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 » Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:32 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Mar 29, 2021 3:22 pm
We know West Bromwich Albion have been up for sale for a while -- things might just have got a hurry up from the Chinese government who have removed the license for the owners Chinese team

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 6293378051
More detail on the news that Chinese authorities have expelled a further six clubs from the CSL for economic failings such as not paying wages - from Xinhuanet.com

Six clubs disqualified from 2021 season of Chinese football leagues
Source: Xinhua| 2021-03-29 19:16:41|Editor: huaxia

BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Football Association (CFA) announced on Monday that six clubs, including reigning Chinese Super League (CSL) champions Jiangsu FC, have been disqualified from professional leagues due to financial difficulties.

Jiangsu FC, which ceased operation in late February, will officially leave the league on Monday, with Cangzhou Mighty Lions filling in the vacancy. Another CSL side the Tianjin Jinmen Tigers eventually met the CFA's qualification requirements despite being reportedly on the brink of dissolution.

The other five disqualified clubs are Taizhou Yuanda, Inner Mongolia Zhongyou, and Beijing Renhe who competed in the second-tier China League One last year, as well as two franchises from the third-division.

"Compared to the 2020 season (when a total of 16 clubs were disqualified from professional leagues), the numbers of disbanded clubs have decreased largely this season," the CFA noted, saying that club investors' financial crisis, the change of the business environment during the pandemic and bubbles in the professional leagues are three main reasons that led to the dissolution of the six clubs.

Last December, the CFA announced the strictest ever expenditure and salary cap in all levels of professional leagues as a CSL Club may only spend a maximum total of 600 million yuan (about 91.44 millon US dollars) every year. The Chinese football governing body said on Monday that "the dissolution of six clubs" will not destabilize the foundation of the professional leagues, which will grow healthier and more sustainable under new expenditure policies.

The 2021 CSL season is scheduled to kick off on April 20 in two host cities Suzhou, in east China's Jiangsu province and Guangzhou, in southern Guangzhou province.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Mar 30, 2021 10:41 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:27 pm
It seems that the clubs (ECA) and UEFA are still at loggerheads over the commercial rights and who controls them in the new world of UEFA club competitions- remember there are about to go into partnership with a separate company. I suspect a lot has to do with revenue distributions and shares of each competition as well as the wider football family - as Zammo once said - "Just say no" come on UEFA you know you want too

https://theathletic.com/news/champions- ... =twitteruk

Though it appears tomorrow's meeting will go ahead to ratify the competition the seem to want though no one else does - you have to feel that this weakens the UEFA position

https://twitter.com/mjshrimper/status/1 ... 9028064259
@TariqPanja with a thread that reveals a bit more that happened in that committee meeting today at UEFA - it is spelt like this GREED

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 6780145665

The ECA have issued a statement after an emergency board meeting - you may wonder how that was possible given the meeting at UEFA - half of them were in that committee meeting and knew they had a fire to fight in the public mindset - so they got down to it - i still think this is mainly down to the few super clubs and the other 220 plus members of the ECA are being conned

https://www.ecaeurope.com/news/eca-exec ... -30032021/

There is an interesting response to this question from Tariq Panja too - check Tim Crow's profile to see the value of his response

https://twitter.com/shaymantim/status/1 ... 9803364355

The chaps at Vysyble have a theory about who is behind today's breakdown - I think it is true in part, Agnelli is seeing the same thing for Juventus

https://twitter.com/vysyble/status/1376929601507753989

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Mar 30, 2021 11:46 pm

Meanwhile the chaps at Vysyble have a new blog out looking at the financial results of Arsenal and Manchester United over the last 11 years and how Arsenal have slipped behind - it is titled "Shooting Blanks" contains a number of charts so linked rather than transposed

https://vysyble.com/blog-8

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Mar 30, 2021 11:56 pm

Given what has gone on at UEFA today it it any surprise that the Premier League has not finalised it's strategic review, which was promised for this month. We have said it for a long time, these clubs have no care for the game at all

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Mar 31, 2021 12:13 am

@KieranMaguire has been posting about Colchester United's financial results how on earth does a League Two club employ more permanent staff than Burnley in in the Premier League for 7 seasons in the last 11

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 7642336256

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Mar 31, 2021 1:56 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:21 pm
yes it is very interesting and part of the ongoing campaign against FIFA regulation I have posted about in the last year, interesting change in tome from these guys to how they usually present themselves though Raiola cannot help being Raiola. I have said before that they are good at looking after their clients, and they seem to have convinced the guys at the Athletic of their worth in the last few months following a series of interviews with these two and Mendes. Though Mendes is actually under investigation I think in Spain/Portugal.

for those who missed it the article is a decent read

https://theathletic.com/2483756/?source=twitteruk
For those that do not subscribe to the Athletic - Jonathan Barnet And Mino Raiola have been talking to a few journalists it seems as they advance their cause - this appeared in the Guardian today


'We’re not little kids': leading agents ready for war with Fifa over new rules
Mino Raiola and Jonathan Barnett, both senior members of the Football Forum, are threatening action over proposed changes

Ed Aarons Wed 31 Mar 2021 08.00 BST

“Fifa will not exist in 10 years’ time,” predicted Mino Raiola at the World Football Summit in November. Best known for representing Erling Haaland, Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Matthijs de Ligt, the 53-year-old was responding in typically bombastic fashion to confirmation a fortnight earlier that football’s governing body was pressing ahead with a raft of controversial new regulations for agents.

Perhaps the most contentious is Fifa’s intention to introduce a cap that would limit agents of the selling club to 10% of the transfer fee, and agents of the buying club to 3% of the fee. The regulations, scheduled to take effect in January 2022 having entered a third and final “consultation process” in November that is continuing, would also force agents to become licensed and undergo an exam conducted by Fifa, and make all transactions public, allowing supporters to see how much agents are paid on deals.

The reforms must be voted on by Fifa’s council but, with the president, Gianni Infantino, having made no secret of his desire for tougher regulations, Raiola and a number of leading agents are preparing for the potential battle.

The Football Forum, established in 2019, is described on its website as an “international movement of football agents and players” and has Raiola as president, with Jorge Mendes, Jonathan Barnett and the German agent Roger Wittmann – whose Rogon agency lists clients including Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino and Chelsea’s Tiémoué Bakayoko – as vice-presidents.

As well as providing “a forum where all participants may contribute to identify, implement and develop the best professional practice of football agency”, TFF’s end-of-year statement says it was “founded as a response to the growing threat to the rights of its members”, and mentions as examples the EFL’s failed attempt to introduce salary caps in Leagues One and Two and the row about using players’ image rights in the bestselling video game Fifa 21.

But the most stinging criticism is reserved for Fifa, with the statement claiming its new rules “will threaten a player’s protection”. “These regulations are about power and that is clearly what Fifa wants,” Raiola said. “The Football Forum will be taking the fight to Fifa next year as well as standing up for players’ rights and ensuring that these shocking salary caps are dropped as a matter of urgency; 2021 will be a big year for us.”

Asked whether the TFF had been founded as a direct response to Fifa’s proposed regulations, Barnett told the Guardian: “I would say 70% or 80% it was formed because of that but since we got together talking there are lots of other things that have come up that we feel that we can help with. It’s coming together nicely at the moment. We want to help and bring all agents and players together for the common good. We want to help agents who are less fortunate than us. That’s our main thing. And if there are smaller countries who need our help to fight Fifa, we will put the money there. We’ll underwrite it all.”

Agents can join TFF as an ordinary member – the highest tier available – with a €750 admission fee and annual fees of €7,500. They will get two seats on the TFF board and “may be granted a preferential treatment compared to the other categories of agents members (eg discounts or free admission, first‑rows seats, invitation to exclusives [sic] lunch or dinners and or other VIP treatment) for events organised by TFF”.

The lowest rung of entry – “members with observer status” – enables agents to join for free and “participate in the meetings of the members and … receive regular updates on the activities of TFF”. This membership is for a maximum of three years, after which the agent has to enter a paid-tier membership or lose their membership.

Barnett, whose ICM Stellar Sports group represents Gareth Bale and many other Premier League players, refused to confirm how many agents had signed up but said “it’s quite substantial”, including “lots of agents’ associations from various countries who have joined us and they come as a group”. He said locating TFF’s offices in Zurich – less than 10 minutes’ drive from Fifa’s headquarters – had not been intended as an antagonistic move. “It wasn’t meant to be near Fifa, because who wants to go near Fifa?”

A TFF pitch sent to agents, seen by the Guardian, describes the intended regulations as “an existential threat to agents and their work. The whole project is based on untenable and ungrounded assumptions which have been repeatedly used by Fifa for discrediting agents. TFF is fully engaged in the fight against such regulations and is taking any necessary step – including starting legal proceedings – to protect the interests, the professionalism and the rights of agents and, as a consequence, of players.”

In a statement, a Fifa spokesperson said new rules concerning agents had been drawn up after “a very robust consultation process … with 23 different football stakeholders, including key player agent organisations” and that feedback from the latest consultation process “may result in changes to the draft regulations”.
.
“The need for a stricter regulatory framework came as a response to a series of worrying trends that have affected the transfer market in recent years,” the spokesperson added. “In particular, Fifa has observed a growing number of abusive practices, widespread conflicts of interests, and a market driven by speculation rather than solidarity and redistribution across the football pyramid. The regulations seek to address these issues by introducing basic service standards to the relationship between a football agent and their client, and reinforce the duty of loyalty that exists in all types of agent-client relationships.”

Barnett, asked whether Fifa should be worried about TFF, said: “Yes, but if they behave properly they don’t have to be worried. The truth is we’re not little kids – we have sufficient funds to put everything in proper order. If Fifa insist on doing what they are insisting on doing at the moment, obviously there’s going to be a lot of litigation flying around.

“The caps are only one part [of the regulations] that everyone seems to be focusing on. These rules have been written by people who have no idea what an agent does. They have no idea other than what people speculate about agents. When they say it’s to help players they are talking out of their backsides. There certainly aren’t any of my players who would rather be represented by Fifa than by us.

“It’s absolutely scandalous that without proper consultation they can write rules that they think will be legal. We’ve got some of the best QCs in England and the best lawyers in Europe so I hope it doesn’t come to it. But if it does, so be it.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Mar 31, 2021 2:27 pm

Some very interesting results re our club in the Athletics foot fan survey - we do not have the number of Burnley respondents

https://theathletic.com/2486308/2021/03 ... dailyemail

Happiness with the performances this season - Ranked 11th with %66.65 of respondents

Happy of team's manager is on charge next year - Ranked 6th with 594.59 of respondents

Think team have a chance of winning a trophy by end of next season - Ranked 17th with %33.65 of respondents

Believe their club is well run - Ranked 12th with %75.29 of respondents

Believe their club has spent well on transfers - Ranked 20th with %34.82 of respondents

Believes their team plays entertaining football - Ranked 13th with %62.62 of Respondents

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » 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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:13 pm

A number of media outlets are publishing reports of West Bromwich Albion's 2019/20 financial results - but there is nothing on the club's website or at companies house - Don't forget the at the owners Chinese Super League club was expelled this week with 5 others for financial issues. as it stands it appears promotion was met with losses of circa £24m - note even parachute payments were subject to Premier League rebates and the financial year was extended to cover the whole season so 13 months wages were paid as well as bonuses. There was also a penalty for promoted clubs (to cover the rebate at the start of the season - something Leeds were complaining about in the summer.

https://theathletic.com/2486973/2021/03 ... explained/

https://www.business-live.co.uk/enterpr ... h-20291766

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:09 pm

Simon Evans with a bit more detail on the UEFA/ECA breakdown yesterday

https://twitter.com/sgevans/status/1377204892050337795

Clubs make late push for greater control over Champions League
Simon Evans
Wed, 31 March 2021, 11:22 am·3-min read

By Simon Evans

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Europe's leading clubs are making a late push for greater control over the business and running of the Champions League in return for backing UEFA's reforms of the competition.

At the heart of the latest talks is the role of a joint company set up between UEFA, European soccer's governing body, and the clubs to deal with the commercial, broadcasting and marketing rights to the competition.

There has been a broad consensus over UEFA's plans to expand, from 2024, the Champions League to 36 clubs and to change the group stages with 100 more games and scrapping the current groups of four teams for a single table for qualification for the knockout stage.

UEFA were hoping to have agreement in principle over the plans at Wednesday's executive committee meeting ahead of an official vote next month.

But the European Clubs Association (ECA), which represents 246 European clubs and is led by Juventus president Andrea Agnelli, now say they want to address the governance structure for the competition before signing off on the deal.

The UEFA plan has been produced against the backdrop of reports of a breakaway Super League, run by the top clubs without the governing body involved.

The ECA are already involved in UEFA's club competition structures, including the second-tier Europa League through a joint company, known as 'UEFA Club Competition SA' or UCC.

UCC is a subsidiary company of UEFA where half the members of the board are appointed by the governing body and the other half by the ECA.

It was created following the signing of a five year agreement between UEFA and the ECA in 2018 -- a deal which will run out before the proposed new Champions League format begins.

Currently UEFA define the companies role as: "To advise and make recommendations to UEFA Club Competitions’ Committee on strategic business matters and opportunities for its consideration before being referred up to the UEFA Executive Committee for approval."

'FUTURE RELATIONSHIP'

The clubs are pushing for a role which goes well beyond advising UEFA, however.

On Tuesday evening, the ECA's executive said that it was not ready to endorse UEFA's plans "in isolation".

"The Executive Board believes that if European football is to meet the challenges it currently faces, the foundations for ECA and UEFA's future relationship also need to be given due consideration at the same time," said the ECA, who said their stance was backed by clubs at all levels of their membership.

"The Executive Board is fully committed to working with UEFA over the coming weeks on all topics and remains confident of reaching successful outcomes, which will be crucial in ensuring European club football’s rebuild and long term sustainability," they added.

Earlier this month, Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, a leading figure in the ECA who also sits on UEFA's Club Competitions Committee and is a member of the board of administration of the joint company UCC, told his club's investors that change was coming.

Woodward said he expected the final UEFA deal to include "a greater involvement of clubs in the governance and control of the competitions".

ECA chief Agnelli recently said that if a new package of agreements on governance and control of the competitions was to be confirmed, the clubs might make "individual commitments" to the structure.

"If we have clubs that will commit individually to the future competitions... it will actually put it (Super League) to sleep," he said.

UEFA said on Tuesday that a formal decision on the reform plan would be taken at their April 19 executive committee which is held a day before their annual congress.

(Reporting by Simon Evans; Editing by Christian Radnedge)

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:20 pm

Birmingham City join the growing list of Championship clubs that have sold their ground, though the price does not seem excessive - I am presuming to a friendly party.

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 1843012608

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:31 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Oct 30, 2020 1:55 pm
Strange goings on at Oldham have been a feature for a few years now - this story about club captain David Wheater - exiled for refusing a pay cut (and not being paid at all) is probably not the only example of it's kind in the EFL at the moment

https://pushtheboundary.co.uk/freewheatz-30-10-2020
More woe at Oldham as the principal sponsors walk away from the club - from the Oldham Evening Chronicle

Principal sponsor and others end deals with Oldham Athletic
Date published: 31 March 2021

Oldham Athletic’s principal sponsor, Oldham Vending, along with other financial supporters, Identity Financial Solutions and Hotelrooms4U, have revealed they’ve pulled out of deals with the football club today, March 31.

Oldham Vending Managing Director, Alex Jones, told The Oldham Chronicle that he has also complained to The Football Association, English Football’s governing body and sought legal advice over what he describes as; “Unfair and unsubstantiated accusations.”

Oldham Vending have requested that their logo be taken off Oldham Athletic’s player’s shirts and sponsorship boards at Boundary Park, as soon as possible.

Their deal with the club was worth approximately £60,000 per year.

The company’s owner, Alex Jones told The Chronicle, “I’m very disappointed that it has come to this, as I’m a fan of the team.

“At one point I wanted to sponsor them for the next ten years.

“Oldham vending is a family run firm, that was started by my father and we are a well established company, doing our best in the current climate.

“We have been doing our bit to help out Oldham Athletic, but I don’t want to be associated with them any longer.”

Mr Jones also confirmed that he had already terminated a deal with club for next season, before a row broke out after the weekend.

'Regrettable decision'

Identity Financial Solutions had been sponsoring the club for the past two to three years, but stepped up their support this season.

They had their name on the players’ tunnel at Boundary Park. They’d also added banners in a seating area.

Identity Financial Solutions Andrew Jones told us exclusively; “I’m a massive Latic’s fan and I’m really disappointed we’ve had to pull out.

“It's a regrettable decision.”

Hotelrooms4U also confirmed they’d terminated a deal where they provided some accommodation for players, at away matches.

Managing Director Mike Halliwell has been an Oldham Athletic fan for 40 years and told us; “This is not a decision I’ve taken lightly.

“But I feel that I the current climate, we don’t want to be associated with any accusations of a sensitive nature.”

The Oldham Evening Chronicle are awaiting further information from Oldham Athletic regarding these sponsorship deals.

Meanwhile, Latics issued a statement this afternoon, saying that Barry Owen had left the club as a Director with immediate effect.

Printed on their website it read:

“At the request of the Club, Mr. Owen no longer has any association in an official capacity.

“No further comment will be made on this matter.”

We'll bring you more news as we have it.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:43 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Mar 29, 2021 11:31 am
Bournemouth have released their 2019/20 financial accounts, just a £60m loss, nothing to see there!! I am wondering how they will go on for FFP in the EFL this season and that may account for the fire sale

Club Statement
https://www.afcb.co.uk/news/club-news/c ... ccounts-1/

Accounts
https://www.afcb.co.uk/media/189462/afc ... e-2020.pdf

The Athletic look like they had an early view of them

https://twitter.com/AhmedShooble/status ... 4914193411

https://theathletic.com/2480733/2021/03 ... -on-demin/
@SwissRamble takes his turn looking at Bournemouth's 2019/20 financial results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 1605781507

the summary is here

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 0688279553

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:50 am

Today's Business of Sport Podcast from the Athletic looks at the reasons for delaying the decision on the Champions League format post 2024 - essentially it spells GREED, but some involved would call it certainty or surety or even fair - fortunately it is not the only thing discussed the discussion moves onto a representative of Football Supporters Europe who keeps arguing that the changes are not what fans actually want.

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cH ... IEhAF&ep=6
Last edited by Chester Perry on Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:54 am

While the Football Today Podcast looks at the cost of Coronavirus on Football (which is driving some of the previous post)

The blurb
In March, we marked the anniversary of the first coronavirus lockdown.

This was a step into the unknown for everyone. And that everyone included football clubs.

With competitive football cancelled and large gatherings banned altogether, things had never looked more precarious for the beautiful game.

Fast forward a year and things are starting to look a little more positive. This week, organised games were allowed for the first time in 2021.

But is football ever going to be quite the same again? Will the game continue to command the same sorts of fees? The same audience share? The same financial pull?

In this episode, we ask: what has the cost of coronavirus been for football?

Guest:

Kieran Maguire (@KieranMaguire) is a lecturer at the University of Liverpool and one of the hosts of the Price of Football Podcast (@POF_POD).

https://www.footballtodaypodcast.com/po ... r-football

Maguire makes subtle reference to this article in the Political Quarterly during the podcast
Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 2:28 pm
@KieranMaguire has been writing more seriously than we tend to get for him, this is more the academic in him writing for the Political Quarterly -- it is a lengthy read

Covid-19 and Football: Crisis Creates Opportunity

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epd ... 923X.12961
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:19 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:47 pm
Sounds like there may be a scandal brewing in Spanish football - along the lines of British Cycling - Clubs involved include Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia and Real Betis - Though we have been here before with a whole range of Spanish sport (not that we as country appear much different it has to be said)

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 6434288647
A bit more on the growing scandal in Spanish football https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles ... zQ.twitter

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:24 am

I have posted about football's move in to fashion a few times on this thread, mainly related to PSG - Here the New York Times looks at the growing trend.

Soccer Samples Streetwear and Loves the Fit
Juventus reimagined its look, P.S.G. partnered with Jordan Brand, and now Arsenal and Inter Milan are following suit. But soccer’s interest in design has little to do with the sport.

By Rory Smith - March 31, 2021

The lights at the Allianz Stadium cut out, and the music swelled. In the darkness, a small patch in the middle of the field seemed to glow. The center circle started to pulse and ripple. And then the grass itself appeared to get pulled away, as if it were nothing more than a tablecloth. Three words ran around the electronic advertising boards: “History. Passion. Lols.”

The extravagant buildup did not seem to match the occasion. Juventus was at home to Genoa that night, a run-of-the-mill Serie A game. It was late October 2019, much too early in the season for the title to be decided or a trophy to be won. What mattered, though, was not what Juventus was playing for, but what the team was playing in.

That night, Cristiano Ronaldo and his teammates would showcase a special edition jersey, designed in collaboration with its apparel partner, Adidas, and Palace, the maverick British skate and streetwear brand.

The design toyed with the history and passion of Juventus, incorporating the team’s traditional bianconero stripes and the disruptive touches that had made Palace a streetwear phenomenon. The team’s logos and the player’s numbers were displayed in an acidic green. Toward the bottom, the stripes started to pixelate.

The jersey was greeted as a masterpiece, but Juventus would never wear it again. By the time Ronaldo and his teammates took to the field against Torino a few days later, they were back in their regular uniforms. It did not matter. Later that week, the Palace jersey came online — or, as the streetwear world would put it, dropped.

It sold out in 12 hours.

Soccer goes pop
A couple of years earlier, Juventus had held a lavish reception at the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. The guest list included players past and present, but also pop-culture fixtures like Giorgio Moroder, the pioneering music producer, and the model and actress Emily Ratajkowski.

The party was arranged to herald the dawn of a new era for the club. Its team was in the middle of an unmatched period of success on the field, establishing a run of dominance in Serie A, however, it risked being left behind by its Continental rivals. To remain competitive, it needed to close the revenue gap on clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United, its chairman, Andrea Agnelli said. To do that, he was convinced, Juventus had to become “more pop.”

He is not the only executive in European soccer to have that thought. In 2018, fans lined up around the block outside the Parc des Princes to get their hands on the first drop of a collaboration between Paris St.-Germain and Jordan Brand, a subsidiary of its primary apparel partner, Nike. Earlier this year, Arsenal unveiled a collaboration with 424, a streetwear brand based in Los Angeles.

As with the audience for Juventus’s collection with Palace, the core market for these collaborations is not the club’s fans. It is not even, necessarily, fans of the sport. The collections are not intended to be worn as soccer products or as declarations of loyalty to a team; the tie-ins are not, as they are often presented, attempts by Europe’s insatiable superclubs to sell more tickets or to pick up more fans.

“A lot of the people buying those P.S.G. Jordan shirts will not care about the team’s league position,” said Jordan Wise, a founder of Gaffer magazine and the creative agency False 9. “Many of them may not even like football.” That is precisely their value to clubs: an entirely untapped market, one not subject to the vicissitudes and tribalism that affect soccer fans.

“Working with streetwear brands gives the clubs access to a completely different space,” Wise said. “But to do that, they have to think and look different: less like clubs, and more like sportswear brands.”

No team has embraced that shift quite like Juventus. In 2016, at Agnelli’s instigation, the club decided to embark on a comprehensive rebrand. Every aspect of the team’s identity would be in play, including, most controversially, its iconic crest, a symbol that had roots stretching back more than a century.

“It was more than just a change in the badge,” said Giorgio Ricci, Juventus’s chief revenue officer. “It was a new visual identity, one which would enable us to be seen as innovative, one step ahead.”

The club put the rebrand idea out to a number of marketing agencies, and eventually selected a pitch from Interbrand, a longstanding partner. Its approach had been risky: After consulting the company’s global network of creatives, Lidi Grimaldi, the managing director of Interbrand’s Milan bureau, decided against presenting the club with a suite of options, spreading their bets in the hopes that one caught the imagination.


Instead, she said, Interbrand decided to go in with one design. Though the company had previously helped tweak the Juventus crest, making it a little less ornate, altering the color scheme a touch, this time Interbrand would suggest something more revolutionary. “Something really bold,” she said.

They did not have much time. Because Juventus and Adidas needed to start work on the club’s jerseys for the next season, Interbrand had less than a month to get its ideas together. Rather than something that looked like a soccer crest, it designed a logo that had “more in common with Google or Apple or Nike,” Grimaldi said.

There would be no depiction of a charging bull, as there had been on every version of the crest for more than a century. There would not even be a crest, as such: just a sleek and stylized J, a design that would form the centerpiece of and inspiration for an updated visual identity. That was no accident. “The whole strategy was to widen the spectrum of activities without abandoning the club’s core, which is football,” she said.

To present the idea to the Juventus board, Interbrand made a short film, one that offered a glimpse into what this bold new future might look like: that stylized J emblazoned on cafes and hotels, adorning events, used in collaborations with cutting-edge fashion brands. The Juventus executives, including Agnelli, were thrilled, Grimaldi said. This was precisely the sort of sea change they had been seeking. The main response, she said, was: “Wow.”

The club, of course, knew such a drastic change would not be universally welcomed. When the new logo was revealed, the reaction from fans was — at best — mixed. Juventus felt it had no choice but to ride out the storm.

“We needed a new identity that could change the perception of Juventus among different stakeholders,” Ricci said. “One that could enlarge the scope and potential targets of our business. We needed a new identity that was suitable not just for core customers, but for new audiences, something that could be a trigger for creators.”

Perhaps the best measure of its success came on Tuesday. After a similarly intensive design period, Inter Milan — Juventus’s fierce domestic rival — presented its own new crest, a simplified version of the badge that has graced the club’s jerseys for decades. Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery.

The soccer entertainment complex
For years, Manchester United has been held up as soccer’s gold standard in converting the sport’s unparalleled popularity into cold, hard cash.

The partnership model it pioneered, combining 25 official club partners with a jumble of regional partners around the world, might have made it an easy target for satire — all those tractor and noodle endorsements — but it has also turned the club into a financial powerhouse, capable of earning a profit even during the coronavirus pandemic.

Increasingly, though, the consumption habits of younger people are making that approach seem outdated. “We’re seeing a move away from the licensing model,” Wise said. “We know that Generation Z and millennials hate being sold to. That means it’s no longer enough to plaster a club’s badge on something and assume fans will buy it out of loyalty.”

Instead, he said, partnerships must feel “authentic,” and the content used to promote them must “tell stories.” That authenticity was the logic behind the Juventus rebrand, not only of its crest but of the club’s whole visual persona, from its social media — using a bespoke font — to its branding.

“It was about placing soccer in the broader entertainment framework,” Ricci said. “We see our competition not just as clubs, but things like the gaming industry.”

For partners, the appeal is obvious. Soccer has a reach that no other aspect of culture can match. Cristiano Ronaldo has more followers on Instagram than anyone else on the planet. Lionel Messi might trail his rival there, but it will be some solace that he is, at least, ahead of Beyoncé.

Likewise, Juventus has a name recognition that can supercharge a brand like Palace. The difference is that, increasingly, soccer has to give a little, too. It has to accept the principles of what Grimaldi called “strategic design,” the idea that design itself can change consumer behavior and expectations.

“The rebrand was not a way of being cooler or more contemporary,” Grimaldi said. “It was a chance to show you understand the verbal and visual codes you have to adopt if you want to be understood in other spaces. To do work with Palace, for example, you have to adopt the design codes of their world.”

It is, though, a slow burn. Four years since its rebrand, Juventus is not in a position to pinpoint any immediate financial boost, which has traditionally been the primary motivation and metric for anything any soccer club does. When looking at the club’s books, Ricci said, it is hard to isolate what is a consequence of the rebrand, and what is a result of winning trophies or signing Cristiano Ronaldo.

He is, though, “absolutely convinced” that it was worth it. Internally, the new identity gave the club a sense of direction, he said. Externally, the outrage over the new badge subsided fairly quickly: Signing Ronaldo and picking up another handful of Serie A titles meant the club’s traditional fans did not feel alienated.

But at the same time, it meant that Juventus had become something more than a team, something more like a sportswear brand, too.

It is still occasionally possible to buy one of those original pixelated, acid green, special-edition Palace jerseys in streetwear’s thriving resale market. Prices start at several hundred dollars, far more than even the newest Juventus jersey. And how the team is doing on the field makes not the slightest bit of difference.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:28 am

This should be a very interesting listen - The Unofficial Partner Podcast with a new series - Rethinking Sport: What's Important now

the blurb

This is the first episode in a new series in collaboration with Portas, the leading global strategy consultancy dedicated to sport and physical activity.

Portas has surveyed more than a hundred chief executives and leaders working across the sports sector to take the temperature of the industry in this extraordinary year.

This episode sets the scene by talking to two people facing very different challenges. Chris Brindley MBE is chair of the 2021 Rugby League World Cup, which takes place across England later this year. And then we speak to Robert Sullivan, chief executive of The Football Foundation, whose remit is very different acting as the link between football's grassroots and the Premier League, The FA and the British government, with a brief to help communities improve their local football facilities through charitable grants.

To frame the conversations, I first spoke to the person who ran the research program for Portas Consulting, Charlie Cowen, and asked why they did it and what they were hoping to achieve.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... ortant-now

you can find more about Portas Consulting here - https://portasconsulting.com/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:43 am

Internazionale Milano have completed their rebrand as IM (a key factor in their legal dispute with Inter Miami) - this from CBS Soccer

Inter Milan unveil new logo as part of 'I M' rebrand
Italian giants aiming to become 'cultural icons' as well as sporting
Jonathan Johnson

By Jonathan Johnson
Mar 30, 2021 at 8:39 am ET
2 min read
inter-milan.jpg
Inter Milan have unveiled their new logo as part of a plan to develop as a cultural brand as well as a sporting one and the crest, which will be used from the 2021-22 season, is part of a rebrand that will see the Serie A giants become stylized as "I M."

In a statement, Inter detailed the thinking behind their decision to choose "I am" as the expression to develop a new identity around in order to make the Italian giants recognizable and accessible for new audiences with their new "streamlined and minimalist guise."

"Inter has moved to revamp its visual identity to open up to an audience that is increasingly digital and sensitive to aesthetics, to reach global targets and different age groups, and establish itself as an icon of culture as well as sport," read the official statement. "The aim is to make the Inter brand relevant and recognizable beyond its fanbase and to allow a younger and international audience to identify with the values of inclusion, style and innovation that have characterized Inter since its foundation.

"The evolution draws a great deal of inspiration from the club's roots; the founding values of Inter remain front and center, preserving the historical and emotional spirit with which its most loyal supporters identify, and emphasizing the bond with the city of Milan.

"The new logo is a modern reinterpretation of the club's historic symbol, in a more streamlined and minimalist guise. While maintaining continuity with the original version, the new symbol is a more suitable fit for the age of entertainment."

https://twitter.com/Inter_en/status/1376804489307492352

The letters I and M stay true to Giorgio Muggiani's original Inter crest and the Nerazzurri's traditional concentric circles are still present with the original colors dating back to 1908 boosted for vibrancy and vividness.

"The task of designing the new logo was entrusted to the Bureau Borsche team, a leading graphic design studio of international standing," add the statement. "The story of the club's new visual identity is to be told through a collection of photographs accompanying the expression I M, read as "I am", which seeks to contextualize Inter's new visual identity with contemporary language: I M Football Club Internazionale Milano.

"The expression "I am" is used to directly communicate the values and inclination of the club but also serves as a hook to describe the essence of every Inter fan without any distinction."

Inter's current logo will serve them until the end of the current season before then being replaced by the new one as next campaign's collection is launched over the summer.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 12:01 pm

Spain may have banned prominent betting sponsorship in football, but that is not stopping Real Madrid from seeking to profit from Gambling, they are building a casino in the new stadium complex. Slightly surprised that Tottenham don't have one in the new stadium to keep people spending within the confines of the club

https://frontofficesports.com/real-madr ... f-stadium/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 12:15 pm

OffthePitch.com with an in front of the paywall special report

https://offthepitch.com/a/special-repor ... 3&wv_name=

Special Report: What do the ECA actually want?
30 March 2021 7:33 PM
  • Hunt for settlement on Champions League reforms, previously promised by late March, goes on without resolution.
  • Numerous sources across European game express concern about ECA, alleging that the body wants to ultimately take over the running of European club competition and is positioning itself to do so.
  • Champions League reform talks broke down at the twelfth hour after clubs demanded majority control over commercial joint venture with UEFA.
  • “They are set up as a lobby group, but you can see from the people they are hiring that their ambitions lie beyond that.”
JAMES CORBETT corbett@offthepitch.com

Deadlines come and go in all walks of life, but three weeks after the European Club Association (ECA) President Andrea Agnelli said that a resolution over the future of European club competition was “a couple of weeks” away, a resolution seems no closer than ever.

A UEFA Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday set up to rubber stamp what Agnelli terms a “beautiful” new format, is now not going to deliver that decision, having already been postponed three times since the start of the month.

“Speculation has been going on for 20 years – let’s hope they are closed in a few weeks,” Agnelli said on 8 March.

But instead of a rush to get a deal over the line, there has been delay after delay with renewed scrutiny on the ECA and its role in European football.

First, a special assembly of the European Leagues, the representative body of 36 leagues across Europe, 48 hours after Agnelli’s comments, saw a furious backlash.

A bombshell
Leading clubs and league representatives lined up to warn of the “devastating effect” on football’s financial and competitive ecosystem if UEFA and the ECA proceeded with its current plans to overhaul its club competitions. Club representatives also spoke out at a lack consultation from UEFA and the ECA and accused the two organisations of “huge conflicts of interest.”

Next, a bombshell: the Financial Times reported that the ECA and UEFA were engaged in talks to create a joint venture to sell TV and commercial rights. Was this just another step to handing over the keys to European football’s engine to the richest clubs?

A week later on 26 March came a renewed attack from the European Leagues, at which its president Lars-Christer Olsson said that he received “guarantees that no clubs are taking over the club competitions from UEFA.”

UEFA, he said, “will always have the final say… That is not handed over to any other body for decision making.”

Then, just as agreement seemed likely, on 30 March UEFA postponed its decision by at least another three weeks. This time renegade clubs ambushed the final round of talks with increased demands. It is not clear whether they were acting of their own volition or at the request of the ECA.

Paranoia
Increasingly, the ECA is whispered about by those not represented at its top table, as a kind of bogey man, or conspiracy. Executives within the game are conspicuously aware of it – they mutter their fears and concerns – but its name is seldom uttered publicly.

But what is the ECA, and why does it cause so much paranoia?

It was formed in 2008 to replace the G-14, which comprised a small number of elite clubs that agitated for greater control over the Champions League – talk of a super league has been omnipresent for decades – and was unrecognised by UEFA. The ECA was created to be more widely representative of European football clubs and take the sting out of the idea that the agenda was pushed by a cartel of super clubs. Its mission statement is "to create a new, more democratic governance model that truly reflects the key role of the clubs".

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Javier Tebas La Liga chief angry fierce attack
“With the ECA there is no debate, there is a kitchen with the access limited to 12 or 13 diners, and when they’ve finished cooking and eating, they invite the rest for a coffee”
1 April 2019 10:41 AM
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At one level it does just that. Instead of representing 14 elite clubs, it has 109 ordinary members comprised from 55 leagues, as well as 123 associated members. But a peek beneath the bonnet shows that some clubs are more equal than others and that power still rests with the elite.

Full membership to Gibraltar club
Ordinary members are selected each cycle according to a country co-efficient and the club co-efficient within that ranking. Thus the top three UEFA members get five ECA members each, the next three get four members, rank 7-15 three members; 16-28 two; and the rest of UEFA’s members get one ordinary member each. Those members are then selected according to UEFA’s club co-efficients.

Yet because co-efficients give precedence to historical pedigree, it has a habit of ensuring elite clubs have full member status, even when they are doing less well. Of Europe’s ‘Big 5 Leagues’, five clubs currently in Champions League positions (Lille, Leicester, Atalanta, Leipzig and Eintracht Frankfurt) only have associate member status – essentially observer rank. This imbalance is heightened by the fact that the likes of Arsenal and AC Milan, which haven’t qualified for the Champions League for several years, not only have full membership, but board representation too.

The ECA will counter this by pointing out that as well as granting full membership to clubs like Gibraltar’s Lincoln Red Imps and La Fiorita of San Marino, but that its board also includes members from clubs like HJK, Malmo and Macabbi Haifa.

Scraps from the table
Yet the perception of such apparent inequalities cuts deep. “We all know that the ECA represents only a few. It is the alibi or the excuse that the big European clubs use to achieve their objectives,” said the ECA’s arch-critic, the La Liga President Javier Tebas in 2019.

“With the ECA there is no debate, there is a kitchen with the access limited to 12 or 13 diners, and when they’ve finished cooking and eating, they invite the rest for a coffee. In the eyes of the world, it seems like the banquet is a celebration for all. It’s a lie.”

Yet some of if its work has had a discernible benefits for all clubs. Soon after its inception it negotiated agreements with UEFA and FIFA for clubs to be compensated for the use of their players in the European Championships and World Cup. These payments now equate to hundreds of millions every cycle. Its work instigated FIFA Club Protection Programme (CPP), an insurance policy covering the injury risk of national team players – which had traditionally been the responsibility of clubs. It works closely with the European Union on the specificity of sport, which ensures the game’s eco-system is preserved.

It has representation on the UEFA Exco committee and is recognised by FIFA. An anomaly of football’s world governing body is that clubs have never had a voice until the past five years. This voice has been felt again and again. At previous negotiations on European club competition it gained a rake of separate payments to clubs based on their UEFA co-efficient. The rich got a bit richer.

Authentic disaster
Tebas has persistently warned against the encroachment of the ECA and says that its pressure on UEFA is ultimately to create a version of the Champions League that cements the hegemony of Europe’s current elite.

UEFA and the ECA are building a competition, he alleged in 2019, “which in the medium to long term will be an authentic disaster and goes straight to the heart of the national competitions because – let’s be clear about this – aside from just a few, this is a coalition dividing rich and poor in which only 32 of them [clubs] will have a VIP pass.”

Yet some critics believe that its ambitions lie even further. One official at a major European league speaks of how its end game is to wrest outright control of club competition from UEFA.

“They think they can do a better job, for less money than UEFA currently levies to organise the Champions League,” says the source. “But ultimately it’s about ensuring the competition’s riches end up in the hands of a small elite of clubs. It would be a super league by default.”

Asked to go on the record, the official says the majority of its league members are concerned about this, but that their league can’t speak out because several members are among that very elite vying for power. “This is a problem a number of leagues face,” the source concedes.

Off The Pitch reached out to a number of club owners, league officials as well as the ECA itself, but no one would speak openly.

Wresting control
Another figure in European football with direct experience of negotiating with the ECA claims “this is not a conspiracy.”

“They are set up as a lobby group, but you can see from the people they are hiring that their ambitions lie beyond that. The appointment of Charlie Marshall – who has a strong sports marketing background – as CEO is one example. He seems to have assumed many of the responsibilities of Michele Centenaro [ECA’s long-serving secretary-general], whose career – by contrast – is more heavily wedded to sports administration.”

The source also pointed to the 2017 creation of a company called UCC SA that was set up to allow the ECA to advise UEFA on selling broadcast and commercial rights, albeit that UEFA retains final say on any such decisions.

“I think long term they see themselves taking over the responsibilities of Team SA [the full service international marketing agency that has been UEFA’s exclusive partner since the early-1990s] and controlling rights. But there are good reasons why they shouldn’t have that power. Serie A’s recent struggles to sell its own rights is a good example; if you have too many powerful interests at an operational level nothing gets achieved.

“But ultimately you’ve got to understand this is about power and control, and it’s not just the ECA that are at it. Sometimes the big clubs go off on their own.

“Threats are made in the media – such as over the super league – and the debate jumps forward. There’s a howl of outrage and they’ll inch back, but the marginal gains remain.

“There’s a constant creep towards their strategic goal, which is more power and more money for the big clubs.”

Creep creep
On Friday 19 March, a report in the Financial Times claimed that UEFA and the ECA were in “advanced talks” over the creation of what it termed was “a joint venture that would control all media and sponsorship rights for contests such as the Champions League and the lesser Europa League.”

According to the report the talks envisaged either an expanded role for UCC SA or an entirely new company, but that either way ECA would have an “equal say” on the terms of future commercial contracts. It would give clubs bigger influence over key commercial decisions, such as display of stadium ads. UEFA would retain control over “all sporting questions”, including, intriguingly “the rules and format of competitions.”

UEFA is understood to have offered 50/50 ownership with the ECA on the venture, but the clubs demanded majority control. It is not clear whether they were acting of their own volition or at the request of the ECA, whose board are understood to have met 24 hours earlier

Is this then, the price that UEFA is willing to pay in order for the biggest clubs to take their tanks off the lawn? Or is it merely part of the “creep creep” towards their “strategic goal”?

We asked both the ECA and UEFA for comment on the FT story, but neither would do so on the record.

Red lines
If these are the red lines, UEFA has at least stuck by them – for now.

When UEFA’s Club Committee convened on Tuesday it had been expected to discuss final sticking points on Champions League reform, including entry criteria for the four additional teams plus how the calendar will accommodate four additional match weeks.

However, the meeting broke down abruptly after club representatives from three teams made demands about who controlled the new commercial and broadcast joint venture.

And so a stasis has again taken hold of talks that have gone on for some 30 months.

Deeply troubling
A league representative who spoke on condition of anonymity said that they found reports about the joint UEFA-ECA venture “deeply troubling from both a financial and governance perspective” and that it was “a much more significant story than anyone had given credit for.”

“You’re essentially handing over control of the crown jewels of European football to a body unaccountable to anyone but a small number of already very wealthy clubs. Why would any organisation do that?

“UEFA need to remember its mission statement and who they actually represent. And European football needs to wake up to what’s actually happening.”

Nb. UEFA’s mission statement opens: UEFA’s core mission is to promote, protect and develop European football at every level of the game, to promote the principles of unity and solidarity, and to deal with all questions relating to European football.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 12:42 pm

Article from the Telegraph highlighting how the summers transfer market is likely to change

https://outline.com/5b6nCL

The future of the transfer market: swap deals, feeder clubs and reward for 'brains'
JASON BURT APRIL 01, 2021

A combination of factors – Brexit, the coronavirus-induced financial issues – have led to changing the way that football clubs at the very top of the game do business. Here, Jason Burt examines the significant ways and how it will effect clubs and players.

More free agents
“In a healthy market, the natural instinct for a club is to prevent players from going inside their last year of contract,” says leading agent Alan Redmond, the head of football at Roc Nation Sports, the company founded by rapper Jay-Z, and whose clients include Marcus Rashford, Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and Wilfried Zaha. "It maintains the rights of the club to sell the player, rather than lose him for free or for a greatly reduced fee.”

However, that has changed with clubs dealing with the loss of income due to Covid and considering how best to manage their squads. It means there may be far more free agents and – therefore – free transfers in the summer, including some high-profile ones.

Sergio Aguero at Manchester City, Bayern Munich's David Alaba and Jerome Boateng and Paris Saint-Germain's Julian Draxler are all free agents in the summer, while some Premier League clubs have swathes of their squads out of contract. Crystal Palace, for one, have 11 in that position come June 30.

“The question that a lot of clubs will have now regarding players inside their last year of contract is: ‘does the wage cost of renewing the player for another three years outweigh the risk of not being able to sell him and the financial implications of being saddled with him for an extended period?’” Redmond says.

“Clubs will ask themselves if they could use the funds to bring fresh faces, rather than go through the motions of renewing a player of questionable re-sale value. Fans of clubs with multiple players on soon-to-expire contracts may normally question the management of their club. In the specific case of the summer 2021 transfer window, your club may be wise in this respect.”

Brexit forcing smarter, speedier deals
One continuing advantage that Premier League clubs have over the rest of Europe is the strength of the broadcast deals. Europe envies the spending power in England which, Redmond says, provides the “opportunity of a swifter financial recovery even if that means it just enables them to borrow more easily than European clubs with the same empty stadiums but vastly inferior TV deals”.

In the first instance that should make it easier for Premier League clubs to buy from Europe despite the UK having left the European Union – although they will have to navigate the ‘points-based’ system which has been introduced. If players are to be signed they have to meet a set of criteria based on such measures as international appearances, which league the selling club is in and how many competitive games they have played.

“The challenge facing Premier League clubs is to work through the ‘points-based system’ and figure out who the hell they can actually sign?” Redmond says. But this also does provide an opportunity. “In the way that clubs like Sevilla were a lap ahead of many of their competitors in terms of data analysis and the transfer market, Premier League clubs who adapt to the new system fastest can steal a march on other clubs,” Redmond explains.

“I think there are some clubs who have reacted sharply and are attacking the situation with an intelligent approach, as others are still yawning while putting their pants on. At Roc Nation, we represent a non-EU player who has played once for his national team. In January, we calculated the points to see if he met the 15-point barrier to play in England. He actually gets 28 points, almost double the requirement. Meeting the requirement to play in the UK adds to the player’s value. This is a time for brains in player recruitment, more than ever.”

Growth of feeder clubs
The idea of so-called ‘feeder clubs’, where players can be developed or sent on loan, is not new. Chelsea have long cultivated relationships with clubs such as Vitesse Arnhem to develop players through loan deals, while Manchester City have used their network of clubs around the world to blood their younger talents.

Redmond believes that more Premier League clubs will look to develop this route.

“There is a chance that an increasing number of Premier League owners will acquire an additional European club,” he says. “One of the many possible advantages of this could be to sign players who fall below the points threshold in the UK, in the same way that prior to Brexit, it was a method of signing non-EU players in territories with less stringent visa regulations.

“The issue with feeder clubs is that they are often small clubs in small markets. Players transferred to them may struggle to meet the criteria to play in England, even after two strong seasons. However, there’s nothing preventing these players from being sold into other countries at a profit. Additionally, feeder clubs are often used as loan destinations for young, not first team-ready, players signed to the mother club.”

Premier League sides building 'feeder' networks give a glimpse into the future of transfers
However the system is not without controversy and does not always work, if there is not a coherent plan or style of play.

“This hodge-podge of crossed purposes often stomps on the identity of the feeder club itself, as the coach is left to select his starting XI from a combination of home-grown players, nomadic players bought for investment, and shoe-horned loans from the mother club that they’re under pressure to play," Redmond says. "And this is all while trying to stay rooted to the footballing philosophy being force-fed by the club at the top of the hierarchy. Some clubs will get it right. A lot won’t.”

More swaps – and the return of big fees
Redmond is confident that optimism is finally beginning to return, with a few caveats. “The January window was uneventful but this wasn’t a surprise to anyone,” he says. “In the summer of 2020, there was a sense that fans would be back in stadiums by the end of the year, even if it was in reduced numbers, and that we would come into 2021 with attendances being increased further.

“The January window was always likely to be restrained but when it became apparent that fans wouldn't be returning imminently, there was a quiet acceptance within the game that while televised football was playing an important role for millions of locked-down people, nobody was likely to spend until there were more concrete signs of recovery.

“Everyone is afraid to jump the gun and presume that we’re over the worst but that is the supposition that is forming the consensus within football and fuelling talks for the summer window. With the positivity around vaccinations being rolled out, the reality of contracts expiring and, dare we say it, fans returning, I can see an active summer window.”

The nature of a number of transfers will change, Redmond argues, with clubs thinking more creatively about how they can get deals done – with the fees paid coming down.

“Just as Neymar’s world record (€222 million) transfer to PSG partially reset transfer fees at the top end, and contributed to prices like those paid for Philippe Coutinho and Antoine Griezmann, the effects of Covid sent things back in the opposite direction more profoundly,” he explains.

“I would still anticipate some big transfers in the summer, as well as some substantial deals that involve part-exchange. A player who was valued, pre-Covid, at £50 million, may not go for £50 million this summer. He may, however, go for £30 million plus a player worth £8-12 million in the opposite direction. Again, exchange deals are nothing new but I can see them being advantageous for both clubs in a transaction in this specific summer window.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:09 pm

SportsBusiness.com with a piece on an interest group who are keen on the Swiss Model for the Champions League - The Sponsors

Matthew Glendinning | Why sponsors would favour the Swiss-format Champions League
Ratification of the proposed Swiss format for the Champions League has been delayed by Europe's most powerful clubs, but there's another group with a keen interest in the outcome – the sponsors
Matthew Glendinning
April 1, 2021

Existing Uefa sponsors are thought to be in favour of the proposed Swiss format of the Champions League, which – if it gets ratified – is slated to start in the 2024-25 season.

Uefa’s Executive Committee was to have voted on the plan on March 31, but this vote has now been postponed until April 19, with the delay caused by a small group of big clubs demanding greater control of the Champions League’s commercial rights.

The leagues were also critical of the increased number of matches in the group phase and the allocation process for the four extra places in the competition.

The sponsors don’t get a say, but here’s why they would be in favour of the idea in the first place.

Firstly, the new format means more matches – the number of group stage games rising from 96 to 180 – and more matches involving the big clubs, which has an obvious appeal to broadcasters, but also to sponsors.

Sponsors may spend a lot of cash and time on activations to engage and align with fans, but the primary value of the Champions League is still located in the media buy, with break bumpers and LED delivering the bulk of the value.

Given the migration of the Champions League to subscription channels – and thus fewer eyeballs – in recent years, the extra media inventory would also provide comfort for the eight Champions League Partners.

The anticipated negative view of the new format from traditional fans might be awkward, but it’s possible to win them over.

Let’s be honest, the new format has invited bad PR, because a) it seems an unnecessarily convoluted way to sort out who should be crowned the best team in Europe, and b) many fans have already bridled at the ‘format doping’ designed to favour the elite clubs.

But the bad PR will pass, and in any case, the new global fans of Europe’s elite clubs are far less concerned by rules that guarantee a level playing field than those in Europe’s football heartlands.

Finally, the format makes the last eight of the competition more predictable and that can be useful to sponsors, not only because the biggest clubs attract the biggest audience.

I’m reminded of this year’s PepsiCo campaign launch in support of its Pepsi Max brand at the last 16 stage of the Champions League.

The campaign featured an endorsement line-up of four players: Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, Manchester United’s Paul Pogba, Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho, and VFL Wolfsburg women’s player Shanice van de Sanden.

Unfortunately, at the time of launch, United and Pogba were already out of the competition from the group stage, and Barcelona and Messi were on their way out after a 4-1 home defeat to PSG in the first knock out stage.

These type of upsets to the big clubs – and the sponsors – would be likely to happen less under the new system. The results of the next round of talks will be seen over the coming weeks, but the sponsors, at least, will be hoping for something similar.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » 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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:49 pm

A good thought piece from SportsProMedia on the trend od of over supplying what is already popular/lucrative - I find particular resonance in the last paragraph

At Large | In sport’s digital age, a bigger Uefa Champions League is inevitable and a risk
Despite a last-minute hitch in negotiations, soccer's Uefa Champions League looks set to pick up four teams and 100 games in its 2024/25 season. Rights holders continue to add volume to their competitions, and only time will tell if that concentrates attention or dilutes their appeal.

By Eoin ConnollyPosted: April 1 2021

Another month passes and still, European club soccer is poised between a Super League and the status quo.

Its future likely lies somewhere between those two outcomes. Schrödinger’s Champions League should be replaced soon enough with a Swiss model, friendlier to cats and palatable, just about, for the various warring factions in the game.

To recap: Uefa this week opted to delay a vote confirming new structures for its club competitions, due to come into effect in 2024. The latest cycle of debates and threatened breakaways has run for about 18 months which, adjusting for the temporal distortion of the pandemic, feels more than long enough. A decision is now due on 19th April.

The latest setback was not about the Champions League format itself, on which more in a moment, but the ownership of various commercial and broadcast rights that Uefa currently sells via its specialist Team Marketing agency. A cohort of European Club Association (ECA) members want greater control over that process; Uefa wants to retain a veto. We all wait a little longer to confirm the fate of that hypothetical feline.

Nevertheless, what we can reportedly expect with confidence is that Europe’s elite men’s club competition will grow from 32 teams to 36 for the 2024/25 season. This has been made possible by the aforementioned Swiss solution – proposed by Ajax chief executive Edwin van der Sar, a two-club winner as a player, and deemed “beautiful” by Juventus and ECA president Andrea Agnelli.

This is a system whereby every team is placed into the same all-in group for the first round. Instead of everyone playing everyone else, as in a full-blown league, each entrant plays five teams at home and five away on a seeded basis. After that, the top eight in the standings progress automatically to the round of 16. Those ranked ninth to 24th enter a playoff to join them. From there, two-legged knockout ties resume until the final.

The concept might end up being more elegant and intuitive than that sounds – or at least it will be next to the ongoing quarrels between the ECA, Uefa and the European Leagues body over who gets to qualify in the first place. Yet while negotiations to this point have centred on what sway and certainty can be reserved for the biggest teams, their upshot forms part of a broadening phenomenon.

Basically, the new format will mean more games. A lot more. Each team will play ten times in the group stage, rather than six, with an extra 100 matches every season. It continues a move away from neatly folding tournaments, where half the teams depart after each round, that Uefa itself triggered by adding eight nations to the finals of its men’s European Championship from 2016.

All around, symmetry and jeopardy are superseded by volume. The Fifa World Cup will grow from its 32-team butterfly shape to an amorphous 48 teams in 2026. And while the reasons may differ with each example, the trend is not unique to soccer.

Formula One’s calendar lengthened to a provisional 23 races this year. The men’s ICC Cricket World Cup actually shrank from 14 teams to ten for its 2019 edition, but featured just one fewer match. A group-stage round-robin meant everyone – including India, the big TV draw – played at least nine times.

Even the NFL, with its hegemony over domestic media and a business model based on appointments to view, will add a 17th game to its regular season later this year. These intra-conference encounters will sustain the league’s international effort, creating space to guarantee every franchise makes an overseas appearance over an eight-year period.

Whatever the motives, there is a trace of content over context. The unmissable events remain but the missable ones pile up. Same amount of killer, slightly more filler.

It leaves a lot to unpack. Some of this is hedging: padding broadcast and sponsorship packages to cushion the landing into digital territory. That impulse has only been heightened by the effects of Covid-19 – particularly the long-term closure of venues to fans, which has spirited away a year’s worth of vital revenues.

There is, however, something more fundamental going on. Digital, on-demand consumption has profoundly changed entertainment media. 20 years ago, television and the movie business hung everything on the tentpole release and the must-see evening block of new shows. Today, a cliffhanger ending is not an invitation to come back next week, next month or next year. It’s an imploration to choose Netflix over sleep.

Companies have flooded burgeoning OTT services with familiar favourites from the archives and are now doing the same with new programming. In its December launch of upcoming content for its surging subscriber platform, Disney announced nine series based on Star Wars characters and 12 derived from the Marvel universe, to say nothing of films and short-run specials.

Competition from gaming and social platforms is only accelerating the process of super-serving fans with what they have already told you they want. Sports rights holders have to work out their place in all that, away from the comforting baseline of TV schedules.

Not many things get to be the Olympics, and even the Olympics has spent the last few years working out how it can stay relevant outside its four weeks every four years. Original programming, documentaries, and other distractions play their part but nothing can match the gravitational pull of the live event. That holds true even when people are less emotionally invested in the result. Put it this way, no one is betting on the highlights.

Even so, tweaking supply affects demand. It will be worth watching the audience research that comes out of the pandemic era carefully. The top-line numbers so far suggest that even where broadcast ratings are down, digital engagement has risen. Tranches of fans may be devoting more energies to particular teams and athletes.

Anecdotally, fans of English soccer in the unique position this season of having access to every game, usually back-to-back, report some fatigue and dislocation. If a drop-off in concentrated interest is not buttressed by that broader supply, it may be that the biggest moments get bigger to compensate. Uefa, for one, is believed to have been quite taken with the emergency compromise of a week-long run from the Champions League quarter-finals last August, even if that left the tournament as a whole a couple of games light for comfort.

But if supporters are weary right now, what about the players? The answer to that probably takes us in the same direction, compounding interest in the elite. One response to expanded schedules is expanded squads, with soccer’s richest clubs amassing yet more talent to be delegated between domestic and continental priorities.

Something Uefa was able to confirm this week was that five substitutions will be allowed in normal time during games at Euro 2020, extending a temporary injury prevention measure for these compacted schedules. If that continued further, leading teams could offer more playing time to those outside their first XIs. Extrapolate that out for different, concurrent competitions and greater shared access to players across tiers – through and beyond co-owned clubs or soccer’s existing loan system – is not impossible to imagine. It would make for some update of the old Seinfeld joke about "rooting for clothes".

Developments like this will keep tugging at the fabric that has held sports like soccer together and that will not make the forces acting on it any weaker. The rationalisation that the pandemic pause could have inspired does not look like it will happen and, if anything, it has been thrown into reverse by financial realities.

Perhaps it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Even then, there may not be enough to go around. Whatever the outcome, we could yet find out the hard way

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 6:38 pm

Jonathan Wilson writing for Sports Illustrated about everything that is wrong about the Champions League reform

Everything That's Wrong About the Future of the UEFA Champions League
There will be more games, more money guaranteed to the elite clubs and more that's focused on everything except the sanctity of sport and competition.
JONATHAN WILSON MAR 31, 2021

More. Always more. Everything that happens in football now is about expansion. Make every tournament bigger. Play more games. Produce more content. Generate more revenue. On Wednesday, the UEFA Executive Committee discussed plans to reform the Champions League from 2024 onwards, specifically the idea of rejigging the group stage to the so-called Swiss System, which will, of course, ensure more games.

A formal announcement had been expected on Wednesday, but that has now been pushed back until April 19, largely because a small group of the super-rich clubs—understood to be a coalition of the Spanish sides and at least two clubs with U.S. owners—has rejected UEFA's proposal for a 50-50 share in a joint venture that would control the commercial rights of the Champions League. That, in turn, has created a backlash from other members of the European Clubs Association (ECA), most notably Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain. But whoever actually is in charge, nobody expects anything other than agreement on the adoption of the Swiss model.

Quite how serious the hold-up is is not yet clear, but this is a critical moment. If UEFA gives up control of the competition, it is finished as a serious governing body. It will no longer have any influence to check the whims of the superclubs. The Champions League will have become an autonomous Super League in all but name, and there will not even be the pretense that Europe’s premier competition is being run for the good of the game, or for anything other than enriching the already extremely rich.

That the formal acceptance of that has itself been delayed by greed is not surprising. This whole business is about greed. It’s about the acceleration of a process that has been going on for a little over three decades. It’s about the triumph of neoliberalism in football.

But let’s begin with the basics. Nobody denies that the group stage of the Champions League, as it stands, is a gloomy trudge. Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of Juventus and the ECA, got that right. After the draw, you can go through each group, highlight the two obviously richer teams and be relatively confident they will progress. Very occasionally some quirk of the seeding will lead to an unusually tight group (as when RB Leipzig, whose coefficient is low because it is a relative newcomer at the elite level, was drawn alongside PSG and Manchester United this season) or some big club (usually Inter) will mess up, but generally the gulf between rich and poor is too great for those games to be anything other than highly predictable.

The shift in tone as the tournament moves into the knockout stage is obvious. This season's was not a classic round of 16, far from it, but it did feature one tie of exceptional drama and quality: Porto’s away-goals victory over Juventus. The second leg was a tie that had everything: a favored side in trouble, an unlikely comeback, a stupid red card, a dogged rearguard action, an unexpected game-changing free kick, one last dramatic twist. It was a game that transformed Cristiano Ronaldo, for turning his back in the wall, into a villain and, implausibly, Pepe, a hero. It highlighted the immense promise of Federico Chiesa and confirmed the emerging talent of Sérgio Oliveira. It brought joy, and it brought sorrow. Crucially, there were consequences: progress to the quarterfinal for Porto and yet another premature exit for Juventus. There was jeopardy—and that feels like the key.

It’s perhaps, though, worth pausing and going back to basics, perhaps the most basic question of all: what is sport? Football boomed in the English public schools in the 19th century. It was partly because, with its demand for physical endurance, courage, strategy and calmness under pressure, it was seen as a tool for honing the skills required to run the Empire. It was also partly because Muscular Christianity, the prevailing doctrine of most of those schools, saw physical activity as worthwhile in itself, not least because it prevented what they euphemistically called “solipsism” (for it is a "truth universally acknowledged" that a boy left to his own devices will masturbate, a practice that at the time was thought to be not just a moral fault but to be physically debilitating; the sermons of the Reverend Edward Thring, headmaster of Uppingham School, contain numerous references to the belief without ever actually naming the practice that so concerns him, and he was far from alone).

The Football Association was formed in 1863 by teams of former public schoolboys, largely because they wanted a standardized set of rules to play under, no matter which school or university they had come from. As the game spread, and spectators began to pay to watch, the early ideals began to shift. Professionalism was introduced in 1885, which for many was a betrayal of the early ideals of the game, but it was essential to allow working-class players to give up their day jobs to focus full-time on football and to travel to away fixtures.

The league was founded three years later to provide structure, partly to establish a meaningful competition to determine a champion, and partly because regular games meant regular income for clubs. At that point, though, the legislation forbade directors to profit from their clubs: the idea was that clubs held a specific social, perhaps even moral function and that revenues should be reinvested. Other countries never had such legislation, and it was almost a century later that it was lifted in England. By then, football was establishing itself as a television sport and the world was adopting an increasingly untrammeled capitalistic outlook.

The tipping point for European football came in 1987-88 when Spanish champion Real Madrid beat Italian champion Napoli in the first round of the European Cup. For Silvio Berlusconi, the owner of AC Milan, this wouldn’t do. Forget sporting merit, forget the unseeded draws that had been such a key part of the European Cup’s charm since it had begun in 1955, he saw a financial imperative to ensure the biggest sides didn’t crash out after just one game.

And so, in 1991-92 came the first group stage, initially comprising two groups of four. It has gone through various formats since, expanding and expanding to the modern format with eight groups. For a while it worked even from a sporting point of view. In the 1990s, the group stage had a palpable tension, a sense that these were the best sides on the continent—and they did come from all over Europe: the likes of Nantes, Panathinaikos and Dynamo Kiev all reached the last four in the 90s.

But the finances of the Champions League created a self-perpetuating elite: the superclubs. The Champions League final has become the preserve of the three Spanish giants, Juventus, Bayern Munich, PSG and a smattering of Premier League teams. When Ajax reached the semifinal two seasons ago, it felt like a fairy tale, so disadvantaged are Dutch clubs. Yet Ajax is a four-time European champion. The distribution of prize money is such that Barcelona made twice as much from reaching the last four that season as Ajax did, just because it comes from a country with a bigger TV market.

It’s a structure that has broken domestic football. France, Italy and Germany are effectively monopolies, even if COVID-19 has created some unpredictability this season. Spain is essentially the preserve of two clubs, with Atlético Madrid providing an occasional challenge. Even in the Premier League, where vast domestic TV rights mean Champions League revenues are less relevant, the last three seasons have seen the champions win with 98 or more points, totals that would have seemed unimaginable even a decade ago.

Which brings us to the existential question: what is football for? Is it about something inherent in the game, about competitiveness—and skill and beauty—for its own sake? Or is it about the production of content to generate revenue for the big brands? Increasingly, it feels the latter is true.

Jose Ángel Sánchez, the general director of Real Madrid, has compared the club to Disney. He was an architect two decades ago of the galacticos project, which was of limited footballing success but raised the profile of the club enormously. Juventus may come to see its signing of Ronaldo in the same way, despite a series of early exits from the Champions League. Increasingly, it feels, football is moving away from a focus on actually winning matches. At least one club is exploring the possibility of producing a semi-fictionalized soap opera set in its offices. Everything is about the generation of content and the promotion of the brand.

That has profound implications for how football may look. In traditional terms, Porto’s success against Juventus was a brilliant game of football. But in a content production sense, it may be that the more attractive game was Juventus’s victory away to Barcelona at the end of the group stage. The result didn’t matter, as both sides had already qualified, but there was Lionel Messi against Ronaldo, two enormous names wearing the shirts of enormous brands, pitted against each other. Who cares if three months later barely anybody could recall the result; content generation is not about posterity.

This brings us to the Swiss model. There will be 36 teams, four more than at present. They will each play 10 games, based on seedings to ensure a range of opponents. All results will be logged in one huge league table, with the top eight sides progressing immediately to the last 16 and the next eight playing off against the third tranche of eight for the final eight places in the knockout phase.

At present, the group stage comprises 96 games after which 16 teams are eliminated. The new format will take 180 games to eliminate 12. The football calendar is already straining with the volume of matches. Last season, even before the pandemic, Liverpool was forced to play a youth side in a League Cup tie because it was playing in the FIFA Club World Cup 24 hours later. This season has been characterized by complaints about scheduling from Jürgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola and others, as they have seen their players succumb to a series of the sort of soft-tissue injuries that result from fatigue. In England, presumably, the League Cup will have to be abandoned or modified, striking at the revenues of smaller clubs, increasing the advantage of the elite even further.

But let’s assume time is flexible and players can play forever without breaking down. Imagine a team wins its first four games in this new structure: it would effectively have qualified and could afford to rest players for its final six games. The scope for arranging mutually beneficial draws late in the competition would be enormous.

And where, exactly, is the tension? Perhaps there would be some intrigue in who finished eighth and who ninth, but the only real drama would be around 24th and 25th, about whether (to go by UEFA coefficient) Villarreal or Bayer Leverkusen or (to go by this season’s groups) Red Bull Salzburg or Olympiakos won the right to lose to Porto or Sevilla or in a playoff. Oh, brave new world, to have such drama as the payoff for surrendering to the elite!

The Swiss model is, as anybody who has given it a moment’s thought must realize, a terrible idea—at least if the aim is sporting merit, integrity and jeopardy. If the aim is an endless slew of games between big or biggish teams, few of which mean anything, though, then it is ideal. And perhaps that is what football wants. Perhaps the modern audience places brand recognition above more traditional sporting considerations.

In which case, you begin to wonder whether this is sport at all. Why not just follow the path of wrestling and script the whole thing, as the Argentinian writers Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares suggested in their 1967 short story “Esse est Percipi,” which imagines a world in which all football is actually just a script read out by an actor playing a commentator on the radio, a subterfuge persisted with to distract the masses from the misery of their everyday lives.

The superclubs are a symptom of a collapse of the traditional values of football, and their solution to that collapse is to trample them some more. They have correctly identified the problem: the group stage is boring. But their solution is to take the problem that causes that—massive inequality—and make it worse.

Forget even romantic notions of clubs as hubs of their community, of symbolic vessels of local identity. Forget the charitable work many actually do in their areas, working with disadvantaged children, coordinating food-banks and supporting hospitals. All of that was secondary, all of that came from the boom in football in industrial Britain in the late 19th century and the birth of the professionalism.

Go back to something even more basic. Go back to why anybody plays sport, for the joy of exercise and occasional virtuosity, for the thrill of matching yourself against a peer, and ask yourself what the proposed new format has to do with that.

So opposed are the superclubs to any sense of merit, that the plan is for two of the four new places created in the pre-knockout phase to go to those sides with the highest coefficient who haven’t already made it: more revenue in perpetuity, another safety blanket against running the club so badly you fail to qualify despite all the advantages available to you (and you can see why Agnelli would be attracted by that).

It feels as though a crisis point is being reached, as though the farmers are circling the golden goose, knives drawn, and the only question that remains is who pays for the dry cleaning afterwards. At some point, UEFA has to call the bluff of the superclubs. This slice by slice despoilment is only delaying the inevitable crunch. At some point, UEFA has to cut the superclubs adrift, let them go and let them sink or swim with their content production. It has a duty to football, and the new model of the Champions League, a Super League by stealth, is barely that anymore.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:09 pm

The Telegraph think they have found another way the biggest European clubs have found for securing there place permanently at the top table - Co-efficient increases

Europe's biggest clubs accused of 'stitch up' over Champions League revamp
Clubs like Man City and United would reap financial rewards for historic performance with fears new plans will only strengthen 'closed shop'

By Tom Morgan, SPORTS NEWS CORRESPONDENT and Sam Wallace, CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER
1 April 2021 • 6:40pm

Europe's biggest clubs have been accused of a "stitch up" over Champions League reforms which pocket them hundreds of millions more than rivals before they have kicked a ball.

Clubs outside England's so-called Big Six fear a likely increase of the "coefficient" reward for historic success will dwarf team earnings for competition performance in any one season.

The likes of Leicester City already stand to earn less money than Manchester City from the competition, even if they qualified for the quarter-final and Pep Guardiola's team were knocked out in the group stage.

However, fears have been raised from clubs across Europe that the new "Swiss System" plan set to be waved through by Uefa next month will widen the gulf even further as the giants lobby for more guaranteed earnings.

Concern from executives comes after a slideshow shown to clubs, and leaked to Telegraph Sport, shows how the big clubs already receive 30 per cent of revenue regardless of achievement that year.

Smaller teams are now convinced the coefficient rate will now go up even more when the delayed reforms for the competition post 2024 are finally tabled. "That chunk of money is only going to increase," one leading British club executive said. "It's all part of the same stitch up."

The 30 per cent guarantee for the most successful clubs over the past 10 years has been in place since 2018, but Uefa has declined to detail what the plan post-2024 will be.

Currently, in the Champions League, around €585 million (£500m) of revenue is spent on both coefficient and competition performance, with the highest ranked sides, such as Manchester City, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona expecting to extract in excess of £30million per season before they have even played a game.

Even though Uefa announced the arrangement several years ago, some smaller clubs were taken aback by the figures as they were explained to them this month in a slideshow by the European Leagues' Clubs Advisory Platform, a body that represents 37 professional leagues in 30 countries.

Last season, Champions League, Europa League and the UEFA Super Cup revenue was estimated at around €3.25bn (£2.9billion), and the smaller teams believe the 2024 reforms could be a final chance to create a fairer model.

What is the proposed new Champions League format - and why would it change?
Concerns around the coefficient are just one of a number of issues that has enraged clubs outside the elite. The bigger clubs have also been pushing for a bigger slice in commercial rights from the controversial "Swiss System", which was due to be announced on Wednesday but has been pushed back until April 19 due to last-minute wrangling.

It was claimed that Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward and Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano made it clear at a meeting of Uefa’s Club Competitions Committee that they would not be prepared to endorse the new format without guarantees of more power.

European football’s governing body was already facing fierce opposition from the Premier League and others by expanding the Champions League from 32 to 36 teams and 125 matches to 225 from 2024/25.

Plans for back-door access for historically-successful clubs have helped stave off the threat of a European Super League, but there remains dismay that it would nevertheless widen the chasm between the haves and have-nots.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:19 pm

Struggling to see how a club who've never won the competition are now able to get more money through historic success just because they've made the QF or SF a few times.

It's a shining example of what's wrong with European football and one that should be challenged in court.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:46 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:19 pm
Struggling to see how a club who've never won the competition are now able to get more money through historic success just because they've made the QF or SF a few times.

It's a shining example of what's wrong with European football and one that should be challenged in court.
No way it can be challenged in court if the rules and methods are laid out in advance - there is an option for the National FA's to force changes and that is because it is they who effectively invite the clubs to participate in Europe on their behalf - At one time the coefficient was country based, but now it is primarily club based. Imagine if the FA said in the future that the qualification for Europe would no longer be based on league position but because of the sums of money involved they would rotate through the league to ensure a more equal financial distribution (think of it as a variant of draft picks) - watch the Big Six spit their dummies out at that one

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:30 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 11:41 am
KPMG's Football Benchmark with a piece that analyses the relationship between clubs’ social media followers1 and their commercial revenues and how this has evolved over the past five years. The day after they Real Madrid won the title last season they produced 180 different releases across a range of social media platforms. Many of us freely acknowledge just how much our club under-utilises it's platforms as a way of growing it's audience and revenues. This illustrates why it can be so important. It is also interesting that in what has been a middling season for Real Madrid that they have grown their social media presence by 15 million subscribers - a total beyond the wildest dreams of our club.

https://footballbenchmark.com/library/c ... cial_media
The Unofficial Partner newsletter had a good reposte to this today

Attribution error
KPMG’s graph suggests a causal link between money and social media followings.

Maybe.

An alternative view is that big, rich football clubs have big social media followings because they’re more famous than smaller, less successful teams.

But big social media followings don’t make big clubs big. They are the result of success not a cause of it.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:19 pm

Brentford a club many admire have released there 2019/20 financial results - a £34m operational loss - fortunately for them Aston Villa stepped in over the summer and paid over $40m for Watkins and Konsa and West Ham have also paid a substantial sum for Benrahma

https://www.brentfordfc.com/siteassets/ ... counts.pdf

@KieranMagiure has had a quick peak - for sum reason it is across two threads

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 2878251017

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 0357692416

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:10 am

Sheffield United release their 2019/20 financial accounts - 2nd club to announce a profit for the season and the first club from the Premier League to show accounts full season accounts rather than accounting year - therefore have 13 months wages

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf

Blades Leisure which appears to be the parent company has also released it's accounts

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf

The Athletic have had a look

https://theathletic.com/2491325/2021/04 ... ed-article

Interesting that they spent £38m on the buyback of the properties following the ownership ruling - it was commonly reported as being £50+ - that should also put into the spotlight the value of the Hillsborough sale which is for much more, particularly as the Sheffield United one was at full commercial value

Blades Leisure has also released it's accounts

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf
Last edited by Chester Perry on Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:56 am

Very interesting piece in toay's The Athletic on working behind the scenes at football clubs - not very pleasant it seems

https://twitter.com/AdamCrafton_/status ... 9805624322

the article https://theathletic.com/2486447/2021/04 ... ed_article

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:42 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:10 am
Sheffield United release their 2019/20 financial accounts - 2nd club to announce a profit for the season and the first club from the Premier League to show accounts full season accounts rather than accounting year - therefore have 13 months wages

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf

Blades Leisure which appears to be the parent company has also released it's accounts

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf

The Athletic have had a look

https://theathletic.com/2491325/2021/04 ... ed-article

Interesting that they spent £38m on the buyback of the properties following the ownership ruling - it was commonly reported as being £50+ - that should also put into the spotlight the value of the Hillsborough sale which is for much more, particularly as the Sheffield United one was at full commercial value

Blades Leisure has also released it's accounts

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf
@KieranMaguire has now had a look at Sheffield United's 2019/20 financial results

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 9241353216

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:05 pm

Barney Ronay in the Guardian despairs at the obscene circus surrounding the potential transfer of Erling Haaland this summer and the current beauty parade his father and agent are undertaking

Haaland transfer saga is a grotesque circus we may never see again
In a time of economic hardship, it is right to feel appalled at the potential sums involved in Erling Haaland’s impending transfer

Barney Ronay

Fri 2 Apr 2021 20.00 BST

At this time of year it was a common thing for elegant young men of the 19th century to set off on a Grand Tour of Europe. Shuttered inside his velveteen stage coach, the brave traveller would wind from royal court to ancient city, taking in the rites of passage: harpsichord studies in Bologna, a marzipan banquet in Nîmes, a wonderful six-month tuition in the fine art of Etruscan wrestling from a youth called Hercule on the Istanbul docks.

It was interesting to see Erling Haaland embarking on a kind of modern-day superstar athlete equivalent this week. According to reports first published in Spain, Haaland has been seen winding his way from Dortmund to Barcelona in the company of his father and – more importantly – his agent, the fascinating, reviled, devastatingly effective Mino Raiola.

Further stops are planned – it is said – in Madrid and Manchester. And so here we are, poring over pictures of sullen men in masks getting into airport cars, picking over the details of meetings and personnel, another high point for the modern phenomenon of the transfer as a grand public theatre in its own right.

All that seems certain right now is Haaland really will leave Borussia Dortmund this summer. Two things have wound the clock forward on this.

First the convulsions, cooling and imminent downshift in the European transfer market. Transfers themselves are said to be in crisis. In 2019 the big five leagues spent a record €5.5bn on player deals. This dropped by 40% in the first year of Covid. How, you wonder, will anyone survive on such thin gruel, so few spare millions? If you’re holding the most valuable bauble in the room, this is the moment to cash it in.

Second, there is of course Haaland’s own astonishing progress, the sense of a man making the pitch look too small, the game too simple. He is that rare thing, a footballer who is thrillingly simple in what he does. He runs, he shoots, he travels in straight lines. He does all these things to a more intense human degree. He will hunt you down. He will find you. He will trample across your traumatised form on the shortest route to goal.

This kind of talent carries its own burden. Haaland is too big, too heavily stacked with potential energy to be allowed to remain in one place. Money, and the demands of money, will not let him rest. When Raiola said this week “With Haaland, everybody was wrong”, he sounded almost resigned, forced by powers outside his grasp to set in motion this obscenely overvalued public trade.

And there is something grotesque in the numbers involved here, evidence of football’s utterly skewed sense of value and scale, of where its wealth should be spread. At this point it would be all too easy to rail against the influence of agents, a source of constant financial leakage, and also of unrest, churn and supplication to the market above all else.

Raiola in particular does himself no favours, a super agent who embodies the small-round-sunglasses-plus-elegantly-straining-gut aesthetic, and who looks in most pictures like a friendly and successful local butcher who secretly wants to kill you. But he is a genuinely fascinating figure, and one of the few people close to the edge of this volcano who does at least seem to be looking at it with open eyes.

Even his early deals in the post-Bosman frontier times stand out now.

Dennis Bergkamp and Wim Jonk to Internazionale? What strange witchcraft was this? Raiola sold Robinho, sold Henrikh Mkhitaryan, sold Zlatan repeatedly, sold Paul Pogba to Manchester United. If the British Museum ever does get tired of polishing the Elgin marbles it could probably finance an entire second imperial pillage by getting Raiola to sell them back to the Greek government at a special Mino premium.

And now this: Haaland to somewhere else for £150m in a time of economic collapse. It is right to feel appalled, alienated and generally overpowered by the sums of money here. Most mega‑money transfers are a nonsense in any case. Look down the list and of the top eight deals of all time only Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid actually looks a solid return – a function of Ronaldo’s miraculous talent rather than any kind of logic.

Dortmund's decline gives Haaland the hump and clouds Raiola's grand plan

The unpalatable heart of this deal is that it is happening right now, at a time when there is contraction everywhere else, when community clubs are menaced by collapse and when the everyday people who fund this show, noses pressed against the glass, are suffering.

This is not magical money. Raiola’s cut, Haaland’s fee: this is your TV subscription, your match ticket, your club merchandise, your advertising value. This is what feeds this overheated soufflé, just as the whoops of shared national pride at each fresh TV deal are the sound of someone selling your own game back to you. Will this process meet any genuine resistance?

Those in power but excluded from the transfer circus seem most likely to do anything about it. There is some talk of new “solidarity rules” that would ban Champions League clubs from selling to one another – a strange idea until you twig its intended effect, the capping of massive-money deals fed by wealthy owners that have terrified some of the more established clubs.

It is across this fraught, changeable landscape that Erling and Mino are now striding out to strike what could be the last truly wild deal of the boom times. Manchester City probably have the will if they could find the finances, despite the current messaging: Haaland would transform the team into something irresistible. The two Spanish clubs have the cultural history and their own ways of rustling up finance. Raiola has the will and the levers to make it work.

But the vast, alienating sums, the loss of human scale, the continued tolerance of all this – well, that’s entirely our own.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:49 pm

An Entertaining newsletter today from the New York Times covering FIFA's (more specifically Gianni Infantino's) plan is for African football, what to do about minnows in European international football and a few other issues

FIFA Has a Plan for Africa. But Who Does It Serve?
APRIL 02, 2021

A couple of weeks ago, a tweet caught my eye. It seemed, unexpectedly, to reveal that a continentwide African Super League was under construction. Cross-border leagues, as regular readers will know, are something that this newsletter generally supports: They are the most readily available way of addressing soccer’s chronic financial imbalance.

On the surface, notwithstanding the complex logistics, Africa is a prime candidate for such a venture. Many of the continent’s domestic leagues struggle to find investment, to retain talent, to compete for interest with the European tournaments beamed onto their television sets. Africa’s major clubs would, I think, be stronger together.

There is, though, always a below the surface. As a rule, whenever I want to know what it is, I ask my colleague Tariq Panja, who spends so much time in the depths that he could be a submarine. For the last week or so, we’ve been exchanging emails on the subject. This conversation is the result.

Rory Smith: Something strange has happened, Tariq. A few weeks ago, someone drew my attention to a tweet from Barbara Gonzalez, the chief executive at Simba, one of the biggest clubs in Tanzania, that seemed to reveal a plan that would change the face of African soccer: a pan-continental super league.

But that’s not the strange part. The strange part is that it turns out it’s the brainchild of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president. As a general rule, making sure you’re on the opposite side of any argument from Infantino is a solid strategy. But in this case my instinct is to say that, at least as an idea, this kind of makes sense.

Please explain to me why I am wrong, so that the world can be restored to its axis.

Tariq Panja: As with everything when it comes to FIFA — and typically FIFA under Gianni Infantino — the devil is in the detail. Or, in this case, the lack of detail.

Infantino first announced his big idea for Africa in 2019, but it had been dormant until this random tweet (more on that in a minute). But when Infantino first went public, people inside FIFA say there was no business plan: just Gianni firing from the hip, claiming it could generate $200 million in revenue. That’s a big number as far as African club football is concerned, but there is no evidence of where it came from.

It reminds me of the time Gianni walked into a FIFA Council meeting and told the board to sign a document that would allow him to sell the Club World Cup to private investors (who turned out to be SoftBank). The members, led by European officials, wanted details. An internal audit found the event was worth considerably less than Gianni had suggested.

Now, back to the tweet: It turns out FIFA officials were surprised, too. Barbara González walked up to Gianni at the Confederation of African Football Congress and asked to have her photo taken with him. Five minutes later, she sent out the tweet. Now I’m not saying a league in Africa is a bad idea, but surely there must be a robust plan before such a major project is undertaken?

RS: If nothing else, you have to admire the chutzpah of that, not least because Infantino strikes me as precisely the sort of person who would fall for the old “as you were saying” ruse.

There does, as you say, have to be a robust plan: economically, of course, but in a sporting sense, too. The basic idea strikes me as sound. Certainly south of the Sahara, African club soccer struggles horribly for investment. That means that the vast majority of nations that produce a constant stream of players for European clubs rarely see any of that talent on show in domestic leagues. That, in turn, hardly entices fans to go and watch games live. And that completes a neat but vicious circle, because it means that, yes, clubs struggle horribly for investment.

A Super League would address some of those issues. A better television deal, if nothing else, would enable clubs to invest in infrastructure. That might help nurture young talent and keep it for a little longer. It doesn’t seem impossible to me that a Pan-African league might be able to rival one of the talent-generating leagues in Europe — the Netherlands or Portugal, say — for quality in a relatively short space of time.

Of course, there is one thorny issue that I haven’t yet had the nerve to bring up. I reckon I could come up with a fairly cogent list of 20 or so African teams that would have a good case for inclusion, thanks to history or support or location. But I am guessing that Infantino and CAF, which is now run by a staunch ally of his, might have a different system in mind?

TP: The little we know so far is that there is an expectation that participating teams would have to invest at least $20 million per season, for five seasons. For clubs in Africa, that is a significant outlay, and it suggests it would not be the most popular teams, so much as the ones that have the backing of wealthy benefactors. But again: Beyond the odd tweet and Gianni’s off-the-cuff remarks, we have nothing concrete.

There are other ways of trying to come up with likely participants. You could use the CAF club coefficient, which is essentially a points system for clubs in the region based on their historic success. But that would mean a league dominated by clubs from wealthier North African countries, with only a dozen or so of the continent’s 54 countries likely to be represented.

RS: That lack of representation would, I think, ultimately be unavoidable. For a tournament like this to be valid, there are certain clubs that would have to be included. Al Ahly and Zamalek from Cairo, would be names one and two. Both Raja and Wydad from Casablanca, and Esperance and Étoile du Sahel, the twin totems of Tunisian soccer.

You would certainly need South Africa’s Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. And you could throw Mamelodi Sundowns in there, too: It is owned by Patrice Motsepe, Infantino’s ally and the new CAF president. Simba, of Tanzania, clearly expect to be involved. TP Mazembe, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, would have to be.

Beyond that, the continent’s powerhouse nations — Cameroon, Senegal, Algeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and, particularly, Nigeria — would command at least one place each. Suddenly, the whole thing looks pretty full, even before thinking about Angola, Sudan and Ethiopia.

TP: If there was a method to wrap this league into the existing pyramid, there would probably be far more buy-in. The idea that teams from across the region would have — at least in theory — a shot at one day making it into the competition would make the proposition far more palatable to those, even among the larger clubs, who are not enthused about it.

Even then, there are the logistics of it: not only to create a level playing field, but a sensible calendar and schedule, given the enormous differences in weather and transport infrastructure across the region. Given the uncertainty and sense of unease among the African football community, there needs to be an urgent and transparent discussion about what this is, and what this is not. A series of clandestine meetings followed by a high-profile announcement that does not stand up to scrutiny is not enough.

RS: There is, definitely, a back-of-a-cigarette-packet air to the idea. And worse still, it has the feel of something that is being imposed on Africa, rather than generated from within it. The problem of representation bears that out: this sort of thing is much easier to conceive if, deep down, you regard Africa as a single, homogeneous entity, grateful for your interest.

And that — given Infantino’s apparent passion for the idea — makes you wonder what the purpose of it all is. Has it been suggested in an attempt to make African domestic soccer stronger, a challenging but essentially admirable aim? Or is there something else at play here?

TP: There’s a suspicion that Gianni’s motivations may be less to do with securing the future of African soccer and more his hopes of creating a club competition that can rival and, eventually, overtake the Champions League. For that to happen, the expanded Club World Cup needs teams from all over the world who can compete with the powerhouses of Europe.

In that light, Africa might just be the start, the canary in the coal mine. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but those involved should be clear about their intentions. And a defining project for the future of African soccer should be guided by those with skin in the game, no question, rather than a Swiss bureaucrat intent on a legacy project.

RS: Ah, that’s a relief. I feel as though I am on much more solid ground now: the idea might have some merit, but the rationale behind it may not. That may not be good news for African soccer, which finds itself being used as a pawn in a broader power game, but it’s good news for my personal moral compass, because it means I don’t have to worry about being on the same side of an argument as Gianni Infantino.

There was, just as there was always going to be, one last hurdle to clear. Most European soccer executives were expecting a blueprint for a new vision of the Champions League to be approved — both by UEFA, the competition’s organizer, and the European Clubs Association, Andrea Agnelli’s bad-idea factory — and announced this week.

That had to be pushed back, though, when several of the continent’s major teams blew up the deal at the 11th hour: It turns out that actually they want to have final say on the competition’s commercial rights, too. Suddenly, it seems as if the new-look Champions League may end up being the lesser of two evils.

Quite how that revamped competition will work is laid out clearly and concisely — and, crucially, in the form of a graphic — here. So clearly and concisely, in fact, that for the first time it is possible to say without fear of having missed something that this iteration of the Champions League will make the tournament immeasurably worse.

Not, though, for the reasons so often given. Yes, there will be more meetings between the game’s superpowers, and for lower stakes. Yes, the whole thing is bloated. Yes, it will starve domestic competitions of oxygen. And yes, it still might serve to entrench the financial inequality that is the real enemy of the game’s ongoing health.

But the main problem is much simpler: The redesign reduces the Champions League’s competitive integrity. It is, essentially, invalid to draw up a league table in which all of the teams play different opponents. It renders it meaningless. And it is quite likely that fans, who are not as stupid as they are taken to be, will notice.

A few days ago, as England threatened to run up the score in a World Cup qualifier against San Marino, the poacher-turned-pundit Gary Lineker suggested it was time to admit that these mismatches — which characterize a substantial amount of international soccer — were of benefit and interest to precisely nobody.

Instead, he said, perhaps it would be in everyone’s interests for some of Europe’s smaller nations to engage in a prequalifying tournament, playing one another for the right to face the continent’s elite, and England. The reaction — Do I really need to say this? You know what the reaction is, because it’s always the same reaction — was furious.

To Lineker’s critics, those who accused him of trying to ghettoize soccer’s underdogs, what followed was karmic retribution. Luxembourg won at Ireland. Spain needed a late goal to avoid a draw with Georgia. Latvia tied Turkey. And, best of all, North Macedonia beat Germany, the country’s first loss in a World Cup qualifier for 20 years.

It goes without saying that all of these results were welcome, impressive, and hilarious. But it does not mean that the idea Lineker espoused — one that has been around for years — should be dismissed.

First of all: That is how qualifying works in Africa, Asia and North and Central America. It helps to thin the calendar a little, something that matters at a time when players are being run into the ground by all of the teams they represent. Second: The success of the Nations League has shown that games between smaller nations are more competitive, and therefore both more entertaining and more educational, than watching the same teams be steamrollered by the giants.

And third: At the same time as all those shocks were rumbling through Europe, England was scoring five against San Marino, the Czechs ran in six in Estonia, and both Belgium and Denmark scored eight, against Belarus and Moldova. Worse still, a team managed by Frank de Boer scored seven against Gibraltar. Some of soccer’s lesser lights are competitive. Some are not. If only there was a way of selecting which teams fell into which categories.

We have been here before. On Thursday, it emerged that Mino Raiola and Alfie Haaland — respectively the agent and the father of Erling Haaland, the goal cyborg — were in Catalonia for a meeting with Joan Laporta, the freshly-minted president of Barcelona. The race for the hottest property in European soccer is, it seems, on.

It is a move straight from the playbook that eventually led the younger Haaland to Borussia Dortmund, his current home, about 15 months ago. Expect Raiola and Haaland’s father to turn up in relatively short order in Madrid, too. They will almost certainly stop off in London after that: Chelsea harbors hopes of signing the 20-year-old Haaland. They may need two days in Manchester; they would not want to rush United or City.

The fact that they are doing their due diligence on their client/son’s next home is, then, no surprise. More eye-catching is the fact that they feel Barcelona’s hopes of signing Haaland are valid, given that Dortmund has made it plain that it will not sell him for less than $150 million, and because Barcelona is, well, currently about $1 billion in debt.

Laporta, clearly, feels he can make a deal work. Perhaps he can. Perhaps there is some way of shifting the money around enough for Barcelona to remain a viable candidate. The appeal is obvious: Signing Haaland would, almost at a stroke, turn Barcelona into major players again. But then so, too, is the problem: After all the club has been through, would it really be a good idea?

The Final Sprint
Aside from the virgin hope of opening day — and possibly the breathless frenzy of Christmas — this is the best part of the soccer season. The end of the March international break heralds not only the arrival of spring, but the start of European club soccer’s race to the summit. Over the next two months, closure will arrive.

Better yet, this time around, we hit the ground running. The top two in both France and Germany will meet on Saturday: first, Lille visits Paris St.-Germain, the two of them level on points, and only a nose ahead of Lyon and Monaco. (I’ll have a story on Lille posting in a few hours.) No sooner has that finished, though, than RB Leipzig hosts a Bayern Munich deprived of Robert Lewandowski, and knowing that a win would close the gap at the top of the Bundesliga to a single point.

In England, meanwhile, the ultimate prize is off the table: It is a matter of when, not if, Manchester City claims a third title in four years. But the battle to finish second, third and fourth — and therefore obtain a place in next season’s not-yet-ruined Champions League — promises to be enthralling. My money would be on Manchester United, Chelsea and Leicester, in that order, but it’s so close that it wouldn’t be much of my money.

Correspondence
Only space for one, this week, from Charles Knights. “I’m trying to figure out how much disappointment is warranted right now as a supporter of the United States,” he wrote. “How do you rate the U.S.A. men’s team’s failed attempts to qualify for Tokyo? There’s a lot of talk about the Olympics as a training ground for the next generation, but when I look at the U.S. squad, the next generation is playing senior friendlies in Europe.”

This is only a personal perspective, Charles, and it is a distinctly European one: My view would, I think, be different if I was South American or African. But in the narrow context of soccer, I’m not convinced the Olympics matter particularly.

It is special for the players to win a gold medal, of course, particularly when it at least rivals the high-point of that country’s soccer achievements thus far (Nigeria in 1996, Cameroon in 2000, Mexico in 2012) or when it is Argentina (2004 and 2008), and the World Cup brings nothing but misery.

But in terms of being used a signpost for greater things to come? In men’s soccer, no, not really. Put it this way: I had to check who won the gold at Rio in 2016. Turns out it was Brazil! They must have enjoyed that. It probably didn’t make up for what happened in a different tournament on home soil a couple of years earlier.

Women’s soccer, of course, has historically placed much more importance on it — the cover of Abby Wambach’s autobiography describes her as a gold medalist, rather than a World Cup winner — but I wonder if that, too, will change with the increased focus on the Women’s World Cup.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:33 pm

Teased in the previous post - Rory Smith with the tale of French Lique title challenges Lille, a talent factory that became financially overstretched and force to change ownership and the the leagues domestic tv deal disintegrated - from the New York Times

A French Soccer Team Clings to First Place as the Bottom Falls Out
APRIL 02, 2021

On the surface, the pitch was a convincing one. Last year, the owners of Lille O.S.C. commissioned a graphic designer to produce a glossy prospectus, one intended to entice an investor into buying out their stake in the French soccer club.

There are dozens of these documents swirling around soccer’s financial netherworld at any given time, passed around by the army of bankers, lawyers, private equity investors, deal-makers and middlemen who serve as gatekeepers to the handful of individuals both wealthy and foolhardy enough to buy and sell teams.

Generally, pitches like the one about Lille are treated with both caution and cynicism, but this one probably would have been worth a second glance. The club’s infrastructure was sound: It had a large training facility at Luchin, and a capacious, modern stadium. Its location, too, was fertile ground for an ambitious, dynamic sort of a team: at the center of a transport nexus connecting London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, in the center of a part of northern France that contains the headquarters of dozens of corporations and a population of two million people, almost a third of them younger than 20.

The centerpiece of the sales document, though, was Lille’s squad itself. The club’s real value, the prospectus claimed, lay in its talent. Every year, the club had invested substantial sums in crops of bright, young prospects, thanks in no small part to the work of Luis Campos, the Portuguese recruitment guru who oversaw the team’s transfer activity.

Each influx of players was referred to as an “acquisition vintage”; as with wine, the idea was that the prospects would get better with age. The club estimated that its squad, at the time, had a cumulative transfer value of around $420 million. Its ceiling, though, was much higher: If all the players developed as they should, the club claimed it was sitting on a pool of talent worth as much as $1 billion.

In ordinary circumstances, this weekend would be the moment that Lille’s approach was vindicated. On Saturday, Lille travels to Paris St.-Germain for the most significant game of the Ligue 1 season: The teams are tied atop the standings, with the P.S.G. side built for hundreds of million of dollars, the one that can call on Neymar and Kylian Mbappé and the rest, ahead of Lille only on goal difference.

But for Lille, the season when everything came together is also the season it all fell apart.

Gérard López, Lille’s former owner, used to boast that if his team was not “the best in the world in trading players, we’re probably in the top three, four or five.” This season should have been his proof.

But if anything — and through no fault of their own — the market value of Lille’s players has not only fallen this season, but it has also dropped to such an extent that, in December, López had no choice but to cede control of the club.

The end game arrived just before Christmas. López was summoned to London to meet with Lille’s two main creditors, JP Morgan Chase and Elliott Management, the activist investment firm founded and run by the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer.

In that meeting, the French sports newspaper L’Equipe reported, López tried everything he could to broker a deal to pay back the loans — worth around $140 million — that were set to come due this summer. He suggested a five-year financial restructuring, and proposed bringing on board an investor from the Middle East. He did not, it seems, want to give up Lille easily.

Whenever he could, he found time to call Christophe Galtier, Lille’s coach, to update him on the progress of the talks. “He kept me informed of the situation last night,” Galtier said in December. “We talked a lot, when it was possible to talk.” Galtier was clearly touched: He dedicated the team’s win against Dijon the next day to the man who had brought him on board in 2017.

Elliott and JP Morgan, though, were unmoved. López’s reign was over. The director Marc Ingla soon followed him out the door. Eventually, so would Campos. In their stead, almost immediately, came a company called Callisto Sporting SARL, a subsidiary of an investment firm called Merlyn Partners.

Both companies are registered in Luxembourg. Both are linked to Maarten Petermann, a former European head of special situations at JP Morgan. Olivier Létang, a veteran soccer executive, was named Lille’s president. The creditors’ decision, and the swiftness of their action, was rooted in the unavoidable fact that the financial reality of French soccer had shifted too much for López to be able to meet his commitments.

Like every club in Ligue 1 — with the exception of Qatar-funded P.S.G. — Lille was facing a cash-flow crisis. The league’s decision to cancel last season meant it had forfeited a tranche of broadcast revenue. Stadiums had been empty, at that stage, for almost nine months, and there was no sign that fans would be permitted to return any time soon. And, most pernicious of all, the league’s new television deal had collapsed; if a replacement could not be found, French domestic soccer was facing ruin.

Lille’s circumstances, though, were particularly perilous. López’s tenure had always been something of a roller coaster; the club had been sanctioned on several occasions by the D.N.C.G., the body that oversees the economic health of France’s soccer teams, and at one point was threatened with relegation because of its precarious finances.

Its release valve was always Campos’s seemingly never-ending pipeline of talent. In the summer of 2019, Lille had sold players — including the wing Nicolas Pépé, to Arsenal — for almost $180 million. A year later, even at the height of the pandemic, it had managed to turn a profit of $71 million in the transfer market.

Despite those impressive returns, the club was barely keeping its head above water. Quite how it burned through so much money is not entirely clear, although the considerable running cost of its stadium is generally regarded as a significant factor. In 2018-19, the club posted an operating loss of $77 million. The year before, that deficit was $120 million.

In a bull market, the club’s creditors had been prepared to tolerate those figures. That changed as 2020 became 2021, as revenues cratered, and as French soccer teetered on the brink. The club was heading for “bankruptcy in January,” according to Létang. This time, Lille could not sell its way out of trouble.

The squad that has brought Lille into contention for its first French title since 2011 — and, more impressively, its first since the Qatari investment in P.S.G. fundamentally altered Ligue 1’s competitive balance — is testament not only to the deft and astute management of Galtier, but also to the keen eye of Campos.

There is a reason that even José Mourinho, not a man given to complimenting other humans, is happy to talk about his friend’s “great career.” Campos, after all, is the technical director who pieced together the Monaco team that made the semifinals of the Champions League in 2017 and was then sold across the Continent for the better part of a billion euros.

His work at Lille was, quietly, no less impressive, even if he was never, technically, an employee of the club. Instead, he was employed by a company called Scoutly, which was wholly owned by Victory Soccer, the vehicle through which López and Ingla owned Lille.

López insisted that this Byzantine approach was necessary so that Campos could operate with “independence” in the market. Regardless, Lille benefited from the arrangement. Its squad is replete with the fruits of Campos’s labor: Boubakary Soumaré and Jonathan Ikoné, spotted in the reserve ranks at P.S.G.; Zeki Celik, plucked from the obscurity of the Turkish second division; Renato Sanches, offered a shot at rejuvenation after four years in the wilderness; and the two crown jewels, the most salable assets, the Dutch defender Sven Botman and the Canadian forward Jonathan David.

The belief that they might, together, one day be worth as much as that Monaco team of Mbappé and Bernardo Silva and Fabinho and the rest was, of course, overstated. That assumption rested on the idea that every single player would reach his maximum value, but it was, for a while, an explicable delusion.

That changed as soon as the pandemic struck, and it calcified as the scale of French soccer’s financial crisis was laid bare. Ligue 1 expects to sign a new television deal in the coming weeks, almost certainly with Canal Plus, the broadcaster it ditched last summer.

Broadcast money will bring some respite for the country’s clubs, but it will not fill the hole left by the empty promises of Mediapro. The teams of Ligue 1, then, are hurriedly trying to cut their budgets accordingly. Several already have agreed to pay cuts with their players. Lyon has offered a reduction in exchange for stock options.

Most, though, will still need to sell players, trading on Ligue 1’s self-styled reputation as the “league of talents.” The problem is not only that prices will be depressed by the fact that so many teams in France need to raise funds, but also that few clubs in Europe retain their purchasing power.

It was that, ultimately, that forced the hand of Lille’s creditors: Campos might still have provided players who can be sold, but in a market likely to be saturated by cut-price deals, Lille can no longer rely on premium fees.

What happens next — what happens this summer — is not yet clear. Létang has said little beyond an insistence that the club cannot rely on qualification for next season’s Champions League for its financial health. Stability, he said, will be his watchword. The players have, as yet, not been alerted to a looming fire sale.

A place in Europe would go some way, of course, to boosting the club’s finances. A French title, combined with a good showing in Europe next season, might help increase demand for some of the more recent acquisition vintages. Like wine, they will get better with age. The problem, now, is that what is inside the bottle matters rather less than the amount someone is prepared — or able — to pay for it.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 03, 2021 1:44 am

The Daily Mail are reporting that the EFL loan from MetLife is at an interest rate of 2% - which sounds very reasonable - they just forgot to mention that the Premier League paid £15m in fees to set that loan up - so in reality the interest would have been much higher and there is still no indication of how long the loan is for - my guess is 18 months which would bring the interest rate (if no fees were paid) up to around 9% - 10%

EFL loan compares favourably to other clubs
By MATT HUGHES FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:32, 2 April 2021 | UPDATED: 22:32, 2 April 2021

The terms of the £117.5m loan taken out by the EFL this week to help members cover lost gate receipts during the pandemic compare very favourably with the borrowing that has been undertaken by several clubs.

The EFL have secured an interest rate of around two per cent from US financiers MetLife, whereas clubs such as Derby and Sunderland are paying up to 10 per cent interest on loans from MSD Capital.

In an indication of the extent of the EFL’s financial crisis, 14 of the 24 Championship clubs have applied for access to the funding, which is capped at £8.3m per club.

The terms of the £117.5m loan taken out by the EFL this week to help members cover lost gate receipts during the pandemic compare very favourably with the borrowing that has been undertaken by several clubs.

The EFL have secured an interest rate of around two per cent from US financiers MetLife, whereas clubs such as Derby and Sunderland are paying up to 10 per cent interest on loans from MSD Capital.

In an indication of the extent of the EFL’s financial crisis, 14 of the 24 Championship clubs have applied for access to the funding, which is capped at £8.3m per club.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 03, 2021 2:24 am

GameofthePeople.xom look at the BeNeLiga scenario

A game of survival: The Dutch, the Belgians and BeNeLiga
APRIL 1, 2021NEIL FREDRIK JENSEN

FOOTBALL’s polarisation over the past decade has prompted league administrators and business people to discuss solutions that can prevent their clubs from being marginalised. The game has become corporatized, meaning money talks louder than ever before in football. Size really does matter, both for a club and a league.

The top five leagues in Europe represent the largest commercial markets. People talk about a football nation as a market these days when they discuss the growth of a club’s franchise. You only need listen to anyone from the rapidly growing football finance industry to hear phrases like “financing”, “expansion”, “global reach” and “facilities”. In the case of the latter, it isn’t stadium facilities, it is a term to describe borrowed money.

There’s another financial term that may soon become commonplace in big-time football: mergers and acquisitions. More specifically, we may be on the precipice of an era where leagues start to merge to achieve critical mass. How about a low country competition involving the cream of Belgium’s Pro League and the Netherlands’ Eredivisie?

Markets
Forty years ago, football’s top clubs came from a much broader geographic spread. Most European countries had a club that could compete, some more sustainably than others. In the Netherlands and Belgium, clubs like Ajax, Feyenoord, PSV Eindhoven, Anderlecht and Bruges could hold their own and give anyone a tough, two-legged tie.

Given these two countries were relatively small football “markets”, their clubs could not produce the resources needed to be continually successful on the international stage. Periodic moments of glory was really the best they could hope for. But it worked for a long time. The Netherlands, for example, produced three European champions who have won the top prize six times between them: Ajax (1971, 1972, 1973, 1995); Feyenoord (1970); and PSV Eindhoven (1988). Only England has had more different winners of the European Cup/UEFA Champions League (five).

Belgium have not had much success in the competition, having produced one finalist, Bruges in 1978, but Anderlecht became something of an expert in the now defunct European Cup-Winners’ Cup, lifting the trophy twice and losing in two finals. At various times, both countries have developed decent national teams, but as Belgium proved in the 2018 World Cup, most of their players are now employed abroad. Belgium may have finished third in the Russian World Cup, but only once has a Belgian team won through to the round of 16 in the UEFA Champions League.

Given the domination of the big five leagues and the strength of their domestic football, it has become clear Belgium and the Netherlands are in danger of going the same way as other parts of Europe, if they have not already. True, Ajax Amsterdam are a huge club, with impressive support and heritage, but they have to work very hard to compete even when they have a strong side. In 2019, they reached the last four of the UEFA Champions League and then sold their top players, benefitting from huge fees but dismantling their latest exciting team. This is the model that clubs from outside the very top leagues exist on, developing talent and selling it to the likes of Manchester United, Juventus and Barcelona. Ajax, along with Benfica and Porto of Portugal are particularly proficient at this strategy.

Concessions
The combination of Belgium and the Netherlands could create a compelling league, one that would be more attractive to sponsors, broadcasters and media. The big issue will be the fans, who will undoubtedly be opposed to the breaking-up a traditional structure. There would also have to be some concession made to lower level football in both countries. But the union of the ninth and 11th strongest European leagues (according to the International Federation of Football History & Statistics) could create the sixth best across the continent, one that Deloitte believes could be worth € 400 million in broadcasting rights alone, compared to the € 80 million that both leagues each receive.

Both Belgium and the Netherlands, because of their size and history, have always been traders and merchants who have welcomed foreign involvement in society. Belgium’s capital, Brussels, is the home of the European Union and a gastronomic centre. The Dutch are a very mobile people who speak the best English in continental Europe. There are a lot of multinational companies across the Benelux region, including Anheuser Busch, KLM, Ahold, Heineken, Airbus and DSM.

The top clubs need to grow their revenue bases substantially if they are to become more competitive on the international stage. Average total income for Belgium’s top division is € 22 million, while the Netherlands totals € 33 million. Compared to the big five leagues, they both have a very long way to go: the Premier League average is € 293 million and the lowest, France, is € 95 million. The total revenues for the Eredivisie as a league amount to

€ 594 million and for Belgium’s Pro League only € 344 million.

By wage bills, Belgian and Dutch clubs are also trailing behind the elite group. Ajax and Anderlecht both pay around € 35 million per season, lower than the less wealthy Premier League clubs (Sheffield United’s wage bill in 2020-21 is reputed to be £ 30 million). Consider also that Ajax’s salaries are a fraction of the teams they try to compete against in European competition. A more prosperous, more high-profile league could mean higher wages.

Upside
Could it also result in higher attendances? Belgium’s average gate for the Pro League is, in normal circumstances, 10,600 , which is around 1,300 lower than the highest ever average. The figures have been quite consistent, but the highest club ground capacity is just 30,000 at Standard Liège’s Stade Maurice Dufrasne. Clubs like Bruges, Liège and Anderlecht can draw 20,000-plus crowds quite easily, but further down, half of the Pro League struggles to get above 10,000. The overall stadium utilisation rate is 64%, so there is some upside.

The Netherlands has a stadium utilisation rate of 88%, thanks to an average Eredivisie crowd of around 18,000. Attendances are actually higher than they were in the golden age of Dutch football. Ajax remain one of Europe’s top draws in Europe with an average of 53,000. The Netherlands’ big three, Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV, are all extremely well supported, but their crowds cannot go much higher without stadium development. The gap between the top and bottom in terms of gates is huge, but across the Eredivisie, all clubs are attracting healthy crowds.

The concept of a Belgium-Netherlands league – the BeNeLiga – has been discussed before, but increasingly, football people are concerned time is running out. Former Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany, for instance, said it was a matter of survival as the elite clubs are moving towards isolation by establishing their own league.

Belgium’s top clubs have agreed in principle but the Eredivisie has yet to vote on a merger. There are obvious benefits, both financial and technical, but plans to start such a competition may take longer than some advocates believe. At the moment, they are looking at 2025. It’s not just a question of taking 10 Dutch and eight Belgian and shaking it like a cocktail. It may take time, but if it does emerge, it could be very interesting.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:31 am

This was supposed to have been published last week, but it has finally arrived - The Athletic looks at the multi-club model employed by high flying Barnsley owners Pacific Media Group - I have posted about them a few times on this thread

https://twitter.com/mjshrimper/status/1 ... 0114714630

https://theathletic.com/2479880/2021/04 ... ed_article

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » 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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:52 pm

Politics meets sport again in African football - I suspect Spain (think Catalonian separatism) amongst others are happy about this precedence

Political forces obstructing Zanzibar’s CAF dreams
The islanders are said to be the victims of powerful forces in Africa’s football governing body serving their own political interests. The same case can be made for the exclusion of Western Sahara.

By: Bonface Osano 3 Apr 2021

“Issa Haiatou gave birth to Zanzibar’s CAF [Confederation of African Football] membership dream, Ahmad Ahmad strangled it and now Patrice Motsepe has completely buried it,” said Tanzanian football consultant Michael Mwebe.

This was in reaction to CAF’s decision to amend article four of its statutes without the prerequisite 30-day notice. CAF has now made it mandatory for any African football association wishing to join its hierarchy to be the only representative of an independent country that is a member of the United Nations. This effectively ended Zanzibar’s CAF dreams, turning the autonomous region of Tanzania into a casualty of a bigger political battle that is allegedly spearheaded by Morocco.

“CAF have basically sealed off the only loophole that allowed Zanzibar to continue pushing for the elusive membership,” said Mwebe.

According to a close source, the amendment was fronted by the Royal Moroccan Football Federation’s president, Fouzi Lekjaa, and passed by CAF’s executive committee without being subjected to any debate during the body’s elective general assembly held on 12 March in Rabat, Morocco.

The move is seen as an attempt to bury any chances of Western Sahara – a disputed territory on the coast in the Maghreb region of North and West Africa, of which 20% is controlled by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and 80% by Morocco – from joining CAF ranks.

Condemned in Zanzibar as parochial and politically motivated, the passing of the amendment was hailed as a “masterstroke in sports diplomacy” in Morocco, according to the 15 March editorial of the Moroccan newspaper Assabah.

“It’s just a selfish game being played by Morocco as they know Western Sahara is already recognised by the African Union, and the only remaining avenue to block them from joining CAF is to introduce the UN member requirement,” said Suleiman Suleiman Shabaan, former club licensing manager of the Zanzibar Football Association (ZFA).

The timing couldn’t have been more apt for the North African kingdom, coming as it did when CAF was undergoing a transition with Motsepe being selected as its first-ever president from the Anglophone grouping. Motsepe is from South Africa, one of the countries that recognises Western Sahara’s independence.

The 59-year-old billionaire replaced Ahmad, the embattled Malagasy who was forced to step down from office after world football body Fifa slapped him with a five-year ban for corruption. On appeal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced his ban to two years.

Motsepe’s ascension to the helm of African football leadership was a mere coronation, a culmination of intense lobbying that saw his three opponents – Ivorian Jacques Anouma, Senegalese Augustin Senghor and Mauritanian Ahmed Yahya – step down in his favour in a power deal believed to have been brokered by Lekjaa and Fifa president Gianni Infantino. A Swiss Italian, Infantino has since come under fire from international media for meddling in the polls against Fifa guidelines.

Zanzibar’s long fight
Zanzibar has managed its football with support from its semi-autonomous government, well-wishers and a few favours from the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) for 95 years, making the ZFA one of the oldest football organisations in Africa.

In this period, it has run four division leagues, three youth leagues and the national team, the Zanzibar Heroes, who do not grace continental championships but play in the regional Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations (Cecafa) Senior Challenge Cup. Clubs from the four-islands region have competed in CAF inter-clubs since 2004 when the continent’s governing body granted Zanzibar “associate membership” status. This was a gentleman’s agreement, with no legal backing, extended to the ZFA by former CAF president Hayatou.

Despite its clear efforts to grow the game, the ZFA’s clamour for official status, which would guarantee it financial and technical support, remains a mirage. After decades of lobbying, including a failed bid to join Fifa in 2005, the ZFA was accepted as the 55th member of CAF on 17 March 2017, in a vote (51/54) taken by the general assembly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

This was a proud moment, not only for the ZFA but also the TFF under former president Jamal Malinzi, who had introduced the motion. The joy, however, lasted only four months as Ahmad, freshly elected to succeed the long-serving Hayatou, single-handedly and without quoting any specific statutes reversed the decision.

“They were admitted without properly looking into the statutes, which are crystal clear,” argued Ahmad, who told the BBC during a CAF extraordinary congress in Morocco that the governing body could not admit two different associations from one country. “The definition of a country comes from the African Union and the United Nations,” he added.

But no such requirement had existed before – not even at Fifa, whose membership comprises 211 national associations, which is 18 members more than the UN’s membership total. Some of the Fifa members that are not members of the UN include Gibraltar, Kosovo and the Faroe Islands.

Tanzania’s hand in the exclusion
According to a source who was privy to the goings-on but did not want to be named as the matter remains politically sensitive, Ahmad was only fulfilling the wishes of the Tanzanian government. “At first, the government of Tanzania, through the Ministry of Sports, approved the Zanzibar bid. However, this position changed immediately after the admission, with Jamal Malinzi being thrown under the bus for allegedly acting on his own,” said the source.

Consequently, Malinzi was arrested shortly thereafter and charged with 20 counts of embezzlement and money laundering. He was found guilty of just one offence and released after two years in detention upon paying a $220 fine.

The issue of Zanzibar gaining full CAF membership is a taboo topic discussed in hushed tones, especially in mainland Tanzania, because it coincides with the islanders’ quest for independence. The late president John Pombe Magufuli’s regime abhorred free speech.

“Though not officially, there is a strong belief – and people talk about it secretly – that the government is opposed to Zanzibar joining CAF as a full member. And it’s not only in football. An attempt for Zanzibar to join the IOC [International Olympic Committee] was equally thwarted by the government and the issue has never been raised again,” said Shabaan. “Any pursuit for such recognition is viewed as a direct affront to the union-making Tanzania and could trigger increased demand for the forbidden independence for Zanzibar.”

Signed in 1964 between the first president of Zanzibar, Abeid Karume, and Tanganyika’s Julius Nyerere, the union pact saw Zanzibar merge with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania, with Nyerere as president and Karume his deputy.

“The usual fear [of an independent Zanzibar] cited [by Tanzania] is security. Zanzibar’s access to the sea makes the mainland vulnerable to foreign aggressors,” said Thabit Jacob, a research fellow in the political economy of development at Roskilde University in Denmark.

Even as, more than ever, the future looks bleak for the ZFA, Shabaan can still spot a silver lining. That the general assembly did not reverse its decision, as required by law, gives him hope that someday Zanzibar will get justice. “The authority to admit or expel a member rests with the general assembly, and to date it has never sat to revoke the ZFA’s legitimate membership. The ZFA is simply an oppressed member of CAF.”

In the meantime, Zanzibar will forge ahead with its football programmes despite inadequate support and cling on to the ZFA’s associate member status, its only source of international recognition for now, as it ponders the future.

“Perhaps, the biggest issue now for Zanzibar is whether they can keep holding that special membership, which allows them to participate in CAF inter-club competitions,” said Mwebe.

CAF had not yet responded to questions posed to them on the matter at the time of publication.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 04, 2021 3:19 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
£30m of commercial Income for Leeds last season in the Championship (ours was £16m-£17m) they have improved a number of those deals (shirt is 10 times as much I understand) and taken on quite a few new ones - I have been saying since last summer that I expect them to be the best at this outside the big six in the Premier League this season

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 04, 2021 3:43 pm

Seems the Premier League and the PFA are under investigation (for a now changed practice) for channelling funds through a PFA Charity - from the Telegraph

Exclusive: Premier League denies tax benefit over £110m donations to PFA's charity account
The logic of millions flowing into the PFA Charity from the Premier League and back out again across the professional game is under scrutiny

By - Jeremy Wilson, CHIEF SPORTS REPORTER
4 April 2021 • 8:30am

Questions have been raised over Premier League donations of almost £110 million to the Professional Footballers’ Association’s charity while it and the Football League benefited from PFA youth development grants which totalled £24m.

The funding arrangement, which relates to the five-year period from 2015 to 2019, was altered during the most recent accounting period that also coincides with the Charity Commission’s launch of a full statutory inquiry into the PFA.

And the logic of millions of pounds flowing into the PFA Charity from the Premier League and then back out again across the professional game is now being questioned. Between 2014-15 and 2018-19 seasons the Premier League paid almost £109.5 million in charitable donations to the PFA following agreements that were linked to the league’s vast broadcast deals.

Listed among the PFA's grants in the same time period were annual payments on youth development, which began at £3m to the Football League (EFL) in 2014-15 and later rose to £6m across both the Premier League and EFL.

“The funder of the charity is also getting donations from the charity - there is a risk of conflict there,” said Joshua Winfield, a barrister at Radcliffe Chambers and an expert in charity law. “It doesn’t look right where there is money going in both directions. "One’s first thought is: ‘Why didn’t the Premier League use the money they were giving to the charity for the purpose that the charity was paying them the money for?’

“Donations to charity are normally tax-efficient for the donor, so one would expect the Premier League to have got a tax benefit from their gifts to the charity. The money paid out by the charity must be used by the Premier League for charitable purposes consistent with the charity’s objects. If one were advising the charity, one would want to be sure that this was the case and that the donation did not come with strings attached.”

The Premier League is adamant that there has been no tax benefit from the arrangement and is comfortable with how the money was paid. The current PFA accounts relate to the first year of the Premier League’s new television deal and, as far as the league is concerned, it is understood that it has simply paid the money into the account requested by the PFA.

The Charity Commission would not comment on an investigation into the PFA which began in Nov 2018 and escalated into a statutory inquiry last year. The inquiry has included examining the charity’s relationship and transactions with other bodies and whether they are in the best interests of the charity, and whether the charity’s activities have been exclusively charitable and for the public benefit.

The latest accounts contain huge changes in the PFA’s financial management since June 2019, notably how its vast income from the professional game’s television deals is now divided between the trade union account, the accident fund and the charity. That has meant charitable income to the PFA listed as ‘TV income’ - largely from the Premier League - has been slashed from £26.99m in 2018-19 to £11.27m in 2019-20.

However, ‘TV rights’ of £12.75m were also paid into the PFA’s general fund and a further £3.44m of ‘television fees’ went into the accident fund. The EFL also pays the PFA around £2m each year from its broadcast income and is understood still to be receiving youth development funding via the union. With its dramatically increased income, staff salaries were also fully covered by the trade union last year and there was no recharge to the charity.

“The fact that apparently most of the staff costs of the PFA were recharged to the charity in 2019 and they are now treated as a donation by the PFA to the charity seems significant,” said Winfield. “I would be very surprised if the Charity Commission were happy with charity money paying PFA salaries, except in respect of services directly relating to the charity’s activities.”

The PFA said that changes in its financial arrangements reflected an ongoing organisational overhaul. This has followed recommendations from an independent review by Sport Resolutions. “The PFA and The PFA Charity are in the process of transitional changes,” said a spokesperson. “Our accounts reflect these changes, as we reappraise organisationally what is best for both the beneficiaries of the charity and members of the PFA.

“It is important to note all beneficiaries and members eligible for assistance before we took these steps can still access the same levels of support provided by both the charity and the union.”

The PFA did not respond to other specific questions on its finances, including a loan of more than £100,000 that was made from the PFA Charity to PFA Enterprises to assist with the purchase of a property and how much it was paying in annual affiliation fees to the Professional Players’ Federation. As previously revealed by The Telegraph, the PPF’s chairman, Brendon Batson, is a PFA Charity trustee and the chief executive is Taylor’s son Simon. Batson and Simon Taylor are paid an annual consultancy fee by the PPF which, in the latest accounts, was respectively £20,160 and £59,000.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » 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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 05, 2021 1:45 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:10 am
Sheffield United release their 2019/20 financial accounts - 2nd club to announce a profit for the season and the first club from the Premier League to show accounts full season accounts rather than accounting year - therefore have 13 months wages

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf

Blades Leisure which appears to be the parent company has also released it's accounts

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf

The Athletic have had a look

https://theathletic.com/2491325/2021/04 ... ed-article

Interesting that they spent £38m on the buyback of the properties following the ownership ruling - it was commonly reported as being £50+ - that should also put into the spotlight the value of the Hillsborough sale which is for much more, particularly as the Sheffield United one was at full commercial value

Blades Leisure has also released it's accounts

https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-m ... 67541d.pdf
@Swiss Ramble with his take on those Sheffield United 2019/20 Financial Results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 3142500352

he has also done one of his summary sheets

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 7793353728

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 05, 2021 1:49 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:19 pm
Brentford a club many admire have released there 2019/20 financial results - a £34m operational loss - fortunately for them Aston Villa stepped in over the summer and paid over $40m for Watkins and Konsa and West Ham have also paid a substantial sum for Benrahma

https://www.brentfordfc.com/siteassets/ ... counts.pdf

@KieranMagiure has had a quick peak - for sum reason it is across two threads

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 2878251017

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 0357692416
@SwissRamble has been busy - he has also poured over Brentford's 2019/20 Results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 1572179975

EDIT @SwissRamble has now posted a summary sheet of those Brentford 2019/20 financials
Last edited by Chester Perry on Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:05 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:04 pm
There is a podcast from the Total Soccer Show on the subject of MLS Franchise valuations, which includes the writer of that article in The Athletic

the blurb:

On this episode of Allocation Disorder, Paul and Sam talk all about MLS franchise valuations and the potential for growth in Major League Soccer.

Why are MLS franchises being bought and sold for so much money? Why aren’t folks who are flushed with cash just going out and buy a Premier League team for a fraction of the cost of an MLS franchise? How do future television rights and the 2026 World Cup factor into MLS’s growth? Is a sort of closed promotion/relegation feasible at some point down the line? And where does Liga MX fit into MLS’s future?

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t ... 0514500550
The Guardian with a less upbeat take on MLS franchise valuations than we have been used to seeing recently

Investors have paid $325m for a place in MLS. But for how much longer?
The fortunes handed out for a spot in the league have always been based on the future worth of soccer in North America. But Covid-19 may cause some to reassess

Graham Ruthven - Mon 5 Apr 2021 10.00 BST

2023 was slated to be Sacramento Republic’s expansion year in Major League Soccer. After long and protracted negotiations to secure a franchise, it was provisionally announced in October 2019 that California’s capital city had been awarded a spot in the league. That may be the closest Sacramento ever gets to MLS, though, with billionaire Ron Burkle pulling out as lead investor amid the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic. The club’s entry to MLS is now on hiatus.

According to commissioner Don Garber, MLS lost close to $1bn in revenue over 2020. “The losses have been dramatic,” he told reporters in December. “Clubs are going to have to manage their economics as diligently as possible.” Even more striking was that Garber, just a few months later, claimed MLS could lose close to the same figure in 2021.

For a league which has had perpetual, uninterrupted growth as a mission for the last decade-and-a-half, such assertions are concerning, especially when an investor like Burkle pulls out of an expansion franchise. So is the MLS bubble at risk of bursting in as economic uncertainty hits North America?

It’s not just the number of teams in MLS that has expanded rapidly since the mid-2000s, but also the expansion fees commanded by the league. In 2007, Toronto FC paid just $10m for a seat at the table. By 2015, New York City FC had paid $100m with FC Cincinnati, Nashville and Austin FC all stumping up $150m each. This was followed by Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper parting with a reported $325m in 2019 for a franchise in Charlotte.

To provide some context, $325m would buy a mid-table club in the Premier League or pretty much any of Europe’s other big five leagues, according to Forbes. In terms of market value, MLS is already keeping company with some of the biggest soccer leagues in the world.

Unlike these long established leagues, though, MLS is still to reach maturity. It’s a work-in-progress and this leaves the league theoretically more vulnerable to the impact of Covid-19, at least in terms of its valuation. Past comments by Garber point to MLS growing to 32 teams in the not-so-distant future, and there will still be interest from across the United States and Canada in filling the remaining spots, but will investors be willing to pay such astronomical fees for the privilege?

“MLS is a growth company,” Joe Mansueto, the billionaire businessman who took full ownership of the Chicago Fire for $320m in 2019, told The Athletic. “You’re not paying for what exists today, but where the puck is going.” With Garber previously stating MLS would be among the world’s best soccer leagues by 2022, the sales pitch has been a strong one.

This isn’t too dissimilar to what is commonplace on Wall Street, where the promise of what could be is often more valuable than an asset’s current worth. MLS is essentially doing what tech disrupters have done for years, elevating their valuation on the idea they will one day dominate the market. Look at how Tesla’s market cap currently sits at around $635bn while Ford, a company that manufactured eight times more vehicles than Tesla in 2020, has a market cap of just over $48bn. The theory – and it’s important to note that it’s just a theory – is that advances in electric cars and batteries will one day make Tesla the world’s best selling car manufacturer.

In the same way, MLS operates on a similar theory. The league doesn’t have the weight to seal NFL-style $100bn broadcasting deals now, but soccer is a growing sport in the US, and North America is a huge, lucrative sports market so one day it could. As long as this notion remains plausible, MLS will be able to continue to sell itself and keep its valuation high. However, any sort of depression could compromise this. If the league sells its next expansion spot for less than it did its last, a downward precedent will be established. At that point, tangible growth (higher average attendances or TV audiences), rather than just the promise of it, would be required to point the arrow up again.

MLS may be wise to pause its expansion efforts for the time being. Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered the investment landscape. If expansion fees are not needed to make up for losses charted over the last 12 months, the league could put its chips back in their pocket until such a time there is more money at the table.

What’s more, the 2026 World Cup, to be co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico, is on the horizon. This represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for all associated with soccer in North America. If MLS was established as a direct result of the 1994 World Cup, the return of the tournament 32 years later could feasibly push it to another level. Those who don’t usually follow soccer will buy jerseys and tickets. Some may even be persuaded to pay hundreds of millions for an MLS franchise.

There are plenty of reasons for MLS to stay bullish in its sales pitch. The league’s demographic is generally younger and more diverse than that of North America’s other major sports leagues, where franchise valuations are even higher. Most teams now play in soccer-specific stadiums, with impressive efforts being made to provide the best matchday experience possible. Efforts to build downtown venues reflect the changing habits of sports fans. MLS, still an early stage enterprise in the grand scheme of things, is nimble enough to respond to new market trends.

League HQ drip feeds financial results and so it’s difficult to get a true picture of MLS’s health. The centralised structure allows Garber and Co to disseminate information on a need to know basis and so it’s possible those with the need do indeed know more. The numbers MLS pulls in negotiations over a new TV deal to start in 2023 will be a yardstick. While there has been an economic downturn, the ongoing streaming wars could keep bids high.

MLS will probably find another city and ownership group to fill the expansion spot vacated by Sacramento. Detroit, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego were all interested in becoming the league’s 30th franchise to begin with and so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of these cities pick up their interest once more. But how MLS responds to the challenges of 2020 and 2021, as well as what has unfolded in Sacramento, will reveal a lot.

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 05, 2021 3:48 pm

The Football Today Podcast discusses the growing dispute between FIFA and Fottball Agents

the blurb

In November of 2017 at the FIFA Executive Football Summit in Istanbul, President Gianni Infantino declared his intention to reform the practices of football agents.

Now almost 4 years later and there is a proposed regulation to do just that. But high-profile agents won’t go down without a fight and recently they’ve been speaking out. It appears agents and FIFA are on a collision course destined to end up in court.

Today we analyze the conflict and ask, why are football agents at war with FIFA?

Guest:

Daniel Geey (@FootballLaw) is a leading sports lawyer for Sheridan and the author of Done Deal: An Insider's Guide to Football Contracts, Multi-Million Pound Transfers and Premier League Big Business.

https://www.footballtodaypodcast.com/po ... s-and-fifa

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:02 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
It comes as no surprise that John Nicholson is deeply repulsed by the actions of Mono Raiola and and his pan-european trawl to find the most gullible/likely suitors of his client Erling Haaland

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

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