps the least likely person in world football to inspire respect from Ronaldo, are now coached by an urbane vintner who used to be a midfielder. The consequence is that, after nine years, Juve’s hold on the Serie A title looks to be coming to an end.

So naturally, the genius who has overseen this collapse, the Juventus chairman, Andrea Agnelli, is the executive who, as chairman of the European Clubs Association, is fronting the redesign of the Champions League (although there are plenty of other club owners lined up behind him). It may not be entirely surprising that he favours a format that will guarantee a flow of revenue to the already rich no matter how badly they are run.

Within the next few weeks, it seems likely to be confirmed that from 2024 the Champions League will adopt the so-called “Swiss system”, with the group stage replaced by a format by which 36 teams each play 10 games, determined by seedings, with the top eight going forward to a last 16 and the teams between ninth and 24th playing off for the other eight slots.

The potential for collusion, for mutually beneficial draws in the final weeks, is obvious
There will, in other words, be 180 games to eliminate 12 teams, four additional matches to squeeze into a calendar already so stretched that last season Liverpool even pre-Covid had to play two games in two days. A side that win their first four games are in effect through and can then field weakened teams.

The potential for collusion, for mutually beneficial draws in the final weeks, is obvious. This is not a format to encourage sporting integrity; it stems from the same content-generating mindset that lusts after big names with no apparent idea of how football works or what makes it special.

By the final week, there may still be a couple of issues to be resolved in terms of automatic progression to the knockouts or to squeak into the top 24, but even that is a best-case scenario (and, really, does the ECA believe the world will be gripped by the 23rd- to 26th-best teams in Europe battling it out? By Krasnodar and Club Brugge scrapping for the right to be eliminated by Atlético Madrid in a play-off?).

The group stage as it stands, clearly, is far from perfect. It’s boring and predictable and involves too many dead games. But that’s not an issue of the format; it’s an issue of resources and their distribution (in 2019, say, Barcelona received 50% more prize money than the other losing semi-finalist, Ajax), the fact that the super-clubs are so wealthy they dominate everybody even when dismally mismanaged – for all Barcelona’s crisis, they still have a decent chance of a domestic double.

To believe the solution is to have more pointless games that will only widen football’s financial disparities is like thinking the best way to mend a broken metatarsal is to stamp on it really hard. In the group stage this year, Real Madrid were at least put under some pressure by losing to Shakhtar and then drawing against Borussia Mönchengladbach. They still ended up topping the group, but with four games to put it right, there was doubt; with eight games, there would be little sense of danger at all.

The Swiss system insulates the elite and, vitally, generates content from which they can generate even more revenue and protect themselves even further against the consequences of dreadful decisions. We are told blithely that it works well in chess. Which may be true, but then rich chess players can’t go out and buy a load of queens off poorer chess players whom the system has structurally disadvantaged.

Juve’s defeat this week to Porto was an example of what high-level European football can be. There was quality and there was drama, brilliance and stupidity, joy and sorrow. Because it mattered. Because there was a sense of jeopardy. Because at the end, one team went through and one team went out. Contrast that to Juve’s futile away win at the end of the group stage to Barcelona: it may have been a clash of super-clubs, perhaps even the final meeting of Ronaldo and Lionel Messi on a football field, but three months later barely anybody can recall it.

These compromises, supposedly, are necessary to head off the threat of a super-league. Perhaps this grotesque chimera does that for a while. But to what end, and at what cost? It will generate meaningless football that exacerbate the fundamental problem of inequality within the game. At some point Uefa has to act for football and say this is a sport, not a content-producing revenue machine for the very rich.

Call their bluff. Let the super-clubs go. And with Agnelli at the helm, watch them fly.

[Chester Perry]

I posted about this over a week ago, and withdrawals by key contenders last week have now confirmed that FIFA have cleared the path for their favoured candidate to take charge of CAF (look another billionaire given a fiefdom in sportm what could possibly go wrong?)- from the Associated Press

https://apnews.com/article/mauritania-i ... fc53080c4e

FIFA brokers deal to decide next African soccer president
By GERALD IMRAY
yesterday

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — FIFA president Gianni Infantino brokered a deal to give politically connected South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe a clear run to lead the African soccer confederation after the other three contenders withdrew over the weekend and backed Motsepe.

FIFA said the agreement for candidates Augustin Senghor of Senegal, Jacques Anouma of Ivory Coast and Ahmed Yahya of Mauritania to withdraw from the upcoming election — and unite behind Motsepe — came after meetings in Rabat, Morocco, last week. The deal was confirmed at another meeting on Saturday in Mauritania, FIFA said.

On that day, all four men appeared alongside Infantino at a ceremony celebrating “African unity” in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, and Infantino said it was the desire of all African soccer federations “to stop the divisions and get united.”

FIFA said Motsepe would lead the Confederation of African Football with “a common program” that takes from the manifestos of all four men.

Reports said Senghor and Yahya would be given CAF vice president positions and Anouma a role as a consultant to Motsepe, although FIFA didn’t announce any details of what agreements might have been made to allow Motsepe to stand unchallenged.

“The four leaders have reiterated that what unites them is much stronger than what could potentially divide them,” FIFA said. “This was the reason it was decided that they should join forces and form a team under the leadership of Patrice Motsepe.”

Motsepe, a 59-year-old mining magnate and the brother-in-law of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, is now almost certain to be elected CAF president in Rabat on Friday. With it, he would become a FIFA vice president.

The only possible stumbling block is if the man Motsepe is in line to replace, Ahmad Ahmad, overturns his five-year ban from soccer for financial misconduct at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and is allowed to stand for re-election. Even then, it appears unlikely that Ahmad would find enough votes to win with FIFA now openly backing Motsepe.

Ahmad, who was CAF president from 2017 until he was banned last year by FIFA, had his appeal hearing at CAS last week. A verdict is expected early in the week, possibly Monday.

Motsepe was a surprise candidate when he announced in November he would stand for the top job in African soccer. He owns South African club Mamelodi Sundowns but has never had a role at the African soccer body, or even his own national body. He was a lawyer before investing in gold mines in the late 1990s and became the first Black African billionaire on Forbes’ list in 2008. He has an estimated net worth of $2.8 billion and is the ninth richest man in Africa.

He rapidly became the favorite for CAF president over the last few weeks after emerging as Infantino’s preferred candidate. Infantino’s involvement has stoked talk of election interference.

FIFA has been closely involved in the affairs of the African confederation since effectively taking over its running for six months in 2019 after it became dysfunctional under Ahmad.

Aware also of the significance of Africa’s 54 votes for his own position as FIFA president, Infantino has been close to CAF elections before.

Infantino attended a party hosted by Ahmad’s campaign manager in the run-up to the 2017 CAF election, giving rise to speculation he was backing Ahmad in the contest against longstanding CAF president Issa Hayatou. Hayatou had led African soccer for 29 years and was also a FIFA veteran. Infantino denied he was taking sides but Ahmad, a relative unknown, resoundingly beat Hayatou in a major surprise.

I have been posting about the CAF Presidential elections (which FIFA's preferred Candidate has won - no none of the above voting here I am afraid) for a while now, including how FIFA have rigged the election by getting all the other candidates to stand down with promises of making them Vice Presidents (it is a luxury gravy train remember) it has now transpired that not only has FIFA been inappropriately involved in the election process, they have also broken CAF's own rules on the Vive President process and in increasing the number of CAF Vice President's

https://twitter.com/FrancisGaitho/statu ... 4633138180

I would say this is shocking and scandalous, but after the re-election of Thomas Bach as President of the IOC this week it hardly raises an flicker on the shock-ometer. This is Governance in 21st Century Sport

[Chester Perry]

There has been no shame show in the election of Patrice Motsepe to CAF President as the Press release shows "It is a position fully endorsed by FIFA President Gianni Infantino" - you don't say - absolutely and utterly shameless

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 4415357960

[Chester Perry]

This latest Podcast from Unofficial Partner should prove interesting listening to anyone who still thinks the GAAF (Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook) you can also include Netflix if you are interested more in the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) are going to be the biggest spenders on sports rights anytime soon -

E148: Did Facebook just change direction? : the blurb

Unofficial Partner|3/12/2021
What is Facebook’s plan for sport? The social media giant chose not to bid for live NFL rights in the US and recently announced they were backing away from their existing UEFA Champions League and La Liga agreements in Latin America and India, respectively.

A recent statement, via Sportico, has made waves: “the reality is that traditional media rights deals like these aren’t compatible with our current video business model. We also don’t think they’ll create the most sustainable value for the industry moving forward.”

So what does this phrase mean for sports rights holders? Does it mark a new strategic direction in Facebook’s relationship with sport?

We talk to Peter Hutton, Facebook’s global sport partnerships director about what rights holder can expect from Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and Facebook in the coming months and years.

The conversation that strays in to other areas too, and we talk about private equity’s role in media rights negotiations, whether VR is ever going to be a thing, what social media has done to our definition of football fans and the cultural and philosophical differences that separate the sports business and Silicon Valley.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... -direction

EDIT there is a lot of good discussion in this, particularly interested in:

- the differentiation of Premium Broadcast rights that drive subscriptions - NFL and Premier League (and virtually nothing else) - and those that are content fillers and niche options
- using the FANGSs to drive additional revenue, particularly by targeted marketing based on data generated on their platforms
- the real need for eights owners to work with rights holders to grow the offering through the life of the deal (something I have posted about a number of times)

[Chester Perry]

It is becoming a familiar take - Chinese Investors in European Football, encouraged to bring their money back home , but pricing the retreat too high as a result of wanting to save face - It appears that Suning have joined that group with their demands for Inter Milan - this from Bloomberg

BC Partners Talks on Inter Milan Investment Stall
By David Hellier
12 March 2021, 19:22 GMT
Buyout firm pauses negotiations over valuation disagreements
Inter Milan’s Chinese owner Suning faces liquidity pressure

BC Partners’s negotiations on a potential investment in Italian soccer team FC Internazionale Milano SpA have stalled, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

The private equity firm has paused discussions due to disagreements about Inter Milan’s valuation and uncertainty over the size of the stake on offer, according to the person. BC Partners was seeking control in any deal, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

Inter Milan is leading Italy’s top soccer league, Serie A, ahead of cross-town rival AC Milan SpA and third-ranked Juventus Football Club SpA. The team’s owner, Chinese conglomerate Suning Holdings Group Co., has been considering options to improve its financial situation, including selling part or all of its roughly 70% stake in Inter Milan, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Suning bought control of Inter Milan in 2016 for about 270 million euros ($323 million) at a time when the Chinese government was encouraging acquisitions of sports teams overseas.

Inter Milan has performed well under Suning’s stewardship, coming in 14th on the latest Football Money League ranking from Deloitte Sports Business Group, which measures soccer clubs’ revenue. Still, its debt level of 411 million euros is the fourth-highest among major European teams tracked by KPMG Football Benchmark.

The situation is fluid, and talks on a potential investment by BC Partners could still resume at a later stage, the person said. Representatives for BC Partners and Inter Milan declined to comment. Suning didn’t immediately answer a call to its headquarters seeking comment outside regular business hours in Nanjing.

Two Chinese state-owned companies agreed last month to buy a 23% stake in the Chinese group’s main listed arm, online retailer Suning.com Co., for 14.8 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) in a deal set to relieve the parent company’s liquidity issues.

[Chester Perry]

Nottingham Forest, a club that has long thought it is too big and too good to sell players to little old Burnley, have announced their 2019/20 financial results - another £32m loss

full accounts can be found here

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

@KieranMAguire has a look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 2460520448

@SwissRamble has a look at those Nottingham Forest 2019/20 financial results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 8577541123

he has done a summary sheet for those who prefer

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 8640669698

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Screenshot_20210315_120554_com.twitter.android.jpg (304.96 KiB) Viewed 3274 times

Just to confirm, their owners have basically written off £170 million and the club has an additional debt of £32 million?

Or is my maths a bit out?

[Chester Perry]

Screenshot_20210315_120554_com.twitter.android.jpg

Just to confirm, their owners have basically written off £170 million and the club has an additional debt of £32 million?

Or is my maths a bit out?

That seems right over the two different ownerships - still too proud to sell to us though, you have to think that the refusal to sell to us has cost them quite a bit and not just in transfer revenues, a serious bid from us has usually meant an uplift in wages for the player concerned, that goes back to Lansbury, though as good as Matty Cash has been for Villa £14m has set the expectations of Championship clubs beyond what we can afford (which is possibly part of the thinking at Villa)

[GodIsADeeJay81]

If they're going to carry on with that attitude about us, then I hope they sink even further into the mire and get relegated to boot.

[Chester Perry]

Rick Parry has once again been warning anyone who will listen of the castrophic consequences of banning gambling sponsorship in football - from the Financial times

EFL warns shirt sponsorship gambling ban would be ‘catastrophic’
SAMUEL AGINI MARCH 15, 2021

Rick Parry, chairman of the English Football League, has warned that a ban on gambling sports sponsorship would be “catastrophic” for smaller clubs already struggling to survive because of the pandemic.

Teams are facing potential sponsorship curbs as part of a wide-ranging UK government review into gambling legislation expected to be completed in the coming weeks. Anti-gambling activists say the close association of football with betting companies has contributed to a rise in gambling addiction and promoting the practice to children.

But Parry, who leads the body that runs the three divisions below the Premier League, told the Financial Times: “There’s no evidence to suggest that banning sponsorship will reduce the prevalence of problem gambling.”

The EFL, itself sponsored by Flutter-owned gambling group Sky Bet, is readying evidence to submit to the review. Parry said he believes the EFL will be able to make a “very good case” that the rise of betting sponsorship in football has not led to an increase in problem gambling.

Shirt sponsorships are among the biggest commercial deals available to football clubs. More than £40m of annual revenue is at stake for the EFL’s 72 clubs, money they could “ill-afford to lose”, Parry said.

The pandemic has wiped out ticket sales, which accounted for just over a fifth of Championship clubs’ £785m revenues in 2018/19, according to Deloitte. Commercial revenues represented a quarter of the total. Half of the division’s 24 clubs have gambling groups as their main shirt sponsor.

“In the wake of the pandemic it would be catastrophic,” Parry said of a potential ban.

Gambling operators, football clubs and leagues should be free to enter commercial partnerships, he added.

Executives at leading clubs expressed concern over the loss of a vital revenue stream at a time when ministers have refused to support the game during the pandemic. So far, professional men’s football has been left out of the £600m government bailout for UK sports.

“This government is guilty of snobbery towards football,” said one EFL club investor.

The Premier League declined to comment, but one club chief executive stressed that a ban would be “harder for smaller clubs because it’s easy money”. Yet Parry pointed out that a ban was “not a foregone conclusion”.

A person close to the government said the review would consider all evidence before any decision on shirt sponsorship is made.

The potential crackdown, as part of the review of the Gambling Act 2005, comes after the government slashed the maximum stake on high speed slot machines in betting shops by 98 per cent to £2. The House of Lords last year recommended that bookmakers should not be able to advertise inside sports venues or on football shirts.

Campaigners say the tie-ups normalise gambling among children and use football to reel in young men, who are then cross-sold a range of casino-style online games which they say are more addictive. There are roughly 300,000 problem gamblers in England, according to the NHS.

“Unless you were somehow able to measure it among a controlled group of people who had grown up never having been exposed to gambling advertising, it would be impossible to empirically prove its impact on rates of gambling harm,” said Matt Zarb-Cousin, Campaign For Fairer Gambling.

“The point is it’s normalising gambling among children and young people, who are most vulnerable to addiction.”

Finances at lower league clubs are already fragile. Most teams in the Championship, English football’s second tier, are lossmaking, paying 107 per cent of revenues in wages in the 2018/19 season, according to Deloitte.

There are reputational risks for clubs closely associated with gambling. Last week, betting “stock market” Football Index collapsed into administration after facing heavy criticism for reducing the dividends paid on players’ performance, leading to the value of so-called shares to crash and prompting punters to complain on social media of major losses. It said it had changed its dividend policy after incurring “substantial losses” in recent months.

Football Index was the shirt sponsor of Championship clubs Nottingham Forest and Queens Park Rangers. Both clubs have said they will remove the betting company’s logo from their shirts with immediate effect.

Entain, one of the world’s largest gambling groups and owner of the Ladbrokes and Partypoker brands, supports a ban on shirt sponsorship, though Rob Hoskin, chief governance officer, said there was “still a place” for gambling groups to sponsor sport, such as at the grassroots level.

Yet rival Kindred, the owner of 32 Red, which sponsors several clubs including Derby County, has argued that the industry is “stigmatised” in the debate.

The company said last month that 4 per cent of its revenue comes from “high-risk” players who show signs of addiction. Neil Banbury, UK general manager, said at the time: “ultimately shirt sponsorship is a bit of a red herring in the debate around problem gambling.”

Dan Waugh, an analyst specialising in gambling regulation at consultancy Regulus Partners, said smaller clubs would struggle to find alternative sponsors willing to pay as much as betting companies.

“It’s not as clear that you would have big businesses stepping up to fill the gap,” he said. “They are not the same as the Premier League in terms of global marketplace.”

[Chester Perry]

This is great as it clearly and thoroughly destroys the notion that the current elite have always been the elite while displaying the transient nature of football success before greed and privilege took over - from James Dixon at notliveandkicking

European Super Leagues
What would they have looked like in the 1990s?

https://notlivekicking.substack.com/p/e ... er-leagues

[Chester Perry]

The difficulties of the membership system at Barcelona and the electoral process, together with the complicated and expensive liabilities (I have touched on the liabilities before particularly in last summers swap transfer with inflated values that meant the then directors did not have to pay out tens of millions of Euros from their own pockets - The newly elected board at Barcelona are struggling to come up with the financial liability guarantees that will allow them to take office - the deadline is tomorrow and they are reportedly 70m euro short

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... a-11581909

[GodIsADeeJay81]

What happens if they don't find the money needed?

Does the 2nd placed lot get a crack at it instead?

[Chester Perry]

What happens if they don't find the money needed?

Does the 2nd placed lot get a crack at it instead?

there has to be another election

[Chester Perry]

I have been posting about the CAF Presidential elections (which FIFA's preferred Candidate has won - no none of the above voting here I am afraid) for a while now, including how FIFA have rigged the election by getting all the other candidates to stand down with promises of making them Vice Presidents (it is a luxury gravy train remember) it has now transpired that not only has FIFA been inappropriately involved in the election process, they have also broken CAF's own rules on the Vive President process and in increasing the number of CAF Vice President's

https://twitter.com/FrancisGaitho/statu ... 4633138180

I would say this is shocking and scandalous, but after the re-election of Thomas Bach as President of the IOC this week it hardly raises an flicker on the shock-ometer. This is Governance in 21st Century Sport

The excellent JosimarFootball.com look at the story behind new CAF President Patice Motsepe - as ever it is lengthy and detailed, but always worth the effort to read - The title gives you the gist of what is to follow

The billionaire puppet
16/03/2021

New Caf president Patrice Motsepe already has a nickname, “the new puppet of Zürich”. The Caf election demonstrated that African football is no longer in the hands of Caf, but controlled by Gianni Infantino himself.

By Pål Ødegård and Philippe Auclair

Everything went as scripted at Caf’s general assembly in Rabat, Morocco on Friday 12 March. Fifa president Gianni Infantino witnessed his favourite, Patrice Motsepe, become the new Caf president by acclamation, while his closest supporters all obtained vital positions in the Caf Executive Committee and the Fifa council. And as Caf effectively became a sub-division of Fifa in the process after the announcement of Infantino’s close friend and enforcer Veron Mosengo-Omba as its new secretary general, no objections were dared uttered by the electorate.

BECOME A PATRON AND SUPPORT JOSIMAR’S JOURNALISM. CLICK HERE.

With everything seemingly in place for Infantino’s plan to be rolled out, most officials went directly to the assembly in Rabat from the successfully arranged Caf U20 Afcon in Nouakchott, Mauritania. Some of them had taken part in a kickabout with the Fifa president, who wore the captain’s armband on the occasion. Such a privilege was not to befall the various U17 national teams on their way to the U17 Afcon about to start on 13 March in Morocco. Despite relatively low Covid-19 infection rates (122 new detected cases among a population estimated at 37 million on 9 March), Moroccan health authorities banned travel into the kingdom from more and more departure countries as days went by. And on 8 March, Caf announced that the tournament would be cancelled, citing the pandemic as the main cause. The squads of Uganda, Zambia, Senegal and Ivory Coast had already started their preparations in Morocco, but had to leave without having kicked a ball. For many of the boys, it was a huge disappointment, some of them having sacrificed precious education time in order to prepare for the tournament. Now, they had also lost a unique chance to be noticed by bigger clubs abroad.

Confusion and difficulties also awaited members of the media who had planned to fly in from abroad to cover the Congress. On 2 March, Caf suddenly announced that journalists could only attend the event by video streaming. Once again, the pandemic and Moroccan border restrictions were given as the reason for this decision – a decision which was then overturned the very next day, but with strict limits still imposed on the number of journalists allowed to be present in Rabat. Morocco’s increasingly draconian coronavirus restrictions meant that many of these journalists were refused entry into Morocco, despite having completed all the necessary formalities.

The same restrictions obviously didn’t apply to the officials attending the assembly, even if they came from countries that featured on the border control’s black list, like Patrice Motsepe’s South Africa. During the roll call, only Eritrea and Chad were absent (the latter after the government dissolved the football federation, which has already led to a suspension by Caf).

Coronation Street
The Fifa president too didn’t have any issues entering the kingdom, despite having travelled almost incessantly since the outset of the pandemic. His presence (or absence) had been the subject of numerous rumours before the Congress. Should he turn up on election day, wouldn’t that be close to an admission that everything that had preceded it, the Rabat conference, the African whistle stop tour, Mosengo-Omba’s criss-crossing of the continent, were nothing but stages in the execution of a plan to put Caf under Fifa’s tutelage?

Gianni Infantino himself had no such qualms. He was seen strolling into the assembly hall at Sofitel Jardin des Roses, beaming with confidence. Contrary to custom, it was Infantino who opened the assembly, rather than acting interim president Constant Omari. After thanking the Moroccans for arranging the assembly, Infantino told the delegates that he had visited almost all of them over the last few months (the Fifa president was also in Africa for the CHAN tournament in January this year).

“Alone, we lose,” Infantino said. “Football is a team sport. Football teaches us values, and perhaps the most important value is that of team spirit, something we have witnessed the last few days in Africa. In the last few days I’ve probably spoken to all of you. I’ve spoken to the four candidates for the presidency, and all share the same vision, the same idea. You all want a strong, united Africa. And today we celebrate this unity.”

The assembly went on with head of Caf’s finance committee Fouzi Lekjaa’s attempt at explaining, without much confidence or conviction, why Caf had accrued a deficit of 11 million US dollars in cash flow, a 40 million dollar loss in cash reserves, and very little room for economical manoeuvering. 24 million were also missing in commercial income compared to the previous year, a result of the cancellation of the broadcasting and marketing agreement they had with Lagardère. (reported here http://josimarfootball.com/the-pyramid-scheme/)

The budget, however, was approved without any votes against. “It’s a good thing to give money, the problem is actually having it”, Fouzi Lekjaa said as he tried to preach more austerity in the next cycle. He made no mention of the gross mismanagement of CAF finances under his watch, which was documented in eye-watering detail in a PWC report conducted in 2019, (reported here http://josimarfootball.com/out-of-africa/)

which laid out how cash was handed out without documentation. He didn’t mention either that CAF had lost its main source of income – their one billion dollar contract with Lagardère. Rather, Lekjaa tried to explain some of the losses on restructuring of referees. The red numbers didn’t seem to bother interim president Constant Omari, who was seen snoozing off during the budget presentation.

Breaking all the rules
Neither were there any objections to a proposal officially presented by the Executive Committee to increase the number of CAF vice-presidents from three to five. The electorate were made aware of the proposal less than 24 hours before the start of the Congress, although Caf statutes are clear that any such proposal must be communicated to the member associations at least 60 days ahead of the voting. Nevertheless, the proposal was approved unanimously.

The next item on the agenda, the election of the next president of Caf, was even easier, as acting secretary general Abdelmounain Bah explained that the other three candidates had pulled from the race, and that article 18.11 in Caf’s statutes allowed the Congress to elect the sole remaining candidate Patrice Motsepe by acclamation. The audience had already started clapping before Bah could finish his sentence. His follow-up words, “please celebrate your next president by your applause,” were evidently superfluous.

Motsepe, his face mask slipped under his chin, stood up smiling, but quickly showed signs of irritation as Constant Omari told him to go up to the microphone. “This is not the time for me to speak. I will give a few remarks later. Time is of the essence,” Motsepe uttered. He still had time to add: “let me also thank my brother Gianni Infantino for his vision and encouragement of unity.” Then he repaired to his seat.

The next item was what many of the officials had been waiting for – the voting on who was to fill the vacant seats on the Caf Executive Committee, as well as Caf’s spots on the Fifa council. And while the voting itself went smoothly, the counting took nearly two hours, the scrutineers openly arguing about the procedure. Nevertheless, it was to be a grand slam for the Fifa president and his closest allies when the results were finally announced. In the case of the Executive Committee, the inexperienced, almost unknown Kanizat Ibrahim from Comoros took the position reserved for a female representative with 35 votes against 8 and 9 respectively for Lawson Edzona from Togo and Patricia Rajeriarison from Madagascar.

Interestingly, Ibrahim, a marketing executive with no background in football administration, had been until recently president of the Fifa-appointed Normalisation Committee of the Comoros FA. Ibrahim’s mandate ended when, on 30 January of this year, a highly controversial vote saw Saïd Ali Saïd Athoumane re-elected without opposition at the head of the Comoros FA. This was the same Athoumane who, according to eyewitnesses whom Josimar has spoken to, bragged that Ibrahim would get an ExCo seat months before he himself became FA president for the second time, after being banned by his own Ethics Committee and precipitating the crisis which led to the appointment of Ibrahim in the first place.

Next, Mustapha Raji from Liberia beat Guinean Mamadou Soaré by 37 votes to 17. Soaré had just been cleared by CAS to run, when the international sports tribunal overturned the decision of Caf’s Governance Committee which had found him ineligible to run. Subsequently, Seidou Njoya from Cameroon (who appeared in a Yaoundé court on Monday 15 March, accused of having illegally re-started the Cameroonian League programme, ignoring a CAS order not to do so in the process) beat Adoum Djibrine from Chad by 45 votes to 7, before Suleiman Waberi of Djibouti, one of Infantino’s closest allies within Caf, was re-elected with 40 votes to Ethiopian Isayas Jira’s 12. The closest-run vote was for the appointee of the COSAFA region, Caf’s largest sub-region with fourteen votes, and where Elvis Chetty of the Seychelles and Maclean Letshwiti of Botswana took the two vacant positions left by South Africa’s Danny Jordaan (who did not run, in order to make space for Motsepe) and Angola’s Rui Da Costa.

Caf’s secretary general then moved on to the Fifa council seats on offer. Egypt’s Hany Abo Rida, one of the masterminds of the Rabat conference and so much else besides, was shooed in, as his only potential rival, Algerian FA chairman Kheiredine Zetchi, had stepped down at the last moment. Zetchi had just been cleared to run by CAS, which meant that he had had no time to campaign. Following Abo Rida was Fouzi Lekjaa himself. One can wonder why the powerful Moroccan had waited until now to apply for a position in Fifa’s governing cabinet. Perhaps it was because last time round, in March 2017, Fifa’s Review Committee had a different setup and wasn’t yet controlled by the Fifa president. It might well have considered Lekjaa’s prominent role in the Moroccan government – he was the director of budget at the Ministry of Finances – to constitute a breach of its regulations for eligibility. After all, hadn’t Fifa’s Governance Committee barred Russian Vitaly Mutko from Fifa office because he was a minister in Vladimir Putin’s government?

Happy people
But times had changed. This was before the Fifa Congress held in Bahrain in May 2017, when Gianni Infantino, unhappy with the eagerness shown by Governance Committee Chairman Miguel Maduro to do his job genuinely independently, had him removed from his position. Other similar-minded or inflexible individuals, like Ethics Committee’s Cornel Borbély and Hans-Joachim Eckert, were also sidelined. A number of their colleagues within Fifa’s independent committees resigned in protest. Ongoing investigations into Infantino, linked to the financing of his Fifa presidential campaign, his use of private jets owned by oligarchs and for interfering in the Caf elections last time around, suddenly stopped when Infantino appointed Maria Claudia Rojas as new head of the Ethics Committee.

The happiest of all the newly-selected Fifa Council members had to be Nigeria’s FA chairman and former CAF first vice president (he’d lost the position to Danny Jordaan in July 2019) Amaju Pinnick, a close Infantino supporter who had coveted this honour for a long time, and who is said to have played a key role in ensuring that CAF’s Executive Committee prevented Ahmad Ahmad from standing for re-election. He obliterated his opponent, Malawi’s Walter Nyamilanu, by 43 votes to 8. For the last available position, that of the confederation’s designated female representative on the Fifa Council, it was a much closer affair. Sierra Leone’s Isha Johansen got 28 votes, beating Burundi’s Lydia Nsekera by just four votes. Although it meant the world to Johansen, who faces serious challenges to her presidency at home, and who was also leaving Caf’s Executive Committee, it was probably not such a big deal for Infantino, as both candidates are considered to be loyal to him.

A league of their own
With that, the Congress itself came to an end. But Motsepe still had a press conference to go through, which was both more and less than the press present had hoped for. Less, because Motsepe refused to comment much on specifics about how to run Caf, and emphasised the need to harness the private sector in each country rather than address Caf’s serious governance issues. And more because he had brought along Augustin Senghor, Ahmed Yahya and Jacques Anouma, the three candidates who had pulled out in order for the ‘African unity’ to work out. All of them looked increasingly uncomfortable as Motsepe also acted as the media officer by directing the difficult questions to them.

“I will answer the easy ones, these the hard ones” was said in jest, but came across as deadly serious. Motsepe himself twice answered questions by “Yes, next question, please”, clearly wanting to end the session as swiftly as possible.

This left several questions unanswered, especially about an African ‘super league’, a pet project suggested by Fifa when it had intervened in Caf in 2019; but that wasn’t followed up by the Executive Committee. The plan, a closed league of twenty teams which would have to buy themselves in, similar to the model used in the United States of America and its Major League Soccer, had come up again in a tweet from one of the guests present at the Congress, the Tanzanian club SC Simba’s CEO Barbara Gonzalez, which read:

“It was great catching up with Fifa President, Gianni Infantino on the sidelines of the CAF Elections 2021. The rollout of the African Super League with 20 permanent member clubs is underway. We look forward to having Simba SC Tanzania participate soon.”

This was a bold statement considering such a league had not been on the agenda for the assembly.

The biggest indication that Infantino’s African coup was complete came the following day in a press statement from Caf. The five vice presidents had been appointed. Senghor became 1st vice president, while Yahya took the second spot. The Mauritanian was also co-opted onto Caf’s Executive Committee for good measure. The Executive Committee now consists of 25 members, that is to say almost half of Caf’s constituency. The Committee had been expanded in 2017 by Ahmad to make room for those who had supported him. This time, it was necessary with two extra vice presidents. Fifa itself has six, one for each confederation. But Caf did not divide them into the respective zones, and of the five selected, four are from Western Africa.

Suleiman Waberi is now third vice president, while the last two were more surprising as Seidou Njouya now is the 4th vice president, and the delighted Kanizat Ibrahim as 5th.

While the consensus seemed to be universal at the assembly, as motions were passed without any votes against, and nobody dared to voice disagreement in public, Josimar knows that many officials clapped while gritting their teeth. One official sent a message to Josimar expressing:

“”CAF is now a FIFA department. It is the saddest moment in CAF history. [Gianni Infantino] has created a nasty and very dangerous system. He can suspend anyone with his toy from the Ethics Committee. And no one dares protest, because if he does, he will be suspended and banned on trumped-up charges or they set up a Standards Committee to sideline you.”

Ishmael Bhamjee of Botswana, who formerly presided over the COSAFA region within Caf, sent a similar message, which Josimar has seen, just a couple of days before he passed away on 8 March after contracting the Covid-19 virus:

“Caf is captured. African football is gone. It’s to be controlled by Infantino. Motsepe is just a front. Now I ask who the hell he is to tell Africa who should take what position. I’m just disgusted”.

The decisive nail in Caf’s coffin was the announcement of the new secretary general, Veron Mosengo-Omba, Infantino’s close friend from his days at the university in Fribourg.

Fifa’s colonisation of Caf was complete. But how did it all happen? Let’s take a look behind the curtains.

The set up
Jacques Anouma thought he knew what was in store for him when he arrived at the sprawling Sofitel Hôtel Jardin des Roses in Rabat on the morning of Saturday 27 February. He’d responded to the invitation of Fouzi Lekjaa, president of the Royal Football Federation of Morocco, head of finances and third vice-president of Caf, who wanted to gather the three West African candidates to the CAF presidential election scheduled to take place in the same luxurious venue on 12 March.

The idea – or so Anouma, 69, had been told by Lekjaa – was that he, the Ivorian veteran of African football politics, Mauritanian FA President Ahmed Yahya, 44, and Senegalese FA President Augustin Senghor, 55, should discuss the possibility of putting aside their personal bids to unite behind a single name. Should they come to an agreement, whichever of them three ticked the most boxes would then be designated as the sole challenger of the fourth candidate, South African mining billionaire Patrice Motsepe, whom everyone knew enjoyed the friendship and thinly, very thinly-veiled support of FIFA president Gianni Infantino. This sole remaining challenger would by all accounts stand an excellent chance to be CAF’s next president, now that the fifth candidate, incumbent and previous favourite Ahmad Ahmad was no longer in the race.

Ahmad, the subject of a 5-year-ban imposed by Fifa for a number of violations of the Ethics Code 5, had seen the Court of Arbitration for Sport lift his suspension on a temporary basis, and had been declared eligible by CAF’s Governance Committee. But a tumultuous meeting of CAF’s Executive Committee held on 5 February in Yaoundé had seen him thrown out for good. No matter that, just a few months before that, 46 of the 54 Member Associations which compose CAF had written a letter of support for the Malagasy official. He was out of the picture for good.

One possible scenario which enjoyed significant support in the region was that the doyen Anouma, who could only serve one term as president, as he would be over the age limit (70) when the next election would be held, would take Senghor as his first vice-president and groom him as his successor. Yahya, widely perceived to be another Fifa choice – a ‘Plan B’ who could deputise for Motsepe if need be and would divide the French-speaking West African vote in any case – would not be able to stand in the way of such an agreement. A lot depended on what Anouma’s and Senghor’s respective heads of state Alassane Ouattara and Macky Sall would decide anyway.

This, however, was not quite what Lekjaa had in mind, as Anouma and his entourage quickly discovered. They first were told that the first meeting, which was originally scheduled for 11am, had been delayed. The explanation they were given by their Moroccan hosts surprised them. “The interpreters aren’t here yet”. “Interpreters”, really? Lekjaa, Senghor, Anouma, Yahya, all of them spoke French. Why wait for “interpreters?”, they asked, but no answer was forthcoming. Senghor, meanwhile, was waiting patiently in his room, where Lekjaa called him to have their own private conversation, which went on for a couple of hours.

Anouma and his advisors had quickly realised that something was afoot, and confirmation of this came when they noticed the presence in the hotel lobby of two of the closest, if not the closest of Giannis’s Infantino’s lieutenants, Fifa’s Head of Member Associations Véron Mosengo-Omba, later to be given the job of CAF’s secretary-general, and Fifa’s deputy secretary general Mattias Grafström. Then they recognised another familiar face, that of Egyptian Fifa Council member Hany Abo Rida, the only survivor of the ‘Old’, pre-FBI raids Fifa, the man who, despite being the subject of an Ethics Committee investigation for the best part of ten years, still held considerable sway in the African confederation and beyond. Abo Rida hadn’t come alone. Ahmed Megahed, the chairman of the Fifa-appointed normalisation committee of the Egyptian FA, was also there.

Then, at 17:30, the main guest made his entrance, flanked by bodyguards: Patrice Motsepe in person.

By then, Yahya had already been made aware of the grand plan elaborated by Fifa with the support of two of the continent’s most powerful power-brokers, Morocco and Egypt. The Mauritanian had agreed to it. The ‘united’ West African candidacy was a red herring, a lure. Motsepe would be allowed to run unchallenged. There would be no ‘election’. This would be a coronation by acclamation – just like it had been for Infantino when he was crowned Fifa president in Paris in June 2019. Yahya’s reward would be the position of second vice-president of CAF, a prestigious springboard for a young and ambitious man like him. Djibouti FA chairman Suleiman Waberi, a faithful ally of Infantino’s, who’d recently accompanied Mosengo-Omba on a trip to Comoros, would become 3rd vice-president. Senghor, whom Lekjaa had informed of Fifa’s wishes in their private chat, had yet to respond positively, despite being offered the 1st Vice-presidency. Anouma, to whom a position as “advisor to the president” was proposed, was always going to be the toughest nut to crack. We were then a long away from the “consensus” which would later be trumpeted as a magnificent show of ‘African unity’ by CAF and Fifa.

Now that all the cast was assembled, the play could go ahead, but only after another hold-up. Mosengo-Omba and Grafström asked to be present in the room where the four candidates would listen to and discuss Lekjaa’s proposal – Fifa’s proposal, in other words -, but all of them refused to have Fifa employees being party to these confidential talks. Mosengo-Omba and Grafström withdrew, and the four candidates talked for three hours that night, with Lekjaa joining them shortly before they broke up for the day. No agreement had yet been reached, other than to reconvene on the following day.

Everyone – including Waberi, Abo Rida, Megahed, Mosengo-Omba and Grafström, who shared a taxi back to the hotel with Senghor – then repaired to a restaurant to have a relaxed conversation between friends over dinner, as they did over breakfast, lunch and dinner on the following day.

“Submitted by Fifa”
As Senghor confirmed in a statement published on his website, two meetings took place at the Hôtel des Roses on the Sunday at 11:00 and 17:00. By the end of the first one, Senghor was starting to sway, but Anouma was still holding firm, whilst Yahya was already ‘in’, as he had probably been for quite a while. At one point, Lekjaa said that Gianni Infantino was ready to fly in on Monday to vouch for the arrangement in person. This did not prove necessary in the end, but showed how crucial this meeting was in the eyes of the Fifa president. Lekjaa also insisted that all four candidates should sign a common statement, something which Senghor and Anouma refused to do. This had been a secret conference, so secret, in fact, that at least two of the people who took part in it had no idea it would take place in the form that it did until after they’d arrived in Morocco. There had been no public statement released prior to the meeting, there should be none afterwards. But they still signed the minutes of the discussion – which have not been made public yet. The deal was almost in place, but not quite. All it needed to be concluded was a little persuasion, a little push in Anouma’s back.

Strangely, or not so strangely, the word got through that the Ivorian candidate had been requested – ordered, rather –

by head of Fifa’s governance Committee Mukul Mugdal to provide an explanation for claims made in a handful of media that his bid was directly financed by his own government to the – quite extraordinary – tune of €15m. Those claims were unfounded, and Anouma had no trouble brushing them away. But it sounded ominously like a warning shot. The deal was as good as done, as Josimar was told on Sunday evening, and as was confirmed when, on 2 March, following consultations with his Head of State Macky Sall and his own FA, Senghor announced that he had accepted ”the consensual proposal submitted to us by Fifa, Morocco and Egypt, in the name of the Superior interest of the unity of African Football that we have put forward in our profession of faith”.

Whether Senghor, a man whose probity is not in doubt, realised it or not, the mention of Fifa as one of the authors of the proposal showed how far down the road to submission and subservience CAF had gone, and how brazen Fifa had become in its pursuit of ever-greater control over the affairs of its vassail. CAF was supposed to be an independent body. CAF’s 54 Member Associations are members of Fifa, but CAF itself isn’t. Its statutes, and Fifa’s own, expressly prohibit any kind of interference of that kind. Yet a man who had bid to become its president accepted that the governing body presided over by Gianni Infantino could bend the African confederation to its will.

Anouma threw in the towel a few days later, on the eve of another summit meeting between the ‘candidates’, in Nouakchott this time, to the disappointment of many who’d seen him as the last rempart of CAF’s independence, the last beacon of resistance in Fifa’s scramble for Africa. Yahya, who’d kept very quiet until then, pulled out of the race as planned. Patrice Motsepe would have no challenger.

But why was Fifa so anxious that this would be the case?

Made by Fifa
Josimar has told elsewhere how Ahmad Ahmad’s ascent to the top of African football was almost entirely Infantino’s doing, from the inception of the Malagasy’s bid to the campaign which reached a climax at the CAF Electoral AGM of Addis Ababa in March 2017, when the previously all-powerful Issa Hayatou was finally unseated.

To start with, Ahmad’s candidacy had been treated with a degree of disdain. Within CAF’s Executive Committee, he was the silent one, barely noticeable and barely noticed. CAF delegates studiously avoided him in the run-up to the election, as being seen with the nondescript Ahmad could be interpreted as a show of disloyalty towards Hayatou. Then, as Infantino worked his magic, votes started to gravitate towards the former pariah, whose eventual triumph was primarily Fifa’s.

Ahmad, however, did not prove quite as pliable as Fifa had hoped he would be, at least not in the last thirteen months of his term, when the ‘puppet’ of Zurich showed signs of wanting to cut off the strings which were held by his manipulators. He’d accepted that Fifa Secretary General Fatma Samoura (whom he knew very well thanks to her five-year stay as a UN official in Madagascar, when he himself was a minister there) run the affairs of his confederation when she was appointed regent (in all but name) of the confederation on 1 August 2019. As Josimar recently revealed, he agreed to cancel Caf’s 1 billion US dollars contract with French broadcasting giant Lagardère at Fifa’s behest. Then he rebelled – after a fashion.

Ahmad had become something of an encumbrance in any case. His arrest and questioning by French police in June 2019 – whilst attending Gianni Infantino’s re-election at the head of Fifa – followed revelations by Josimar and others that Caf had cancelled a huge equipment contract with PUMA to hand it to a completely unknown French company with zero experience in that field, a company which happened to be run by a close friend and former French army comrade-at-arms of Loïc Gérand, Ahmad’s personal advisor.

A full dossier on the affair had been passed on to Fifa’s Ethics Committee in March 2019 by Caf’s secretary-general Amr Fahmy, who was to die from cancer one year later, aged just 36. Fahmy was sacked by Ahmad as a result, a sacking which heralded an in-depth purge of Caf’s administration. Fahmy had also included incriminating information about how Ahmad had used Caf money to finance an expensive ‘minor’ (‘Umrah’) pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslim African football officials, including Ahmed Yahyah and Suleiman Waberi, who’ve just been appointed 2nd and 3rd vice-presidents of CAF. These accusations would prove the bedrock on which Fifa’s Adjudication Committee based their decision to ban Ahmad for five years on 23 November 2020, effectively preventing him from being a candidate to his own succession in March 2021.

The delay between the moment when Fifa received the incriminating documents from Fahmy (31 March 2019) and the date at which it formally opened its investigation into Ahmad’s alleged wrongdoings (25 March 2020) seems inordinately long, given Ahmad’s arrest in connection with the affair over nine months previously, and the fact that, judging from Fifa’s final Ethics Committee report, dated October 2020, almost no new evidence had been unearthed by Fifa compared to what medias like Josimar had published when Ahmad was questioned by the French investigators (who we can confirm are still working on this case).

What had happened that could explain such a delay, given the seriousness of the allegations and the preeminence of their target? One hypothesis is that Fifa, which has now weaponised its independent committees and its use of normalization orders to an unprecedented degree (see Josimar’s investigations into the TTFA, the Comoros FA and the FKF as examples), decided to sit on Ahmad’s case until such a time when this leverage could be used for maximum impact. What happened in this case certainly does nothing to invalidate this theory. It was only after Ahmad had clashed with Infantino’s desire to reform the CAF competitions calendar (the Fifa president had spoken at a conference held in Rabat, advocating a 4-year cycle for the African Cup of Nations) and refused to renew Samoura’s regency mandate for a further six months that the indictment process was activated.

The time to get rid of Ahmad had come. But whom to replace him with?

Hands-off president
The name of Patrice Motsepe was not an obvious one to come up with. The South African multi-billionaire was known to be the owner of South African elite club Mamelodi Sundowns, who’d enjoyed excellent results under his stewardship, winning the African Champions League in 2016. He was also known to be somewhat distant from the actual running of the team, and not especially au fait with the issues currently facing African football, as was shown during the Rabat Conference, when Augustin Senghor challenged him to name five members of CAF’s current Executive Committee, something which Motsepe was allegedly unable to do. It has also been obvious from his press conferences that the mining magnate’s knowledge of the conditions faced by the people who’d elected him was scant at best. It is highly unlikely that Patrice Motsepe will be a ‘hands-on’ president of CAF.

In that respect, this made him an excellent candidate as far as Fifa was concerned. Wealthy as he was, he would not be tempted to use his function to enrich himself. If he kept his distance from the day-to-day running of the confederation, this would enable Fifa’s envoy – at one time thought to be Fatma Samoura, now confirmed to be éminence grise Véron Mosengo-Omba – to have an almost free hand in the actual management of Africa’s supreme governing body.

Motsepe had also been recommended by Rwandan president Paul Kagame, a highly controversial and divisive figure in Africa, revered by some, considered a brutal tyrant by many others, whose advice Gianni Infantino has often sought in the past. Moïse Katumbi, the influential owner of one of Africa’s powerhouse football clubs, TP Mazembe, is also known to have approved of Motsepe’s choice.

The South African businessman is also a friend of Gianni Infantino’s. The two had been seen together at the infamous birthday party thrown by Zimbabwe’s FA chairman Phil Chiyangwa in Harare in February 2017, only one month before the Fifa-orchestrated ousting of Issa Hayatou. Motsepe and Infantino had also been photographed sitting next to Donald Trump in Davos in January 2020.

Motsepe’s own motivations for seeking out office at the head of CAF were not as clear. One explanation was that the increased access he was bound to get to heads of state and top civil servants would help his business. Another was that he harboured political ambitions in South Africa, and saw himself as a possible future successor to his brother-in-law Cytil Ramaphosa, the current president of the South African republic.

One thing that was out of the question for him, however, was to lose, and there was no chance of that happening if he ran against Ahmad. It didn’t matter how many letters of support Ahmad could get. All it took to remove him from the equation was a decision to ban him from all football activities by Fifa’s Ethics Committee, which had all the ammunition it needed to execute this if and when required. Which it did.

So the path looked clear for a while, until Jacques Anouma, whom Josimar was told was encouraged to stand by the Ahmad clan, decided to throw his hat into the ring, being closely followed by Augustin Senghor. Motsepe had yet to declare himself formally, as did Fifa’s supposed ‘Plan B’ Ahmed Yahya, and waited until 9 November to do so. His problem was that almost anyone who stood against him had a chance of beating him in a CAF election. Motsepe was an outsider. A rich man, no doubt, but not a football man. Unlike Anouma, Senghor, Yahya and Ahmad, he did not know who the people who would elect the next CAF president were. He would be seen as the candidate imposed by Fifa. He could lose. Unless Fifa intervened. And Fifa did.

Horse trading
Failure was unimaginable. It would be more than a humiliation if Motsepe wasn’t elected. It would jeopardise the grand plan of keeping CAF on a tight leash and ensuring its support for the global changes Infantino wished to implement in the future, such as the creation of a new, gigantic version of the Club World Cup which would weaken the hold of confederations (UEFA in particular, and its ally CONMEBOL, to a lesser degree) on club football, and re-channel revenue from various Champions Leagues competitions to the coffers of Fifa. And should a man other than Fifa’s favoured candidate, that is to say Motsepe, win the election, CAF and its 54 Member Associations (out of the 211 which compose Fifa) could also become a major stumbling block on the road to Infantino’s own re-election in 2023.

So Infantino took the matter in his own hands. It was not enough for his right-hand man and chief enforcer Véron Mosengo-Omba to criss-cross the continent as he’d done indefatigably in the past six months, pandemic or no pandemic, offering financial support through Fifa’s Forward and COVID relief programmes whilst reminding MAs of the threat of normalisation if they didn’t play by the book – Fifa’s book, that is. Infantino had to do that job himself.

One of the main reasons for this is that, contrary to what happens on other continents, Europe in particular, the real power in African football politics does not lie with the federations and their presidents, but with the governments. This is reflected in many of those FAs’ statutes, which place them under the direct control of their country’s Ministry of Sports. All of these FAs also receive direct subsidies from their governments, with the consequence that sitting on an association’s board becomes an act of public service, and is actually treated as such in legal terms in a number of African countries. In other words: it would be unthinkable for African FA chairmen to vote against the wishes of their heads of state. If Alassane Ouattara and Macky Sall told Anouma and Senghor to make way for Motsepe, they would have no choice but to comply. Gaining access to these heads of state and pleading the case for a favoured candidate – in this case, Motsepe – was therefore key to ensuring the success of the plan. Only Infantino himself could do that.

It would look like blatant interference into the affairs of CAF. It also constituted a brazen violation of both the confederation’s and Fifa’s statutes, which specifically target interference into their internal affairs as one of the most damning statutory breaches of them all. What’s more, it is worth keeping in mind that CAF is not a member of Fifa, even if its Member Associations are. But, as one former high-ranking Fifa official told Josimar, the magnitude of the interference was such that it could, paradoxically, go unnoticed. Cram the room with elephants, nobody will notice anything anymore, which is why so little was made of Senghor’s breath-taking public admission that the proposal adopted at the Rabat conference had been mooted by Fifa, when it should have unleashed a torrent of criticism – and even provoked a rebellion from African MAs. It would look like neo-imperialism, or neo-colonialism, and would be denounced as such. It was, in private by many, in public by a few, like former chiefs of Liberian and Togolese FAs Musa Bility and Tata Avlessi. But this would not matter in the end, as who would be Fifa’s judge? Fifa itself. Fifa was not going to condemn or punish itself. Infantino could start his African journey with his mind at rest.

Touring Africa
He had visited the African continent as Fifa president a number of times beforehand, but never in this extraordinary fashion. His previous tours, such as those which took place in January and November 2019, had lasted just a few days and consisted of only a handful of stopovers. This time, in the midst of a global pandemic, he managed to cram in visits to eleven countries in the matter of ten days.

Infantino’s offensive started on 16 February in Mauritania, where the pattern was set for the rest of his African blitz. The Fifa president would inaugurate a new Fifa office or a facility funded in totality or in part by the governing body’s Forward programme, shake hands or bump fists with local football officials and, most importantly, hold private talks with the local Head of State or key government advisors. This, by the way, demonstrates how much prior planning must have gone on before the tour took place: prime ministers and presidents do not find free time in their schedule at the drop of a hat.

On 16 February, Infantino was in Nouadhibou, taking this opportunity to lavish praise on FFRIM president and CAF presidential hopeful Ahmed Yahya in what just stopped short of a clear endorsement, before meeting Mauritanian president Mohammed Cheikh El Ghazouani. The following day, he was the host of Augustin Senghor and president Macky Sall in Dakar, Senegal. From there, straight on to Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, where he was made a Commander of the Ordre National de la Reconnaissance by PM Firmin Ngrédaba and met president Faustin-Archange Touadéra (18 February). Two countries were on his schedule on the 19th. The first port of call was Rwanda’s capital Kigali, where president Paul Kagame, a key ally in the inception of the Motsepe bid, received him. Another hop on the private jet, put at his disposal by Fifa partner Qatar Airways, and he landed in the evening in Congo-Brazzaville, where he met with president Denis Sassou Nguesso. On the 20th, Infantino crossed the river Congo to Kinshasa, where his host was president of the DRC Felix Tsishekedi, who’d been recently appointed Chairman of the African Union. No time to breathe – next box to tick was Patrice Motsepe’s home country, South Africa, where COSAFA (the Council of Southern African Football Associations, which includes 14 Member Associations from the south of the continent) was holding its AGM in Johannesburg on 20 February, the perfect occasion for Infantino to stress the importance of ‘African unity’ to an audience of FA presidents before visiting Cape Town, where he was granted an audience with president Cyril Ramaphosa, Motsepe’s brother-in-law.

Sudan was next, on 21 February, where he was welcomed by Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, followed by Morocco, which Infantino calls “a powerhouse of African football”, a description which is doubly apt in the circumstances, as the man who greeted him on the tarmac of Rabat airport, CAF VP Fouzi Lekjaa, would also be the crucial go-between and facilitator of Fifa’s grand plan to ‘unite’ the CAF presidential bids behind the sole Motsepe, as we’ve seen. Infantino signed off his whirlwind tour of the African continent with meetings with the interim president of Mali Bah Ndaw and, last, on Friday 26 February, with Beninese head of state Patrice Talon, just as Jacques Anouma, Augustin Senghor and Ahmed Yahya were getting ready to fly to Rabat.

There was one glaring absentee in the list of countries which Infantino had visited to promote his vision of African football’s future, and who should be in charge of it: the Ivory Coast, the country of Fifa’s irritant Jacques Anouma, who had said things such as “it’s up to Africans to decide. Do they want to put at the head of CAF a federation president in the pay of FIFA or someone who has time to give them”, a barb which absolutely everyone knew was directed at Motsepe. The official explanation was that a visit had been planned, but that clashing schedules had forced its postponement.

No new date for the visit has been announced yet.

[Chester Perry]

I have seen these kinds of studies before and I remain unconvinced by the findings related to those who would be willing to pay for legitimate services, or rather that rights holders would cater to those requirements including price points - from SportsProMedia.com

Study: Sports rights holders missing out on US$28.3bn a year due to piracy
Synamedia and Ampere say identifying consumer triggers can transform piracy into a revenue opportunity.

Posted: March 16 2021By: Sam Carp

- OTT sports streaming services alone stand to gain US$5.4bn by eradicating piracy
- Survey of 6,000 sports fans finds 74% would convert from illegal services if legitimate alternative is available and illegal streams become unreliable
- 52 per cent of those most likely to switch to legal platforms pay for a pirate service

Sports service providers and rights holders are missing out on up to US$28.3 billion in new revenue each year as a result of piracy, according to a new study by video technology company Synamedia and market research firm Ampere Analysis.

The report found that over-the-top (OTT) sports streaming services alone would stand to gain US$5.4 billion - equivalent to 19 per cent of the total - by eradicating piracy, with the remainder available to pay-TV broadcasters.

The overall figure in the study, titled Pricing piracy: the value of action, was generated by identifying the demographics and characteristics of illegal users that are most likely to convert to legal services, including their reaction when illegal viewing is disrupted.

As part of the report, a survey of 6,000 sports fans conducted by Ampere Analysis found that 74 per cent would be willing to switch from illegal services if a legitimate alternative is available and if the illegal streams become unreliable.

By understanding those motivations and behaviours, the report says that service providers can target interventions - such as disrupting streams and incentives - at the ‘converter cohort’, which refers to viewers most likely to switch to legitimate platforms.

The study found that the converter cohort primarily comprises younger fans and are often families with young children. The group is made up of avid sports viewers, many of whom watch ten or more different sports using connected devices.

Some 40 per cent of the converter cohort said they would subscribe to OTT sports streaming services, including single-sport platforms operated by rights owners, with the balance opting for traditional pay-TV services, particularly those with exclusive coverage.

Despite being the most likely to switch from illegal streaming, the study also found that 57 per cent of the converter cohort already pay for legitimate subscriptions, while 52 per cent are putting money in the pockets of illegal services.

The study therefore calls on service providers and rights holders to ‘transform piracy from a cost centre into a revenue opportunity’ by identifying the triggers that lead consumers to turn to piracy. Some of the reasons that consumers favour illegal streams are listed as flexible access without complex installations or long contracts, ease of use, availability on every device in any location and a price point that is often much lower than a traditional pay-TV contract.

Yael Fainaro, senior vice president of security at Synamedia, said: “After years of growth, a recent downturn in rights fees has been exacerbated by the pandemic, hitting sports rights hard. But just as the value of rights is being eroded, there is now the prospect of creating new revenues by converting illegal viewers into paid subscribers.

“While previous attempts to value the revenue leakage from sports streaming piracy took a crude approach, we now have the detail to develop targeted approaches and the tools to deliver quantifiable results, ensuring every investment hits the jackpot.”

It is the latest report on piracy released by Ampere and Synamedia, which last year carried out a ten-country study of more than 6,000 sports fans. That analysis that found 51 per cent of respondents still used pirate services to watch live sport on a monthly basis, despite some 89 per cent of participants owning a subscription to a pay-TV or OTT platform.

[Chester Perry]

This has bee discussed for years but it seems that a Beneliga (a combined Dutch and Belgian League) could happen after all Belgian clubs in the top 2 divisions voted it through - from SportsBusines.com

Beneliga takes step towards reality as Belgian clubs give ‘unanimous support’ to plans
Adam Nelson, Europe office
March 16, 2021

The proposed ‘Beneliga’ – a super league comprised of top Dutch and Belgian football clubs – has taken a step towards becoming reality after top clubs in Belgium backed plans for the competition.

The general assembly of the Pro League, the governing body of the top two leagues of Belgian football, voted unanimously to support moving forward with the concept at a meeting earlier today (Tuesday).

All 24 teams in the First Division A and First Division B gave their backing to the proposal, though no specifics were agreed upon.

Peter Croonen, the president of the Pro League, said: “There is unanimous support for giving the possible realisation of the Beneleague every chance. This must be accompanied by the assurance of economic stability for the other professional clubs through the creation of one national top league.

“The future ambition is based on respect for the sporting aspirations for the top clubs and the need for economic stability for the remaining professional clubs based on sustainable licensing and competition rules.

“We have now chosen a direction, which hopefully will allow us to make logical decisions for the future.”

The Pro League will now attempt to conduct further conversations with both its Dutch counterpart and its broadcast partner, Eleven, with whom it reportedly has a clause allowing for the eventuality of a ‘super league’ being established even during the current rights cycle, which runs until the end of the 2024-25 season.

Earlier this year, professional services firm Deloitte announced the results of a study finding that a combined league could generate media rights sales of up to €400m ($476m) per season – a considerable rise on the €80m each league is currently estimated to generate from their respective TV deals.

The concept was first mooted in 1996 as a way for Dutch and Belgian clubs to keep pace with the commercial changes in European club football. The concept has cropped up several times over the past 23 years, but a group of Belgian clubs known as the G5 – AA Gent, Club Brugge, KRC Genk, RSC Anderlecht and Standard Liege – have been the driving force behind the recent resurgence of the idea.

In 2019, representatives from the G5 met with six Dutch Eredivisie teams – AFC Ajax, AZ Alkmaar, FC Utrecht, Feyenoord, PSV Eindhoven and Vitesse – to discuss the idea, with support at the time believed to have been strong among those clubs.

Later that year, the Dutch Football Association (KNVB) confirmed that it had commissioned Deloitte to carry out a study into the feasibility of the project, with the study reportedly finding that even the smaller teams in the Belgian and Dutch leagues would benefit from the increased commercial visibility and media rights selling power of a combined league.

Towards the end of 2020, Club Brugge chief executive Vincent Mannaert said that recent discussions had progressed to the point where a Beneliga could be a “realistic prospect” in time for the 2023-24 season.

The two countries already enjoy a shared league in handball, with the BeNe League having been founded in 2008, and ice hockey, whose BeNe League features teams from both countries and began in 2015.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Just spotted this Belgian and Dutch league merger online, interesting proposal.

[Chester Perry]

Just spotted this Belgian and Dutch league merger online, interesting proposal.

The BeNeLiga idea has not always had such a favourable response, particular if you are called Michel Platini and you suggest it

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/ ... gues-merge

[Chester Perry]

The title is crass, but as we have seen there has to be specialist middleman knowledge in the buying of a football club, some of course have better reputations than others, though I am sure what fans think and what prospective owners think are often quite different on that scale of measurement. the same is likely to be said re owners and fans. The Athletic on the "Estate Agency" for football clubs, of course no one really likes estate agents so that gets them off to a bad start for many

https://theathletic.com/2445242/?source=twitteruk

[Chester Perry]

Sky Italia/KPMG's Football Benchmark looks at the new investors in European Football - particularly those from Private Equity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh8tbcwGWn4&t=3s

as ever subtitles are available at the 5th icon at the bottom right of the video

[Chester Perry]

It has come as no surprise to those of us who have been watching these things for some time but the proposed takeover of Derby County by Sheikh Khaled has collapsed - from the Telegraph

Derby County furious after takeover collapses - so why does Sheikh Khaled find it so hard to buy football clubs?
John Percy, Mike McGrath 3 hrs ago

Derby County's protracted takeover by Bin Zayed International has finally been scrapped, with the Championship club understood to be "furious".

Mel Morris, the Derby owner and chairman, has ended negotiations with Sheikh Khaled and his party after the Dubai-based businessman failed to meet a final deadline to complete the deal.

After nearly 12 months of talks, Morris is understood to have told BZI they had until Monday to deliver the necessary funds, but with no resolution the deal is off with Derby now pursuing other options.

It is now the third time that Sheikh Khaled, a cousin of Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour, has fallen short in his bid to buy a football club after previous attempts with Liverpool and Newcastle.

Derby announced on November 6 they had agreed a deal in principle with Derventio Holdings, a company set up by BZI, and the takeover was approved by the English Football League.

Three separate deadlines have now been missed, including one on Christmas Eve, and the delay threatened to plunge Derby into financial crisis earlier this year.

In January, it is understood that Derby's finances were woefully low and Morris had to provide funds from his own pocket to keep the club afloat. The sales of Kaide Gordon to Liverpool, George Evans to Millwall and Morgan Whittaker to Swansea also helped to generate cash flow at a crucial time.

Derby have not discounted the prospect of legal action for breach of contract now that negotiations have ceased.

Morris is currently talking to other parties, including Spanish businessman Erik Alonso and at least two other consortiums who are said to be credible.

Derby secured a 2-2 draw with Brentford at Pride Park on Tuesday night and are currently 19th in the Championship table.


Sheikh Khaled's murky history with English football
By Mike McGrath

When the news alerts started pinging on mobile phones, Derby County fans started getting excited. Sheikh Khaled bin Zayed Al Nehayan had previously been reported to be close to a takeover at Pride Park but now it was official.

In black and white, the club confirmed it. Derventio Holdings Limited, read Derby’s statement, had passed the EFL’s “Owners and Director’s test” (sic). The company funded by Sheikh Khaled was expected to complete the transaction imminently and there would be no further comment from any of the parties. There seemed little need for more detail with the deal so close.

That statement was on Nov 6. Four months later and the Sheikh’s deal has collapsed, making it the third time he has failed with a takeover. He has left a trail of disappointment and questions over why a billionaire from the Abu Dhabi royal family cannot complete seemingly straightforward deals.

Since the expected takeover was announced, Derby have sacked one manager and appointed the country’s greatest international goalscorer [Wayne Rooney]. Former England manager Steve McClaren has been appointed technical director in anticipation of the £60 million deal, but the collapse leaves the club in limbo.

Players have been waiting for the deal to be completed. They were told, via email, that a last-minute delay in the takeover transaction meant their wages were not paid at the end of December, but it would be ironed out in good time. Yet there was still no sign of the takeover being finalised.

Sheikh Khaled, reported to be a cousin of Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour, never spoke publicly about Derby. Indeed, he has never been on the record about the three clubs he has tried to buy. In 2018 he was interviewed at the Malta Blockchain Summit, a technology trade event, when he looked a little older and thinner than the stock pictures of him accompanying stories of his efforts to enter the world of football. He has seldom been seen since.

The public face of Sheikh Khaled’s takeover bids has been Midhat Kidwai. As a director of Derventio, missing out on Derby County has made it a hat-trick of takeovers where Kidwai - London-born and educated, and who started a civil engineering degree before going into chartered accountancy - has promised billions worth of investment from Abu Dhabi only for deals to fizzle out.

The first mention of Kidwai in the national press came in 2018 when The Daily Mail revealed Sheikh Khaled had failed in an audacious attempt to buy Liverpool for £2 billion in what would have been the most expensive takeover in the history of football.

Kidwai, on behalf of Sheikh Khaled, had met Liverpool chairman Tom Werner in New York. The Bin Zayed Group (BZG), the Sheikh’s company, had seen the potential of investing in a global brand.

The meeting is not even a footnote now at Anfield, with the club returning to the top of European football under their existing Fenway Sports Group (FSG) owners. “I don’t think it was very serious,” said one club source recently. At the time, that view was backed up with a categorical denial of an agreement being made.

Proof of funds or a £25m down payment for the deal never materialised. FSG went on the record and insisted they would “consider taking on a minority investor” but the club was not for sale.

So the biggest deal in Premier League history collapsed but the Bin Zayed Group was now on the map; new players among football’s wealthy and looking to invest in the right club. Within nine months, they were trying to buy Newcastle United.

This time it was The Sun who broke the story of Mike Ashley agreeing to sell to Khaled, his asking price of £350m small in comparison to the money he was prepared to spend buying Liverpool. It appeared, on the face of it, an easy deal. The money needed was a drop in the ocean for the Sheikh and Newcastle supporters wanted change after 12 years of Ashley.

Kidwai was now centre stage. As managing director of the Bin Zayed Group he released statements about the takeover. “We have agreed terms and are working hard to complete the transaction at the earliest opportunity,” he said.

There were a few warnings, lingering doubts over the deal going through, but this was a perfect storm for Kidwai. Fans were desperate for new owners, desperate for Rafa Benitez to stay at St James’ Park and for the Sheikh to spend his billions on the world’s finest players which would take the club back to the 1990s when they were competing for the title.

In the circumstances, anomalies could be overlooked. It was not considered significant that the Bin Zayed Group official website looked rudimentary, its copyright date at the bottom of the home page dated 2008 and looking barely updated since.

They used stock pictures of the man behind the wealth and his profile opened with the line, “Sheikh Khaled Bin Zayed Al Nehayan is a pioneer extraordinaire”. He is also listed as president of the UAE Sailing and Rowing Federation, whose official website is defunct.

The Sheikh was once billed as a cousin to City’s owner but the relationship seemed unclear. A source close to Mansour recently told The Daily Telegraph there was “no meaningful relationship” between the pair and if they are related, it is distant.

It has been Kidwai who has spoken about the group’s diverse interests in construction and energy, trading and industry, real estate, technology and financial services. He explains his business background in a 2015 interview with Human Resources expert Amro Bullock. On an interview set looking like a living room, Kidwai says he worked in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia but had been back in England since around 2008.

When the Newcastle takeover attempt became public, it was Kidwai who was the face of the bid. But later in the summer, messages started coming via Pete Redding, a disc jockey in Dubai with the Twitter handle @dubai_geordie. “Press claims of no bids or Premier League approval processes are simply untrue,” read part of BZG’s statement through Redding.

A few months after declaring they had agreed to buy Newcastle, it went quiet in the Middle East. It is difficult to say exactly when the deal collapsed, but by the time Ashley was interviewed by The Daily Mail’s Martin Samuel in July 2019, there was no hope of a takeover. "The last bid, the one from UAE, he's a prince and he's got £38bn or £100bn, all these numbers - well, why would you even care what you're paying then?” he said.

What is unclear is how close the Newcastle takeover was. Was BZG put off by the terms being changed? Did it have the money? Kidwai did not reply to calls and messages over the takeover.

The news of interest in Derby County broke last October through a different media outlet. This time The Athletic reported Sheikh Khaled was interested in the Championship club, who were struggling at the wrong end of the table but had Wayne Rooney, who would soon become manager.

Derventio was the name of the Roman town that evolved into Derby, a nod to a glorious past and hope of a return to the former glories. Those supporters whose mobiles pinged with the news of a takeover have ultimately been frustrated, although they can console themselves with the knowledge that they are far from alone.

When considering how takeovers work, it is worth reading Ashley’s interview with Samuel again. In contrast to the soundbites on television, the Newcastle owner gives answers with depth and explains himself fully. He suggests when Newcastle is sold the first people will hear about it will be when the takeover is completed. (you can read that interview here https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... owner.html)

These deals rarely come with a long run-up.

[Chester Perry]

This makes for interesting reading - CIES Football Observatory looks at Sustainable squad management

https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/mr63/en/

What is particularly interesting is how many English clubs are at the top end of the overall sustainability rating - and yes we do quite well

[Chester Perry]

The Guardian with the sorry take of Birmingham City - I cannot for the life of me understand why Bowyer has left Charlton for them. Also we can add this club to the list that have sold their own ground to themselves, though this was considerably cheaper and considering it's semi-condemned state you wonder if there is another motive, though the location is not one you would call salubrious


'Staring at the abyss': Birmingham City's tale of endless turmoil
Lee Bowyer is the latest manager tasked with trying to revive a club struggling under a Hong Kong-based holding company

Ben Fisher - Wed 17 Mar 2021 08.01 GMT

“Normally we do this every 12 months, or less,” said the Birmingham City chief executive, Xuandong Ren, at Aitor Karanka’s unveiling last August. It was a haunting soundbite that had those present at St Andrew’s, renamed three years ago to incorporate the name of the Hong Kong-based holding company that owns the club, Trillion Trophy Asia, squirming. Ren’s opening gambit was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek but there is more than a grain of truth behind the sentiment.

It was an ominous start to life under Karanka and sure enough the Spaniard has gone less than eight months into a three-year contract, with Lee Bowyer named the club’s eighth manager in less than five years. Bowyer was part of the side that lifted the League Cup at Wembley 10 years ago but following relegation that season Birmingham have left behind Europa League trips to Brugge and Braga and face the prospect of returning to the third tier for the first time since 1995.

Before hosting Reading on Wednesday they are three points above the relegation zone. “It has been a sad decline,” says the former Birmingham defender Michael Johnson. “Lifelong fans are worried about the club’s future.”

The threat of relegation is nothing new – Birmingham have not finished above 17th since turning to Gianfranco Zola when sacking Gary Rowett in December 2016 with the club seventh, a decision that looks more baffling by the day. Harry Redknapp, Steve Cotterill, Garry Monk and Pep Clotet have played the role of firefighter since and, after avoiding dropping into League One by two points last season, now it is over to Bowyer to channel Red Adair. Going further back, it is seven years since Birmingham rallied from 2-0 down to stay up on the final day courtesy of a 93rd-minute equaliser at Bolton. “You breathe a sigh of relief and hope lessons will be learned,” says Johnson. “But the club has not moved on and here we are again staring at the abyss. It is a club that seems to be weekly, monthly, yearly in turmoil.”

Recruitment staff have been furloughed since last year and scouting outsourced to companies in France and Spain. Ren regularly attended training under Clotet last season in a club tracksuit but perhaps the most bonkers story came to light over the weekend, when Karanka’s last supper played out in a bizarre episode at the club’s Wast Hills base. As first reported in the Daily Mirror, on Sunday staff and players, in for their recovery session after a 3-0 loss to Bristol City, reported for a celebratory lunch to belatedly mark Ren’s 39th birthday. Karanka had just been sacked but sat through the pleasantries anyway.

Ren was adamant Karanka was the man to return Birmingham to the Premier League but the chairman, Wenqing Zhao, is understood to have pressed the button to relieve the manager. “It doesn’t matter who you put in charge, if the culture is not quite right, there are always going to be things that surface to the top,” says Johnson. “Unless someone can go in and have a good sweep out of the garage, you are just creating more trouble and issues.”

Karanka publicly throwing players under the bus hardly endeared him to a dressing room low on confidence after a run of three wins since Christmas. Several longstanding staff members have departed, with Julia Shelton, the club secretary for two decades, among a quartet of senior administrative figures to leave in January 2019. Last week, her replacement, Ciara Gallagher, handed in her notice. The former academy coach Richard Beale, instrumental in the development of Nathan Redmond and Demarai Gray, left after 15 years in June 2019. He recently said he was “pushed out for the same reason as five or six of the other people”, because he was “not willing just to sit back and let what was happening happen”.

The owners have invested millions but wasted millions. Scattergun recruitment led to exorbitant spending during Redknapp’s reign in 2017, with top earners on about £30,000 a week and a wage bill totalling £38m for 2017-18. They have twice been found guilty of financial misconduct under English Football League regulations and received a nine-point deduction in 2018-19 after breaking profit and sustainability rules. Ren has defended his regime and told the BBC last month: “My top priority is to make this football club self-sustainable. The more self-sustainable you become, the less you have to rely on the owner or the parent company. The club is getting very close to becoming self-sustainable. We have a healthy squad.”

Birmingham’s chief executive, Xuandong Ren, pictured last September. Photograph: Paul Greenwood/BPI/REX/Shutterstock
Last year Birmingham’s plans to shelve an academy structure that produced Jude Bellingham, sold to Borussia Dortmund last summer for a fee rising to more than £30m, in favour of a B-team model caught senior academy staff by surprise. The announcement caused consternation within the club and, 24 hours later, they U-turned and confirmed their intention to attain Category One status. They are undergoing the auditing process.

In December the former academy manager Kristjaan Speakman left for a sporting director role at Sunderland after 14 years. “It is sad to see some people who have had some real longevity move on to pastures new,” says Johnson, formerly a club ambassador and now England Under-21s assistant manager. “When you lose those people in any environment, you lose a lot of the emotional connection and DNA. Those people are the kind that are supposed to finish at 5pm but come 7pm you’ll still see them there working”

To cap it all, the stadium, sold for £22.8m last year to a company controlled by the owner Paul Suen Cho Hung is no longer fit for purpose. A routine inspection by Birmingham city council in December found two stands – the Tilton and the Kop – failed to satisfy safety guidelines and there are major doubts as to whether they will be fixed in time for the expected return of fans next season. “A huge amount of repair work has to be done,” Ren said.

[Chester Perry]

It's deja vu time at Serie A again, another week another failure to agree the Domestic rights deal or International rights, as ever more talks required - from SportsBusiness.com

Serie A fails to award domestic rights again, more private talks for international rights
SportBusiness Staff
March 17, 2021
Mergim Vojvoda of Torino, Ivan Perii of Inter during Serie A match (Photo by Massimiliano Ferraro/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Italian Serie A football clubs have once again failed to reach a consensus on the allocation of domestic broadcast rights for the 2021-24 cycle.

Meetings held on March 4 and March 11 failed to deliver a consensus and a follow-up assembly meeting held yesterday (Tuesday) resulted in a similar outcome. Incumbent rights-holders DAZN and Sky Italia have been vying for the contract but clubs have not been able to reach a majority decision.

The latest impasse comes as Lega Serie A has decided on another phase of private negotiations over the sale of international rights.

Lega Serie A did not disclose details of how clubs voted but reports in the Italian press claim that Atalanta, Fiorentina, Hellas Verona, Inter Milan, Juventus, Lazio, AC Milan, Napoli, Parma and Udinese favoured DAZN’s offer.

Benevento, Bologna, Crotone, Genoa, Roma, Sampdoria, Sassuolo, Spezia and Torino abstained from voting, while Cagliari was absent from the meeting.

The clubs who abstained are the same nine who reportedly did so in previous meetings held on March 4 and February 26. Cagliari had previously voted in favour of DAZN’s proposal, which carries the support of telecoms operator TIM.

A total of 14 votes are needed to approve any deal.

Clubs will continue to evaluate the offers received in a new assembly meeting scheduled for next week.

DAZN has submitted the leading offer of €840m ($1.01bn) per season for rights to seven exclusive matches per matchweek and co-exclusive rights to three matches. Ahead of the February 26 meeting, Sky sought to increase pressure on the clubs by flagging concerns over the effect on market competition of the DAZN-TIM proposal.

Along with streaming on its OTT platform, DAZN currently airs Serie A action on its linear channel, which is available on Sky’s pay-television platform. The DAZN offering is also available as an add-on for subscribers to Telecom Italia’s TIMvision live streaming and video-on-demand service, and to Vodafone’s television customers.

Should DAZN be awarded the rights on the terms offered, then 40 per cent of its bid would equate to €336m per year. TIM’s payments would be settled in six annual instalments of identical amounts “made to an escrow bank account to be used exclusively for payments to Serie A”, according to details of a letter published by Bloomberg.

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

Sky is thought to have bid €750m for Package 2, one of the ‘mixed’ marketing packages offered by Lega Serie A, comprising rights across all platforms but with only co-exclusivity for internet, IPTV and mobile rights. It recently emerged that Sky has offered an upfront payment of €505m as part of its offer, including the settling of the disputed final instalment for the 2019-20 season.

International rights
The subject of international media rights was also up for discussion during yesterday’s meeting, with Lega Serie A stating that it has entered into a second round of private negotiations.

Earlier this month, Lega Serie A made alterations to the countries and regions on offer in some of its international rights packages as it invited agencies and broadcasters to increase their bids for the 2021-24 cycle by March 10.

The league’s second round of bidding was launched after it concluded a phase of private negotiations launched in January.

The global tender was launched on November 23 and was divided into 57 packages, including 52 country-specific packages, four continental packages and one ‘global’ package.

Rights in the Middle East and North Africa (along with Italy, San Marino, and the Vatican City) continue to be excluded from the global offering with the league having entered private negotiations in the Mena region after inviting bids by February 28.

International rights are currently held by the IMG agency in a deal originally worth just over €380m per season. That covers international broadcast rights, club archive rights, betting rights, a marketing spend and fee for access to the broadcast signal.

IMG, Infront, Sportfive and Mediapro are among the agencies thought to have bid in the global tender, along with the likes of Aser Ventures, the media group that owns subscription broadcaster Eleven, and the Disney-owned ESPN.

Along with Serie A, the tender also includes rights to the knockout Coppa Italia competition and Supercoppa tournament with the packages covering these divided along the equivalent package lines as the league.

In-flight and in-ship rights are also included in the global ITT.

[Chester Perry]

With all the Private Equity Interest in Sport it should come as no surprise that other kinds of financial shenanigans/instruments are moving in on the act - today saw the announcement of Sports first Exchange Traded Fund - you can find out what exactly an ETF is here https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/etf.asp

As ever these type of things need to build credibility so I am a little surprised that Joseph Pompliano of the hugely respected sports industry newsletter HuddleUp as got involved at such an early stage - here's what he has to say about it

https://huddleup.substack.com/p/the-fir ... Kq5KLJNvL0

needless to say it is not for me

[Chester Perry]

It is not that long ago that Middlesbrough saw us as great rivals, but things have moved on some what since then as football fortune once again conspired against them. They are a very different club to us, specifically as they have an owner that appears continually willing to pour money into the club to fund losses - he has been doing that for over 30 years now. Here we see there 2019/20 financial results

Statement of Accounts
https://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/sites/ ... 019-20.pdf

Summary of Accounts
https://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/sites/ ... 019-20.pdf

@KieranMaguire has had a look to

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 4585459715

It is noticeable that this is another club that is working to reduce it's transfer liabilities - while understandable in the division, this is part of a welcome trend across the game, as is the fact that the analysts are paying greater heed to that debt.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

You seen the new NFL TV deal set to start from 2023?
Over $100 billion for 10yrs

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Losses of £206 million at Boro.... Just wow.

I remember when they were bragging over their PL signings of Valdes etc.
Pretty sure a few of us said it would end in tears.

[Chester Perry]

You seen the new NFL TV deal set to start from 2023?
Over $100 billion for 10yrs

It is not a surprise, and had been forecast for some time, it was posted on this thread a couple of months back that this was possible - as I have said recently it is one of a small handful of sports rights that drives subscriptions, the length of the deal also allows broadcasters/rights holders to build business plans that will give them a return on the investment - which is exactly what Claire Enders was telling the Premier League to do as there is no rivalry between the domestic broadcasters know, they are all happy with the shares they own. The Premier League being in that elite group of sports rights that can drive subscriber numbers.

There are lessons to be learned here, will the Premier League use them?

Here is the Washington Post with the low down on that deal, not that from some broadcasters the deal starts earlier than others so that all end on the same date in 2033, also note how the different slots have warranted different price growth

What the NFL’s new TV deal means for the league, fans and networks

By Ben Strauss March 18, 2021 at 8:57 p.m. GMT

The NFL on Thursday announced a slew of new media rights deals that further cement the league’s status as the most valuable property on television. Here’s what it means for viewers, the league and the media companies forking over billions to stay in business with football.

Who will broadcast NFL games?
Sundays and Mondays will look very similar for NFL fans, with CBS continuing to carry the predominantly AFC package, and FOX carrying its traditional slate of games involving NFC teams. NBC will broadcast the Sunday night game, and ESPN will hang on to Monday Night Football.

ABC will also enter the Super Bowl rotation, which would put the Monday Night Football crew — Steve Levy, Brian Griese and Louis Riddick — in line to potentially to call the game. Expect ESPN to deliver its “Megacast” concept to the Super Bowl, meaning several different feeds will be available to fans on its cable channels and streaming service, ESPN+.

Streaming services ESPN+, Peacock (NBC) and Paramount+ (CBS) will also carry games.

Thursday night is where fans will see the biggest change, with Amazon getting exclusive streaming rights to those games. Local markets will still air games over broadcast TV, but other fans will need to be Amazon Prime subscribers (or have a friend willing to lend their login) to watch.

How long are the deals?
CBS, Fox and NBC signed 11-year deals, with ESPN signing up for 12 years, which will allow the deals with those networks to expire together at the end of the 2033 season.

How much are the networks paying?
A lot.

Fox, CBS and NBC are paying around $2 billion annually, basically doubling the amounts they are paying in their current deals. ESPN, which currently pays around $2 billion for its Monday Night package, will pay around $2.7 annually in the new pact. Amazon will pay around $1 billion for its right to stream Thursday night games.

The amounts are staggering, and they show just how tied to the NFL the networks are. This is especially true of Fox and CBS, which are smaller companies than Disney, which owns ESPN, and Comcast, which owns NBC. Fox will be paying annually around 10 percent of its current market capitalization, which is just above $20 billion. CBS will be paying around 3 percent of its current market capitalization which is around $60 billion.

ESPN’s new deal looks slightly different from the others. Currently, it pays higher rights fees than CBS and NBC because it also gets access to highlights that fuel ESPN programming for much of the year. ESPN also pays a premium, according to some insiders, because it is the only network that takes the NFL’s games off broadcast TV, which has the largest reach of any media.

With Disney paying $2.7 billion, the two sides reached a compromise that will pay the NFL lots of money and allow Disney executives to say to shareholders that they held the line on the NFL’s demands.

Why are they paying so much?
After a year in which sports TV ratings were down across the board, the NFL still maintained its dominance. The league delivered 33 of the top 50 TV audiences in 2020, including 14 of the top 20, according to data compiled by Sportico. If advertisers want to reach big audiences — even if those audiences are smaller than they have been in the past — sports, and more specifically the NFL, is increasingly the best place to do that.

Thursday Night Football is here to stay, isn’t it?
Yes. The NFL introduced Thursday night games in 2006. CBS, NBC and most recently FOX have all taken turns as broadcasters. Fox currently pays an estimated $650 million for the package, after signing a five-year pact in 2019.

The networks were less keen to bid on Thursday night games moving forward both because of the price increases for the other packages and because NFL Network and Amazon would likely have been simulcast partners. Without exclusive windows, it is harder to monetize the telecasts.

In turning over its Thursday night slate to Amazon, the NFL is trading reach for a bet on the future. The NFL televised one game exclusively on Amazon last season, which drew around 4 million viewers, much less than the average game on linear TV.

Does Sunday Ticket have a new home?
Not yet. DirecTV currently pays around $1.5 billion annually for the package, which offers a full slate of out-of-market game to customers. That the package wasn’t announced with the others could suggest there isn’t as robust a market for it, though streaming services like ESPN+ and NBC’s, Peacock, are considered favorites to eventually land it.

What do the deals mean for the future of football-watching?
In announcing the deal, the NFL touted its expanded streaming presence, with games on Amazon, ESPN+ and network streaming partners. Both NBC and ESPN will have exclusive games on their streaming platforms, meaning fans will need to purchase them to watch every Sunday and Monday night game. CBS will also make all of its telecasts available on Paramount+, its streaming service. All three media companies hope to use the NFL to boost their subscribers.

But legacy media companies remain the predominant home of the NFL. The league has always prided itself on reaching the most fans, and the best way to do that continues to be broadcast TV.

The broadcast channels will likely increase the fees they charge cable companies to carry them over the life of the deal, meaning fans will ultimately pay for some of the higher rights fees. Fans will also have to purchase multiple streaming services--ESPN+, Peacock, Amazon Prime--to watch NFL every game.

What does it mean for the league?
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones can buy an even bigger yacht, probably. Also, the salary cap will eventually rise, though it fell for the 2021-22 season. The Cowboys signed quarterback Dak Prescott to a four-year contract recently worth around $160 million, signaling that some players will also see a windfall from the new deals.

What does it mean for other sports?
With media companies ponying up enormous sums for the NFL, there have to be cuts somewhere, right? Almost certainly. But it remains to be seen which properties might be affected. The NHL just announced a big new deal this week with ESPN and will sign another one in the coming weeks. Major League Baseball and the Southeastern Conference also consummated large rights deals last year. Major League Soccer and the Pacific-12 conference will be looking for new deals soon and may find the landscape stingier after the NFL’s bounty.

Mark Maske contributed reporting.