Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

There has been a lot of speculation about the state of Barcelona's finances lately - and I am as guilty of that as anyone, if not more so

Here @SwissRamble has a look at their 2019/20 financial accounts

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 9661067264

judging by his last post on that thread he shares the common view that they are overstretched and need to exercise some stringent fiscal planningl no doubt the members will be saying "it's Barcelona not Burnley"

as usual he has also done one of those lovely summary sheets too

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 8977432577

[Chester Perry]

Apparently Derby's players have finally be paid for December - the takeover has not completed yet though and there is no real confirmation on the wages either

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/sport/ ... es-4925234

[Chester Perry]

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

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

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

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

The consultation on Ligue 1 Uber Eats includes 4 lots:

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

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

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

Lot D: weekday magazines.

The consultation on League 2 BKT includes 2 lots:

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

Lot B: weekday magazines.

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

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

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

Are we to take it that the re-tender is not going too well as this tweet from @TariqPanja would seem to indicate - it can be an usual country (at least to our eyes) politically at times

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 6495833089
"French sports minister begging broadcasters to come to the rescue of Ligue 1 which is in a pickle thanks to own incompetence and hubris is next level stuff. Why should they? And, she also seems to suggest folks who are responsible for the mess should be absolved."

[Chester Perry]

SportsProMedia are doing another of their very good series of analysis and opinion - This time we have European Soccerweek - first up a questioning I j have been tracking for some time - there are charts you may want to look at

Part One: Who will fund the continental game’s future?
https://www.sportspromedia.com/from-the ... ial-report

Part one of SportsPro's European soccer series assesses the options for financing the game's post-Covid recovery.

By Tom BassamPosted: January 25 2027

European Soccer Week | Part one: Who will fund the continental game’s future?
While the European soccer landscape was on course for seismic change long before the catastrophic events of 2020, that divergent path is now markedly different than it was just 12 months ago. Across all levels of the game, the focus has shifted from growth to survival.

The European Club Association (ECA), the influential body that acts in the interests of the continent’s top clubs, said in its annual report that its members were facing €5 billion (US$6 billion) in combined revenue losses by the end of the 2020/21 season. Fifa, soccer’s global governing body, stated as part of its relief plan analysis that 90 per cent of the financial impact of the pandemic would be felt at the club level.

Though leagues and other rights holders mostly managed to stage their games, thereby avoiding complete financial ruin, significant rebates are being given to the broadcasters who have funded soccer’s previously unchecked growth. Clubs in the Premier League, soccer’s global leader in terms of rights revenue, are returning a combined UK£330 million (US$451 million) to the English top flight’s broadcasters over the next two seasons while Andrea Agnelli, the ECA and Juventus chairman, said he expects clubs in Uefa competitions to see a reduction of around €575 million (US$786 million) in TV income.

In France, Ligue 1 clubs are facing even bigger problems. The decision to prematurely cancel the 2019/20 season - the only one of Europe’s big five leagues to do so - saw the Professional Football League (LFP) miss out on €278 million (US$304 million) in rights fees. That decision was taken in the knowledge that the new campaign would also usher in a new domestic broadcast contract with Mediapro worth €814 million (US$996 million) a year, a 60 per cent uptick on the previous deal.

By 11th December, however, those promised riches had evaporated, with the Barcelona-based agency failing to pay its second and third instalments before seeing the contract torn up less than six months into the three-year deal. More than a month on from the cancellation of the Mediapro deal, there is still no permanent replacement domestic Ligue 1 or Ligue 2 broadcaster in place.

Apart from France, the pipeline of TV cash has, mercifully, remained open. However, commercial and matchday revenues, which made up around 41 per cent of the Premier League’s income in 2018/19 and significantly more in Europe’s other top four leagues, have been more significantly hit, with gate receipts virtually non-existent since last March.

“We operate pretty much at 100 per cent capacity for every home game,” says Paul Barber, chief executive of Premier League outfit Brighton & Hove Albion. “Every single time that we open these doors without fans coming through, we’re losing seven figures plus worth of revenue and everything else on top of it, in terms of rebates. So, from a financial point of view, this situation isn’t sustainable for a very long time.”

TV money failing to prop up the industry
When it comes to the immediate issue of funding, it is apt to start with European soccer’s biggest backers: broadcasters. Since March, it has become clear that media companies are not the reliable source of growth for leagues that they were previously.

In Germany last June, the Bundesliga’s domestic tender for the next rights cycle brought in €246 million (US$323 million) less over its duration than the expiring contract, which was considered a good result. Overseas, the German Football League’s (DFL) TV deals will bring in 20 per cent less this season than last. Elsewhere, the aforementioned French top flight is in a perilous position; the Premier League lost its mammoth UK£523 million (US$715 million) Chinese rights deal with PPTV in September; Spain's La Liga agreed to pay a €100 million (US$122.5 million) rebate to its broadcasters for the late completion of the 2019/20 season; and Serie A has also had to accept reduced fees for the same reasons.

Due to the industry’s outlandish finances, leagues are generally not deemed eligible for state bailouts. The LFP did secure a €224.5 million (US$270 million) government loan in May and smaller clubs across Europe did make use of various state-backed furlough schemes to pay wages, but rights holders largely accept they must find ways of sustaining themselves through the pandemic.

In England, the UK government made it clear the public purse would not be used to bail out professional soccer. The Premier League, with its vast resources and TV money guarantees, is helping to plug a UK£250 million (US$337 million) hole in the finances of the 72 lower-tier clubs under the watch of the English Football League (EFL) via grants, loans and financing guarantees. The EFL has reportedly opened talks with the UK Treasury over a UK£200 million (US$269 million) government business loan to support second-tier Championship clubs get through the season where the return of any matchday revenues cannot come soon enough. Another loan from the private sector is also said to be on the cards.

The answer, for Serie A and potentially the DFL, has been to turn to private equity. In November, clubs in Italy’s top flight accepted a €1.7 billion (US$2.06 billion) offer from CVC Capital Partners, Advent International and FSI for a ten per cent stake in a new company that will manage and market Serie A’s media rights. At the time of writing, the deal had yet to close but its ratification is understood to be a formality, with Paolo Dal Pino, the league’s president, describing the investment as a turning point for the Italian soccer industry.

Elsewhere in December, news broke that the DFL had hired Japanese bank Nomura to field enquiries from private financiers who might be interested in acquiring a stake worth between €200 million (US$243 million) and €300 million (US$364 million) in a new company to manage the Bundesliga’s international media rights, data services and other commercial offerings. According to reports, more than 20 parties expressed an interest.

'This isn't charity'
Funds sourced from private financiers do come with a warning label. In the world of motorsport, where CVC has previously been a major player as an owner of Formula One and MotoGP, the private equity firm was seen as a vulture, with one team principal accusing CVC of “raping the sport” during its tenure. After its leveraged UK£1.4 billion acquisition in 2006, CVC held on to Formula One for more than ten years, making UK£3.5 billion (US$4.71 billion) on that investment as it pushed former supremo Bernie Ecclestone to ruthlessly pursue profits at the expense of the series’ long-term health.

Simon Thomas, who served until recently as Fifa’s chief commercial officer, is concerned that soccer bodies mistakenly see private financing as a handout to keep the business going.

“The reality is that many clubs and other organisations are in dire financial trouble, and private equity perhaps offers some options that they lacked, or didn't need, before,” he says. “I also think that private equity can bring a hard-nosed business approach to the management of these sports organisations that can improve performance in a number of areas. But the quid pro quo that I suspect many sports administrators do not grasp sufficiently is that [private equity] funds are not a charity; hundreds of millions in funding should not be taken for granted.

“At some point they're going to be wanting to be paid back, and the financial consequences - in terms of mortgaging your future earnings - needs to be properly considered. Also [there are] implications in terms of loss of control. One of the main ways [private equity] funds see they can get a return is to improve the governance - in reality, the performance - of the asset. It's not as simple as someone just writing you a big cheque. Bringing on a partner like that is fine as long as you're willing to see it through and give them control, and also help them get an appropriate share of future revenues."

During Thomas’ time at Fifa, the governing body looked at securing private backing to overhaul its Club World Cup competition. In December 2019, Fifa launched a tender process to sell the revamped tournament's commercial rights, with documents seen by the Financial Times suggesting that investors could make sweeping changes to the property after 2021 that covered frequency, format and team qualification. Fifa, it seems, understood the levels of control it would have to cede in order to bring in the US$1 billion of backing it was reportedly looking for.

In Spain, La Liga is taking a different route to bringing in venture capital. Having spent the past few years building up its in-house technology stack and developing white label products, league president Javier Tebas announced in December that La Liga was spinning off its R&D division to create LaLigaTech as a separate company and putting as much as 60 per cent of its stock on the market. Tebas insisted the move was not a reaction to the losses incurred by La Liga since the start of the pandemic, but with the new company valued at €450 million (US$547 million) a sale would provide a timely cash boost. American investment firm Bruin Sports Capital, which entered into a strategic partnership with CVC and the Jordan Company in early 2020, was one firm Tebas identified as a potential suitor.

Now, Tebas says he believes the soccer industry should welcome venture capital, partly because it is a sign of its maturity.

“Obviously, you need to have very good control regulations,” he adds, speaking to SportsPro prior to LaLigaTech’s unveiling. “But I think [private equity] is good because this industry is mature, it needs to grow, get more jobs, to be more stable. So you don’t have to worry and look at these issues as if you’re being scared by them.”

He continues: “Are [these] people here to stay? Will they stay? No. Capital comes to make money. Like a club wants to win at a sports level, these companies try and make money on a different level. But if they’re going be able to develop the industry and [ensure] that your product is going to do better, do well quicker, I think that’s good.”

La Liga is being proactive in seeking to maintain the status quo for its clubs by taking a more direct role in financial matters, providing assistance in the form of loans and spending controls. In November, the Spanish division confirmed the salary cap for its clubs would be cut by more than €700 million (US$830.3 million) for the 2020/21 season, meaning some of its biggest teams will be asked to drastically slash payrolls. Each club has a different salary cap that is calculated based on a series of factors such as revenue, costs and debts. For example Barcelona, who made an post-tax loss of €97 million (US$115 million) for 2019/20, can spend nearly €383 million (US$454 million) on salaries, compared to €671 million (US$795 million) last season.

The combined salary cap for La Liga’s 20 clubs has been reduced to €2.3 billion (US$2.7 billion), having been set at €2.9 billion (US$3.4 billion) prior to the pandemic-affected 2019/20 season. The cost controls also include player transfers and are agreed before the start of each transfer window, although breaches are not expected to be met with disciplinary action. According to Tebas, La Liga has also secured around €600 million (US$729 million) in credit from banks that will be used to offset its clubs’ losses in the short term, with the long-term aim of hastening the league’s recovery.

“So these two circumstances together, based on the fact that we were a very economically solvent league and most of the clubs had a very good, sound financial situation, has managed to solve the issues related to the pandemic without any great losses and problems at the different clubs,” he says.

In the Premier League, too, there is confidence of a quick recovery once crowds return and a level of normality is restored.

“The football business model will sustain,” insists Barber. “It may just have to accept that there’s going to be a slower return to normal than perhaps we’d all like or expect. And I suspect there’s going to be some changes as well that we can’t even yet foresee.

“The reality is we’re like any other part of the entertainment industry, rely on our fans’ goodwill and their desire to want to come out and watch a live sport, just as someone in the theatre industry wants people to watch live theatre or live music. We need them to be able to feel safe when they come here. We need them to be able to feel safe getting to and from here. Then we need to make sure that the balance still exists between those fans who want to come and watch live, and can watch live, and those that can’t, or don’t want to, and can watch therefore on live TV at home or listen on the radio.

“All the component parts of the live sports industry will still be there post pandemic. We’ve just got to make sure that we manage through, to ensure that as many of us as possible are still in business.”

Financiers baring teeth at club level
Prior to the pandemic, US-based Elliott Management wasted little time in ousting Li Yonghong when, in 2018, the Chinese businessman defaulted on the €300 million (US$364 million) loan provided by the firm, and now the hedge fund company appears to be doing its utmost to return AC Milan to European soccer’s elite tier in order to facilitate a profitable sale.

More recently in France, just days after the collapse of the Mediapro rights deal, Elliott pressurised Luxembourgish businessman Gérard Lopez into selling debt-laden Lille to Callisto Sporting. The subsidiary of Luxembourg-based investment fund Merlyn Partners is viewed as a far more reliable debtor for Elliott and JP Morgan as they seek to recoup the outstanding €123 million (US$150 million) of the loan Lopez took out to buy the club in 2017.

In France, a club’s financial stability is monitored by the National Management Control Directorate (DNCG). The regulatory body seeks to ensure teams are solvent at the end of the financial year and while it will accept owners providing proof of funds to maintain a club, it does not allow leveraging of future profits to do so, as Ligue 1 side Girondins Bordeaux are discovering to their detriment.

Joseph DaGrosa’s ill-fated year as Bordeaux owner ended in December 2019 when investment firm Kings Street Capital (KCP), which acquired 86 per cent of the club but handed the American veto rights as part of the consortium’s takeover deal, reportedly came to believe its partner had overstated the club's potential profitability and bought out his 14 per cent stake.

While Bordeaux are now struggling to avoid being wound up, DaGrosa and his Kapital Football Group (KFG) business partner Hugo Varela want back in to the ownership game and believe the pandemic offers the opportunity to build a City Football Group-style portfolio of clubs at a cut price.

DaGrosa expanded on his soccer investment plans in an interview with Forbes back in May. “From a macro point of view,” he said, “we believe football over the long term is a great investment. 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.”

KFG is said to be in negotiations to acquire Premier League club Southampton from Chinese businessman Gao Jisheng. Under DaGrosa’s previously stated manifesto, it appears The Saints would serve as the ‘anchor club’ within KFG’s investment portfolio, with three to five satellite clubs and up to ten academies across Asia, Africa and South America being targeted to build out the group.

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

There is, however, scepticism among European soccer’s powerbrokers as to where this opportunistic approach leads. ECA chief executive Charlie Marshall, in particular, is wary of investors circling soccer clubs in desperate need of cash.

“I think we need to take a very balanced view of [private equity],” he tells SportsPro. “It’s not something that should just be welcomed with open arms because no industry, no company taking on investment, should try to do so from a position of weakness, or a position of need. Therein lies the lack of negotiation power and the lack of leverage and that’s not the kind of structures we want to create. But again, I think that, correctly constructed - with healthy governance and fully agreed-upon commercial models - these things can prove to be effective.

“I think we all need to make sure that whether we’re looking at structures that require investment, or could benefit from an investment, or structures that don’t require investment - because they are very self-sustaining - wherever you are, you make sure that your ultimate objective is stability. Stability between all of the different stakeholders involved in any sporting structure. Because it’s the lack of stability that creates the issue.”

Throughout this week, SportsPro will be unveiling a special series that delves into the structural elements that underpin European soccer in an attempt to highlight the forces shaping the game's future.

[Chester Perry]

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

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

It has now been confirmed that NBCSN is to close before the end of the year from sportcal.com

NBC Sports Network shutting down this year
Business - 25 Jan 2021

NBC Sports Network, the dedicated cable sports channel of the Comcast-owned US broadcaster, is to close later this year.

NBCUniversal confirmed the move on Friday, with programming on the network, including NHL ice hockey, Nascar motor racing and English Premier League soccer, to switch to sister general entertainment channel USA Network and new streaming service Peacock.

The move will save costs in terms of production and pay-television distribution fees, and widen the reach of NBC sports content, with USA Network available in 86 million homes, compared with NBCSN’s 80 million. Peacock has already been streaming Premier League games in the 2020-21 season.

NBCSN, formerly known as Outdoor Life Network and Versus, took on its current guise in 2012, but has struggled to compete with ESPN, and, like the market’s dominant player, been affected by ‘cord-cutting’, subscribers switching from traditional TV platforms to cheaper and more flexible streaming services.

Other sports channels operated by the top US networks include CBS Sports Network and Fox Sports 1.

After the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, this is a big year for NBC, with the broadcaster to provide extensive coverage, across all platforms, of the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, on top of its regular coverage of top sport such as the NFL, college American football and basketball and golf.

NBC Sports Group chairman Pete Bevacqua said: “We’re absolutely committed more than ever to live sports as a company, and having such a huge platform like USA Network airing some of our key sports content is great for our partners, distributors, viewers and advertisers alike.”

NBC holds rights to the NHL in a 10-year, $2 billion deal running to the end of the current 2020-21 campaign, and has said it is keen to continue showing the league, while its Nascar contract runs to 2024.

The present six-year deal with the Premier League, worth around $1 billion, expires at the end of the 2021-22 season.

The closure of NBCSN is thought likely to prompt a review of the NBC sports portfolio, meaning there is uncertainty over continued coverage of events such as cycling’s Tour de France.

However, the decision does not impact on the broadcaster’s regional sports networks, which offer local live coverage of teams in MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS among various leagues.NBC Sports Network shutting down this year

NBC Sports Network, the dedicated cable sports channel of the Comcast-owned US broadcaster, is to close later this year.

NBCUniversal confirmed the move on Friday, with programming on the network, including NHL ice hockey, Nascar motor racing and English Premier League soccer, to switch to sister general entertainment channel USA Network and new streaming service Peacock.

The move will save costs in terms of production and pay-television distribution fees, and widen the reach of NBC sports content, with USA Network available in 86 million homes, compared with NBCSN’s 80 million. Peacock has already been streaming Premier League games in the 2020-21 season.

NBCSN, formerly known as Outdoor Life Network and Versus, took on its current guise in 2012, but has struggled to compete with ESPN, and, like the market’s dominant player, been affected by ‘cord-cutting’, subscribers switching from traditional TV platforms to cheaper and more flexible streaming services.

Other sports channels operated by the top US networks include CBS Sports Network and Fox Sports 1.

After the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, this is a big year for NBC, with the broadcaster to provide extensive coverage, across all platforms, of the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, on top of its regular coverage of top sport such as the NFL, college American football and basketball and golf.

NBC Sports Group chairman Pete Bevacqua said: “We’re absolutely committed more than ever to live sports as a company, and having such a huge platform like USA Network airing some of our key sports content is great for our partners, distributors, viewers and advertisers alike.”

NBC holds rights to the NHL in a 10-year, $2 billion deal running to the end of the current 2020-21 campaign, and has said it is keen to continue showing the league, while its Nascar contract runs to 2024.

The present six-year deal with the Premier League, worth around $1 billion, expires at the end of the 2021-22 season.

The closure of NBCSN is thought likely to prompt a review of the NBC sports portfolio, meaning there is uncertainty over continued coverage of events such as cycling’s Tour de France.

However, the decision does not impact on the broadcaster’s regional sports networks, which offer local live coverage of teams in MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS among various leagues.

[Chester Perry]

There has been a lot of speculation about the state of Barcelona's finances lately - and I am as guilty of that as anyone, if not more so

Here @SwissRamble has a look at their 2019/20 financial accounts

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 9661067264

judging by his last post on that thread he shares the common view that they are overstretched and need to exercise some stringent fiscal planningl no doubt the members will be saying "it's Barcelona not Burnley"

as usual he has also done one of those lovely summary sheets too

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 8977432577

The MAil has picked up on a particular facet of those Barcelona Accounts and run with it

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... -2018.html

The club's full economic report is here

https://www.fcbarcelona.com/fcbarcelona ... ressed.pdf

[Chester Perry]

This could prove very interesting and damaging for US Private Equity if it ever comes to pass - from Pitchbook.com - obviously thee is a surging mood of wanting to change in American politics as the Democrats power increases across the government - how that will reflect itself in actual action and law is likely to take both time and an awful lot of political will, the counter-pressure while powerful is likely to be largely invisible to most observers

https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pri ... eth-warren

Private equity could face a reckoning as power shifts in Congress
By Adam Lewis
January 21, 2021

After years of operating with minimal government intervention, the US private equity industry could face new regulatory scrutiny in 2021 and beyond.

Democrats now control both chambers of Congress and the White House, giving progressive lawmakers who have long criticized the PE industry their best chance yet to enact significant change.

Chief among those lawmakers is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the primary force behind the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, a comprehensive bill first introduced in 2019. The proposed legislation never left committee in a Senate controlled by Republicans. But Warren is now set to reintroduce her effort to regulate an industry she has derided for debt-heavy deals that can lead to layoffs, bankruptcies and other woes while exposing firms to few risks.

If passed, the bill would tax capital gains as regular income, ban dividends in the first two years a private equity firm owns a portfolio company, and hold firms responsible for debt and legal obligations incurred at portfolio companies under their ownership, among other outcomes.

"Senator Warren will continue her push to rein in the private equity industry this year," a Warren spokesperson told PitchBook. "And that includes holding these predatory companies accountable for lining the pockets of wealthy firms at the expense of struggling workers during the COVID-19 crisis, and wreaking havoc on low-income Americans at risk of losing their homes."

In terms of the pandemic's effect on private equity, the industry's top lobbying group takes the opposite view of Warren.

"Our nation is experiencing a serious economic downturn," said a spokesperson for the American Investment Council. "And now would be the worst time to pass legislation that will discourage investment in businesses and destroy jobs."

Indeed, any efforts to seriously reassess the role of private equity may have to wait. The newly blue Congress has several other high priorities, including efforts to pass another economic stimulus package and an infrastructure plan as well as holding a second impeachment trial for former President Donald Trump.

"I think the Biden administration has many catastrophes to contend with to move on PE in year one," said Eileen Appelbaum, a frequent private equity critic who has testified before Congress in support of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. "Hopefully, there will be Congressional hearings to tee up financial reform in year two."

Not every member of Warren's party will be on board with her latest push. When the House held hearings in late 2019 to look at private equity's role in a string of retail bankruptcies, including Toys R Us, several Democrats voiced support for the industry's role in creating jobs in their districts.

One newly empowered lawmaker who could set his sights on private equity is Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who was recently named chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Politico reported this week that Brown, a co-sponsor for Warren's bill, plans to hold public hearings to examine private equity's influence.

Appointees joining the Biden administration could also play a role in determining how private equity is regulated.

Last week, President Biden nominated Gary Gensler to lead the SEC. A former partner at Goldman Sachs and the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama administration, Gensler has since become known for clashes with big banks over their role in the global financial crisis. The expectation is Gensler, if confirmed, would be an aggressive advocate for Wall Street regulation.

Biden also tapped Rohit Chopra, a Warren disciple and commissioner of the FTC, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Last year, Chopra lobbied Congress to require private equity firms to notify the FTC of smaller add-on deals, describing such firms as "vulture investors" and expressing concern about potential monopolies in the healthcare industry.

One shift that could have more immediate impact would be increased congressional funding for the IRS, which was gutted under the Trump administration. A renewed push by the agency to investigate investment funds and monitor fees could increase transparency about whether those dividends were used to either enrich executives or actually pay their LPs.

"That would achieve one of the important ends of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act," Appelbaum said.

[Chester Perry]

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

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

Budweiser joins Pepsi and Coca-Cola in deciding not to advertise during the Super Bowl - this is fast becoming a catastrophe for CBS and rights holders - remember broadcasters are currently putting together bids for the next 10 years of NFL and the NFL are looking for a massive uplift on the previous deal, if broadcasters cannot rely on regular advertisers and sponsorships how can they pass through those earnings to rights owners

https://www.sportico.com/business/media ... 234621025/

It will be interesting to see how this filters through to the UEFA rights that are doing the rounds of tender at the moment, part of the power of the Champions League is that it brings it's own key sponsors and advertisers to the broadcasters.

[Chester Perry]

given the amount of pressure that has been building this seemed inevitable, though there is still a feeling of jumping the gun before the manifesto pledged review has actuall taken place - from the Telegraph

ormer sports minister to introduce bill in Parliament for independent football regulator
JEREMY WILSON JANUARY 25, 2021

A former Conservative sports minister will on Tuesday propose legislation to create football’s first independent regulator after warning that the national game is facing a “crisis” of governance.

Helen Grant, who spent almost three years in David Cameron’s Government, will introduce her Football (Regulation) Bill after securing support from a cross-party grouping of MPs.

It is being introduced under the Ten Minute Rule Bill procedure, meaning Grant will have the opportunity to outline the merits of the proposals in front of MPs, even if its chances of eventually being passed as legislation will depend on whether it receives parliamentary time.

Grant is part of a grouping of former players and administrators, which also include Gary Neville, former FA chairman David Bernstein, Manchester mayor Andy Bernstein and former Bank of England governor Mervyn King, who have proposed a new ‘Manifesto for Change’ to overhaul football’s governance.

The main recommendation of their report is that an independent regulator should be formed, backed up by statutory powers, to reform the way England’s national game is governed. “The governance of English football is broken and our national game is in crisis,” said Grant. “Huge financial disparities, outdated governance and vested interests have created a spiral of unsustainability with some clubs already having gone out of business and the threat of more to follow. These issues are not new, but they have been laid bare by the Coronavirus pandemic. Football has again and again proved that it is unable to reform itself and so, if we are to protect and preserve the fabulous heritage of football in our country, the game’s governance needs emergency surgery.”

The FA signalled earlier this month that they are open to ministerial discussions about enhancing their role in governing the national game following what Bernstein described as the “shambles” of the past year.

In a hard-hitting letter to culture secretary Oliver Dowden, Bernstein has also called for urgent action. “The governance of our national sport remains a shambles,” he wrote. “You and the current Government have seen this for yourself in 2020. English football’s failure to speak with one voice over the past months of the Covid-19 crisis have only highlighted a dysfunctional and damaging structure. There is no overall leadership and therefore vested interests continue to prevail. The financial disparity between rich and poor has frankly become obscene.”

A Government spokesperson said that they were committed to a review of football governance, but no definite timescale has been outlined.

[Chester Perry]

Does this go someway to explaining Liverpool's tight hold of the fiscal reins as the media scream at them to sign a defender for the short term - probably not. The proposed Redball/FSG tie-up is off according to this report - from Axios.com - it is an American outlet which explains the Baseball focus of the story

Scoop: Red Sox strike out on deal to go public
Dan Primack

The parent company of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool F.C. has ended talks to sell a minority ownership stake to RedBall Acquisition, a SPAC formed by longtime baseball executive Billy Beane and investor Gerry Cardinale, Axios has learned from multiple sources. An alternative investment, structured more like private equity, remains possible.

Why it matters: Red Sox fans won't be able to buy stock in the team any time soon.

Background: Deal talks first leaked last October, with RedBall seeking to acquire between a 20-25% stake of Fenway Sports Group at around an $8 billion valuation.

It would have been funded by $575 million that RedBall raised in its IPO, plus up to $950 million Redball sought to raise from Cardinale's private equity firm (RedBird Capital Partners) and outside investors.

Neither FSG nor RedBall ever confirmed their talks, nor would regulatory restrictions have allowed them to do so.

What happened: RedBall couldn't raise enough outside capital at the asking price.

Forbes last year estimated that the Red Sox were valued at $3.3 billion, compared to the $380 million that its ownership group paid back in 2002. That total does not include Liverpool or some of Fenway Sports Group's other assets, which include a NASCAR team and regional sports network that airs Red Sox and Boston Bruins games.

What happens now: Cardinale and FSG still may try to negotiate a private investment deal, but not one that would immediately result in a public stock listing.

RedBall will continue to seek out an acquisition target, possibly in pro soccer or gaming.

[Chester Perry]

The techies at FIFA have been busy during lockdown - today sees the launch of FIFA's Professional Football Landscape

press release
https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fi ... dscape-afc

The Database

https://landscape.fifa.com/

[Chester Perry]

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

this is last years report if you want a refresher

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

It is here the Deloitte Football Money League 2021 report - subtitled testing times

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

The report is downloadable from the link. disappointingly it only lists the top 20 clubs - of which 7 are from the Premier League - notably Liverpool rise above Chelsea and Manchester City to close in on Manchester United

EDIT It is important to note the caveats in reporting, particularly which revenues were able to be reported and why - this explains Liverpoo;'s position amongst others

Another 5 Premier League clubs are in the next 10, note the surprising placing of Crystal Palace just above West Ham and Sheffield United just above Wolves

• Pos. Club Revenue
  21. Valencia 172.1
  22. Leicester City 171.0
  23. Benfica 170.3
  24. Borussia VfL Mönchengladbach 167.9
  25. Crystal Palace 161.3
  26. West Ham United 158.0
  27. Ajax 155.5
  28. Sheffield United 152.0
  29. Wolverhampton Wanderers 151.2
  30. AC Milan 148.5

[Chester Perry]

The Financial Times's take on the Deloitte Money League 2021 report

World’s richest football teams set to miss out on €2bn revenue
SAMUEL AGINI JANUARY 26, 2021

The world’s 20 richest football clubs are on course to miss out on €2bn in revenue by the end of this season because of the pandemic, underlining a bleak outlook against which some teams are accelerating plans for a breakaway “super league”.

Spain’s Barcelona was the highest-earning club even though its revenues fell 15 per cent to €715m in the 2019/20 season, according to Deloitte’s annual “money league” report, putting it narrowly ahead of its La Liga rival Real Madrid.

But the consultancy warned that the clubs would miss on €2bn over the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 seasons because of lost matchday and broadcast revenue.

Driven by victory in the Uefa Champions League, Europe’s top club tournament, Germany’s Bayern Munich had revenues of €634.1m, allowing it to leapfrog England’s Manchester United’s €580m and finish in third place.

The Bundesliga’s quicker resumption of play in the 2019/20 season, which was suspended as a result of the pandemic, also played a part in Bayern’s ascent from fourth to third place. The swifter return of the Bundesliga enabled German clubs to recognise revenue, in particular domestic broadcast deals, sooner than those in rival leagues.

Despite winning the Premier League and, unlike Manchester United, participating in the Champions League that season, Liverpool could not finish higher than its English rival in the money league.

The €8.2bn in revenue generated by the top 20 clubs last season represented a 12 per cent decline against the one before. Deloitte warned that matchday revenue is likely to remain negligible because of repeated delays to the return of fans to stadiums.

Losses are increasing the stakes as Manchester United and Real Madrid are working on plans to restructure elite competition in European football, in a move that would radically alter the finances of the sport.

Founding clubs could be offered €350m each to join the so-called super league, which would guarantee spots for 15 members and a further five open to clubs able to qualify.

Fifa, world football’s governing body, took the proposals so seriously that it has warned that it will not recognise such a league. It also threatened to ban players who participate from taking part in the World Cup, the top level of international football.

Dan Jones, a partner at Deloitte, warned of the “disruption and the risk that comes with the super league” and said that he was “fundamentally quite positive . . . that top level sport will rebound well as we get some more normality”.

“It feels like people are trying to fix something that isn’t broken,” he added.

[Chester Perry]

Does this go someway to explaining Liverpool's tight hold of the fiscal reins as the media scream at them to sign a defender for the short term - probably not. The proposed Redball/FSG tie-up is off according to this report - from Axios.com - it is an American outlet which explains the Baseball focus of the story

Scoop: Red Sox strike out on deal to go public
Dan Primack

........................................

The Financial Times are carrying the story of the Redball/FSG deal collapse

Talks end on blank-cheque deal for Liverpool FC
SARA GERMANO JANUARY 26, 2021

Talks for a deal between the ownership group behind Liverpool FC and the Boston Red Sox and a blank-cheque company led by Moneyball executive Billy Beane have fallen apart, according to people briefed on the matter.

Instead, they said Fenway Sports Group, the ownership vehicle for both clubs controlled by billionaire John Henry, was in discussions to sell a minority stake to RedBird Capital, a private investment firm founded by former Goldman Sachs veteran Gerry Cardinale.

The private transaction would probably result in a lower valuation for Fenway than the $8bn floated for a potential acquisition by RedBall, a special purpose acquisition company directed by Mr Cardinale and Mr Beane, the people familiar with the discussions said.

The talks between Mr Cardinale and Mr Henry were described as continuing, and there was no guarantee they would reach a deal.

A transaction between the two companies would continue a recent trend involving private capital investment in major sport clubs and leagues around the world, particularly as the industry has been hampered by the pandemic. Private equity firms have been seeking deals from Italy’s Serie A to Germany’s Bundesliga and with New Zealand’s All Blacks rugby team.

A private deal between RedBird and Fenway would mean Mr Beane and Mr Cardinale would seek a different target for their RedBall Spac, launched in July with the purpose of raising $575m to acquire a sports franchise.

Discussions about the potential for the private investment in Fenway were earlier reported by Axios.

Mr Beane is best known for his analytics expertise working in the front office of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics, where he became the subject of the Michael Lewis best-selling book, Moneyball, which was later made into a film starring Brad Pitt.

Mr Cardinale is best known for launching the regional broadcast network of the New York Yankees, YES, and currently manages more than $4bn in assets at RedBird, which recently acquired French football club Toulouse.

Mr Henry, a commodities trading veteran who made billions crunching numbers, translated that success into owning two sports teams and stewarding them to championship seasons. Friends, baseball industry experts and former colleagues describe him as a champion of analytics in sports — like Mr Beane.

[Chester Perry]

Leeds have today confirmed what we have known has been coming since the summer - the San Francisco 49ers have upped their stake in the club to 37% - from the Telegraph

San Francisco 49ers increase stake in Leeds United
LUKE EDWARDS JANUARY 25, 2021

Leeds United have announced that NFL franchise San Francisco 49ers have increased their stake in the club following months of negotiations.

Telegraph Sport revealed the American groups plans to increase their stake back in October last year, with their share of the club increasing from 15 to 37 per cent.

Leeds owner, Andrea Radrizzani has been looking for fresh investment since the club were promoted back to the Premier League last summer and preferred to work with those he already has an excellent relationship with.

The move will see Paraag Marathe, 49ers Enterprises President and current LUFC Board Member, become the Vice Chairman of Leeds United.

Revealed: NFL-led plan to put Leeds United back among European football's elite
Marathe – supported by 49ers Enterprises Vice President Collin Meador and other key 49ers personnel – will be more involved in the decision-making process and day-to-day running of the club, both in football and business operations as he has done for the 49ers for the last 20 years

“We are delighted to welcome further investment into our club from 49ers Enterprises and I am confident that this latest partnership will help Leeds United continue to grow and develop into the team our supporters deserve,” said Radrizzani.

“I have always been open to bringing partners on this journey with me, as long as these actions can benefit the long-term strategy of the club. Paraag and the team at 49ers Enterprises are uniquely positioned to collaborate with myself, Angus Kinnear, Victor Orta and our management team to help us achieve our goals.”

The announcement builds on a strategic partnership and equity stake initiated in 2018 when 49ers Enterprises purchased 15 per cent of the club from Andrea Radrizzani, who remains the majority stakeholder of the Yorkshire club.

“Our 49ers Enterprises team has always shared Andrea’s vision for constructing a powerful and winning club in the most competitive football league in the world, and the experience of the last three seasons has been more exhilarating than we could have ever imagined,” said Marathe.

“The hard work and bold leadership demonstrated by Andrea and his talented team has restored Leeds United’s rightful place in the Premier League and we look forward to playing an even bigger role in supporting their efforts to climb the table this year and into the future.”

The Athletic with an informative piece on the Leeds deal with the San Francisco 49ers and why it was always more probable than a deal with Qatar's QSI. Leeds owner Andrea Radrizzani has done an impressive job with the club and he is obviously not finished yet, he also recognises that is club are far from safe in the Premier League this season. That is not to say that they cannot do much more in the next couple of years if they stay up, I do wonder how they will challenge the financial might of the likes of Aston Villa though who are on a similar path but are being finaced by share issues not loans.

Explained: What 49ers investment means for Leeds and Radrizzani

By Phil Hay 7h ago

For all the flirting between Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) and Andrea Radrizzani, people in the loop at Leeds United were confident in predicting that when fresh investment came to Elland Road it would come from the San Francisco 49ers.

There was endless smoke around Radrizzani and QSI — so much smoke that many thought there must be fire behind it — but 18 months of talk about money arriving from Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari owner was never backed up by substance. At no stage has QSI performed due diligence on Leeds. At no stage has it agreed in principle the purchase of shares. Radrizzani and QSI’s chairman, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, are well-established friends but, in ownership terms, no more than that.

Even as the pair were spotted having dinner together, and even as reports in France talked of QSI creeping closer to buying into Leeds, the 49ers were already in the building and preparing their next move. The minority stake purchased for £10 million by the NFL franchise’s investment arm in 2018 jumped to almost 40 per cent yesterday, significantly altering the balance of power in the boardroom at Elland Road.

Neither Leeds nor 49ers Enterprises will talk precise numbers but Radrizzani is believed to value the Premier League club at £250 million, a figure which would set the price of the latest investment at £50 million. “It’s something more than that,” Radrizzani said after announcing the deal, “but the level of investment won’t change the life of Leeds United (overnight). We’re just happy to have a clear common goal together.”

Radrizzani, Leeds’s chairman since 2017, and 49ers Enterprises president Paraag Marathe began discussing another equity transfer after the club’s promotion from the Championship in July and The Athletic understands that the final terms of an agreement were put in place just before Christmas. Marathe, who said the purchase involved existing shares rather than a new issue, has been a board member at Leeds for the past two and a half years, ever since the 49ers first acquired a shareholding of just over 12 per cent, but is taking on the role of vice-chairman, increasing his seniority at executive level.

Leeds are in the final week of the January transfer window but sources at Elland Road say this second tranche of investment from the US will not alter their short-term recruitment policy. The club did not intend to make any significant signings this month and they are continuing to indicate that the window will close on Monday without any additions to their first-team squad. Head coach Marcelo Bielsa said yesterday morning that he was “happy with the squad we have and I feel we can finish the season with these players”. The 49ers’ input is likely to focus on improvements to infrastructure, with one of the main thrusts the redevelopment of Leeds’s stadium.

The club are in possession of a ground with a capacity of 35,000 but the maximum attendance and Elland Road’s commercial limits fall short of what they require to compete with the Premier League’s richer teams. Angus Kinnear, Leeds’s chief executive, pointed out after a recent 3-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur that Spurs’s newly-built stadium was capable of pulling in five times as much revenue from individual match days as Elland Road. Leeds want to rebuild their West Stand to match the height of their East Stand and deliberately left land behind it untouched when they organised the construction of a community sports hub on Fullerton Park adjacent to the stadium. Between work on the West Stand and potentially the North Stand too, the capacity of Elland Road could almost double to 60,000.

Under Radrizzani, expansion was dependent on both promotion from the Championship and underlying confidence in Leeds establishing a strong foothold in the Premier League. With their squad in 12th position at the midway stage of this season and waiting list for season tickets 20,000 names long, the prospect of a second year in the Premier League would be a first step in allowing their board to begin formalising redevelopment plans.

“We need to be permanently Premier League for the next two or three seasons,” Radrizzani said. “Then eventually we can start to think (about changing Elland Road). It’s a project that requires big investment and we need to be able to finance it and be stable enough. Certain conditions are needed before we kick it off. I give myself five to seven years to see the Leeds I dream of but there’s a lot of micro-achievement (required) to achieve that goal.”

The 49ers are one of the NFL’s wealthier franchises and the intention is for Marathe, as Leeds’s vice-chairman, to create more of an overlap in the teams’ administrative operations. Speaking to the media last night, Marathe said the 49ers would bring e-commerce ideas and hospitality strategies, part of an attempt to hit Radrizzani’s target of “doubling our revenue in three to five years.” But the American club also have recent experience of stadium construction having moved from Candlestick Park — their home near downtown San Francisco for more than 40 years — to the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara to the north of San Jose in 2014.

The decision to shift 50 miles south was taken after an unsuccessful fight to gain planning permission for a revamped arena in the San Francisco area. The 49ers’ headquarters and training centre were based in Santa Clara and authorities there were more co-operative in allowing them to build but relocating so far away drew criticism from some who felt the 49ers gave up too easily on efforts to redevelop Candlestick Park. Journalists speak of their hierarchy becoming “exasperated” with local government resistance and ultimately deciding that targeting land in Santa Clara made sense (notwithstanding subsequent political battles between the NFL team and Santa Clara’s authorities).

Opinion is divided over the venue that materialised. The Levi’s Stadium is vast and was built at huge expense, with estimates putting the final cost at close to £1 billion. It houses almost 70,000 and the technology there was advanced, providing wi-fi throughout the ground and monetising it with a smartphone app which allowed food and merchandise to be delivered to fans in their seat. But to a section of supporters, it felt sanitised and corporate and was not always bursting with atmosphere. There is a view that Lumen Field, the home of their rivals the Seattle Seahawks, can be “worth a seven-point start to the Seahawks”, as one NFL writer put it, because of the impact of the crowd. The Levi’s Stadium, according to those who know it, does not have quite the same intensity.

Leeds will need to strike a balance when they come to increase the size of Elland Road, treading a line between maximising revenue and protecting the stadium’s raw reputation. But no consideration has been given to relocating, as the 49ers did, and the construction of the Levi’s Stadium demonstrated the 49ers’ ability to deliver successfully on a large and expensive project. There was already regular interaction between Kinnear and Marathe and input from the States will grow after the 49ers’ purchase of more shares. “For us it’s about lending expertise wherever we can,” Marathe said. “We have experience because we’ve gone through some major transformations at the 49ers. I can’t tell you whether it’ll be X days per month (that Marathe will spend in Leeds) but we’ll be a much more regular presence.”

As for Radrizzani, it remains to be seen if relinquishing a further 22 per cent of shares in Leeds is a creep towards relinquishing his position as majority shareholder. He has a vision of buying other European clubs to create a stable alongside Leeds — a smaller and less global version of the City Group’s strategy — and certain advisers think Belgium and Portugal would be good markets for him to target, in part to work around new Brexit rules governing transfers to the UK. But for three and a half years the Italian has been covering losses at Elland Road with loans and equity exchanges. Shortly after Leeds’ promotion, he and the club moved to secure a forward financing deal worth more than £30 million, secured against future TV income.

Radrizzani estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic will come at a cost of at least £40 million to Leeds and as far back as the summer he was publicly urging the 49ers to “help us more (and) step up.” He confirmed that part of the new cash invested by the franchise would be used for day-to-day working capital. In October, Marathe conceded that the 49ers were “not flying the plane by any means. We want to drive more value on and off the pitch.” Part of the reason why Leeds were able to commit to £100 million of transfers in the last summer transfer window was because initial talks between Radrizzani and Marathe indicated that a new investment deal was likely to be reached.

Senior staff at Leeds expect Radrizzani to remain involved until they make good his aim of European qualification. He said as much himself and thinks that in three years’ time there is a strong chance of Leeds being in the mix for a Europa League place, two decades on from their last European fixture. Marathe would not be drawn on whether he sees the 49ers as future owners of Leeds, saying only that he “envisaged a day when we continue to grow as a club.” Radrizzani joked that “to make me tired, it takes a long time.” He is rapidly approaching season number five.

The most telling comment from Radrizzani was his admission that Leeds need to “grow a new skin”; to shed their Championship habits and their Championship structure, reorganise themselves in a manner which drives up revenue dramatically and provides the clout to cut the gap to the top six. That way, he said, Leeds can be “relevant in the world of football”. Commercial ideas are part of the conversation. So are infrastructure changes.

“The stadium, it’s in our plan,” Radrizzani said. “My dream is to play one of these European nights with Leeds United. Until I accomplish this dream, you will see me around.”

[Chester Perry]

A new sports business podcast - Sport Unlocked - fronted by Martyn Ziegler and Rob Harris - episode 1 has Tariq Panja as a guest - the discussion on the proposed European Super League is very goo, even though it covers much of the ground that is detailed within this thread, that is first up

The blurb
2021's big issues: Will a breakaway Super League be launched and will the Euros and Olympics go ahead?

Rob Harris and Martyn Ziegler are joined by Tariq Panja to talk through the big issues facing sports leaders in 2021 on this episode.

Plans are being made to reshape the Champions League from 2024 but will elite clubs manage to launch the breakaway Super League?

UEFA is also grappling with uncertainty surrounding the European Championship it has already had to postpone once. Will it go ahead this year and will all 12 venues in 12 countries still be used?

Can the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics still open in July and in what form as the pandemic persists?

Unlocking the sports news issues as sport grapples with so much of the world still being in lockdown.

The Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2 ... 0506315852

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Leeds have a waiting list for season tickets of 20k?

They've soon crawled out of the woodwork considering they didn't regularly sell out Elland Road when in championship of lower.

[Chester Perry]

More analysis on those Barcelona 2019/20 accounts - this time from long time critic of their finances Sam Wallace in the Telegraph - he ,anages to have a go at Real Madrid too

Barcelona's £1bn black hole could signal a catastrophic collapse – and Lionel Messi's exit
SAM WALLACE JANUARY 26, 2021

The brutal reality of Barcelona’s finances were finally laid bare on Monday with the admission by the club that it has crippling total debts of €1.173 billion (£1.04bn) – suggesting the only way out could be a restructuring of its 122-year-old ownership set-up.

As for Lionel Messi, there is no prospect of a new €100 million-a-year contract (£89m) – the salary that the world’s most celebrated footballer is accustomed to earning at the Nou Camp. Unless the disgruntled Argentine star is prepared to take an enormous pay cut he will inevitably be leaving this summer when his current deal expires. The club’s financial results, long overdue, were a picture of the situation as of June 30 last year and the reality is that the situation has significantly deteriorated since then.

Telegraph Sport has long highlighted the reliance of the two Spanish powers, Barcelona and their rivals Real Madrid, on debt and long-term borrowing and a precarious financial approach to club-building has laid the ground for a catastrophic collapse in the Covid-19 era. Madrid’s debt, which includes the €575 million (£511m) bonds to rebuild the Bernabeu Stadium, is also over €1 billion (£890m) and may be much more. The two clubs’ days as predators circling the Premier League’s best players are over and the haste with which they have pursued European super league proposals, led by Real president Florentino Pérez, demonstrates the desperation to show creditors increased future revenue streams.

Barcelona’s situation is so grave that it looks impossible to resolve without some kind of capital injection from a third party. The club is owned by its 150,000 plus members – or socios – which would make this operation problematic. The assets of the club – the Nou Camp, the training ground, the player contracts – belong to the members and any takeover would require them to be bought out. The prevailing wisdom is that these clubs, cultural behemoths in Spain, are too important to be allowed to fail, but the conditions under Covid-19 are unprecedented.

The re-signing of Messi, already gravely disillusioned, would now be too great a burden for the club to bear even in spite of the 33-year-old’s achievements over the last 15 years. His friend and former team-mate Luis Suarez was released last summer simply to take pressure off the wage bill. The Liga salary cap, calculated according to future revenue shows that Barcelona’s wage paying capability has fallen from €671.4 million (£596.4m) to €382.7 million (£340m).

Currently Barcelona have a negative working capital – debts exceeding short term assets – of €600 million (£533m). They owe around €320 million (£284m) to other clubs in transfer fees; bank borrowing of €280 million (£249m); bonds of €200 million (£178m); unpaid wages of €200 million; suppliers are owed €84 million (£75m); and public administrators €55 million (£49m). Barca have a €146-million (£130m) state-backed credit line which seems to have been used to pay last summer’s wages – the club pay salaries twice yearly in six month tranches.

The club’s problems were severe before the pandemic, with four separate bond issues in 2018 and 2019 to raise funds – all of it borrowed against New York and Hong Kong subsidiary companies and their merchandising company set up to handle their Nike merchandise.

The sacking of manager Ernesto Valverde last season, which precipitated a significant public rift between the players, led by Messi, and the then president Josep Maria Bartomeu, cost the club €10 million (£9m) in compensation to their former coach. Barca have already dismissed his successor Quique Setién and are refusing to pay his compensation, effectively arguing in a tribunal that he was incapable of doing his job.

The club claim to have spent around €100 million (£89m) on the Espai Barca project, the rebuilding of the Nou Camp, although its long-term future looks in considerable doubt given the scope of their debts. There will be presidential elections in March to choose the successor to Bartomeu with former president Joan Laporta the favourite over the other key candidate, Victor Font. The winner will be faced with some testing decisions in order to save the club.

Barcelona and Real have always rejected the notion of a rich owner, and are one of only four clubs in Spain, with Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna, to be owned by their members. However, years of financial mismanagement have made them extremely vulnerable to the tumbling revenues of the Covid-19 crisis and there is no benefactor in a position to bail the clubs out. The boards of the four membership-based clubs have successfully lobbied Government to have the law that makes them personal liable for club losses to be struck out.

With Pérez at Real and a succession of Barcelona presidents, money has been spent and debt accumulated with a carelessness that would not have been the case had it been their own resources at risk. The Uefa Financial Fair Play regulations that were brought in to curb the billionaire owners of clubs in the Premier League and elsewhere have not, it seemed, been comprehensive enough to save the membership-owned clubs whose model was long held up as the best way of ensuring a stable future.

[Chester Perry]

Meanwhile the Mail has picked up on reports emanating from Spain that Barcelona have not paid a large proportion of the wages (the element that is paid every 6 months)

Barcelona 'FAIL to pay Lionel Messi and the rest of the squad their full wages for the second half of 2020' despite players agreeing salary cuts worth £109MILLION... as the cash-strapped Catalans battle rising debts amid the Covid-19 pandemic
-Barcelona have struggled to cope with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic
-The Spanish giants only agreed pay cuts with all of their players in November
- It also emerged this week how much Barca still have left to pay for old transfers
But news of missed salary payments last month is yet more cause for concern
By TOM FARMERY FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 13:19, 26 January 2021 | UPDATED: 14:16, 26 January 2021

Barcelona failed to pay any of their first-team players in December and fear further missed payments as the effects of coronavirus continue to bite, according to reports in Spain.

On Monday it emerged that the Spanish giants still owe 19 clubs £112million (€126m) in transfer fees.

But the overlook now appears much bleaker with Spanish media reporting that Barcelona's financial situation is 'extremely delicate'.

Radio station Cadena COPE also claim that all of Barcelona's players weren't paid their wages last month although the shortfall is expected to be made up in February.

It is reported that the squad usually gets their salary in two payments - one in June and another in December.

Barcelona have struggled to cope financially since the pandemic struck European football last March.

While other clubs agreed payment deferrals with players earlier in the year, Barcelona only managed to do so for all of their first team at the end of November.

It was estimated that such wage cuts would help save the club £109m although they had hoped for that figure to be closer to £170m.

Gerard Pique and Frenkie de Jong were among those to take pay cuts in Spring last year but star names such as Lionel Messi, whose salary is £500,000 a week (£26m a year) only agreed to reduced terms in November.

News of Barcelona failing to pay players for last month follows the release of the club's annual financial report, which shows a huge outstanding transfer debt.

The highest portion relates to the £25m the club owes Liverpool for Philippe Coutinho.

Despite the deal now being three years old, Barcelona still haven't covered the overall transfer cost of £142m.

The club's fragile financial state was also brought into focus last week when El Confidencial reported that Barcelona had asked a number of major banks to delay debt repayments to help the club's immediate cash flow.

It was claimed that Barcelona requested Goldman Sachs, Allianz, Barings, Amundi and Prudential give them more time to pay outstanding repayments.

In a further blow, it was also reported that the club have a negative working capital of £535m, which is mainly down to a huge decrease in revenues caused by playing behind closed doors for most of last year while continuing to pay high wages.

[Chester Perry]

SportProMedia.com's European Soccer week continues - again there are charts so you may choose the link instead

https://www.sportspromedia.com/from-the ... -interview
European Soccer Week | Part two: The evolution of club competition
As Europe's soccer clubs pick themselves up in the wake of the pandemic, the battle for who will shape the game's recovery is hotting up as the elite teams take on the traditional powerbrokers for control of competition structure.

By Tom BassamPosted: January 26 2021

Stable is not a word anyone would associate with 2020, yet it is against this backdrop that the future of European soccer’s club competitions is being debated. On one side, there are those who argue for the game’s existing structure to largely be retained, while on the other side of the fence are those who wish to lean into ever-growing interest in the big clubs.

There is no doubt that those clubs at the top feel their commercial success means they deserve a separate set of rules, in particular rules on how they qualify for the Uefa Champions League, Europe’s lucrative elite club competition.

The vessel for much of that discussion is the European Club Association (ECA), a successor to the more power-concentrated G14. As chief executive, Charlie Marshall oversees a 246-member body that, in his own words, “strives to secure more participation from our members in European competitions, because, for our members, European competitions represent a very important avenue for growth.”

Ultimately, the goal for the biggest clubs is to capture a greater share of revenue and they see the route to that as coming via more games against each other. Current reporting suggests that, unless there is a major restructuring of European competition, such as the much-touted breakaway ‘super league’, then the Champions League will be restructured to expand the number of group games.

With 2020 a lost year for discussions on the future of Europe’s competition structure, those negotiations will now have to be squeezed into 2021 before key rights tenders hit the market in 2022. Jostling for position as those talks loom, Marshall points to the fact that clubs, as the game’s frontline businesses, have borne the brunt of the pandemic. When it all shakes out, he estimates that the economic damage for European soccer will be between €7 billion (US$8.51 billion) and €8 billion (US$9.72 billion), the majority of which will fall on the ECA’s members. That, Marshall asserts, should give them greater control on the structure of soccer after the pandemic.

“The one thing that Covid has clearly done is reinforced the message that the clubs are the key economic actors in the industry and, therefore, they should be in more of a position to make the decisions on the basis of which the industry operates,” he says. “The decisions about competitions. The decisions about calendars. Decisions about how the balance of national team and club competition sits together.

“The ECA’s view is that there needs to be balance. There are many stakeholders in the industry, and they all make up what is a very, very vibrant industry, the world’s number one sport. What Covid has definitely shown is that clubs need and can be delivered - if we continue to do our work - more of a say in how those decisions are made.”

While 2019’s ECA-led attempt to shift qualification of the Champions League away from domestic league places and towards past performance collapsed, Marshall says that structure’s merit, missed in much of the discussion, was based on as many as 44 spots being all-but guaranteed to the top performers in the previous season’s competitions across 128 group stage places in three competitions – the Champions League, the Europa League, and the new Europa Conference League.

“If you could give, let’s say, 40 or 44 European clubs, or spots, the ability to bank their future on staying into this competition, year on year - by the way, not the same 44, but 44 who would finish in the right places across the competition - then you could give a different kind of a future to a club like Benfica, Ajax or Celtic, or these clubs that are in the smaller markets.

“It was very much about our platform for clubs of different shapes and sizes - even though they’re the leading clubs, they’re still of different shapes and sizes - for them to be able to grow.”

Framed in that way, the notion seems more noble but the reality would be a largely closed-shop in those competitions and a further distancing of the haves and have-nots domestically.

In the Champions League, 134 different clubs have taken part since 1999, with 29 of those since 2010. Marshall argues that with roughly the same teams qualifying consistently for European competition, they deserve some stability.

However, the idea that dominant teams remain consistent is only as true as a system allows them to be. For example, had the drawbridge been pulled up at Europe’s top club tournament in 2000, then Napoli, Manchester City, Atletico Madrid, Tottenham Hotspur and, in all likelihood, Ajax would have been on the outside looking in. Two of those clubs have played in Champions League finals in the last ten years.

The English problem
It is an oddity of European soccer that a decision over the future of the Champions League has implications for English minnows such as – for the sake of argument – Burton Albion.

In February 2020, Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said that adding more games to the Champions League would “fundamentally alter” the League Cup’s “trajectory”. Yet the competition is of vital importance to England’s smaller clubs as it makes up to two-thirds of the EFL’s UK£119 million (US$155.2 million) annual broadcast deal with pay-TV network Sky Sports and offers money-spinning ties with top-flight clubs, such as those enjoyed by Burton on their run to the semi-finals in 2018/19.

Paul Barber, who as chief executive has successfully overseen Brighton’s rise out of the EFL, has “no doubt” the “complex puzzle” of the financial gap between the top flight and second-tier Championship will be debated going forward. Masters and Boston Consulting Group are leading on the official reform plans for the Premier League, which will inevitably involve the EFL and, as the national governing body, the Football Association (FA). Those talks could turn ugly if the self-interest on display during 2020’s EFL bailout discussions are anything to go by.

During those negotiations, as the chief executive of a Premier League club, Barber’s position was that clubs in the bottom two tiers needed to be protected, but that Championship clubs, which often teeter on the precipice of unsustainable budgets, could not be given a blank cheque.

“[That is] for two reasons,” he explains. “One, some of the clubs are owned by people that are richer than [Brighton] owner [Tony Bloom]. Secondly, those clubs are seeking to replace us in the Premier League. So it wouldn’t make much sense to anyone, at any level, in any business to weaken your own business, to strengthen somebody else’s that is looking to then replace you.”

Barber says he has to do what is best for his club, which is a common and understandable argument, but one that makes consensus on reform difficult to achieve.

Project Big Picture, the controversial plan formulated by the Premier League’s top clubs, proposed a new revenue distribution model but also a dramatic shift in voting rights towards those elite sides, as well as seeking to achieve consensus by offering generous cash incentives for the EFL. While the proposals were ultimately rejected, Marshall sat in the camp of those who believe the big clubs have the right to say how money they bring in is invested back into the system.

“The reality is that the vast majority of the football industry is unprofitable,” he says. “The economic reality is that it is a pyramid wherever you look, and below the top tier of that pyramid, it’s unprofitable. It’s unsustainable as a standalone economic engine.

“So therefore, there does need to be a system of solidarity or subsidy. I prefer the word investment. There needs to be a system of strategic investment by the value creators into the rest of the pyramid, in order that it is self-sustaining.

“I think that it’s not right to say that the value creators can’t make sensible decisions about what is the right structure and system of self-sustaining football. I thought, within Big Picture - which we weren’t involved in at all, but was fairly well publicised - there was not just a nod, but there was some serious strategic thinking in there about what that system needed to look like.”

For Barber, who has previously been on the other side of the fence as an executive director at Premier League ‘big six’ club Tottenham, the concentration of power was a red line issue that could not be overcome.

“I think, if you make the Premier League into a bit of a procession - because the big six clubs have so much power, so much additional wealth - those sort of games [where smaller clubs beat bigger ones] and that sort of excitement will become rarer and rarer and rarer. And that will actually diminish the value of the Premier League over time.”

La Liga president, JavierTebas, very much an advocate for the continued primacy of domestic competition, saw the Project Big Picture episode similarly. “It’s absurd that they want to change the governance from the Premier League when the ecosystem has always worked,” he says. “The Premier League itself should talk to the other, to regions of a federation, if they need to develop or change things but never because the six top clubs want to get more power and they want to change it. That’s very dangerous.”

One question that consistently flummoxes those on the outside looking at the big clubs as they try to accrue more power is: ‘What is the jeopardy they are trying to protect against?’ The common answer is that the influx of American money comes loaded with pressure to enshrine the guaranteed incomes enjoyed by franchises in major North American leagues.

That four of the Premier League’s big six clubs are US-owned - or, in the case of Bruce Buck at Chelsea, have Americans in prominent leadership positions - is surely no coincidence. However, the prevailing sentiment within the European soccer industry is one of defiance. Tebas, for one, believes the European tradition has provided enough economic stability that the industry is able to resist pressure to pursue an American-style closed-league structure.

“The Americans like their model because the value of their investments is obviously higher because clubs can’t be relegated, but this model isn’t one we’ve had for Europe,” he says. “I think [European soccer’s] broadcasting industry has the highest turnover in Europe and we have the same amount of inhabitants as the USA. We get more than the NBA and the other American leagues, just in football, and I mean I talk about everyone. So it’s a successful model. Why should we change it?”

Marshall says he “passionately believes” that the smartest American investors are learning what is different about European sport versus US sport. If so, then perhaps Project Big Picture might be one of the last throws of the dice from the English elite, rather than being, as is more commonly perceived, an opening salvo.

Indeed, Barney Francis, until recently the managing director of UK pay-TV giant Sky Sports and someone who knows more than a little about the value of soccer rights, believes that a key part of the Premier League’s appeal comes from the existing setup and the weekly intrigue that its highly competitive nature fosters.

“If you look at the ‘big six’, where are they in the league right now? We’re in an extraordinary place,” he says. “Don’t we want that to continue? Is that not, long term, the best thing to be selling overseas: the most competitive domestic football league?”

Throughout this week, SportsPro will be unveiling a special series that delves into the structural elements that underpin European soccer in an attempt to highlight the forces shaping the game's future.

[Chester Perry]

Are we to take it that the re-tender is not going too well as this tweet from @TariqPanja would seem to indicate - it can be an usual country (at least to our eyes) politically at times

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 6495833089
"French sports minister begging broadcasters to come to the rescue of Ligue 1 which is in a pickle thanks to own incompetence and hubris is next level stuff. Why should they? And, she also seems to suggest folks who are responsible for the mess should be absolved."

Oh dear - that re-tender by the French Ligue is not going well at all - there is now a legal challenge from Canal+ (backed up by Bein Media - from SportsBusiness.com

LFP’s rights tender disrupted by Canal Plus legal challenge
Martin Ross - January 26, 2021

Pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus has initiated its legal challenge to the domestic broadcast rights tender recently issued by France’s Professional Football League (LFP) in a move that threatens to disincentivize bidders in the auction.

The legal action, which had been expected, comes with the Vivendi-owned broadcaster having sent a summons to the LFP yesterday (Monday) afternoon, reports L’Équipe.

A hearing is to be heard at Paris’ commercial court on February 19.

The court date falls two and a half weeks after the first-round bid deadline in the LFP’s invitation to tender, raising the possibility that the results of the auction could be annulled by the court.

In going to market, the LFP has re-tendered the broadcast rights previously held by Mediapro, which is closing down its Téléfoot subscription service in France, but not those currently held by Canal Plus through its sublicensing agreement with subscription broadcaster beIN Sports.

The move by Canal Plus is, in any case, designed to dissuade potential new market entrants in France from bidding aggressively in the rights sales process.

Mediapro held exclusive rights to eight Ligue 1 fixtures per matchweek in a deal worth €780m ($946m) per season from 2020-21 to 2023-24. It also held rights to Ligue 2 in a contract worth €34m per year. Both deals were terminated in December on missed fee instalments.

Canal Plus holds exclusive rights to two top-pick Ligue 1 fixtures per matchweek from beIN. It is the latter that holds the original contract with the LFP in a deal worth €330m per season, from 2020-21 to 2023-24. Canal Plus has been vocal in its calls for the LFP to tender the full set of rights and warned that it will hand back its rights to the league on February 5, the date up to which it has paid beIN.

SportBusiness understands that beIN shares Canal Plus’ legal stance that the LFP can’t lawfully treat two portions of rights differently, believing that the action by the league is anti-competitive and discriminatory. The Qatar-backed broadcaster is also thought to be considering its legal options with regards to its own contract with the LFP.

The LFP is seeking to retain the value of the rights bought by beIN – and sold on to Canal – for a strategically high price and before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

There have been some noises in France that Amazon is readying a bid for the rights, although the online retail giant has until now only targeted specific strategic rights packages in its football acquisitions made to date in the UK, Germany and Italy. An all-encompassing bid from Amazon that would leave beIN and Canal empty-handed is viewed as unlikely.

The legal move by Canal Plus also brings up the unusual potential scenario of the broadcaster bidding for and winning rights in the LFP’s tender and then withdrawing its claim.

Four Ligue 1 rights packages
There are four packages of rights available from the top-tier Ligue 1 and, as part of separate tender, two from the second-tier Ligue 2.

Matches up until February 5 have been excluded from the Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 rights on offer.

The four Ligue 1 rights packages on offer are:

Package A: One match per matchweek, including 10 first-pick matches per season, 28 third-pick matches, the Sunday-evening magazine programme and review magazine programme
Package B: Seven matches per matchweek, including 38 second-pick matches per season, 38 fifth-pick matches, 36 sixth-pick matches and 152 matches ranging from seventh to tenth pick. Two magazine programmes, including the Sunday morning programme
Package C: Simultaneous ‘multiplex’ coverage of all matches during the 19th, 37th and 38th rounds of the championship, plus the relegation playoffs and the Trophée des Champions match
Package D: Magazine programmes during the week
The main Ligue 2 package (‘Package A’) comprises eight matches per matchweek, the two ‘multiplex’ matchweeks during the 37th and 38th rounds, the ‘tour of the stadiums’ magazine programme and the Sunday morning magazine show. Package B comprises the magazine programmes during the week.

[Chester Perry]

Some of you may be interested in this - you have to register to downkload it but it is timely given what is going on at our club

CEO Playbook: A practical guide for leading and managing a sports business in a new era

https://www.sportspromedia.com/playbook ... 20Playbook

there is a podcast to help introduce it

https://www.sportspromedia.com/analysis ... 19-podcast

[aggi]

One thing I was pondering following the various stuff on Barcelona. It appears that a number of their creditors (Liverpool being one) have sold the debt on.

In terms of the UK, if a football club goes bankrupt but the clubs that they owe money to have sold the debt on, would it still be counted as a football creditor? Anyone any bright ideas?

[Vegas Claret]

looks like we should be shopping in France

[Chester Perry]

One thing I was pondering following the various stuff on Barcelona. It appears that a number of their creditors (Liverpool being one) have sold the debt on.

In terms of the UK, if a football club goes bankrupt but the clubs that they owe money to have sold the debt on, would it still be counted as a football creditor? Anyone any bright ideas?

I suspect that depends on whether FIFA/UEFA (it is an international transfer) have allowed a direct payment to the the new debt owner - which I cannot see them doing, particularly if the debt owner is not a registered financial institution (think direct payments from the Premier League when factoring).

My guess would be that the liability to the lender remains with Liverpool, the assurance was the football creditor rule, and Liverpool while benefitting from the advanced cashflow at the time, will have to dig into their current cashflow to service it.

It actually ties in nicely to some of my thoughts about how the assurance of the football creditor rule specifically in the area of staged transfer payments is a looming problem in this period of such restricted cash flow (first expressed last summer) One that only looks worse the longer the pandemic continues.

[Chester Perry]

looks like we should be shopping in France

haven't we just done that

[aggi]

I suspect that depends on whether FIFA/UEFA (it is an international transfer) have allowed a direct payment to the the new debt owner - which I cannot see them doing, particularly if the debt owner is not a registered financial institution (think direct payments from the Premier League when factoring).

My guess would be that the liability to the lender remains with Liverpool, the assurance was the football creditor rule, and Liverpool while benefitting from the advanced cashflow at the time, will have to dig into their current cashflow to service it.

It actually ties in nicely to some of my thoughts about how the assurance of the football creditor rule specifically in the area of staged transfer payments is a looming problem in this period of such restricted cash flow (first expressed last summer) One that only looks worse the longer the pandemic continues.

I don't know why but I have a feeling it was sold to Barclays. I'm almost certain it was a financial institution.

It wasn't specifically the Barcelona-Liverpool one I was wondering about, just pondering how it will work if it comes up in the future.

[Chester Perry]

I don't know why but I have a feeling it was sold to Barclays. I'm almost certain it was a financial institution.

It wasn't specifically the Barcelona-Liverpool one I was wondering about, just pondering how it will work if it comes up in the future.

As an exercise it is actually relatively common, and has been around for most of the last decade.

[aggi]

As an exercise it is actually relatively common, and has been around for most of the last decade.

Yes, I guess the reason it hasn't come up in insolvencies is no-one wants to buy those debts from shaky looking clubs.

[Vegas Claret]

haven't we just done that

that's stretching what I meant Not sure he's first team ready ?

[Chester Perry]

Brighton have published their 2019/20 financial results - headline losses of £67m - they have not adjusted their accounting period to cover the end of season so this doesn't include final tv income - they say lost £25m to covid

https://resources.brightonandhovealbion ... imited.pdf

@KieranMaguire has had a look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 3642417156

what is evident from all this is that if we were to add back the Covid losses and, forgetting the lost China TV revenues, the remaining £26m of tv money they are yet to report then Brighton would have had in excess of £180m turnover last season - ours would have been in excess of £150m - that is a significant uplift on the previous year largely as a result of the new TV deal

[Chester Perry]

This is not what English Football wants to hear right now, from the Telegraph - That would be our £7.25m a year sponsor gone - They can be replaced, just not for as much in all likelihood, it is an opportunity for our new board to find a much more suitable type of sponsor I would suggest

Shirt ban on gambling firms 'likely'
TOM MORGAN JANUARY 26, 2021

Boris Johnson is increasingly likely to ban gambling firm sponsors on football shirts by the autumn amid rising unease in Government over betting addiction.

With a call for evidence in the most extensive review of the sector since 2005 set to expire in March, sources close to talks with Downing Street say there is determination at the top of Government to press ahead with reform.

Senior Whitehall figures involved in the review say they are conscious of "the worst possible timing" to remove finance streams for sport post-Covid-19.

But two-thirds of the British public support a ban on football shirt sponsorship, campaigners say, despite the £110million-a-year dent it would cause in the Premier League and Championship alone, and Government's decision will be guided ‘by the evidence’ over the betting industry's influence on addiction within the sport.

Carolyn Harris, the Labour MP and leading figure in the all-party parliamentary group on gambling harm, said she was confident the PM was inching closer to announcing a significant shake-up. "For me, it's about common sense prevailing over greed, because these football clubs have alternative ways to be funded," she added.

Ministers insist they will follow the evidence, but Matt Zarb-Cousin, director of Clean Up Gambling, was also among a host of figures to claim yesterday that ending betting sponsors on football shirts "looks increasingly likely" in the months ahead.

Analysis of betting habits show gambling fell less than expected while sport was wiped out during the first lockdown. Gamblers unable to wager on football or racing instead contributed to a surge in interest in online slots, which have a higher rate of addiction and no stake limits. A total of "17.3 per cent of male sports bettors and 16.6 per cent of female sports bettors started to bet on new activities during this period," according to a study led by Professor Kate Hunt of the University of Stirling.

Research by GambleAware had already estimated up to 2.7 per cent of adults in Britain - 1.4 million people - were problem gamblers, yet sponsorship is more prevalent than ever. Half of Premier League teams and 16 out of the 24 Championship sides had betting partners last season.

Last night the Clean Up Gambling said public appetite is now overwhelmingly in favour of a ban on shirt sponsorship, even as clubs face unprecedented financial chaos. Two-thirds of a sample size of more than 1,000 people told Survation this month that football should not be profiting from the industry.

The government published its call for evidence last month, having promised to review the industry in its pre-election manifesto. A White Paper of recommendations is set to follow by late summer or autumn, and ministers are promising to follow the evidence.

One anti-gambling lobbyist said last night: "Number 10 is very keen on the wider gambling reform agenda, particularly to gambling advertising, and even more so on football shirts. We think it’s highly likely that there will be progress in this area."

One further option discussed informally has been a levy that is paid by the betting industry to sports governing bodies for the right to take bets on the sport. Curbs on advertising will prompt stiff opposition in the gambling industry, as well as among broadcasters and professional sports.

"The government should go much further and end all gambling advertising, promotion and sponsorship," said Zarb-Cousin of Clean Up Gambling. "But given many of the gambling firms that sponsor football teams are based offshore and avoid paying UK corporation tax, it’s really a no brainer."

The betting industry, which spends billions on football and horse racing alone, will fight to prove the current status quo is not damaging society. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is leading the initial review, but the Prime Minister is expected to play a key role.

[Vegas Claret]

good, it has no place.

[Chester Perry]

good, it has no place.

indeed

[Chester Perry]

Part 3 of SportsProMedia's excellent European Football series - as ever there are charts you may wish to view at the link

https://www.sportspromedia.com/from-the ... -tv-rights

European Soccer Week | Part three: The commercial outlook
With budgets tightening in every industry, brands and broadcasters will look to be more efficient with their spending. What does this mean for Europe's soccer leagues and their clubs?

By Tom Bassam Posted: January 26 2021

In January, a telling deal was struck between Juventus and their current principal partner, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ (FCA). The agreement will see the carmaker keep its Jeep brand on the front of the team’s playing shirts until the end of the 2023/24 campaign.

The pair last reworked their contract in 2019, when FCA agreed to pay the Serie A giants an additional €25 million (US$30.4 million) until the end of the current season. Under that agreement, Juve received a minimum annual fee of €42 million (US$51.2 million). Yet, despite Juventus and Fiat both being controlled by the Exor group of companies owned by the Agnelli family, the club only saw an uptick of €3 million (US$3.64 million) a year on the base fee.

Now, the new partnership is one of the most lucrative shirt sponsorship deals in European soccer and the most valuable in Italy’s top flight, but it is also an increase of less than five per cent in that basic fee.

In the Premier League, Chelsea’s decision to swap tyre maker Yokohama for telecommunications brand Three last summer saw them secure no increase on their UK£40 million fee (US$53.8 million). None of this should be a surprise amid the financial crisis brought on by the pandemic, but it does illustrate the state of the commercial market in European soccer.

New partnerships have kept coming. In the Premier League, both Liverpool and Tottenham have agreed new sleeve deals this season but the upwards curve in the value of that inventory is not what it was.

Phil Carling, head of soccer at the Octagon agency, and his colleagues, have been working on make-goods and untangling cancellation clauses since Covid-19 shut down sport. Specific pandemic-related wording is now being written into all new deals.

"So virtually, every contract had some sort of force majeure in it. Some were quite prescient and did call out pandemics. Others didn’t. So you know, sort of drilling into the details of that, and then deciding with the rights owner what was suitable compensation," he says.

"It’s quite interesting building contingencies into the contracts to deal with pandemics and things that people might not have considered previously. Things that have actually now become quite prevalent, I would say."

Liverpool and Tottenham might be outliers in terms of agreeing major new deals, although Carling thinks the commercial appeal of the big clubs will endure. As for the smaller clubs, Carling says, centralised rights revenue is likely to be the most reliable source of commercial income for at least the next three years as brands focus their money on the reliable big names.

Brighton & Hove Albion chief executive, Paul Barber, and his commercial team have had to redraw contracts in an effort to keep partners on board. Deliverables that have proved impossible because of Covid restrictions have to be made up but, beyond finding new digital activations or agreeing free extensions, clubs need to continue to appear commercially attractive when much of that window dressing is not available.

“Our team have had to be creative,” says Barber. “They’ve had to be fleet of foot. They’ve had to be clever. They’ve had to be persuasive. They’ve had to, you know frankly, at times, sell the whole idea of being involved in the football world again because it’s a different kind of football that we’re involved in at the moment.”

Another hit is the tightening regulatory squeeze on the gambling industry's involvement in sponsorship. France and Germany have historically had very tight laws around the betting sector, while Spain has now followed Italy in moving to outlaw gambling brands from sports sponsorship. That move, according to La Liga president Javier Tebas, will cost Spanish clubs a combined €90 million (US$105 million). In the UK the government has indicated it will follow suit, further reducing the pool of potential partners for clubs and leagues.

Half of the 20 teams in the Premier League, English soccer’s top tier, have gambling brands as a main or sleeve sponsor for the 2020/21 season. During the 2019/20 season, Premier League clubs earned UK£69.6 million (US$89 million) from shirt deals with betting firms, with most clubs also holding smaller partnerships with companies from the sector.

In the second-tier Championship, 15 of the 24 teams rely on betting companies for shirt sponsorship and the English Football League (EFL), which oversees the three professional tiers below the top flight, could be hardest hit by any law changes. The league body says between its title sponsorship with Sky Bet and clubs' deals with betting brands a ban would wipe out UK£40 million (US$54.9 million) of commercial income.

On the broadcast side, indications are that Ligue 1 clubs will not be getting the same levels of rights fee as was agreed in the now-abandoned Mediapro deal. Serie A is aiming to raise at least €1.15 billion (US$1.4 billion) per season over the next three years from the sale of its domestic rights. That would represent a 15 per cent uplift on its current deal, but a cut of that would go to its new private investors. In Spain, Tebas says La Liga’s days of double-digit fee increases are likely over as the league prepares for its next rights auction this year.

Given its status as a market leader, all eyes will be on the Premier League to see where the market stands and whether it can secure a favourable deal. The pandemic has delayed the tender as Masters and his executive team assess how to package the league’s domestic rights. As part of that process, decisions need to be made on whether to go back to the blackout for Saturday 3pm fixtures, what the data from last year’s pay-per-view (PPV) experiment reveals, and how many games to sell.

Former Sky Sports managing director, Barney Francis, who is not directly involved in a domestic Premier League rights bidding process for the first time since 2009, agrees with the projection of Claire Enders, founder of consumer research company Enders Analysis, in that the Premier League will see the value of its games drop by between five and ten per cent from the current UK£1.67 billion (US$2.26 billion) a year fee. He also has a few suspicions about how the league’s strategy to deal with that drop will shake out.

“They’ll get declarations of interest from the usual suspects that you would imagine,” he says. “There are always declarations of interest from private equity firms and all those sorts of things because owning the Premier League is a glamorous thing - particularly for financial investment vehicles - but they always seem to have fallen away in the final throes of the bidding process

“Which way do I see it going? I see them looking to sell more inventory in a bid to achieve similar numbers to last time. I think that if they were to go back to market selling 200 games, I can’t see there being an increase in the value.”

Carling also fails to see any growth for the Premier League, with international broadcasters struggling too.

“I fully expect [a plateau] to happen with the Premier League this time around, “ he says. “What you’re also seeing is that the pay operators, even in the growth markets like Asia, are similarly suffering because of three challenges, really. One is media fragmentation, so more competition. Second is the fact that the consumer now is probably not committed to watching as much television as they were previously, and the third issue is piracy. And so all of those things, they’re conspiring to attack the pay television model.”

Phil Carling's four generations of soccer broadcast rights (and a bold prediction)
Pre-1992 Advertiser-driven and public-service broadcasters determine rights values due to limited competition, with obligations to serve a broad audience reducing demand for live soccer.

1992-2007 Pay-TV cable and satellite services, such as Sky, arrive as a disruptive development. With round-the-clock schedules to fill, broadcast rights values explode as rights holders are paid to sacrifice reach. Leagues can now extend beyond their own borders to become global properties by segmenting rights into multiple different territories.

2007-2018 The model remains primarily pay-TV, but telecommunications companies such as BT and Orange arrive with ‘quad play’ offerings incorporating TV packages, phone lines, and broadband and wireless services. Revenues are not entirely driven by subscriptions or advertising, with live soccer acting as a loss leader for other services in the bundle. Greater competition ensures rights values continue to rise.

2018-present The entrance of the digital giant. Amazon’s investments are a precursor, but this will develop into a mixed model where those digital operators play alongside traditional linear subscription-based services. However, with consumers under the age of 35 not prepared to pay for subscriptions anymore, piracy, fragmentation and competition sees rights values plateau.

Generation five? As delivery via digital platforms stabilises, rights holders are forced to drastically alter the model by which they sell their rights, with the key change being eliminating segmentation by territory. So, for example, digital giants could buy all 380 Premier League games and stream them globally or separate them only for large regions with very different media markets, such as China, to end up with three different territories rather than the current 180 to 200. The third component for rights holders is that, in addition to the upfront fees, there could be an advertising revenue share model as the threat of piracy grows and consumer adversity to paywalls sees the digital provider offer content for free. Ultimately, in order to fully realise the value of their investment, the media platform owns all of the advertising within the content - not only the advertising breaks and pre-roll, but what is going on inside it: shirt branding, sleeve branding, and all of the signage.

[Chester Perry]

Brighton have published their 2019/20 financial results - headline losses of £67m - they have not adjusted their accounting period to cover the end of season so this doesn't include final tv income - they say lost £25m to covid

https://resources.brightonandhovealbion ... imited.pdf

@KieranMaguire has had a look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 3642417156

what is evident from all this is that if we were to add back the Covid losses and, forgetting the lost China TV revenues, the remaining £26m of tv money they are yet to report then Brighton would have had in excess of £180m turnover last season - ours would have been in excess of £150m - that is a significant uplift on the previous year largely as a result of the new TV deal

The Price of Football Blog does a deep dive into those Brighton 2019/20 financial results

http://priceoffootball.com/brighton-201 ... -fountain/

[Chester Perry]

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

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

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

:KieranMaguire has a look

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

@SwissRamble delves into those 2019/20 financial results at Bristol city

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 4779187201

and he has done his customary summary charts too

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 8371251200

[Chester Perry]

Meanwhile the European Clubs Association President Andrea Agnelli is preparing the ground for his final push at UEFA in regards to the future shape and financing of there international club competitions (and the underlying threat of that European Super League) - from the Athletic

Juventus chief predicts up to €8.5bn losses for European football due to COVID
27 January 2021Updated 09:58 GMT

Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli has warned European football might lose up to €8.5 billion due to the COVID-19 crisis, reports James Horncastle.

The pandemic has, barring brief periods, seen football played in empty stadiums across the continent since March 2020.

Speaking at the News Tank Football seminar on Wednesday, Agnelli painted a grim picture of the state of club finances across Europe.

What did Agnelli say?
He said: “My firm opinion that we will have a real understanding of what this crisis has meant for clubs only at the end of the season.

“I have seen the Deloitte study that came out yesterday. I was looking at data for the top 20 clubs whereby we had a €1.1 billion hit in the 19-20 season and the estimate for those 20 clubs alone is a €2 billion hit for the combined two years.

“I think it's going to be much worse than that. The 2019-20 season only has three or four months of crisis, of empty stadiums, no fans of stadiums, commercial rebates, broadcasting rebates, whilst as it seems right now from my point of observation 2020-21 will be a full season without fans in stadiums.

“We are in the middle of (broadcast) tenders. Some have been out, the Germans have been out, they've had a loss of value 10 per cent. We are seeing international broadcasters not paying their dues.

“And so I think this season will be much worse. So I mean, it's gonna be much worse than what we've seen there.

“When I look at the best information I've had so far, we're looking at a bottom-line loss for the industry in the region of €6.5 billion to €8.5 billion for the combined two years, and about 360 clubs in need for cash injections, whether it's debt or equity within those two years, for an amount of €6 billion.”

What did Deloitte predict?
The professional services firm predicted that the top 20 richest clubs in the world will lose out on over €2 billion by the end of the current season.

This revenue decline — 12 per cent — is largely due to the impact of COVID-19 on clubs’ finances with most around Europe set to play over a season of football without fans in stadiums.

What else did Agnelli say?
The 45-year-old also spoke favourably about the ‘Swiss system’ — which has been mooted as a possible new format to be used in the Champions League from 2024. It would see more games played between Europe’s elite clubs.

The Swiss system would have all 32 or 36 qualifying clubs in a single division, where each would play 10 matches against teams of varying strength according to seeding. The top 16 would qualify for the knockouts, where ties would be played much the same way as American playoffs — first would play 16th, second would play 15th and so on.

Agnelli cited the 1826 games played in Europe’s top five leagues compared to only 125 played in the Champions League as a flaw in the current system that means clubs are not maximising their potential revenue streams.

He also noted that the “great” Swiss system would help reignite interest in football and keep the sport ahead of its competitors.

He added: "I think what's dear to our hearts at the moment is mostly the governance of the entire system, that that is what we should be looking at most. And when I talk about the governance of the system, it's the governance and the right management system.

"And that is to create a better balance within the existing stakeholders in which clubs and national team football align, sharing objectives, we can talk about the sporting matters of competitions, whereby we as the ECA, evidently, we're looking at a quality versus quantity kind of approach.

"Just to give you an example, talking about the most viewed games in Europe, we take the top five leagues, we play one 1826 games every year in the top five leagues, versus only 125 in Champions League alone.

"We can look at the governance aspect in terms of financial management, and that is we've always had a profit and loss approach. So we're looking at total turnover we're looking across, we want to really focus on balance sheet management and value creation. I can give you some examples there.

"A revision of the transfer system, a collective bargaining agreement with the player that will leave us with the tools in order to operate in a moment of crisis."

[Chester Perry]

it is possibly a bit too much of a claim, but there is no denying the development and strategic focus at Leicester City - from the Telegraph

How Leicester turned the Premier League's 'big six' into a 'big seven'
JOHN PERCY JANUARY 27, 2021

The Premier League's 'Big Six' is not the sort of the club to welcome applications from new members, but Leicester City are proving difficult to turn down.

After winning the title in 2016, and finishing fifth last season, Leicester are the former underdogs who have become pedigree performers, emerging as a beacon club with a developing squad, progressive manager, enviable recruitment department and facilities which are now a match for any of the traditional elite.

As they aim to tighten their grip on a place in the top-four at Everton on Wednesday night, their sustained progress since delivering that fairytale title win five years ago is proof of the benefits of shrewd planning and careful management.

They may not be involved in the embryonic discussions around the creation of a European Super League, but having been crowned champions more recently than Manchester United, Tottenham or Arsenal, their case to be at the top table in negotiations is hard to counter.

Under manager Brendan Rodgers, Leicester are refusing to go away quietly. With a vibrant squad containing a crucial blend of experienced performers and young talent, they continue to threaten the private member’s party.

Rodgers was 48 yesterday and is clearly building something special in the East Midlands. He has harnessed an environment where players feel valued, challenged, and in constant pursuit of improvement.

Leicester, and Rodgers, are in a good place.

So what makes Leicester such a threat to the 'big six'?

Recruitment seems to have defined Leicester’s success in recent years: in the title season it was bargain buys Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez who captured the imagination, with both players costing under £1.5 million.

Aside from a wasteful summer transfer window in 2016, when panic gripped as Leicester adjusted to their new standing in European football, the recruitment has been outstanding.

Youri Tielemans, the Belgium international, is the record signing at £32m and operating on a high level this season. Rodgers’ ‘coach on the pitch’, Tielemans is only 23 but was captain against Brentford in the FA Cup on Sunday and is already studying for his coaching badges.

There are many other crucial additions, such as James Justin (£6m from Luton), James Maddison (£25m from Norwich) Wilfred Ndidi (£15m from Genk), Jonny Evans (£3.5m from West Brom) and Timothy Castagne (£18m from Atalanta).

Yet the one player who appears their shrewdest find is Wesley Fofana, the 20-year-old defender signed from Saint-Etienne for an initial £30m.

Fofana has been outstanding alongside Evans and his potential is frightening, with the comparisons to Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk more than just hyperbole.

Leicester first started watching him as a raw teenager in Saint-Etienne’s under-23s and Fofana is already being openly talked about as a future £100m player.

As a result of such high-quality signings, Leicester’s recruitment, and the analysis and preparation behind it, is the envy of clubs across Europe.

Rodgers works closely with director of football Jon Rudkin, recruitment chief Lee Congerton and head of football analytics Mladen Sormaz on targets and fully recognises the importance of recruitment in the modern game.

“It’s about understanding the market that you’re in and we know the types of players that we want to sign,” says Rodgers.

“We’ll never be spending £80 million on players but we have our profile that we like, that fits into the model of our game. We do our work on their character and how they behave off the field, plus they always have to be coachable.”

Leicester’s recruitment strategy remains a closely guarded secret, yet the foundation is based on always thinking ahead: when Manchester United first inquired for Harry Maguire, Leicester signed Caglar Soyuncu in the summer before Maguire’s sale.

Ben Chilwell was pursued over two seasons by Chelsea and Manchester City, so Leicester acted by bringing in Justin and Castagne. It sounds simple, but it means Leicester always have a succession plan in place.

There was also a pivotal moment in Leicester’s future on Christmas Eve, when the club moved into their stunning £100m training ground near Seagrave.

Ever since the Srivaddhanaprabha a takeover in 2010, a new headquarters has been a priority in the long-term vision.

Under construction since April 2019, and delayed six months due to Covid-19, the 180-acre site includes 14 pitches, a 499-seater stadia for the show-pitch, overnight accommodation and a nine-hole golf course which has been scored by the PGA.

The attention to detail is striking - first-team players all have video screens on their lockers, with clips or goals from recent matches plus a weekly schedule for training sessions and media commitments.

It is now the nerve centre for Leicester’s first-team squad, management, recruitment team and analysts, while the presence of the academy teams on site also represent a clear pathway for the club’s future.

“It’s an incredible place to come and work and we’re very fortunate,” says Rodgers, who was fully briefed over plans for the training ground during talks over his appointment in February 2019.

“It’s a modern facility at the very highest level and there certainly won’t be many more better around the world. We have to be so thankful for what the owners have provided, for this current generation of players and many more to come.

“It’s everything as a manager you would want to develop a club. Khun Top will be very proud because I know it was a legacy and a great passion of his father’s to build a training complex up there with the best in the world. When Khun Top does arrive he will see that vision laid out in front of him.”

Aiyawatt ‘Top’ Srivaddhanaprabha, the son of the late Vichai, has been unable to fly into England for some time due to travel restrictions, but remains fully involved via regular contact with chief executive Susan Whelan and Rudkin. He recorded a special video message for the squad when they moved into the new training ground.

The next plan is to expand King Power Stadium, increasing the capacity by more than 10,000.

Behind the football team, there is a culture within the club that radiates calm and professionalism, epitomised by the highly regarded Whelan, a long-term associate of owners King Power.

It was Whelan who recently argued against the pay-per-view model - despite a 19-1 vote - and she is renowned as a respected voice within Premier League boardrooms.

Leicester are a club making 100 per cent use of their resources, and there is excitement over what the future holds.

It may never become the ‘big seven’, but as we all discovered five years ago, it is always foolish to write Leicester off.

[Chester Perry]

GameofthePeople.com with a tirade about those recent European Super League Proposals - I think what most people have missed here is that the insensitivity and raw logic of the proposals smacks of them coming from a financier looking to make money not a group of football executives making some additional consolations for the wider game you saw in Project Big Picture

The Super League – who is really hiding behind the leaked document?
JANUARY 27, 2021NEIL FREDRIK JENSEN

IT’S BACK again, the threat of a European Super League involving 15 fixed clubs and five lucky qualifiers. We can easily name the likely 15: there’s six from the Premier League; three from La Liga; three from Serie A; two from the Bundesliga and one from Ligue 1. It’s almost certainly the usual suspects, the first 14 in the latest Deloitte Football Money League and stray giants AC Milan.

The strategically-leaked document, which has turned up all over the place, shows no sign of accountability. Normally, one might expect a logo or two to indicate who has put the paper together. But there’s nothing to suggest where the proposal is coming from, no real mention of the universal benefits of such a structure and no attempt to convince. In other words, nobody is asking for approval. And nobody has yet to claim responsibility.

We can make a good guess where the idea originates from because without the involvement of some of Europe’s blue riband clubs, there would be no mileage in the project. But everyone is hiding and even some clubs that have been named as driving forces are distancing themselves from the controversial concept. If this is such a great idea, then why doesn’t anyone confidentally step forward?

Killer
It’s pure cowardice, because the clubs know that such a proposal would attract a mountain of negativity, mostly around the self-interest of the behemoth football houses and the damage it might do to the football eco-system. Social media will destroy anyone supporting the league.

This just doesn’t make sense and will effectively kill it before it can gather momentum. Why? Because without providing credible discussion points around the rationale and pluses of a super league, the governing bodies, media, supporter groups and vast body of opposition clubs will prevent it happening. If those that produced the paper want to gain backing for their league, then they have to canvas, cajole and compromise. Throwing it out there, running away and waiting to see what will happen is foolhardy. OK, it makes good copy, but actually, it is getting a little tedious.

A super league might actually be the natural evolution of the UEFA Champions League, but not in the way influential clubs are trying to create. This should be UEFA’s idea, devised by them, proposed by them and fully-aligned to domestic football across the continent.

The timing couldn’t be worse or more cunning. Football clubs across Europe have suffered from a loss of revenue due to the pandemic, as noted by Deloitte in their latest Football Money League. All the top clubs saw their overall revenues decline, Barcelona, the number one club by income (€ 715m) experienced a 15% fall, but the downturn varied at Real Madrid (-6%), Bayern Munich (-4%), Manchester United (-19%), Liverpool (-8%), Manchester City (-11%) and Paris Saint-Germain (-15%).

While matchday income and broadcasting income fell right across the board, 12 of Deloitte’s top 20 were boosted by increased commercial revenues. It is difficult to see the proposal of a super league anything other than a commercial enterprise. It’s curious that the involvement of bank financing from JPMorgan Chase was mentioned in much of the coverage, but no confirmation of the clubs that will undoubtedly be involved.

Supply
UEFA, FIFA and the European Union are all against the plan and FIFA have said anyone who plays in any super league would be banned from their competitions. This could prove a major stumbling block as it could start a player drought. But it is not just players that might be in short supply, what about managers and coaches, will they not be impacted?

Admittedly, the 15 clubs already have most of the world’s best players – 77% of the Guardian’s top 100 and 94% of the top 50 in KPMG Football Benchmark’s player valuation database. The clubs already trade heavily among themselves – Real Madrid, over the past five years, have dealt with 14, Manchester City 11, Barcelona and Chelsea nine.

But there’s also mention of the super league sending 12 teams to the annual revamped FIFA Club World Cup. How could they possibly even factor that into the equation unless there was reasonable hope that FIFA would buy into their scheme? Shouldn’t they be invited rather than assume they can even consider sending a dozen to China, Qatar, Morocco or wherever FIFA decide to host their new competition?

While the 20 involved clubs (the permanent 15 and five qualifiers) will play their 18 group games (two groups of 10) in midweek, they will also participate in their domestic leagues. How important will the Premier League be to the half dozen clubs who will appear in the super league, given their involvement is guaranteed in the latter? And surely, the FIFA Club World Cup will then become more important than the Premier?

This all could, of course, just be a tactic to push the governing bodies into a corner and for Europe’s giants to squeeze them for more cash, just as they have in the past. The tail is certainly wagging the dog, but the dog has got significantly weaker over the past few years. The clubs are so strong and they know that if they take their ball away, UEFA would struggle to produce a compelling Champions League that appeals to broadcasters and sponsors around the globe. This is a game of poker and at the moment, with the world suffering from covid-19 and lockdown fatigue, people are tired and bored of repeated attempts to bully the game into submission and introduce more elitism.

It would help if we knew who is really behind this attempt to challenge the status quo. If their paper is so marvellous, then stand behind it, explain it, try to change hearts and minds and, above all, present something that benefits the broader football world, not just 20 privileged clubs. The future of football is at stake, after all. Isn’t that worth a little more than USD 3 billion?

[Chester Perry]

The government have finally created a winter support package for the tiers 7-11, and they are talking of not letting no-league clubs go to the wall - the very language they have routinely condemned the Premier League for using re the EFL - from the BBC

Cash injection: Non-league clubs handed £10m government 'winter survival' money
Last updated 2 hours ago

About 850 non-league clubs have been handed a £10m injection as the first part of the government's Sports Winter Survival Package.

Teams in the four tiers below National League, National League North and National League South, will benefit.

But Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston also offered hope to the 66 National League clubs, promising: "We will not let clubs go to the wall."

The government will examine individual cases following a furore over loans.

Clubs at steps one and two in England's non-league system had agreed a delayed start to the season in October, with the help of a £10m government grant.

But that was on the assumption there would still be further financial support to complete the season if fans remained locked out of grounds in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

National League to talk with clubs about scrapping season vote
Instead, when a further cash injection was offered prior to the country going back into lockdown in early January, it was not as a grant, but as a provisional £11m loan on very low interest terms.

It caused discontent at many clubs who thought a promise of funding was to cover the entire season, not just the first third of it.

But the government says that any club in proven need of emergency funds just to survive will still be listened to if their imminent future is at risk and they can demonstrate loans are unaffordable.

"With precious public money, we are providing financial support to the National League Steps 1 and 2 in the form of loans," added Mr Huddleston.

"However, if clubs at those levels can demonstrate it needs grant funding urgently to survive, we will ensure that option is available.

"Applications will be assessed by the independent board, through the same rigorous process that we apply to other sports."

What is the Sports Winter Survival Package?
The award of a £10m grant to the 850 clubs in steps three to six of the non-league pyramid is the first to be announced by the government as part of a £300m Sports Winter Survival Package.

It is "a sector-specific intervention on top of the multi-billion pounds worth of business support that has been made available by the government, including the furlough scheme, business rates relief and business interruption loan scheme that has helped many sports clubs survive".

Clubs will be contacted directly by the Football Foundation on Thursday and invited to make an application.

Funds will then be distributed quickly to clubs through the Football Stadia Improvement Fund.

[Chester Perry]

An update on the long standing saga of the missing millions loaned to Northampton Town to redevelop a stand - wife of the central figure in the case - is being sued to recover monies

https://twitter.com/mattcprecey/status/ ... 1712974850

There has been an enquiry into the council of the loan saga to Northampton Town football club and they have been found wanting - which is no surprise really

https://www.nnjournal.co.uk/p/unlawful- ... ished-into

[Chester Perry]

Today's Business of Sport Podcast from the Athletica looks at the financial Peril at Barcelona, while they still top the Deloitte money league - remember folks revenue does not equal wealth,

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t ... 0506843073

[Chester Perry]

The Football Today Podcast dissects the latest proposals for a European Super League

https://www.footballtodaypodcast.com/po ... e-proposal

[Chester Perry]

Daniel Geey (@FootballLaw) and Omar Chaudri of the 21st club have their own take on the European Super League

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiTnpLk ... e=emb_logo

[Chester Perry]

The Athletic with a piece on the finances of La Liga's big two and why they are both wanting to grasp the opportunity of the European Super League


Dire finances mean Barcelona and Real are pushing for European Super League
Dermot Corrigan Jan 27, 2021

“And one last thing, beloved socio delegates,” said Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, coming to the end of his long speech at Madrid’s AGM last December. “We are all aware of the complexity of the moment and the adversities we will face in the coming months. The pandemic has made us more vulnerable and forced us into an even deeper reflection, because nothing will ever be the same again.”

Perez is not the most exciting public speaker, but he is a gifted politician who knew a moment had arrived for him to seize.

“Football needs new formulas to make it more competitive, more exciting, and stronger,” he continued. “As always, Real Madrid must continue at the vanguard of this sport. I want to remember that our club has taken part, since its foundation in 1902, in all the necessary innovations over the years, and also been protecting football’s traditions when they have been in danger.”

All Madrid’s socios attending virtually from home probably knew by now what Perez was building up to — one of his favourite themes over his two terms as president. But he was not quite there yet.

“I want to also recall that Real Madrid was the only founder club of FIFA in 1904, along with seven national federations. Also, 50 years later, the newspaper L’Equipe and Real Madrid pushed for the creation of the European Cup. That was a revolutionary moment, necessary for football, and especially for European competitions. And it changed the history of football. Without these changes, European football would not be what it is today.”

Finally, he got to the point.

“And now this model needs a new impulse. Football must step forward in these new times. And Real Madrid will be there, as it always has been over its history. Everyone realises that the current competitive environment must be reformed as soon as possible. The great European clubs have thousands of followers all around the world. We have the responsibility to fight for this change, a change which we must take on, of course, from a basis of solidarity with the rest of the clubs. Our duty is to adapt to our new reality. The competitiveness and quality of our competitions must improve. It is a challenge for which we must be prepared.”

The words “European Super League” were never mentioned. But everybody got the message.

Real Madrid’s interest in a European club competition outside of UEFA control goes back to before Perez was first elected Bernabeu chief in 2000. When a “breakaway” plan for the continent’s richest clubs to form their own competition was proposed by a Milan-based company called Media Partners back in 1998, Lorenzo Sanz was the Madrid president giving his backing to the idea.

The turn of the millennium also saw a new “European Golden Cup” proposed by Spanish sports business executive Carlos Garcia Pardo, on behalf of telecoms giant Telefonica. This was welcomed at the time by then Atletico Madrid president Jesus Gil and Deportivo La Coruna chief Augusto Lendoiro, and also reportedly had support from both Real Madrid and Barcelona.

“Of course this is an elitist project,” Garcia Pardo said in 2003, when a galactico-filled Madrid had won three of the previous five European Cups. “Elitist as we are looking for the best possible spectacle to offer to digital TV operators. Ask them if their viewers would prefer a Real Madrid-Barcelona to an Alaves-Celta.”

The pressure from such projects led UEFA to keep tweaking their Champions League model, generally favoring the bigger teams with more money and less chance of early exits. However the idea never really went away, and Perez kept talking about it. “We must agree a new European Super League which guarantees that the best always play the best — something that does not always happen in the Champions League,” he said in 2009, during a run of five successive last 16 exits for Madrid from the existing competition.

When the long-awaited Decima victory for Madrid in 2014 began a run of four Champions League trophies in five years, Blancos players and fans were very much in love with the competition. But even still, Perez regularly spoke about how difficult it was for his member-owned club to keep up financially with rivals around Europe who had super-rich backers, whether Arabian Gulf states, Russian oligarchs or US venture capitalists. “It is all the time getting more difficult to compete on a level playing field,” Perez told socios at Madrid’s AGM 2017. Also, around now, La Liga president Javier Tebas was pushing through changes to the distribution of TV revenue in the domestic league which somewhat reduced the previously dominant position held by Madrid and Barca.

In November 2019, Perez was named president of a new organisation called the World Football Club Association (WFCA), which also featured founder members AC Milan (Italy), Auckland City (New Zealand), Boca Juniors and River Plate (Argentina), Club America (Mexico), Guangzhou Evergrande (China) and TP Mazembe (Congo). “This new association will be a credible, focused counterpart to FIFA and we will strive to improve all aspects related to clubs, starting with the FIFA Club World Cup in 2021,” said Perez in comments carried on Madrid’s club website.

The first meeting of the new association was hosted by FIFA president Gianni Infantino, in stark contrast to the friction with UEFA chiefs, including current incumbent Aleksander Ceferin, which arose any time the European Super League was discussed. Whether Madrid really wanted to play TP Mazembe and Auckland City more often than Sevilla or Valencia was unlikely. But Perez was pushing the political buttons wherever he could find them.

With Madrid and Perez so associated with the whole European Super League idea, Barca’s directors have generally been quieter on the idea. Sandro Rosell was the blaugrana president who seemed most open to applying public pressure on UEFA, saying in 2011 he backed the demands being made by the European Club Association (ECA) lobby group.

“We’d like to have a Champions League with more teams — and have a Barcelona v Manchester United Champions League game on Saturday or Sunday,” Rosell said during a visit to Qatar. “If not, then ECA is entitled to organise their own champions competition by themselves. We’re asking for more revenue. We’re asking for governance, transparency, insurance.”

Rosell’s long time associate and successor Josep Maria Bartomeu said little about the issue, right until he dropped a bombshell while resigning from the blaugrana presidency last October.

“I can announce some extraordinary news,” Bartomeu said. “The board of directors have approved the requirements to participate in a future European Super League, a project promoted by the big clubs in Europe which will guarantee the future financial sustainability of the club and ensure that it remains owned by its socios.”

The farewell speech did not expand upon who had offered the invitation, or what it would mean for Barca’s participation in existing UEFA competitions or La Liga. Given how unpopular Bartomeu had become, it might have seemed obvious that anybody looking to replace him as president would immediately rule out anything he was in favour of. However anybody following things closely at the Nou Camp knew the club’s financial situation was so bad that no possible solutions could be discounted.

“Not everything is about money,” replied former president Joan Laporta, who was then readying a bid to return to the post. “But there are other alternatives like a ‘Super Club World Cup’. I’d incline towards that option.”

Long-time Bartomeu critic, and then “pre-candidate” for the club presidency, Victor Font was also cautious and did not reject completely the idea of joining a new competition.

“The European Super League has been tried before and is a very political issue,” Font said. “We would like to see an improvement to the format of the competition, whether it is called the Champions League or a Super League, so that we don’t have to wait seven years to visit Anfield again. But always without the death of the national leagues.”

Also concerned about the impact of any new European club competition on the national leagues was La Liga president Javier Tebas, who was also quick to react to Bartomeu’s parting shot.

“Poor old Josep Bartomeu announcing on his last day the participation in a phantom competition that would ruin (Barcelona) and reiterating his ignorance about the football industry,” Tebas tweeted that night. “A sad end for a president who did many things right but that lately made many mistakes.”

“Bartomeu was directed by Florentino, that is what I believe,” Tebas then told the AP. “This (league) has been a dream by the Real Madrid president. He has worked for this for a long time, this is nothing new. But it is a big mistake because he doesn’t understand its financial consequences.”

“Barcelona used to have its own voice when dealing with the league, with UEFA and with FIFA,” Tebas added, possibly with the aim of making it more difficult for any new blaugrana president to back the Super League idea. “But for the last three years it only repeats what Real Madrid says.”

In this battle, Tebas has an ally in Atletico Madrid chief executive Miguel Angel Gil Marin, who since last February has also been the “first vice-president” of La Liga.

“Football is a representation of society, and with that, of social and economic differences,” Gil Marin said in December. “The most powerful clubs do not want to share the value of their rights with the weakest. UEFA has the responsibility and the commitment to find a balance which is difficult to achieve, and leave everyone half-satisfied. It must protect the domestic leagues, and weekends must remain for the national leagues. To do that it is necessary to update the current format, increasing the number of attractive guaranteed games, which will bring more income from broadcasters and sponsors.”

Canny operator Gil Marin was not in favour of a new breakaway competition, and was backing the domestic league of which he is a VP. At the same time arguing that UEFA needed to reform the Champions League and guarantee the biggest teams would play each other more often. Which was maybe a different way of saying the same thing.

Recent weeks have seen the rumblings over a coming European Super League grow even louder. On January 19, Madrid president Perez visited Turin for a three-hour meeting with Andrea Agnelli, Juventus president and chairman of the European Club Association.

Two days later, The Times published an 18-page document outlining a potential new “closed” competition with 15 permanent members, who would include three Spanish teams — almost certainly Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. The Athletic has been told that Manchester United co-owner Joel Glazer has also been a key figure in behind the scenes talks over potential changes to European club competitions, while sources say JP Morgan could finance the proposed project outside the current structures.

All this noise prompted last week’s letter signed by FIFA, UEFA and the world’s other confederations which emphatically rejected any proposal for a European Super League, and also said that players who took part would be banned from representing their national teams at World Cups or European Championships. This showed the strength of feeling against the move while also suggesting the governing bodies were rattled. It also showed that Perez’s apparent attempt to split FIFA’s Infantino and UEFA’s Ceferin over the issue had not worked.

The Times report said that participating teams would be offered around €350 million each to join and then earn as much as €230 million a season from taking part. Current Champions League qualification is worth about €100 million, with the winners receiving around another €100 million depending on other factors including their results along the way and the size of their TV market. This very significant jump in income even for teams who do not go far in the competition would be especially attractive at the moment, with COVID-19 having ripped through the financial plans of all of Europe’s top clubs.

As Perez was again pushing the need for “revolution” in how football was organised at December’s club AGM, he said the pandemic “was ruining us”. The current crisis has arrived just as Madrid were taking on the €600 million renovation of their Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, and the loss of ticketing, sponsorship and match-day revenue has put a €300 million hole in their finances. Their latest accounts show that they took out a loan of €205 million under a Spanish government scheme to balance the books over the next five years. Even still, they are asking their players to take 10 per cent pay cuts, and this January has seen pressure eased on the wage bill by allowing little-used squad players Luka Jovic and Martin Odegaard to leave on loan, with no replacements likely to be added.

Meanwhile, Barca’s financial situation is even worse than Madrid’s. This week’s release of accounts showing the money they still owed other clubs for transfers — such as €69 million from the deal with Liverpool to sign Philippe Coutinho and €19 million to Bordeaux for Brazilian winger Malcom, who left for Zenit St Petersburg more than 18 months ago. Even more scary for club members were total debts of almost €1.2 billion, of which €730 million was due to be repaid in the short term, €266 million to various banks by June 30. Such extraordinary numbers mean that Barca’s worries have moved from whether Lionel Messi will accept a pay cut to sign a new contract to whether the club might have to declare bankruptcy and lose its proud “socio-owned” status.

“The financial situation of the club is serious, but nothing that has been said today has surprised me, not a bit,” Font said this week when the detail and depth of the club’s debts was made public by Barca’s current interim president Carlos Tusquets. “Protecting the ownership model is a priority for us, to avoid the risk that Barca is converted into a public company.”

Fear of the dismantling of the club’s proud ownership model could in theory be used to bounce Barca into a new competition, and is now a real issue among club socios ahead of the election of a new president. Frontrunner Laporta this week appeared to confirm that he had already been in touch with those behind the latest proposal being circulated.

“They have explained to us how it would go,” Laporta said on Cope radio. “It is still very fuzzy. The income for the clubs would be significant, between €700 million and €800 million for each club. The first three years it would be a closed system, then there is a proposal for promotion and relegation.”

Official sources at the Nou Camp said this week that Bartomeu had not committed the club to anything concrete before he left, and the new president and his board would have to the consider the possibility of joining any new competition.

“The European Super League will be something for the new board to consider,” the source said. “Maybe not the first item on their agenda, but something for them to consider whether to go forward with or not. It would then of course have to be put to a vote of the socios.”

Madrid’s members would in theory also get a vote on whether their team would join any new competition — whether backed by FIFA, UEFA or American venture capital. Whether the idea is actually popular with Blancos socios has never really been explored, given the peculiar form of managed democracy at the Bernabeu. Perez is definitely not one to let a good crisis go to waste, so his long-term project of a European Super League is now being presented as necessary to secure the club’s long-term future. Moving forward into a new even higher profile competition would also allow the current club chief to emulate predecessor Santiago Bernabeu championing the early European Cup.

The coming weeks look sure to bring more developments, with UEFA reportedly readying a new Champions League proposal including further reforms and concessions to the biggest clubs. Others around Europe including Bayern Munich and Juventus appear to be still unconvinced about the need to break away. Spain’s big two are leading the push on this for their own reasons – and especially their own huge financial issues.

“It could be bread today, and hunger tomorrow,” said Laporta when asked if he had concerns over the proposal for a new competition that he said he had seen.

Given the seriousness of the financial situation at both La Liga’s biggest clubs, nothing is now off the table.

[Chester Perry]

Meanwhile the outlook in the French Ligue continues to deteriorate - from SportsProMedia

Report: Ligue 1 losses set to exceed €1.3bn in 2020/21
Covid-19, scrapped Mediapro rights deal and stagnating transfer market cited as main causes.

Posted: January 28 2021 By: Ed Dixon

- Total income for French top-flight soccer clubs only set to reach €1.6bn; combined costs to hit €3bn
- Prior report from Le Parisien had put PSG losses alone at €300m

Clubs in Ligue 1, French soccer’s top flight, are set to run up combined losses of more than €1.3 billion (US$1.5 billion) this season, according to Paris-based news outlet Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The eyewatering figure, which averages to around €65 million (US$78.6 million) per team, was first reported by L'Équipe. The losses have been attributed to Covid-19 and the collapse of the league’s domestic broadcast rights deal with Mediapro, worth approximately €815 million (US$986 million) per season.

Now, the AFP cites a source close to the country’s Professional Football League (LFP) who says clubs have been warned by the organisation and the Direction Nationale du Contrôle de Gestion (DNCG), French soccer’s financial watchdog, about the losses. The total amount will reportedly exceed €1.314 billion (US$1.590 billion).

The AFP added that Ligue 1’s 20 clubs are set to have combined costs for the current campaign of almost €3 billion (US$3.6 billion). A considerable amount of this will be absorbed by Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), the reigning domestic champions and by far France’s richest team, who Le Parisien had already reported are facing losses of €300 million (US$363 million) for 2020/21.

With fans continuing to be shut out of stadia, coupled with the cancellation of Mediapro’s contract and the transfer market stagnating, it is expected total income will reach little more than €1.6 billion (US$1.9 billion) for Ligue 1 clubs.

The AFP reports that losses of €400 million (US$484 million) are set to come from the lack of in-game attendance, with a similar amount also being lost from the transfer market as clubs tighten the purse strings.

Money from player sales remains a key part of many French clubs’ business model and there will be hopes that by the time the summer window arrives the pandemic will have less of a stranglehold.

[Chester Perry]

The Portuguese Primera Liga is looking like it is about to join the collective bargaining ranks thanks to the intervention of the government - from SportsProMedia

Primeira Liga TV rights to be centralised by Portuguese government
Sports secretary says move will promote equal competition in Portuguese top flight.

Posted: January 15 2021By: Tom Bassam

- Existing contracts could delay move until 2027
- Sport TV currently has deals with all Primeira Liga teams apart from Benfica.

Portuguese soccer is moving towards the centralisation of media rights with government legislation being readied, a senior official has declared.

Currently clubs in the Primeira Liga market their rights individually rather than the league selling them centrally. Pay-TV network Sport TV has deals with all of the teams except Benfica, who broadcast their matches on an in-house network. However, there have been growing calls for Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional (LPFP) to take control of the rights to more evenly distribute revenues.

João Paulo Rebelo, Portugal's secretary of state for youth and sports, has said that legislation is being prepared that should address the balance of broadcast revenue that sees a 15:1 ratio disparity between clubs at its most extreme.

He told a hearing of the Education, Science, Youth and Sports Commission this week: "Legislation on TV rights and their centralisation, which will introduce a much better distribution of the resulting money, is in the coming weeks for approval."

He added that a centralised model would provide "a much more competitive championship, in line with what happens across Europe."

It was reported last year that any changes to how rights are sold would not come into force until 2027 when contracts such as Benfica’s deal with telecommunications firm NOS come to an end.

The collective bargaining of TV rights is going to come to Portugal - just not yet - the 2027/28 season to be exact - from SportsProMedia

Primeira Liga TV rights to be centralised from 2027/28 season
New model described as a ‘core tool’ for the development of Portuguese soccer.

Posted: January 28 2021 By: Sam Carp

- LP and FPF to form new media rights company in coming months
- Sport TV holds rights to home matches for 17 of Primeira Liga’s 18 clubs until 2025/26

The domestic television rights to Portuguese soccer’s Primeira Liga will be centralised from the 2027/28 season onwards under an agreement between the top-flight league and the sport’s national governing body.

Liga Portugal (LP) and the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that will see them form a company in the coming months to oversee the media rights sales process for the Primeira Liga.

The new approach will be a ‘core tool’ for the development of professional soccer in Portugal, according to the two parties, who added in a joint statement that the clubs will have ‘permanent involvement’ in the new media rights business.

“The sustainability and development of national football as a whole are closely linked to this negotiation,” said FPF president Fernando Gomes. “It seems to us that this is a sign of the irrevocable will of the FPF and the league to complete this process and work together to come up with better solutions for national football. ”

The move had been expected after it emerged earlier this month that the Portuguese government was readying legislation for a centralised media rights sales process.

It marks a significant departure from the current model, under which the clubs sell rights to their home games on an individual basis.

All but one of the current Primeira Liga clubs have deals with pay-TV broadcaster Sport TV until the end of the 2025/26 season.

Benfica games, however, are broadcast via the club’s in-house network, Benfica TV. The club also has a carriage deal in place with Nos, the Portuguese telecommunications company.

[Chester Perry]

The Daily Mail is reporting that the FIFA threat against players wanting to take part in a European Super League has been overruled by the European Courts

EXCLUSIVE: UEFA and FIFA's threats to BAN players who play in £4.6 billion European Super League suffers a huge blow as European courts rule it is illegal for sports' governing bodies to stop clubs and players joining rival competitions
- Proposed European Super League would rival UEFA's Champions League
- Plan is being pushed by Europe's big clubs like Real Madrid and Man United
- UEFA and FIFA said clubs and players taking part would be banned from their compeitions, including the Champions League and World Cup matches
- But a German court this week ruled it's illegal for a sport to take that action
- It follows a similar judgement in Europe's second highest court in Luxembourg
By CHARLIE WALKER FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 12:05, 28 January 2021 | UPDATED: 12:10, 28 January 2021

UEFA and FIFA's opposition to the £4.6 billion European Super League project has suffered a major setback following a new court judgement which found it is 'illegal' for governing bodies prevent clubs and players joining rival competitions.

Football's governing bodies moved decisively last week when more details of the proposed league emerged and they immediately threated to ban any club or player who took part.

The league, which is believed to be driven by Europe's biggest clubs, including, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Manchester United, would create a virtually closed-shop competition of 20 clubs, with 15 founder members having guaranteed participation.

These privileged teams would be awarded up to £310m to join the competition and as much as £213m from competing in the league, which it's been claimed would 'destroy' English football.

The plan is more threatening than anything that has been proposed before in the eyes of football's governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA

Their threat would mean that clubs who participated in the highly lucrative super league would be banned from the Champions League, Europa League and any FIFA Club World Cup event, and the players would not be allowed to take part in World Cups or European Championships.

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Super League Plans
Manchester United, Real Madrid and AC Milan are the driving forces behind the plans for a European Super League, to replace UEFA’s Champions League, according to The Times.

An 18-page proposal includes details of the proposed league, which includes plans for the format, membership, prize money and even financial fair play rules.

The current proposal is for the league to have 15 permanent founder members, who would receive greater financial reward and five annual qualifiers.

The league would be divided into two groups of 10. The top four in each group would compete in quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final, which would be held at a weekend.

Participating teams would play between 18 and 23 matches a season, as well as competing in their domestic leagues.

It is believed the plan would be for six clubs to be included as founder members from England — this could be the Big Six of Liverpool, the two Manchester City and United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur — plus three from Spain, three from Italy, two from Germany and one from France.

The venture is believed to have the support of investment bank JP Morgan Chase

The document highlights the benefits of the super league, including huge revenues for participating clubs as well as the ability to offset losses associated with Covid.

The privileged teams with 'founder member' status would be awarded up to £310m to join the competition and as much as £213m from competing in the partially closed league.
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However, two European courts have now passed judgements overturning similar moves by other sporting federations, making the threat by football's governing bodies appear hollow.

'With these judgements the position of clubs and players has improved because it puts them on a more equal footing with the governing bodies,' said Mark Orth, of MEOlaw based in Munich.

'UEFA and FIFA's position in opposition to a European Super League has been weakened by these judgements.'

As reported by Sportsmail, the European Commission has previously ruled that the International Skating Union cannot prevent speed skaters from participating in new money-spinning events. That decision was supported in a judgement in Europe's second highest court, the General Court in Luxembourg, last month.

And now a German court has for the first time used that decision as a precedent to prevent the German and international wrestling federations from blocking a new competition.

The latest decisive action came on Tuesday in the Higher Regional Court of Nuremburg in Germany - the same court where the famous Nuremburg trials took place after the Second World War.

While German wrestlers may seem remote from the riches and glamour of elite soccer, the case is seen by competition lawyers as particularly significant because it closely resembles the situation in European football.

The upstart league launched a new wresting competition in Germany for clubs and athletes, but official federations reacted by threatening any club taking part with a ban from their competitions and the wrestlers were told they would not be selected for international competition, including the Olympics.

''The court has said that the sanctions put forward by the wrestling federations are illegal and contrary to competition law,' added Orth.

'In the end, the judgement means that the clubs and athletes can take part in the independent league and the national competition at the same time and the athletes can be representatives in international competitions.'

It also creates the possibility for clubs or athletes to seek damage should they be prevented from competing.

FIFA and UEFA have threatened clubs and players who participate in any European Super League with a ban from their competitions, but lawyers are sceptical about that claim

Competition law is notoriously complex, and should the European Super League challenge UEFA and FIFA in court there would still be significant areas of contention, not least around scheduling of fixtures.

However, the judgements say that it is not enough for a dominant governing body to simply argue there are no free dates, or that their own investment in a sport will be undermined, to prevent a new competitor entering the market.

Orth says that preventing athletes from competing would be, in his view, an abuse of FIFA and UEFA's 'dominant position' in European competition law.

The European Super League plan has re-emerged following comments from Real Madrid's President Florentino Perez.

He urged football to embrace change amid the coronavirus pandemic earlier this month in his most recent pitch for the competition to be created.

'Real Madrid played a part in the foundation of FIFA and the European Cup and the current model needs a reboot, as the impact of COVID-19 has demonstrated. Football needs new momentum and Real Madrid will be right there at the heart of it.'

But UEFA and FIFA have dominant positions they want to protect and enhance.

UEFA is considering its own plans to expand the continental competition from 32 or 36 clubs in 2024 and FIFA is developing its own tournament - a 24-team Club World Cup.

Meanwhile, supporters look on in concern at the powerplays at the top of the European game.

'It destroys domestic football,' Kevin Miles, chief executive of the Football Supporters' Association, previously told Sportsmail.

'The [European Super League] proposals are the latest incarnation of the greed of European clubs and their complete disregard in their pursuit of money over all principles and traditions of football.

'They want to siphon off more and more resources to a handful of elite clubs with a guarantee of participation. It's a bad idea.

'It would ultimately be the death of many of the already struggling clubs in the English football pyramid.'

The FSA fears a super league would increase the revenue for the Big Six in English football, while cutting the income for other top-tier teams, since broadcasters would be unlikely to pay as much for the Premier League.

[Chester Perry]

SportsproMedia with another series - they have been very busy lately - this time American Investor Jordan Garner with "An expert’s guide to owning a European soccer club"
- part one: Identifying the opportunity

In the first of a four-part weekly series, Jordan Gardner, an American sports executive who is currently chairman and co-owner of Danish side FC Helsingør (also a minor shareholder at Swansea), outlines what drives individuals, private equity and institutional investors to look towards European soccer for opportunity.

https://www.sportspromedia.com/analysis ... an-gardner