Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

I missed this the other day, I have posted a number of times about Ahmad Ahmad the suspended president of CAF, apparently the Court of Arbritation for Sport have re-instated him - from the BBC

Court ruling dramatically restores Ahmad as Caf president
By Piers Edwards - BBC Sport Africa
Last updated on29 January 2021

Madagascar's Ahmad has been dramatically restored as Confederation of African Football (Caf) president following a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas).

Ahmad was banned by Fifa in November for five years after football's world governing body found him to have breached several of its ethics codes.

Ahmad is still ineligible to contest Caf's presidential elections in March however, since the Cas decision came after both Caf's Governance and Fifa's Review committees sat earlier this week to approve candidates' eligibility.

The Malagasy - who will now resume his role as a Fifa vice-president - is appealing his ban at Cas, which issued a preliminary ruling on Friday.

Sport's highest legal body says it will hear the appeal in full on 2 March, with a decision issued before the Caf presidential elections on 12 March.

"Due to a risk of irreparable harm for Mr Ahmad if the disciplinary sanction is maintained during the period prior to the Caf elections, the Cas panel has upheld the request to temporarily stay the effects of the [Fifa ban]," Cas said in a statement.

This effective suspension of the Fifa ruling will be in place 'until the day that the final Cas award is issued'.

Mysterious money moves and un unholy mess: Why Fifa banned Caf president Ahmad
Since he was banned when Fifa met on Tuesday and Caf on Thursday to vet presidential aspirants, Ahmad was deemed ineligible.

He will now need to overturn the decisions ruling him ineligible to run, since his appeal at Cas is not against the decision barring him from contesting the elections but against his Fifa ban.

Should Cas uphold Fifa's ban when its hearing takes place in early March, Ahmad will be ruled out of the race once and for all.

Yet if he can overturn both his ineligibility and his Fifa sanction, a man who was proclaiming the backing of 46 federations, out of 54, shortly before his ban will have the chance to secure an unlikely comeback.

As of this week, four candidates were cleared to run for the Caf elections in Morocco on 12 March: Jacques Anouma (Ivory Coast), Patrice Motsepe (South Africa), Augustin Senghor (Senegal) and Ahmed Yahya (Mauritania).

Ahmad's stay of execution is uncommon, says a sports lawyer with working knowledge of the Switzerland-based Cas.

"The Cas rarely issues a preliminary decision suspending the effects of a sanction to ban someone from football," said Paolo Torchetti of Ruiz-Huerta & Crespo Sport Lawyers.

Fifa adjudged Ahmad, who took charge of Caf in 2017, to have broken ethics rules relating to duty of loyalty, the offering and accepting gifts, abuse of position and misappropriation of funds.

These were primarily related to a decision to approve deals totalling $4.4m with a French company run by a close friend of Ahmad's then attaché and the financing of a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia for Africa's Muslim FA presidents.

[Chester Perry]

Given what we have learned about FIFA President Gianni Infantino it would not be surprising if this allegation that he has been involved in the European Super League discussions are true - remember the role of the then FA Chief Greg Clarke in Project Big Picture being revealed after he had publicly denounced the process that led to the document - from the Mail

FIFA president attended meetings under a code name
- Javier Tebas wants Gianni Infantino to clarify his part in Super League talks
- FIFA stated that such a tournament would not receive official recognition
- It was reported in 2019 that Infantino had held talks with Florentino Perez
- Tebas stressed that it is important for there to be clarity over Infantino's stance
- There have been suggestions Infantino attended meetings under a code name
By JAMIE GARDNER, PA CHIEF SPORTS REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 16:15, 1 February 2021 | UPDATED: 16:25, 1 February 2021

FIFA president Gianni Infantino must clarify what part he has played in any meetings related to a European Super League, according to LaLiga president Javier Tebas.

The Times published documents about how a new 20-team competition might look last month.

On the same day football's world governing body and the six continental confederations issued a statement saying such a tournament would not receive official recognition and that any player taking part would be barred from official events such as the World Cup.

It was reported in December 2019 that Infantino had met with Real Madrid president Florentino Perez - understood to be the key mover behind the Super League project - and bosses of other leading clubs, and Tebas says it is important Infantino go on the record about any involvement he has had.

Speaking at the Soccerex Connected online conference, Tebas said: 'I have more doubts about the president of FIFA. He should clarify if he has participated in some meetings of this project that I know he has.

'The president of FIFA should clarify if any of these meetings have given explicit support to this type of project.

'The FIFA president must clarify whether the name that appears in code W01 in the documents that have been distributed by those who would be in these projects refers to (Infantino) as everyone believes, not just me.

'This whole situation must be clarified and he as president how FIFA be very clear what is the position of FIFA.'

In addition to FIFA's statement last month, Infantino also said in October last year that he had no interest in a European Super League.

'As FIFA president, I'm interested in the Club World Cup, not the Super League,' said Infantino.

'For me, it's not about Bayern Munich against Liverpool, but Bayern against Boca Juniors.'

FIFA has been approached for comment in light of Tebas' remarks.

Tebas condemned the Super League project, which comes at a time when the future format of the Champions League is being discussed.

'If the European Super League were part of the future then the leagues would have to close,' he said.

'It is ruinous for the national leagues but also for those same clubs (involved) in the very medium term.

'An ecosystem that works very well will end and it would be ruinous for them as well, but that is the delusion of grandeur for some.'

[Chester Perry]

The Guardian with an article on the growing sense of panic in the French football League


French football crisis deepens as TV rights offers fail to reach reserve price
Amazon, Discovery and DAZN bids deemed unsuitably low
Governing body to reassess sale of rights for Ligues 1 and 2

Paul MacInnes

Tue 2 Feb 2021 14.00 GMT

French football has plunged further into crisis after an emergency auction of TV rights ended without a suitable offer. The Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) has said it will decide upon a new approach for selling its rights by Wednesday night, with fears that clubs will struggle to pay their staff without the restoration of a crucial source of revenue.

Results of the auction were revealed on Monday night, after three bidders – Amazon, Discovery and DAZN – submitted offers that failed to match the reserve price sought by the LFP.

“Given that the reserve price has not been met, the consultations [bids] have been declared unsuccessful,” the league said. “The LFP gives itself 48 hours to define the next steps to take in the commercialisation of its rights.”

The failed auction is the latest blow to the LFP, which runs the top two divisions in French football, following the collapse of its existing TV rights deal in December. A deal struck in 2018 with the Spanish company Mediapro had secured a 60% increase on its previous arrangement, worth more than €1bn a year in total from the start of the 2020 season.

The offer proved too good to be true, however, and after Mediapro failed to make scheduled payments amounting to more than €300m four months into the arrangement, the LFP was forced to cancel the deal.

Mediapro then went to court to protect itself from its creditors, chief among them the LFP, before agreeing to pay the leagues €100m to relinquish the rights.

This enabled the new auction. Key to its failure was the absence from the bidding of Canal Plus and BeIN Sports, the two broadcasters who shared the rights under the previous contract.

On Tuesday French telecoms operator Free confirmed that it would continue to show league matches on its mobile phone service until the end of the season.

The front page of the sports paper L’Equipe gave a stark summary of the current situation with the headline: “48 hours to survive”.

[Chester Perry]

The Financial Times with a similar take on the French Ligue rights retender debacle and a bit more coherence to my 3 post blast on the subject yesterday - it always pays to maintain good relationships with key media partners, even if they fail in a cycle to win the rights, you want them back in the ring next time - it is the Premier League way

French football crisis deepens as league fails to resell TV rights
LEILA ABBOUD FEBRUARY 01, 2021

Kylian Mbappé of Paris Saint-Germain (right) takes on Lorient’s Trevoh Chalobah during their Ligue 1 match on Sunday: several presidents fear their clubs are facing bankruptcy © AP
France’s top-flight football league has failed to auction off four lots of television rights for the 2021-2024 seasons that had been returned by its cash-strapped former broadcaster Mediapro, plunging the sport deeper into crisis.

The Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) said in a statement on Monday night that it had received bids from tech giant Amazon, US broadcaster Discovery, which owns Eurosport, and the sports streaming service DAZN. None of the bids was seen as valuable enough by the league.

“Given that the reserve prices were not reached, the consultations were unsuccessful,” it said. “The LFP will take 48 hours to determine the next steps in commercialising its TV rights.”

France’s Ligue 1, which is made up of 20 teams including Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique de Marseille, must now seek a new way out of the slow-motion crisis that began in October when Mediapro simply stopped paying for the TV rights. Several club presidents earlier told the Financial Times that the situation could push some clubs into bankruptcy, and many have already begun negotiating with players over cutting their pay.

The failure of the auction stemmed largely from the fact that Vivendi’s pay-TV operator Canal Plus and Qatar-backed beIN Sports did not submit bids.

Canal Plus was the main broadcaster of French football for decades but in 2018 the league cut it out in favour of newcomer Mediapro in an auction that pushed up the total price by nearly 60 per cent to just over €1bn. At that time, beIN Sports won a smaller package of rights and later signed a licensing deal worth €330m a year with Canal Plus to give them access to the matches.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic last year cast a pall over the sport by sapping revenue from tickets and merchandising. The crisis crippled Mediapro’s attempt to launch a new pay-TV channel called Telefoot to showcase French football, and by October the Spanish company had simply stopped paying the hundreds of millions it owed to the league.

Mediapro then sought court protection from its creditors, namely the LFP.

After an acrimonious fight and a court-supervised mediation process, the two sides eventually agreed that Mediapro would give back the rights, leaving the league free to sell them again. But the broadcaster would pay only a fraction of what it owed the league, placing huge stress on the finances of the member clubs.

And before the auction could be held, Canal Plus launched a lawsuit against the LFP, arguing that the league should also take back the batch of rights that it had licensed from beIN Sports. Canal Plus argued it would be fairer to resell all the rights or otherwise it would be stuck with the inflated prices set in the 2018 auction.

The league refused, and then went ahead with the auction that failed on Monday. A court hearing is expected on February 19 to hear the case of Canal Plus against the league.

Canal Plus has also filed a complaint with France’s competition regulator over the league’s decision.

Canal Plus and beIN Sports declined to comment.

[Chester Perry]

@SwissRamble has a look at the 2019/20 Financial results of Inter Milan

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 6776496130

as ever here is his short summary sheets

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 5473019904

[Chester Perry]

In what looks like it has been a busy day for him @SwissRamble looks at Arsenal's (he is a fan) transfer performance since 2010 in monetary terms

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 1363369987

[Chester Perry]

Supporter groups across Europe unite behind a statement against a European Super League

https://thefsa.org.uk/news/fan-groups-a ... er-league/

[Chester Perry]

Came across this today - actually first released in October - BDO with a report 'The Investment Pitch: Private Equity in Sport' one to add to "the vultures are at the door" file

the blub -

Report: Private equity in sport
27 October 2020

The sports industry has traditionally been cautious when it comes to private equity investment. However, in the last 18 months there has been a notable shift in activity and appetite on both sides of the field. The private equity investments in A.C. Milan and the Six Nations rugby for example are high profile cases of this.

Our joint report with The Sports Consultancy (TSC) explains what sports businesses must consider in order to attract the right investors, why now is the right time for sports businesses to strike private equity deals and how the deal should be structured to ensure success for both parties.

Examples of private equity investment in sport have been relatively sporadic and isolated. Aside from the largest and most notable sports properties and brands, there have been very few examples.

A number of factors have historically limited deals including:

Overlap of regulatory and commercial aspects of sports organisations
sport’s unique relationship with stakeholders
sport’s ability to adapt and innovate, or lack of it.
However, investors and sports entities are increasingly finding innovative ways to collaborate and accelerate growth. Private equity are increasingly attracted to sports organisations for the following reasons:

Emerging sports on an upward trend, in particular women’s sport and e-sports
predictable and growing revenues for established sports
new opportunities within existing sports.
Sports organisations are relatively recession proof but are looking for commercial expertise to help maximise the value of participation and leverage new partnerships. This is all the more true as the sports organisation look to recover from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The deal activity has grown as both sides identify opportunities to both weather the shorter-term challenges posed by the pandemic and to position themselves to enter the “new normal” stronger.

To find out more about how sports entities can navigate the deals, download the full report.

to save you registering for it - you can find the full report here
https://www.bdo.co.uk/getmedia/43628384 ... t.pdf.aspx

[Chester Perry]

This looks like it would have been a very interesting article for this thread - Too big to fail? Accounting for Predictions of Financial Distress in English Professional Football Clubs

unfortunately it is behind a paywall and being an Academic paper will not be cheap

this abstract whets the appetite

Purpose
This paper analyses English Premier League (EPL) and English Football League (EFL) championship clubs during the period 2002–2019 to anticipate financial distress with specific reference to footballs' Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.

Design/methodology/approach
Data was collected for 43 professional football clubs competing in the EPL and Championship for the financial year ends 2002–2019. Analysis was conducted using the Z-score methodology and additional statistical tests were conducted to measure differences between groups. Data was split into two distinct periods to analyse club finances pre- and post-FFP.

Findings
The results show significant cases of financial distress amongst clubs in both divisions and that Championship clubs are in significantly poorer financial health than EPL clubs. In some cases, financially sustainability has worsened post-FFP. The “big 6” clubs – due to their size – seem to be more financially sound than the rest of the EPL, thus preventing a “too big to fail” effect. Overall, the financial situation in English football remains poor, a position that could be exacerbated by the economic crisis, caused by COVID-19.

Research limitations/implications
The findings are not generalisable outside of the English football industry and the data is susceptible to usual accounting techniques and treatments.

Practical implications
The paper recommends a re-distribution of broadcasting rights, on a more equal basis and incentivised with cost-reduction targets. The implementation of a hard salary cap at league level is also recommended to control costs. Furthermore, FFP regulations should be re-visited to deliver the original objectives of bringing about financial sustainability in European football.

Originality/value
The paper extends the evidence base of measuring financial distress in professional team sports and is also the first paper of its kind to examine this in relation to Championship clubs
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and this thread gives more detail that only makes you want to read the detail more - the sheer number of bankruptcy risk observations for the Premier League is huge

https://twitter.com/DrDanPlumley/status ... 9463366656

Dan Plumley the author of the above article gave a lecture on it today and allowed someone to post the slides on twitter - thankyou for that

Too big to fail? Accounting for Predictions of Financial Distress in English Professional Football Clubs

https://twitter.com/DrRob_Wilson/status ... 3362682880

[Chester Perry]

You may have noticed that I have been talking up the financial prospects of Leeds for a while now, here their new Vice Chairman talks up their prospects to ESPN

Leeds can mirror San Francisco 49ers' path back to glory - vice-chairman
4:59 PM - Mark Ogden - Senior Writer, ESPN FC

Leeds United will follow the San Francisco 49ers blueprint to recreating their former glories and challenge the Champions League elite, the club's newly-appointed vice-chairman Paraag Marathe has told ESPN.

Marathe, the 49ers Enterprises president, has been appointed to the Leeds board after the NFL franchise's increased investment in the Elland Road club, which now sees them own a 37% stake following last week's reported £50 million share purchase.

Three-time English champions Leeds are back in the Premier League this season, 16 years after being relegated from the top-flight, and on course to achieve a mid-table finish under coach Marcelo Bielsa.

And after helping to oversee the 49ers' progression from a struggling franchise to Super Bowl finalists, Marathe believes the expertise of the NFL team's hierarchy can have a similar impact at Leeds.

"Leeds today reminds me of the 49ers 15 years ago," Marathe told ESPN. "Both teams with a great fanbase and history. The 49ers had such great success in the '80s and '90s, like Leeds in the '70s, and both were struggling a little bit on and off the pitch and the 49ers were playing, at the time, at the oldest un-renovated stadium in the NFL.

"We built a new stadium, which completely transformed our franchise and it's the same thing that we want to do here at Leeds.

"We have the right people, the expertise and the playbook blueprint to be able to intellectually grow our broader organisation and we wanted to go into the Premier League and use that expertise to be able to help another club grow in the same way that we grew the 49ers from a bottom-tier franchise to a team which came a few minutes short of winning the Super Bowl last year.

"Leeds certainly have the bones and the infrastructure and the capability to be competing at the very top, but that's going to take some time to build and we want to grow thoughtfully, incrementally.

"The first step is showing that we can be sustainably competitive within the Premier League, and not just be a flash in the pan and hang on by the laces of our shoes.

"We want to be in the Premier League for the next 2-3-4-5 years and beyond and then it's qualify for the Europa League and then the Champions League, to be competing with the best clubs."

Marathe, who said Leeds chairman Andrea Radrizzani will continue to lead the club on a day-to-basis, relied on former Chelsea director Mike Forde, now executive chairman of New York-based Sportsology, to "scout several opportunities in Europe" before choosing to invest in Leeds.

And Marathe believes that Leeds can become an established force by using both the 49ers' knowledge and examples of success within the Premier League.

"There are certainly good examples for us to follow," he said. "Andrea [Radrizzani] mentioned Leicester the other day is an example of a club that did it with smart investment and recruitment.

"I also look to our domestic friends in the U.S. and what they've done, with what John W Henry enacted with his group and what they've done with Liverpool as another good example of growing a franchise and developing a club.

"Those are two examples that come to mind, but at the end of the day, you still need to build properly.

"You don't want to just go all in and then crash and burn the following year."

[Chester Perry]

after todays ruling in Russia - this comes as no surprise, from the BBC

Premier League: MPs urge action on Russia-linked football clubs
By Dan Roan
BBC sports editor

Published1 hour ago

The UK government is under pressure from MPs to ban two English football clubs from official projects promoting Britain overseas because of their links to two billionaire oligarchs.

It comes after Russia's jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny called for action to be taken against Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov, who has ties with Everton.

A group of 24 MPs from six parties have signed a letter sent to the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab asking him to ensure neither club fronts or participates in any government trade missions.

Written by the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran, and seen by the BBC, it says such work is "undermined" if such clubs are involved.

"Britain's soft power is weaker because of it," she writes.

International projects the MPs want the two clubs barred from include the Premier Skills grassroots coaching programme, a partnership between the British Council and Premier League that has worked in 29 countries since 2007.

The GREAT campaign which promotes trade and investment into Britain - and which the Premier League has supported - is another listed.

- Sanctions urged for Russians in English football
- Alexei Navalny: Russia's vociferous Putin critic
- Thousands join Navalny protests across Russia

Mr Navalny has been detained since 17 January, after returning to Moscow for the first time since he was poisoned last year.

The UK has urged Russia to release him but he has now been sentenced to three and a half years.

The dissident has blamed the nerve agent attack that almost killed him on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin denies involvement.

An associate of Mr Navalny's has released a list of eight individuals drawn up by the opposition leader whom he says should face sanctions in order to put pressure on President Putin.

Mr Abramovich, who bought Chelsea in 2003, and former Arsenal shareholder Mr Usmanov, who owns a company that sponsors Everton, and who has links with the club's majority shareholder, were both included.

They were described in the list as being among "key enablers and beneficiaries of Russian kleptocracy, with significant ties/assets in the West".

Asked to comment, a spokesman for Mr Abramovich said there was "no foundation" to Mr Navalny's claims.

"Strong words are one thing, but action is what's needed now" Ms Moran tells Mr Raab in her letter, urging him to "rapidly consider and implement further sanctions".

"Football and our football clubs are part of Britain's brand. They help us promote our interests and our values overseas.

"That work is undermined if we allow clubs with close links to the Russian state to be involved in those efforts. Britain's soft power is weaker because of it.

"We urge you to work with Cabinet colleagues to ensure that any club with such connections is not fronting, or part of, such programmes, including; The GREAT Campaign, Premier Skills, government trade visits conducted in partnership with the Premier League.

"Clubs that should be considered for such action include Chelsea FC and Everton FC."

Ms Moran adds, "the UK must show leadership and stand up for its values. In addition to further sanctions, making it clear that our cultural and sporting institutions are to be protected will send a clear signal to our allies and Russia."

Last week, during an emergency debate in the House of Commons, the government was challenged by opposition MPs to impose sanctions on the two oligarchs.

Foreign Office Minister Wendy Morton said: "We continue to work and protect human rights and civil society in Russia. We are considering all options for further action... it would be inappropriate for me to speculate on any future listings."

Representatives for Mr Usmanov have previously declined to comment, along with Chelsea and Everton.

Both men have always insisted their businesses are legitimate.

The Premier League has declined to comment.

[Chester Perry]

I have been talking about the American invasion of European football (and club ownership in particular) for a while now - this is the current picture for clubs operating in the top two leagues domestically across Europe - that's 36 clubs

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 9831510017

[Chester Perry]

David Conn in the Guardian pulls together strands and themes from the fall out of last weeks Deloitte report, the transfer window. Project Big Picture and renewed talk of a European Super League and tries to put some perspective into them

Football must address economic fallout caused by Covid-19 crisis
David Conn Tue 2 Feb 2021 20.30 GMT

The January transfer window’s emptiness highlights the impending recession and a need to engineer financial solidarity

We do not need a wise seer to understand the portents for football of a January transfer window whose dominant feature was an absence of transfers. Yes, West Ham, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Brighton did still splash out some millions, for Saïd Benrahma – a standout £20m trickle-down for Brentford – Amad Diallo, Morgan Sanson and Moisés Caicedo respectively; but the rest is a long tail of frees, loans, and battening down the hatches.

Football at all levels, like every other normal social activity, is in a Covid-19 financial crisis that is being parked while the health emergency is faced. As with the bigger social challenges, the measure of sport’s true values will be how it addresses this economic fallout: disaster capitalism, the wealthy seizing what they can, or proper solidarity.

Just as the continuing broadcast of ghostly football matches in empty stadiums with made-up crowd noise is aimed at distracting a housebound population from pandemic realities, somehow it is also delaying discussion of the financial reckoning to come. Now, the transfer window’s emptiness has made the point. January is not the window in which most clubs want to sign players but last year, like every year, many clubs treated themselves. There were 21 signings for £1m or more – including the Championship club Bristol City selling Josh Brownhill to Burnley for £9m then spending £5m themselves to sign Nahki Wells. United paid Sporting £46.5m for Bruno Fernandes, who has been transformative.

This time, here and across Europe, the signal sent by clubs is not of sporting ambition but impending recession. The Juventus owner, Andrea Agnelli, said last week that total losses for clubs from the pandemic, considering absent crowds and rebates and reductions to broadcasters, could be £7.5bn.

Clubs, leagues and governing bodies seemed to suspend their squabbles in the face of the public‑health menace at the beginning, and came together to agree a postponement of the European Championship and reordered priorities. Nearly a year later, they are all staring at the money they continue to lose.

The suddenly more serious moves by some big clubs to consider a breakaway European super league has shattered the truce, prompting a public slapdown from Fifa and Uefa. A multitude of fans’ groups have made their feelings clear, signing a statement from Football Supporters Europe (FSE) that a money-grabbing big club breakaway is the opposite of the more equitable distribution required from the people’s game.

Breakaway threats are a hardy perennial of the football calendar, but their eruption this season is another harbinger of the financial squeeze. One source at a major club explained it last week by cautioning against the assumption that the wealthier clubs consider themselves to be better set to recover strongly. Although they inhabit a different football planet from League One and League Two clubs, and still have extraordinary TV revenues even after rebates, they are still paying huge wages to players and their owners fret every day at the big bucks they are losing.

United, said to be one of the potential breakaway proponents, would have had lower broadcasting revenues anyway last season than 2018‑19, because they played in the Europa League not the Champions League, but their 2019-20 annual report stated TV revenues as £101m down. The vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, lamented the various financial losses because of the pandemic, and United opted not to even predict the finances for this current year. Football was finally suspended on 13 March with most of the season played, but United still lost £20m matchday income, and Woodward recited the rebates paid to broadcasters, the absence of fans when games restarted, the closed megastore and all-round hit to commercial activities.

Other Premier League clubs that have published their accounts to 30 June – taking in only three months of the pandemic’s effects – Southampton and Brighton, reported losses of £76m and £67m respectively. Brighton’s owner, Tony Bloom, noted the loss of money but within a considered view of their relative importance, most prominently praising the club’s community efforts, led by the chief executive, Paul Barber.

“Tragically, thousands upon thousands of people have lost their lives or loved ones to the pandemic, amongst them a number of Albion fans and members of the Albion community,” Bloom wrote in his chairman’s statement. “Such tragedies put football in perspective.”

Of course they do.

Yet a perspective on sport even in these circumstances can acknowledge its importance to people’s spirits and wellbeing, and its potential role in helping to restore some normality when this is over. Love of sport can be seen in the eye-popping numbers watching the eerie TV matches at home, and in the elemental urge people have to get out to play and watch their sports again.

But League One and League Two clubs are currently reliant on the rescue fund the Premier League took months to agree, and on their owners putting money in. Andy Holt, the Accrington Stanley owner, says “football was holed below the waterline” financially by the pandemic. The FSE statement said the grassroots game was “on the brink of collapse” in many countries.

This presents a great challenge to the top Premier League and European clubs, to help engineer proper solidarity, not just look after themselves with breakaway plans or other self-interested wheezes. It is, of course, not surprising that the January 2021 football transfer window will be recorded in history as not normal at all. What the clubs do next is much more important.

[Chester Perry]

The Redball/FSG SPAC attempt may have failed to happen but one sports/entertainment empire has managed to make it work - not football but this shows it can be done - from the Financial Times

Billionaire Tilman Fertitta floats entertainment empire in $6.7bn Spac deal
SARA GERMANO FEBRUARY 01, 2021

Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta is returning his business empire to the public markets after a gap of more than a decade. Holding company Fertitta Entertainment, which includes Golden Nugget casinos and Landry’s restaurants, will be floated through a reverse-merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

The deal takes advantage of investor enthusiasm for Spac deals and values Fertitta Entertainment, whose restaurant chains include Del Frisco’s and Morton’s, at a $6.7bn enterprise value during a volatile time for both the gaming and restaurant industries.

Fertitta, which runs regional casinos in Nevada, Louisiana, and Mississippi, was walloped by the onset of the pandemic, according to an investor presentation accompanying the deal. Group revenues fell an estimated 40 per cent in 2020, it said.

Mr Fertitta’s personal empire also includes ownership of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets and has propelled him to entrepreneurial fame, with his own programme on business network CNBC. The Rockets are not included in the public transaction, however.

Fertitta Entertainment’s merger with Fast Acquisition, a blank-cheque company that raised $200m in its initial public offering in August, will give Mr Fertitta a nearly 60 per cent stake worth more than $2bn.

“In today’s opportunistic world, I determined that in order to maximise the opportunities in the gaming, entertainment and hospitality sectors, it was preferable to take my company public,” Mr Fertitta said in a statement on Monday. He will remain chairman and chief executive.

Roughly three-quarters of Fertitta Entertainment group revenues — $3.41bn in 2019, pre-pandemic — are derived from the restaurant industry, which has been depleted during coronavirus-imposed shutdowns. Meanwhile, profits for the five regional casinos under the Golden Nugget division have fallen less sharply than those at larger global operators such as Wynn and MGM.

In a presentation, the company said it was poised to benefit from the economic recovery as weaker restaurants have shuttered during the pandemic.

The Spac merger will make for the second public listing of Fertitta Entertainment, after Mr Fertitta took the organisation private in 2010. He had considered merging Golden Nugget/Landry’s with Caesars Entertainment two years ago but Caesars ultimately selected another bidder.

It is also not Mr Fertitta’s first tie-up with a Spac. Late last year, he spun off the mobile wagering segment of his business, Golden Nugget Online Gaming, through a public listing with the blank-cheque company Lancadia Holdings. Fertitta Entertainment still has voting control and ownership of about half of the outstanding shares of GNOG, worth roughly $700m.

The latest deal includes a fundraising of $1.24bn in new equity from a group of unnamed investors, which will go towards reducing the company’s debt to just above $3bn.

Fast Acquisition, a Spac founded by chain restaurant veterans Doug Jacob and Sandy Beall, will own 1 per cent of the public Fertitta Entertainment, while the undisclosed co-investor group will hold 35 per cent of shares.

[Chester Perry]

This was posted on the sponsor thread, by Quickenthetempo, but has a place here too - the story behind those asian betting companies that asian at all and are targeting a market where gambling isn't allowed - China. I have posted about this before elsewhere, the Lovebet organisation is the same as our previous sponsor Laba and can be traced through Malta to the Isle of Man then it just disappears from scrutiny, though serches keep referring towards the Panama papers - I want to get rid of betting sponsors for a different reasons, but to have sponsors with this lack of transparency is far from ideal, though the ultimate ownership structure of our club is now equally opaque and residing in Delaware.

Exclusive: I've spent months investigating how secretive Asian gambling companies came to dominate Premier League football, spending millions to advertise to TV viewers in China... where gambling firms are strictly illegal.
https://t.co/YdPgJWcBZ6

Twitter feed about it
https://twitter.com/josephmdurso/status ... 41952?s=19

[Chester Perry]

The Redball/FSG SPAC attempt may have failed to happen but one sports/entertainment empire has managed to make it work - not football but this shows it can be done - from the Financial Times

Billionaire Tilman Fertitta floats entertainment empire in $6.7bn Spac deal
SARA GERMANO FEBRUARY 01, 2021

Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta is returning his business empire to the public markets after a gap of more than a decade. Holding company Fertitta Entertainment, which includes Golden Nugget casinos and Landry’s restaurants, will be floated through a reverse-merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

The deal takes advantage of investor enthusiasm for Spac deals and values Fertitta Entertainment, whose restaurant chains include Del Frisco’s and Morton’s, at a $6.7bn enterprise value during a volatile time for both the gaming and restaurant industries.

Fertitta, which runs regional casinos in Nevada, Louisiana, and Mississippi, was walloped by the onset of the pandemic, according to an investor presentation accompanying the deal. Group revenues fell an estimated 40 per cent in 2020, it said.

Mr Fertitta’s personal empire also includes ownership of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets and has propelled him to entrepreneurial fame, with his own programme on business network CNBC. The Rockets are not included in the public transaction, however.

Fertitta Entertainment’s merger with Fast Acquisition, a blank-cheque company that raised $200m in its initial public offering in August, will give Mr Fertitta a nearly 60 per cent stake worth more than $2bn.

“In today’s opportunistic world, I determined that in order to maximise the opportunities in the gaming, entertainment and hospitality sectors, it was preferable to take my company public,” Mr Fertitta said in a statement on Monday. He will remain chairman and chief executive.

Roughly three-quarters of Fertitta Entertainment group revenues — $3.41bn in 2019, pre-pandemic — are derived from the restaurant industry, which has been depleted during coronavirus-imposed shutdowns. Meanwhile, profits for the five regional casinos under the Golden Nugget division have fallen less sharply than those at larger global operators such as Wynn and MGM.

In a presentation, the company said it was poised to benefit from the economic recovery as weaker restaurants have shuttered during the pandemic.

The Spac merger will make for the second public listing of Fertitta Entertainment, after Mr Fertitta took the organisation private in 2010. He had considered merging Golden Nugget/Landry’s with Caesars Entertainment two years ago but Caesars ultimately selected another bidder.

It is also not Mr Fertitta’s first tie-up with a Spac. Late last year, he spun off the mobile wagering segment of his business, Golden Nugget Online Gaming, through a public listing with the blank-cheque company Lancadia Holdings. Fertitta Entertainment still has voting control and ownership of about half of the outstanding shares of GNOG, worth roughly $700m.

The latest deal includes a fundraising of $1.24bn in new equity from a group of unnamed investors, which will go towards reducing the company’s debt to just above $3bn.

Fast Acquisition, a Spac founded by chain restaurant veterans Doug Jacob and Sandy Beall, will own 1 per cent of the public Fertitta Entertainment, while the undisclosed co-investor group will hold 35 per cent of shares.

SportsBusiness with a new podcast on Finance

https://www.sportbusiness.com/2021/02/s ... neil-hbse/

interesting that the SPAC market is still in growth - the first 4 weeks of January saw new SPAC's generate 35% of the funds generated in the whole of last year

[Chester Perry]

This should be a good listen - The Guardian's Football Weekly has a special podcast

Has Fifa really changed? – Football Weekly Special

We’ve teamed up with our friends at Josimar to take a closer look at Fifa. In this episode, Max Rushden is joined by Philippe Auclair and Tariq Panja for an interview with Miguel Maduro, a former chair of the organisation’s governance committee, about his time under Gianni Infantino

https://www.theguardian.com/football/au ... al-podcast

[Chester Perry]

I am not sure if KPMG have got this right - they are saying that MSD Capital (parent of MSD UK) are looking at Spezia to acquire a controlling interest - I thought reports on Monday said it was ALK (our club's new owners) - you would also ask why a business that is providing credit for so many clubs wants to own one

https://twitter.com/Football_BM/status/ ... 3702970368

[Chester Perry]

KPMG's Football Benchmark with an article on how Covid has been impacting financial results from 2019/20 as reporting season gets into it's swing

https://footballbenchmark.com/library/f ... rus_crisis

[Chester Perry]

Part Two of SportsProMedia's new four part series from Jordan Gardner - this week the focus is on due diligence - this is the third recent series from SportsProMedia that I have posted in the last month which has enormous interest and input to our potential understand of what our new owners could be doing, it is essential reading.

An expert’s guide to owning a European soccer club - part two: Due diligence
In the second of a four-part weekly series, Jordan Gardner, an American sports executive who is currently chairman and co-owner of Danish side FC Helsingør, outlines how to build the right investment thesis and thoroughly assess the purchase of a European soccer club.

By Jordan GardnerPosted: February 4 2021

As European soccer has grown and become more professionalised over the last decade, we have seen increased interest in ownership and investment in the sport.

Much of this interest has come from developing soccer markets like China, the United States and countries in the Middle East. The motivations of investors from these different markets have varied greatly, but the importance of building a sound investment thesis and doing proper due diligence before purchase has never been more important. While some investment groups overlook these important steps, any sophisticated investor will approach buying a soccer club in the same way they would any merger and acquisition outside of the sports world.

In part one of this series, I described the motivations of individuals, private equity and institutional investors who look towards European soccer for investment opportunities. This instalment will focus on the next steps investors take going through the acquisition process, and what goes on behind the scenes.

Building the right investment thesis
As investors become more serious about an acquisition, it is vitally important that they lay out a proper business plan and investment thesis. What will be the core focus of this business? Will it be selling players? Aiming for promotion? Qualifying for European tournaments?

While most clubs focus on a combination of these areas, some investment groups struggle without a core investment thesis. Many groups make the mistake of assuming they can succeed by managing these clubs “better and smarter than anyone else". American groups in particular are often guilty of assuming “best practices from North American sports” will automatically result in success, rather than a well thought-out business plan.

While the investment thesis varies depending on the size of the club, the current infrastructure, market characteristics and the motivations of that particular prospective ownership group, it is important that investors have a concrete plan. These groups need to be laser focused on analysing all aspects of the due diligence process through the lens of whatever the chosen business plan is.

The soccer culture and challenges in each country
A mistake that foreign ownership groups sometimes make is underestimating the inherent cultural, language and sporting difference between each league and country in Europe. Both on and off the pitch, the way the game is played, the way businesses are run, and the way people in each country interact with the game can be drastically different.

Clubs in Spain and Portugal, for instance, generally play a more open, attacking style with a focus on technique, bringing in many players from Latin America due to the cultural and language similarities. Teams in France have a tendency to bring in more players from French speaking countries in Africa, which have created a strong pipeline of talent and made the French leagues a focus for scouts from the biggest clubs in Europe.

Even off the pitch, it’s vital that potential investors understand both the opportunity and challenges in each market. Italian clubs, for example, generally have poor infrastructure compared to their European counterparts, and endemic corruption can make operating a soccer club in that country challenging

English soccer's Premier League and the lower divisions in the English Football League (EFL) are dealing with a new set of challenges related to Brexit, as clubs will have significantly more hurdles in the future obtaining work permits for players from abroad. Clubs like Brentford in the second-tier Championship have made good work of recruiting undervalued talent from Scandinavia and continental Europe, and Brexit will fundamentally disrupt this successful model. In France, strict labour laws make it nearly impossible to reduce front office payroll expenses and cut costs, something many foreign investors are unaware of.

Regardless, each market is unique both on and off the pitch, and it’s crucial that potential investors understand the intricacies of each country and league as they go through the acquisition process.

Building relationships and boots on the ground
The business side of soccer is very relationship driven, and building trust with key stakeholders throughout the acquisition process is crucial. During our purchase of FC Helsingør, I spent the better part of six months on the ground building relationships at the club, interviewing key staff members and ingraining myself in the local community as much as possible. This was extremely important as I was able to identify weak points in the organisation, and gain the trust from local stakeholders who knew we would treat the club with care and respect. My goal was to invest the time and energy in advance, so that there were fewer surprises after the purchase was complete.

When American billionaire Rocco Commisso purchased ACF Fiorentina in the summer of 2019, he described the deal as the "quickest closing in soccer history".

"From a letter of intent, I think it was less than two and a half weeks before I did signing and closing," Commisso said, speaking to Forbes. "We signed and closed on the same day, which means I didn't do any due diligence between signing the contract and closing on the contract, which typically takes two or three months."

While the exact purchase price was not disclosed, it is remarkable that Commisso made a purchase of between US$150 million to US$200 million without doing any due diligence. To no one’s surprise, it was only after the sale closed that the new ownership group learned that a third party agent held secret contracts with the club’s top players, something that should have been discovered during a proper diligence process.

According to the New York Times, the newly discovered agreements 'effectively gave a soccer agent, named in February as part of a money laundering investigation in Spain, permission to find buyers for at least five members of Fiorentina’s roster. In return, the agent would be paid a commission. If Fiorentina balked at completing any deal the agent brought to the club, he would receive a penalty fee instead.'

This is just one example of how important the diligence process is, and how no deal is worth rushing through. There is a temptation to close these deals as quickly as possible, but this should be a reminder to be smart, strategic and patient throughout the acquisition process.

Managing expectations and mitigating risk
No club acquisition is entirely risk free. However, with proper due diligence, the magnitude of problems and surprises that arise can be severely reduced. The sport of soccer in Europe has inherent risk, whether that is relegation, or injuries to top players, or just bad luck on the pitch, so it is crucially important that club leadership mitigate off the field risk as much as possible.

There is immense opportunity in European soccer to run these clubs smarter and more efficiently than the status quo, but the first step is to be humble and take the necessary time to do proper due diligence, be patient, and feel comfortable with the entire acquisition process.


About the author: Jordan Gardner is an American sports executive and investor in several soccer clubs across Europe including Swansea City AFC in the United Kingdom and Dundalk FC in the Republic of Ireland. He is currently the chairman, co-owner and managing partner at FC Helsingør, an American-owned soccer club in Denmark, and was previously vice president, investment and business strategy for the digital media company JUGOtv before it was acquired by Relevent Sports Group. He was also the owner and chief executive of a live event ticketing and technology company based in San Francisco, California.

[Chester Perry]

The new vice Chairman at Leeds has been a busy boy, with his round of interviews and now talking to both the Price of Football Podcast which includes more discussion on our takeover too

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

and the Athletics Business of Sport Podcast

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

[Chester Perry]

@KieranMaguire has been writing more seriously than we tend to get for him, this is more the academic in him writing for the Political Quarterly -- it is a lengthy read

Covid-19 and Football: Crisis Creates Opportunity

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epd ... 923X.12961

[Chester Perry]

An interesting tale in the Financial Times about Inter Milan owners Suning desperately trying to raise a large amount monies for the club - remember Suning owned PPTV, the Chinese TV broadcaster that failed to pay £160m to the Premier League last season which ultimately saw the contract cancelled. Suning is a very large multi-multi-billion dollar group. All this comes at a time when the Chinese government is cracking down on it's coporations and mega-rich owners - the biggest of which Jack Ma of Alibaba fame has been completely sidelined recently.

Inter Milan owner seeks $200m in emergency finance
KAYE WIGGINS FEBRUARY 04, 2021

The Chinese owners of Inter Milan are rushing to raise at least $200m in emergency cash, after the Italian football club’s finances deteriorated due to the pandemic and heavy spending on top players.

Suning Holdings, the retail conglomerate that owns a majority stake in the Serie A team, is seeking new investment by the end of the year in response to a financial crisis at the club, according to three people familiar with its finances.

Suning’s challenges with Inter Milan comes as the retailer, which is backed by Jack Ma’s Alibaba, faces questions over its heavy debt burden in China.

The club had been in exclusive discussions with private equity group BC Partners in recent weeks over a potential investment, but those talks have ended after the two sides could not agree on valuation, according to people with knowledge of the matter who confirmed reports from the Italian media this week.

The club continues to speak with BC Partners as well as other potential investors including distressed debt funds such as Ares Management and SoftBank-owned Fortress Investment Group. Others who have been monitoring the situation include Swedish private equity group EQT and US-based Arctos.

Those talks range from discussing an outright acquisition of the club or the purchase of a minority stake, according to several people familiar with ongoing discussions.

Suning is working with Goldman Sachs to advise on fundraising options.

Those people added that the negotiations with BC Partners foundered over a valuation for the club, with Suning believing it is worth more than €900m. Two people familiar with the discussions said BC Partners valued the group at just €750m.

Those discussions have become critical due to the precarious financial situation of the club, which requires a cash injection to continue operations into next season, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

One person close to the club’s leadership said Suning is committed to financially supporting the club through this year.

Some of those with knowledge of the talks added that Suning was believed to be far likelier to sell an equity stake, even if that means taking a loss on its investment, rather than allowing the club to go bankrupt altogether.

Inter Milan is led by president Steven Zhang, the 29-year-old son of Zhang Jindong, Suning’s billionaire founder. After spending €270m to acquire the club in 2016, Suning has authorised spending hundreds of millions on euros on star players such as Romelu Lukaku and Christian Eriksen to seek a return to the top of Italian and European football.

The “Nerazzurri” have faced a cash crunch over the past year. The club suffered a pre-tax loss of €102m last season mainly due to revenue shortfalls caused by the pandemic. Meanwhile, Suning is also facing financial pressures closer to home, which has made it difficult to continue funding the Italian club, including a recent crackdown by Chinese authorities on foreign outflows of capital.

While the Nanjing-based company managed to pay off $1.5bn in debt late last year, its remaining obligations are towering. The group has a further $1.2bn in bonds maturing this year — more than half of its total outstanding debt load, according to data from Dealogic.

Zhang Jindong, Suning’s chairman, has over recent months also pledged shares in his own company to Alibaba. Such a move is a common mechanism used by Chinese companies and shareholders to secure funds for refinancing or working capital.

Suning and Inter Milan declined to comment. BC Partners, Fortress and Ares did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

What are the Chinese Gov cracking down on Chinese businesses for?

Aren't Wolves owned by a Chinese company?

[Chester Perry]

What are the Chinese Gov cracking down on Chinese businesses for?

Aren't Wolves owned by a Chinese company?

Fosun, yes a very successful one, who have been subject to their own controls by the Chinese government in the last 18 months. I tis no coincidence that Wolves are struggling and had to sell some of the best players this season.

The Chinese government's only focus is the Chinese economy, from time to time they enact swift actions to help maintain the stability and growth of that economy by controlling cash flows and business activities outside it's jurisdiction, there is also a long running cultural battle with the ultra-rich entrepreneurs that leads to regular - re-education and reminders of what is the party line, the clamp downs can be very harsh if there is not a quick realignment to the government line. It has all been posted in detail on this thread, though if you want to keep abreast online from a sport perspective @Prof_Chadwick is the best most succinct source.

[elwaclaret]

Fosun, yes a very successful one, who have been subject to their own controls by the Chinese government in the last 18 months. I tis no coincidence that Wolves are struggling and had to sell some of the best players this season.

The Chinese government's only focus is the Chinese economy, from time to time they enact swift actions to help maintain the stability and growth of that economy by controlling cash flows and business activities outside it's jurisdiction, there is also a long running cultural battle with the ultra-rich entrepreneurs that leads to regular - re-education and reminders of what is the party line, the clamp downs can be very harsh if there is not a quick realignment to the government line. It has all been posted in detail on this thread, though if you want to keep abreast online from a sport perspective @Prof_Chadwick is the best most succinct source.

Thanks for that Chester had not seen any of that. Interesting stuff.

[Chester Perry]

Thanks for that Chester had not seen any of that. Interesting stuff.

not much different to Putin really

[Chester Perry]

Le Figaro are reporting that Canl+ have taken all the rights for Ligue 1 and 2 through to the end of the season at half the price that the previous deal was done for

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... e-20210204

With Italy's Seri A still not concluding it's rights tender, fresh negotiations begin tomorrow, the Bundesliga seeing it's rights drop around 20%, La Liga and UEFA also experiencing difficulties is there anyone left who thinks the Premier Leagues rights are going to show strong or any growth?

[elwaclaret]

not much different to Putin really

Could not agree more. Cosying up to China and bringing them in to the world economy was always going to make China a monster. Long term I think the best hope for humanity is that the two versions of communism turn on each other again. Chinese power is seriously bloody frightening compared to Putin. He’s not as independent as is often portrayed in the West, though he is far more authoritarian than the West, China is another level entirely... and I think someone fancies becoming king of the world.

[Chester Perry]

The Times with a report of a new proposal of a "safety net" for the big clubs who do not qualify for the Champions League - it is that time in the cycle only exacerbated by the financial chaos caused by the pandemic's impact - that is my free article for this week used up

Anger over Champions League safety net for Europe’s biggest clubs

Martyn Ziegler, Chief Sports Reporter
Thursday February 04 2021, 5.00pm, The Times

Europe’s biggest teams will be given a safety net to play in the Champion League even if they fail to finish in the top four of their domestic competitions, under Uefa plans revealed to Premier League clubs today.

The proposal, which provoked anger from some Premier League clubs, would see three Champions League places allocated via Uefa’s coefficient based on historical performances in Europe.

In a move by Uefa to fend off the threat of a Super League, it would mean that the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool, Juventus or Real Madrid would still qualify via their Uefa coefficient if they finished fifth or six in their domestic leagues. The safety net would only apply to clubs that finish in Europa League or Europa Conference League spots but potentially could mean up to six English clubs involved in the Champions League.

The coefficient would be calculated over the previous five years, although it is understood the European Clubs’ Association wants a club’s European trophy record to be taken into account as well.

The Premier League clubs were also told that Uefa plans to allow four more teams into the Champions League each season after 2024, with 36 instead of 32 teams involved using what has been termed the “Swiss system”. An extra place would probably go to France with the other three allocated using coefficients.

There is pressure from some European associations to give the extra places to the champions of Holland, the Czech Republic and Austria who do not have an automatic group spot, but Uefa is understood to be favouring the coefficient approach. It would also help the likes of Portugal who have only one automatic qualification spot but have teams such as Porto with strong coefficients.

That approach would go some way to satisfying those clubs who have been threatening a European breakaway Super League. Manchester United have been one of the main drivers behind the Super League plans and have suffered a significant financial drop after failing to make last season’s Champions League.

It would however widen the gap further between Premier League clubs who do not qualify for Europe’s top competition, and a number of chairmen spoke out against the proposal including Crystal Palace’s chairman Steve Parish.

The “Swiss system”, which is often used in chess, is a format where all the clubs are in a single division and are drawn to play matches against ten opponents of different strengths based on seeding. The top 16 would go through to the knockout rounds, via a play-off for those clubs finishing between ninth and 24th place in the table.

Uefa is understood to be planning to use the system in its other two club competitions, but reducing the number in the Europa League to 32 and have the same number in its third-tier Europa Conference League.

The extra European matches would put the fixture calendar under greater pressure because it would mean ten group matches per team instead of six under the existing format.

[ecc]

Hi Chester,

"Le Figaro are reporting that Canl+ have taken all the rights for Ligue 1 and 2 through to the end of the season at half the price that the previous deal was done for

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... e-20210204"

Just heard this on the radio. Easy for me to say this now but this was always a hope during the whole Mediapro mess. Canal+ is the historic football broadcaster in France having been the first TV channel to show live league matches back in 1984. Very similar to Sky in that their offer was based on sport and cinema.

They had the French League over a barrel as only Amazon, Discovery and DAZN had bid for this week's Call for Tenders and they had the necessary infrastructure to take up all the matches and the existing subscribers to pay for them.

It is excellent short-term news for French football given the horrendous last 12 months.

[Chester Perry]

Fosun, yes a very successful one, who have been subject to their own controls by the Chinese government in the last 18 months. I tis no coincidence that Wolves are struggling and had to sell some of the best players this season.

The Chinese government's only focus is the Chinese economy, from time to time they enact swift actions to help maintain the stability and growth of that economy by controlling cash flows and business activities outside it's jurisdiction, there is also a long running cultural battle with the ultra-rich entrepreneurs that leads to regular - re-education and reminders of what is the party line, the clamp downs can be very harsh if there is not a quick realignment to the government line. It has all been posted in detail on this thread, though if you want to keep abreast online from a sport perspective @Prof_Chadwick is the best most succinct source.

this from a couple of days back

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1356662416315191299

[Chester Perry]

Hi Chester,

"Le Figaro are reporting that Canl+ have taken all the rights for Ligue 1 and 2 through to the end of the season at half the price that the previous deal was done for

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... e-20210204"

Just heard this on the radio. Easy for me to say this now but this was always a hope during the whole Mediapro mess. Canal+ is the historic football broadcaster in France having been the first TV channel to show live league matches back in 1984. Very similar to Sky in that their offer was based on sport and cinema.

They had the French League over a barrel as only Amazon, Discovery and DAZN had bid for this week's Call for Tenders and they had the necessary infrastructure to take up all the matches and the existing subscribers to pay for them.

It is excellent short-term news for French football given the horrendous last 12 months.

yes good for fans, but not so much for the clubs

how are you doing, have you cleared your email inbox yet?, I kept getting my emails bounced because it was full. I am hoping the world is a better place for you at the moment

[Chester Perry]

The Telegraph with their take on the story of Champions League fail-safe for Europe's biggest clubs

Six Premier League clubs may play in Champions League from 2024 onwards
Exclusive: Uefa proposals would see teams play 10 group games each, while Europa League may be reduced in size

By - Sam Wallace, CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER
4 February 2021 • 4:49pm

Premier League clubs discussed for the first time on Thursday new Uefa proposals for expanded European club competitions post-2024 which would potentially see six English clubs in the Champions League — the top four plus two upgraded on historic performance.

An option put in front of the 20 clubs on the February shareholders’ call on Thursday afternoon, one of the so-called “Swiss model” ideas, would see 36 clubs in a new look Champions League post 2024. Those clubs would each play 10 group games, with fixtures based on seeding, and be placed from first to 36th in a league table at the end of the stage.

Critically, qualification for this new Champions League could be earned by clubs finishing outside the top four by Uefa co-efficient – a metric measuring historical performance. Under the 36-team proposal, the Premier League would be given seven places in Europe: four in the Champions League, two in the Europa League and one in the new Uefa Europa Conference League to be launched from next season.

Any club finishing outside the Premier League’s top four automatic Champions League places — but in fifth to seventh place — could potentially be upgraded to the Champions League by virtue of their co-efficient. For example, should Manchester United finish seventh in the Premier League – only good for an automatic Uefa Conference League place, they could see their co-efficient “boost” them up to a Champions League place. Any Premier League club finishing outside the top seven would be unable to qualify for European football, regardless of their co-efficient.

It means that depending on the final Premier League position of certain clubs, and the strength of their co-efficient relative to clubs across other European leagues in equivalent positions, there could be as many as six English Champions League teams in one season. That would consist of the top four automatic qualifiers and two more who have been boosted up by their co-efficient. Their vacated places in the Europa and Conference Leagues would not be taken by other English clubs.

Under this proposal, the total of English clubs in all European competitions would be capped at seven. In a scenario where two extra English clubs are boosted up to the Champions League there would be a total of six in that competition and one in the Europa League.

Of the 36-team league playing 10 matches each, an equal number home and away, the top eight clubs would then qualify automatically for the next round, the first knockout round of 16. The clubs placed from ninth to 24th would play off to go into that round of 16. There would be a total of 19 matchdays and 225 matches. There are currently 32 clubs in the Champions League and 48 in the Europa League. Under new proposals that would be adjusted to 36 in the Champions League and 32 in both the Europa League and the new Conference League.

The Premier League clubs discussed the proposals but no decisions were made. They will eventually agree on a set of recommendations which will be fed back to Uefa. There was no discussion of a putative breakaway, the European super league. No model has yet been suggested for the new distribution of revenue.

Uefa’s broadcast contracts expire in 2024 after which the big European clubs led by Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli are asking for a huge increase in games and a much greater share of revenue for what they consider to be the established powers.

Uefa are fighting to keep control of their most lucrative competitions, the Champions League and the Europa League, as well as the new Conference League but recognise that they will have to make huge changes to appease the biggest clubs.

Fifa has issued a warning that any player who participates in an unsanctioned breakaway competition will be banned from playing in a World Cup finals. Fifa has plans to expand its Fifa Club World Cup and appears to have an informal agreement with Uefa in which they will support one another against any independent breakaways.

[Chester Perry]

Many may have felt that the current detente in the Middle East would lead to the end of broadcasting piracy within Saudi Arabia, there have been a number of articles of that leaning. However, the IOC are wanting too put an end to that complacency, as no doubt are many rights owners - this from the Washington Post

IOC urges US government to help curb Saudi broadcast piracy
By Associated Press = Feb. 4, 2021 at 6:24 p.m. GMT

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Aiming to curb Saudi Arabia’s piracy of Qatar-owned sports broadcasts, the International Olympic Committee has urged the U.S. government to keep the country on its watch list for intellectual property protection.

“We are extremely concerned of the impact that online piracy could create during the next 12 months,” the IOC wrote to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in a letter seen Thursday by the Associated Press.

The Jan. 28 letter “respectfully requests” that the U.S “maintains Saudi Arabia’s position on the Priority Watch List” and engages with the kingdom to protect intellectual property.

The IOC sold Middle East rights for the Tokyo Olympics this year and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games to Qatar-based beIN Media Group.

BeIN’s broadcasts of soccer’s World Cup and Champions League have been consistently pirated in Saudi Arabia amid political tensions since a three-year boycott of Qatar by some regional rivals began in 2017. BeIN was banned from operating in Saudi Arabia.

International soccer bodies FIFA, UEFA and England’s Premier League called on the piracy to stop before a World Trade Organization ruling cited Saudi Arabia for failing to shut it down.

The IOC letter said its broadcasting rights, worth billions of dollars in each four-year Olympic period, were key to funding sports bodies and athletes worldwide.

“Robust enforcement efforts by Saudi Arabia against piracy are therefore essential to protect the exclusive rights of beIN in the region, support athletes and safeguard the goals of the Olympic movement,” the IOC wrote.

[Chester Perry]

Le Figaro are reporting that Canl+ have taken all the rights for Ligue 1 and 2 through to the end of the season at half the price that the previous deal was done for

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... e-20210204

With Italy's Seri A still not concluding it's rights tender, fresh negotiations begin tomorrow, the Bundesliga seeing it's rights drop around 20%, La Liga and UEFA also experiencing difficulties is there anyone left who thinks the Premier Leagues rights are going to show strong or any growth?

It is official - the LFP have announced the rights have all gone to Canal+ for the remainder of the season - if the 50% loss on revenue is correct Canal+ have paid 35m Euros for the 80 percent of games it didn’t already have rights to.

There are reports that Canal got the 80 percent of games it didn’t already have rights to for just 35m euros - ouch

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... igue-2-bkt

[Chester Perry]

a fascinating article in the athletic about Liverpool and FSG covering so much territory from multi-club ownership, SPAC's finding it impossible to raise money to by teams, the need to make a profit, the complex structure of MSG, Project Big Picture and the vulnerability of a model that relies to some extent on Barcelona, Real Madrid paying a premium price for talent you have turned into superstars.

https://twitter.com/Simon_Hughes__/stat ... 1935902720

[Chester Perry]

The Athletic also has an article about the fact that the standard boot deal has all but disappeared for many players, it is something that I was becoming aware of but this shows how quickly the world is changing at the moments

https://twitter.com/AdamCrafton_/status ... 8352705541

[Chester Perry]

Another European club comes under American ownership, this time in Denmark - that is 37 in the top 2 domestic leagues across Europe with at 4 more currently in the pipeline

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 1295281155

[Chester Perry]

Yesterday there was some interest on here re Chinese investment in European football - this may be too heavy for many but is interesting nevertheless - An academic article

The effect of investment into European football on the market value of Chinese corporations

https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/17734 ... -Zheng.pdf

[Chester Perry]

Episode 6 of Unofficial Partner's Money Talks Podcast looks at a favourite topic on this thread - how to value a sports team - it initially focuses on the NBA but then switches to compare with pricing of football teams and more specifically turns to the recent takeover of Burnley FC - should be an interesting listen - i will come back and let you know

the blurb:
This is episode six of Money Talks, our regular series that looks at sport through the eyes of the finance and private equity sectors.

Our guests today are Rob Tilliss and Michael Broughton, and the conversation is about how to value a professional sports team or franchise.

Rob Tilliss is CEO of Inner Circle Sports and the former MD of JP Morgan’s sport advisory group. Inner Circle is a global investment bank focused the sports, media and entertainment industry.

Michael Broughton is partner at Acceleration Capital, formerly director of business technology, innovation and investment strategy at FIFA.

We talk about the various methods used to value an NBA franchise, what the new limited partnership rules mean for investors and owners, and how this compares to buying teams in the Premier League, with a look at the recent Burnley acquisition by ALK Partners.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... n-nba-team

EDIT it is an interesting listen, particularly as the conversation swung to the differences in the North American (unlimited restrictions on equity input, restrictions on debt) and European (restrictions on equity input, unlimited Debt) approach to regulation.

With regards to the Burnley takeover not much different to the informed voices on the takeover thread, it is a risk, they will have a plan and will have considered the threats, Pace had been round the block in finance and to a less extent sports, he is a thought to be a good well intentioned guy.

[Chester Perry]

@TariqPanja in the New York times and the story of how for Valencia fans having a Billionaire owner has not been the salvation they thought it would be

They Hailed the New Owner as a Savior. Then They Got to Know Him.
FEBRUARY 05, 2021

Valencia fans had waited 11 years for this kind of celebration.

A generation earlier, their soccer team, Valencia C.F., had been one of the best clubs in Spain, a two-time Champions League finalist and a domestic champion. That was before financial crises and mismanagement had sent it into a yearslong tailspin.

Now, in the spring of 2019, the fans could start to believe again. Victory in the Copa del Rey, Spain’s domestic cup competition, had ended a decade-long trophy drought. A deep-pocketed billionaire with powerful soccer connections now owned the club. The trophy, and the money, would herald the start of a journey back to the top, back to relevance in La Liga, back to closing the gap with the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid.

So as thousands of fans lined the streets to salute the team’s conquering heroes, Valencia’s beaming chief executive, Anil Murthy, spoke excitedly as he surveyed the scene from the deck of an open-top bus.

“I have never seen anything like this in my life: It’s incredible,” Murthy told a live television interviewer as players took turns with the trophy. “Practically the entire city is in the streets supporting this great club.”

It did not take long for the mood to sour. Within months, the coach and the sporting director who had built Valencia’s cup-winning team had both been fired. Within a year, the team was offloading players to save money during the pandemic. Fans shut out from attending games because of coronavirus restrictions now protest the club’s ownership from outside it. Board members are heckled in the street.

Less than two years after Valencia paraded a trophy through its city, its new dawn has been replaced by disillusion, anger and cynicism.

“This is Valencia’s worst time,” said Gaspar Romero, who was born into a Valencia-obsessed family and whose grandfather once served as the club’s accountant. “My nightmare will be to see Valencia in this state for a long period of time, with no purpose, like a zombie club.”

Valencia’s new reality is a hollowed-out roster, weakened by the sale of top players in the off-season, and a team that struggles to win even once or twice a month. After a positive start to the new season last fall, which included a 4-1 destruction of Real Madrid, Valencia has cratered, tumbling down the table. That has put a renewed focus on the club’s one-time savior, the Singapore billionaire Peter Lim, a reclusive figure who prefers to stay out of the spotlight but — in Valencia, at least — can no longer avoid it.

It was not always this way. Romero, 32, recalled how when he was a boy, the team was one of the most feared squads in Europe. How fans in the steep-banked stands at its Mestalla stadium roared as talented players brought joy and pride to the city. There were consecutive trips to the Champions League final in 2000 and 2001 and a league title in 2004, when Valencia’s team brushed aside Barcelona and Real Madrid teams containing the likes of Ronaldinho and Zinedine Zidane.

By the time Lim entered the scene in 2014, though, a financial crisis had engulfed the club. Top talents like David Silva, David Villa and Juan Mata had been sold off to make ends meet, and a combination of bad management and mounting had only made things worse.

Lim’s interest in soccer predated his investment in Valencia. Earlier in his career as an investor, he had parlayed his love of the English club Manchester United into a business operating United-themed cafes and restaurants across Asia. That allowed Lim, now 67, to build relationships with a generation of United’s stars, players like Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and David Beckham. Those relationships spawned joint business ventures in the hospitality sector and, since 2014, a co-ownership of Salford City, a team that plays in English soccer’s fourth tier.

Lim’s affection for Valencia, the fallen Spanish giant, did not run nearly as deep.

“He planned to buy a football club and the opportunity of Valencia came along,” Murthy said. Lim provided the money to acquire the team; loyal lieutenants like Murthy and others were installed to run it.

To many Valencia fans, Lim’s management style has been part of the problem. They noticed, for example, that he spent the 2019 cup final in a private box with his friend Beckham but did not visit the locker room to congratulate the team.

Though they once chanted his name in the streets, believing him to be their club’s rescuer, many now believe he never understood what the team represents in its city.

“It is our essence, what we have loved for so long, what our parents told us about,” Romero said. “It’s like they stole our memories, our traditions, our history, our pride.”

Lim’s critics also point to the clout of another figure in his soccer network, Jorge Mendes, the soccer agent considered to be among the most influential power brokers in soccer.

Even before he bought Valencia, Lim, with Mendes acting as an adviser, had been an active player in soccer’s multibillion-dollar player trading market.

By placing speculative bets on players just as he had once invested in small companies, Lim had hoped to profit from their future sales. The practice was banned by soccer’s governing body FIFA in 2015, a year after Lim bought his majority stake in Valencia. But a feature of Lim’s tenure has been the revolving door of talent, with Mendes often pulling the strings.

For desperate Valencia fans, though, whatever their concerns, Lim still offered a chance of salvation. The 2007 financial crisis had left the club in a bind, caught with two stadiums — its longtime home, the Mestalla, and the half-built shell of a new one that could only be completed with the proceeds from selling the old arena to property developers. Fear of bankruptcy felt real.

Excited by the prospect of restoring the team’s fortunes and completing the Nou Mestalla, fans picketed for the team to be sold to Lim. When his purchase was approved, fans greeted his arrival with the kind of reception usually reserved for a prized signing.

The flurry of bold promises and predictions made by the officials he installed to run the club, though, failed to materialize. Fans now bemoan not only the state of the first-team squad but also the seemingly whimsical decision-making that has seen a succession of players, coaches and sporting directors come and go, some replaced by questionable appointments seemingly guided by Lim’s personal relationships with Mendes or his connections to the former Manchester United cohort.

Lim appointed Phil Neville as a coach at Valencia in 2015, for example, and then hired his brother, Gary, who had never led a professional team and did not speak Spanish, as the team’s manager. The experiment lasted less than four months, with the team winning only three of Neville’s 16 Liga games.

Front-office appointments were just as curious. Figures with longstanding ties to the team and the city were replaced by executives close to Lim. Newcomers sometimes had little or no prior experience in European soccer.

“If you want to remove the coach and sports director, sign another coach and sports director to build a project,” Gaizka Mendieta, who captained the team in both of its Champions League final appearances, told the Valencia newspaper Las Provincias in December. “But no, what Peter Lim has done is take a step back and return to the model of the beginning, when they arrived.”

Few are predicting a bright future. Valencia still plays at the Mestalla, and its new stadium is no closer to completion. When the team’s leadership sold or released some of the club’s most established talent last summer — including Dani Parejo, the popular captain who had lifted the Copa del Rey only a year earlier — Valencia’s coach, Javi Gracia, threatened to quit.

Murthy said the player sales — more than 70 million euros (about $85 million) came in — were needed to rebalance the club’s books after revenues had been halved by the pandemic. The team remains mired in debt, even after the sales, with more than 400 million euros (nearly $500 million) owed to creditors. And the team’s transfer market dealings under Lim are drawing new scrutiny.

Murthy, the former Singaporean diplomat installed by Lim as chief executive in 2017, recently told journalists that there was now a new plan, one focused on producing a stream of players from the club’s youth academy who will instill a Valencian core in the squad and return it to greatness.

Murthy predicted a championship within 10 years, a lofty ideal but, to most Valencia fans, an unrealistic one under Lim’s continued ownership. The team, they know, is currently far closer to relegation from La Liga — and another brush with financial ruin — than to its next trophy celebration.

Six years after thousands of fans chanted Peter Lim’s name in the streets, many now clamor just as loudly for his exit.

“The feeling among fans is Peter Lim doesn’t understand where he is,” said Paco Polit, a journalist and contributor to a book about Lim’s stewardship of Valencia. “He never understood how big Valencia was before he came, and now it feels he has left Valencia to die.”

[Chester Perry]

Is the competition for power in the Middle East about to come to the French Ligue? - Saudi Prince Al- Waleed Bin Talal is reportedly a close to buying Olympic Marseille - a deal that has been suggested for quite some time, this is possibly a bigger club than PSG, though it doesn't benefit from the money that is in the capital

https://twitter.com/JacobsBen/status/13 ... 6708542465

with Bein Sport no longer owning any of the French Ligue's domestic media rights for the rest of the season it is though that it would be more difficult for Qatar to block such a move

[Chester Perry]

An utterly fascinating podcast from Unofficial Partner with Patrick Nally a man who practically invented the business of sports marketing and was a key in the commercialisation at FIFA, UEFA and the IOC - there are tales to be told. This is essential listening if you want to know the history of what is now feeding this thread

the blurb
There’s a very small group of people who have genuinely shaped what is today called the sports marketing industry. Patrick Nally is one of those, and is often bracketed together with Mark McCormack and Horst Dassler as the genuine architects of today’s sports business.

It’s hard to think of a major event or sport that doesn’t bear Nally’s handprints, from the Olympics and FIFA World Cup through to Commonwealth Games, snooker, rugby, golf, cricket and more latterly match poker.

But that’s just a part of the story. This is a conversation that reveals the back room deals, the agency politics and sometimes vicious personal rivalries among people at the very top of sport over the last fifty years.

If you’ve ever wondered how we got here, you’ll enjoy the next hour.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... rick-nally

[Chester Perry]

Directly related to that Patrick Nally podcast is this article/interview from 2018 at SportsBusiness.com which goes into detail about the Argentine World Cup - bear in mind that Nally was still in his early 20's at the time, it is incredible stuff really.

Coca-Cola, guns and money: the genesis of the Fifa Partner programme
Matthew Glendinning - June 1, 2018

The Fifa Partner programme was born via an unlikely collaboration between a twenty-something PR man, his client – the Coca-Cola Company – and the Argentinian military junta. Throw in the symbiotic relationship between Fifa president João Havelange and the head of Adidas France Horst Dassler, and you have the essential ingredients to a story that takes in the World Cups in Argentina 1978 and Spain 1982, introduces an ambitious Swiss marketer called Sepp Blatter to world football and ends with the formation of the now-discredited ISL agency.

The PR man was Patrick Nally, then the communications side of London sports and communications firm West Nally, which began life in the early 1970s as a two-man partnership with BBC sports broadcaster and Times columnist Peter West.

On first meeting the veteran broadcaster as a 19-year-old, Nally was keen to impress: “I came out with the line saying, ‘Well, Peter, you know all about sport why don’t we make our new PR company one that uses sport and communications?’ It was some smart-arse statement but it did impress him and he thought it was great idea.”

What Nally “stumbled across” – his words – over the next few years was sports marketing, a discipline that barely existed in the early 1970s.

West Nally made a name for itself bringing Gillette razor blades to cricket and Benson and Hedges cigarettes to golf – and Nally was soon mixing with increasingly important people, notably Al Killeen, the head of Coca-Cola marketing internationally, who “thought what we [West Nally] were doing and what they might be interested in doing might fit”.

With West Nally’s operations growing in Australia and Canada, Nally also appeared on the radar of Horst Dassler, son of the Adidas founder Adi Dassler. The younger Dassler was then considered the most influential man in sport, not least for his liberal use of undercover payments to amateur athletes who would wear Adidas shoes at major events like the Olympic Games.

Dassler was the spark for what happened next.

The Adidas France connection
In June 1974, just before the World Cup in Germany, a new Fifa president – Brazil’s João Havelange – was elected on a ticket of developing the game outside its strongholds in Europe and South America.

Dassler, who held sway over most of the European federations, had nearly turned the election in favour of the incumbent, Sir Stanley Rous. Havelange was impressed and thought that the Adidas man might help Fifa fund the youth development projects the new president had promised.

As Nally observes: “Horst didn’t control the marketing money of Adidas – that was the family in Germany – so he was looking for another way to find the funds to help Havelange. If he could help Havelange, it meant that he could control Havelange.”

Enter Nally. “I came in a good two months after the 1974 World Cup because Horst was already talking to various people and was not getting very far. He’d heard of me, but I hadn’t really heard of Fifa! I spent quite a bit of time getting to understand not only Fifa, but what an international sports federation was.

“I went to Strasbourg, and then a place called Landersheim, where Horst had an extraordinary office in the middle of some fields. He had broken away from the German enclave and set up in France. It was ostensibly Adidas France, but really he was manipulating and controlling the whole world from there, fighting with his Mum, Dad, sisters and brothers-in-law in the company all the time.”

There was method in Dassler’s confrontational madness. “Being the clever man that he was, Horst had already seen that Adidas should move away from paying athlete endorsements,” Nally explains. “The future was to actually control the federations: control the administrators, then you control the sports. At any major gathering of people in sports, Horst would be there. Adidas would throw a great dinner, forging relationships with the great international federations because none of them had any money. The IOC was struggling, Fifa was struggling, there was no money.”

Fifa, meet Coca-Cola
“I met with Fifa in Zurich. There was literally five or six of them, including Havelange, the general secretary Dr Helmut Kaiser – Blatter didn’t exist at this stage – and two German shepherd dogs. They had no money, there was no security. It was like a little family. I said to Horst that what Fifa had to offer could be of interest to what I’m doing in sport and that I had one company in mind. Coca-Cola, the world’s universal drink and – through Fifa –football, the worlds universal language. But nothing existed in the way that I would need it to exist to present to Coca-Cola.”

The things that didn’t exist, Nally needed to create. These were a series of youth competition and development programmes to improve standards of football in under-developed soccer countries including big markets like the US, Japan and Australia, that Coca-Cola could brand around the world.

Coca-Cola’s international strategy until then had been to supply the US Army abroad and then stay on in each country. “I had to write a completely robust project programme and cost it because without that, I couldn’t get Coca-Cola. Even then, I was only hoping that Coca-Cola would be my client, I wasn’t serving the sport. Professionally, the whole pitch was to Coca-Cola and then I would be part of a pitch for the agency to execute the programme.”

After spending 18 months of his life on the project, Coca-Cola eventually signed a cheque for $10m in May 1976 to fund the ‘Fifa Coca-Cola Football Development Programmes’, including the Coca-Cola Cup youth tournament – the precursor to the Under-20 World Cup.

The development torch was passed on to someone within Fifa to manage the programme. That person was Sepp Blatter, a PR executive with the Swiss watch company Longines who had been recommended to Nally by the president of Swiss Timing. “He spent some months in London with us in West Nally’s Berkeley Square office and a lot of time with Horst. He was our captive! He was our man that we put into Fifa to run the development programme.”

The influence business
The branding programme allowed Coca-Cola to enter new markets like China, the Soviet Union and the Middle East and showed the value and strength of Fifa as a promotional partner.

Beyond that, it meant two things. First, Dassler got credit for finding the person who had delivered the Fifa development money and therefore retain the upper hand in his relationship with Havelange. Second, with the World Cup coming up in 1978, Coca-Cola was receptive to new ideas from Nally.

But this time there were bigger hurdles to overcome, both structurally within Fifa and politically around the hosts, Argentina.

Nally continues: “Fifa had no control over the World Cup and no proper [marketing] rights. These were left almost by default to the host nation and the European Broadcasting Union, the European television coordinator. Fifa didn’t have rules and regulations, they had no concept – when Peter and I started, there was no professionalism, no sports law, it was all on the back of a fag packet. Fifa appointed the hosts and handed it over!”

Getting Coca-Cola on board depended on Fifa allowing Nally to negotiate with the hosts for the marketing and stadium operating rights, a task made all the more challenging when the government in Argentina, which had been awarded the 1978 World Cup in 1966, was overthrown by a military coup in March 1976.

Nally got to work on the problem in a way that only a self-proclaimed “classical agency man” can. “I remember at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, I hired a house and took over an English cook. My team and I were entertaining Horst, of course, and a lot of sports people, including Havelange. I discussed with them how they were going to get around resolving this issue and how we had to protect Coca-Cola’s interests.

“I was, in effect, mandated by Fifa because Horst was pushing me all the time. He thought I was a hero, he absolutely loved me because I’m giving him the ability to raise money for other federations as well.

“I was already beginning to work with him on the Olympics and the IAAF and he suddenly sees me as someone who could help him get control from more international federations.”

Dassler was right about Nally, who went on to coordinate the Olympic Partnership Programme (TOP), the global partnership package that exits today. But Fifa came first.

Under the gun
The way the Argentinean junta did business was very different to the playbook established by Nally and Dassler. In Montreal, Nally held his first meeting with a representative of the Argentinian government to discuss the 1978 World Cup. It didn’t get far, and he was asked to meet up again in Buenos Aires.

“I remember taking a Caledonian Airways flight from London directly to Buenos Aires, and I took our finance director with me, a guy called Mike Storey. We were met at the airport by the son of one of the two generals who ran the country and taken in a gunship-type convoy of cars and military vehicles down to the Sheraton Hotel.

“We hadn’t even taken our bags out of the car when we were shuffled back in and the convoy went back out to the airport where we were put on a plane. What had happened was that the guy who was going to become head of the World Cup organising committee and who we were supposed to be meeting was blown up in his bed that morning by one of his servants.

“They got us out of the country and said we’ll be in touch. We landed in Miami, I had a visa, Mike didn’t and was arrested. I flew on to Atlanta to talk to Coca-Cola and calm things down – so it was all a bit of a shock.”

Meeting the generals
Nally returned to Argentina for a key meeting with the two generals themselves: General Videla and General Viola. “I had a meeting with the two generals in a fairly palatial sort of building – don’t forget, the son was still delegated to look after us. He would take Mike and I to night clubs in the evening with heavily-armed guards. He was snapping his fingers at any girl he took a fancy to and they had to come over. For two English guys who had never been to Latin America before it was pretty horrific.”

But discussions with the generals turned out to be constructive in terms of getting agreement on the marketing rights and stadium operational rights that Nally needed to get his client, Coca-Cola, on board. “What I found was I could communicate well with the generals. It was obvious they wanted to do something to make Argentina look less terrifying. We talked about image, barbed wire and guns, and why it would be better having people dressed in Adidas kit as opposed to looking like the military.

“They needed the world’s media to come and did not want the World Cup taken away. They agreed that Coca-Cola needed to control the stadiums and have control of the advertising and the logos. I had to get Argentina to change the whole formula to give us all the exclusivity and they agreed because they agreed with me that they needed a good image.

“They were not interested in money but in the importance of the World Cup staying there and the image of Argentina winning the World Cup, which surprise, surprise, they did – exit Peru [Argentina needed to beat Peru by a margin of four goals to qualify for the final. Peru’s conspicuously supine performance in the 6-0 victory ensured it did]. Although it was very frightening and worrying, I actually found them very receptive.”

Cutting the deal
After a set of meetings with Admiral Lacoste, the new head of the organising committee, Nally returned to Atlanta where the full Coca-Cola board listened to his presentation on a “clean concept for the World Cup” and agreed to guarantee 12m Swiss Francs to protect Fifa and underwrite the event.

In return, Coca-Cola was given around 20 per cent of the signage, with the rest sold to generate revenue to reduce – or cover – the guarantee costs. The revenue was split 70:30 between Coca-Cola and West Nally, with Fifa nowhere to be seen. “Seventy per cent of the sales money went towards paying off the guarantee with Fifa and 30 per cent would stay with us to meet our costs. In the end, it was such a success, it cost Coca-Cola nothing.

“Once we started selling to the other sponsors and signage people, it replaced Coca-Cola’s guarantee because we had sufficient money to meet all the obligations. In essence, Coca-Cola had a free ride in 1978 because we were way above our expectations of what we thought we’d generate.”

Nally sold signage packages worth up to $500,000 each to brands like Philips, KLM and Gillette. Other signage rights were sold to Europe’s leading signage groups, who would sell rights to single matches or groups of matches involving specific national teams. Adidas paid “nothing, or almost nothing” for its match ball and referees’ kit supply rights.

But Nally’s head had not yet been turned by the rights business. “My interest was not to sell massive rights for more money, my only interest was to protect Coca-Cola.”

Spain ups the ante
With Argentina deemed a success all round – “I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t been doing it” – thoughts turned to the next World Cup in Spain, where wresting the marketing rights from the local organising committee was likely to cost a lot more than in Argentina.

Spanish sport had important power brokers of its own, including Juan Antonio Samaranch, then Spanish ambassador in Moscow [Samaranch would later be elected IOC president] and the head of the Spanish football federation, Pablo Porta.

With Dassler and Havelange, Nally went to Madrid to try and negotiate what he’d done in Argentina for the Spanish market. He soon found out that the price had been agreed without him. “I can remember standing in the gents’ toilets next to Horst and he told me ‘Oh Patrick, I have already done the deal, you will have to fund another 45m Swiss francs’. I thought to myself how the hell do I finance 45 million? It was such a colossal leap. Later, I realised I would need to create a totally new package.”

The package Nally wrote was the ‘Intersoccer 4’ programme, a four-year schedule of competitions, including the 1979 Gold Cup in Uruguay (involving Germany, England and Italy), the 1980 European Championships, which entailed a rights-buy from Uefa, the Toyota Cup between the club champions of Europe and the club champions of South America, and, of course, the 1982 World Cup itself.

“All I can remember is that the total nut that I needed to crack for the whole programme was a modest 135m Swiss francs. We held the risk and had to fund that whole project which is why people like Franz Beckenbauer got involved because Horst was trying to get financiers in because we had no money. He was bringing in all sorts of shady characters. We didn’t use them because I got Coca-Cola again.”

Selling Intersoccer 4
Coca-Cola came in as a cornerstone of the project and took a “fairly healthy chunk of the risk”, says Nally. “They had an expanded position, a favoured treaty and why not because they’d been my client! I did a favoured treaty agreement with Coke and then I started selling the rest – which everyone said I couldn’t do – into the Intersoccer4 programme.

Seeking to fill the portfolio with multinationals, he understood that unlike most US companies, Japanese firms like Seiko, Toyota and Panasonic were the only ones that had central control of their marketing budgets for a global campaign.

Japanese advertising agency Dentsu started to take notice, but Nally eventually made a deal with Dentsu rival Hakuhodo. “Dentsu cooperated on one or two other sports projects but kept saying it [Intersoccer 4] was too expensive. I said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not too expensive, this is what I have to do’. I also needed a Japanese agency because back in those days moving money internationally was an absolute nightmare, so I had Hakuhodo suddenly helping me and becoming very powerful. They hated Dentsu.”

Nally brought in brands like Seiko, JVC, Fuji Film and Gillette for Spain 1982. “Somehow, I did it, but I did too well because by doing it, it showed to Horst that, bloody hell, this is a monster! It also woke up Dentsu.”

End game
With Nally’s success in selling World Cup rights and Dassler’s influence at the heart of Fifa, the duo used their jointly-held, Monte Carlo-based company, Société Monegasque du Promotion Internationale (SMPI) to sell rights for the 1983 to 1986 rights cycle, which culminated with the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Nally pre-sold the programme at a 25-per-cent increase on the 20m Swiss Francs paid by sponsors for the 1979 to 1982 package, and then pre-sold the 1987 to 1990 programme as well.

But the partnership did not hold. When Dentsu offered Dassler $55m to block Nally and Hakuhodo, the Adidas man headed for the exit. A joint-venture between Adidas and Dentsu, International Sports and Leisure – better known as ISL – sprang up to sell the rights.

“I didn’t see that coming,” reflects Nally. “I knew there were fights within Adidas and that he needed money and I had agreed to buy him out, but did I see somebody coming out of the woodwork with a vast sum of money for a gift? No.

“Adidas and Dentsu set up ISL from nowhere – and used that money and all the Coca-Cola money and all my sponsors to get the rights in Mexico. And Horst, of course, still had control of Havelange.”

Havelange had a long reign, serving 24 years as Fifa president before Blatter was elected in 1998. Dassler, who led Adidas from December 1984, died less than three years later at the age of 51.

“I’m sure had he lived, because of the relationship he and I had, we would have bonded. I wouldn’t have worked for ISL in a million years, but he would have compensated me, given me an improved position. Fundamentally, he’d had no choice. He said that with me I was paying him the money, but I would have controlled everything. I would have had the relationship with Havelange, Samaranch and [IAAF president] Primo Nebiolo, therefore I would be the monster.”

And there was one other legacy of the split that lived on at ISL: “There was one thing that I and Horst never agreed on. He wanted to make these payments to these individuals, like Havelange who wasn’t paid a salary by Fifa, and I was saying avidly, ‘No we do not, I’ve got no desire to do that’ – and there was no need. He would say, ‘You are too Anglo-Saxon, you don’t understand how these things work. We have to pay him money, because then we’ve got the control’.”

Epilogue
ISL, the company that Dassler built, collapsed in 2001. Having been awarded the right to sell Fifa’s broadcast and commercial rights, for 1994 and 1998, with an option on 2002, the company overextend itself with rights obligations in other sports and went bankrupt.

It would later emerge that millions of dollars had been paid out by ISL in bribes to Fifa officials in a scandal that would expose Havelange and other senior members of the executive committee. This was the prelude to further investigations into Fifa corruption that would lead to the arrest of exco members and the downfall of Blatter himself.

[Chester Perry]

Things are starting to get stressful for some fans in the EFL - first Derby, the Rams Trust have RamsGroup have sent a let to the clubs seeing to know what is going on regards the proposed takeover by Derventio Holdings

https://twitter.com/GroupRams/status/13 ... 3127076867

Burnley fans will not be surprised that Charlton fans have been quick on the case to offer their concern and support

https://twitter.com/freeCAFC/status/1357820530825568256

[Chester Perry]

Another set of fans were alarmed on Thursday night when Swindon Town's Chairman told local radio that the club was on the brink of financial collapse. It doesn't help that Swindon take advantage of the small business accounting rules and don't include Profit and Loss accounts in their financial reporting - a common theme in Leagues 1 and 2 and one the EFL could easily remedy (with enough votes). As you would expect fans groups are concerned

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/new ... lee-power/

[Chester Perry]

In what is probably no surprise to anyone the European Leagues have voiced concerns about the proposals for a revised Champions and Europa League format - from the Guardian

European leagues voice concerns over Champions League expansion plans
Group stage could be replaced by 36-team league from 2024
Proposals would raise number of autumn games from six to 10

Fri 5 Feb 2021 21.13 GMT PA Media

Uefa’s proposals for more matchdays in a new-look Champions League are a cause for strong concern, according to the body representing domestic leagues across Europe.

European football’s governing body has put forward plans for a new format from 2024 featuring one 36-team league replacing the current group stage, where every team plays 10 matches.

Accommodating four additional games in the autumn will be a challenge for many leagues, including England where the Carabao Cup’s future would be under severe threat.

The members of the European Leagues group – made up of 37 competitions from 30 different countries including England’s Premier League – met on Friday to discuss the proposals, and while it welcomed some aspects of Uefa’s plan, it also has some serious misgivings.

“The European Leagues have raised strong concerns about more matchdays in such a flexible system in an already very congested calendar,” the group’s statement read.

An increase to eight matches from the current six might be something the leagues would consider, sources have said.

European Leagues’ mission is to maintain the competitive balance between and within domestic competitions, and the statement indicated some unhappiness over plans to alter the qualification process.

It is understood three clubs will qualify based on their Uefa co-efficient which looks at past performance, meaning European heavyweights such as Manchester United and Real Madrid could still qualify even if they missed out on qualification via the conventional route.

The inclusion of these places in the Uefa proposals is seen as a means to head off the threat of a European super league, but the European Leagues group expressed concern over the planned changes.

Sources close to the discussions said there would be a preference for the four additional places to be used to widen access to national champions from countries which do not automatically qualify, rather than give further places to clubs from Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues.

The statement continued: “(The European Leagues) also questioned the possible impact of access as well as commercial components on the sporting and financial balance of domestic leagues. Finally, they discussed several options regarding financial redistribution.”

European Leagues said the ‘Swiss system’ was “an improvement compared to the more radical proposals that emerged in 2019”.

Earlier plans championed by European Club Association (ECA) president Andrea Agnelli had been criticised by European Leagues as being tantamount to a “closed league”, so that is at least a step forward towards consensus.

It is understood qualification for the last 16 would be changed so that the top eight teams in the 36-team league would automatically reach the knockout phase, while the next 16 teams in the table would play off for the final eight places.

Altogether there would be 225 matches in the competition compared to 125 now, which clearly is a concern for European Leagues.

Talks between Uefa, European Leagues, the ECA and other stakeholder groups will now continue.

The European Leagues’ concern about how “flexible” the Swiss system is reflects the fact that although 10 matches are proposed at the moment, there is the scope to add more, which Agnelli said last week he saw as a positive.

It is understood Uefa’s proposal does not include anything about how revenue from the new-look competition would be distributed at this stage. League sources feel this is a vital part of reaching an agreement.

[Chester Perry]

This will be an interesting read when it is finally produced - from Sheffield Hallam University

05 FEBRUARY 2021
Project launched to assess financial impact of Covid-19 on professional football clubs

Academics at Sheffield Hallam are to analyse the financial impact of Covid-19 on professional football clubs in England and the wider impact on their communities

Press contact: Greg Mattocks-Evans | g.mattocks-evans@shu.ac.uk

The 15-month £48,000 research project will focus specifically on teams in League One and League Two, many of which are on the brink of collapse due to the pandemic.

In the last year, one community has already lost its professional football club, Bury FC, and other communities have been affected by the demise of semi-professional clubs, such as Rhyl FC.

The project will be led by senior lecturer in sport finance Dr Dan Plumley, head of department for finance, accounting and business systems, Dr Rob Wilson, Professor of human resource management and employment relations, Peter Prowse, and Professor Simon Shibli of the Sport Industry Research Centre.

Project lead, Dr Dan Plumley, senior lecturer in sport finance said: “We are delighted to have secured some funding to examine the impact of Covid-19 on the financial situation in English football.

“We know that clubs have been really struggling since the start of this pandemic and this research will enable us to see the wider impact across the clubs and their communities.

“We are hopeful that we can use the research as a springboard to drive recommendations for the industry moving forward in a post-Covid world and enable them to support each other better in times of economic hardship.”

By counting the cost of the Covid-19 pandemic through financial and economic analysis, and on the roles many undertake to support football clubs, a key aim of the project is to outline governance reforms that could be used to make the football eco-system more resilient.

Dr Rob Wilson, head of department for finance, accounting and business systems said: “From an internal perspective, it is great to work on a project that showcases cross-collaboration between different departments, making use of the terrific expertise that the University has to promote applied research that can have an impact across the sporting landscape”.

The research is being funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), as part of UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to Covid-19.

[Stevie Morgan]

Is this it? Is this the bubble finally starting to burst?