Football's Magic Money Tree

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Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jan 11, 2021 5:59 pm

I have posted about how "fans" (sic) use social media to back their club to hilt without ever thinking things through first previously on this thread. Recently it took a slightly different turn following comments from Karen Carney on Leeds whilst employed as a pundit on a Leeds game. There was a response from the club's twitter channel, supported and retweeted by the club's owner which then led to horrendous abuse (as the self style biggest club in the universe's fanbase piled in. There is of course likely to be significant fallout from this for the club too - for now the Unoffical Partner Podcast looks at the story from a more sports business perspective (that is it;s purpose afterall) - it is quite thought provoking

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... eeds-tweet

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 12, 2021 2:09 am

seems like common sense has finally been knocked into some clubs though I am sure some players and agents will resist - Covid provisions are starting to enter new contracts - from Sky Sports

Premier League and EFL clubs including 'Covid clauses' in new contracts
JANUARY 11, 2021
Premier League and EFL clubs are trying to include new legal guarantees in player contracts to cover themselves if the coronavirus pandemic worsens.

New "Covid clauses" are being included in many loan deals which mean they can be cancelled and fees at least in part recouped if coronavirus leads to further interruptions in the football season, Sky Sports News has been told.

These clauses have led to more complex negotiations between clubs than ever before.

Many clubs are also trying to future-proof themselves by including legal small print in new contracts - for new and existing players - that would mean pay cuts, if games continue to be played behind closed doors beyond the end of this season.

Aston Villa's scheduled Premier League match against Tottenham on Wednesday is the fifth to be postponed because of Covid-19.

The Premier League has not discussed the possibility of a circuit break for the season despite the growing number of positive cases.

A season-high 40 positive coronavirus cases were recorded last week.

The EFL reported 112 positive tests from its strategic league-wide testing programme last week.

The winter transfer window is open until Monday February 1 at 11pm.

Follow all the news and analysis on Sky Sports News and across Sky Sports' digital platforms, including our dedicated Transfer Centre blog.
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FactualFrank
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by FactualFrank » Tue Jan 12, 2021 3:03 am

Chester.... a massive relief to know we're still looking out on the news.

Social media fans... it's how I make my living, so always watching. Will give an update tomorrow if worth reporting.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by The esk » Tue Jan 12, 2021 9:51 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Jan 08, 2021 9:27 pm
more examples of how MSD Holdings raise money which they then loan out - including contributions from our friend The Esk - it doesn't come cheap to them and definitely not cheap to those they lend too - remember that Includes Southampton and Derby (at the time of this fund raising also previously to Sunderland

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 8756404224
Just on the funding vehicle that MSD UK is using. The loan notes are listed on The International Stock Exchange in Guernsey. The underlying funds which invested in the loan notes are other investment vehicles owned by Michael Dell. This is a means of transferring profit from the taxable UK entity (MSD UK Holdings) to the non-taxable Guernsey loan notes.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 12, 2021 12:34 pm

The esk wrote:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 9:51 am
Just on the funding vehicle that MSD UK is using. The loan notes are listed on The International Stock Exchange in Guernsey. The underlying funds which invested in the loan notes are other investment vehicles owned by Michael Dell. This is a means of transferring profit from the taxable UK entity (MSD UK Holdings) to the non-taxable Guernsey loan notes.
Paul, I had noted that in your response to Kieran. Are you able to identify where the funds raised for the ALK loan (issued in late December came from - I am assuming monies raised in October were for an alternative purpose - I could be wrong in that of course.

Also does MSD always use other Dell monies or does it actually goo out to the real marketplace as well? I suspect this could get really convoluted quite quickly.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 12, 2021 1:34 pm

It is that time again for UEFA as it readies it's distributions for it's club competitions in the next cycle - there will be a third one of course - the Europa Conference - but don't expect the Champions League bigwigs to be sharing any of their monies - this from goal.com rehashes a lot but treat that as a refresher

The great Champions League illusion: A European Super League in all but name
Mark Doyle - Deputy Features Editor - Last updated 21 hours ago

UEFA will soon make a decision on revenue distribution that will tell us much about the direction in which the game is moving
Former UEFA chief executive Gerhard Aigner once dismissed the potential for a European Super League as "an illusion" – but its power is very real.

In August 1998, a group of unexpected visitors turned up at Lenart Johansson's holiday home in Switzerland.

Representatives from Media Partners, the Italian conglomerate, surprised the UEFA president with a bold proposal for the launch of a new competition for Europe's top clubs backed by Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi, Leo Kirch and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.

Their 'Super League' would consist of 32 teams, including 16 founder members who would be guaranteed participation for at least the first three seasons.

The participants would be split into two divisions and would play 15 games per season, facing each team in their division home or away – but not both.

The top eight clubs in each division at the end of the regular season would then enter a knockout stage or round-robin tournament to determine a champion.

Media Partners claimed that the participants would receive, on average, £16.8 million ($22.8m) – before prize money was even taken into account. To put that in context, Manchester United had earned only £6.5m ($8.8m) from reaching the quarter-finals of the previous season's Champions League.

The 1998 Super League proposal was dismissed by UEFA but, tellingly, the Champions League was increased from 55 teams to 71 just two years later, allowing up to four teams from Europe's biggest countries to enter for the first time, while more games were created with the addition of a second group stage.

Consequently, that summer's day in Switzerland would be the last time anyone in football was ever again taken by surprise by the threat of a Super League. It returns, regular as clockwork, every single time Europe's biggest and richest clubs have a grievance with the governance of the game.

"And the threat of a Super League always ends with UEFA promising the big clubs more revenue, " Tsjalle van der Burg, an assistant professor in Economics at the University of Twente, tells Goal.

"As long as UEFA is doing that, there will be no Super League. However, by constantly meeting the big clubs' demands because of the threats, we will end up with a format that closely resembles a Super League."

Thus, the re-emergence of Super League speculation at the tail end of 2020 was entirely expected. The current agreement on the international match calendar will expire in 2024, meaning there is scope for restructuring the continental club game, and preliminary talks among the game's major stakeholders are already under way.

The future format of UEFA's flagship event, the Champions League, is understandably drawing much of the media and fan focus. Will the group stage be expanded in 2024? Will the qualification process change? Will certain clubs be guaranteed participation?

These are all valid and fascinating questions, and the answers will have a massive impact on European football as a whole. However, of even greater significance will be the decision taken on the distribution of UEFA Club Competitions (UCC) revenue. As Goal has learned, UEFA will discuss the matter in talks with some of the game's stakeholders later this week.

Football has experienced rapid financial growth over the past decade and the gap between Europe's richest and poor clubs is not just increasing – it is accelerating at a rapid rate.

The size of a club's coffers is influenced by three primary revenue streams: its domestic league's broadcasting deal, its own commercial contracts, and UCC money.

Sponsorship deals are obviously important and influential. United, for example, may not have enjoyed much on-field success since Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement in 2013, but they remain a commercial colossus due to their global appeal and make millions from partnership deals.

The significance of TV money cannot be overstated either. One only has to look at the wealth of the Premier League to see evidence of the incredible effect rights deals can have on a domestic competition.

As pointed out in the European Leagues' study 'The Financial Landscape of European Football', a quarter of all expenditure on broadcast content in Europe is allocated to football. We are clearly no longer talking about the people's game, then, but a lucrative entertainment industry.

However, the area which has experienced the biggest growth over the past 10 years is UCC distributions.

"European fixtures are already the biggest distortive factor in the competitiveness of domestic competitions, including the Premier League," Kevin Miles, chief executive of the Football Supporters' Association (FSA), tells Goal.

"The Premier League has a distribution model which has been relatively flat, with relatively being the key word. A big chunk of their money is shared out equally. You then have the competition prize money, which is determined by where you finish in the league. However, there was an element of the wealth being shared among all the clubs, and an element of solidarity with the rest of the pyramid.

"But every time there is a proposal for a European Super League and it gets knocked back, there follows an appeasing adjustment in the Premier League in favour of the biggest clubs. The last time it happened, there was a change in the distribution of international broadcasting rights revenue. So, a bigger proportion went to the big clubs.

"With this latest threat, what we're likely to see is a reduction in the size of the Premier League, from 20 teams to 18 or even 16, meaning fewer domestic games but more space for European fixtures, which will only shift the balance even more in favour of those playing in UEFA competitions."

Indeed, the top three clubs in each of the 'Big Five' European leagues accounted for, on average, 85 per cent of the revenue their country received during the previous UCC cycle (2015-18). In short, increasing sums of money are going to a decreasing number of clubs.

With the rich getting richer, it is becoming ever more difficult for the poorer clubs to qualify for the Champions League, which means they are only falling further behind. It is a vicious cycle that will mean only a small group of teams will soon be able to compete for domestic and European trophies.

One of the biggest arguments against a Super League is, as UEFA themselves have claimed, that a closed-off competition devoid of promotion and relegation would be "boring". However, we are already in danger of reaching that point within the existing framework.

Sport retains its ability to surprise, of course – Leicester City in England and Atalanta in Italy provide recent evidence of that – while it must be acknowledged some clubs and indeed leagues are simply bigger than others for historical reasons that are rooted in cultural and socio-economic factors.

However, there is clearly something very wrong with the system when one considers that Paris Saint-Germain have won seven of the past eight Ligue 1 titles, Bayern Munich are on course for a ninth consecutive Bundesliga crown, and Juventus are looking to make it 10 Scudetti in a row in Serie A.

Even the supposedly uber-competitive Premier League is experiencing worrying trends. Leicester pulled off a miracle by winning the title in 2016, but Manchester City and Liverpool have since made 90-plus points hauls the norm for a championship-winning side.

As La Liga president Javier Tebas has argued in the past, the problem is not that big teams have continued winning titles over the past 10 years – but how they are winning those titles.

Records are falling at a ridiculous rate. During the past decade, we have seen teams win leagues with 100 points or more in Italy, England and Spain. Smaller clubs are being reduced to also-rans.

It has taken a pandemic to level the playing field somewhat. Even Europe's elite have been affected by the financial crisis caused by the Covid-19 outbreak – Barcelona are flirting with bankruptcy while Real Madrid did not spend a cent last summer – and the congested fixture list has resulted in numerous injuries and widespread fatigue.

As a result, we are seeing bizarre results and tighter title races in leagues that have been dominated by one super-club for the past decade. This apparent equality will not last, though. Particularly as the pandemic has only panicked the game's top clubs.

It has accelerated their need for stability and certainty. The European Club Association (ECA) is pushing hard for Champions League reform because its members want more guarantees and less unpredictability. So, while the latest Super League chatter may have upset football fans, it was welcomed by Juventus and ECA chairman Andrea Agnelli and those he represents. In a way, the fan backlash suits UEFA too.

They may be forced to cede to more requests from the clubs than they would like, but when an agreement is eventually reached over the reformation of the Champions League – and it surely will be – president Aleksander Ceferin will still be able to boast about having staved off the threat of a Super League once again.

However, the revamped Champions League could still retain most of the Super League's proposed elements: an expanded group stage and qualification based on historical results rather than pure sporting merit.

What is absolutely essential, then, is that UEFA also endeavours to protect the rest of Europe's clubs – and not just those competing in its continental competitions.

UCC distribution money may have increased enormously over the past 10 years, but solidarity payments have fallen behind and, thus, remain relatively small.

The amount of money UEFA distributes to every national association is determined by a variety of factors. For example, countries which had a representative in the Champions League group stage receive a higher figure.

Generally, this money is shared among the 650 or so clubs who did not play in the group stage of either the Champions League (32) or the Europa League (48) and, between 2009 and 2018, non-participating solidarity payments grew in line with UCC payments.

However, a new three-year broadcasting cycle began ahead of the 2018-19 season, which resulted in a massive divergence and saw Champions League and European League payments increase by 50%, but solidarity payments grow by just 20%.

Consequently, we now find ourselves in a situation where 93% of UCC club distributions are being shared between Champions League (80%) and Europa League participants (20%), with the remaining 7% being split between teams eliminated in the qualifying rounds and those that did not participate at all.

With a new cycle set to begin, there is a very real danger that the goalposts are set to be moved again, and the 650 clubs not competing in Europe will receive an even smaller slice of the pie, meaning if a team is not regularly competing in the Champions League, it will have little chance of competing at all.

The counter-argument will be, of course, that the Europa Conference League is being introduced for the benefit of smaller clubs. However, many questions remain unanswered at the time of writing.

As Kieran Maguire, author of 'The Price of Football', tells Goal, "UEFA have been very quiet about distribution payments from next season, particularly in relation to the Conference. I can't see the big clubs in the Champions League being willing to give up any of the money they earn from their 80 per cent share of UCC revenue.

"So, where will the money for the Conference come from? Will it come from UEFA's coffers? Is it supposed to be self-financing? Because the broadcasters I've spoken to certainly aren't interested in the tournament. It's a glorified version of the EFL Trophy!"

The purpose of the Europa Conference League is to appease and generate money for the biggest clubs in Europe's smaller leagues, but this is not an adequate solution to financial inequality. Qualifying round payments are already having just as big a distortive effect on smaller leagues as Champions League participation within the 'Big Five' leagues.

And competitive balance is suffering as a consequence, with the same teams winning titles every year now, and often by record-breaking margins.

What happens next, then, is absolutely crucial to the future of football. It is essential that all clubs are looked after, and that all voices are heard. UEFA must listen to the fans, as well as the clubs, leagues and broadcasters.

UEFA could also do with some help and Van der Burg believes that the European Union (EU) could remove the threat of a Super League once and for all, thus allowing the governing body to focus solely on reform.

"My view is that the Super League itself, and the threats of a Super League, are incompatible with Article 101 of the EU's competition law,” says Van der Burg, who has written a paper on the matter. "So, the EU should tell the football sector that it doesn’t want any more threats of a breakaway.

"By removing those threats, UEFA’s full power would be restored, allowing it to follow through on Ceferin’s stated goal of improving the competitive balance in European football. Doing so would make the present format more interesting to the fans again, which, in turn, would end the possibility of the Super League becoming a more appealing system than the current one."

A decision on UCC revenue distribution for the next cycle, between 2021 and 2024, is expected to be made by the summer and, significantly, European Leagues have asked that UEFA doubles solidarity payments for non-participating clubs to 8% – a request backed by the majority of clubs and fans across Europe.

UEFA's response, then, will provide us with a clear indicator of the direction in which the game is headed.

If no attempt is made to reverse – or at least halt – the current rate of divergence between UCC distribution money and solidarity payments, we will know that some clubs and leagues will be left fighting a losing battle while the elite look forward to a new Champions League tailored to their specific needs.

UEFA will, of course, battle to ensure that the tournament remains open to everyone, but the economic disparity it would perpetuate by ceding to the clubs' principal demands will effectively close the Champions League's doors to all but a select few.

The Champions League would, thus, become an illusion itself; a European Super League in everything but name.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 12, 2021 1:58 pm

The Daily Mail has picked up on an article from a regional Catalan news outlet about the the growing debt at Barcelona - it is a be dramatic but the finances of the club are not great

Barcelona 'are approaching a BILLION EUROS in debt', leaving the club fighting to avoid insolvency
JANUARY 12, 2021

Barcelona's growing debt is set to force the club into a period of dramatic austerity, with the Catalan giants owing nearly £1billion to creditors.

The LaLiga side announced during the 2019-20 season that it expected to be the first club to break the £1bn barrier for income in a single year in football, however that figure was blown off course by the coronavirus pandemic.

As a result, the club took a loss of almost $100m (£73.5m) for the campaign, and there are concerns this season could be worse.

And according to Catalonia's leading newspaper La Vanguardia, that has added to the total the club owes, with a net debt of €500m being topped up by a 'runaway' deficit amounting to more than €400m.

The piece explains that the next president and his board will have to deal with the situation as a priority, with €420m of that debt owed in the next 12 months.

That is something the club cannot currently afford, and so a expensive restructuring of those debts will likely be needed, throwing the club into a further financial hole.

There is also the small matter of the club's wage bill, which was restructured by Josep Bartomeu in the height of the cornavirus pandemic in a bid to ease the club's outgoings last year.

That saw players agree to forego nearly half the entire wage bill, with €170m of the €355m paid to stars annually withheld.

Boss Ronald Koeman has been forced to be pragmatic in his hunt for new additions on the field
However, that money is still due to be paid, with €45m extra due to players each year for the next four seasons.

This is a huge extra burden on the Nou Camp outfit, which already spend 70 per cent of its budget on transfers and wages. In fact, no football club in the world spends more money on wages than Blaugrana.

There are issues, too, with the budget agreed for this current campaign, with the projected income of €791million based on several theoretical issues, some of which it is already clear have not - and will not - come to fruition.

That budget was based on fans being allowed back into the Nou Camp from December, with the stadium opened at 25 per cent capacity. That has not happened, nor is it likely that the target of a full Nou Camp by February will be met.

Barcelona's form on the pitch is slowly improving after a disastrous start to the new campaign
Indeed, €320m of that figure is meant to be generated by fans visiting the stadium, museum and club stores along with other services. It appears a wholly fanciful one in the current climate.

One source told La Vanguardia: 'Those accounts also included expectations of renewal with sponsors such as Rakuten - €55m - or Beko, €19m, which will not be met.'

Fingers are being pointed at Bartomeu and the legacy he is leaving behind, with a series of highly expensive signings having failed to make the grade at Barcelona in the form of Ousmane Dembele, Philippe Coutinho and Antoine Griezmann.

Lionel Messi is still due a further €39million payment as part of his latest contract agreement
The current predicament played it's part in the saga involving the future of Lionel Messi during the summer.

The player's unhappiness was caused in part by the club dragging its feet on a €39m payment due to him as part of his contract.

Eventually that was paid in July, however a second payment for the same amount is due at the end of the current season.but it has been reported this has been absorbed in the outstanding wages due over the next four years.

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 12, 2021 4:02 pm

the small Shareholders at our club have been "exiled" for a number of years at our club, and I do not expect that to change under the new ownership, but what can small shareholders actually do? - our friend The Esk makes a great case for their role in overall governance as a direct result of accountability to and scrutiny by them - it is a worthy read and more so for Burnley fans who no longer have these general meetings

https://theesk.org/2021/01/11/the-signi ... nity-lost/
This user liked this post: The esk

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 12, 2021 4:24 pm

you may have read today that City Football Group have a new signed another club - only this club is a partner, who will be paying for the privilege for access to CFG knowhow - Bolivar is the biggest and most successful club in Bolivia - you may remember I posted about the problems the Bolivian league was experiencing in the early autumn and how the Chairman of Bolivar offered to supply the media rights to the league - they are still having problems by the way.

@TariqPanja with a little snippet that brings into clear light as to why this relationship is occurring - it is a repeating theme with these companies (you can add in Reliance from India and SilverLake from the US)

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 6258489345

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:53 pm

Southampton release their 2019/20 Annual Report and financial Statements - I have been saying for a while they are running a financially unstable operation and this underlines it - wages at 90% of revenues *and yes there was a revenue shortfall but that is bonkers - we will not be anywhere near that and we will be posting 13 months of wages

https://www.southamptonfc.com/supporter ... statements

@KieranMaguire has had a quick look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 5535399945

it should be noted that Southampton are paying MSD interest at 9.14% which is less than I thought but still quite a bit above business commercial rates

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:16 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 4:24 pm
you may have read today that City Football Group have a new signed another club - only this club is a partner, who will be paying for the privilege for access to CFG knowhow - Bolivar is the biggest and most successful club in Bolivia - you may remember I posted about the problems the Bolivian league was experiencing in the early autumn and how the Chairman of Bolivar offered to supply the media rights to the league - they are still having problems by the way.

@TariqPanja with a little snippet that brings into clear light as to why this relationship is occurring - it is a repeating theme with these companies (you can add in Reliance from India and SilverLake from the US)

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 6258489345
Everton also announced a partnership with a club today - a bit different, but still not a bad idea - Sligo Rovers

https://www.evertonfc.com/news/1971159/ ... artnership

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Vegas Claret » Wed Jan 13, 2021 4:15 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:53 pm
Southampton release their 2019/20 Annual Report and financial Statements - I have been saying for a while they are running a financially unstable operation and this underlines it - wages at 90% of revenues *and yes there was a revenue shortfall but that is bonkers - we will not be anywhere near that and we will be posting 13 months of wages

https://www.southamptonfc.com/supporter ... statements

@KieranMaguire has had a quick look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 5535399945

it should be noted that Southampton are paying MSD interest at 9.14% which is less than I thought but still quite a bit above business commercial rates
and that deal was signed when interest rates were surely higher than now. Hopefully we got a lower rate than you speculated

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 11:54 am

Vegas Claret wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 4:15 am
and that deal was signed when interest rates were surely higher than now. Hopefully we got a lower rate than you speculated
not convinced by that, or as to where the money was raised (the Dell family office is known to move it's own money round for these types of loans) so exchange rates could have been a factor also

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:12 pm

Episode 9 of Unofficial Partner's "The Bundle" Podcast

the blurb
Today’s podcast is episode 9 of The Bundle, our regular series of conversations about sports media and the streaming market with co-host Yannick Ramcke.

We start in France by picking apart the ongoing saga in the country’s top football league following Mediapro’s premature exit from its huge domestic rights agreement, which leaves a trail of uncertainty among clubs, players and fans, with Canal Plus seemingly the only entity ready to pick up the pieces and at a fraction of the price promised by Mediapro.

Secondly, another regular appearance on The Bundle for DAZN, this time using them as the way in to a conversation about how the new generation of streaming sports sites are pricing their products and repackaging their OTT content for linear channels.

Then we look at the metrics around Amazon’s recent streaming of NFL games in the US, BeIN’s recent rights acquisitions and look ahead to the upcoming Serie A rights auction.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... e-bundle-9

EDIT the discussion on Amazon's exclusive airing of an NFL game is fascinating and further illustrates that going digital only for rights is not yet financially sustainable for leagues, and that it is likely that we are 3 or more cycles away before it becomes viable
Last edited by Chester Perry on Wed Jan 13, 2021 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:23 pm

and speaking of that French football tv rights deal collapse - this from the Financial Times echoes much of what I suggested early in the summer and then in the Autumn about how Canal+ are now in the driving seat - what isn't talked about is the rapid churn in ownership that French football has experienced as (like in England, Italy and a lesser extent Spain) local owners have been replaced by International investors - it is the new owners that voted for this deal.

French football’s slow-motion crisis should open door to change
LEILA ABBOUD JANUARY 13, 2021

Kylian Mbappe reacts after missing a chance during the French League One soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Brest © AP
The Covid-19 pandemic has decimated a raft of industries from airlines to restaurants. The beautiful game has not been immune. Across Europe, football clubs are facing steep falls in ticket, merchandise and sponsorship revenue as matches are played in empty stadiums and lockdowns scramble schedules.

Nowhere is this more true than in France, where the top division, Ligue 1, has been stuck in a slow-motion crisis since October when its broadcast partner Mediapro simply stopped paying instalments on its €780m annual TV rights deal. The heavily indebted Spanish company sought court protection from creditors and begged the league for a price cut.

Although Mediapro blamed coronavirus, its problems largely stemmed from its inability to convince enough people to sign up to its newly created Téléfoot channel. After much acrimony, Mediapro wrangled a deal with the league to return the 2020-2024 TV rights altogether and pay only a fraction of what it owed: €100m, according to L’Equipe newspaper, although it missed payments worth about €325m. The debacle has left a huge hole in the finances of French clubs and prompted much soul searching on how things went so wrong.

The answer is simple: greed. French clubs chose the unproven Mediapro in 2018 because it far outbid far other candidates, including the longtime football broadcaster pay-TV provider Canal Plus. The clubs bet that Mediapro would bring a historical windfall to the French league by increasing its TV rights valuation closer to that of the UK and Spain and helping it better compete in Europe. Instead, Mediapro plunged French football into a historical crisis.

The league is now scrambling to find a new broadcaster ahead of January 31, the date until which Mediapro has agreed to keep screening the matches. Canal Plus, owned by Vivendi, is the most likely choice — but it is in a strong position to dictate terms since there are no other bidders.

The consequences of Mediapro’s exit are already being felt across French football. While big clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain — which has a deep-pocketed owner in Qatar Sports Investments — can weather the storm, smaller ones face tough decisions.

Bordeaux announced plans on Saturday to fire 10 per cent of its staff, and its owner King Street Capital — a US investment company — reportedly wants to sell the club. The president of the Breton club Rennes warned of a coming reckoning and said it would post a €40m loss in 2020.

Clubs with high debts, such as Lille, are in a particularly vulnerable position. Owner Gérard Lopez sold Lille to an investment fund after coming under pressure in December from debt holders, the US hedge fund Elliott Management and JPMorgan.

Resetting club finances must start with trimming their biggest expense — players’ salaries. The league and a union representing French players are scheduled to meet this week to discuss potential pay cuts. Some clubs will also probably try to raise more funds by selling players.

French football should not let this crisis go to waste. The smallest of the big five leagues in Europe by revenues, the French league has become unbalanced and uncompetitive, with few teams able to keep up with Qatari-owned PSG. The club has won the title in seven out of the past 10 years. No wonder people are not rushing to sign up for expensive TV packages.

Football experts have floated several ways to breathe new life into the French league, such as splitting up the TV money more equitably between clubs or imposing a salary cap.

The UK’s Premier League is Europe’s most egalitarian in how it splits up TV money, according to François Godard of Enders Analysis. Before Covid-19, the top UK clubs earned 1.3 times the domestic TV revenues of the median club. The gap is 2.5 in France and Germany and 3.1 in Spain.

Another idea would be for the French league to create a separate company to commercialise its TV rights, something that Italy did last year in a bid to relaunch Serie A. More drama could be injected into the league if a second big club was created in Paris to be a cross-city rival to PSG.

Vincent Labrune, who recently took over as the head of France’s professional football league, has signalled an openness to change, calling for “redesigns of the formats of competitions” and perhaps reducing the number of teams. Without such boldness, the French league risks falling into a spiral of decline.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:27 pm

In my last post I talked about the volume of ownership change in France - this tweet from CIES Sports Intelligence illustrates that change in graphic detail

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 3978504192

that mediapro tv deal also covered Ligue 2 in France the ownership change there is significant

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 3383086080

it follows a trend across Europe that showed a high volume of ownership changes

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 5445488642

note how many were by US Investors and look at the picture in the Premier League now

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 1166478336

CIES Sports Intelligence have also produced this about the longevity of current owners in Italy

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 8100568066

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:43 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 4:24 pm
you may have read today that City Football Group have a new signed another club - only this club is a partner, who will be paying for the privilege for access to CFG knowhow - Bolivar is the biggest and most successful club in Bolivia - you may remember I posted about the problems the Bolivian league was experiencing in the early autumn and how the Chairman of Bolivar offered to supply the media rights to the league - they are still having problems by the way.

@TariqPanja with a little snippet that brings into clear light as to why this relationship is occurring - it is a repeating theme with these companies (you can add in Reliance from India and SilverLake from the US)

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 6258489345
a little bit more on that relationship between CFG And the owner of Bolivar

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 0180464641
Last edited by Chester Perry on Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:46 pm

Question - How many English league clubs can you name that have invested in Belgium as part of a multi-club strategy?

Did anyone get to 7 - I know I didn't

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel/sta ... 2324613138

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by aggi » Wed Jan 13, 2021 2:54 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:16 am
Everton also announced a partnership with a club today - a bit different, but still not a bad idea - Sligo Rovers

https://www.evertonfc.com/news/1971159/ ... artnership
I wonder if this is a workaround on the work permit rules? Different rules apply to Ireland but I don't know if that would be the case for other EU citizens working in Ireland.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:04 pm

aggi wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 2:54 pm
I wonder if this is a workaround on the work permit rules? Different rules apply to Ireland but I don't know if that would be the case for other EU citizens working in Ireland.
I think Matt Slater was hinting about that when he called the deal clever

https://twitter.com/mjshrimper/status/1 ... 8277083136

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:25 pm

Yesterday it was Leicester to day it is Sheffield United - factoring TV income (or is that Parachute payments) for another roll of the dice

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 6956181504

on the takeover thread I posted yesterday about how difficult it is to lift a club out of this endless spiral of loans and that while we have achieved it once it will be very difficult to do again - there is a way, slash and burn post relegation and failure to get back up quickly, but in all honesty who really wants to witness that at their club

On a side note it is interesting to see MacQuarie active again after the troubles back at home in Australia for the parent bank (I posted about that in the late summer) - it was always argued that the two were distinct entities and this revival of lending would seem to confirm that.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:48 pm

This tale related by @TariqPanja on a report in Le Figaro means French Football is not looking too secure at the moment

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 5690078208

that Le Figaro report

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... us-1029018

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 7:02 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sun Jan 10, 2021 3:56 am
last weekend Derby were insisting that their players had been paid paid all outstanding wages

https://footballleagueworld.co.uk/this- ... st-update/

this weekend it has emerged that still is not the case for a number of players

https://footballleagueworld.co.uk/this- ... st-update/
John Percy of the Telegraph reporting that players and execs at Derby have still not been paid for December - and the money still has not arrived for the takeover - I warned about this guy when he was first mooted at Derby - very similar to Liverpool and Newcastle just a bit further along

https://twitter.com/JPercyTelegraph/sta ... 4712940548

what is interesting is Mel's apparent refusal to put another penny in and the club having to go to MDS with a begging bowl - not sure they have anything left to secure the money with though

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:24 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Jan 04, 2021 6:57 pm
following the creation of a separate commercial rights company with Private Equity involvement Serie A has today revealed what can only be considered as extremely ambitious tenders for the domestic rights in the next cycle. Remember it is CVC who now control this process on their behalf. - From SportsBussiness.com

Serie A unveils packages as domestic broadcast rights tender issued
Martin Ross - January 4, 2021

Italian football’s Lega Serie A has today (Monday) launched its domestic broadcast rights sales process for the 2021-24 cycle, issuing a bid deadline of 10am (CET) on January 26.

The league has published separate invitation to tender documents for “communication operators” and “independent intermediaries”. A process has also been started for companies to express their interest in creating a thematic Serie A channel.

The rights for communication operators have been split up into three main packages, covering exclusive satellite platform rights (Package A), exclusive digital terrestrial platform rights (Package B) and co-exclusive internet, IPTV and mobile platform rights (Package C).

An optional ‘Gold’ package of ‘accessory rights’ has also been made available and can only be acquired by the purchaser of (at least) one of the main packages.

Package A commands a minimum reserve price of €500m ($613.4m) per season, with reserve figures of €400m and €250m per season set for Packages B and C, respectively. A minimum reserve price of €20m per season has been attached to the Gold package.

Alternatively, three packages of ‘mixed’ marketing packages are included in the ITT document. Package 1 includes rights across all platforms exclusively, while Package 2 comprises rights across all platforms but with only co-exclusivity for internet, IPTV and mobile rights. Package 3 includes the internet, IPTV and mobile rights held co-exclusively with the winner of Package 2.

A minimum reserve price of €750m per season has been set for Package 1, followed by prices of €250m and €150m per season for Packages 2 and 3, respectively.

The league’s stated aim of raising a minimum of €1.15bn per season from the sale of its domestic broadcast rights from 2021-22 to 2023-24 emerged at a league assembly meeting held last month. That represents an 18-per-cent increase on the €973m currently brought in annually through deals with pay-television broadcaster Sky Italia and subscription OTT platform DAZN.

The ITT for independent intermediaries offers a global package of rights and also carries a minimum reserve price of €1.15bn per season.

Sky Italia’s broadcast rights for the current rights cycle are comprised of two packages, the first of which, Package 5, includes rights to three matches per weekend for a total of 114 per season, including the 8:30pm game on Sunday. Sky also acquired Package 6 – four matches per weekend or 152 per season, including the 8:30pm match on Mondays.

Sky Italia was recently left reeling after its appeal against a ban on it acquiring exclusive digital media rights was thrown out by Italy’s Council of State. The decision means Sky’s ban on acquiring exclusive digital rights to sports properties is upheld and will extend through to 2022.

Sky Italia’s inability to target exclusive digital rights is expected to damage the level of bid that Lega Serie A could expect.

The launch of the domestic tender comes just weeks after Serie A clubs accepted an offer from private equity companies including CVC Capital Partners for a 10-per-cent stake in a new entity that will manage its media-rights business. That proposal, which is worth €1.7bn and also involves fellow private equity firm Advent International and Italy’s state-backed investor Fondo Strategico Italiano (FSI), has not yet been signed off, however, with no binding commitment in place.

International rights to the Italian top tier are already on the market following the issuing of an ITT (also from 2021-22 to 2023-24). That tender, which also includes rights to the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana, specifies that interested parties must lodge their bids by 10am on January 11.

In February, Italy’s antitrust authority (AGCM) cleared the way for the domestic rights auction after approving the guidelines set out by the league. The approval followed the green light given by Italy’s communications authority (AGCOM) and covers the sale of centralised rights to Serie A, the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa, along with the ‘Primavera’ youth league, cup and Supercoppa.

Within its approval, the competition watchdog backed the “preparation of packages that stimulate competition in the pay-television market, allowing more pay-television operators to be able to broadcast a large part of Serie A”.
some interesting news on those Serie A rights tenders - first up - Amazon have expressed an interest in the domestic rights according to reports - this from Reuters

Amazon plans to bid for Italy's Serie A TV rights - Bloomberg News
By Reuters Staff

Jan 13 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is planning to bid for the TV rights to Italy’s top-flight soccer league, Serie A, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The online retail giant plans to bid for streaming rights for its Prime Video service, the report said. (bloom.bg/3nKZ9lv)

The league set a Jan. 26 deadline to sell rights to the next three seasons, seeking at least 1.15 billion euros ($1.40 billion) apiece, the report added.

Amazon and Serie A did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. ($1 = 0.8226 euros) (Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't see them bidding 1.15 billion euros a season though - it may be that Amazon have bid for the International rights - there has been plenty of interest according to this report from SportsBusiness.com

Serie A international rights ‘attract 14 agency bids’, Mena tender readied
Alex Taylor - January 12, 2021

Italian football’s Lega Serie A has attracted a healthy number of bidders for Serie A international rights as the deadline for offers passed yesterday (Monday).

A total of 49 businesses are reported to have submitted bids, comprised of 35 broadcasters and 14 agencies. The rights are on offer for the three-season cycle between 2021-22 and 2023-24.

Lega Serie A is now in the process of reviewing all submitted bids ahead of the league assembly meeting on Thursday, where the award of the rights is on the agenda.

A financial target of a figure somewhere between the fee currently paid by the IMG agency and €500m ($607.6m) per season was outlined by the league upon the tender’s launch. However, the agency bids are likely to fall well short of that threshold given the sizable impact caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

IMG acquired the international rights from 2018-19 to 2020-21 in a deal originally worth just over €380m per season. That covers international broadcast rights, club archive rights, betting rights, a marketing spend and fee for access to the broadcast signal.

IMG, Infront and Mediapro are among the agencies to have bid, according to Milano Finanza, the Italian financial news website, along with the likes of Aser Ventures, the media group that owns subscription broadcaster Eleven, and the Disney-owned ESPN.

The rights in the Middle East and North Africa were carved out of the 2021-24 tender and an invitation to tender for those rights will be discussed on Thursday ahead of its launch.

The Mena tender will cover the same three-season cycle as the global tender.

The league’s relationship with its rights-holding broadcaster in the region, pay-television broadcaster beIN Media Group, became strained after Lega Serie A elected to host the Supercoppa in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom had enforced an economic blockade on Qatar, the home nation and state funder of beIN, though that has now been lifted. The ban on beIN’s broadcast licence in Saudi Arabia is, however, still in effect.

Continuing to suffer from the effect of pirate broadcasting operation beoutQ, beIN refused to show any Serie A matches on the 2019-20 season’s restart after the Covid-19 pandemic amid tensions over the league’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. However, beIN subsequently lifted the blackout after reaching a compensation deal with the league and IMG, which factored in lost exclusivity due to beoutQ’s activities.

The global 2021-24 ITT states that if the Supercoppa is played outside of Italy between 2021-22 and 2023-24, then rights to that competition may be awarded in the host country to “one single other broadcaster”.

Those rights, the document states, would be awarded “exclusively in regard to the specific season or seasons in which Supercoppa Italiana will take place in that country, without the [Coppa Italia/Supercoppa] licensee being entitled to any claims against Lega”. The league adds that the Supercoppa rights would therefore “be exercised by the licensee on a co-exclusive basis, in the aforementioned country, together with the broadcaster selected by Lega Serie A”.

The global tender was launched on November 23 and was divided into 57 packages, including 52 country-specific packages, four continental packages and one ‘global’ package. The tender also included rights to the knockout Coppa Italia competition and Supercoppa tournament with the packages covering these divided along the equivalent package lines as the league.

Bidders were entitled to submit offers for the Serie A package and/or the Coppa Italia package for the Global territory, one or more Continental territories and one or more country packages. Joint bids from consortia will be considered.

Lega Serie A has reserved the right to sell the betting and data rights separately.

Also on the agenda at the league meeting this week will be the possibility of broadcasting matches from the 2020-21 Coppa Italia and the Italian Super Cup via Serie A’s social media channels in markets where broadcast deals have not been struck.

‘Italian communities’ package
A key difference between the previous international tender and the 2021-24 offering is the exclusion of a package which carved out rights for Italian nationals abroad.

IMG ended up securing a €10m-per-season discount on its payment for the Serie A international rights as a settlement in a dispute over the way the league’s Italian-language rights were sold.

IMG had threatened to take the league to court for breach of contract regarding the performance of the league’s deal with Italian state broadcaster Rai for rights which, by law, the league must make available to Italian expatriate communities around the world. The agency claimed that the way the rights were sold prevented it from securing market value for its main rights package.

Rai paid €4m per season for a separate global, non-exclusive Italian-language rights package covering three matches per week. The matches are carried on its international general entertainment channel Rai Italia.

In the new tender, the Melandri Law is adhered to by requiring any licensees acquiring rights to make the rights to three matches per matchweek available in each market in the Italian language via an OTT platform.

However, Rai directors Riccardo Laganà and Rita Borioni have rounded on Lega Serie A for its decision to remove the package from the 2021-24 tender, arguing that it represented a “symbol of identity and belonging”.

In quotes published by the Calcio e Finanza website, the pair said: “The package for the Italian communities abroad, while guaranteeing the Lega a fair economic value, allowed Rai, through Rai Italia and its widespread distribution in the areas of the world with the greatest presence of our communities, not only to offer Italians abroad a sporting event of excellence and an opportunity for sharing and belonging.

“It also fully satisfied the provisions of the Melandri Law, which was intended to ensure maximum visibility of championship events to our distant compatriots.

“The legitimate interest of the League in maximising profits cannot conflict with the rights of Italians abroad and with the duty of Rai as a public-service broadcaster to defend its role towards them by all means.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:53 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sat Nov 28, 2020 1:44 am
The Mail are reporting that there are up to 6 bidders for West Brom

West Brom the subject of possible takeover interest from up to SIX parties... but the effects of the coronavirus pandemic means under-fire owner Guochuan Lai may struggle to get his £150m asking price
West Brom are the subject of takeover interest from up to six different parties
Current owner Guochuan Lai wants £150m but will struggle to achieve that
The Chinese businessman will likely take lower offer after coronavirus effects
By TOM COLLOMOSSE FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 00:30, 28 November 2020 | UPDATED: 00:31, 28 November 2020

West Brom are the subject of possible takeover interest from up to six parties but owner Guochuan Lai may struggle to achieve his £150million asking price for the club.

Sportsmail understands Albion have already held talks with at least three of the groups, two of which are based in the United States, and discussions are ongoing.

Lai bought the club from Jeremy Peace for about £200m in 2016 but the effects of the coronavirus pandemic means he is highly unlikely to recoup that outlay. To conclude a deal, Lai may have to accept a fee closer to the £100m mark.

The Chinese businessman’s aim is for Albion to be self-sufficient, meaning they had a transfer budget of only about £25m – plus whatever could be recouped from sales – during the last window, following promotion from the Championship.

That has caused tension behind the scenes, with boss Slaven Bilic desperate for improved funds to give his side a better chance of survival. Albion have yet to win this season and have collected only three points from their opening nine matches, ahead of their vital clash with fellow strugglers Sheffield United at The Hawthorns.

Bilic’s position looked vulnerable before the international break but his side performed very well against Tottenham and Manchester United, despite the narrow defeats. Even so, the next two games – both winnable home fixtures against the Blades and Crystal Palace – look pivotal for their prospects.

Bilic said: ‘A win would have a massive psychological effect. It's the same for them and it is worth more than three points in this situation.

‘It gives you everything if you look at the bigger picture: it gives you big momentum, big motivation. Now is the time to do it and that's why we are talking about such a big game for both sides.’
apparently West Brom are hoping to move to preferred bidder status next week - I will be astounded if anyone meets the asking price - which the Mail now says is £200m (I thought the previous £150m was steep) - note the serious American interest (just like at Southampton and Newcastle)

West Brom facing three-way takeover battle with owner Lai Guochuan desperate to sell amid growing fears of Premier League relegation
West Brom owner Lai Guochuan is desperate to sell amid fears of relegation
There are three interested parties and Guochuan will talk with a preferred bidder
Guochuan has yet to receive any offer that meets his £200million valuation
There will be penalties imposed if the Baggies are knocked out of the top flight
By MATT HUGHES FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:30, 13 January 2021 | UPDATED: 22:31, 13 January 2021

West Brom are engulfed in a three-way takeover battle as owner Lai Guochuan stands eager to sell before the end of the season amid growing fears of relegation.

American-based businessman Mark Campbell, who held talks about buying Sunderland two years ago, is understood to be fronting one of the consortiums with West Brom hoping to have identified a preferred bidder by next week.

Guochuan is desperate to sell, but has yet to receive an offer that meets his £200million valuation and may struggle to recoup the £175m he paid for 88 per cent of West Brom’s shares five years ago.

The club’s income has been decimated by the Covid-19 pandemic and — as with every other club — they are facing the prospect of over a year without gate receipts.

A highly costly relegation to the Championship is a major threat. They have been in the Premier League bottom three all season and sit six points from safety.

Sam Allardyce was brought in to replace the sacked Slaven Bilic last month, but a battling 1-1 draw at Liverpool is the only point West Brom have earned in his four games in charge so far.

Guochuan has indicated that he will enter exclusive negotiations with a preferred bidder next week, with all three parties having submitted offers. All of the bids are understood to include penalty clauses, giving the buyers discounts in the event of relegation — and the club’s value is likely to decrease as that possibility looms ever closer.

One of the offers is understood to value West Brom at £130m if they stay in the Premier League, dropping to £105m if they are relegated.

Campbell is a British real estate magnate based in New York. His company Fairway Sports Capital has previously held talks about buying Sunderland, without agreeing a deal.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by The esk » Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:15 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 12:34 pm
Paul, I had noted that in your response to Kieran. Are you able to identify where the funds raised for the ALK loan (issued in late December came from - I am assuming monies raised in October were for an alternative purpose - I could be wrong in that of course.

Also does MSD always use other Dell monies or does it actually goo out to the real marketplace as well? I suspect this could get really convoluted quite quickly.
It's impossible to say which of literally hundreds of different funds/vehicles under the MSD umbrella have invested in the loan notes unfortunately. The loan notes themselves (and indeed MSD UK Holdings) represent a tiny proportion of his overall wealth so I suspect they are funded entirely by his own resources - he has no need to borrow to fund these vehicles.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:17 pm

The esk wrote:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:15 pm
It's impossible to say which of literally hundreds of different funds/vehicles under the MSD umbrella have invested in the loan notes unfortunately. The loan notes themselves (and indeed MSD UK Holdings) represent a tiny proportion of his overall wealth so I suspect they are funded entirely by his own resources - he has no need to borrow to fund these vehicles.
That is kind of what I expected - thanks Paul

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:51 pm

Article from GameofthePeople.com on that CFG partnership with Bolivar - I actually think there is more to this story - and I will come to that in my next post

The City Football Group reaches Bolivia – how much further will the expedition run?
JANUARY 12, 2021NEIL FREDRIK JENSEN

THE City Football Group (CFG), Manchester City’s holding company, continues to expand its influence, forming a partnership with Bolivia’s leading football institution, Club Bolivar.

This latest move by CFG, coming just a few months after Belgian club SK Lommel and France’s Troyes became the 9th and 10th clubs to come under the influence of the group, is different than all past transactions executed by CFG.

While past deals have seen CFG buy a stake in a club, Club Bolivar of La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, becomes the first partner club. In this role, Bolivar will now be able to access CFG’s proprietary technology, strategic advice and scouting and coaching methodologies. On the business side, CFG will help Bolivar to grow its partnership revenues and support the development of the club’s key executives. It’s a pact of cooperation.

Bolivar were founded in 1925 and named after the founder of the country, Simon Bolivar. They have won the Bolivian league 29 times. It seems an unlikely match-up for Bolivia is South America’s poorest country and life is very tough for much of the population. The country has suffered droughts and has a track record of military coups and corruption. Economically, Bolivia has over-concentrated on industries such as tin, silver and cocoa, making it vulnerable when there’s a downturn.

If that’s not enough, Bolivian teams have to play at high altitude, in fact, La Paz is almost 12,000 feet above sea level, making it’s the highest capital city in the world. It is often referred to as a “vertical city”.

The Bolivian Primera Division includes two teams from La Paz, Bolivar and their fierce rivals, The Strongest. The 2020 season was won by Always Ready from El Alto, a city adjacent to the capital. In the 2020 Copa Libertadores, only Bolivar won through to the group stage, although they finished third and moved into the Copa Sudamericana where they were beaten by Argentina’s Lanus. Bolivar have participated in the Copa Libertadores 28 times and reached the semi-finals twice, in 1986 and 2014.

From Bolivar’s perspective, there are many positives from this link-up. At present, the club trails behind the South America’s leading lights, notably those from Argentina and Brazil. The club’s president, Marcelo Claure, called it a dream becoming reality: “Club Bolivar joins the City Football Group family as a partner, consolidating a long-term project developing world-class football, corporate and infrastructure standards that will enable Club Bolivar to become even bigger. We will utilise the expertise and advice that CFG brings to continue in our goal to place Bolivar as a top club in Latin America.”

There’s also hopes that the partnership will prove influential in Bolivia, so much so that World Cup qualification might become commonplace as opposed to a rare interlude. The CONMEBOL programme for 2022 is already underway and Bolivia are bottom of the 10-country league. Bolivia are the lowest-ranked South American nation in FIFA’s rankings and have qualified only three times. They’ve yet to win a game and have scored just one goal in their six games in the finals, the last time being 1994 in the United States.

As for the CFG, South America is seen as a key market, hence they already have Uruguayan club Atlético Torque in their portfolio. The region is always rich in raw talent and having unhindered access is to it is a big advantage – the signing of Gabriel Jesus in 2016 was a significant moment for Manchester City as they acquired the young striker directly from Palmeiras before he had been exported to Europe.

Torque have now gone through a CFG rebranding and are now known as Montevideo City Torque. In 2019, they were promoted to the Primera Divisíon and are in only the second top flight campaign in their history. They are performing well and are third in the table.

Montevideo is as good place as any to anchor the CFG South American project. The Uruguayan league is almost totally centred on the capital and the country has a rich football culture. Torque will undoubtedly play a major role in building the franchise.

How big will the City Football Group become and how many more clubs will it sweep-up? So far, investments have been made across the continents. The City flag has been planted in China, India, Australia, the US, Japan, Belgium, France and Spain, as well as Uruguay and Bolivia. Basically, CFG’s presence is working strategically across all regions. Furthermore, there are constant rumours about where they will strike next – Russia, Malaysia, Colombia and Egypt are just a few areas of speculation.

CFG is quite a unique construction and doesn’t sit well with some people. It is the best example of the corporatisation of football, or is it, as some critics put it, the “Disneyfication” of the game? However you define it, whether you see it as a menace or a model to admire, you sense the portfolio isn’t finished yet.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:07 pm

Bear with me and see why I believe this is related to the CFG/Bolivar story and also our club indirectly

This week saw Private Equity buy a controlling stake in Legends a company founded by the owners of NY Mets and Dallas Cowboys, which utilises and sells the knowhow developed in turning in those sports franchises into multibillion dollar businesses. That 2nd business is now a billion dollar business, which from a sports investment perspective is the double whammy dream that many (mainly but not exclusively American) are dreaming of - CFG are selling their knowhow in the same way that Legends have been doing, it is a new business opportunity that helps them refine their own expertise in the prime business,

SportsProMedia on the Legends Deal

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/leg ... es-yankees

And this deal has significance to our club too, because Dave Checketts (who is soon likely to be a Director at our club) was the man who headed up Legends when it first launched

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/103 ... hs-venture

I had assumed that hospitality development was one of the core growth areas for our club based on the backgrounds of the other ALK Capital directors - I just wonder where the money for it is going to come from

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:13 pm

Chinese owned (Suning) Inter Milan who have been having financial problems in the last few years (a result of all all the spending) are entertaining offers of investment from Private Equity groups - including the option of a takeover - from the Financial Times

Inter Milan owners in talks over private equity sale
KAYE WIGGINS JANUARY 14, 2021

Inter Milan has spent big to capture star players such as striker Romelu Lukaku in its effort to secure Serie A success © AFP via Getty Images
Italian football club Inter Milan is in talks over a sale to buyout groups including BC Partners and EQT, as private equity looks to extend holdings in football during a financial crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Suning Holdings, the Chinese retail conglomerate that owns a majority stake in Inter Milan, has begun negotiations with various parties over selling some or all of its holdings in the Serie A team, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the talks. One person close to the discussions said the owners value the club at up to €900m.

The Chinese group has hired Goldman Sachs to advise on potential fundraising options. Private equity firms including Sweden’s EQT and US-based Arctos Sports Partners are among those interested in a deal, according to people with knowledge of the talks, though discussions with London-based BC Partners appear to have progressed the furthest.

The talks underline how private equity groups have increasingly pushed into sports over the past year, seeking to take advantage of the need to raise money due to coronavirus-induced losses, such as lost ticket sales.

CVC Capital Partners and Advent International are in advanced discussions over a €1.6bn deal to invest in Serie A’s commercial rights, while Germany’s Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga are also talking to private equity investors over similar deals.

Inter Milan, led by president Steven Zhang, the 29-year-old son of Zhang Jindong, Suning’s billionaire founder who paid €270m for a majority stake in the “Nerazzurri” in 2016, has been seeking to return Inter Milan to the top of Italian and European football.

The club has spent hundreds of millions of euros to capture star players such as striker Romelu Lukaku and midfielder Christian Eriksen, in an effort to win its first Serie A title in a decade. Alongside local rivals AC Milan, it has also announced plans to build a €1.3bn stadium by 2023 alongside its existing ground at San Siro.

There have been concerns over liquidity at Suning’s main business in China, however, while Inter Milan made a pre-tax loss of €102m last season mainly due to revenue shortfalls caused by the pandemic.

In September, the English Premier League terminated its $700m screening deal in China with PPTV, a digital broadcaster owned by Suning, after it sought to withhold payments and renegotiate its contract citing the pandemic.

Financial pressures have led Suning, which owns 68.5 per cent of Inter Milan, to seek additional outside investment for the club. It is unclear whether Lionrock Capital, the Hong Kong-based private equity group which owns 31.5 per cent of the club, is also looking to sell its holding.

Suning, Inter Milan, Lionrock and BC Partners did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Arctos, EQT and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:28 pm

CFBFootball.com with a detailed article on how UEFA distribute monies in to club in the Champions League

HOW CHAMPIONS LEAGUE CLUBS MAKE THEIR MONEY
Posted byCallum McFadden13th Jan 2021 Posted in European Football, Football Finance, In depth analysis

The UEFA Champions League Financial Distribution Model

By Alex Harvey and Daniel Geey

The brilliant Swiss Ramble has published an excellent, detailed analysis of the UEFA Champions League distribution model. We would strongly recommend reading the twitter thread in full, which you can find here (https://twitter.com/swissramble/status/ ... 80?lang=en). As we have done with previous Swiss Ramble threads, we thought it would be helpful to set out some of the key highlights from the analysis, along with some comments of our own.

UEFA as the distributor
As the governing body of European Football, UEFA is responsible for exploiting the commercial rights in the Champions League, the Europa League and the Super Cup. UEFA earns significant sums through collectively selling broadcasting rights[1], commercial rights and tickets/hospitality, and will then distribute those sums back to the participating teams using a complex financial distribution model. It is that distribution model which we will seek to unpick in this blog.

The Champions League “Pot”
UEFA’s gross commercial revenue from the 2019/20 season is estimated to be around €3.25bn. Of that, €1.95bn will be distributed to clubs participation in the Champions League, with the remainder being used for administrative costs, solidarity payments and clubs participating in other UEFA competitions such as the Europa League.

Under the current UEFA financial distribution model, the €1.95bn is divided into four pillars:

- 25% Participation (€488m)
- 30% Performance (€585m)
- 30% Co-efficient Ranking (€585m)
- 15% TV Market Pool (€292m)

Participation (€488m)
All of the 32 clubs which qualified for the 2019/20 Champions League group stage will each receive €15.25m (i.e. €488m/32). This participation fee alone can represent a significant proportion of total revenue for clubs playing outside of the top 5 European leagues.

Performance (€585m)
During the group stage, €2.7m worth of performance bonuses will be paid out for each match. Where a team wins, they receive the full €2.7m (with the losing team receiving nothing). Where two teams draw, both teams receive €900,000 each and the remaining €900,000 is pooled and redistributed among all clubs playing in the group stage in amounts proportionate to their number of wins.

After the group stage, clubs receive additional performance bonuses depending on how far they get in the competition: Round of 16, €9.5m: Quarter-finals, €10.5m: Semi-finals, €12m: Finalist, €15m: Winners, €19m.

Swiss Ramble calculates that, after this year’s group stage, Bayern Munich have already earned €27.3m through performance bonuses alone. This consists of: (i) €16.2m for winning all 6 group stage games; (ii) €1.6m for their share of redistributed “draw” money; and (iii) €9.5m for reaching the last 16.

Co-Efficient Ranking (€585m)
30% of the Champions League pot is distributed to teams based on their position in the UEFA co-efficient ranking, which takes into account performances over a ten-year period.

The €585m is divided into ‘coefficient shares’, with each share worth €1.108m. The lowest-ranked team in this year’s competition, Slavia Prague, will receive €1.108m (representing 1 share) and the highest-ranked team, Real Madrid, will receive €35.46m (representing 32 shares).

TV Market Pool (€292m)
15% of the Champions League pot is distributed in accordance with the proportional value of each TV market represented by clubs taking part in the Champions League. Half of the amount representing the value of each market will be split among the clubs based on their performance in the previous domestic season. The other half will be paid in proportion to the number of matches played by each club in the current Champions League competition.

Swiss Ramble calculates that, in relation to the first half of the Market Pool only (ie. based on performances in the 18/19 domestic season), Man City have the highest Market Pool revenue of all clubs with €14m, followed closely by Liverpool with €10m; a reflection of the large sums that BT Sport pay for the broadcasting rights in the UK.

Swiss Ramble: Key Statistics
Following the completion of this season’s group stage, Swiss Ramble crunched the numbers and unearthed some fascinating findings:

English Clubs
Manchester City have the highest 2019/20 Champions League revenue to date amongst the English clubs with €78m. Close behind are Liverpool (€76m) and Chelsea (€73m), with Tottenham lagging behind on €58m.

Man City benefitted from significant performance bonuses totalling €23.2m after a group-stage which included four wins and two draws. As mentioned above, they have also earned a healthy €14m from the first half of the TV Market Pool due to their Premier League triumph last season.

In contrast, Tottenham had the least successful record of English clubs in the group stage (earning €19.3m), the lowest UEFA coefficient based on the last 10 years (earning €19.9m) and the smallest TV Market Pool after their 4th place finish in 2018/19 (earning €3.5m).

Highest Earners v Lowest Earners
The highest earners after this year’s group stage are Bayern Munich, who have already amassed a sizeable €82m. Slavia Prague are the lowest earners with a more modest €18m. So how are those numbers broken down?

The first point to remember is that both teams receive €15.25m as a participation fee simply for reaching the group stage. As stated above, Bayern Munich have earned an impressive €27m through performance bonuses. They are also third in the UEFA co-efficient behind only Real Madrid and Barcelona, earning them a further €33m, and have received €6m from the first half of the TV Market Pool.

Slavia Prague, by contrast, earned only €2m in performance bonuses after a group stage campaign which saw them lose four games and draw two. They are also the lowest-ranked team in the UEFA co-efficient, earning them €1.1m. Note, however, that information on their TV Market Pool earnings is not currently available.

The Atalanta Case Study
Atalanta are a fascinating case study. They have successfully qualified for the round of 16 after progressing through Group C ahead of Shakhtar Donetsk and Dinamo Zagreb. Despite this, their total revenue after the group stage is only €40m; half that of fellow Italian club Juventus (€80m), and less than five other clubs who actually failed to progress past the group stage (Benfica €51m, Ajax €46m, Shakhtar Donetsk €44m, Inter €41m and Zenit €41m).

The comparison with Inter is telling. Despite outperforming Inter in the performance bonuses (€16.3m v €6.8m) and the TV Market Pool (€5m v €2.5m), Atalanta have suffered due to their low UEFA co-efficient ranking (earning them only €3.3m) in comparison to Inter (€16.6m). It is clear that the distribution model, which includes a 30% pool based on the UEFA co-efficient ranking, advantages the traditionally larger clubs against up-and-coming teams such as Atalanta.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:31 pm

I missed this earlier this week - The guardian wiath an article on the process for the tendering of Premier League rights - has a chart in it so have provided a link rather than transcribed

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/ ... tion-nears

of course there is the added issue of no longer being able to stream in the EU for those who hold UK rights packages and like to spend time in 2nd homes for long periods each year

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... x-bt-sport

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:06 pm

FIFA has announced that it is going to do a series of live streamed talks on aspects of Football Law (were talking business/organisation side) - the final 4 in particular look worthy of our attention

https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fi ... -law-talks

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 15, 2021 5:31 pm

Fascinating article in The Athletic today from Matt Slater - it is important to remember just how much of the football economy is built on the transfer market and how many clubs entire financial model is centred on it

Should football scrap transfer fees?
Matt Slater Jan 14, 2021

Professional cycling had rolled merrily along for more than a century without anyone trying to do something as underhand as buy a rider from another team. Fixing races, paying bribes, taking drugs? Sure! But financial inducements to break a contract? Pah, we’re all gentlemen here and we have shaken hands!

But then, in 2009, new money arrived and it wanted a star to lead its grand project. And it wouldn’t wait.

Bradley Wiggins, now Sir Bradley, had just finished fourth in that summer’s Tour de France. It was his breakthrough performance on the road after a decade of success in the velodrome. That fourth place was later upgraded to third when Lance Armstrong’s career was cancelled but Wiggins’ result was already a tie for the best Tour finish by a British rider, making him the obvious leader of the new British flagship coming down the slipway, Team Sky.

The lovechild of performance guru Sir Dave Brailsford and Sky chairman James Murdoch, Team Sky were determined to compete from the gun when the 2010 season started, which is why they needed Wiggo. There was one problem, though. He still had one year on his contract with US team Garmin-Slipstream and they wanted to keep him.

What followed was cycling’s first transfer saga. And it finished the way these things often finish in football, with the bigger team getting their man and the smaller team wondering if they got enough for him.

“Cycling contracts are typically short enough that it’s more efficient to just wait until the contract is up,” remembers Jonathan Vaughters, Wiggins’ old boss at Garmin and now manager of the team they have become, EF Education-Nippo. (Cycling might be behind football when it comes to transfers but it is has nothing to learn on naming rights).

“But with Wiggins, it was a combination of things. One, you had the wealth and personal interest of James Murdoch wanting him at Sky, ASAP. Two, the team was branded ‘Britain’s team’ — not having the best British rider would have looked bad. And three, our inability to financially match the compensation levels.

“So, it was a rare moment when a transfer made sense. Legally, we had no choice.”

Wiggins would win the Tour de France for Team Sky two years later but a decade after cycling’s first transfer tug-of-war, his move remains the exception to the rule. Contracts are getting a bit longer and small fees are sometimes paid by the richest teams to smaller ones for hot prospects, but the majority of riders go from one season to the next, eager to earn a bit more from their next contract while they’re on the up, and desperate to eke out another season on their way down.

It is the same story in almost every other professional team sport in the world. Rugby league, one of the UK’s oldest professional sports, used to have transfer fees, usually when one of its best players was being poached by rugby union, but they have dried up in recent years, with the last notable fee being the world-record £700,000 the New Zealand Warriors paid Wigan for Sam Tomkins in 2013.

There is no tradition of transfer fees in cricket, either, while rugby union, professional for the last 25 years, mainly lives without them. High-profile transfers such as Louis Picamoles’ move from Northampton to Montpellier or English stars George Ford and Jonny May joining Leicester are rare, and they involve tiny fees by football standards.

Of course, North American sport, with its closed leagues, collective bargaining agreements and draft systems, has no need for transfer fees. And this is where many in European football believed the game was heading after it received the biggest shock to its way of doing business, the Bosman ruling in 1995.

Jean-Marc Bosman is an unlikely revolutionary. Like so many other players before and since, his early promise had faded somewhat and he found himself out of favour at RFC Liege. He was only 25, though, and Dunkerque, just over the border, were convinced the former Belgian youth international could do a job for them in France’s second division.

Unfortunately, Liege wanted £500,000 for the player, despite his contract expiring, a sum Dunkerque could not afford. The impasse left Bosman stranded and, to make matters worse, Liege promptly cut his pay by 75 per cent and sent him to train with the reserves.

Bosman bit back, suing Liege, the Belgian FA and eventually UEFA, too. It took more than four years but by the time he was done with them, he had heralded the start of football’s free agency era and ended UEFA’s limits on the number of overseas players teams could use, which had been deemed a clear breach of the European Union’s single market.

In a classic case of justice delayed being justice denied, Bosman’s win did little for his career but made millions for fellow professionals, and their agents, who realised they now just had to wait for contracts to expire before they could take their pick of suitors willing to put what they would have spent on a fee into the player’s wage and signing-on bonus.

The transfer market was dead, right? Players had all the power, clubs no longer had any incentive to develop talent and the end of the world was nigh. Wrong.

Seven months after the Bosman ruling was delivered, Newcastle United paid Blackburn Rovers £15 million for Alan Shearer — double what Arsenal had sent Inter Milan for Dennis Bergkamp a year before. By 2000, the record was Luis Figo’s £37 million price tag for moving from Barca to Real Madrid. In 2009, Real paid Manchester United £80 million for Cristiano Ronaldo’s services and then, in 2017, Neymar set the bar at a shade under £200 million when he went from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain.

“What happened after Bosman is the European Commission investigated the rules of the entire transfer system and forced some substantial changes,” explains Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, general secretary of global players’ union FIFPro, which helped Jean-Marc Bosman fight his landmark case.

“But that process established new mechanisms and restrictions, which, according to the famous words of the then-European competition commissioner Mario Monti, were meant to strike a balance between the interests of the sport and the players’ right to free movement.”

Through a series of subsequent rulings, the most notable involving Brazilian playmaker Matuzalem and his attempt to force a move from Shakhtar Donetsk to Real Zaragoza in 2007, the pendulum swung back towards the clubs. A compromise was struck between the European Commission and FIFA based on the idea that football was different to other industries, and therefore footballers could not be allowed to just up sticks and leave whenever a more lucrative opportunity came calling.

It is a compromise FIFPro threatened to blow apart in 2015, when it announced a fresh challenge to the system. Frustrated at the authorities’ failure to address the problem of players being paid late, or not at all, the union told FIFA and UEFA that transfer fees impeded their members’ ability to find better employers. It also pointed out that fees were not trickling down the pyramid but had instead become a barrier to entry that only the richest clubs could clear. And, with that in mind, FIFPro also wanted to cap agents’ fees, limit loans and reduce the size of squads.

If it was a bargaining tactic, it worked, as FIFA started talks with FIFPro on reforms to its “regulations on the status and transfer of players” and the union agreed to drop the challenge. So far those talks have produced some tweaks to the rules that should benefit players but the most high-profile proposal — limiting the amount agents can earn from deals — is likely to result in another round of fierce legal argument.

Baer-Hoffmann is happy to continue trying to change the system for this 65,000 members’ benefit from inside the tent for now, but he does not sound like a man willing to wait for the sunlit uplands forever.

“FIFA has accepted the system doesn’t obtain its stated objectives and that raises questions about the restrictions it creates,” he says.

“There’s a misconception in football that we try to regulate this market by restricting the labour market for players but if you’re concerned about reimbursing clubs for training players, you don’t have to do that via a transfer system. You could put a tax on any of your revenues and say: ‘You know what? The clubs further down the pyramid do such a good job developing players, we’re going to share some of our money’.

“We talked about that at the time of Bosman. The advocate-general of the European court said the goals the clubs and federations wanted to obtain could be much better achieved by other mechanisms. That’s still the case today.

“The transfer system stabilises the power structure because only a few clubs will be able to pay the fees you need for certain players. Yes, it does redistribute money but not to a degree that will ever outweigh the competitive advantage the big clubs get.”

Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan and the author of the best-selling Soccernomics, agrees. In fact, he wrote a paper to support FIFPro’s planned assault on transfer fees in 2015 and is rather disappointed the union agreed to an armistice.

For him, the argument is very simple: transfer fees are illegal.

“If The Guardian offered you a staff job, but The Athletic said, ‘You can only move jobs now if they pay us a fee, otherwise you have to work for us for another two years’, you would be in court like a shot,” he explains.

“Everyone in Europe has the right to move freely, except footballers. No law has ever been passed exempting football clubs from labour law. So it is illegal and it breaches a right that everyone else takes for granted.

“If it’s illegal, it should stop. Full stop.”

What is the alternative, then?

“Players would negotiate contracts with teams, just as the rest of us negotiate contracts with our employers,” says Szymanski. “Most people are happy to stay with their current employer as long as they feel they are being treated fairly and only leave if a) they get a better offer or b) they don’t like their work environment.

“Clubs would need to treat players a bit more like human beings and less like horsemeat. It’s not difficult: every other employer has to do it. And it isn’t necessarily more expensive. It’s a state of mind.”

The counter-argument, however, is that so-called selling clubs — which, let’s face it, is nearly all of them — would either be unable to compete without transfer income or would go bankrupt without it. Szymanski rejects this.

“I’ve researched the financial performance of clubs over the last half-century and there is no evidence that small clubs obtain substantial benefits from transfers,” he says. “Teams do better when they can spend more on players, not when they sell them and spend less.

“Active trading in the transfer market is not a means of challenging the dominant clubs. In fact, I would argue that small clubs would have a better chance of challenging if transfer fees were not an obstacle to hiring stars.

“Financial failure is a valid concern but you need to understand why it happens, and to realise that the transfer system does not help. Most financial failures are a result of failure on the pitch, usually connected to relegation. Fire sales of players by teams in crisis do little to solve the problem, precisely because the buyers know it’s a fire sale.

“Very few small clubs are ever able to generate substantial revenues from player trading — it’s the big clubs that control the development of talent. The best players are cornered by the age of 15. What the clubs need is an insurance scheme to guard against financial failure.”

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? But how do you get there from here?

Dr Giambattista Rossi is a lecturer in sports labour markets at the University of London’s Birkbeck College and he isn’t so sure you can.

“When we talk about transfer fees in football, we’re really talking about compensation: good players make you win games and that means revenue,” explains Rossi. “But you cannot take 10 players and make a Messi. So there is scarcity value for the top players.

“North American sport doesn’t have (transfers) because they have closed leagues and the owners pool all of the game’s resources and say, ‘OK, the players get half’. Nobody can interfere as they have legal protection from US anti-trust rules.

“Transfer fees are implicit to global football’s system. Media interest has created the rise in fees because, don’t forget, you buy players to win and winning equals revenue. Football, unlike US sport, has a winner-takes-all approach to revenue.

“Economists often talk about human capital. Take our jobs: we know how to write and explain things but lots of people can do that. But there are some jobs — sport, music, surgery — that require a huge amount of specific training to acquire a high level of skill. And when you are a little bit better than everyone else, you can earn much, much more than the rest.”

For Rossi, the problems that Baer-Hoffmann and Szymanski identify have easier solutions than scrapping something as fundamental to the game as transfer fees, although to be fair to FIFPro, it has been calling for these ideas, too.

“It always strikes me as strange that people complain about the negative impact of transfer fees but do not talk about how financial fair play rules have entrenched the status quo or how the big clubs stockpile talent in feeder clubs, giving them huge power and influence,” says Rossi.

“We should criticise (leading agents) like Jonathan Barnett and Jorge Mendes if they don’t pay their taxes, not for doing their jobs. There is a lot of myopia about where the power really resides in football. You would think, in a sport where there are a fixed number of players, you would have to release anyone you don’t use, but the biggest clubs hold onto and control these players.

“And people often talk about money going out of the game to agents but what economic sector is there that is hermetically sealed? Money leaks in every sector. Look at image rights. Does that money stay in football?

“Transfer fees are here to stay because they are entwined in the system: most clubs use them to generate revenue. If you took them away, you would have to replace them with a mechanism that compensated clubs for that lost revenue. It’s not impossible but I do not see how you do it without a closed league.”

Daniel Geey is a leading British sports lawyer and the author of Done Deal, the definitive guide to the transfer market’s legal framework. He agrees with Rossi that scrapping transfer fees would be very difficult, as players are the club’s most valuable intangible assets and any new system would have to address that immediate loss of value.

He also believes the system has more benefits for players than its critics are willing to admit.

“When a player is in demand, the interests of the buying club and player are aligned in that they want security,” says Geey. “The club wants to lock in that value and the player gets the benefit of a life-changing contract.

“Why don’t players want to sign shorter contracts? Simple: one bad injury and it’s all over. So there are upsides in the current system that the unions tend to gloss over. I would argue that for players contractual stability will usually outweigh the restrictive effect of high transfer fees.”

This point makes perfect sense for Daren O’Leary, a former rugby union professional who is now a leading agent in the sport.

“Rugby union is going in this direction and the simple reason is length of contracts,” says O’Leary, who retired in 2005 after making more than 200 appearances across stints with Harlequins, Gloucester and Worcester.

“When I started as an agent, about 75 per cent of the players were on two-year deals, with the rest on one-year contracts and maybe a handful on three-year deals.

“But now about a third of the players are on three-year contracts and we’re even seeing four and five-year deals coming in, although they tend to be very much in the club’s favour and I would never advise a young player to commit that long.”

The complicating factor with rugby union is the hard salary cap, a cost-control mechanism that should work in the opposite direction of a vibrant transfer market, where, theoretically, the talent goes up the pyramid and money filters down. Salary caps, on the other hand, are meant to stop all the best players automatically going to the biggest teams, more evenly distributing talent throughout the league.

But the older professional club rugby union gets, the more like football it becomes. O’Leary says it is now fairly common for clubs to make small payments — £30,000 or so — to instantly get a player they want, rather than wait until his contract is up. And players are less willing to play out final seasons with their current clubs, risking injury, when they know there is a longer contract awaiting somewhere else.

O’Leary listed several other trends in the game — fixed development fees to compensate smaller teams when their best youngsters are poached, competition for talent from overseas and clubs separating recruitment from coaching — that he believes are lessons professional rugby is learning from football.

So perhaps it is not the case that football’s “illegal” approach to human resources is so out of step with the rest of sport. It is more that football — or, more accurately, top-flight football — is simply much richer than any other team sport outside North America, and if draft systems, trades and collective bargaining agreements are your thing, you cannot have promotion, relegation and transfer gossip, too.

Open or closed, total free agency or contractual stability. You cannot have both. Choose one, always read the small print and enjoy.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Vegas Claret » Fri Jan 15, 2021 6:06 pm

"how the big clubs stockpile talent"

This is the biggest issue imho

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 15, 2021 6:53 pm

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

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

Posted: January 15 2021By: Tom Bassam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 15, 2021 7:05 pm

Following on from Amazon entering the bidding for Serie A rights in the next cycle here is SportsProMedia with some thoughts

A deep dive into Amazon’s plans for a Serie A rights bid
SportsPro digital editor Tom Bassam's fortnightly briefing on what’s happening in the world of OTT and sports broadcasting.

By Tom Bassam Posted: January 14 2021

This is a significant year in the European soccer industry. Four of the continent’s five major leagues are set to sign new broadcast partnerships. There will be time to discuss the Premier League and La Liga at a later date. Matters in Italy and France are slightly more pressing.

Let us start with Italy, where Bloomberg (and others) report that Amazon is entering the bidding for domestic rights to Serie A. There are a few of parts to this. Firstly, at this point it should not really be a surprise when the digital giant goes in for premium European soccer rights. The last few years have seen Amazon pick up various deals with the Premier League, Bundesliga and Uefa Champions League.

It is the final name on that list that is perhaps the most relevant in this situation as one of those Champions League contracts is for Italy and kicks in at the start of next season. In a recent conversation - which forms part of a broader report in the upcoming Issue 112 of SportsPro magazine - former Sky Sports managing director Barney Francis made the point that the Champions League as a standalone offer is not that attractive for pay-TV services. His argument is that there will be only a few teams from any one country - four in Italy’s case - playing in the competition, so the number of fanbases interested in those broadcasts is limited.

As an add-on to domestic league rights, however, the Champions League is a fantastic proposition for providing more value for existing subscribers. Amazon, it should be said, is a slightly different beast to the traditional pay-TV network because of its broader services and low price point. But it will be interesting to see how aggressive the company is willing to be in the Serie A auction, not least as it did not go too hard for domestic Bundesliga rights in Germany after acquiring the Champions League there in late 2019.

The second element of this is the tender offered by Serie A. It is clear that the league wants to retain a traditional satellite broadcast presence, with digital, IPTV and mobile rights very explicitly carved out in the document. That is not to say that Amazon could not acquire those rights and then sublicense them to a traditional broadcaster, but such a move hardly fits with its opportunistic approach to rights acquisitions so far.

Finally, what is CVC’s role in all this? Its equity deal is yet to close but is expected to soon. Back in September, before Serie A selected which group of investors it wanted to progress talks with, CVC was said to be talking to Amazon about a domestic rights bid. From the perspective of the private equity firm it makes a lot of sense. One way of driving up rights value is for a new player to enter the market, and Amazon is nothing if not a major new player.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jan 15, 2021 9:08 pm

Tariq Panja in the New York Times revealing just how lucrative it is to be a FIFA representative - something else I missed during my December absence from the board

Soccer Faces a Cash Crunch. Its Leaders Aren’t Feeling It.
DECEMBER 03, 2020

Anywhere one looks around the world, the soccer industry is struggling with the financial effects of the coronavirus. Leagues are counting their losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Stadiums remain empty. Staff members are being furloughed. And players, even those at the richest clubs, have agreed to millions of dollars in pay cuts or salary deferrals.

But there is one group that has proved bulletproof from the costs of the pandemic: FIFA’s top executives.

While cost-cutting, resource-saving and painful decisions have become the norm in most of the soccer world, the men and women who sit on FIFA’s 37-member governing council continue to collect six-figure salaries that, for some, will amount to $250,000 this year but require their attendance at as few as three meetings. The most senior officials, who have added responsibilities, will earn even more; FIFA pays its vice presidents $300,000.

And merely showing up has been easier this year: With most international travel restricted or ill-advised, council members need only an internet connection and a comfortable chair to take part.

Asked about the lack of belt-tightening among its leaders, a spokesman for FIFA said the organization had achieved significant cost savings through the reduction of travel and the hosting of virtual meetings, rendering a re-evaluation of compensation unnecessary.

“No additional major cost cuts were needed to secure FIFA’s continuous support to the global football community throughout the pandemic,” the spokesman said.

For top executives, FIFA work is often only one of several hefty paydays. Several officials on the council also sit on the executive boards of their regional governing bodies, positions that offer their own significant financial benefits.

Executive committee members at UEFA, Europe’s governing body, for example, receive salaries of 160,000 euros a year (about $194,000), and its vice presidents are paid 250,000 euros (just over $300,000). South America’s governing body, CONMEBOL, pays the members of its executive board $20,000 a month, while CONCACAF, which is responsible for the sport in the Caribbean and Central and North America, distributes $135,000 a year to its senior leaders.

The size of such compensation packages was highlighted recently when it emerged that Greg Clarke, who was forced to resign as chairman of England’s Football Association after making inappropriate remarks during a parliamentary committee hearing, received more for the few days of work he contributed as one of FIFA’s vice presidents than he did in his day job leading English soccer. He was scheduled to earn even more next year, once he completed a planned move onto UEFA’s executive committee.

Yet among FIFA and its six regional confederations, only UEFA instituted cuts to executive pay this year: a reduction of 20 percent for the three months while its competitions were suspended.

Still, at a time when the soccer industry is expected to contract by billions of dollars, and when leagues and teams large and small face challenges that threaten their futures, FIFA’s decision to continue paying its executives six-figure net salaries has been brought into even starker focus. Only last week, Barcelona announced its players had agreed to pay cuts that would save the club almost $150 million.

“We’ve seen a lot of calls for solidarity and that we are in the same boat — this definitely contradicts that narrative,” said Ronan Evain, executive director for Football Supporters Europe, an umbrella body for fan groups. Fans across Europe, he said, have been asked to bear some of the pain affecting their teams by, in some cases, writing off some of the value of season tickets for games that they have not been able to attend.

“There’s definitely a contradiction being asked of fans, and not everyone is contributing the same,” Evain said.

On Friday, the FIFA Council held the last of its three scheduled meetings of the year. Like the others, it took place via videoconference.

During the pandemic, the calls have been shorter than ever, according to attendees. Most members never speak; some, in fact, have not said a word during one in years, longtime members say. And even before they meet, most of the important decisions have already been made by the bureau of the FIFA Council, a smaller group consisting of the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, and the presidents of the six regional confederations. (Africa is not now represented on that body because its current president was barred from soccer last month.)

At Friday’s virtual gathering, for example, the council members ratified several proposals — approved by senior leaders last month — that will provide new protections and benefits for female players, including paid maternity leave. They were also asked to sign off on several scheduling and disciplinary matters.

As sports governance posts go, a FIFA Council seat is one of the most coveted sinecures in global sports. In most years, members are flown to exotic locations and housed in the finest hotels, and at meetings they often follow the lead of their regional presidents on votes. Now grounded, their only financial sacrifice appears to be the inability to claim the per diems available on every foreign trip.

Beyond the pay, though, the lifestyle enjoyed by FIFA Council members extends to privileged access and status that money can’t buy, including access to the best seats and the biggest matches.

Miguel Maduro, the former FIFA governance chief, said the pay and perks were parts of a system that rewards loyalty and ensures power is concentrated in a small group of top leaders.

“The narrative is one of representation from bottom up, a body where you have elected representatives that will in theory discuss and deliberate on the crucial issues of football,” Maduro said this week. “Instead, as we know, it doesn’t happen like that.”

Asked what could be done to reform a council to which some members contribute little, one longtime soccer official said a first step would be to reduce the number of board seats.

A better option, the official suggested, would be to “have everyone leave the building and leave the few capable ones inside and not let the others back in.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 16, 2021 1:41 am

I must say that I am somewhat surprised that it has taken so long for smaller Premier League clubs to cry foul over the advantageous credit rates that Arsenal and Tottenham have received from the Bank of England - of course I have long argued that football clubs should avoid debt for reasons other than Infrastructure development - which is why Arsenal and Tottenham have debt and ironically is those empty expensively developed Stadiums that have compromised their cash flows, given their reliance on the incomes they provide - Ours remains the only club that I am aware of that has not sought credit/owner assistance for cash flow issues during the pandemic - this story from the Financial Times

Premier League rivals cry foul over BoE Covid loan scheme
SAMUEL AGINI JANUARY 15, 2021

Nearly £300m of loans from the Bank of England to two of the Premier League’s biggest clubs have led to accusations that the central bank’s emergency Covid-19 support facility could have a distorting effect on the competition.

Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur have borrowed a combined £295m through the BoE’s “Covid Corporate Financing Facility”, a form of low cost borrowing only open to “larger” firms with an investment-grade credit rating.

But the London clubs’ tapping of the facility has led some smaller rivals to cry foul, because they say they are ineligible to borrow under the terms of the scheme.

One club chairman claimed the interest rates offered on the BoE loans were cheaper than those on offer from other government-backed Covid loan schemes.

“It’s a competition-distorting government bailout for select clubs,” said the chairman of one Premier League side who, in common with other executives who spoke to the FT, asked not to be identified. “Either we all have access to it or we don’t . . . [there’s] no chance Arsenal or Tottenham are borrowing at [that rate] from anybody else.”

Smaller Premier League clubs, with substantially lower revenues and constantly at the risk of relegation from the league, say they are unable to gain the required credit rating making them ineligible for the scheme.

That has caused anger as the government has been reluctant to provide other forms of support, omitting much of professional football from a wider £250m UK sports rescue package last year. A backlash against some clubs including Tottenham and Liverpool using the furlough scheme for non-playing staff has made others reluctant to use another state backed financial support option.

“It’s slightly galling some clubs were hugely criticised for using the furlough scheme . . . we don’t get access to the [Bank of England scheme],” said a Premier League club chief executive.

Another club chief said: “It feels strange that state aid is being refused to most clubs because it’s not palatable from a PR perspective but Arsenal and Spurs have borrowed a quarter of a billion pounds between them.”

Arsenal, which is owned by US billionaire Stan Kroenke, said this month it had borrowed £120m under the scheme “to assist in managing the impact of the revenue losses attributable to the pandemic”. The loan is repayable in May.

Spurs drew £175m through the facility last year. The club, which is owned by Bahamas-based billionaire Joe Lewis, said at the time that the pandemic could wipe out more than £200m in revenues by the end of June 2021 as a result of being unable to sell tickets to fans.

Arsenal said: “The CCFF is designed to provide short-term finance at commercial rates during the pandemic to companies that have strong investment ratings and which make significant contributions to the British economy. We met these criteria and it’s sensible and prudent business to use this facility which will be repaid in full plus interest.”

Spurs declined to comment.

The government insists all professional football teams are free to take advantage of other support schemes, such as the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) or the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS).

But the CBILS scheme is only open to companies with an annual turnover below £45m. According to Deloitte’s annual review of English football finance for 2018/19, the lowest earning club, Huddersfield Town, made revenues of £122m.

The CLBILS scheme, which offers loans of up to £200m to companies with annual revenues over £45m, would potentially be open to Premier League teams.

But one executive said the scheme was not an attractive option because the commercial lenders providing the state backed loans were unlikely to offer finance at similarly competitive rates to the BoE scheme.

The BoE declined to comment but the Treasury said: “The purpose of the Covid Corporate Financing Facility is to help big companies to sustain the jobs and suppliers that rely on them. The Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme is also available for companies to borrow up to £200m.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:26 am

Football Index the trading (actually betting) exchange is in the news because of problems that exist as a direct result of it's fundamental practice - people are struggling to get their money out as prices fall - from the Guardian

Football Index clients' money could be trapped after fall in players' 'share price'
- Sports trader abused by users when he raised concerns
- Company is shirt sponsor of Nottingham Forest and QPR

Exclusive by Greg Wood - Sat 16 Jan 2021 08.17 GMT

A series of share-price crashes and rule changes on the betting site Football Index has led to increasing concerns that its clients now have millions of pounds in stakes trapped in the platform which has no protection if the firm ceases trading.

Football Index, the shirt sponsor of Nottingham Forest and Queens Park Rangers, is a self-styled football stock market where users trade virtual “shares” in top players. It was launched in 2015 offering “a challenge” to traditional forms of betting on football.

It sells time-limited “shares” in footballers which can then return “dividends” over the course of a three-year contract. Dividends normally range from 1p to 14p per share, and are based on both the player’s performances on the pitch and their media profile. The shares can be sold on to other users to retrieve some or all of a user’s stake from the exchange – but only if the owner can find a buyer at the right price.

This, however, has become increasingly difficult in recent months following a series of crashes in the price of shares. A share in the Borussia Dortmund forward Jadon Sancho, say, cost £15.04 in early September. The price fell to £12.33 on 15 September and has since hit a series of new lows: £10.31 on 3 October, £5.76 on 19 November and £4.20 on 22 December. A “share” cost £5.28 on Thursday, a 65% drop from its peak.

The growing desperation among users of the site, including some thought to have five- or even six-figure stakes in the exchange, has been highlighted by the experience of a professional sports trader and YouTuber who raised concerns about Football Index on his channel. Caan Berry has been subjected to a sustained and possibly coordinated campaign of abuse and intimidation by some clients of Football Index after posting the video on 9 December.

Berry described Football Index as “a good concept” but also listed what he believes are “five major risks” for users, including: the use of the term “shares” when users are in fact buying time-limited contracts; the removal of a feature which allowed users to “instant sell” shares back to Football Index to retrieve stakes from the platform; the exchange’s ability to affect prices by “minting” new shares; and its right, written into its terms and conditions, to make significant changes to its dividend structure and rules after shares have been purchased.

The risk of mid-contract rule changes was highlighted as recently as last Friday, when Football Index gave notice to users that it will stop paying “In-Play” dividends – for instance, when a player scores a goal – in four weeks’ time.

The online campaign against Berry was immediate, and culminated in a notice from YouTube on Thursday that his channel is being “de-monetised” until mid-February at the earliest due to complaints about “misleading information”. The notice was withdrawn a few hours later after the Observer asked YouTube to explain its decision.

“I didn’t see it coming, I didn’t know what some people in the [Football Index] community were like,” Berry says. “People ask me different questions [about betting and trading] on the YouTube site and had been asking me a bit more about Football Index since the summer. So I thought I’d have a look.

“After the first video, a lot of people on Twitter and social channels were encouraging people to ‘downvote’ it, to try and stop it being seen. After that, the hounding has been constant, I’ve had to delete hundreds of comments from the YouTube channel. It’s typical football thuggery, ‘you’re a nonce and I’m going to report you’, that sort of stuff, and then a book I’ve got out on Amazon suddenly started to get loads of one-star reviews in just a few hours.”

Football Index leans heavily on its claim to offer a trading environment similar to a stock exchange in its extensive marketing campaigns, including stock-market style “tickers” as pitch-side adverts during televised matches. However, the firm is regulated as a betting site by the Gambling Commission and while it offers a “medium” level of protection for users’ funds if it ceases trading, this applies only to money on deposit and not to any stake that has been “invested” in shares.

As Football Index makes clear in its T&Cs: “Once you have purchased shares, the applicable value of your shares have been ‘wagered’ and are not stored in this segregated account. This means that steps have been taken to protect your funds but that there is no absolute guarantee that all funds will be repaid in the event of insolvency.”

Brian Chappell, the founder of Justiceforpunters.org and a long-standing campaigner on issues affecting gamblers, said on Thursday that “medium” protection “is no guarantee that all funds will be repaid”, adding: “If restrictions are being placed on a customer’s ability to sell shares and/or withdraw funds, this must be a major worry. Betting consumers are all too aware of previous UK-licensed gambling company insolvencies.”

A spokesperson for Football Index said on Friday the firm is “unable to comment on ongoing complaints that involve our users, however we take any reported abuse extremely seriously and we strongly condemn harassment and online trolling”.

Regarding withdrawals from the site and recent crashes, the spokesperson added: “Cash balances [not spent on shares] are always free to be withdrawn from the site. Order Books [the firm’s system for buying and selling shares between customers] allow our customers to sell more quickly at a lower price or take longer to achieve a higher price, depending on their strategy and demand for that particular footballer. This is clearly set out in our terms of service.”

The spokesperson added that Football Index “is in regular contact with the Gambling Commission and updates them on changes [to operations] at appropriate junctures. These product enhancements were introduced after appropriate testing for fairness through a UK Gambling Commission approved test house.”

The spokesperson declined to reveal the total net investment in Football Index by its customers since launch, or the proportion of customer deposits being held as a cash balance, saying only: “Football Index is a betting product regulated by the Gambling Commission and customers’ bets are not investments. Customer cash balances are protected under a quistclose trust.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:33 am

the long running saga between Rangers and Sports Direct (remember Mike Ashley was financing the club at one stage) is still bouncing round the courts

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/190 ... ts-direct/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:44 am

The Athletic did an extremely detailed piece on Derby on Sunday - just loved the takeaway from the Derby County blog

https://twitter.com/derbycountyblog/sta ... 1849368577

for clarity

Zingarevich almost killed Reading https://thetilehurstend.sbnation.com/20 ... n-analysis
and
Tony Xia took Aston Villa to a couple of hours from financial collapse before NSWE stepped in

You can may want to add those those middlemen - Chris Samuelson and Andrew Obolensky together with Philippe Huber (of Thaksin Shinawatra and Venky's fame) to the list of middlemen to keep an eye out for in much the same way we now look out for Chris Farnell

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:51 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:53 pm
Southampton release their 2019/20 Annual Report and financial Statements - I have been saying for a while they are running a financially unstable operation and this underlines it - wages at 90% of revenues *and yes there was a revenue shortfall but that is bonkers - we will not be anywhere near that and we will be posting 13 months of wages

https://www.southamptonfc.com/supporter ... statements

@KieranMaguire has had a quick look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 5535399945

it should be noted that Southampton are paying MSD interest at 9.14% which is less than I thought but still quite a bit above business commercial rates
@SwissRamble with his insights into Southampton's 2019/20 accounts

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 5271258118

and he has also produced his summary sheet

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 6718083074

Southampton have announced that they are cancelling their kit deal with Under Armour 2 years early and switching to Hummel - this from SportsProMedia

Southampton switch to Hummel in new kit supplier deal
Premier League club cut Under Armour contract two years early.

Posted: January 18 2021 By: Ed Dixon

- Five-year partnership begins from 2021/22 season
- Under Armour agreement was due to run until 2023
- Saints last wore Hummel shirts from 1987 to 1991

English top-flight soccer outfit Southampton have signed a five-year kit supplier deal with Danish sportswear brand Hummel, which replaces Under Armour.

Starting from 1st July 2021, Hummel will design and develop match, training and travel wear across the club’s men’s, women’s and academy teams, along with a comprehensive retail offering.

The agreement, for which financial terms have not been disclosed, sees the Saints reunite with Hummel, which made the club’s shirts in the pre-Premier League era between 1987 and 1991.

The announcement signals an early end to the Saints’ kit partnership with US-based Under Armour, which first teamed up with the club in 2016 in a deal reportedly worth UK£9 million (US$12.1 million) until 2023. However, with Under Armour shifting its marketing strategies as it looks to bounce back from a turbulent 2020, both parties have mutually agreed to cut the partnership short.

For Hummel, the tie-up means Southampton become their second Premier League partner, having penned a three-year kit deal with Everton from the start of the 2020/21 campaign, reportedly worth as much as UK£10 million (US$13.5 million) per year.

“From the moment we first met the Hummel team it was obvious there was a great connection between us, not only because of our past history, but also because of the potential of what we could achieve together in the future,” said David Thomas, Southampton’s chief commercial officer.

“Hummel’s core mission of wanting to change the world through sport aligns perfectly with our disruptive approach to how we behave on and off the pitch.

“We hope these shared values will create a unique partnership that not only produces great kits for our players and fans but also redefines the positive impact two like-minded organisations can achieve together.”

Allan Vad Nielsen, Hummel’s chief executive, added: “After 30 years apart, we’re extremely proud and honoured to be back as an official partner of Southampton FC.

“Football is engrained in our brand DNA at Hummel and the partnership with Southampton represents another huge step of our ambitious growth plans and expansion internationally.

“Southampton has continuously proven its pioneering and innovative approach in the game and along with its strong values and history, this is a perfect fit for Hummel. Together, we share the same values of turning potential into excellence on and off the pitch, and we are truly looking forward to be working with the club on future product collections and fan activations.”

Now a new kit supplier is secured from 2021/22, the Saints could also be lining up a new front-of-shirt sponsor, with their current agreement with Sportsbet.io, the multicurrency sports betting firm, due to expire at the end of the ongoing campaign. Part of the Coingaming Group, Sportsbet.io replaced LD Sports last August after the Chinese company’s three-year deal was axed. It is not yet clear if either Southampton or Sportsbet.io wish to prolong their existing partnership.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jan 18, 2021 3:48 pm

FIFA publishes it's 2020 Global Transfer Market Report - lowest spend since 2016 which should come as no surprise

media release
https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fi ... 20amateurs.

the full report
https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fi ... 20amateurs.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jan 18, 2021 3:54 pm

French football has revised expectations/requirements for it's soon to be re-tendered rights - I fear that may still be too much for the broadcasters - from SoFoot.com

622 MILLION EUROS TO SAVE THE L1, OTHERWISE...
622 million euros: this is the price hoped for by the LFP to save the soldier Ligue 1. $622 million is 46% less than the amount negotiated in 2018. It's a disaster, the clubs are on the brink of bankruptcy and it's likely to last. But what is happening, concretely?
BY PIERRE RONDEAU MONDAY, JANUARY 18

622 million euros to save the L1, otherwise...
Dijon president Olivier Delcourt warns: "If nothing is done, we won't be able to leave next summer." Interviewed by the Eurosport channel, the manager claims to have "eaten all the reserves and all the equity accumulated over the last 7 years." Bankruptcy is near, and a solution must be found quickly. This is not a special case. Apart from Dijon, a third of the professional clubs of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 are in a worrying situation, according to the DNCG, victims, for the past 10 months, of the health and economic crisis, the premature end of last season and the fiasco of Mediapro. Last Tuesday, at the meeting between club representatives and UNFP (the players' union), the issue of bankruptcy was raised.

From twist to twist
Several sources claim that the argument for a definitive stoppage of the championship was made, notably by one of the leaders present at the meeting, that if the situation remained as it was, without TV rights and without agreement on the reduction of the players' salaries, "we will not be able to continue and we will be forced to stop the season. [...] If two or three teams close shop, the championship will have to be stopped prematurely. That same evening, when a principle of a reduction in salaries negotiated on a club scale and in agreement with the players had been decided, a new twist: Maxime Saada, president of the Canal Group, announced that he was giving up the rights to Lot 3 and called for a new global tender. The goal was clearly financial, he refused to pay two games at a value set in 2018, 330 million euros, and wanted to recover the rights to the other 8 games, at a value adjusted in 2021, post-Covid19 and post-economic crisis.

OnThursday, the LFP, following Saada's statements, then convened its board of directors, and decided, after two hours of discussions on Zoom, the principle of a new tender on the lots held so far by Mediapro.

Initially, they had imagined an over-the-counter sale,and had set their sights on Canal, seen at the time as the great saviour. Saada's request had the merit of cooling all their hopes. Vincent Labrune, president of the LFP, would then have determined broadly revised targets: while retaining the valuation of Lot 3, recovered by beIN Sport, after the turnaround of Canal, at 330 million euros, the lots dropped by Mediapro will have to be sold at least 250 million euros. Figures immediately denied by the LFP... We must understand the reaction of the League: 250 million is a far cry from the 790 promised by the Chinese-Spanish group in 2018! In addition, Free's 42 million euros for digital rights. That's a total of 622 million euros.
The big sell-off

622 million euros is 48% less than the original price, which was 1.153 billion euros. The fall is severe, heavy, painful, difficult. But at least clubs will be able to re-inflate their drained finances and recover cash, albeit in smaller but present quantities. Except the story is not over... On Friday, as we quietly headed towards a new tender, organized quickly, in less than 22 days, in order to stabilize the situation somewhat, beIN Sport announced in turn to give up its lot 3 and asked that it integrate the tender as soon as possible. However, if this lot were to be renegotiated in turn, we should expect a significant devaluation and to pull the total price down, perhaps below 500 million euros. At the same time, the LFP communicated and announced, without fail, that the 24th day, the weekend of February 7, with the Classico OM-PSG, would be broadcast on Telefoot and Canal. Let's sum up calmly: Mediapro no longer pays anything, Canal gives up its lot, the League no longer receives a penny, but all matches remain broadcast on these antennas. Good, good, good... However, on the same day, Friday, it was learned that M6, TF1 and France Télévision were proposing to broadcast the matches free of charge and in the clear at the time of the new tender and to find a loophole. We don't understand anything about it anymore.

So, in practical terms, what's going tohappen?
What we are sure of is that French football will not be black screen at least until February 7, that the Classico will be broadcast on Telefoot, always free (except for subscribers who pay every month, of course ...) and without any gain for the clubs. On the other hand, with regard to both the global or only condensed tender on The Mediapro matches, as well as the real price of Ligue 1 and the survival of the clubs, we are in the total unknown, without any prospect or precedent. This is a serious time, and unfortunately things do not seem to be improving. And nothing says that the next twist will improve the situation.

BY PIERRE RONDEAU

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:45 pm

A fascinating discussion with Nick Coward on the Unofficial Partner Podcast - including a on the topics of sports betting where sport is a betting product and therefore has rules that manage practise and also the intellectual property right that betting companies pay for to make bets on, and sports funding.

the blurb
Nic Coward currently chairs UK Athletics and England Golf and several other organisations both in and beyond sport. He began his career working as a lawyer for The FA and has since held leadership roles at many of the UK’s biggest sports rights holders including the Premier League, British Horseracing Authority and he advises an array of international rights holders across motorsport, football and a host of others. So it’s fair to say he’s thought long and hard about how sport works and when it doesn’t. This is a conversation about many different things, including people’s relationship with change, the effectiveness of sports organisations and the day to day job of leadership.

the podcast
https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... nic-coward

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jan 18, 2021 7:13 pm

This is likely to cause a few questions and be a recurring itch for the Premier League - prior to his return to Russia yesterday, where he was immediately arrested, Alexei Navalny named two individuals (Usmanov and Abramovich) with highly significant links to top tier English football clubs on his list of eight who should be sanctioned by Western powers

https://twitter.com/christoph_21/status ... 8699273217

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 19, 2021 11:14 am

The only thing I find surprising about this is the fact that it has taken so long - PPTV who failed to pay the Premier League at least £150m last season and eventually saw their contract cancelled and replaced by one that brings in just £12- £25m this year is suing the Premier League for £85m for change of contract - from the Financial Times

Chinese broadcaster sues Premier League in escalation of Covid dispute
SAMUEL AGINI JANUARY 18, 2021

A Chinese broadcaster has retaliated against England’s Premier League, escalating a legal feud over the collapse of their $700m contract during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Premier League sued a streaming service owned by Chinese retail conglomerate Suning for $215m last year for failing to make payments for the rights to screen live matches and highlights.

PPLive Sports International is now countersuing, claiming at least $116.8m from the Premier League.

The dispute relates to payments for the live transmission of matches in the Premier League — the world’s richest domestic football competition — after the pandemic forced scheduling changes on broadcasters.

Premier League football matches were suspended in March last year — the same month PPLive withheld an instalment — for three months before recommencing in June.

Clubs were forced to pay £330m in rebates to some of the Premier League’s broadcast partners as a result of the blackout. However, PPLive failed to come to an agreement with the Premier League and their discussions have ended up with a dispute in court.

“The Premier League seems to have adopted a double standard and treated a domestic UK broadcaster differently from a Chinese broadcaster,” PPLive Sports said in a statement to the Financial Times. “We have made our best efforts to reach a compromise, but we have been left with no choice but to take legal action.”

The company added that it had received “less than a third of the value of this contract but paid half the money for it”.

PPLive said in its claim, which has been filed at the High Court in London, that there had been a “fundamental change” to the competition when it restarted, causing “substantial losses” to the broadcaster.

Changes to kick-off times meant there were fewer matches during primetime slots in China, while the lack of fans in stadiums changed the atmosphere, it said.

PPLive said it wrote to the Premier League in June to negotiate a reduction to the fees it owed under their agreement. However, the Premier League “demanded” that PPLive continued to pay advance instalments for future matches, according to the claim.

The Premier League declined to comment. PPLive said the Premier League had retained $116m paid for matches that were not broadcast. The broadcaster is seeking to reclaim that amount plus interest and damages.

PPLive also said it would seek to reclaim the $210m instalment that was due in March last year should the Premier League succeed with its claim.

In September, the Premier League signed a one-year contract with Chinese internet group Tencent to replace PPLive in the country. All 20 Premier League clubs approved the deal.

People with direct knowledge of the terms of the Tencent contract said it was worth less than the amount PPLive was due to pay for the current 2020-21 season.

As well as a fee, the new deal with Tencent includes a revenue-sharing component with the Premier League based on how many people subscribe.

The loss of the PPLive deal, which had been due to expire in 2022, was a blow to Premier League clubs, which continue to miss out on match day revenue as games continue to take place without spectators. As a result, protecting broadcast revenues has been a high priority for the Premier League.

The dispute is a challenge for Suning, which is in talks to sell all or part of its majority stake in Inter Milan, the Italian football club.

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:45 pm

This is not a surprise, but still shocking that the government having encouraged the Non-league clubs to start the season (rather than mothball) with assurances of financial support if games remained behind closed doors, are now likely to switch from grants to loans. It follows having switched from saying they would provided grants to the National Lottery providing grants at the start of the season

https://twitter.com/Ollie_Bayliss/statu ... 7310558212

Chester Perry
Posts: 19173
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2016 11:06 am
Been Liked: 3116 times
Has Liked: 481 times

Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:55 pm

A very informative video short from Tifosy on Kit Suppliers/sponsors in the big 5 leagues

https://twitter.com/tifosy/status/1349642567219032064

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