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 Apr 05, 2021 6:19 pm

Interesting Interview in the Financial Times with Liverpool Chairman Tom Werner and Red Bird Capital's Gerry Cardinale

Liverpool FC owner FSG seeks new teams and possible listing
JAMES FONTANELLA-KHAN APRIL 03, 2021

Fenway Sports Group, the owner of Liverpool football club and baseball’s Boston Red Sox, will seek to acquire more professional sports teams and potentially a future stock market listing after securing new investment that values the US group at $7.35bn.

Earlier this week, private investment group RedBird Capital and basketball star LeBron James acquired minority stakes in FSG, in a transaction that confirms its position as one of the most valuable ownership groups in global sport.

Speaking to the Financial Times, FSG chairman Tom Werner and RedBird founder Gerry Cardinale committed to using the new capital to buy teams in other leagues, such as North America’s National Basketball Association and National Hockey League, as well as elsewhere in European football.

“Fenway Sports Group was started two decades ago and I think we have a lot of knowledge and experience in creating and launching new businesses and in sports and entertainment and media,” said Werner. “We look at Gerry as being a critical partner in our interest in identifying and acquiring more assets.”

The push for growth comes, however, after earlier talks with RedBird and its special purchase acquisition company, RedBall, about a potential reverse-merger fell apart.

That would have listed FSG publicly and given the group's owners, led by billionaire John W. Henry, a faster and potentially greater near-term financial reward following years of careful stewardship of the Red Sox and Liverpool, both of which have achieved great on-field success in recent years.

Asked if FSG could yet sell either club and seek a swifter payday, Werner said: “If someone comes into your house and offers you an insane price, you examine it. But our interest certainly is to retain and grow the properties that we have. I think that we see a lot of upside, not just in a financial sense. We have a commitment to our supporters.”

Werner’s answer underscores a broader problem for FSG, and indeed majority owners of other blue-chip sports franchises: the ability to find buyers flush enough to write a multi-billion-dollar cheque.

In the US, top sports franchises regularly exchange hands for billions of dollars, such as baseball's New York Mets, bought in October by hedge fund titan Steve Cohen for $2.4bn.

But such purchase prices have yet to be achieved in European football. Roman Abramovich, the Russian-Israeli billionaire who owns Chelsea, last year demanded a price in excess of £2bn from those seeking to acquire his Premier League club.

“How do you get to a £2bn plus valuation for [a club in] a league with total revenue of £5bn and total net operating profit before tax of £500m,” said Bob Ratcliffe, an executive at Ineos, the UK chemicals group that had examined purchasing Chelsea as part of a wider sports portfolio. “How does that ever reconcile itself?”

That problem is one that faces FSG with Liverpool, one of England’s most successful clubs, which it acquired for £300m in 2010. Since then, the team has won the Champions League, Europe’s top club competition, and last season won the Premier League, securing its first English league title in 30 years. FSG’s valuation suggests the football club alone is worth billions of dollars.

“The business of sports is something that has not kept pace, in my view, with team valuations”, said Cardinale, a former Goldman Sachs executive who helped launch the regional sports network for baseball's New York Yankees, before founding RedBird, a sport-focused private investment group.

“These sports assets and leagues, they are mini businesses in today's world, the way technology has transformed the way people want to receive and do receive content, and particularly live programming”, he added.

A banker advising buyers of sports assets said there are a number of factors leading investors to own multiple teams in different sports, including diversification and scale.

“Owning multiple sports franchises within the same market gives the team owner more leverage over media partners when negotiating new media rights contracts,” said the banker, who asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the press. “If it’s a team that plays during the summer and a team that plays during the winter, then you also have year-round content, which is valuable if you have your own network.”

“If the two teams share the same arena, then there can certainly be benefits from an operational perspective of selling tickets and suites across both teams. Finally, owning multiple franchises will give the company much greater scale and can mitigate swings from season to season, which can matter more for smaller market teams given the lower revenue base,” they added.

In the meantime, private capital has been pursuing minority positions in big leagues and teams, including Italy's Serie A and the NBA's San Antonio Spurs. Both Major League Baseball and the NBA have recently expanded bylaws to allow such institutional investment.


As a result, and with the pandemic continuing, Cardinale said a private investment in FSG made the most sense until markets “normalised”. “Down the road, we might think at that point we can be a leader in sports and introduce the public construct and the kind of capital that comes with that”, he said.

Werner said that ultimately FSG will adhere to the same principles that have guided their stewardship of the Red Sox and Liverpool thus far.

“The reason we’ve grown is that we focused on building a winning team on and off, whether you call it ‘the diamond’ or ‘the pitch’”, he said. “The most important thing for us is to try to be best in class.”

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 05, 2021 8:03 pm

Last year Everton announced a surprised sponsorship deal with USM for a preferential option on the naming rights for the Bramley Moore Dock stadium, USM already sponsor the training ground in a deal worth more that they have for shirt sponsor CAZOO - somehow Alisher Usmanov is not considered as a person of influence at Everton, which is fortunate for them considering the ongoing issues falling out from the Alexei Navalny allegations and the possibility of sanctions against those he named. Today Everton announced that they have a new sponsor, and it comes as little surprise that this organisation too has connections to Alisher Usmanov.

https://www.evertonfc.com/news/2081739/ ... nd-mygames

Everton fan TheEsk details the connection

https://twitter.com/theesk/status/1378999181482860544

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 05, 2021 8:35 pm

TiFo Football attempts to explain what a reformed Champions League under the Swiss system will look like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY5RcSf0scU

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 06, 2021 12:04 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:58 pm
Mino Raiola is not doing his reputation with the general public any favours, despite his recent press appearances - this is reportedly asking clubs who want to sign Erling Haaland

The finances requested by Mino Raiola for the transfer of Erling Haaland, during his meeting with Barcelona last week:

- €20M to Mino Raiola
- €20M to Alf-Inge Haaland
- €30M net per season to Erling Haaland
- Plus the transfer fee

https://twitter.com/City_Xtra/status/13 ... 5315927042
David Squires really hits home with his take on the Raiola/Haaland tour

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng ... sales-tour

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 06, 2021 12:10 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:37 pm
The Agents fees to 1 Feb 2021 have been released - some may be surprised at our near £4.5m bill given the summer and January windows but there have been a slew of deal extensions. Only West Brom have spent less than us in the Premier League and only Watford of the 3 that went down have spent less (though that is half what we have paid)

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 5692639234
The Guardian on how Paul Scally The Chairman of Gillingham managed to pay zero agents fees in the last year - the only club in the 92 not to do so

How did Gillingham become the only EFL club not to pay agents a penny?
League One club’s owner, Paul Scally, says weak people are funnelling vast sums to agents who not needed in football

Ben Fisher
Tue 6 Apr 2021 10.39 BST

When the Football Association released last week the latest sums paid to agents, eyes inevitably moved towards the headline figures: Premier League sides stumped up a record £272m in a year – they have shelled out more than £1bn over the past four seasons – with every top-flight club spending more on intermediaries than the whole of League One combined, including Gillingham, the only club in the top four divisions to not pay a penny.

Championship clubs spent more than £40m in the 12 months to the start of February 2021, League One £3m, League Two £1m and National League clubs almost £275,000, with Guiseley spending £450. Over the past six seasons Gillingham have, according to the FA, spent £86,457 on agents’ fees, a figure eclipsed by fourth-tier Salford City in the last year alone. Across that six-year period Manchester United have paid intermediaries £125m, and Liverpool’s £143m spend is enough to buy Gillingham’s £600,000 record signing Carl Asaba 238 times.

Gillingham are an anomaly in an era awash with super-agents and overspend. They will not pay agent fees unless they “absolutely have to”. “I don’t aim to pay zero,” says the club’s owner, Paul Scally, who celebrated 25 years as chairman last summer. “There are occasions when I have to pay an agent but I try and avoid it and do it very rarely. I don’t like agents. I don’t like their business, their trade. We managed before agents came along and it was probably a better world.

“For the first 10 years I dealt with players or their families, sometimes a solicitor or a representative, but most of the time I dealt with players. They would come in and we would agree a contract. Since agents came in it’s gone downhill from there. I think they either don’t bother coming to us because they know I don’t like agents, I’m not going to pay them a fee or will fight them over a fee … or they realise that they’ll get their player in the shop window, we’ll develop their player, their player will then have more worth and if they get sold to a Championship club they will get more money.”

Playing hardball does not mean Gillingham struggle to get players through the door; since last summer they have loaned a dozen and made 11 permanent signings, seven of which, according to the FA, involved agents. “If an agent represents a player, then the player should pay the agent,” says Scally, whose annual budget is about £2.6m. “I shouldn’t pay the agent. In times of austerity, such as we are, I’m looking at every penny to keep the business going. Why would I waste money on agents? We don’t need them in our industry.”

Shrewsbury, Gillingham’s third-tier opponents on Saturday, coughed up £95,000 in agent fees and the league leaders Hull City £543,238. By Championship standards Wycombe (£126,053) and Millwall (£255,715) paid a pittance, but why do more clubs not resist paying vast sums? “Because the people that make those decisions are weak,” says Scally.

“The people that make the decisions to pay the agents are often not the owners; they are often people working on behalf of their owners. They are weak because, invariably, it is not their money and they think the money is just going to keep on coming, keep on coming. They think bringing these players in is going to guarantee them success and promotion. That is why the Championship is in such a mess, because of this frenzy to get hold of the Premier League money.”

The millions spent by top-flight clubs, four of whom have used the government’s furlough scheme, particularly rankle. “It’s absolutely pathetic. It is all money that should have stayed in the game and should have been fed down into the pyramid. When League One and League Two asked for some help [to combat the impact of Covid-19], they all cried poverty. So we ended up with a £30m grant and £20m loan. We are going to them with begging bowls when they are paying that kind of money to agents.

“When you talk to fans generally, they are sick and tired of the nonsense at their club, the waste and the money they are spending on wages, agents etc. The average man cannot relate to the sums of money that are being wasted in the Premier League and, to some extent, in the Championship.”
Mehmet Dalman, the Cardiff City chairman, has said the game requires a “Big Bang” to reset financial order and Fifa is pressing ahead with plans to introduce controversial regulations for agents. The dizzying numbers have made Scally question his future across a challenging 12 months but he has been encouraged by emails of support from fans since detailing some of his observations in a 14-page open letter last month. Gillingham remain fiercely competitive despite operating within rigid parameters.

“There are people who have supported us for 40 years saying: ‘We’re never going to be a top, top club, we’re never going to be glamorous but we’re still going and we love what we’ve got because it’s real,’” Scally says. “If the Premier League and the Professional Footballers’ Association don’t get their heads out of their backsides and start realising the way they are going there is no sustainable long-term future, it is going to be a very rocky road ahead.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:21 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:21 pm
It has been quite the day of Podcast posts and here is another from SportsProMedia

PODCAST | Al Guido on the San Francisco 49ers and the future of the fan experience - this is interesting because of the 49ers involvement in Leeds and the plans they have to grow and redevelop the club

https://www.sportspromedia.com/analysis ... es-podcast
There are some clues in this Sportico piece on new Leeds Vice Chairman Paraag Marathe abou the directions Leeds will take to grow their revenues and the club

PARAAG MARATHE’S NOT-SO-SECRET PLAN FOR 49ERS GLOBAL DOMINATION

BY BRENDAN COFFEY - April 5, 2021 5:55am

Paraag Marathe is getting more done than you are.

In recent months, the San Francisco 49ers executive vice president restructured the team’s salary cap, allowing them to trade up to the pricey third slot in the NFL Draft. As president of the team’s business arm, 49ers Enterprises, he closed a deal to boost the team’s ownership of English soccer’s Leeds United. Then he was appointed as vice chairman of Leeds. He was reelected as chairman of USA Cricket and joined a SPAC seeking a fitness technology buy. In May, he takes over as treasurer of the Sequoia Hospital Foundation and is on the board of two eating disorder nonprofits, too. Come Tuesday, he’ll be teaching his class on negotiating at Stanford’s business school.

“In any successful enterprise, it’s all about the people around you,” Marathe, 44, said in a recent video call. While the northern California native is quick to give credit to others, the reality is he’s built his career by being the person successful people want to have around them—most notably, the York family, the majority owners of the storied NFL franchise.

“I think the Yorks think of Paraag as one of their own—not one of their employees, but one of their own,” emphasized Indra Nooyi in a phone call. As CEO of Pepsico at the start of the last decade, Nooyi was gently lobbying the Yorks to switch their concessions from Coke to Pepsi when patriarch John York introduced Paraag as “‘one of the movers and shakers of the San Francisco 49ers organization,’” Nooyi recalled. Then, and in the 11 years since, Nooyi has found Marathe “endearing, insightful, incisive,” she said, adding, “I only wish I knew him a long time ago. I would have hired him at Pepsi. He could have been a great CEO candidate.”

That Marathe returns the loyalty to the Yorks is clear in conversations, since he usually ends up framing his non-NFL business efforts through the prism of the 49ers. Take, for instance, joining the board of Athlon Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company formed in December by Boston Celtics owners Wyc Grousbeck and Mark Wan. “I want to learn what it’s all about to see if it’s something [49ers Enterprises] ever wanted to do,” Marathe said.

It would be wrong to see Marathe’s involvement as a zero-sum game he’s intent to win for the 49ers, however. His optimal outcome is always a net gain for all involved, whether it’s restructuring a player’s contract or weighing in on an acquisition target for the SPAC.

“When I was putting together the board for Athlon, I reached out to him because I wanted smart people who had great networks and reputations that would help elevate the visibility of Athlon,” Wan, also a part-owner of the 49ers, said in an email. “He was therefore a natural for that role and always full of great ideas.”

As Marathe teaches his graduate students at Stanford, “It’s not about what you get but how you feel about what you get,” he said. “That has been a guiding a philosophy of mine.”

Right now, he wants Leeds United fans to feel good about what they’ve got. 49ers Enterprises initially bought a 15% stake in the 102-year-old team in 2018 and this January boosted that to 37%. His appointment as vice chairman was a sign that the Yorks were taking an active role in the club’s future; that, Marathe recognizes, is often met with decidedly mixed feelings from English soccer fans. “One of the things that may not have served American owners of European football clubs all that well is that sometimes it appears to be viewed as a dispassionate economic opportunity,” he said. “That’s the antithesis of us. I watch [Leeds] games the same way I watch 49ers games—I’m screaming at the TV,” he added. During matches, Marathe and the Yorks trade texts, like any fans do, celebrating the wins and commiserating on the losses.

This season is Leeds United’s first in the English Premier League since 2004. And with eight weeks left, the team is likely to finish mid-table, healthily above relegation, meeting the immediate goal of majority owner Andrea Radrizzani and his 49ers partners. In the long run, Radrizzani and Marathe aim to put Leeds, once one of England’s dominant clubs and still one of its more popular sides, back in the same breath as the “Big Six” teams from London, Manchester and Liverpool.

“We have so many resources and blueprints we can export with relative ease, plugging into the Leeds business to help them grow on and off the pitch,” Marathe said. “I do this in my sleep.”

His confidence comes from having to earned his way to the top. Marathe had a pretty typical childhood in Saratoga, Calif., where like one in eight Americans, his parents were immigrants, from India. Young Paraag would “eat sports for breakfast” and dream of playing a sport professionally. His average build spiked that plan, but he saw a different path into sports after watching Jerry Maguire as an undergrad at Berkeley. With no experience or connections, he snagged opportunity a few years later when his then-employer, consultant Bain & Co., was hired to figure out a way to value draft picks for Bill Walsh and the 49ers front office. Marathe handled the assignment well enough to land a permanent job with the team.

When the 49ers wanted to build Levi’s Stadium, the Yorks put Paraag in charge. The technologies developed for the arena led to launching VenueNext, an ecommerce company that just sold for $72 million and, indirectly, led to the investment in Leeds, since Radrizzani first connected with the team during a stadium tour with Marathe. The team keeps its other investments close to the vest but allows that Levi’s Stadium turned the 49ers from a football team into a “multi-billion-dollar sports and entertainment company.” The facility vaulted the 49ers from among the least valuable teams to one of the NFL’s most valuable, a model Leeds will likely draw upon as it ventures to replace its aging home.

Marathe’s experience in 49ers operations is the basis for his work as chairman of USA Cricket, too. The job is a volunteer position he took on in 2018, with the goal to develop the game enough to get the U.S. competitive on the international stage. “When I joined, I didn’t even know how to play the game. But I know how to build organizations, I know how to build things,” he explained. “It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s about building an organization, building momentum and building support for it.”

Major League Cricket, a league of T-20 cricket launching top-level pro play in 2022, asked Marathe for guidance as it sets about seeking investors and developing the league, said MLC’s Vijay Srinivasan. Marathe helped secure the league’s first dedicated venue, a tenant-less minor league baseball stadium just outside Dallas. “Just the fact that someone with his wealth of experience in the professional sports landscape in the U.S. lends his expertise and time on a volunteer basis to cricket speaks volumes,” said Srinivasan in a video call. “I can’t pinpoint another instance globally in cricket of that crossover happening.” Last month, Marathe was reelected to serve as chairman of USA Cricket for another three-year term.

“With cricket and with Leeds we—49ers Enterprises—were able to plant the flag about who we are and what we do,” Marathe said. The organization continues to kick the tires on possible other investments, perhaps in a soccer club on the continent or a sports analytics company with global reach. Ideally, he’ll find ways to help make American football more than just a North American sport.

“NFL-wise, the next frontier for us to potentially really expand is globally—popularize our game in the same way that [soccer and cricket] are now the No. 1 and No. 2 most popular games in the world,” Marathe said. The 49ers will be at the front if he has his way. “I want it to be known that when someone is looking to do something, to connect with us.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:28 pm

A really interesting article from Rory Smith in the New York Times looking at the failure of PSG to tap into the most lucrative youth football marketplace in the world - the Parisian suburbs, why can't it keep hold of all that young local talent?it is a parable of the ages as far as football academies go

Europe Plunders Paris for Talent, and P.S.G. Pays the Price
APRIL 06, 2021

Paris St.-Germain could not, in the end, have sped Tanguy Nianzou along much quicker than it did. He was captain of the club’s under-19 side when he was only 16. He was called up to the first team at 17, training alongside Neymar and Kylian Mbappé and the rest, and soon made his debut. He even started a game in the Champions League.

And still, despite all those opportunities, he left. Nianzou had just turned 18 when, on July 1 last year, he was presented as a Bayern Munich player. P.S.G. did not even have the solace of being able to pocket a premium fee for a player it had nurtured. Nianzou’s contract was expiring. He walked out of his hometown club for nothing.

His departure stung. It stung sufficiently that Leonardo, P.S.G.’s sporting director, was citing it as a sort of parable as recently as February, long before the teams were drawn to meet in the Champions League quarterfinals this week.

“He played with us in the Champions League, and he has spent almost a year at Bayern without playing,” Leonardo said, undeterred by the fact that injuries — not a lack of quality — have limited Nianzou to 21 competitive minutes at Bayern. “The problem is thinking that there is paradise elsewhere. They say that P.S.G. lost a youngster, but sometimes I think it is not P.S.G. who loses, but the youngsters who leave.”

Leonardo’s sensitivity — and his club’s — to Nianzou’s departure is only partially explained by the teenager’s talent. It is also because Nianzou is not the only prodigy P.S.G. has allowed to slip through its fingers. He is not even the only one at Bayern.

Kingsley Coman became the youngest player to play for P.S.G. when he made his debut for the club in February 2013. He was the jewel of the team’s youth system, the standard-bearer for its future. A year later, he left on a free transfer. Last August, he scored the goal that won the Champions League for Bayern, against P.S.G.

There are plenty of others like them. There are 11 players left in this year’s Champions League who either grew up in Paris or spent some time in P.S.G.’s youth academy. Only three play for the reigning French champion: Colin Dagba, Presnel Kimpembe and Mbappé, though of course he had to be restored to his hometown at great expense.

Some of the others — Chelsea’s N’golo Kanté, Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez and Benjamin Mendy, Borussia Dortmund’s Raphaël Guerreiro — grew up in the sprawling suburbs surrounding Paris but never caught the club’s attention. A few did: Like Coman and Nianzou, Dortmund’s Dan-Axel Zagadou and Real Madrid’s Ferland Mendy spent time at P.S.G.’s academy before leaving to make their names elsewhere.

That would be galling enough; in reality, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Eleven more players born in P.S.G.’s backyard were eliminated from the Champions League in the round of 16, including Christopher Nkunku, Ibrahima Konaté and Nordi Mukiele at RB Leipzig and Jules Koundé of Sevilla.

Dozens more can be found in Ligue 1 and across Europe, from Paul Pogba on down. P.S.G. is sitting on what is generally regarded as the richest gold mine of talent in world soccer, and yet it is allowing prospectors to spirit its treasure away by the truckload. Most of the time it receives nothing in return but the lingering, bitter taste of regret.

It is understandable that Leonardo, for one, should have tried to blame the speculators. Scouts for rival French clubs have long trawled the Paris suburbs looking for the next big thing. In recent years, they have been joined by representatives of German teams and, before Brexit, Premier League clubs hoping to cut out the middleman.

“The German clubs, mainly Bayern, Leipzig and Dortmund, attack young people and threaten French development,” Leonardo told Le Parisien this year. “They call parents, friends, family, the player himself, even with players under the age of 16. They turn their heads. Perhaps the rules should be changed to protect the French teams.”

The problem, though, is not one that can be legislated away. Given the number of players emerging from Paris, it is unavoidable that P.S.G. should miss some of them, as it did with Kanté and Mahrez. What should concern Leonardo more is that — as Michael Zorc, Dortmund’s technical director, said — so many young players “see better permeability and greater potential for developing” away from P.S.G.

A decade ago, when Qatar Sports Investments first invested in the French capital’s flagship club, it vowed not simply to acquire success; Nasser al-Khelaifi, the club’s president, spoke of wanting to find the next Lionel Messi, rather than buy the original. The owners put their money where their mouth was, investing tens of millions of dollars on the club’s youth system.

But as P.S.G. has found in its pursuit of the Champions League trophy, the formula for success is rarely quite that simple. The club’s academy is regularly assessed as one of the best in France. In many ways, the amount of players it has produced for other teams is proof of its eye for talent and the quality of its coaching.

All of that is irrelevant, though, if the leap from the academy to playing alongside Neymar and Mbappé is too great. It is here that P.S.G. has failed.

What the stories of Coman and Nianzou and so many of the others have in common is that they made it to P.S.G., and all the way through the academy, only to find their path blocked at the last step: by a coach whose job was to focus on today; by an expensively acquired superstar brought in to win trophies; by a club moving too quickly to wait for youngsters to learn their trade.

On one level, the loss of all that talent has delivered P.S.G. only a glancing blow. It has still established, with only one exception so far, an effective monopoly on the Ligue 1 title. It has made it to a Champions League final. It can call on some of the world’s finest players. Would Ferland Mendy or Guerreiro or Koundé have made much of a difference? Possibly not.

But on another, more fundamental level, the impact has been considerable. Qatar has poured considerable time and resources into not only P.S.G. but French soccer as a whole, bankrolling the transformation of the club through Qatar Sports Investments at the same time it was effectively underwriting the league through broadcast deals with the Qatari broadcaster beIN Sports.

It has always had a clear idea in its head of what it wanted P.S.G. to be — winner of the Champions League, mainly — but, 10 years since it arrived, it is not yet obvious that it knows how to get there. Coaches have come and gone, all of them different: the coaching superstar, the canny tactician, the pressing zealot, the former captain.

The squad has a patchwork quality that suggests muddled thinking. Is it built around Neymar or Mbappé? Where do Moise Kean and Mauro Icardi fit in? Can any of these players do what the manager at the moment, Mauricio Pochettino, is likely to want them to do? Did they really suit Thomas Tuchel last season? P.S.G. is now, as it has been for a decade, a team in search of an identity.

Yet the easiest, most authentic identity has been at its fingertips all along: that of a team built around a Parisian core, young and dynamic and rooted to its location. Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, has spoken before about his ideal team being one that could compete for honors while being drawn exclusively from its own city. The pool of talent there, as almost everywhere else, renders that idea utopian. Everywhere, that is, except Paris.

P.S.G. has failed to claim that birthright. As recently as 2018, coaches at teams in the banlieues expressed surprise at how disconnected the city’s biggest club was from the young players on its doorstep. Perhaps that can be blamed on conceit, a sense that Parisian prospects would always want to play for a Parisian team.

Or perhaps it is representative of a broader failing at the club, one that places more weight on what Paris is seen to be than what the city actually is. In 2016, when P.S.G. revamped its stadium, it commissioned the architect Tom Sheehan to “breathe the identity of Paris into the Parc itself.” He drew a parallel between the new V.I.P. entrance at the stadium and the foyer of the Palais Garnier, the opera house.

It is that tourist perception of Paris that Q.S.I. hoped would become the team’s identity: the celebrities in the stands, a soccer team as a glamorous boutique nightclub. But that is only one side of Paris. It has not engaged quite so willingly with the other side of Paris, the one that is found in the banlieues, the one that is not quite so easy to sell.

Still, the talent keeps coming through. The club holds out great hope, in particular, for a 15-year-old central defender named el Chadaille Bitshiabu. French law prohibits him from signing a professional contract until he turns 16, on May 16, but all of the coaches who have worked with him are convinced he can make it. They can only hope it is with P.S.G.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 06, 2021 4:07 pm

It has been some time coming and given the level of fractious infighting at the National League much needed - Brian Barwick is to step down as (Part-time Non-Executive) Chair of the National League - from the Times

National League chairman Brian Barwick to stand down as crunch time looms for clubs
exclusive
Matt Lawton, Chief Sports Correspondent
Tuesday April 06 2021, 12.00pm, The Times

The National League has been thrown into turmoil by the news that Brian Barwick is to stand down as chairman, The Times can reveal.

It comes at a critical time for the National League clubs, because it is feared the departure of the former Football Association chief executive and television boss will make the government even more nervous about providing future bailout money.

Barwick has been the chairman since 2015 but the impact of Covid-19 has been devastating for clubs, with the government providing a £10 million rescue package last November.

The distribution of that cash caused a major furore, however. While there was an understanding that the money would be distributed according to clubs’ lost gate receipts, the National League board decided its own distribution formula based on a flat rate.

It left some clubs with hundreds of thousands of pounds less than they were expecting, with the criticism prompting the National League to commission David Bernstein, the former FA chairman, to lead an independent review of the financial distribution.

In February the National League North and South seasons were brought to a premature close and declared null and void, with only the National League continuing. But there has been further controversy with fines for clubs.

Last month Dulwich Hamlet, which plays in National League South, were fined £8,000 and given an eight-point suspended points deduction for not fulfilling fixtures. Dover was fined £40,000.

The National League said it had “sympathy” for clubs but such sanctions have caused further resentment with talk of a possible vote of no confidence in the board.

The board is due to meet this Thursday, after which there is due to be an announcement that 66-year-old Barwick is stepping down at the end of the season.

But his departure will create something of a power vacuum and may convince the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to stick with the plan of only offering loans to clubs going forward. That in itself has caused issues, given the view at the National League that they started the season believing that there would be centrally-funded grant support only for that to change to loans. Not all clubs have chosen to take on those loans, for fear of accruing more debt. But the situation, with a lack of direct government support, is leaving the majority of clubs fearing for their future.

Speaking today to The Times, Barwick said: “I’m very comfortable about my decision. It’s a time of life thing. I’ve done this for six years and I’ve had a great time doing it. I wanted to give something back to the sport.

“But the last 12 months have been the most difficult in my career. I’ve been trying my very best, as has everyone else, to get through this crisis. It blew us out of the water. There will be some who think we’ve done a good job and some who don’t.

“I decided over Christmas that it was time for me to step down. I’m 67 in June and I’ve been around sport and sports broadcasting since 1979. I formally told the board at our February meeting. They were surprised and very supportive, and they’d love me to stick around.

“But I just thought, you know what, it is the right time. I was determined out of a sense of duty to see this season through. I will stay until the end of the season. I think that’s the right thing to do. It’s morally right that they can prepare for the future.

“But if I’m honest it’s been tough. I am a part-time, non-executive chair who for the last 12 months has worked for 365 days.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 06, 2021 4:34 pm

Manchester City have released their 2019/20 Financial results - a big (big) loss - more to follow no doubt

press release

https://www.mancity.com/news/club/annua ... 1-63753311

financial report

https://www.mancity.com/annualreport202 ... report.pdf

Annual report

https://www.mancity.com/annualreport202 ... report.pdf

they do like to wrap things up in a glossy way though

https://www.mancity.com/annualreport2020/

this is a good way to understand that these figures are severely distorted by the the restart

"A better financial picture of the Covid years will be provided at the end of the 2020-21 season, when the two seasons are combined and normalised."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Paul Waine » Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:03 pm

Fees paid by clubs to football agents covered above - CP's post of Guardian report.

The Times has a different report, tax man looking at the tax avoided in the way agents fees are split between the players and the clubs.

Top footballers and agents face big bills as tax loophole shown red card

David Byers, Assistant Money Editor, Tuesday April 06 2021, 9.00am, The Times

They are the fixers who earn multi-million-pound fees to broker some of football’s biggest transfers and contracts. Now agents, and the players they represent, have fallen foul of the taxman.

HMRC is clamping down on agents who work for a player and a football club at the same time during a transfer or contract negotiation — known as “dual representation” — but who understate the amount of work they have done for players and overstate their role for clubs to save on tax.

It is in an agent’s interest to register less work is being done for a footballer because they must pay income tax and national insurance on the fees they receive from them. When representing a club they don’t need to do so and instead the club is charged VAT which it can reclaim as a tax-deductible expense.

At the moment most clubs pay an agent’s fee on behalf of players and then automatically declare that 50 per cent of the work was done for both parties — deducting the sum and corresponding tax bill from players’ wages. However, HMRC believes that, in reality, agents do far more work for players than clubs and that they, and players that they represent, should be paying much more tax as a result.

Under the new guidelines all clubs and agents must now record every phone call, email and meeting and invoice accurately to ensure all parties pay the right amount of tax. At the same time as releasing its guidance, the taxman has started sending some unnamed Premier League stars and agents multimillion-pound tax bills to recoup revenue HMRC has lost. As part of these investigations, agents are being asked to prove through every last WhatsApp message, email and text how much they really worked for the club and the player.

Some experts say that the move to document every call could cause huge problems, with the extra administrative burden on clubs potentially delaying transfers of star players to the Premier League.

Pete Hackleton, head of sport and entertainment at Saffery Champness, a tax firm, said the previous “50-50” rule had been “agreed historically” with HMRC as industry best-practice, “without the need for further evidence” before it began its latest crackdown. “This guidance puts a huge burden on clubs and their finance departments,” he said. “When a club is considering six different options, or looking to squeeze a deal in before a deadline, documenting every phone call or meeting a club has, is just not practical.”

Spending on agents’ fees has climbed as clubs strive to bring in the best players despite losses in the pandemic from games being played behind closed doors. Between February 1 last year and this year, clubs in the Premier League spent £272.2 million on fees compared with £263.4 million the previous year. Chelsea spent the most, with an outlay of £35.5 million.

Nimesh Shah, chief executive of Blick Rothenberg, the advisory firm, said the change in guidance would mean most players paying more. “I suspect that players and their agents were using the 50-50 approach, when in reality the entire, or majority of the, fee should belong to the player,” he said.

An HMRC spokesman said: “HMRC doesn’t accept that dual representation automatically occurs whenever an agent interacts with a club, and that a minimum of 50 per cent of the fee is automatically in respect of club services. We’re providing guidance on this so all parties understand the rules.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:37 am

Paul Waine wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:03 pm
Fees paid by clubs to football agents covered above - CP's post of Guardian report.

The Times has a different report, tax man looking at the tax avoided in the way agents fees are split between the players and the clubs.

Top footballers and agents face big bills as tax loophole shown red card

David Byers, Assistant Money Editor, Tuesday April 06 2021, 9.00am, The Times

They are the fixers who earn multi-million-pound fees to broker some of football’s biggest transfers and contracts. Now agents, and the players they represent, have fallen foul of the taxman.

HMRC is clamping down on agents who work for a player and a football club at the same time during a transfer or contract negotiation — known as “dual representation” — but who understate the amount of work they have done for players and overstate their role for clubs to save on tax.

It is in an agent’s interest to register less work is being done for a footballer because they must pay income tax and national insurance on the fees they receive from them. When representing a club they don’t need to do so and instead the club is charged VAT which it can reclaim as a tax-deductible expense.

At the moment most clubs pay an agent’s fee on behalf of players and then automatically declare that 50 per cent of the work was done for both parties — deducting the sum and corresponding tax bill from players’ wages. However, HMRC believes that, in reality, agents do far more work for players than clubs and that they, and players that they represent, should be paying much more tax as a result.

Under the new guidelines all clubs and agents must now record every phone call, email and meeting and invoice accurately to ensure all parties pay the right amount of tax. At the same time as releasing its guidance, the taxman has started sending some unnamed Premier League stars and agents multimillion-pound tax bills to recoup revenue HMRC has lost. As part of these investigations, agents are being asked to prove through every last WhatsApp message, email and text how much they really worked for the club and the player.

Some experts say that the move to document every call could cause huge problems, with the extra administrative burden on clubs potentially delaying transfers of star players to the Premier League.

Pete Hackleton, head of sport and entertainment at Saffery Champness, a tax firm, said the previous “50-50” rule had been “agreed historically” with HMRC as industry best-practice, “without the need for further evidence” before it began its latest crackdown. “This guidance puts a huge burden on clubs and their finance departments,” he said. “When a club is considering six different options, or looking to squeeze a deal in before a deadline, documenting every phone call or meeting a club has, is just not practical.”

Spending on agents’ fees has climbed as clubs strive to bring in the best players despite losses in the pandemic from games being played behind closed doors. Between February 1 last year and this year, clubs in the Premier League spent £272.2 million on fees compared with £263.4 million the previous year. Chelsea spent the most, with an outlay of £35.5 million.

Nimesh Shah, chief executive of Blick Rothenberg, the advisory firm, said the change in guidance would mean most players paying more. “I suspect that players and their agents were using the 50-50 approach, when in reality the entire, or majority of the, fee should belong to the player,” he said.

An HMRC spokesman said: “HMRC doesn’t accept that dual representation automatically occurs whenever an agent interacts with a club, and that a minimum of 50 per cent of the fee is automatically in respect of club services. We’re providing guidance on this so all parties understand the rules.”
I don’t think the extra burden things stack up... I’m sure some of the boffins on here could knock up a specific app that does it all for them.... you have a code that logs call... the time and length etc. And spits it out or mails it to the HMRC at the tap of a button.

I expect the national purse will benefit massively from this action... hope they are a keen on making sure some of the dodgy owners are paying their whack too. Time this country went after those profiting most from the system, at levels the rest can only imagine.... but that goes for all their cronies too, instead of screwing the population at every turn.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:42 am

elwaclaret wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:37 am
I don’t think the extra burden things stack up... I’m sure some of the boffins on here could knock up a specific app that does it all for them.... you have a code that logs call... the time and length etc. And spits it out or mails it to the HMRC at the tap of a button.

I expect the national purse will benefit massively from this action... hope they are a keen on making sure some of the dodgy owners are paying their whack too. Time this country went after those profiting most from the system, at levels the rest can only imagine.... but that goes for all their cronies too, instead of screwing the population at every turn.
I would be surprised if it added up to £100m (probably substantially less, which sounds a lot but is not a massive benefit in tax revenue terms, and a mere speck when you look at other legal means of corporate tax avoidance

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Paul Waine » Wed Apr 07, 2021 10:28 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:42 am
I would be surprised if it added up to £100m (probably substantially less, which sounds a lot but is not a massive benefit in tax revenue terms, and a mere speck when you look at other legal means of corporate tax avoidance
Hi CP, I'm surprised at your comment. Are you ok with "top earning" sportspeople dodging their income tax obligations, just because it might not add up to £100m? I'm assuming you are thinking just about football. I'm sure there are other sports where similar "payment allocation" decisions have also been made to avoid income taxes that would otherwise be due.

Regulation of agents should be better. Agents should either be permitted to act as agents for the players they represent or as agents for clubs - the two classes of agents should be kept separate.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Paul Waine » Wed Apr 07, 2021 10:31 am

elwaclaret wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:37 am
I don’t think the extra burden things stack up... I’m sure some of the boffins on here could knock up a specific app that does it all for them.... you have a code that logs call... the time and length etc. And spits it out or mails it to the HMRC at the tap of a button.

I expect the national purse will benefit massively from this action... hope they are a keen on making sure some of the dodgy owners are paying their whack too. Time this country went after those profiting most from the system, at levels the rest can only imagine.... but that goes for all their cronies too, instead of screwing the population at every turn.
There's no burden in keeping track of activities. Lawyers and I'm sure others have been doing this for years. Many years ago I knew lawyers who could account for their activities in 12 minutes periods.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:36 pm

Paul Waine wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 10:28 am
Hi CP, I'm surprised at your comment. Are you ok with "top earning" sportspeople dodging their income tax obligations, just because it might not add up to £100m? I'm assuming you are thinking just about football. I'm sure there are other sports where similar "payment allocation" decisions have also been made to avoid income taxes that would otherwise be due.

Regulation of agents should be better. Agents should either be permitted to act as agents for the players they represent or as agents for clubs - the two classes of agents should be kept separate.
Hi Paul

no issue with the correct taxation of anyone, more of an issue of a very consistent approach from governments of all flavours in this country targeting football, simply because it is football, if they were as consistent in their rabid pursuit of other groups/businesses (and in particular cronyism) I would be much happier. I have posted many times on this thread about the fact government targets football disproportionately in much of it's messaging and activity.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:37 pm

Paul Waine wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 10:31 am
There's no burden in keeping track of activities. Lawyers and I'm sure others have been doing this for years. Many years ago I knew lawyers who could account for their activities in 12 minutes periods.
I think that is done in 6 minute periods now, across a lot of professions

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:41 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 4:34 pm
Manchester City have released their 2019/20 Financial results - a big (big) loss - more to follow no doubt

press release

https://www.mancity.com/news/club/annua ... 1-63753311

financial report

https://www.mancity.com/annualreport202 ... report.pdf

Annual report

https://www.mancity.com/annualreport202 ... report.pdf

they do like to wrap things up in a glossy way though

https://www.mancity.com/annualreport2020/

this is a good way to understand that these figures are severely distorted by the the restart

"A better financial picture of the Covid years will be provided at the end of the 2020-21 season, when the two seasons are combined and normalised."
@SwissRamble looks at those Manchester City 2019/20 financial results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 5014294529

and here is his summary sheet

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 5524081673

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:43 pm

For the second time in 6 months Derby County confirm a definitive takeover, though as yet it has not received EFL approval - this time from No Limits Sports

https://www.dcfc.co.uk/news/2021/04/der ... l-approval

couldn't resist - such a cheesy name goes with this cheesy response

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM5W7Xn7FiA

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:51 pm

Meanwhile Ipswich Town have confirmed their takeover by American Private Equity company Gamechanger, the investment arm of Phoenix Rising has completed with the necessary approvals - what is it with these names?

https://www.itfc.co.uk/news/2021/april/ ... cus-evans/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:59 pm

An interesting interview with Karl Heinze Rummenigge in the Athletic

https://twitter.com/TheAthleticUK/statu ... 5241363456

Rummenigge exclusive: ‘We can’t get to the point where only clubs owned by billionaires can compete’

https://theathletic.com/2497119/?source=twitteruk

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 3:55 pm

From time to time we discuss the impact of relegation from the Premier League, here is an alarming statistic, during the course of the Premier League's lifetime of the 42 clubs that have been relegated 27 have never made it back (though both Bournemouth, Swansea and Barnsley are currently seeking to reduce that figure). Here is @SportingIntel with some additional detail

https://twitter.com/sportingintel/statu ... 9562872833

Of course their needs to be some more detail, particularly around when most of those teams were relegated - it feels like the parachute payments in the last decade along with FFP have made the process of return somewhat easier in recent years.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Paul Waine » Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:16 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:36 pm
Hi Paul

no issue with the correct taxation of anyone, more of an issue of a very consistent approach from governments of all flavours in this country targeting football, simply because it is football, if they were as consistent in their rabid pursuit of other groups/businesses (and in particular cronyism) I would be much happier. I have posted many times on this thread about the fact government targets football disproportionately in much of it's messaging and activity.
Thanks, CP. I don't think footballers are unfairly targeted by the tax authorities. The rest of us have been subject to these anti-avoidance rules for many years. If all of the £270m agents fees paid by the 20 Premier League clubs last season were for services provided to the agents' players rather than the clubs who paid these bills then the tax avoided is £160m - and that's just one season.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 5:04 pm

Serie A have sewn up a International rights deal that excludes North America and the MENA region - as posted previously the expected International rights overall are expected to fall in the next cycle just as the domestic rights have. Serie have still to sell the MENA rights after BeINSport refused to bid and also a small non-exclusive 3 game a week deal on the domestic front for which Serie A have been unable to agree a price with Sky Italia - this from SportsProMedia

Serie A international rights snapped up by Infront for ‘€139m a year’
Marketing agency takes over Italian soccer contract from IMG.

Posted: April 6 2021By: Tom Bassam

- Previous overseas deal was worth €370m a season
- Fee hampered by absence of BeIN from bidding on MENA contract

Serie A, Italian soccer’s top flight, has awarded its overseas media rights contract to the Infront agency for the 2021/22 to 2023/24 cycle.

After a tumultuous process to finalise its domestic broadcast deal, Infront’s bid got the unanimous backing of the Serie A clubs. The global rights deal excludes the US market - where the league recently agreed a €64 million (US$75.8 million) a year deal with CBS - and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, which the league is tendering separately.

The agency is paying €139 million (US$164 million) per year for the contract, according to reports in Italy, with Infront seeing off a rival bid from Kosmos, the investment group that backs the Davis Cup. According to reports, the contract drew 49 offers, with IMG, Sportfive and Mediapro all said to have bid.

Serie A signed off on the Infront deal after a second round of private negotiations following alterations to the tender documents made after initial talks in January.

Infront served as Serie A’s media rights advisor during the last cycle, with the league reportedly paying the agency between €50 million (US$59.2 million) and €60 million (US$71.1 million) per season over the past three years.

Serie A president Luigi de Siervo warned recently that the league should expect a dip in the value of its overseas rights revenue.

IMG, Serie A’s outgoing overseas broadcast partner, paid in the region of €370 million (US$438 million) per season once technical costs, betting rights and the Coppa Italia knockout competition were factored in.

“It will definitely go down. A decent amount,” De Siervo told the Associated Press last month in relation to the overseas rights deal.

“Our biggest problem is BeIN. BeIN was worth 50 per cent of our package and they’ve decided not to take part in our auction. And they’ve prohibited all of their friends and intermediaries to make offers for their countries. So we’ve been ostracised by BeIN, and that makes it very complicated and difficult for us.”

At the start of its sales process, the league publicly targeted a figure of up to €500 million (US$592 million) per season, but as De Siervo said, the absence of BeIN bidding for the MENA contract hampered that goal. The Qatar-based pay-TV broadcaster has expiring Serie A rights contracts in France, Australia and MENA that were worth in the region of US$170 million when first signed.

Last June BeIN declined to broadcast Serie A games in the MENA region amid tensions over the league’s ties with Saudi Arabia. The broadcaster was unhappy that Serie A continued to show support to the kingdom despite state links to the BeoutQ pirate network that had been so damaging to BeIN’s business.

BeIN resumed coverage after agreeing a compensation deal with Serie A and IMG.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 5:47 pm

This is quite a detailed piece looking at whether the perception that sponsorship has concentrated on premium offerings in the pandemic - SportsBusiness

Sponsorship market dynamics favour premium sports brands in the pandemic
Matthew Glendinning
April 7, 2021

- New sector entrants have buoyed the premium sponsorship market during the pandemic
- B2B companies are taking on major branding assets previously held by B2C companies
- Premium sports rights-holders have adapted to enhance tech company activations

In tough economic times, high-end sellers like to present their products or properties as exceptional. It’s no different in sports sponsorship, where there is an expectation that sponsorship sales at premium properties – those sport brands that combine prestige with big audiences – will come through whatever the macroeconomics.

Some would argue this has been the case in the pandemic – that the big have survived, thrived even, while lesser properties have suffered.

But sports marketing experts paint a more complex picture. Premium sports have indeed shown greater resilience during the pandemic, but their relative success has been driven not just by their innate attributes but by their ability to respond to the new market conditions.

Market trends
Tim Crow, a sponsorship consultant and former chief executive of the UK’s Synergy agency, says the ‘flight to quality’ concept mischaracterises the market over the last 12 months.

“There have been two big trends. Demand is down overall because so many traditionally high-spending sponsor categories have been hit hard by the pandemic, but brands from categories having a good crisis have come in and spent at all levels, not just premium. So the dip has been much smaller than the forecasters predicted.”

Others agree there has not been a major differentiation in the volume of deals at all levels of sponsorship, but that rights fees for lesser properties have been hit disproportionately. Phil Carling, managing director of football at the Octagon Worldwide agency, explains: “It’s certainly the case the secondary- and tertiary-level properties have had to work harder to attract sponsorship than they’ve ever had to do before, and I think they’ve also had to be very flexible in terms of price.

“For premium properties, our experience has been that, whereas for the last probably five years, we’ve seen rights fee inflation between cycles of between 15 and 20 per cent – sometimes higher with the really elite properties – that is not currently the case. With the premium properties, flat is the new good and the further down the food chain you go, they’ve had to put more inventory into the deals, or they’ve had to trade on price.”

Premium variations
According to research by the European Sponsorship Association and research firm Nielsen Sport, the European sports sponsorship market shrank nine per cent in 2020.

Nielsen Sport told SportBusiness the effects of the pandemic on smaller sports have been more pronounced, partly due to the greater relevance for sponsors of spectators, who have been shut out of stadiums and arenas around Europe to safeguard health: “Whereas in football, [for example], media presence is more relevant, the smaller sports’ visibility for on-site spectators plays a greater role,” the company noted.

Yet there are also wide variations at the premium end, with some of the biggest sports properties in the world registering double-digit falls in value.

Properties like the main shirt deals at Manchester United and Barcelona – two of the most iconic in sport – were sold or extended over the last six months at discounts of 18.4 per cent and 45.4 per cent, respectively. German software company TeamViewer will pay United $65m (€55.4m) per season, compared to the incumbent, car brand Chevrolet’s $79.8m per season. E-commerce brand Rakuten will reportedly pay Barcelona €30m ($35.2m) for the 2021-22 season, reflecting the wider economic situation and a change in asset mix, where its currently pays the club €55m per season.

Crow sees the results of each deal through the lens of the club’s specific circumstances rather than their premium context. “United went to market at the height of the pandemic, had multiple bidders at the table, and achieved a number that most of their peers could only dream about before the pandemic hit. By any standard that is good business, and the contrast with Barcelona, in particular, is instructive.

“Barcelona has been a club in crisis on and off the field for some time now, so it was no surprise to see them come up short: no-one new was ever going to come in and buy the level of risk they were selling, which the pandemic exacerbated. They’ve become a price-taker rather than a price-setter and it will be a long road back to re-build the balance sheet as well as the team.”

B2B upgrades
Carling also views the United deal as indicative of a trend that has emerged in the pandemic, of B2B companies taking up positions formerly held by B2C companies.

“Historically, the big premium properties have been the home of the B2C brands because the primary benefit is the eyeballs and the media-facing inventory,” he says.

“What you tended to find was that technology companies, because they are essentially B2B businesses, would go for quite low-key supply level deals or partnerships with a premium rights-holder.

“If you look at the Man United deal being a bellwether for this transformation, you’re now getting technology companies who are prepared to swallow the inefficiencies around some of the consumer-facing inventory. They’ve seen this as an opportunity to build fame and to build a brand with a wider consumer base than would have been historically the case.”

Carling adds that this trend had built on an already growing interest from technology companies in marketing platforms from sports, entertainment and leisure: “A lot of technology companies are seeing sports, entertainment and leisure as a key sector to develop their own position within the marketplace.

“What they see in terms of the benefit of working with ‘quality rights owners’ is that they can build up a proof of concept around the use of their technology and sell the story around that to potentially 2,000 other businesses. The higher up the food chain you can go in terms of getting a flagship property as a showcase for your technology, the better.”

There has also been a groundswell of B2C new economy companies, from food delivery services to online car retail, entering sport at the premium end. Last summer, for example, online used-car sales portal Cazoo became Premier League club Everton’s main shirt sponsor and followed up in the same role with rival Aston Villa. Carling believes that Premier League clubs from the mid-tier upwards should be considered premium and that brands like Cazoo on “a pathway to becoming bigger businesses” may next set their sights on clubs in the top six.

US perspective
For the CAA Sports agency, working out of New York, the past 18 months have seen the agency complete more than $1bn in sponsorship transactions on behalf of its clients, which include Formula 1, Red Bull Racing, Golden State Warriors, NCAA, Riot Games, USTA and USGA.

Sponsorship sales executive Rob DeAngelis, recently appointed co-head of CAA Sports’ global sales and partnerships, told SportBusiness the agency defines premium by “the quality of the property, not necessarily the dollar value assigned to that property”.

As in the European context, the rise of technology company sponsors has been a key factor in US sales for premium properties. “Within the last year, there’ve been certain categories, such as technology companies, which had a pretty strong year and where their desire to innovate within sport did not change. We weren’t able to do business as usual but were able to find unique and different ways for them [technology-based sponsors] to show up.”

DeAngelis cites the example of video communication platform Zoom, which became one of the stand-out brands during the pandemic from a business standpoint. Zoom, he says, “became a verb for video communication” and was therefore less concerned with brand building, and more invested in showcasing what it could do in new and engaging ways with activation-led programmes such as the Virtual Paddock Club in Formula 1.

DeAngelis mentions one other factor in the agency’s favour relating to its premium sports sales not to be dismissed – timing. He says it takes the agency, on average, one year before a partnership is brought to execution so some of its major deals have roots in 2019. Meanwhile, as the calendar has turned this year, there has also been a wider market pick-up: “I think there’s some psychological element to the fact that companies are really looking to put themselves in a position to be the winners when we all come out of this mess.”

Major league flexibility
New York-headquartered Excel Sports Management, a full-service sports management and marketing agency, also works with premium sports, primarily the NBA, MLB and PGA Tour.

Emilio Collins, the company’s partner and chief business officer, and a former executive vice-president of global marketing partnership at the NBA, believes the flexibility of premium rights-holders in terms of inventory has been key to keeping the deal pipeline open.

He points to the NHL’s response to the pandemic, which has been just as instructive as any of the initiatives led by the NFL, NBA and MLB.

“I have thought for a while that the NHL doesn’t really get enough credit in North American sports,” Collin says. “Obviously, a lot of the attention goes to the ‘big three’, but I think NHL is maintaining and even growing its value proposition.

“The NHL has been able to focus on innovation while building authentic stories with brands that enhance fan engagement, which has attracted new sponsors, even in the pandemic.

“For instance, if you look at their roster of technology partners, they have developed authentic integration stories with some of the best in the world, from Verizon to SAP, as well as the recently announced deal with AWS [Amazon Web Services], and, one that doesn’t get enough attention, Apple.”

Like his European counterparts, Collin concludes that lesser properties have not profited from the technology sector’s resilience in the same way. “To a lesser extent, fringe properties have also benefited from the new economy marketplace, but generally speaking brands placing sports marketing bets in these sectors are looking for highly-prominent positions with the potential to drive real market share.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 07, 2021 9:16 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 10:14 pm
It looks like we can add Swindon Town to the list of clubs clinging precariously to like while under the stewardship of a questionable owner even as they are about to have their promotion ratified

https://twitter.com/ChrisMaisey/status/ ... 9138004994
SWINDON TOWN FC, LEE POWER, FIRST TOUCH PRO MANAGEMENT AND MICHAEL STANDING are all CHARGED by the FA

Swindon Town FC, its Owner and Chairman, Lee Power, First Touch Pro Management and its Company Director, Michael Standing, have been charged in relation to breaches of The FA’s Regulations on Working with Intermediaries.

It is alleged that Swindon Town FC, Lee Power, First Touch Pro Management and Michael Standing breached Intermediary Regulations in relation to the ownership and/or funding of Swindon Town FC.

Swindon Town FC, Lee Power, First Touch Pro Management and Michael Standing have until 22 April 2021 to provide responses to their respective charges.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The supporters trust have put together this response

Wednesday 7th April 2021 for Immediate Release

TrustSTFC were disappointed to learn today of FA charges being issued to Swindon Town FC, Lee Power, First Touch Management and Michael Standing .

TrustSTFC assume that these FA Charges are linked to the ongoing legal proceedings and upcoming court case on the formal ownership of Swindon Town Football Club. TrustSTFC would like to go on record and state that if the FA do find any wrongdoing has occurred in their investigation and associated charges , that they deal with the individuals appropriately but do not take action that will penalise the football club specifically as it will be largely the loyal fan base of STFC that will suffer in this scenario which would be unjustly unfair.

TrustSTFC will be making further enquiries to establish exactly what the situation is and also to understand any potential actions which may manifest from this investigation / charges should it be proven that rules have been broken. The matter will also be discussed further at our Board meeting on Thursday 8th April and any further updates will be issued via further press releases in due course on our website.

Should the FA wish to speak to TrustSTFC on this matter we would be more than happy to discuss this with the FA teams to explain our rationale for the above statement.

TrustSTFC Board.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 11:26 am

It has been a while, Accrington Stanley Chairman/majority shareholder @AndyhHolt lets fly at the games authorities and their permanent thrall of the biggest clubs

https://twitter.com/AndyhHolt/status/13 ... 0520451074

it all sparked out from SPFL Supremo Neil Doncaster yesterday

https://twitter.com/AndyhHolt/status/13 ... 9671983114

more of it in the Price of Football Podcast that is out today

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:25 pm

Football club valuation is one of the longest running topics on this thread, The Markham method being the most commonly referenced (but I feel the least used). Following a surge in football clubs changing hands The Ornstein and Champman Podcast talk to Tom Markham about club valuation (he has just become a shareholder in Wigan)

the blurb
Host Mark Chapman is joined by The Athletic's football news reporter Matt Slater are joined by Dr Tom Markham to explain how a football club is valued and how deals are negotiated between buyer and seller with our guest Dr Tom Markham - who is on the board of the group that has just bought EFL side Wigan Athletic.

Analysing a raft of recent deals including the breaking news during recording of this week's pod that the pod that saw the completion of sales of both Ipswich and Derby County.

Tom also reveals the club he thinks would be the toughest to buy.

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

for those who are interested I link again the academic paper that Tom Markham first highlighted the approach

https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.ph ... INDEX=TRUE

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:30 pm

I see Derby sale is pretty much done isn't it?
Relative of Xabi Alonso the buyer.

Also, there's a Newcastle Utd supporters Trust making a lot of noise about raising some money to buy some of the club and put fans on the board.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:40 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:30 pm
I see Derby sale is pretty much done isn't it?
Relative of Xabi Alonso the buyer.

Also, there's a Newcastle Utd supporters Trust making a lot of noise about raising some money to buy some of the club and put fans on the board.
From what I have seen/read about Erik Alonso one can only fear the worst for the club, it is a shame the EFL Owners and Directors test isn't as robust as the Premier League's

As for the Newcastle United Supporters Trust - it sounds good, but I cannot see any Private Equity group wanting to share ownership with fans to a level of significant input or indeed fans being able to raise the necessary £80m - £100m to have that input, particularly when they want a sugar-daddy Sir John Hall type who will chuck money at the club. The share-holding they want to maintain influence will also be required to carry a significant liability and that is why it is doomed and I haven't bothered posting about it, until prompted.
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:48 pm

The vultures are at the door

Seems like the American Private Equity invasion of European Football is about to switch attention to the Bundesliga (there are so many American players developed there) and not just the league itself but also the clubs within it. This from Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... f=Xka7aNox

U.S. Investors Eye Profit in Germany's Soccer Leagues
By David Hellier - 8 April 2021, 05:00 BST

- Clubs open to external money after financial hit of pandemic
- Eintracht Frankfurt, SC Paderborn 07 among potential targets

American money is starting to chase German soccer, where strict ownership rules have for decades favored spectators over speculators.

Sensing an opportunity to tap into one of Europe’s richest leagues and undeterred by a fanbase that has sometimes been resistant to wealthy owners, U.S. businessmen Paul Conway and Jordan Gardner are among those eyeing deals. Their interest comes with clubs including Eintracht Frankfurt and SC Paderborn 07 opening up to the possibility of external investment.

Even before the coronavirus crisis shut down arenas and sent soccer clubs searching for ways to shore-up their finances, those in Germany were looking for ways to start bridging the money gap with rivals in the U.K. and Spain.

“Germany is interesting to us strategically,” Conway, the co-founder of investment firm Pacific Media Group, said in a phone interview. “We have approached a number of clubs to see if there’s a shared philosophy and to see if we can be helpful.”

The Bundesliga is home to greats of the global game, including Robert Lewandowski, and rising stars like Erling Haaland. Its clubs, such as FC Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and FC Schalke 04, are known for their passionate fanbases. Bundesliga games have the highest average attendances across Europe’s top five leagues, according to Deloitte.

Conway said teams in the country are a good fit for his firm’s existing stable of lower-league European soccer clubs, which it manages with a focus on developing young talent and a more exciting, attacking style of play.

“Many teams play with a high press, they have balanced budgets and have a commitment to youth,” according to Conway, who said Pacific Media could make more than one investment in Germany.

Liquidity Squeeze
Germany's top division saw key revenue streams start to dry up last year


Source: DFL Economic Report 2021

Among those weighing outside money is SC Paderborn 07, according to people familiar with the matter. The second-division German team has held discussions with at least one American group, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Eintracht Frankfurt, one of Germany’s best-known teams, has also been exploring the possibility of introducing new investors, people familiar with the club’s thinking said. It has held preliminary talks with bankers on its potential value in any minority stake sale, one of the people said. The club’s board hasn’t made a formal decision on whether to pursue a deal, another person said.

Representatives for Eintracht Frankfurt and SC Paderborn 07 declined to comment.

Last year, an international investor group approached third-tier club TSV 1860 Munich about buying a majority stake, according to a person familiar with the matter. The consortium hasn’t reached an agreement with the club’s main investor, the Jordanian businessman Hasan Ismaik, the person said.

A representative for TSV 1860 Munich declined to comment, referring questions to Ismaik. Attempts to reach Ismaik through TSV 1860 Munich and another company he owns were unsuccessful.

“Many, including myself, see Germany as an untapped, potentially lucrative market,” said Gardner, an American soccer executive who has minority investments in the U.K.’s Swansea City AFC and Dundalk FC in Ireland, and is majority shareholder in Denmark’s FC Helsingor.

Covid Crunch
Clubs in the top two Bundesliga divisions generated revenue of about 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) during the 2019/2020 season, 5.7% less than the previous year, according to figures from DFL. The German sporting body warned that the impact on the most recent season would be even more pronounced as a result of ongoing stadium lockdowns.

“Covid will have an impact on the ownership structure of German teams in the long term,” said Daniel Erd, a lawyer at Pinsent Masons in Germany. “In the end they won’t find a long-term solution apart from external investment.”

A representative for DFL declined to comment.

Since 1998, the so-called 50+1 rule has prevented a commercial investor from holding more than 49% of voting shares in any German club. The edict has been credited with keeping wage bills and ticket prices in the country low compared with other major European leagues, where super-rich investors have poured millions into buying players but presided over rising costs for fans.

“The 50+1 rule model ties the soccer industry a little bit to the regular fans through a membership-owned system,” said Tilo Zingler, the founder of an official Borussia Dortmund fan club in the U.S. “As a fan, I can have my say.”

Loyal Fans
German soccer games draw the highest average crowds in Europe


Source: Deloitte

Data cover 2018/2019 season

There are outliers. VfL Wolfsburg is owned by car giant Volkswagen AG, and Bayer 04 Leverkusen by pharmaceuticals group Bayer AG. These clubs are exempt from 50+1 as their owners have invested consistently over more than two decades. Another is TSG 1899 Hoffenheim, whose billionaire owner -- SAP SE co-founder Dietmar Hopp -- has been a divisive force in German soccer.

The emergence of RB Leipzig, backed by energy drink maker Red Bull GmbH, is a more recent example of a shift in the fans-first culture that has led to it being dubbed a “plastic” club by rivals’ supporters.

This resistance to flashier owners isn’t deterring wealthy Americans.

“In general, German clubs are well run, and well supported commercially,” said Gardner. “Opportunistic investors have been keen to jump into German football.”

— With assistance by Stefan Nicola, and Jan-Henrik Foerster

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 1:32 pm

This is an interesting and long read from Tifosy - Stronger together: merging football leagues: The dominance of Europe's Big 5 and North America's Big 4 is encouraging smaller leagues to join forces to compete.

you have to register for free to access it but it is really quite fascinating how differently the Investment market looks at football

https://www.tifosy.com/en/insights/stro ... agues-3478

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 4:37 pm

An Interesting first column in the Guardian from former Bayern and Germany captain Philip Lahm - what is it about that club and to a lesser extent Ajax that generates so many football statesmen - I suspect it has a lot to do with historical sense of purpose and value that has essentially remained unflinching for decades. It actually ties quite well with the Rumennigge interview in the Athletic earlier this week


A bigger, more diverse European super league can help enrich football
Philipp Lahm

In the first of a series of columns, the World Cup-winning Germany captain argues for an expanded league which includes clubs from across the continent

Thu 8 Apr 2021 13.59 BST

Football has changed for the better. In the 1980s, it was open season on artists like Diego Maradona, with foul specialists sent in to stop him. You can watch the clips on YouTube, and be horrified. The end, back then, justified all means.

Today, tripping and brutal tackles are heavily penalised, and such fouls have all but disappeared. The international football community agreed on the stricter approach in a transparent process. Players must now play fair, and fouls are seen as a last resort. These days, the end is justified by the means. For this development, from which I profited as a player, I would like to thank all those involved.

This example shows how important it is to establish rules that take everyone’s interests into account. It has proven extremely beneficial to our sport, particularly in international matches. It has allowed the Champions League to transform into a scintillating competition.

With the quarter-finals in train, let’s take a brief moment to consider: why do we even play football? For fame, glory, success – financial success as well – for entertainment and for spectacle. More than anything, though, it teaches us to cooperate and collaborate with others.

A shared set of rules is of particular importance. In football, that means: two goals set up on a rectangular field. Only one player is allowed to pick the ball up with their hands. The same offside rules apply to Porto and to Chelsea. If the referee misses a penalty for the Hungarians, all fans find it just as unfair as they would if it happened to the Swedes. The fact that adjustments must constantly be made can be seen by the currently inconsistent application of the rules governing handballs and by the discussion over financial fair play. There will never be absolute equity.

There are also, of course, rules in basketball, table tennis and the Eurovision song contest. But the impact of football is greater. This global sport that fills stadiums around the world offers unique opportunities for encounters far beyond one’s own national borders. People everywhere play the game or participate as fans, whether it’s the Champions League final or the European Championship. And these two formats – that of national teams and club teams – complement and benefit each other.

Football is the most popular sport in 120 countries around the world, and there is hardly a European country in which it isn’t ranked No 1. When it comes to football, all others measure themselves against our continent. The last time the world champion didn’t come from Europe was 2002. And European club football is the Silicon Valley of the sport.

All others measure themselves against our continent – European club football is the Silicon Valley of the sport
The brand names aren’t Facebook, Amazon and Google, but Real, Juventus, PSG, Arsenal, Barça, Bayern, City and United. Through digitisation and globalisation, they have developed worldwide communities. Fans of Bayern can be found just as easily in Shanghai as in Oberpfaffenhofen. Because their markets have been rapidly expanding for several years, these top brands have turned into monopolies of sorts, a status that will only become more entrenched in the years to come. Five of the eight teams in this year’s Champions League quarter-finals come from England and Germany, the two strongest leagues financially.

This brings us to an issue that also needs attention: who is allowed to participate? In recent years, the biggest teams have voiced a desire to create a super league of the 16 to 20 strongest clubs in Europe. Resistance to that idea is born out of concerns that it would establish a football elite. On the other hand, though, clubs and players would like to compete with their equals. The arrival of the Bundesliga in 1963 was accompanied by similar concerns, but it became a great success.

Just as I am a fan (leaving aside the pandemic for a moment) of the concept behind holding the European Championship in 12 European cities, I quite like the cosmopolitan idea underpinning a European league. At the moment, clubs from only five or six countries would participate – namely the established teams from Madrid, Manchester, Munich, Paris and London. But just as players from Istanbul, Warsaw and Bratislava get their shot in the Euros, would it not be better to include teams from Bruges, St Petersburg, Athens, Copenhagen and Prague in a European league? Investors are certainly interested in such attractive locations. It should also not be forgotten that the beginnings of the European Union came in the 1950s with just six countries.

The top beneficiaries of current developments, the top brands, bear a significant share of the responsibility. In my role as tournament director of Euro 2024 and in my new column, which appears in many different countries and languages, I would like to take part in this debate. Critical participation from fans and the media is helpful. Europe is the continent of the Enlightenment, and football can make a small contribution to the strengthening of democracy.

I find it important to mention one last thing: every country, every club should preserve – or even emphasise – its own identity and distinguishing characteristics. Cultural particularities enrich the whole. Italian football has different strengths than the game played in Spain, England or Germany. Our continent has brought forth champions from places as different from each other as Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, the former Czechoslovakia, the former Soviet Union and Portugal. In 2018 Croatia reached the World Cup final. Poland, Hungary and Austria have all taken their turn at the top of European football. Ajax, Dynamo Kyiv, Red Star Belgrade, Benfica and MTK Budapest have achieved glory in the past. Football greats have come from Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Wales and Norway. Diversity is Europe’s strength.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 7:13 pm

Southampton show it is still possible for the smaller clubs in the Premier LEague to get record breaking shirt sponsorship deals, unfortunately it seems that it is still only gambling companies that offer them - from SportsProMedia

Southampton secure club record Sportsbet.io shirt sponsor extension
Three-year deal includes option for Premier League club to be paid in Bitcoin.

Posted: April 8 2021 By: Ed Dixon

- Multicurrency sports betting firm replaced LD Sports last August on initial one-year contract
- LD deal was reportedly worth UK£7.5m per season

English top-flight soccer outfit Southampton have extended their partnership with Sportsbet.io, the multicurrency sports betting firm, which will continue as the club’s shirt sponsor for a further three years.

Sportsbet.io, which is part of the Coingaming Group, initially came on board with the Saints last August, replacing LD Sports at short notice when the Chinese brand’s three-year deal was ended after just one season.

At the time, a statement from Southampton said they were ‘left with no alternative’ but to end the partnership. Earlier reports had suggested LD’s exit had been ‘influenced’ by political tension between China and the UK, with the company also purportedly having a break clause that could be activated last summer.

Sportsbet.io’s original deal was due to expire at the end of the current season, but the renewal means the company will continue as the Saints’ main club partner until the end of the 2023/24 campaign.

Financial terms of the new arrangement have not been disclosed, but Southampton have described the deal as ‘the biggest sponsorship agreement in the club’s history’. The club added that it also includes the option for them to be paid certain performance-based bonuses in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin at the end of each season.

The Saints’ previous deal with LD was reportedly worth UK£7.5 million (US$10.3 million) per year.

“The team at Sportsbet.io have built a successful business by challenging convention and disrupting the market, but in a responsible way, and their approach to our partnership with them has been no different,” said David Thomas, Southampton’s chief commercial officer.

“In a short timeframe they’ve proven to be innovative, forward thinking and extremely supportive of the club, our fans and the wider community, and we’ve welcomed the opportunity to develop and promote safe gambling messages together. As such they have become valued partners and we look forward to the next chapter together.”

Maarja Pärt, chief executive of the Coingaming Group, added: “Our first season as Southampton FC’s main club partner has already exceeded all expectations. We’ve been inspired by the passion of the club and its fans, and it was an easy decision for us to extend our partnership with the Saints for another three years.

“From the beginning, Southampton have been a perfect match for the fun, fast and fair way we do things at Sportsbet.io. We can’t wait to continue this journey with the Saints, and we’ll be doing everything we can to support the team and its community into the future.”

The announcement comes as the UK government continues its review of the country’s gambling laws. Anti-gambling campaigners are calling on tighter restrictions to limit the amount of betting sponsorship in sports.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 9:04 pm

Remember how The PFA ended the salary cap in Leagues 1 and 2, this sounds like it could be going the same way . apparently those leagues have agreed to limit squad size to 20 going forward and the PFA are not happy - I think they will win the issue on the rule but clubs are free to do as they wish individually - like now.

EFL: PFA will consider legal action over squad size limit proposals
Last updated on 6 hours ago

The PFA said the squad size limits of 20 for Leagues One and Two would increase the risk of injury to players

The Professional Footballers' Association has said it will have to consider legal action if the English Football League does not scrap its proposed limits on squad sizes.

Under the proposals, teams in the Championship will be able to name a 25-man squad while those in Leagues One and Two will be restricted to 20.

The PFA wants teams at all three levels to be allowed to name 25-man squads.

The union said that suggestion has been rejected by the EFL.

In an open letter to EFL clubs and players, the PFA said that limiting squad sizes in Leagues One and Two would "increase the risk of injury to players" because of the demands of a 46-match season.

And it said clubs relegated from the Championship would "be forced to honour multi-year contracts to players who are no longer able to play due to reduced squad sizes".

In February, the EFL's plans for salary caps in Leagues One and Two were withdrawn following a decision by an independent arbitration panel after a successful claim by the PFA that they were "unlawful and unenforceable".

Under the proposals, third tier clubs would have been given a £2.5m ceiling for salaries and fourth tier sides £1.25m.

The PFA said that unless a solution was found to the limits on squad sizes it must consider beginning another arbitration claim or legal action.

"We believe there exists a majority of clubs in the EFL that would prefer to have stability and certainty for next season instead of suffering the inevitable uncertainty that another challenge through arbitration or the courts brings," the letter said.

"This would cause a further needless waste of legal costs, money that ultimately the clubs themselves have to pay if the EFL is again unsuccessful."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 08, 2021 9:30 pm

That PFA open letter

AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE PFA TO EFL CLUBS

News posted:

08/04/2021

To: All Championship Clubs, League One Clubs, League Two Clubs and all EFL Players

With copy to: Mr Trevor Birch, chief executive of the English Football League (EFL)

Dear all,

Re: Squad size limits in the Championship, League One and League Two

As you know, the PFA was recently required to take hard salary caps to arbitration, where the independent Panel unanimously confirmed that the introduction of the salary cap without the prior agreement of the Premier League, the FA and the PFA (acting through the PFNCC) was in breach of the legally binding PFNCC constitution.

Following the logic of the panel’s decision in the salary caps case, the PFA expected the EFL to remove the squad size limits (25 for the Championship, and as from next season, 20 for Leagues One and Two) because these limits were also introduced without consultation or the agreement required from the members of the PFNCC.

Unfortunately, the EFL is refusing to withdraw the squad size limits. Frustrating as this is, unless another solution can be found, the PFA must now therefore consider commencing a further arbitration claim and/or bringing other legal claims. This would cause a further needless waste of legal costs, money that ultimately the clubs themselves have to pay if the EFL is again unsuccessful.

OUR PROPOSAL
To avoid further legal costs and uncertainty for next season, the PFA has proposed to the EFL a temporary limit of 25 players across all EFL leagues, pending a proper discussion of the underlying issues and the best way to resolve them.

The EFL has rejected our proposal but we believe there exists a majority of clubs in the EFL that would prefer to have stability and certainty for next season instead of suffering the inevitable uncertainty that another challenge through arbitration or the courts brings.

We believe there are very important issues that need to be considered, including:
  • It is not fair to impose a squad size limit of 20 for Leagues One and Two in a 46 match league. The demands of the EFL season mean that limiting squad sizes increases the risk of injury to players;
  • Squad size limits have nothing to do with the current pandemic: all clubs should be free to set their own squad size, large or small, taking account of their own economic circumstances;
  • Clubs relegated from the Championship will be forced to honour multi-year contracts to players who are no longer able to play due to reduced squad sizes;
  • The Premier League has a squad size limit for its own unique reasons, nothing to do with clubs in the lower leagues;
Under the Articles of Association of the EFL (see Article 10) it is open to the clubs to request a vote on the PFA’s proposal, pending further discussion and agreement. We urge clubs to engage with the EFL and if necessary to request a vote on this proposal, as an alternative to the PFA having to assert its rights through PFNCC and then likely the courts or arbitration again.

We trust that clubs and players alike see that the PFA intends to be part of the longer-term solution to current challenges. The PFA is certainly not the problem. Our door always remains open for those who wish to discuss a fair and appropriate way forward, in the same way that we never objected to squad size limits for the Premier League, or financial controls for clubs in lower leagues in the form of SCMP.

We intend to host an open discussion about squad size limits in the near future. We hope you will join us, and if you would like details, please contact the PFA.

Yours faithfully,

Gordon Taylor and the Players’ Board of the Professional Footballers’ Association

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:35 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sun Apr 04, 2021 12:40 pm
Leeds have released their 2019/20 financial accounts the year they finally got promoted baxk to the Premier LEague

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

@Kieran Maguire has had a look

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history
@SwissRamble looks through Leeds United's 2019/20 financial results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 1579088896

as usual there is a summary sheet too

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 1400622080

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:06 pm

TiFo Football with an introduction to Match Fixing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdkNapb2Axk

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:01 pm

Aston Villa announce their 2019/20 financial results - no report as yet, but another big loss in the Premier League

https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2021/april/ ... -Accounts/

Aston Villa Publish 2019/20 Year End Accounts

In the second financial year since Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens acquired Aston Villa, major investment in rebuilding the first team playing squad for the Premier League; strategic funding of the club’s Academy; substantial training ground infrastructure improvements and Aston Villa Women’s entry into the WSL, are the highlights of Aston Villa Group’s End of Year Accounts for the year ended May 31st 2020.

The impact of the COVID pandemic had a major effect on the financial results with significant losses of matchday income as matches went behind closed doors and a rebate being payable to broadcasters following the disruption of the season.

The suspension of The Premier League in March and the subsequent conclusion of the league season after the financial year end on May 31st 2020 resulted in £36.1m of revenue which was expected to be recognised in the financial year now being recognised in the financial year ending May 31st 2021. Although turnover for the year was £112.6m, substantially up from £54.3m in the previous year, the unexpected cost of the pandemic contributed to a total loss of £99.2m compared to £68.9m in 2018-19. Thanks to the unwavering support of our Owners, the operating loss and all capital investment has been funded by shareholder equity. Aston Villa remains debt free.

In accordance with the long term strategic plan put in place by the Board in September 2018 , the primary strategic focus in the financial year 2019-20 was to build a new first team squad capable of competing in the Premier League and a comprehensive recruitment programme of new players was completed at a cost of £155.9m. The recruitment strategy is focused on securing talented young players on long-term contracts to build long-term asset value in our playing squad.

During the financial year the Board continued its rebuilding of the Club by funding the construction of a new High Performance Centre at Bodymoor Heath. First team players, female players and academy players will benefit in the long-term from our investment in creating a world-class facility and an elite athletic working environment. The facility is now in use and will be formally opened in May 2021.

Further major investment in our Academy continues apace in line with The Board’s priority objective of developing our own talent for the future. In September 2019 we appointed Mark Harrison as Academy Manager and the club has supported him with a structured long-term plan to develop and recruit young talent across the age groups. A steady increase in call ups of our young players for international duty is a good early indicator of the improved standards we are now seeing.

On the infrastructure side, we have planned and designed a new central Birmingham satellite academy at Brookvale, adjacent to Villa Park, which is in the planning application phase and we hope this receives a favourable legislative response.

Aston Villa Women went unbeaten in their Championship season to secure their place in the Women’s Super League for the first time and our girls academy has started to produce homegrown players for our first team.

At the start of the pandemic Aston Villa made the decision not to utilise public funds via the Coronavirus Retention Scheme and did not furlough any members of staff. The Club continued to pay all employees throughout the Coronavirus period, including all our casual and matchday employees.

The important work of the Aston Villa Foundation continued throughout the year. Our charity has provided a wide range of support programmes to help some of the most vulnerable members in our communities. It was pivotal in establishing Villa Park to be utilised by the NHS throughout the year including turning our Holte End conference facility into a mass vaccination centre. The Foundation also started an innovative programme of cooking food in the under-utilised stadium kitchens for some of the city’s population who most need help.

For the 2019/20 financial year, season ticket sales were capped at an all-time high of 30,000 and we now have a substantial waiting list with Villa Park sell-outs being a welcome part of our return to the Premier League pre-pandemic. The Club offered Season Ticket holders a refund or credit note for the full value of the games which were moved behind closed doors. The Board’s strategy includes a long-term plan to improve our iconic Villa Park home and preliminary designs and schemes are now being formulated both to increase our capacity and modernise our commercial facilities.

Post-year end the 2019/20 season was completed, albeit behind closed doors and Aston Villa retained its Premier League status. Additional new investment in the first team squad was subsequently made in the shortened post-season summer 2021 transfer window all of which activity will be reflected in the 2020/21 financial year. Taken together the average of the two financial years will give a more accurate reflection of underlying results.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by JarrowClaret » Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:16 pm

Apparently they have £99 million loss, crazy looked Kieran maguires Twitter thread and some villa fan was on there saying they are well run not sure how that size of loss equals well run but hey it is the murky world of Football.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:28 pm

JarrowClaret wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:16 pm
Apparently they have £99 million loss, crazy looked Kieran maguires Twitter thread and some villa fan was on there saying they are well run not sure how that size of loss equals well run but hey it is the murky world of Football.
It is interesting what people consider what is well run and what is not well run, we see it with out own club particularly with the previous board.

With Villa under the current ownership, there is no longer any debt, they are currently growing accustomed to living beyond their means, yes there are plans to grow revenues (as today's press release confirms), but whether that actually occurs - there are plenty of others striving for the same (particularly regular participation in Europe), is quite a different matter.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:38 pm

I am somewhat surprised not to see this anywhere else on the board (though it could far to easily get political) - Premier League Executive Bill Bush (no I don;t recall ever having heard of him either) argues that a covid passport is an acceptable burden if fans want to attend matches - not that the games authorities have even bothered to ask fans, What he is really saying is that football clubs are more than prepared to do anything (irrespective of it's morality) to get as many free spending fans back as possible, this is about matchday revenues and protecting those commercial and TV deals against any further rebates and nothing else.

https://www.bt.com/sport/news/2021/apri ... nd-matches

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 10, 2021 1:43 am

This is a thoughtful piece from Phillipe Auclair bout the recent protests about the Qatar World Cup which coincided with the qualification process starting in Europe. From Eurosport.co.uk

https://www.eurosport.co.uk/football/wo ... tory.shtml

WORLD CUP 2022 - OPINION: QATAR BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN IS CHANCE FOR FOOTBALL TO SAVE ITS SOUL
It may be too late to stop the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, writes Philippe Auclair, but it is not too late for football to make a concerted effort to ensure that the mistakes which led to the award do not happen again. After some international teams brought the issue to the forefront last week, there is a compelling moral case for joining the campaign to boycott the World Cup.

BY PHILIPPE AUCLAIR
PUBLISHED 09/04/2021 AT 13:33 GMT+1 | UPDATED 09/04/2021 AT 15:09 GMT+1

Even the most passionate advocates of a boycott of the Qatar 2022 World Cup know that the tournament will take place in the emirate a year and a half from now, and that it is likely that none of the nations which will have qualified for it will turn their invitation down - unless Norway, currently 4th of UEFA's Group G, manage to scrape through and then decide to stay away.

This begs the question: why, then, call for a boycott which stands close to no chance of being successful?

The answer to this is simple. In this particular case, what matters the most, apart from highlighting the appalling human cost of building the infrastructure needed to host the World Cup and welcome a projected 1.5m fans in the autumn of 2022, is the process itself.

For those who initiated the movement in Denmark and Norway, the success of their campaign would not be measured by the number of countries - if any - that would refuse to take part in a tainted tournament. Rather, it would be judged on how the movement would spread, first at home, then to other countries; and, in this regard, the campaign has already exceeded initial expectations. The boycott is now the subject of a growing debate in most of Europe, and it is only a question of time before it spreads further.

Its aim is to force football, and that is all of football: fans, players, clubs, officials, FAs, confederations and, above all, FIFA, to look at themselves and at what they have become, how they have allowed, and sometimes encouraged, football to turn into a vehicle for sportswashing, a sport which will sacrifice its moral integrity for the sake of a few millions more, whilst, in the same breath, pretending to promote human dignity, advocate fairness and equality, stand for human rights, everywhere. That's what the slogans and the t-shirts say, anyway.

But whether we like it or not, in 2021 as in 1978, when the Mundial took place in Argentina, the award of a major sporting event to a country, any country, also constitutes a vindication of its regime, a recognition that it is at least, if not a model, a valid and valued actor in the concert of nations. This is exactly why Qatar bid for the 2020 Olympics before moving on to football, and why it has organised a bewildering number of sporting events across almost all disciplines since identifying sport as the best means to polish its image and promote itself (and why neighbouring countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia have done exactly the same).

Qatar's image needed a lot of polishing. This absolute monarchy is also a de facto apartheid state, in which the migrant workers which compose 88% of the population enjoy close to no civic rights and are exploited in conditions which NGOs have referred to as a modern-day slavery. A hugely impactful investigation by The Guardian established that - at least - 6,500 deaths had occurred in the migrant workforce since Qatar was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup on 2 December 2010.

It is worth reminding that the number of migrant workers present in the emirate has doubled since that date, to illustrate how it is impossible to separate what is directly linked to football from what is not. Hotels are needed as well as stadiums. Transport links. Shops. Restaurants. A whole new infrastructure, of which the new town of Lusail City (with a projected population of 200,000) will be the most spectacular asset. Football and the World Cup constitute the basis of this project of renewal. It is in itself an admirably ambitious vision: the shame is that it requires the actual sacrifice of thousands of lives, and the hardship endured by millions more, who will never be allowed to partake in its benefits, save for a monthly salary of potentially as low as $250 in a country where the nominal annual GDP per capita is of $66,000.

Joshua Kimmich, happy as he was to sport a 'HUMAN RIGHTS' t-shirt before Germany's WC qualifiers two weeks ago, said that the boycott campaign was happening "ten years too late". He was not wrong; but he was not right either. It is too late to prevent the event from taking place; but it is not too late to make sure that when it does, the right questions are asked, and, especially, that the same mistake is not made twice.

Human rights NGOs were quick to flag the glaring flaws in Qatar's candidacy before FIFA's Executive Committee succumbed to heaven knows what temptations and gave it their seal of approval in 2010. Hardly anyone echoed their warnings, as hardly anyone believed Qatar could be chosen. Then it was, as Kimmich said, too late for the kind of campaign which would have seen FAs deciding to give the tournament a miss - but not too late for the kind of campaign which is happening now, which is entirely different from the threats of boycott made towards Russia 2018 after the Salisbury poisonings.

Then, the United Kingdom was at the forefront of what was a reaction of established powers towards a rogue Kremlin conducting state-sponsored assassination attempts on their soil. This is different. This is not one of these boycotts to which the Olympic Games have been subjected on a number of occasions, the consequence of tit-for-tat diplomacy. This is a campaign which started from the grassroots, and originated in one of the very rare countries - Norway - where fans genuinely can control what is happening at their federation's level.

On 20 June, a specially-convened extraordinary General Assembly should sanction Norway's decision to say 'no' to Qatar 2022, regardless of what the Norwegian FA's officials would like to happen. The fans are in favour of the boycott, and so are the country's most popular and most titled clubs, such as Viking, Brann and Rosenborg. It is likely that no-one else will follow suit. But a precedent will have been set. Fans will have made a first step towards reclaiming what should always remain their football. Qatar - once again, the regime, not the country - will know that they will be under scrutiny like never before, and there will be other fights to fight, other campaigns to organise, to make sure that it will not happen again. That, next time, it will not be 'too late'.

As, next time, in 2030, FIFA has opened the door for China to bid for the World Cup. What little soul there is left in football can still be saved.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 10, 2021 1:54 am

Somehow I missed this last month global players union FIFpro have launched a report entitled Shaping Our Future - one of their key issues ins the sheer volume of players who are not getting paid

overview

https://fifpro.org/en/industry/shaping- ... t-launched

the full report

https://fifpro.org/media/2cvbad3p/fifpr ... t-2021.pdf

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 10, 2021 2:05 am

On Wednesday FIFA decided to suspend to members - The Pakistan and Chad FA's as a result of Third Party Interference, somthing I have posted about before in relation to a government appointed Independent Football Regulator

- Here is what the official press release on the matter said

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

FIFA suspends Chad and Pakistan football associations
07 Apr 2021
General view of the Home of FIFA.

The Bureau of the FIFA Council took the following decisions concerning the governance of two member associations.

Suspension of the Chadian Football Association
The Bureau of the FIFA Council decided to suspend the Chadian Football Association (FTFA) with immediate effect due to government interference.

The suspension was prompted by the recent decisions of Chadian government authorities to permanently withdraw the powers delegated to the FTFA, establish a national committee for the temporary management of football and seize control of the FTFA’s premises.

The suspension will be lifted once the relevant government decisions have been repealed and the FTFA and its management, led by President Moctar Mahamoud Hamid, have confirmed to FIFA that the FTFA premises are again under its control.

Suspension of the Pakistan Football Federation
The Bureau of the FIFA Council suspended the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) with immediate effect due to third-party interference, which constitutes a serious violation of the FIFA Statutes.

This situation was prompted by the recent hostile takeover of the PFF headquarters in Lahore by a group of protestors and an alleged decision by certain individuals to remove the FIFA-appointed normalisation committee of the PFF led by Haroon Malik and to hand over the leadership of the PFF to Syed Ashfaq Hussain Shah.

FIFA issued a letter warning that, should the illegitimate occupation of the PFF headquarters not be lifted and the office bearers recognised by FIFA not be permitted free access to the building to carry out their mandate, the matter would be immediately submitted to the Bureau of the Council for decision.

As the situation remains unchanged, the Bureau of the Council has decided to suspend the PFF.

This suspension will only be lifted once FIFA has received confirmation from the normalisation committee of the PFF that the PFF’s premises, accounts, administration and communication channels are again under its full control and it can continue to carry out its mandate without further hindrance.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 10, 2021 4:43 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:40 pm
From what I have seen/read about Erik Alonso one can only fear the worst for the club, it is a shame the EFL Owners and Directors test isn't as robust as the Premier League's
According to the Daily Mail the EFL are trying to find where Erik Alonso's money for the Derby takeover is coming from - which can only be a good thing, especially for Derby - Whatever Mel Morris is currently thinking

EFL PROBING ALONSO'S MONEY

Prospective new Derby owner Erik Alonso is facing questions from the EFL over the source of his funds before a proposed takeover can be signed off.

Alonso lodged proof of funds with the EFL this week after reaching an agreement to purchase the club from Mel Morris, but questions remain about his trading history and the money's origin.

Alonso's case may not be helped by the fact that the EFL pushed through a previous takeover attempt at Derby by Sheik Khaled last year after receiving reassurances from Morris.

There is suspicion Morris took the step of publicising the sale agreement to pressure the EFL to provide endorsement.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 10, 2021 1:42 pm

Crystal Palace announce their 2019/20 Financial results - just a £58m loss and another tranche of debt and that is with a 13 month set of accounts that includes project restart - it is a lot less flashy than last years offering

https://www.cpfc.co.uk/siteassets/pdfs/ ... -final.pdf

@KieranMaguire has a look at the info shared so far

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 6650616836

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 10, 2021 2:07 pm

Excellent article from Adam Crafton at The Athletic today about Social Media, Football and why clubs will never leave the platforms for good

https://theathletic.com/2508681/2021/04 ... ed_article

for those without a subscription some info in this thread

https://twitter.com/AdamCrafton_/status ... 5262366721

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:47 pm

Forbes have released their list of the world most valuable sports clubs - there are some interesting valuations

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozania ... fab9e616ac

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:58 pm

The Football Today Podcast looks at Crystal Palace and how this summer is an opportunity(and a threat)

the blurb
Saturday was a rough day for Crystal Palace. After a 4-1 loss to Chelsea, Crystal Palace is tied for 12th in the league and comfortably above the relegation zone. It’s a familiar position for Palace, not quite good enough for Europe and too good to be a yo-yo club.

However, with manager Roy Hodgson’s contract finishing in the summer along with a number of key players, Palace have big questions to answer. Should they rebuild and start afresh with a new squad or run it back with the same cast of characters?

Today we ask; what should Crystal Palace do this summer?

https://www.footballtodaypodcast.com/po ... n-the-road

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:54 pm

This should be enlightening - The Unofficial Partner Podcast looks at Football as a platform

the blurb

This is a conversation about how the digital economy is changing how football clubs define themselves, either as digital platforms or ecommerce vehicles. And we look at how the financial markets encourage this trend, and whether or not its feasible or desirable for big clubs like Manchester United, with huge global followings, to seek to be seen in the same company as the stars of Silicon Valley such as Pinterest or TikTok.

Our guest is Lucas von Cranach is well placed to help us answer these questions. He founded OneFootball, the digital platform which boasts 85 million active users across the world, many of whom are under 30. The company is a veteran of digital, having begun life in 2008 and was among the first 1,000 apps in the Apple App Store.

Recently, OneFootball acquired Dugout, the digital football network co-owned by ten of the biggest clubs in world football, including Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Milan. This places OneFootball and Lucas von Cranach at the centre of football’s digital economy. It’s a conversation I know you’ll enjoy.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... a-platform

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