Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

Another Portuguese Judge in the Rui Pinto "Football Leaks" case admits to a conflict of interest

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 5123151874

the original article translated by Google Translate
https://translate.google.co.uk/translat ... interesses

[Chester Perry]

What is it about Newcastle and the Premier League Owners and Directors test that it can force through so many changes in such a such a small space of time

No longer flogging prisoners

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-52420307

No longer beheading minors for the crimes they have committed

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saud ... ted-minors

What else can be achieved if the Premier League continue to resist making a decision (yes I am being facetious)

[Chester Perry]

John Nicholson with the question that defines our times - Will you join thousands at the football ever again?

https://www.football365.com/news/footba ... -nicholson

[Chester Perry]

Today's Price of Football Podcast is made particularly interesting as it contains an interview with Luton Chief Exec Gary Sweet - who closed out saying he needed to get is players to accept a pay cut - less than 24 hours later the manager and his 1st team coach's were sacked.

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0c ... ICxAE&ep=6

[Chester Perry]

Colchester announce that they will not be looking to extend the contracts of any play whose contract ends in June even if the season does resume

https://www.cu-fc.com/news/2020/april/l ... -chairman/

[Chester Perry]

I do like the solid contribution to a discussion an essay/well formed long piece of writing can make. This is one of the best, of any length I have yet seen on the particular subject matter, Jon Mackenzie turns to the writing of Michel Foucault in a bid to understand the debates about sportswashing a little more… - includes a reference to one of our own boards illustrious posters - from the co-operative newsletter https://thecoop.substack.com/subscribe? ... ack.com%2F

On the 1st of March 1757, a man—Robert-François Damiens—was conveyed by cart to the Place de Grève in Paris; to the scaffold where his life would end. Over the next four hours, his body became the site of a piece of corrective theatre, a state-mandated communiqué which saw him systematically dissected before an audience in retribution for an unforgivable crime: the crime of (albeit attempted) regicide.

At the outset, flesh was torn from his chest, arms, thighs and calves, and, into the viscera left by the harrowing, a smouldering concoction of lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur was poured. Following this, his right hand—the hand in which he held the knife which he had thrust so ineffectively at Louis XV—was burned with sulphur.

Then, a quartering was attempted. But Damiens’ body was less than compliant. Undeterred, the Royal Executioner, Charles Henri Sanson, sawed away at the still-living Damiens' tendons to allow the horses to perform the dismemberment.

With limb ripped from socket, and to the applause of the crowd, Damiens’ torso was burned at the stake. At this point, accounts differ: some say he died as his last remaining arm was removed; others maintain his screams could still be heard while the fire crackled around him.

On the 2nd of October 2018, another man-made a final trip; this time to the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post journalist, would enter the consulate to receive documents relating to his upcoming marriage. But he would never leave.

It transpired that Khashoggi had been the victim of a state-sanctioned execution. Having been strangled shortly after entering the building, Khashoggi’s body was dismembered with a bone saw before being dissolved in acid. His last words, captured on an audio recording: “I can’t breathe”.

Two killings. Both gruesome. Both carried out by the state. Both disposing of enemies of that state. But the one more than two hundred and fifty years before the other.

To readers in the twenty-first century, it is hard to know which one of these stories is more disconcerting. On the face of it, the first is more macabre in its performative gore; the living man slowly eviscerated as a parable in full view of its audience. But the second seems the more inconceivable in terms of the proximity to us in time. How, you might think, can any state in the present day think that it can mandate a death in this way?

In both instances, the question becomes: how do you get from here to there? How did we get here from Regency France? And how is modern-day Saudi Arabia still there?

Instinctively, the Western liberal sensibility reaches for some sort of progressivist moralism as an explanation for this phenomenon. In three hundred years, so the story goes, we Europeans have moved beyond a worldview that sanctions the use of flagrant power as a dissuasive tool through a slowly evolving ethical outlook that now considers the sanctity of life somewhat differently that they did in the eighteenth century.

Looking outwards from our place in the world, the logic seems to follow a similar pathway when applied to the ‘regressive’ reality of the Saudi state. Despite a storied heritage, the house of Saud only formed a kingdom in 1932. In the grand scheme of things, you might argue, they are simply further upstream in the great river of history.

In fact, I have heard representatives from the Qatari government using this approach as a defence of their human rights record with regards migrant worker deaths in the run up to the World Cup in 2022. Qatar, I was told, are very much going through their own Industrial Revolution right now. And how many people died during the English Industrial Revolution? Eh? Eh? QED

This progressivist view of history places us on the sunlit uphills of a utopian moral sensibility. As we amble up towards the inevitable peak—the moral high ground, as it were—we look back at those regressive nations, wallowing around in the mud at the foot of the mountain. One day they may join us, but today is not that day.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault offered a different solution to the question, ‘How did we get from there to here?’ In his book, Discipline and Punish, Foucault begins from the case of Robert-François Damiens and traces the unfolding genealogy of the French penal system using sociological and theoretical mechanisms to explain the emergence of the prison as the principle form of punishment within modern France.

In doing so, he reacts against the moral causality which sees the human race on that inevitable upward trek to the high ground, refusing to accept that the only operative factor in the historical development was a humanitarian concern on the part of reformists to improve the lot of their fellow creatures. Instead, Foucault offers an alternative causality which proceeds by means of what he calls ‘discipline’.

In a famous passage in Discipline and Punish, Foucault expands on his idea of discipline:
“Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines.” (Discipline and Punish, 222)

‘Power’ is the operative term here for Foucault. This is about maintaining control. As a result, rather than Europe’s slow moral improvement being the result of what liberalism likes to think is just some sort of inevitable human tendency towards enlightenment, Foucault sees power as being the ultimate driver. Not power in the maximal sense, though—in the way that we see in 17th-century France and 21st-century Saudi Arabia; but a form of ‘micro-power’ in which sensibilities are subtly manipulated through time.

Here’s the thing: when a ruler attempts to administer power maximally through the use of, for example, vicious and public execution, they run certain risks. Primarily, the ruler sets themselves up as the embodiment of power in a hierarchy of power. But this leads to an agonistic system in which the head of a populace is always having their authority challenged by the body. Much of the early history of politics was punctuated by people being killed by other people. And at some point, power wanted to consolidate itself in a way that was a little more stable (and required less dueling).

This is the internal logic of Discipline and Punish: the movement from ‘there to here’ is prompted by a shift from the use of macro-power to micro-power as the means of ‘subjecting’ a populace, that is, literally ‘making the people subjects’. Why do ethical mores look so different ‘here’ than they did ‘there’? Not because individual consciences were pricked, but because power began to realise that it could disperse itself much more efficiently than it had. Punishment, then, gives way to discipline.

The most immortalised aspect of Discipline and Punish is actually an idea borrowed from the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham: the panopticon. The panopticon was an institutional facility designed by Bentham such that the prisoners could be monitored by a solitary guard. Bentham’s conceit was that, by allowing all the inmates to be visible to this guard but not knowing when he was looking at them, the prisoners would eventually be compelled to regulate their own behaviour.

This idea of the ‘unequal gaze’—the constant possibility of being observed—became fundamental to Foucault’s ideas about discipline. Not only does it give rise to the emergence of the prison system as the dominant model for the dispersal of power, it becomes the prototype for a whole ‘carceral system’: a vast network of schools, military establishments, hospitals, and factories which create a panoptic society for its members. Why do we not see macabre public executions anymore? Well, says Foucault, because we don’t need them. We have better methods at hand for the control of the populace.

But it’s not even clear that this shift from macro- to micro-power should be considered as an ethical development. In many respects, the shift instantiates a form of subverting in the old violence under a different guise. As an illustration of this point, you only have to look back over the last ten years of British history. Last year, 184 people were executed in Saudi Arabia. But between the years of 2012 and 2014, 45,000 people were estimated to have died because of austerity measures introduced by the Tory government. Through the enactment of micro-power—the implementation of economic sanctions on the most vulnerable in society—the Tories were able to impose control upon the British people without doing so in a manner that raised any question about their methods in much of the population. Thousands of lives snuffed out on the say-so of the state but to little moral fanfare.

Discipline and Punish tells the story of how we moved from ‘there to here’. And fundamental to the tale is the sense that our so-called ‘ethical evolution’ has very little to do with any intrinsic betterment and everything to do with finding more palatable ways to enact violence.

In the next few months, there is a strong possibility that the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia will purchase an 80% stake in Newcastle United and become the majority owner of the North East club. Quite apart from the brazen murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi human rights record is beyond the pale. But in football, nothing is as simple as it should be. Inevitably, the fans, wearied by years of the Ashley regime, are finding every sort of excuse to hail Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince, as the saviour to walk them from out of their enslavement and into the Promised Land; or to render it in the modern vernacular: the Premier League.

This, we are told, is sportswashing. According to Amnesty International, sportswashing is the phenomenon that occurs when “authoritarian regimes use sports to manipulate their international image and wash away their human rights record.” As to mechanics of this, it is largely left under-explained.

On the one hand, this is understandable. The idea that the Saudi state investing in English football might be bad seems so obviously preposterous that it doesn’t seem worthy of especially careful argumentation. But on the other hand, questions emerge: how does sportswashing ‘manipulate’ an international image of a state? Who, exactly, is forgetting the Saudi’s human rights record in all of this? What underlying processes are working beneath the surface when sportswashing occurs?

Bringing Foucault into this conversation throws it into a whole new light. At heart, sportswashing is all about dispersal of power. In a bid to move his kingdom onto the world stage, Mohammed bin Salman is discovering that displays of macro-power might not be as effective as they had proved to be in the past. This is true not only on the global level—Western nations are appalled at the sorts of abuses that take place under the auspices of Mohammed’s rulership—but on the domestic level too—these macro-power shows aren’t working on Saudi nationals either. With the news that flogging will be abolished as a judicial sentence comes the acceptance by the Crown Prince that a level of liberalisation is necessary if his aspirations for the country are to be achieved. Is this the result of a moral awakening on his part? Or is it not more plausible that he is coming to the recognition that a change of tack is needed if he is to continue his vertiginous rise?

This seems to be more properly a shift from macro- to micro-power as the mechanism by which polity will be realised in modern-day Saudi Arabia. Mohammed bin Salman is dragging his nation from ‘there to here’. And we fans of English football are being invited along for the journey.

The recognition that this is as much about governance on the international political stage as it is about governance within the relative legislative backwater of English football raises a number of questions that are currently passing under the radar:

On the one hand, by focusing on macro- abuses of power, there is a subtle avoidance of an inquisition into the micro-powers that pervade the world of elite football. If, as Foucault showed, the shift from macro- to micro-power is not about moral improvement but the more effective spread of power. Whilst the ethical questions raised by the Saudi takeover of Newcastle deserve careful consideration, they shouldn’t allow us to become distracted from the micro-abuses that take place within English football on a daily basis and have done for many years.

One of the best examples of how this works in the case of Premier League football is in the assumption that state ownership of a football club is a de facto problem but corporate ownership of a football club is not. Underlying this approach seems to be the idea that, because there exists a separation of state and corporation within liberal polity, there can be no issue with a company—read a famous energy drinks company who like to play Rasen Ballsport—or the owner of a company buying up a football club to do with it what they wish.

But of course, this just ignores the fact that power has consolidated in such a way that the separation of corporation and state has collapsed in the West, leaving nothing behind but the misguided sense that it still exists. If government is now the political arm of corporation, then it seems unlikely that we are out of the woods in this regard. If state ownership of a football club is an issue, the question of corporate ownership in football needs to be raised anew.

What, then, is sportswashing? By now, it seems obvious that it forms one part of the process by which a state attempts to move from ‘there to here’ through a redistribution of power by means of increasingly subtle mechanisms. But why should we reduce this washing simply to sports? Or narrow it to only the erasure of their human rights record?

In the end, the more you look at it, the more it becomes apparent that ‘washing’ is used by power in every walk of life as a means of dispersing itself more efficiently. Yes, it’s more obvious when it involves a country who brazenly kills journalists in full view of the international community. But rather than being an outlier, it is merely the most overt instance of a whole network of power dynamics that have been undergirding and underpinning our lives and have gone unchecked for years.

Where the tendency is to use sportswashing as a cipher for ethical discussion rather than actually carrying out the difficult conversations, the PIF buyout of Newcastle United should remind us of the task at hand. Doing ethics with Foucault complexifies the issue of Saudi Arabia’s ownership of Newcastle. But it doesn’t lower the stakes in any way. Rather it turns the mirror on the norms that are accepted by us in the West with very little comment.

In many respects, the fact that a state with medieval attitudes to the dispersal of power is the height of the bar for what constitutes ethical discussion in football today is an indictment of how far gone we are. There should be no sense in which Mohammed bin Salman should be allowed to own a majority stake in Newcastle. But we have only arrived at this point because we have refused to ask more difficult questions about the subtle ways in which power has consolidated in the Premier League at an earlier juncture.

The solution to these problems isn’t going to be intransigent posturing or line-drawing in the sand. Instead, we should turn to these difficult ethical questions and debate them, discussing issues that may be hard to come to terms with or uncomfortable. Without this discourse, we have sleepwalked into a world where the state-sanctioned murder of Jamal Khashoggi isn’t enough to put us off. It may be the case that we are too far gone.

You can follow Jon Mackenzie on Twitter @Jon_Mackenzie.

[Chester Perry]

This seems an appropriate way to follow that last post - remember this from last week

For sometime now Simon Chadwick has been distancing himself from the concept of sportswashing in sport arguing that by buying clubs like Manchester City and PSG, or hosting a world cup countries like Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Russia have opened themselves up to deeper and more public scrutiny that he has referred to as "staining" rather than washing.

Also he as preferred to call countries that invest extensively overseas to provide domestic income as "rentier" states, as income comes from assests that the home countries do not use, i.e. that are rented out to other countries for employment purposes.

Now his thinking is evolving to the issue of legitimacy - which is what some of us would argue is what was driving the issue of sportswashing. It is a more honest (and direct) term and with a history of academic research precedence - what goes around.....

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 7165360128

Well Simon Chadwick has been thinking some more

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 4273963009

[Chester Perry]

The hiatus is showing football that it is going to have to fight very hard when it comes back to win the hearts and minds of the next generation - something it was aware of before the shutdown, but the pace of change in that brief time has been astonishing - 12.3m watch a live concert within an online game of Fortnite

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 6057248776

to put that into context - that is substantially more than the global audience tv audience of many Premier League matches (including when they are broadcast on SKY or BT in the UK)

https://twitter.com/sportingintel/statu ... lang=en-gb

[Chester Perry]

UEFA are giving up to Euro 4.3m to each of it's 55 member associations to help with the current financial crisis in the game

https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/mediase ... 41748.html

As @TariqPanja reminds us, "to use as they see fit" is not necessarily the best guidance to be giving

sticky hands https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 9537115136

[Royboyclaret]

Quite an essay there, Chester P !!..........Many moons ago I was involved in a project involving the original Jeremy Bentham to whom the term "sportswashing" would most definitely not have been a familiar term. Mind you that was back in the 18th century. One quote associated with Bentham that always stayed with me was....."The question is not, can they reason?.....Nor, can they talk?.....But, can they suffer?"............Perhaps a line that might be appropriate to many Newcastle United fans.

I believe he originated from Spitalfields, London, but the current Jeremy Bentham resides much closer to home in downtown Padiham.

[Chester Perry]

We are all aware just how utterly bonkers some of the spending in the EFL and particularly the Championship is but this apparently leaked info from an annual survey the EFL do to understand the finances of it's members - it appears to show that some owners need a psychiatrist rather than financial help

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... brink.html

of course this article is only talking about the extremes so it can loudly proclaim it's headlines - it would be better if the clubs were named and if there was a sister article that illustrated the best managed clubs alongside the average and worst in each league (showing the what the actual numbers look like as an overall percentage of revenues
'

[Chester Perry]

The FA have released their 2018/19 accounts - @KieranMaguire takes an unfavourable look

http://www.thefa.com/about-football-ass ... statements

The accounts are not yet published on the FA website - http://www.thefa.com/about-football-ass ... statements

but are at companies house - https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/comp ... ng-history - that strategic report is worth reading

You should also note that for the amount of liabilities they have in hand they really do not hold anything like enough cash given that so much relies on games at Wembley and the FA Cup being played which explains why they moved quicker than most to reduce staff costs during the pandemic shutdown

[Chester Perry]

@SwissRamble has been looking for things to keep him busy during the shutdown - here he has been experimenting with a print and keep reduced format for his analysis of club financials - he does intend to carry on doing his in-depth analysis thankfully

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 6297625600

[Chester Perry]

Colchester announce that they will not be looking to extend the contracts of any play whose contract ends in June even if the season does resume

https://www.cu-fc.com/news/2020/april/l ... -chairman/

@AndyhHolt made reference to this statement this morning - focussing on the divisive nature of the EFL that is effectively encouraged by the EFL board so it can maintain a modicum of influence

https://twitter.com/AndyhHolt/status/12 ... 2456862722

he added to it a bit later to reinforce a particular point

https://twitter.com/AndyhHolt/status/12 ... 7379883008

and finished with

https://twitter.com/AndyhHolt/status/12 ... 1454387200

[Chester Perry]

Simon Chadwick talks to FC Business about that Newcastle takeover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfQZKAp ... e=youtu.be

Chadwick hits an interesting point re the Newcastle region for investment and the notion of a potential freeport on the Tyne - that makes a lot more sense.

EDIT and just to reinforce that last point

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 2721790987

[Chester Perry]

The French Ligue looks like it is over following a government announcement banning all live sport until August at the earliest

https://twitter.com/marcwebber/status/1 ... 6627139584

as @RobHarris says "Now the French government has declared the end of the football season, it'll raise questions over why other countries where the pandemic is as bad are trying to restart leagues "

[Chester Perry]

Now FIFA's medical chief says that all leagues should follow the Dutch and French example

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

[Tricky Trevor]

Statute of limitations runs out on Beckenbauer trial. Well who is surprised?
More chance of Ken Dodd or Steven Gerrard being found guilty in Liverpool.
http://www.skysports.com/share/11980034

[Chester Perry]

There have been a number of times in recent transfer windows including the run up to and just after when some Burnley fans wanted to know where "their" money had gone as a result of our activity in the said window. Especially why x, y and z clubs have bought A, B or C. This might show some of the story - the average contribution of matchday fans to their club in 2018/19

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 5578692609

looks like we have a lot of OAP's, kids - though I suspect twix sales are counted in the commercial food and drink element of our accounts

[Chester Perry]

Following on from a statement published on twitter over the weekend - Lawyers for @mercan_resifi, the fiancee of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, write to the Premier League urging them to block the sale of Newcastle United - remember he went to the embassy in Turkey to pick up legal documents for the wedding.

https://twitter.com/JamesPiotr/status/1 ... 1479577600
.

[Chester Perry]

a long and detailed essay on The Impact of COVID-19 on Pay-TV and OTT Video - it offers an excellent view of the American market, and plenty of detail to think about from a Premier League and Football perspective - at the moment I believe football would better spend it's energies on what the future looks like rather than desperately finding ways to finish the season in the next 3 months when that looks far from realistic - even in Germany

https://www.matthewball.vc/all/covidvideo

[Chester Perry]

The French Ligue looks like it is over following a government announcement banning all live sport until August at the earliest

https://twitter.com/marcwebber/status/1 ... 6627139584

as @RobHarris says "Now the French government has declared the end of the football season, it'll raise questions over why other countries where the pandemic is as bad are trying to restart leagues "

meanwhile the madness and the desperate search for revenue streams continues - PSG say they plan to continue their Champions League commitment outside of France when UEFA restarts the competition

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 3130017793

[IanMcL]

I think football should restart, in the interest of sanity!

[Chester Perry]

I think football should restart, in the interest of sanity!

yours maybe but not the game's as things currently stand - judging by comments in recent weeks from the deep pocket owners in the lower leagues, I hope an extend no sport hiatus will see even the most selfish big clubs begin to change their thinking - I am all for it - we need a whole game solution or the likes of Agnelli and Sorriano win and get their self perpetuating desires.

[Royboyclaret]

There have been a number of times in recent transfer windows including the run up to and just after when some Burnley fans wanted to know where "their" money had gone as a result of our activity in the said window. Especially why x, y and z clubs have bought A, B or C. This might show some of the story - the average contribution of matchday fans to their club in 2018/19

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 5578692609

looks like we have a lot of OAP's, kids - though I suspect twix sales are counted in the commercial food and drink element of our accounts

Yet again absolutely no surprises when the PL/Championship tables at the link show Burnley in such a good light. On the other hand there are some horror stories, none moreso than Hull City at £505 in the Championship. What is that all about? In all 13 of the 24 Championship clubs have a higher matchday Income per fan than Burnley.... The Birmingham fan is quick to emphasise that his club have not increased prices for five years, well take a look at Burnley and see that same statement here applies to more like ten years:-
2019.....£273
2018.....£271
2017.....£284
2016.....£298
2015.....£314
2014.....£284
2013.....£264
etc.

The one ironic aspect is that all the sensible decisions and financial prudence of our Board of Directors over the last decade or so are in danger of potentially being undone by the effect of just a few short months of this horrible Coronavirus outbreak.

[Chester Perry]

yours maybe but not the game's as things currently stand - judging by comments in recent weeks from the deep pocket owners in the lower leagues, I hope an extend no sport hiatus will see even the most selfish big clubs begin to change their thinking - I am all for it - we need a whole game solution or the likes of Agnelli and Sorriano win and get their self perpetuating desires.

This being another example of my point - even this clown is changing his risible tune

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52463819

remember Seth Johnson https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... rt.comment

[Chester Perry]

The House of Saud play the game of - if you let us buy Newcastle we will give you lot's of money for TV rights and other commercial gold

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... roved.html

There is no real evidence in this story, no formal offer, not even someone close to either party willing to put their name to it - so contains zero commitment - meanwhile the Premier League is hoping their "broadcast partner" BeINSport won't ask for a refund/withhold payments like they have done in France.

[Chester Perry]

With that Newcastle sale price being a reported £300m it represents a 12% reduction in asking price to reflect current market conditions - later this week we are expecting the latest University of Liverpool Management School‘s Centre for Sports Business Premier League club valuations report - It will be interesting to see where it values them and indeed all clubs in the current context (though that is not part of the Markham methodology)

I should also point out that with the financial accounts for both Newcastle and Crystal Palace from last season still not available that will be even more difficult.

a reminder of last years report that upset many and surprised even more

https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2019/05/03 ... able-club/

Apparently this report is now coming out on Monday, though I can reveal that Spurs are now the most valuable club in the Premier League - suspect that there will be some revelations in tomorrows Price of Football Podcast

Better late than never - Daily Mail getting all excited by the Tottenham news - still waiting for Liverpool Univerity to publish the full report to the public

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... rpool.html

we slip to 9th and lose £48m in value compared to last year - while Wolves rocket in value - The more I see this methodology applied in football the more I think it is inappropriate

[Chester Perry]

That Premier League Football Club Valuation report has been released on the Price of Football site

http://priceoffootball.com/2728-2/

Just a thought, but our persistently high valuation in models such as this may have deterred investors from coming on board because they believe that there is no room to develop the valuation any further

[Chester Perry]

@SwissRamble dives into Southampton's 2018/19 financial results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 4132509696

and produces his new quick and easy chart (that I posted about yesterday) for them

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 7600285699

[Chester Perry]

Another legal advisory piece - this time - Players’ Pay Cuts: A Checklist for Clubs, Players and Agents - the longer this hiatus goes on the more likely all clubs are going to have to do something along these lines

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/players- ... cAaQ%3D%3D

Many may have to do it anyway even if they is a restart and next season goes ahead behind closed doors for the Premier League if these anticipated Match Day losses are anything like correct (if anything they could be an understatement)

https://twitter.com/vysyble/status/1255194369512149001

[Chester Perry]

Meanwhile, is the women's professional game on this country about to be decimated

Reading furlough their squad https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52454359

AFC Fylde fold their women's team - https://www.afcfylde.co.uk/club-stateme ... -women-fc/

[Chester Perry]

There has been much debate about how to declare the season if English Leagues are not able to complete. This blog piece from Leeds Beckett University suggests that maths can be a good tool for declaring results.

https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/blogs/ca ... er-league/

of course there are always outlier's think Leicester 2015 and those 7 wins at the end of the season - this is what legal teams would use I suspect

[Chester Perry]

The House of Saud play the game of - if you let us buy Newcastle we will give you lot's of money for TV rights and other commercial gold

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... roved.html

There is no real evidence in this story, no formal offer, not even someone close to either party willing to put their name to it - so contains zero commitment - meanwhile the Premier League is hoping their "broadcast partner" BeINSport won't ask for a refund/withhold payments like they have done in France.

which has led to this theory - piracy has devalued the righs and given them access to numbers interested in the service

https://twitter.com/_PaulHayward/status ... 5635840002

[Chester Perry]

Some of you might be interested in this free webinar this afternoon (the forecast is for heavy rain in Burnley) - COVID 360°: Where does football go now? - some big hitters in the game are taking part

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/siga-socce ... 3624503680

[Chester Perry]

Another Rights holder suspends payments to a Football league clubs - This time Portugal where clubs still negotiate their own deals rather than the collective League option that has become the norm

https://www.sportbusiness.com/news/alti ... ese-clubs/

[Chester Perry]

which makes the final paragraph of this piece all the more relevant - Rights-holders and sponsors must talk to mitigate peak pandemic pain

https://www.sportbusiness.com/2020/04/a ... mic%20pain

[Chester Perry]

The FA have released their 2018/19 accounts - @KieranMaguire takes an unfavourable look

http://www.thefa.com/about-football-ass ... statements

The accounts are not yet published on the FA website - http://www.thefa.com/about-football-ass ... statements

but are at companies house - https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/comp ... ng-history - that strategic report is worth reading

You should also note that for the amount of liabilities they have in hand they really do not hold anything like enough cash given that so much relies on games at Wembley and the FA Cup being played which explains why they moved quicker than most to reduce staff costs during the pandemic shutdown

The FA's predicted losses are huge - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sport ... risis.html

[TVC15]

That Premier League Football Club Valuation report has been released on the Price of Football site

http://priceoffootball.com/2728-2/

Just a thought, but our persistently high valuation in models such as this may have deterred investors from coming on board because they believe that there is no room to develop the valuation any further

Putting aside the impact of Covid on the clubs finances what do you think of this report Chester ?
I’ve seen it before and after being initially interested in reading something a bit different but the more I look at it the more I think they are being deliberately controversial to get more people interested in reading it - which is quite a clever strategy in itself !!
The methodology does include some credibility but the problem is when you start to overlay this with other subjective things it just dilutes significantly the final results.
The paradox of recognising things like a lower wage bill in a clubs valuation is one of the interesting (but less credible) dynamics. It takes no account of why a club chooses to have a lower wage bill, or in the case of the higher ones how it affords this via the billionaire wealth and subsidies offered by there owners. It’s the same with the debt levels really - it rewards lower debt but discounts the fact that a lot of the debt other clubs have is not bank debt but it’s the money that their billionaire owners have put into the clubs.

If anything the report is more a league table of how the clubs would rank if their owners lost their fortunes !!

[Chester Perry]

Hi TVC - as I posted last night I do not find the methodology appropriate, Roy and I along with Aggi have debated the subject a couple of times and none of us have found a satisfactory approach, even to ourselves.

There are many issues like you say, and for me the valuations in the report bear no reality to actual transactions as Maguire himself hints at.

For most clubs the sale would mean transfer of debt (Aston Villa. Huddersfield Town) or write off of debt (Bolton), so for Man United that is paid and maintained by club turnover (a rare example of it's kind), for Bournemouth or Brighton it isn't.

Brighton are valued at £187m have been underwritten to the tune of £352m in the last decade, made a small profit once in that time and don't really own any infrastructure, the owner does, what would the real transaction price be?

Again looking at valuation and transaction - does the Newcastle sale price include the loan repayment of £110m or is it separate? because I am pretty sure that Newcastle's valuation (using this method) would be substantially less than the transaction on 2018/19 financial accounts. Wages were growing and they had made a number of signings.

As for our club I still struggle to see Burnley achieve a transaction price of anything approaching £200m - but that could be because of the baggage of history of them I carry around

As for Maguire himself - you may have noticed that I have posted a lot less of him recently - the guy is overstretching himself, turning up for the opening of a window and frankly speaking quite a lot without even thinking. It is a shame, he has mixed up his employers keenness for him to speak publicly with the need to keep a high level of professional responsibility and aptitude in what he is doing.

just a note - I have been following the thread on Burnley's relative strength post pandemic with interest, I opted not to post my thoughts yet as I noticed that the debate often stops when I do - though it shouldn't, it is only a single perspective after all.

[TVC15]

Cheers Chester
All good points as usual.
I don’t mind alternatives to the normal Deloitte stuff. I worked with Deloitte for many years in my banking career and as soon as I see their name on anything I think firstly that must of cost millions (!!) and secondly it reminds me of how much I disliked a lot of their people and the whole company culture.
So I’m up for alternative views and I think Maguire’s summaries of individual clubs year end accounts are actually very good.
As for this report like you say he seems to have got too wrapped up in his own self importance and is cashing in by coming up with something headline grabbing. It’s almost like he has thought how can I come up with a report which causes controversy and ranks clubs differently to other more traditional methods and then worked backwards to achieve that by including his own made up metrics !

As for your last paragraph - you’re getting paranoid !! If the debate does stop it might be because you are right !!

[Chester Perry]

As for your last paragraph - you’re getting paranoid !! If the debate does stop it might be because you are right !!

My wife hates it when that happens

[Chester Perry]

@RobHarris brings new detail to light of the Premier League's campaigning against the Saudi Piracy as recently as February this year - it is part of their ongoing dilemma

https://apnews.com/ff6ed803e836b5f0bd463340c392c450

the letter referred to
https://twitter.com/RobHarris/status/12 ... 0864060417

[Chester Perry]

Food for thought- Tom Reed on Football365.com - Why Premier League should die in coronavirus crisis…

Farewell Premier Greed, bonjour Divisions 1-4
Why football needs a new deal & to return without the Premier League, English football's historic mistake, after pulling together during the Coronavirus.

https://www.football365.com/news/premie ... rus-crisis

[Chester Perry]

A new blog from the chaps at Vysyble - Home Alone

https://vysyble.com/blog

[Chester Perry]

Comcast who bought SKY not so long ago are feeling the pinch - Revenues down significantly in Q1 and warnings about Q2

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/comcast ... r=sharebar

This is significant because the Premier League are hoping that Sky will pay them the outstanding £350m for this season, even if it does not complete (BT just have £50m outstanding)

[Chester Perry]

Be warned the vultures are at the door - from Fobes.com

Apr 30, 2020,07:35am EDT
U.S. Investor Plans Premier League Club Takeover To ‘Recreate City Football Group’

Robert KiddSenior Contributor - SportsMoney

American investor Joseph DaGrosa and business partner Hugo Varela have revealed ambitious plans to create a global group of soccer clubs and academies, starting with an English Premier League team.

With the coronavirus pandemic hitting the finances of all soccer clubs, DaGrosa sees an opportunity to snap up teams at a discount of between 50%-70%.

DaGrosa is Chairman of Florida-based GACP Sports, which sold out of French Ligue 1 club FC Girondins de Bordeaux in December, 13 months after leading a takeover. The company also owns Soccerex, the world’s largest organizer of soccer business conferences.

“From a macro point of view, we believe football over the long term is a great investment,” DaGrosa told me in an interview.

“It’s a particularly opportune time, given what's happened due to the coronavirus and its effects on the global football industry. We think that clubs are going to be hard pressed to survive in many cases and there'll be some opportune possibilities to acquire some really strong clubs in terms of on-field performance, but that are financially distressed.

“Similarly, you've got an opportunity to acquire some world class players at a fraction of what they would otherwise cost. So anyone who comes in with dry powder in this environment with the view to the medium to long term is going to be well rewarded.”

DaGrosa and Varela, a former professional player and agent, plan to “recreate the best aspects of City Football Group” in their platform, Kapital Football Group.

Beginning with an “anchor club”, ideally in the English Premier League, Kapital Football Group intends to add three to five satellite clubs and up to 10 academies in Asia, Africa and South America.

City Football Group, which has eight clubs including the flagship Manchester City, was valued at $4.8 billion in November.

However, while Manchester City account for more than 80% of City Football Group’s revenue, Varela told me Kapital Football Group’s satellite clubs would not be set up to “feed” the anchor club.

“Each club will grow and have individual success on their own … and we can take advantage of sharing information, like scouting and commercial,” he said.

The investors said they are eyeing clubs in Spain’s La Liga, Portugal, Brazil and the U.S. as possible satellites.

The anchor club is unlikely to be one of the Premier League’s ‘top six’ of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham.

“Because of the situation there’ll be clubs in the second tier of the table (below the top six) that are more open to sell than before,” Varela said.
“The idea would be to go to a mid-table club and grow from there.”

DaGrosa, who was in discussions to take over Newcastle United last year, said GACP Sports was talking to “large institutional investors” and wants to move “fairly quickly”. He sees a window of opportunity of 24 months to recreate the City Football Group model “at a fraction of the cost”.
“Ultimately, we want to build a platform that will lend itself to going public at some point,” he said.

“But the idea is to have all the capital in place, allocate approximately two thirds of our capital for acquisitions, and leave a third or more of our capital as dry powder.

“The whole key here is to have dry powder after those initial acquisitions are done to build world class teams at a time when not a lot of other people are investing. Thematically, it's all about playing offense when the rest of the world is playing defense.”

It is a strategy that has previously worked well for DaGrosa, who has built a reputation for turning around distressed businesses. While with private equity business 1848 Capital Partners, for example, he bought 248 Burger King Franchises out of bankruptcy.

But while the burger business may be all about how many Whoppers you can sell, DaGrosa learnt from his time in Bordeaux that there is emotion involved in running a soccer club.

“First and foremost, we're fiduciaries for other people's money. And so regardless of our personal feelings, we have a responsibility to protect the capital we've been entrusted with and that's our primary focus,” he said.

“Having said that, we both love the sport and we would both like to have a legacy. But I don't think it's inconsistent to have a legacy of winning on the field and winning financially as well.

“That's why we think this is a particularly good, opportune time to move, because we think we can accomplish both.”

[Chester Perry]

@RobHarris brings new detail to light of the Premier League's campaigning against the Saudi Piracy as recently as February this year - it is part of their ongoing dilemma

https://apnews.com/ff6ed803e836b5f0bd463340c392c450

the letter referred to
https://twitter.com/RobHarris/status/12 ... 0864060417

Just put put this into context - if you have not been following closely - or to summarise if you have Simon Chadwick is on hand to help (or is that boggle your mind)

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 2137116673

[Chester Perry]

The French Ligue looks like it is over following a government announcement banning all live sport until August at the earliest

https://twitter.com/marcwebber/status/1 ... 6627139584

as @RobHarris says "Now the French government has declared the end of the football season, it'll raise questions over why other countries where the pandemic is as bad are trying to restart leagues "

This decision has proven quite costly to the clubs

https://twitter.com/jeremysmith98/statu ... 5402627080

This New York Times piece from @TariqPanja shows just how badly and how many clubs are being impacted by it

France’s Prime Minister Shut Down Soccer. That Surprised Teams Restarting.
France is the first of Europe’s big five soccer leagues to declare the season over. Now, its clubs are facing the financial consequences.
By Tariq Panja - April 29, 2020

At their board meeting on Friday, the decision makers of France’s top professional soccer league were making plans for the resumption of their competition: plans for safety protocols, training schedules and possible dates for when the first games could be played.

The talks were similar to those among executives of the other top European leagues. In Germany, players are already on the practice field. Spain has devised a hygiene plan for players and staff. In England and Italy, tentative moves are being made for a return, too.

But then, on Monday night, the planning in France was brought to an abrupt halt by a declaration by the prime minister, Édouard Philippe. The French soccer season, the prime minister announced, was over. Not paused like the others, but over.

The announcement sent shock waves across French soccer, with team owners and league officials struggling to figure out what it meant. The financial impact of not finishing the season would be crippling for teams in France, just as it would be elsewhere. League officials across Europe are warning about bankruptcies and financial carnage across the sporting landscape if television contracts that underpin their competitions are unable to be fulfilled.

So with a huge amount of anxiety, a group of executives from some of France’s leading teams joined in a conference call with the sports minister, Roxana Maracineanu, shortly after Philippe’s address.

Maracineanu, according to Bernard Caiazzo, who heads a group representing Ligue 1 clubs, said the government would offer support to clubs from the hugely damaging effects of not playing.

The government, Caiazzo said by telephone, would guarantee up to 90 percent of emergency loans the league is trying to secure from banks, a measure that is also being considered by the German league even though it is on course to be the first top division league to start playing again.

(The French league is talking to banks about a 200 million euro bridging loan, or about $217 million, to replace the final payment for the season that has been withheld by its broadcast partners since games were suspended in March.)

Social charges, a 40 percent tax on players’ salaries, may also be temporarily waived, he said. Clubs also have the option of agreeing to a 70 percent payment deferral with their athletes, which would go a long way toward alleviating some of the immediate pain, since players’ salaries are the most expensive item on teams’ balance sheets.

“I use the example of someone losing blood, even a little bit all the time: In the end he is going to die,” said Caiazzo, who also owns the top division team Saint-Étienne. “We need a blood transfusion, and the government said we will give it to you.”

Still, the sudden change in direction leaves much in the air. For example, it’s unclear whether France will crown a league champion this year — Paris Saint-Germain led the standings by 12 points when the season was stopped with 11 games to go — or whether teams will be promoted or relegated between the top two divisions.

The prime minister’s choice of declaring the league over has also led to confusion and surprise.

On a call with the league on Friday, the French soccer federation told the league to refine preparations to get players back practicing, telling officials that all that was now required was a final signoff from the government. By Tuesday, everything had changed.

“The 2019-20 season of professional sports, including football, will not be able to resume,” the prime minister told parliament.

Some club executives questioned why the prime minister did not limit his comments to when games could be played, rather than say the season was over. Jean-Michel Aulas, who as the owner of Olympique Lyonnais is one of the most powerful figures in French soccer, said he hoped that a playoff could be arranged to work out the final standings before the new season commenced.

Paris St.-Germain officials were said to be so concerned with the decision that they tried to contact the prime minister’s office for clarification.

Still, some clubs are more comfortable with the season being over than others, and the reason is money. The majority of the last portion of the current television contract was supposed to be paid to the clubs that had the largest television exposure. Moving straight to the next season would unlock a new domestic broadcast contract of a billion euros.

An emergency board meeting has been scheduled for Thursday, when the league will try to make a decision on its next steps, including whether to declare the 2019-20 season annulled and whether to declare a final classification based on the current standings. UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, said entrance to its competitions, like the Champions League, must be determined by sporting merit.

Only time will tell, Caiazzo said, whether the French prime minister made the right call.

“There are two hypotheses,” he said. “The first one, that the Germans, the Spanish, Italians and English start and they play and finish their championships, get money for TV — and everyone will say, ‘The French, they are completely stupid.’

“Or you have a problem in those countries, the virus comes back and some teams, they cannot play because of virus, and it’s a big mess and people will say, ‘The French were right, we made a mistake.’”

For now, and based on the constantly evolving prognosis for the containment of the coronavirus, the plan is to start the new French season without fans in August, before opening up stadiums in September. Whether that will happen remains, as most things right now, up in the air, Caiazzo said.

“They are in a labyrinth,” he said. “And they have doors which they are opening and closing: Nobody knows the end of this story.”

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There is a golden carrot in ending the season though - The new seasons ushers in a much more lucrative TV contract - so income will rise (Same for Belgium and Scotland) - the ability to switch to that rather than hang on to this years remnants is important

[Chester Perry]

FCBusiness in the 2nd of what is appearing to be a series of interviews with Simon Chadwick - in this one he talks about the impact Covid-19 will have on football's relationship with China and Asia and discusses the issue of leadership in the face of football's unexpected shutdown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNfarQI ... e=youtu.be