Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

Now here is a tweet that shows my argument about revenue disparity from top to bottom in the Premier League that cannot really be managed by an independent regulator and rules on distribution on broadcast income including the abolition of parachute payments. If all that were to happen the gaps between top and bottom in the Premier league would be even greater. and were we no have 4 Clubs earning more in commercial revenue than 14 clubs do from all income streams, it would quickly turn to 6 clubs earning more commercially than the other 14 do from all income streams and the UEFA places would quickly become cemented despite the efforts of Aston Villa, Everton, Leeds and Leicester

https://twitter.com/vysyble/status/1424781512030007297

[Chester Perry]

Powerful stuff from Miguel Delaney in the Independent on the news that Lionel Messi has agreed a deal with PSG

Lionel Messi’s PSG transfer is the ultimate example of football’s problems
Messi’s decision to join a state project at Paris Saint-Germain rather than make a more romantic move feels oddly hollow but it is a symbol of how the modern game works

Miguel Delaney - Chief Football Writer

18 minutes ago

If Lionel Messi’s departure from Barcelona was genuinely sad for him, his arrival at Paris Saint-Germain is just depressing for the game.

It is another development in this saga that completely articulates the absurdity of football’s modern finances, and the lack of competitive balance that is destroying the core of the sport.

The constant counter-argument is that PSG are one of a limited number of choices, because few others can afford him. That is precisely the problem and why it is so depressing. It isn’t some coincidence.

It comes from a decades-long absence of regulation in football, that allowed some clubs to inflate to such a size that the prospect became attractive to some of the questionable states in the world as sports projects.

They have set the top end of the market. The Independent has been told that, as far back as that fantastical summer of 2017, one of PSG’s ambitions was to short squeeze the football market. That was to raise wages and fees so high that fewer and fewer clubs could compete. Messi is the ultimate example of this.

The game’s distorted finances have played their part in conditioning Barca into dismal decisions, and ultimately squeezing their greatest ever player out against his will. This is an absurdity, so much of it lacking in any kind of reason.

It should be stressed this isn’t to absolve Barca of blame. They deserve plenty of it.

It also shouldn’t be to overlook Messi’s personal and professional situation. There is a lot of logic to this move on his part, before you even get to the money.

He knows a lot of the PSG players. It is close enough to Barcelona that it doesn’t involve an upheaval for his family. They are also so close to winning another Champions League.

That is said to still be more important to Messi than anything else. It is why he would never have yet considered leaving Barcelona for MLS or Newell’s Old Boys.

The last choice would have been the ultimate in romance, and in truth a little bit much to expect of any player.

Because of the emotions a footballer like Messi inspires for how he plays, there is always a danger of idealising their own motivations, and what they represent. No one should be under any illusions about that. No one should project their own ideals onto that.

It is still remarkable that, at this point in the game’s history, clubs like AC Milan, Internazionale, Borussia Dortmund, Arsenal – clubs that have been in the Champions League final within the last 15 years – would be considered “romantic” choices. That’s before you even get to mooted parallels with Diego Maradona like Napoli.

None of them could come close to matching what PSG could offer, in circumstances as much as wage.

And yet all of this is only true because of what PSG are as a state project, right down to that convenient location. Paris was particularly attractive as an opportunity for investment for Qatar, and that has created the club wealth that has brought so many South American stars as well as the chance to win the Champions League.

And yet we can’t overlook what will be staring us in the face. Messi is one of the purest footballers in history in terms of how he plays. There is a rare beauty to it. He will now indirectly be an ambassador for the Qatari state, much more so than when the country’s businesses sponsored Barcelona.

We can’t overlook the context there, either. No one can really plead ignorance any more. The fact the 2022 qualification campaign has started is already creating dilemmas for players and managers on whether to speak out about Qatar’s human rights questions in the blandest ways. There is more awareness than ever before.

There is of course a fair argument that this is just another way players are denied agency at a point when they have never been better paid, in a similar way to how Messi has been forced out of Barcelona.

If they want to maximise their abilities in the way they should be entitled to, the reality of the modern game is they have to engage with interests many of us wouldn’t want to.

That is just one other way this is so depressing. It shows how the game has been taken over.

But, equally, Messi is not just some young player who has won nothing and just arrives at these limited choices as he looks to win the medals to maximise that talent.

He is now a free agent and, as perhaps the best in history and still the best in the world, he now had more choice than anyone else. He could have chosen any number of offers for £300,000 a week, where he wouldn’t have ceded in the way many expected at Barcelona. There’s now a different context. Any number of clubs could have afforded that.

He’s chosen a state project, one of only two in the game. Last year, by all accounts, he chose the other one in Manchester City. Let’s make no bones about that.

If it’s obviously unfair to put some of this on players, it’s also fair for the rest of us to be a bit put out by it. You only have to look at the example of one of Newells’ other heroes, Marcelo Bielsa. He makes his choices on very different parameters.

All this story shows is how narrow the parameters of the top level have become.

Would there even be much sporting value to the achievement if Messi did win the Champions League with PSG? None of the players or fans would care of course, but the reality would be it would be a consequence of concentration of wealth more than ever before in history. PSG have just kept accumulating until they’ve got to this.

And yet one of sport’s delicious ironies is its very human dynamics can disrupt things in unexpected ways of their own.

Look what PSG have accumulated. They have perhaps the best front line that has ever existed in Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe, but who here is pressing? It puts a curious pressure on the rest of the structure.

And that’s under a manager, in Mauricio Pochettino, who favours pressing almost more than any other. It is young, fresh and hungry players who are best suited to that. It is also why the links to Tottenham Hotspur in the summer were true. There had been frustrations on Pochettino’s part with how PSG work.

The Argentine has, for his part, always wanted to work with Messi. That could be magical. It could be beautiful. The attacking trio will no doubt be wonderful, producing moments that will fill social media.

And yet it still feels oddly hollow. It isn’t necessarily suited to how football works. All this is, however, how the modern game works. So much of it is downright depressing.

[Chester Perry]

A new statement from Real Madrid in regard to the CVC deal with La Liga - translated from the Club website, I expect Barcelona to make a similar statement

Official Press Release
SHARE
10/08/2021

The Board of Directors of Real Madrid C. F., meeting today at 11:00 am, has unanimously agreed to carry out both civil and criminal legal actions against the president of LaLiga, Mr. Javier Tebas Medrano, against Mr. Javier de Jaime Guijarro responsible for the CVC Fund and against the CVC Capital Partners SICAV-FIS Fund itself.

Likewise, the Board of Directors has also decided to carry out the legal actions of all kinds that are understood to be appropriate to cancel and cancel the possible agreements adopted by the Assembly of LaLiga, to be held on August 12, 2021, regarding the agreement between LaLiga and the CVC
Fund.

Javier Tebas's response to that Real Madrid statement is telling of just gow much the big clubs pressurise behind the scenes - we have often heard about it in relation to the greedy six in the Premier League

https://twitter.com/Tebasjavier/status/ ... 8001051648

translated it goes something like this

The threatening method that FP (Florentino Perez) has been using in private for years is now being transferred to the public. Clubs and institutions have been supporting their threats for years. Since 2015 against the centralized sale (broadcast rights), the constant challenges of agreements, the Super League ... The @Real Madrid deserves more

[tiger76]

A couple of stories related to Glasgow Rangers that probably belong here.

SPFL ask SFA to facilitate arbitration in row with Rangers. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/58150927

Ex-Rangers chief Charles Green wins £6.3m payouthttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-58159210

[Chester Perry]

Brand Finance - best known for their Football 50 report on the 50 most valuable football brands in the world ha posted this about how Messi's departure could affect the Brand value of Barcelona

Messi’s Departure Could Cost Barcelona €137 Million in Brand Value
06 August 2021

Brand Finance estimates that Lionel Messi’s departure could decrease FC Barcelona’s brand value by 11%. The club can therefore see €137m knocked off its 2021 valuation of €1,266m.

Barcelona is currently the world’s second most valuable football club brand, according to the Brand Finance Football 50 2021 report. With a brand value of €1,266m, Barcelona ranks closely behind Real Madrid, which boasts a brand value of just €10m more – €1,276m. Brand value is based on the proportion of revenues that is attributable to the brand; Messi's departure is expected to have direct adverse effects on Barcelona's future sponsorship income, merchandise sales, and matchday revenue. It could also indirectly contribute to a decline of brand value as Barcelona’s brand strength may weaken with diminished fan perceptions and the club’s global following at risk of shrinking.

Looking at Messi’s role in driving revenue for the club across different streams, Brand Finance has estimated that his departure could result in an 11% drop to Barcelona’s brand value. In absolute terms, the club could see a €137m decline to its 2021 brand valuation of €1,266m, and lose any chance of overtaking Real Madrid. With a lower brand value of €1,129m following Messi’s departure, Barcelona could also slide down to third place in the Brand Finance Football 50 2021 ranking behind Manchester United (brand value €1,130m).

Hugo Hensley, Head of Sports Services at Brand Finance, commented:

“Messi is synonymous with the Barcelona brand and has been the club’s talisman since bursting onto the scene 15 years ago. His presence at the club has no doubt allowed it to attract additional fans, better players, managers, commercial deals, and win silverware. His departure can cost the club as much and result in a painful brand value decrease.”

What does Messi’s departure mean for FC Barcelona’s brand value?

Ben Baigrie, Sports Services Consultant at Brand Finance, explains:

It is needless to say that Messi is a global superstar. The key areas where the Argentine player generates value for Barcelona are:

• Commercial revenue: His global following makes him a highly attractive athlete for corporate sponsors and his presence at the club has undoubtedly allowed Barcelona to bring in more lucrative sponsorship deals. Messi has over 240m followers on Instagram, more than double than that of the Barcelona official account (99.5m), a stat personifying the popularity and value he can bring to any team through his sheer following alone. Brand value at risk linked to commercial revenue is estimated at around €77m.

• On-pitch performance & Matchday: One cannot predict how Barcelona will perform following his departure, but he has had a colossal impact on their performance over the years and has brought a significant amount of following to the club. Messi has scored more than 30 goals a season since 2008/2009 leading the club to a plethora of honours along the way. Barcelona still presents a star-studded line up with his name off the team sheet, but they may take time to adjust without their key man.Messi’s absence from the pitch could cost up to €17m in brand value.

• Shirt sales and merchandising: You can walk the streets almost anywhere in the world and expect to see someone roaming the streets wearing the iconic No. 10 jersey. Messi’s shirt sales reportedly generated over €200m, of which the club collects a portion of around 10-15% (€30m), and kit manufacturer Nike enjoy the lion’s share. This may also mean Nike will lose out on revenue following his departure should Barcelona general merchandising sales decrease as a result. With the famous ‘Messi No. 10’ off the shelves, Barcelona could lose out on €43m in brand value.

When taking this into account, it’s important to recognise that value must be measured as forward looking – as in to say, how much additional value could Messi generate for Barcelona over the remainder of his career if he were to stay? Whilst one might argue he is approaching the end of his career; Messi has shown little sign of slowing down, registering 38 goals across all competitions in the 2020/2021 season. Many players such as Cristiano Ronaldo (age 36) and Zlatan Ibrahimović (age 39) are still performing at the highest level and there is little to suggest Messi could not go on to play for another 5 years at the top level. However, if Messi was 28, then the value at risk for Barcelona would be significantly higher based on a larger expected future return.

Looking at the impact of Ronaldo’s departure from Real Madrid in 2018, the club’s brand value decreased by 19%. The club has struggled to replicate its on-pitch success since the Portuguese superstar left for Juventus. This year also saw no Real Madrid players selected for the EURO 2020 Spanish national team, pointing to the club’s struggle for form.

Barcelona can see a very similar impact, but the club’s future actions and performance can play a significant role in mitigating the risk of such a painful brand value drain. Naturally, the value at risk is largely dependent on how Barcelona reacts and performs once he leaves. For example, if they bring in other star players who can help drive better on-pitch performance, shirt sales, and commercial deals, then the impact may be limited.

Methodology

Brand Finance has estimated the potential impact of Lionel Messi’s departure on FC Barcelona’s brand value by examining the player’s role in driving revenue across key streams, such as commercial and matchday. The proportion of Messi’s value on the transfer market to the total value of the club’s players was used as a proxy for the proportion of the club’s revenues which can be attributed to Messi’s presence in the club.

[Chester Perry]

Burnley FC continue their rise up the Premier League all time wage table (based on published accounts) last season we passed Bolton, Middlesbrough and Bournemouth. This season we will pass Swansea and our friends down the road,. If we survive into next season we will pass Stoke (if they are not promoted) and close in on Sunderland - I have have to I am not sure I am happy about any of that apart from the fact we remain at the highest level of the domestic game - chart by @KieranMaguire

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/6970339/

[Chester Perry]

As predicted the Al Jezeera Investigation Unit piece heavily trailed yesterday is about Christopher Samuelson - and also about how interests can be supported in money Laundering, it also seems inextricably linked to other Investigations that the i:unit has done particularly around Cyprus.

This article focuses on a theme the mem who sell football - which itself has been an ongoing investigation for which there are now 3 associated podcasts - the third of which is linked to this article

the podcasts can be found here https://www.ajiunit.com/investigation/t ... orruption/

the associated article is here
https://www.ajiunit.com/article/investi ... der-money/

Al Jezeera's i:unit has now released a 2nd much much longer article associated to this investigation

How a convicted criminal can buy a famous English football club
The I-Unit goes undercover to show how English football clubs can become vehicles to launder the proceeds of crime.

10 AUG 2021 | 37 MIN READ

In a plush suite at a boutique hotel in London, a man known as The Magician is lounging on a sofa, his right arm snaking out across the top.

“The usual rubbish, I’m used to it,” he says. “I’m in the real world. I understand all of this. We’ll have no problem with any of that.”

“The Magician” is Christopher Samuelson, a football dealmaker and offshore finance specialist. He owes his nickname to his expertise in hiding clients’ money, and their identities.

He has just been told by an undercover reporter, posing as the agent for a fictitious Chinese investor who wants to buy an English football club, that the investor has criminal convictions. He was found guilty of bribery and money laundering and is on the run – which should automatically disqualify him from football club ownership.

It was a crucial moment in our investigation. We wanted to find out whether – and how – a convicted foreign criminal could buy a football club to launder his ill-gotten gains.

We thought the revelation of our investor’s crimes might prompt The Magician to make himself disappear, but Samuelson did not bat an eyelid. Instead, he offered to find a home for the criminal’s funds. “If he wants help with moving assets and he wants secure locations, I can do that too,” he said.

“Then I can organise the financial institutions who will hold them for him. Banks where he can move his money to. I have a close relationship with banks in Liechtenstein.”

‘The ultimate man in the shadows’
Few people outside the arcane world of offshore finance have heard of Christopher Samuelson. Unsurprising, perhaps, for a man once described as “the ultimate man in the shadows”. Yet in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he helped to build one of the world’s biggest offshore trust companies, Valmet, with offices in Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and other tax havens.

His clients included some of the richest people on the planet: Middle Eastern sheikhs and Russian oligarchs – such as Boris Berezovsky and Arkady “Badri” Patarkatsishvili – whom he helped to move billions of dollars out of Russia.

Samuelson has been investigated by police in several countries for alleged money laundering, but never charged. In recent years, he has brokered the controversial sale of two of England’s oldest football clubs, Reading and Aston Villa.

Both were taken to the brink of financial collapse under secretive new owners. A third deal he arranged, for an unnamed wealthy Russian to buy a controlling stake in Premier League club Everton in 2004, was called off when the buyer’s name – Boris Zingarevich, a pulp and paper magnate – was leaked to the press.

We set up a fake company and contacted Samuelson. We told him we represented three rich investors looking for a “sleeping giant”, a once-great football club with a big fan base and ambitions to return to the lucrative top flight of the game.

Samuelson took the bait and agreed to meet. We briefed two undercover reporters. “Billy”, as we called him, would ask most of the questions; “Angie” would play the role of Billy’s assistant. Neither of them knew anything about football but after several long briefings, Billy eventually knew his championship from his Champions League.

He would tell Samuelson that the criminal investor, who we call Mr X, wanted to own 60 percent of an English football club; had fled to Hong Kong and smuggled his money out of China through Macau casinos, and was sentenced to seven-year imprisonment in absentia. Now Mr X wanted to clean his money.

One big hurdle for Mr X was the football authorities’ Owners’ and Directors’ Test, which bans anybody with an unspent criminal conviction, and a minimum 12 months’ jail sentence, from owning a football club.

Over a series of meetings in London hotels, a loquacious Samuelson gave a turbo-charged sales pitch, peppered with stories about football, Russian oligarchs and his own success. He spoke with an accent honed in Kent, southern England, where he was born to a society family in 1946, and at Sherborne, the private boarding school he attended in Dorset.

Samuelson said he had almost bought Chelsea, with the West Ham and England World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore, in the 1980s when he ran a sponsorship company. He claimed that Abramovich bought Chelsea, some 20 years later, after he had advised the oligarch to buy a football club to protect himself from a political change in Russia.

He was a prodigious name-dropper but seemed well-informed and well-connected. He rattled off the names and prices of clubs for sale: Premier League teams Chelsea, 3 billion pounds ($4.1bn), and Tottenham, 2 billion pounds ($2.8bn). Charlton, Millwall and others, for much less. We were interested in a second-tier, championship side with the potential to rise to the lucrative Premier League, the world’s richest league.

Samuelson talked about Leeds United and Nottingham Forest but recommended that we go for another club, Derby County, twice champions of England in the 1970s, because he had an advantage. “I was with Mel [Morris, the Derby owner] yesterday. He’s appointed me to sell the club,” he said. He agreed to take our undercover operatives to meet Morris. Things were moving fast.

‘A gun to their head’
It was remarkable how little Samuelson even pretended to be interested in – or concerned about how Mr X had made his money. The English Football League (EFL) – which governs the divisions below the Premier League – can require would-be owners to produce “evidence of the ultimate source and sufficiency of funds” to buy and sustain a club.

Could Samuelson really get our criminal investor approved by the EFL? The Magician was breezily confident. The EFL would be given “the minimum information”, “presented in the right way”; and he would “come up with an idea of how we can structure it so we defeat the EFL”.

“We create the bio,” he said. “We’ll say his business was real estate investment, and other sectors … We’ll just manufacture it.

“I’m an expert,” he added. “When I did the Aston Villa application, I wrote the whole thing myself and I took the information I needed and left the rest out.”

He talked tough. “I’ll hold a gun to their head. I can pressure the Football League … it will be approved,” he said. “And if we have to threaten them with legal action – watch them fall over.”

EFL investigators? Nothing to be concerned about. “Sometimes, they appoint one of these investigating firms to do a report,” he said. “If they appoint somebody, we’ll know which one is doing it and we’ll deal with them.”

Samuelson named his team: Jamie Banfill, business partner and lawyer; Andrew Obolensky, chartered accountant who worked on the Reading and Aston Villa sales; and Christian Hook, lawyer at London-based Gunnercooke, who did the legal work on the same two clubs. He would look after Mr X’s money until the sale was completed. “He’s very discreet. No leaks,” Samuelson said.

“The main thing is, do you have the money – and the fact it’s sitting in Christian Hook’s law firm’s trust account has a huge effect on them [the Football League],” he added.

“Yes, I can help here. You’ve come to the right person.”

And there was, of course, his fee: 3 percent of the sale price, extra for his associates. Plus, club director roles for himself, Obolensky and Banfill.

Samuelson mentioned another associate with “skills” to help get deals done: Keith Hunter, a private investigator and former Scotland Yard detective. “He works hand in glove with us,” said Samuelson. “He can do all kinds of things, like tap telephones and so on.”

“When we were dealing with [the sale of] Aston Villa, for example, we were monitoring what the Football League was saying behind the scenes. They didn’t know this, of course.”

When Villa’s chief executive Keith Wyness was suspended by the club in 2018, Samuelson – who had fallen out with him – wanted to find out whether he was talking to the media. “Of course, we had an ability to get the telephone records, to see who he was talking to,” Samuelson said. “So, we could identify what numbers he was calling. He was talking to the media.”

During negotiations at Everton in 2004, Samuelson said when the name of the Russian owner who wanted to buy a majority stake was leaked to the media, Hunter obtained the journalist’s private telephone records to find out who the “mole” was.

“We knew which journalist had got the story, so we looked at that journalist’s telephone records. It’s not allowed but we did, and we found out who he had spoken to, and one of them was the financial controller in Bill Kenwright’s office, so we know who leaked it.”

Hunter later confirmed the Everton story to Billy: “Yeah. Two individuals that were communicating with someone they shouldn’t have been.”

Billy: “Two guys inside the football club?”

Hunter: “Yeah, board level.”

‘Sometimes it’s impossible, sometimes it’s illegal’
For the past 20 years, Hunter has run private investigation companies. His latest is called Animus and, like Samuelson, he numbered oligarchs including Berezovsky among his clients, as well as a prominent Nigerian politician, James Ibori, who in 2012 was given a 12-year jail sentence by a UK court for fraud and money laundering.

His past, too, is mired in controversy. An internal 2007 report by Scotland Yard’s anti-corruption team on his former company, RISC Management, obtained by the I-Unit, says: “Intelligence strongly indicates that RISC Management was an aggressive corruptor of serving Metropolitan Police Service staff.” RISC employees also exploited former colleagues “to corruptly obtain sensitive information”. But although Hunter was implicated in police corruption cases in 2006 and 2012 he was not charged.

Billy met Hunter separately, to ask him what services he could offer his clients, such as obtaining competitors’ bank statements.

“Yeah,” Hunter replied. “Banks, credit cards, lifestyle. Have they got a mistress? Is there anything that we could damage their reputation with?”

Phone records?

“We could potentially get that.”

He said third parties could be used in difficult cases.

“Sometimes it’s impossible. Sometimes it’s illegal … But there will be times where you could use trusted third parties to help you get the information you’re looking for.”

Emails?
“Again, that would be for third parties to do. Other people do those things. I’m very happy to organise an introduction but it would be something that we could ask people if they would do it.”

Billy: “How can you trust them?”

“Because you build up trust. My people will have relationships with people that can do things that we can’t do in-house.”

Hunter told Billy that he was also involved in buying football clubs. He claimed he was close to sealing a deal for Hull City and was confident of getting a mandate to sell Bournemouth AFC. Neither club has been sold to date.

Samuelson’s lack of curiosity about – or indifference to – Mr X’s finances had a precedent. In 2016, he arranged for Tony Xia, a Chinese businessman, to buy Aston Villa for a reported $105m, installing himself as deputy chairman.

Samuelson told our undercover reporters he was sure Xia was a front for other buyers – but still helped him obtain approval from the EFL.

“Tony Xia claimed to own this, that and everything else,” he said. “I said I don’t want to hear about it. I want one asset where you made more money, enough money to get you approved. He came with one, which was 450 million sterling [$621m] equivalent.

“OK, it may not have been his, Billy, but he claimed it was his. So, we put that on the form, just that.”

How much of that was his own money is a question. How much of it was somebody else’s?

“He said it was him. Well, of course, it wasn’t him. He was a front. I was sure he was a front.”

Two years later, Aston Villa was in deep financial trouble. Xia was sued by creditors in China for allegedly defaulting on loans worth tens of millions of dollars. He sold the club. In October 2019 Chinese authorities issued an arrest warrant for Xia and he was later detained for failing to repay loans. He denies the charges and remains in custody pending the results of a police investigation.

Keith Wyness, Villa’s chief executive under Tony Xia, until he left the club in 2018 and sued for constructive dismissal, said in a statement he prepared for an employment tribunal: “Not a lot was known about him that could be independently verified. My concern was that for a supposed billionaire with a string of companies, Mr Xia appeared not to have a grasp of basic financial modelling.”

‘A crook, a thief and a liar’
During our investigation, we obtained a secret 2005 report by the Dutch police which gave details of allegations against Samuelson. The investigators suspected he was the “de facto leader of an international money laundering operation”, with clients who had been the subject of criminal investigations.

The report said that his clients included the Russian oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky and “Badri” Patarkatsishvili and; the two largest organised crime families in the UK; and Kurdish organisations whose finances he helped structure to avoid money laundering accusations.

Samuelson was later named in court papers in the US as the subject of “multiple, high-profile, money-laundering investigations”. A 2011 court deposition in Miami said in an email from 2006, Badri had called Samuelson “a crook” and “a thief and a liar”. Samuelson dismissed the allegations as “farcical”.

The EFL had asked Samuelson about the Dutch investigation during a meeting at its headquarters in Preston to discuss his suitability to be a director of Aston Villa. In a statement written after the meeting, obtained by the I-Unit, Samuelson says that Nick Craig, the EFL’s head of legal affairs, had described him as “a master of concealment”. Samuelson claimed the investigation was politically motivated and said all claims against him were dropped. He was approved as a director.

Samuelson and Hunter prided themselves on their caution and discretion. Over high tea at an upmarket London hotel, they urged our reporters to be vigilant in case people were trying to record their conversation – unaware that they themselves were being covertly recorded. “I know too many of the old tricks,” said Samuelson. “When we were dealing with the Russians you had to make sure there wasn’t bugs in the room. Here they couldn’t bug it because it’s too difficult.”

He jokingly leaned in towards a teapot to see if there was a recording device inside. “Can you hear us?”

Football clubs as ‘vehicles for money laundering’
It has been said that Samuelson can make an elephant disappear. But could he make Mr X disappear, by concealing his name and identity, so he could buy a famous English football club.

The Magician said he had many “tricks” for doing this. His preferred option was to set up an offshore company with two other investors owning 50 percent each. They would then sign a Declaration of Trust in favour of Mr X. That meant they were holding shares for Mr X who was, in offshore parlance, the “beneficial owner”. Their names would be disclosed in the share registry but Mr X would be hidden from public scrutiny.

“Nobody can ever get behind who the shareholders are in the public domain,” Samuelson said. “No media can penetrate because it’s held in what we call nominee names.”

“I’m one of the leading specialists in this kind of work,” he said.

Samuelson claimed he had used offshore trusts to deceive the Football League before when he helped to arrange the purchase of a majority stake in Reading FC in 2012.

The money raised for Reading belonged to Boris Zingarevich, the Russian pulp and paper magnate. “I didn’t clear Boris [with the EFL], I cleared Anton,” said Samuelson, referring to Boris’s son. “Anton didn’t have any money. So, I got his father to gift the money to him, OK, done. That’s it. They didn’t argue about it, at all.”

But Anton Zingarevich did not have the funds to sustain the club and Reading were relegated after just one season in the top-flight, prompting fury from fans. “The fans at this point just felt they’d been taken for a ride,” said Jon Keen, former vice chairman of the Supporters’ Trust at Reading.

Zingarevich sold up. “He left Reading holding a big bill that he’d run up with no money left to pay it,” said Keen.

Samuelson had another “trick” as a fallback. He said he would set up an investment fund with 20 or 21 small companies, each held in a separate trust and with a stake of 5 percent or less. The real owner would be hidden in a master trust behind the small investors but the size of the shareholdings meant that the name of the real owner would not have to be disclosed, according to EFL rules.

He said he had planned to use this scheme for the Everton takeover in 2004, using a Brunei-based company called the Fortress Sports Fund – until Boris Zingarevich’s name was leaked to the media.

Keen said offshore trusts are “dangerous” for the game. “It leaves football clubs open to be vehicles for money laundering. Nobody knows where the money’s come from, it could come from any source, no matter how criminal or disreputable.”

A new identity
Samuelson said his offshore schemes meant only the Football League would have to know Mr X’s name and they were obliged to keep it strictly confidential. But we pushed harder, insisting that his identity had to be kept secret from everybody, including the EFL. Again, we thought this could be the end of our investigation. But for Samuelson, it was just another obstacle to overcome and, once again, he had a solution.

“We can always look at getting another passport for your big man,” Samuelson said. “With a new name, yes, why not?” This would give Mr X a totally new identity and an address in Cyprus to deceive the EFL.

Samuelson called his friend Hunter and told him Mr X needed another passport. “How quickly can we get a Cyprus one, money no object?” He made it sound normal, as if he was asking how soon a kitchen table could be delivered.

Like Samuelson, Hunter was unfazed when he heard the details of Mr X’s criminal record. He had excellent, high-level contacts, including a government minister in Cyprus, who could help obtain a Cyprus passport, he said.

It could be done through property investment. The Citizenship-by-Investment programme, a European Union scheme, allowed investors to obtain a Cyprus passport for an investment of $3m.

Convicted criminals were excluded from the scheme but Hunter was calmly reassuring. “We’ve done this many, many times for others who, I can assure you are in a worse position than your boss. So, you’ve just got to leave it to us.”

“The different name we just have to work on. We might just change the date of birth slightly. Everything’s possible.”

Hunter said he had obtained passports for “Indian, Russian, Ukrainian and Nigerian” clients. “And the process is seamless.”

Between them, Samuelson and Hunter would prepare due diligence reports for the English Football League and the Cyprus authorities.

Days later Samuelson emailed to say he had met two of Hunter’s Cyprus contacts who said the minister had given the price to get a passport for Mr X. “Last evening I attended Keith’s box at Epsom races and met Chris Giovani and Antonis Antoniou who handle obtaining Cypriot passports,” Samuelson wrote. “Their discussion … resulted in the Minister saying that the passport would be issued within 8 weeks providing the investment was 10 million euros ($12m).”

On the brink of striking a deal
Back on the football club trail, our undercover team headed up to Derby, with Samuelson, to meet Mel Morris, the club’s owner. On the way, Samuelson went through the numbers: 50 million pounds ($69m) for the club, plus 29 million pounds ($40m) for the stadium and a further 20 million pounds ($27.6m) to cover losses for the coming season. Total: 99 million pounds ($136.5m).

Morris gave our undercover reporters a tour of the Pride Park Stadium and the club’s training ground. He was passionate about the club and understood its importance to the people of Derby. He wanted the new owners to continue that close relationship.

Morris has put an estimated $200m of his own money into the club and he was keen for our investors to become the new owners. He proposed to help them by becoming a minority shareholder with a stake of 9.9 percent. This would mean he could write off his loans to the club over a number of seasons rather than in one go at the time of sale. The move would benefit the club financially but could be seen as circumventing Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. Morris admitted: “It is something we must not commit in writing.”

Kieran Maguire, a football finance expert at Liverpool University, said Morris’s proposal broke the spirit if not the letter of the law. “That would be for the EFL to monitor and to choose whether or not to have charges against the club.”

Morris has had a few run-ins with the Football League over FFP rules, which limit a Championship club’s losses to no more than 39 million pounds ($53.8m) over three seasons.

In 2020, Derby County was cleared of breaching FFP rules over Morris’s sale of the stadium, effectively to himself. But in June this year, the club was fined 100,000 pounds ($138,000) for breaching rules governing the valuation of players and, in a non-FFP charge, was given a suspended three points deduction for failing to pay players’ wages.

Morris was keen on our investors buying his club. We left Derby knowing that we were on the brink of striking a deal to buy a famous English football club for a convicted criminal.

A message to Mr X
It was time for us to fly to Cyprus where Hunter had arranged for Billy and Angie to meet British estate agents Tony and Denise Kay who would start the process of acquiring Mr X’s new passport. “Keith is a good friend and I’ve worked with him for many years,” said Tony. “We refer each other people. If I send someone to him, I know that he looks after me and vice versa.”

Denise said of Keith Hunter: “He does the due diligence for us.”

The extra millions of dollars for the passport, our reporters were told, was not through the official scheme. “Where there are problems, it costs more money to achieve these things,” said Tony.

In a whirlwind week, our reporters were introduced to a network of powerful people who all said they were willing to help Mr X obtain a Cyprus passport.

A lawyer, Andreas Pittadjis, said: “So he had convictions … we will need to find ways to overcome this problem.”

He told Billy over dinner in Ayia Napa: “If it wasn’t for Keith and Tony, I wouldn’t even accept to see you.”

An MP and property developer, Christakis Giovani, said: “We help people take a passport, why not? I think we have a way to help.”

Finally, the president of the Parliament, Demetris Syllouris, the de facto vice president of Cyprus, told Billy to pass on a message to Mr X. He asked Mr X to come to Cyprus and said he would provide any support he can, using all levels of the state.

We told the story of Cyprus passports in a documentary called The Cyprus Papers Undercover, released in October 2020. Within days of its release Giovani and Syllouris resigned, the Cyprus passport scheme was scrapped, the EU and the Cyprus government launched investigations and weeks of anti-corruption protests erupted on the streets of Nicosia.

‘Football fans should be angry’
Before our trip to Cyprus – and soon after our meeting with Morris – we pulled out of the Derby deal so as not to prevent genuine buyers from buying the club. Samuelson tried to rekindle our fictitious investors’ interest. We said they had decided against Derby but were still interested in buying a football club and so we would press ahead with obtaining a Cyprus passport and a new identity for Mr X.

Two other deals to buy Derby County have since collapsed. One of the proposals was led by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family through a company called Derventio Holdings (UK). Two of the original directors of Derventio were Samuelson and Obolensky but they stepped down after just two months, in November 2020.

In April 2021, football club ownership was thrust into the spotlight after the announcement of a European Super League for 12 leading clubs. Protests were held by fans in England where six clubs – Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham – had signed up to the breakaway league. The fans claimed that billionaire owners were treating English football as a global cash cow and cutting clubs off from their communities.

The Super League was dropped after 48 hours and the fiasco prompted the launch in the UK of a fan-led government review, headed by MP Tracey Crouch. Its interim report, published in July, called for an independent regulator for the sport and reform of the football authorities, particularly in financial regulation, corporate governance and ownership.

Ben Cowdock, investigations lead at Transparency International, said the I-Unit’s investigation exposed serious problems with football club ownership. “This investigation will be of great interest to the police and also the English football authorities,” he said. “They are up against faulty, fraudulent due diligence reports and a network of enablers seeking to pull the wool over their eyes.”

He added: “Football fans should be angry about this investigation because it shows the entire vulnerability of the English football system to funds from dubious origins and unsuitable owners for their clubs.”

Maguire found our evidence “disturbing” and said Samuelson “is a person that should have nothing to do with football in this country”.

“Football clubs in England hold a particular place in the heart of everyone,” he said. “They are part of our history, heritage, community and so on and as such, they should be protected.”

Al Jazeera contacted all those involved in this investigation.

Christopher Samuelson’s lawyers say that he had never been told that Mr X had a criminal conviction for money laundering and bribery. Had he known of any criminality, he would have ended discussions immediately.

Keith Hunter refuses to engage with the details of our findings but says that he strongly disputes most of them. Hunter says that he left the police with an exemplary record. His company, Animus, refutes all allegations of wrongdoing.

Mel Morris and Derby County did not respond to the subject of Financial Fair Play regulations and other matters featured in this investigation. They tell us the club would only be sold to “appropriate custodians” and that they have not had any “formal association” with Samuelson for some time.

Roman Abramovich’s lawyers say he never had a personal relationship with Samuelson and never received advice about purchasing a football club.

A spokesman for Mikhail Khodorkovsky denies that Samuelson advised him to buy Yukos and says that it is “highly likely” that he has never met Samuelson.

Christian Hook and the Gunnercooke law firm say they comply strictly with all legal and regulatory obligations at all times. Our investigation uncovered no evidence to suggest otherwise.

Andrew Obolensky tells us he is not Samuelson’s partner and has never had dealings with anyone resembling Mr X.

Tony and Denise Kay, Andreas Pittadjis, Christakis Giovani, Antonis Antoniou and Demetris Syllouris, deny any wrongdoing.

Tony Xia is currently in jail in China pending a police investigation. He denies all charges.

[Chester Perry]

Managed to find the documentary film that goes with all the other Al Jezeera i:unit material for the "Men who Sell Football" investigation

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

[Chester Perry]

TIFO Football convert a recent Kieran Maguire article into one of their videos - "Should the Premier League have a Salary Cap?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjdBELHif20&t=2s

[Chester Perry]

TIFO Football convert a recent Kieran Maguire article into one of their videos - "Should the Premier League have a Salary Cap?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjdBELHif20&t=2s

this was the original article on which the video is based

The Athletic applies LA Liga spending rules to Premier League clubs in a hypothetical exercise

https://theathletic.com/2725299/2021/07 ... =twitteruk

[Chester Perry]

Sportico.com looks at the Messi transfer to PSG in the context of Ligue 1's domestic broadcast chaos

Messi’s PSG Move, Amazon Deal Spotlight French League’s TV Chaos
ASLI PELIT AUGUST 10, 2021

Argentine soccer star ’s arrival to Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) might have been the big headline today, but who will broadcast his first game is a major question mark. While Ligue 1, France’s billion-dollar first division soccer league, is thrilled about La Pulga’s arrival, it must now navigate an unresolved dispute between media companies Canal+ and beIN Sports.

France’s soccer league has been in turmoil ever since Mediapro, the Spanish broadcasting group, failed to make payments to Ligue 1 for television rights to broadcast about 80% of the league’s matches between 2020-2024. The agreement, valued €882 million ($980 million) a year, was terminated in the first quarter of 2020 when the company failed to pay LFP, the governing body of France’s professional leagues due to pandemic-related revenue losses.

Struggling to find a broadcaster for 2021-2024, LFP reached an agreement with Canal+, the largest broadcaster in France, to televise the two best matches of the week, on Saturday afternoons and Sunday evenings. However, the league still needed to broadcast eight more matches per week. That’s when beIN Sports, the official international broadcaster of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 (the second division), came in. The Qatari network agreed to pay for domestic rights for the Ligue 1 if Canal+ agreed to show them in its platform.

A month before the kickoff of the new season, Canal+ announced it terminated its contract with beIN Sports and would not broadcast Ligue 1. The fallout came after LFP signed a three-year domestic rights deal with Amazon to stream 304 Ligue 1 matches per season each year along with top pick games from Ligue 2—at a price much lower than what Canal+ and beIN Sports agreed to pay to for the broadcast rights. This is the biggest soccer contract to date for the online retail behemoth’s streaming platform Amazon Prime.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the deal and its details with Sportico over email but declined to comment on the financial terms. However, sources close to the deal said it was approximately €250 million per season, about €500 million less than the price Spain’s Mediapro negotiated with LFP in 2018, and what Canal+ had agreed to pay for broadcasting rights at the end of 2020/2021 season.

Last Thursday, a court in France ordered Canal+ to honor its €332 million ($393 million) per year commitment to beIN Sports to produce and broadcast the agreed number of matches. Canal+ faces a penalty of €1 million per day if it does not respect the ruling.

“The domestic Ligue 1 rights remain fragile,” Dan Cohen, SVP of Octagon Sports said in a phone interview. “The court’s decision does not mean that the issue is resolved.”

Canal+ aired the opening week games, but it is likely to appeal the court’s decision. The important question is whether the media company supports the growth, promotion and marketing of Ligue 1 if they are legally bound to air the matches against their desire.

Cohen thinks it is an extraordinary moment for Ligue 1 and its broadcasters. “Messi’s presence would boost value and attractiveness of Ligue 1, just as Ronaldo’s arrival to Serie A did,” he said. “Since Juventus confirmed Ronaldo, Serie A’s broadcast value went up 27% in the U.S.”

While the future of the national TV broadcast is unclear, those who are interested in watching Messi and Neymar online will have to fork out €12.99 ($15.25) a month on top of their Amazon Prime membership. The streaming platform also offers a weekly show, featuring commentary anchored by retired soccer superstars and former coaches such as Thierry Henry, the World Cup-winning French player who finished his career in New York Red Bulls in 2014.

[Chester Perry]

meanwhile The New York Times ling the same transfer to Super League and the dismal financial arms race in the modern game - there is some interesting new information re the timing of Super Leagues launch in this too

In Lionel Messi’s Move, a Dim Portrait of Modern Soccer
AUGUST 10, 2021

In those frantic, final hours in April, before a cabal of owners of Europe’s grandest clubs unveiled their plan for a breakaway superleague to an unsuspecting and unwelcoming world, a schism emerged in their ranks.

One faction, driven by Andrea Agnelli, chairman of Juventus, and Florentino Pérez, president of Real Madrid, wanted to go public as quickly as possible. Agnelli, in particular, was feeling the personal pressure of acting, in effect, as a double agent. Everything, they said, was ready; or at least as ready as it needed to be.

Another group, centered on the American ownership groups that control England’s traditional giants, counseled caution. The plans still had to be finessed. There was still debate, for example, on how many spots might be handed over to teams that had qualified for the competition. They felt it better to wait until summer.

If the first group had not won the day — if the whole project had not exploded into existence and collapsed in ignominy in 48 tumultuous hours — this would have been the week, after the Olympics but before the new season began, when they presented their self-serving, elitist vision of soccer’s future.

That the Super League fell apart, of course, was a blessed relief. That this week has, instead, been given over to a dystopian illustration of where, exactly, soccer stands suggests that no great solace should be found in its failure.

On Thursday, Manchester City broke the British transfer record — paying Aston Villa $138 million for Jack Grealish — for what may not be the last time this summer. The club remains hopeful of adding Harry Kane, talisman of Tottenham and captain of England, for a fee that could rise as high as $200 million.

And then, of course, dwarfing everything else, it emerged that Lionel Messi would be leaving — would have to leave — F.C. Barcelona. Under La Liga’s rules, the club’s finances are such that it could not physically, fiscally, register the greatest player of all time for the coming season. It had no choice but to let him go. He had no choice but to leave.

Everything that has played out since has felt so shocking as to be surreal, but so predictable as to be inevitable.

There was the tear-stained news conference, in which Messi revealed he had volunteered to accept a 50 percent pay cut to stay at the club he has called home since he was 13, where he scored 672 goals in 778 games, where he broke every record there was to break, won everything there was to win and forged a legend that may never be matched.

As soon as that was over, there came the first wisps of smoke from Paris, suggesting the identity of Messi’s new home. Paris St.-Germain was, apparently, crunching the numbers. Messi had been in touch with Neymar, his old compadre, to talk things through. He had called Mauricio Pochettino, the manager, to get an idea of how it might work. P.S.G. was in touch with Jorge, his agent and father.

Then, on Tuesday, it happened. Everything was agreed upon: a salary worth $41 million a year, basic, over two years, with an option for a third. As his image was stripped from Camp Nou, a hole appearing between the vast posters of Gerard Piqué and Antoine Griezmann, Messi and his wife, Antonela Roccuzzo, boarded a plane in Barcelona, all packed and ready to go.

Jorge Messi assured reporters at the airport that the deal was done. P.S.G. teased it with a tweet. Messi landed at Le Bourget airport, near Paris, wearing that shy smile and a T-shirt reading: “Ici, C’est Paris.”

This was not a journey many had ever envisaged him making. But he had no other choice; or, rather, the player for whom anything has always been possible, for once, had only a narrow suite of options.

There is a portrait of modern soccer in that restricted choice, and it is a stark one. Lionel Messi, the best of all time, does not have true agency over where he plays his final few years. Even he was not able to resist the economic forces that carry the game along.

He could not stay where he wanted to stay, at Barcelona, because the club has walked, headlong, into financial ruin. A mixture of the incompetence of its executives and the hubris of the institution is largely responsible for that, but not wholly.

The club has spent vastly and poorly in recent years, of course. It has squandered the legacy that Messi had done so much to construct. But it has done so in a context in which it was asked and expected to compete with clubs backed not just by oligarchs and billionaires but by whole nation states, their ambitions unchecked and their spending unrestricted.

The coronavirus pandemic accelerated the onset of calamity, and so Barcelona was no longer in a position where it could keep even a player who wanted to stay. When it came time for him to leave, he found a landscape in which only a handful of clubs — nine at most — could offer the prospect of allowing him to compete for another Champions League trophy. They had long since left everybody else behind, relegated them to second-class status.

And of those, only three could even come close to taking on a salary as deservedly gargantuan as his. He should not be begrudged a desire to be paid his worth. He is the finest exponent of his art in history. It would be churlish to demand that he should do it on the cheap, as though it is his duty to entertain us. It could only have been Chelsea or Manchester City or Paris.

To some — and not just those who hold P.S.G. close to their hearts — that will be an appetizing prospect: a chance to see Messi not just reunited with Neymar, but aligned for the first time with Kylian Mbappé, who many assume will eventually take his crown as the best, and with his old enemy Sergio Ramos, too.

That it will be captivating is not in doubt. And doubtless profitable: The jerseys will fly off the shelves; the sponsorships will roll in; the TV ratings will rise, too, perhaps lifting all of French soccer with it. It may well be successful, on the field; it will doubtless be good to watch. But that is no measure. So, too, is the sinking of a ship.

That the architects of the Super League arrived, in April, at the wrong answer is not in doubt. The vision of soccer’s future that they put forward was one that benefited them and left everyone else, in effect, to burn.

But the question that prompted it was the right one. The vast majority of those dozen teams knew that the game in its current form was not sustainable. The costs were too high, the risks too great. The arms race that they were locked into led only to destruction. They recognized the need for change, even if their desperation and self-interest meant they could not identify what form that change should take.

They worried that they could not compete with the power and the wealth of the two or three clubs that are not subject to the same rules as everybody else. They felt that the playing field was no longer level. They believed that, sooner or later, first the players and then the trophies would coalesce around P.S.G., Chelsea and Manchester City.

It was sooner, as it turns out. P.S.G. has signed Messi. City may commit more than $300 million on just two players in a matter of weeks, as the rest of the game comes to terms with the impact of the pandemic. Chelsea has spent $140 million on a striker, too. This is the week when all their fears, all their dire predictions, have come to pass.

There should be no sympathy, of course. Those same clubs did not care at all about competitive balance while the imbalances suited them. Nothing has damaged the chances of meaningful change more than their abortive attempt to corral as much of the game’s wealth as possible to their own ends.

But they are not the only ones to lose in this situation. In April, in those whirlwind 48 hours, it felt like soccer avoided a grim vision of its future. As Messi touched down on the ground near Paris on Tuesday, as the surreal and the inevitable collided, it was hard to ignore the feeling that it had merely traded it for another.

[Chester Perry]

Another in the trainload of articles using the Messi exit from Barcelona as a metaphor for the financial ills of the game - this from the Telegraph's business section (hence the very weak puns) uses Vysyble's economic profit angle and wonders if the outcome of the fan led review is going to place some exacting financial discipline on the game in this country

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... rcas-woes/

Another fine Messi: football must heed the lessons from Barça’s woes
BEN WRIGHT AUGUST 11, 2021

All the action on the pitch during Euro 2021 (sorry, Euro 2020) earlier this summer somewhat eclipsed the drama off it in the weeks leading up to the competition. But news that a private equity firm is banging hard at the gates to Spain’s La Liga and Barcelona has been forced to sell Lionel Messi because of financial difficulties serves as a reminder that English football still needs to take a long, hard look at itself.

The aftermath of the failed European Super League bid gave added piquance to the Government’s pre-planned “fan-led review” of football chaired by Tracey Crouch. This will, among other things, assess the need for an independent football regulator. But even the most ferocious regulator won’t help address the issues with football unless there is an honest assessment of what it’s presiding over.

The review will look at the flow of money through the game and assess the need for “cost controls [and] real time financial monitoring”. It will also consider the possibility of a levy on transfer or agent fees to support the development of the grassroots, amateur and women's games.

All this is to be welcomed - as far as it goes. But there’s a real possibility it will not address the main financial forces that led to the Super League, the malignant threat of which is not dead, merely sleeping.

There’s a popular myth that football clubs are rich. This is understandable. The owners are gazillionaires, the players drive from their mansions to training in supercars. The fans pay through the nose for season tickets, replica shirts and even to watch their teams play on TV. What’s more, the Premier League has never been more popular. Surely these guys must be coining it?

And the pretence is perpetuated by those who really should know better. In that sense, Barcelona’s recent woes should serve as a salutary lesson to all in the sport. This is a football club that was crowned the world’s richest in Deloitte’s Football Money League as recently as January this year.

The illusion of wealth comes from a cycloptic-focus on just one side of the ledger. Too few in the world of football, it would seem, are familiar with the principle espoused by the Charles Dickens character Wilkins Micawber: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.”

Barcelona may have been the first club in any sport ever to surpass $1bn in annual revenues but this was slashed by the pandemic and, as Simon Kuper details in his book Barça: The Inside Story of the World’s Greatest Football Club, was easily surpassed by the club’s annual expenditure. “Adding together the salaries and write-offs [on transfer fees], Barça’s total outlay on players was about €700m a year,” writes Kuper. “Shockingly, that was more than the club’s entire revenue for the 2020-21 season.”

Barcelona, like Mr Micawber, was living beyond its means. Result: misery. Or, more specifically: the tearful departure of perhaps the best player in the history of the sport, debts of €1.2bn, league-imposed spending limits, a desperate hunt for out-of-contract players so as to avoid transfer fees and evaporating hopes of winning La Liga or the Champions League for the foreseeable future.

Barça’s problems are far from unique - they are just both more extreme and more obvious thanks to rules that govern member-owned clubs in Spain. The finances of English football clubs are somewhat obscured by their owners’ propensity to keep shelling out ever-more cash to prop them up. Normal accounting rules ascribed zero cost to this equity, allowing most clubs to post (fairly meagre) profits.

But that money could have been invested in something else. Ascribe the correct opportunity cost to such owner-equity and you can calculate the economic profit (or loss), which gives a much clearer picture of what’s going on.

The reality is pretty frightening. Premier League clubs suffered record economic losses totalling £1.4bn for the 2019-20 season, according to financial and strategy analysts Vysyble, well over double the £599.5m loss made in the 2018-19 season.

Such ugly numbers are, of course, partly the result of Covid. But they are also the continuation of a long-term trend. Since 2010, Premier League clubs have achieved combined revenues of £34.3bn but suffered collective economic losses of £3.5bn.

The Crouch-chaired review of English football will assess the flow of money through the sport. But the issue is less with flow and more with leakage in the form of player salaries and agents fees. Transfers are a zero-sum game: one club sells and another buys. A potential levy on transfer or agent fees might result in some money being redirected but would mostly add to the costs.

Barcelona had an annual wage bill of €500m. About a quarter of this went to Messi. El Mundo newspaper calculated that the Argentinian earned a total of €500m between 2017 and 2021. His salary tripled between 2014 and 2020. Each time he got a raise, his team mates asked for one too. Messi brought footballing glory and trophies to Barcelona and untold joy to the fans. But he also brought ruin to the club’s finances.

The highs and lows of Messi's Barca career
Highs

First goal, 2005

Messi, aged only 17, races onto a chipped pass from Ronaldinho and lobs the Albacete goalkeeper at the Camp Nou. He has arrived.

Hat-trick in El Clasico, 2007

A 19-year-old Messi scores his first-ever hat-trick for Barcelona, and he does so against their fiercest rivals. The world is now taking notice.

Champions League glory, 2009

Messi scores a brilliant header against Manchester United to help Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona win the Champions League in Rome. He later wins his first Ballon d’Or.

Another Champions League triumph, 2011

Guardiola’s Barcelona reach their pinnacle as a team with a majestic display against Manchester United at Wembley. Messi scores and is named man of the match.

Hitting new heights, 2012

Messi scores an incredible 91 goals (for club and country) in one calendar year, surpassing Gerd Muller’s record of 85 goals in 1972. He also registers 24 assists.

Another treble, 2015

Messi leads Barcelona to another treble, helping them to win La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League. His performance in the Champions League semi-final, against Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, was one of his finest.

Record sixth Ballon d’Or, 2019

Messi lifts a record sixth Ballon d’Or, awarded to the world’s best player, after leading Barcelona to yet another La Liga title.

Lows
Teenage tears

Messi joins Barcelona at the age of 13 but struggles with homesickness at the start. “I always came back from Rosario crying,” he has said.

Injury anguish, 2006

Messi misses Barcelona’s 2006 Champions League final against Arsenal due to injury. He was so devastated that he did not take part in the celebrations after Barcelona’s victory.

Court conviction, 2016

Messi and his father, Jorge, are convicted of defrauding Spain £3.5m in taxes. The Messis were sentenced to 21 months in prison but that was later changed to a fine.

Anfield humiliation, 2019

After scoring twice in the first leg to help his team to a 3-0 lead, Messi is helpless in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final as Barcelona are overrun by Liverpool.

Bayern thrashing, 2020

More embarrassment for Barcelona as they concede a gruelling eight goals to Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-final. Questions are asked of Messi’s own performance.

It’s not as if Premier League clubs reined in spending to help counter their diminished revenues through the pandemic. Collectively, they spent £874.1m on transfers in 2020-21, the second most profligate year after 2018-19 when they shelled out £918.8m. It is now clear that the era of parabolic TV rights deals, which saved the sport in the past, is over.

Jack Grealish’s recent £100m transfer from Aston Villa to Manchester City does not augur well for more spending restraint in English football. According to Vysyble’s calculations, Man City suffered an economic loss of £189m during the 2019-20 season, the biggest in the Premier League.

Football can’t go on like this and it won’t. “It was clear looking at the underlying economics of the game in England over several years that the owners of Premier League football clubs would not want to continue shouldering large economic losses. That is why we thought something like the European Super League was inevitable,” says John Purcell of Vysyble.

“Yes, it was stopped in its tracks… this time. But the underlying economics remain the same. It is therefore safe to assume that English football will be confronted with something very similar to the Super League before long.”

[Chester Perry]

I am posting this for two reasons - one is that most of you would never see it if I didn't and being on this thread tends to mean that peeople just read it and do not get into arguments, two facebook actually make quite a lot of revenue out of football but do very little it feels to give anything back to make it better

From the New York Times a debut article by @RMac18 with input from :TariqPanja

How Facebook Failed to Stem Racist Abuse of England’s Soccer Players
AUGUST 11, 2021

In May 2019, Facebook asked the organizing bodies of English soccer to its London offices off Regent’s Park. On the agenda: what to do about the growing racist abuse on the social network against Black soccer players.

At the meeting, Facebook gave representatives from four of England’s main soccer organizations — the Football Association, the Premier League, the English Football League and the Professional Footballers’ Association — what they felt was a brushoff, two people with knowledge of the conversation said. Company executives told the group that they had many issues to deal with, including content about terrorism and child sex abuse.

A few months later, Facebook provided soccer representatives with an athlete safety guide, including directions on how players could shield themselves from bigotry using its tools. The message was clear: It was up to the players and the clubs to protect themselves online.

The interactions were the start of what became a more than two-year campaign by English soccer to pressure Facebook and other social media companies to rein in online hate speech against their players. Soccer officials have since met numerous times with the platforms, sent an open letter calling for change and organized social media boycotts. Facebook’s employees have joined in, demanding that it to do more to stop the harassment.

The pressure intensified after the European Championship last month, when three of England’s Black players were subjected to torrents of racial epithets on social media for missing penalty kicks in the final game’s decisive shootout. Prince William condemned the hate, and the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, threatened regulation and fines for companies that continued to permit racist abuse. Inside Facebook, the incident was escalated to a “Site Event 1,” the equivalent of a companywide five-alarm fire.

Yet as the Premier League, England’s top division, opens its season on Friday, soccer officials said that the social media companies — especially Facebook, the largest — hadn’t taken the issue seriously enough and that players were again steeling themselves for online hate.

“Football is a growing global market that includes clubs, brands, sponsors and fans who are all tired of the obvious lack of desire from the tech giants to develop in-platform solutions for the issues we are dealing with daily,” said Simone Pound, head of equality, diversity and inclusion for the Professional Footballers’ Association, the players’ union.

The impasse with English soccer is another instance of Facebook’s failing to solve speech problems on its platform, even after it was made aware of the level of abuse. While Facebook has introduced some measures to mitigate the harassment, soccer officials said they were insufficient.

Social media companies aren’t doing enough “because the pain hasn’t become enough for them,” said Sanjay Bhandari, the chair of Kick It Out, an organization that supports equality in soccer.

This season, Facebook is trying again. Its Instagram photo-sharing app rolled out new features on Wednesday to make racist material harder to view, according to a blog post. Among them, one will let users hide potentially harassing comments and messages from accounts that either don’t follow or recently followed them.

“The unfortunate reality is that tackling racism on social media, much like tackling racism in society, is complex,” Karina Newton, Instagram’s global head of public policy, said in a statement. “We’ve made important strides, many of which have been driven by our discussions with groups being targeted with abuse, like the U.K. football community.”

But Facebook executives also privately acknowledge that racist speech against English soccer players is likely to continue. “No one thing will fix this challenge overnight,” Steve Hatch, Facebook’s director for Britain and Ireland, wrote last month in an internal note that The Times reviewed.

Some players appear resigned to the abuse. Four days after the European Championship final, Bukayo Saka, 19, one of the Black players who missed penalty kicks for England, posted on Twitter and Instagram that the “powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages” and called it a “sad reality.”

Around the same time, Facebook employees continued to report hateful comments to their employer on Mr. Saka’s posts in an effort to get them taken down. One that was reported — an Instagram comment that read, “Bro stay in Africa” — apparently did not violate the platform’s rules, according to the automated moderation system. It stayed up.

#Enough
Much of the racist abuse in English soccer has been directed at Black superstars in the Premier League, such as Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford. About 30 percent of players in the Premier League are Black, Mr. Bhandari said.

Over time, these players have been harassed at soccer stadiums and on Facebook, where users are asked to provide their real names, and on Instagram and Twitter, which allows users to be anonymous. In April 2019, fed up with the behavior, some players and two former captains of the national team, David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, took part in a 24-hour social media boycott, posting red badges on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #Enough.

A month later, English soccer officials held their first meeting with Facebook — and came away disappointed. Facebook said that “feedback from the meeting was taken on board and influenced further policy, product and enforcement efforts.”

Tensions ratcheted up last year after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. When the Premier League restarted in June 2020 after a 100-day coronavirus hiatus, athletes from all 20 clubs began each match by taking a knee. Players continued the symbolic act last season and said they would also kneel this season.

That has stoked more online abuse. In January, Mr. Rashford used Twitter to call out “humanity and social media at its worst” for the bigoted messages he had received. Two of his Manchester United teammates, who are also Black, were targeted on Instagram with monkey emojis — which are meant to dehumanize — after a loss.

Inside Facebook, employees took note of the surge in racist speech. In one internal forum meant for flagging negative press to the communications department, one employee started cataloging articles about English soccer players who had been abused on Facebook’s platforms. By February, the list had grown to about 20 different news clips in a single month, according to a company document seen by The Times.

English soccer organizations continued meeting with Facebook. This year, organizers also brought Twitter into the conversations, forming what became known as the Online Hate Working Group.

But soccer officials grew frustrated at the lack of progress, they said. There was no indication that Facebook’s and Twitter’s top leaders were aware of the abuse, said Edleen John, who heads international relations and corporate affairs for the Football Association, England’s governing body for the sport. She and others began discussing writing an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter.

“Why don’t we try to communicate and get meetings with individuals right at the top of the organization and see if that will make change?” Ms. John said in an interview, explaining the thinking.

In February, the chief executives of the Premier League, the Football Association and other groups published a 580-word letter to Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Dorsey accusing them of “inaction” against racial abuse. They demanded that the companies block racist and discriminatory content before it was sent or posted. They also pushed for user identity verification so offenders could be rooted out.

But, Ms. John said, “we didn’t get a response” from Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. Dorsey. In April, English soccer organizations, players and brands held a four-day boycott of social media.

Twitter, which declined to comment, said in a blog post about racism on Tuesday that it had been “appalled by those who targeted players from the England football team with racist abuse following the Euro 2020 Final.”

At Facebook, members of the policy team, which sets the rules around what content stays up or comes down, pushed back against the demands from soccer officials, three people with knowledge of the conversations said.

They argued that terms or symbols used for racist abuse — such as a monkey emoji — could have different meanings depending on the context and should not be banned completely. Identity verification could also undermine anonymity on Instagram and create new problems for users, they argued.

In April, Facebook announced a privacy setting called Hidden Words to automatically filter out messages and comments containing offensive words, phrases and emojis. Those comments cannot then be easily seen by the account user and will be hidden from those who follow the account. A month later, Instagram also began a test that allowed a slice of its users in the United States, South Africa, Brazil, Australia and Britain to flag “racist language or activity,” according to documents reviewed by The Times.

The test generated hundreds of reports. One internal spreadsheet outlining the results included a tab titled “Dehumanization_Monkey/Primate.” It had more than 30 examples of comments using bigoted terms and emojis of monkeys, gorillas and bananas in connection with Black people.

‘The Onus Is on Them’
In the hours after England lost the European Championship final to Italy on July 11, racist comments against the players who missed penalty kicks — Mr. Saka, Mr. Rashford and Jadon Sancho — escalated. That set off a “site event” at Facebook, eventually triggering the kind of emergency associated with a major system outage of the site.

Facebook employees rushed to internal forums to say they had reported monkey emojis or other degrading stereotypes. Some workers asked if they could volunteer to help sort through content or moderate comments for high-profile accounts.

But the employees’ reports of racist speech were often met with automated messages saying the posts did not violate the company’s guidelines. Executives also provided talking points to employees that said Facebook had worked “swiftly to remove comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers.”

In one internal comment, Jerry Newman, Facebook’s director of sports partnerships for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, reminded workers that the company had introduced the Hidden Words feature so users could filter out offensive words or symbols. It was the players’ responsibility to use the feature, he wrote.

“Ultimately the onus is on them to go into Instagram and input which emojis/words they don’t want to feature,” Mr. Newman said.

Other Facebook executives said monkey emojis were not typically used negatively. If the company filtered certain terms out for everyone, they added, people might miss important messages.

Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s chief executive, later said the platform could have done better, tweeting in response to a BBC reporter that the app “mistakenly” marked some of the racist comments as “benign.”

But Facebook also defended itself in a blog post. The company said it had removed 25 million pieces of hate content in the first three months of the year, while Instagram took down 6.3 million pieces, or 93 percent before a user reported it.

Kelly Hogarth, who helps manage Mr. Rashford’s off-field activities, said he had no plans to leave social media, which serves as an important channel to fans. Still, she questioned how much of the burden should be on athletes to monitor abuse.

“At what point does responsibility come off the player?” she wondered. She added, “I wouldn’t be under any illusions we will be in exactly the same place, having exactly the same conversation next season.”

[GodIsADeeJay81]

I see Palace have now got themselves a 4th co owner that's enabled them to wipe £50 million of debt and give them an extra £40 million to spend this summer...

[Chester Perry]

I see Palace have now got themselves a 4th co owner that's enabled them to wipe £50 million of debt and give them an extra £40 million to spend this summer...

I have been trailing the John Textor stuff for a little while - some of his thinking for the failed bid at Benfica seemed totally naive when it comes to football which is why the shareholders told him where to go

you can find my posts about him here

http://www.uptheclarets.com/messageboar ... d%5B0%5D=2

[Paul Waine]

Managed to find the documentary film that goes with all the other Al Jezeera i:unit material for the "Men who Sell Football" investigation

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

Fascinating investigation. All this "buy Derby" stuff was going on at the same time that Mike Garlick was selling Burnley. Wouldn't it have been tragic if BFC had got caught up in all this dodgy money laundering and hidden club owners.

UTC

[Chester Perry]

Fascinating investigation. All this "buy Derby" stuff was going on at the same time that Mike Garlick was selling Burnley. Wouldn't it have been tragic if BFC had got caught up in all this dodgy money laundering and hidden club owners.

UTC

@KieranMAguire has written an opinion piece for Al Jezeera as a follow up to the i:unit investigation "The Men who sell Football"

Football club ownership regulations need to be made tougher
The current rules can be easily bypassed and club ownership exploited for money laundering.

Kieran Maguire - British academic and author
11 Aug 2021

Vanity, insanity, love and profit. There are many reasons why people want to own football clubs.

The most sought-after clubs are in England where the globally popular Premier League offers the prospect of fame, prestige and potentially vast riches.

But Al Jazeera’s investigation, The Men Who Sell Football, exposes a disturbing, murky side to football club ownership and a failing system of governance.

Watching the documentary, I was left with a deep sense of unease about our most popular national sport, once known as The Beautiful Game.

The undercover investigation – in which reporters pose as the agents of a convicted Chinese criminal who wants to buy a football club – shows how crooks, helped by middlemen, can buy clubs and use them to launder the proceeds of crime.

Those middlemen see legal and sporting governance statutes as an inconvenience to be circumvented rather than as a means of protecting the sport.

In the film, we see them explain how they can submit fake due diligence reports, use “dirty tricks”, hide dirty money behind impenetrable offshore trusts, and help criminals to acquire false identities.

The undercover reporters even come very near to striking a deal for the criminal investor to buy Derby County, one of England’s oldest football clubs.

This investigation should be a wake-up call for England’s football authorities.

England has three bodies responsible for football. The English Football Association is in charge of the national team and “grassroots” football.

The Premier League, which consists of 20 clubs, was formed in 1992 and is the world’s most lucrative football entity.

The English Football League (EFL) looks after the three divisions below the Premier League. Clubs in the second-tier championship – which can be bought for as little as $20m – can win promotion to the Premier League within 12 months.

Each of these entities has rules that aim to protect football from prospective owners whose ambitions might not be in the best interests of the game. The owners’ and directors’ tests (OADTs) are enforced by the football authorities, but their resources to do in-depth investigations into prospective owners are limited.

The OADTs state clearly that anyone with an outstanding criminal conviction cannot be a club owner.

The Al Jazeera documentary shows a middleman, Christopher Samuelson, an offshore trust specialist, who appears to see this block on criminals simply as a problem that he can solve.

There is nothing wrong with making a persuasive case to assist a legitimate, prospective owner to acquire a club, but Mr Samuelson goes far beyond that.

It is also alarming that he is prepared to use a private investigations company to assist in this process, employing a number of questionable, even potentially illegal methods.

Organising phone tapping and false passports are discussed, which are serious criminal offences that would pose a significant threat to the integrity of the OADT if carried out.

Mr Samuelson’s willingness to use offshore trusts to hide the fictitious criminal’s money and identity is also worrying. Good governance depends on transparency and openness and the use of such investment vehicles makes linking clubs to their owners very difficult.

The documentary also features Keith Hunter, a private investigator and former Scotland Yard detective. Using third parties, he says he provides “services”, sometimes called “dirty tricks”, to push deals through. Hunter introduces the undercover reporters to contacts in Cyprus who offer to help the criminal investor obtain a passport.

The film presents powerful and deeply concerning evidence that middlemen with scant regard for the rules – and for UK law – are moving in the shadows of English football.

It is clear that the sport is infested with people who have created an environment in which safeguards can be bypassed. The rules that govern football are being abused and need to be made much tougher.

Since the fiasco of the breakaway European Super League in April, which prompted an angry backlash and was dropped within 48 hours, the UK government has taken the first steps in this direction.

It commissioned a “fan-based review” of the game led by former Sports Minister Tracey Crouch. Her interim report stated “… the evidence has been clear that football clubs are not ordinary businesses. They play a critical social, civic and cultural role in their local communities. They need to be protected – sometimes from their owners who are, after all, simply the current custodians of a community asset.”

Football clubs are unique in the central role they play and sense of identity they give, to individual towns and cities, not just in the UK, but around the world.

They should be protected. Al Jazeera’s documentary shows that the battle for what remains of the integrity of the world’s most popular sport is far from over.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Kieran Maguire is a British academic and author who specialises in financial reporting, financial modelling and football finance. He is the author of the book The Price of Football, which looks at different ways in which professional football operates as a business.

[Chester Perry]

Interesting name involved in one of the consortiums looking to bring the MLS to Las Vegas - from Sportico.com - I find it a little strange that they do not choose to mention his joint ownership of Aston Villa

WES EDENS BACKS MLS EXPANSION BID AS LAS VEGAS CLIMBS TO TOP SPOT
BY SCOTT SOSHNICK, EBEN NOVY-WILLIAMS AUGUST 11, 2021 11:06AM

MLS Expansion Vegas Wes Edens BillMilwaukee Bucks co-owner Wes Edens is one of a handful of people trying to lure a Major League Soccer team to Las Vegas as the city emerges as the most likely location for the league’s 30th franchise.

Edens and Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley are part of separate groups hoping to bring an expansion franchise to Allegiant Stadium, the $2 billion home of the Las Vegas Raiders, according to multiple people familiar with the plans. Another group, backed by the Renaissance Companies, is looking to bring a team to Cashman Field, home of the city’s USL franchise.

Over the past few weeks, Las Vegas has emerged as the most likely location for the next MLS club, according to someone familiar with the league’s thinking. It looked for a while like the 30th MLS team would be in Sacramento, but the withdrawal of that bid’s principal owner has cast uncertainty over its future.

A representative for MLS declined to comment on the expansion. A spokesman for Edens also declined to comment, and a representative for Foley didn’t immediately respond to a request.

Should an expansion team be given to the city, it’s unclear what the fee might be. The next MLS board of governors meeting is Aug. 25, and expansion is on the agenda, as it has been for every meeting since 2004.

Co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, Edens’ sports holding include the Bucks, English soccer club Aston Villa, and esports organization FlyQuest. He has direct business ties to Las Vegas, as well. Fortress is backing Brightline West, a high-speed rail project hoping to connect Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

Edens fits the profile of the type of owner that the MLS has courted in recent years, and will continue to court. He has investments in other leagues, he’s younger than the original generation of league owners, and he’s already shown in Milwaukee how a tech-forward approach can grow valuations.

“Diversity of thought is the most important aspect of the new owners over the last 10 years,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said last month during a
SporticoLive event.”

Long considered off limits because of its proximity to gambling, Nevada’s largest city has become the hottest market in sports. Foley’s Golden Knights made their NHL debut in 2017, and the NFL’s Raiders moved to town last year. Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai just purchased an NLL expansion team in the city, and it’s been discussed as a possible landing spot for baseball’s Oakland Athletics.

The Renaissance Companies’ plan, according to chairman Floyd Kephart, involved partnering with billionaire Seth Klarman and his Baupost Group to redevelop the area around Cashman Field in downtown Las Vegas, which Kephart called the “largest undeveloped site in the city.”

In April, the group let its exclusive negotiating agreement with the city expire because it was not immediately apparent an MLS franchise was available, Kephart said. He said the group hasn’t spoken with MLS in a number of months.

“Our last conversation was, ‘When you guys decide there’s a franchise available, let us know,’” Kephart said. “So we’re sitting. And if we’re not the right guys for Las Vegas, then they’ll get the right guys, but Las Vegas will get a franchise, I believe.”

The earliest opportunity for any Las Vegas investor would be to nab MLS’ 30th franchise, a slot originally awarded to Sacramento in late 2019. That bid is now in jeopardy after billionaire Ron Burkle, its lead investor, left the project due to issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project isn’t officially dead, but the team’s crest has been removed from the MLS website, and people close to the league say it’s looking increasingly like a Sacramento team won’t be joining as scheduled in 2023.

MLS, which had 20 franchises just five years ago, has expanded rapidly since. The league now has 27 teams following the debut of Austin FC this season, while franchises in Charlotte and St. Louis are set to join in the coming years. That expansion has come alongside a rapid rise in expansion fees—Charlotte paid $325 million, more than double Austin’s fee—and an uptick in team valuations. The average MLS team is now worth $550 million, according to recent numbers from Sportico, with three franchises worth more than $800 million.

Edens has first-hand experience with appreciating sports assets. He and Marc Lasry bought the Bucks in 2014 for $550 million, then the most ever paid for an NBA franchise. The team just won its first NBA title in 50 years and is now valued at $1.86 million, according to
Sportico’s numbers. Last year he told a Las Vegas paper that if the Bucks had been unable to get a new arena built in Milwaukee, the group “definitely” would have considered a move to Nevada. “It’s just such a tremendous market,” Edens said.

[Chester Perry]

Speaking of Wes Edens - Aston Villa become the 5th Premier League club to sign with Chiliz/Socios and the fan token strangeness - from SportsBusimess.com

Chiliz adds Aston Villa to growing Premier League portfolio
SportBusiness Staff - August 11, 2021

Global blockchain provider Chiliz has bolstered its Premier League portfolio to five teams by signing a deal with Aston Villa.

The agreement will result in the launch of a $AVL Fan Token on the Socios.com app, which is owned by Chiliz.

The tokens will serve as collectible digital assets and will be minted on the Chiliz $CHZ blockchain. The agreement is designed to create new experiences for Villa supporters around the world.

Fans will be able to take part in interactive votes and access club-related content, along with Socios.com’s geo-location, augmented-reality feature ‘Token Hunt’. Other features will include club-related games, competitions and quizzes.

The $AVL Fan Token will launch soon, with Villa members and season-ticket holders to be given the option of a free token for a limited time.

Nicola Ibbetson, chief commercial officer at Villa, said: “Socios are leading the way in blockchain in the sports industry, the launch of the $AVL Fan Tokens will give our fans worldwide more opportunities to engage with the club and be a part of our global family.

“This is a new and innovative way for all our supporters to get involved with the club, whether they are local or international. We’re looking forward to working with Socios to create and develop interactive opportunities to take the club closer to our fans around the world.”

Chiliz already holds agreements with fellow Premier League clubs Everton, Manchester City, Arsenal and Leeds United. All four clubs have launched fan tokens through their tie-up with Chiliz, with fans able to access similar perks that will be made available to Villa supporters.

Alexandre Dreyfus, chief executive of Chiliz and Socios.com, said: “A very significant proportion of Premier League clubs have now become part of the mission to shift passive fans into active participants on Socios.com. We are on the verge of an exciting new era of greatly enhanced fan engagement for top-flight clubs in England and I can’t wait to get started.”

Socios.com has also built a presence in other sports, including with leading MMA properties Ultimate Fighting Championship and Professional Fighters League; Formula 1 teams Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo Racing and the National Basketball Association’s Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers.

[Wile E Coyote]

Fascinating, reads like a Da Vinci code novel.
Have we arrived at a horrible stage in the modern era when financial irregularities are the norm ?
I am a mere humble, largely uneducated simpleton who just likes his team. I had never had cause to suspect wrong doing on such a scale.
Its looking more and more like the game has left our shores and become a device for cash generating for the shadowy figures.
We should be better served if this is what honest supporters are really buying into.

[Chester Perry]

Today the Spanish FA (RFEF) came out and backed Real Madrid in their fight against the La Liga deal with CVC - accusing La Liga of making an illegal deal

https://www.marca.com/en/football/spani ... b4644.html

the following is a translation of the full RFEF statement - it is nice to know the burofax is still a key part of Spanish commercial law

THE RFEF CONSIDERS THE CVC-LNFP AGREEMENT TO BE TOTALLY ILLEGAL

INSTITUTIONAL/11 AUG 2021/CITY OF FOOTBALL

The Royal Spanish Football Federation has had the opportunity to examine before tomorrow's Assembly and with a margin of only 48 hours the documentation provided - we do not know if completely - by the LNFP that structures the operation intended by it and CVC. This operation, carried out with the slightest publicity and concurrence in the selection of the successful bidder, has two parts: the one related to the commercialization of audiovisual rights, on the one hand; and the rest of the LNFP's businesses, which make up a heterogeneous group, on the other.

As regards the agreements between the LNFP and CVC relating to the audiovisual rights of sports clubs and public limited companies, the RFEF must express its opposition. Not only for legal reasons, which will undoubtedly generate numerous litigations arising from the agreement and may question its very viability, since it is intended to force some legal institutions to the extreme; but also for economic reasons, given that the rights of clubs and SADs for the next fifty years are heavily taxed in exchange for a small amount of money. But the most important thing is that the agreement increases inequality and makes it impossible in a capital and definitive way a reasonable evolution of the format of the professional football competition in Spain, making that in practice and in application of the agreement the competition is petrified without possibility of evolution or can only modify when a third party outside the sports structure so decides or agrees fact that flagrantly violates the law and the European sports model. In addition, it forgets the clubs that compete in non-professional competitions that, at the time of their promotion to the professional competition, will see that their income is reduced by the remuneration of CVC, without having obtained any benefit from the contribution of that entity.

If there are clubs that, with their inalienable rights and unavailable by third parties, want to borrow voluntarily, there is no problem in doing so, whether the conditions are considered market or usury, but not through an illegal agreement that binds everyone, through the false attribution in favor of the LNFP of rights that it does not have. What is more, we see it as lax and very opportunistic, trying to go beyond the borders of the law to reach a lousy and regrettable economic agreement for the future of all Spanish football and, on the other hand, fantastic for a fund and other possible beneficiaries.

The RFEF must also warn that it will not allow the contribution to modest football that comes from these audiovisual rights to be reduced during these fifty years. Royal Decree-Law 5/2015 established a centralized marketing model very beneficial for the LNFP, establishing controls and mandatory contributions for certain purposes. If the LNFP now intends to bypass the controls and reduce the contributions to which the Royal Decree-Law obliges it, the RFEF will be obliged to exercise the appropriate legal actions to defend its rights and those of non-professional football. At this point it should be remembered that the Higher Council of Sports would be in the same situation as the RFEF.

With regard to the rest of the LNFP's business, the RFEF merely states that it intends to create a new corporate structure, the sole purpose of which is that the President of the LNFP will become the President of the new entity, also receiving new emoluments for it and avoiding the already few controls that are now imposed on him.

In short, analyzing the operation with a perspective of fifty years, which is the one foreseen by the LNFP and CVC, as well as its contents, we must conclude that it exceeds what could be understood by the commercialization of the audiovisual rights to which the competences of the League are limited, which may irreversibly affect the future of the competition.

The RFEF, being aware of the various complaints and comments that have been sent to it by various clubs in the First and Second Division, has communicated its firm opposition to this agreement, through a burofax sent to the LNFP.

[Chester Perry]

Leeds fansite thesquareball.net tries out socios as the club prepares to launch it's own tokens - it is a useful (if long read) about the conflicting messaging from club and socios and arrives at a very firm conclusion

If Football’s Future is The Socios App, Let’s Download It And See

Written by Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman - August 11, 2021

A fundamental problem with Socios.com, the cryptocurrency-powered supporter engagement quiz trading app thing, is that Socios and the clubs that have signed up, our Leeds United among them, keep talking about its purposes in two different ways, often using the same words.

Take this example. Asked about the link-up on The Square Ball Podcast, Leeds CEO Angus Kinnear was very clear: “It is categorically not about monetising fan influence.”

But that very morning I, as a Socios customer, had received a marketing email from them titled ‘The Superfan Checklist’, the top item of which is ‘Influence the team you love.’ Even the sub-heading, before I even opened the email, was asking me, ‘Are you ready to influence your team?’

Partly this is about language, but it’s an important cause of the stress around this app. The Socios announcement on Leeds United’s website didn’t help, with its headline reading, ‘Leeds To Boost Fan Engagement By Launching Fan Token On Socios’. Engagement and influence, to people like Leeds United Supporters’ Trust and Angus Kinnear, means involving fans in key decisions about the football club, like ticketing. Engagement and influence, to Socios, means getting fans to vote to decide what songs the players listen to before a game. There’s a third meaning, to do with the horrible internet language of ‘engaging with content’, something that particularly affects football fans who have been lulled into regarding their own tweets as ‘content’, rather than tweets, to be ‘engaged with’, rather than looked at. Right now you’re not engaging with content I created, you’re reading a blog post I have written, and it’s important for what slivers of esteem we hold for one another that we remember that. The spillover of language from Google Analytics to ordinary conversation has done nobody any good: fans don’t need to reduce themselves to the language of advertising metrics. Socios will do it for us. ‘Just one $LUFC Fan Token is enough to allow holders to access every engagement opportunity on Socios.com’, they say. Football fans just love accessing engagement opportunities! It’s sad because it’s true.

But there’s only so long Socios can carry on having one meaning for ‘influence’ and ‘engagement’ while its partner clubs are using the same words to mean something else entirely. Kinnear continued on the podcast, saying, “Socios has nothing to do with supporter influence,” but, well, that’s not what they’re telling me, the user. Angus always seems like a good dude and so I think he should be having words with these bitcoin bozos, because he’s copping the blame out here while Socios are blissfully sending out their emails contradicting him.

Anyway, about being a user. With so much heat around this app I decided the only way forward was to download the thing and find out for myself about what the heck. So after signing up and clicking a verification link, here I am in the future. Here we’ll find more contradictions, but first I’ll explain how it works.

The idea is to own a fan token for your favourite team. It’s like a share. With a token, you can do some stuff related to your favourite team. You only need one, and like a share, you keep it. It will go up and down in value as an item of cryptocurrency, but for the purposes of voting in a poll or doing a quiz, one token is one token.

The cryptocurrency value, and the monetary value, are not small points. Every token has its equivalence in euros written beneath it in the app. If you tap that, you get a graph of its value over various timescales. That value is affected by two forces, neither of which you control. One is the popularity of that token — if lots of people want a token for a particular team, its value will go up. The other is the value of Socios’ own Chiliz cryptocurrency, aka $CHZ, which is traded separately on crypto exchanges. So while your fan token’s value might go up when your team wins, $CHZ might drag its value down with overall cryptocurrency trends, or vice versa. A fan token’s value, then, is not driven by its worth as a fan token alone. Everything is built on top of $CHZ and its value in the wider crypto market.

“It’s not positioned as a cryptocurrency investment,” says Kinnear, but nevertheless you will be investing in cryptocurrency to use the app. There are four tabs across the top of the main screen: $CHZ, where you can buy the $CHZ needed to use the app; Market, which opens a ‘Trading’ screen, showing the value and fluctuations of all the fan tokens available. Then there is Vote — there are two votes about Sauber Racing at the moment, for people who own those tokens, and Predict, offering two prediction games, one for the European Championship (finished) and one for the South American Cup (also finished, and I guess they didn’t have the commercial rights to call it Copa America).

Two out of four tabs are about cryptocurrency, and the first instructions you’re given when you sign up are to ‘Top Up’ with $CHZ, then to use that to buy some fan tokens. To the $CHZ screen, then, where the default top-up amount, whenever you open it, is €25, which today gets you about 88 $CHZ. €25 seems like a high default to me, given that it is immediately subject to the fluctuations of cryptocurrency, and there’s a bit of effort involved in reducing that default value to a slightly more comfortable amount (the app is quite bad for tap-sensitivity, I often got a different screen to the one I thought I tapped on). I deposited €10, plus a 50c transaction charge, and was rewarded with jolly pop-ups congratulating me with hundreds of XP ‘gamification’ rewards, that we’ll come back to.

Costs, and the barrier to entry, are quite a big issue here, and again Socios are contradicting Kinnear’s view of how the app works.

“All season ticket holders and all members are going to receive a token for free,” he said on the podcast, and the announcement adds that an option will be available for a limited time to receive a free $LUFC token. “So they can have the ability to engage in a way which is at no cost to themselves. And the second thing is the price of the tokens is £2. So we’re not talking about large level cryptocurrency speculation here.”

The token will be £2 at launch, that’s true. But the entire point of the app is that, if the value of a token doesn’t go higher than £2, it isn’t working. $LUFC is supposed to become the must-have token among tokens, and the more people want to have it, the more it costs. If I’m a fan joining up a few months late, or a non-member wanting to get involved, the price of a token by then will very likely be more than £2. This actually presents savvy fans with an opportunity: grab your free token as soon as it is launched, then when the price goes up, cash out for a profit — free money! But this is not a cryptocurrency speculation app, so don’t do that (and I feel duty bound to remind you the value of these tokens can go down as well as up).

The two quid $LUFC token will soon be a memory. The top priced fan token on the app at time of writing is Paris Saint-Germain — Messi gonna Messi. One $PSG token is worth 151 $CHZ, which is €43. So to vote in a poll, like the most recent to choose the cover of FIFA 22’s PSG edition, I need to find a way of owning €43 (£36) worth of $CHZ, to exchange for one $PSG token. There are two ways: top up with a couple of quid, and through luck and skill but mostly I’d suggest luck, trade various fan tokens until I have 151 $CHZ. That feels a bit too much like cryptocurrency speculation, which this app is apparently not for, but the other option is putting in €43 in cash (plus fees). And whether I like it or not, that €43 will then be subject to the popularity of PSG and the whims of cryptocurrency exchanges. That fan token might not be worth €43 by the time I decide I’ve had enough and want to cash out — it might be worth more, sure, but this morning the app is telling me $PSG is actually down by 2.84%.

PSG have the top priced token, so let’s go down the charts looking for a fairer comparison: a Barcelona token costs €22, Manchester City is €20.49, Juventus is €12.83. Atletico Madrid is €17.95, Roma is €6.93.

With my €10 worth of $CHZ, I bought an $ASR Roma fan token. I guess I’m a Roma superfan now! I always liked their kits, and David Batty and Francesco Totti looked like brothers, so it’s fine. Leeds United, you had a good run in my affections. Forza Roma! In case there’s any doubt that transferring my allegiance in this way was a cryptocurrency transaction, I had to stump up a ‘Trading Margin Cover’ to account for fluctuations in the price while the trade went through. The transaction took a few seconds to go through and then the Trading Margin Cover was refunded.

Roma are a decent example of what one token, or seven euros here, gets you. This is the stuff the app is supposed to be all about. With one token, I can play some games: Rate The Kits, through which I could win a replica shirt as a prize, and Guess The Score & Win, although that one expired in April — I could still play it, though, so I looked up the 1-1 draw with Ajax they wanted me to predict and typed it in. There’s a shirt up for grabs for that but I guess it’s been won. There are quite a few games that don’t need a token, like ‘José Mourinho against Socios clubs’. The polls need a token, and the most recent poll expired in June, when I could have voted for the design of Roma’s team bus, and there was a curious one in May: ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana was recently voted by Fan Token holders as the new AS Roma goal song. Would you like to confirm it or change it?’ So much for a binding referendum, I guess. The first goal song poll was only a week before, but the new option was Maneskin’s Eurovision winner (it lost). Then back in December I could have helped to choose a gift for Edin Dzeko, and that is the last eight months of polling in total: a present for Dzeko, goal music, goal music again, team bus. The most recent item in the Roma news section is a two minute video of Head Coach Paulo Fonseca answering questions submitted through the app, but that was in July 2020, and he’s long gone. Working backwards, also in July 2020, thirty fans had videos of themselves put on the Stadio Olimpico digital hoardings; in February 2020, there was a poll to name a training pitch after a club legend; and in November there was a video of a Roma superfan competition winner having a day out at a game. That seems to be your lot. I’ll come back to the lack of anything to actually do on this app in a moment.

The other thing my token gets me from Roma is a 5% cashback ‘benefit’ on merch. That doesn’t sound like a bad deal for seven euros. A standard home shirt is €90, so €4.50 cashback on that would be decent. It’s not quite that simple, though. You can’t read the details of the offer until you have enough tokens to access it. As a confirmed Roma superfan, I have one, so I can have a look: turns out it’s a one-time offer, and it’s only applied to the first €50 I spend, so cashback is to a maximum of €2.50. I have to take a photo of the receipt and upload it to the app, and then: ‘Once authenticated, Socios account holders who are KYC level 3 verified or higher will receive the 5% cashback in their Socios.com wallet via $CHZ airdrop! Ready to continue?’

But there are other offers being shown here. I could get 10% cashback, if I only had 100 $ASR tokens. Or even better, 20% cashback, if I owned 250 tokens — that’s the first ‘Benefit’ you’re shown, before scrolling sideways to the 10% and 5% offers. But 250 tokens… that’s the equivalent of €1,732.50. Which seems like a lot of money to have wrapped up in a fun fan engagement app. Most clubs offer this same ‘benefit’, but at Paris Saint-Germain, 250 $PSG tokens are worth €38,220 this morning. And I can’t read the terms and conditions to learn the maximum cashback amount until after I have the 100/250 tokens needed for the ‘Benefit’.

If this app is just about a fun token and a few quizzes, how come on nearly every club page I’m looking at a ‘Benefit’ that will cost me the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of pounds to access, and earn me perhaps, if it turns out to be capped at 20% of €50, ten bucks? I know, I know, I don’t have to access it. Maybe I could stop being so greedy and be happy with my one token and my €2.50 one-time cashback. But I’ve downloaded the app now, haven’t I? And I assume the 20% for 250 tokens is front and centre for a reason — they must expect someone to be taking it up. Maybe I can trade my fan tokens back and forth in different clubs to get up to that level (trading tokens is point four on ‘The Superfan Checklist’ they emailed to me), assuming the values of my trades don’t go down.

There is another way of acquiring tokens. The tabs at the bottom of the screen are Home, Wallet (your balance), Hunt, Feed (Socios news), Rewards. Rewards give you something called XP gamification points for completing various tasks. For example, the ‘Trade’ section will reward you for completing ‘Sell Sell Sell! — Take the plunge — sell your fan tokens for the first time and let the trading begin!’ or ‘Shut Up & Take My Money! — Fill up your empty wallet with some $CHZ and start your game’ (roughly translated that means putting some euros in). XP tokens can give you a place on a leaderboard, yet to be launched, where you can win VIP tickets and other prizes. More immediately useful are $SSU tokens, 100 of which will give you access to the ‘All Sports Discussion’ and ‘All Trading Discussion’ chatrooms — I guess a crypto trading chatroom could be useful on this app? — or enable you to grab fan tokens for new clubs before they’re launched. You get these by playing a pretty miserable form of Pokemon Go — that’s the ‘Hunt’ tab. Every day you can grab some $SSU tokens from nearby, or sometimes (I haven’t seen one) a $CHZ token. If you turn off the augmented reality you just tap a couple of $SSU tokens on a map and they’re added to your wallet, where you can see them alongside your balance in euros and $CHZ.

These games bring me back to the content. There isn’t much of it, and I suspect part of the reason execs like Angus Kinnear are bemused by the reaction to this app is that, deep down, they’re not very fussed about the content. The clubs are being paid by Socios upfront, so the content is for Socios to worry about, as they monetise to make that money back. Every club is running the same sort of polls — design the bus, choose the goal music, tell the goalkeeper what colour gloves to wear in training — and based on last season’s content, they’re usually months apart, so for a long time you won’t be interacting or influencing your favourite team on this app at all. Some clubs are a little more involved, letting you pick some questions to ask a player or manager at a press conference, but again, this content is consistent across clubs and there’s nothing innovative here or, significantly, that looks club-led, unique to one team rather than another. There are a couple of weeks until most European seasons start but none of the clubs on the app have anything for me, their devoted superfan, to do. It feels to me like, up to now, the discussions with Socios around offers and ‘influence’ have been ending with most clubs saying, well, what are the other clubs doing? Okay, let’s do the bus thing. Then in a couple of months the goal music thing. Socios are coming up with content ideas and clubs are going, okay, pre-match playlist, whatever. Maybe that will change. Some of Socios’ more vocal users on social media reckon fans will be picking the team through this app one day.

Who these ‘engagement’ ideas will appeal to in the meantime is another thing. You can quite quickly get called grandad for not jumping on board with the exciting future of blockchain powered fan engagement and innovative content. Okay, fine. I’m old. Let’s assume that Milan’s poll a couple of weeks ago, asking fans to vote for a player ‘To dare to show us the inside of their personal shower bag’, is aimed at much younger fans than me. The Pokemon Go token-hunting game sure is, and the language of the rewards games mentioned above has a young voice: or, for another example, ‘Pick your 2 favourite teams and make sure you purchase their tokens’ to get 150 XP. Does anyone over the age of fourteen have two favourite teams, or want to know what’s inside Daniel Maldini’s shower bag, or want to play a token hunt game? Fair enough if that’s what today’s teens are into. But should anyone under the age of eighteen be topping up this app with the euros they need to buy tokens for both their two favourite teams, maybe not understanding that they’re actually investing in cryptocurrency that could fluctuate wildly in value before their parents even check their credit card bill? There is a warning about using another person’s card, and of course, kids famously heed those warnings. But the app is also set by default to save credit card details for a faster top up next time.

After exploring the app over a few days I think this thing is, as it stands, a mess. It’s not supposed to be a cryptocurrency trading app, but you have to trade cryptocurrency to use it. You’ll even get rewards for doing that. A token is two quid, until it’s eight quid, or thirty quid. It’s an app for fun quizzes and votes, that keeps telling you to top up with €25. It isn’t selling influence, but it sells itself as influential. Blockchain technology will be a ‘competitive advantage’ for clubs in the future, but none of the clubs can be bothered making anything for the app now. It’s Pokemon Go, y’know, like for kids, but you’re hunting cryptocurrency assets which are, y’know, for fiscally responsible adults.

As always with a mess, you wonder why it was made. If this didn’t exist, I doubt you’d need to invent it. Using the app, there’s very little content to engage with, but a lot of cryptocurrency — every page shows you a token value, a euro value, and a green or red percentage increase or decrease, then a bunch of samey-looking polls that closed weeks or months ago. The $CHZ top up button and Market trading button are never far away from showing you which tokens are up and which are down, and don’t forget, it’s a ‘Superfan’ move to trade your tokens for another club’s. There was some attention over the weekend on how Milan and Real Madrid swapped fan tokens before their friendly, part of Milan’s Socios-sponsored summer tour, but when it comes down to it, that was all about old fashioned sponsorship. Anyone can sponsor a friendly, and in return, decide what’s on the pennants or whatever that the players exchange. Much of Socios’ innovative, disruptive activity boils down to stuff like that. They’ve basically paid for sponsorship rights to a friendly match pennant, or a team bus, then they’ve run a competition to pick a design. In essence that’s nothing any other sponsor hasn’t done before. Why, then, does it need to have cryptocurrency and blockchain tacked onto it? Who gains from Frankensteining trading in $CHZ onto deciding the look of a team bus Socios are paying to sponsor?

Some investors in $CHZ, probably. From the past twelve months, to today, the value of $CHZ has risen by more than 2,000%. Cool for you if you happened to own a bunch of $CHZ before the app took off. Let’s imagine a theoretical person out there a year ago with £100,000 invested in $CHZ — that’s worth £2m now! If that person invested their £100,000 at the lowest point in the last twelve months, and sold it after that low point when $CHZ reached an all-time high in March, after that 9,954% increase they’d have been walking away with more than £10m. Although $CHZ is about 60% down from that all-time high, it’s up by 28% over the last month, 22% over the last week. Somebody could be making a lot of money off this $CHZ thing, but it isn’t Leeds United and it sure ain’t me (my Roma token has gone down).

What drives the price of cryptocurrency up and down in general is still as much mystery as science, but one key factor is mainstream acceptance — the theory goes that as cryptocurrency gets better known, and the more it is used in day to day life, the greater the demand will be, and the higher the price. That’s why, when Elon Musk tweets that Tesla will use Bitcoin, Bitcoin’s price goes up, and when he tweets that they won’t, Bitcoin’s price goes down. So as more clubs come on-stream with Socios — West Ham appear to have faded from the scene, but Arsenal, Inter, the Portugal national team, Valencia, Leeds United and others are listed in-app ready to launch — with all their season ticket holders and members acquiring free fan tokens linked to $CHZ, and others following them wanting to buy fan tokens and play games and vote in polls, more football fans will, knowingly or not, be owning $CHZ cryptocurrency. The first thing the app tells you to do, after signing up, is deposit €25 to buy $CHZ, so you can buy fan tokens. Cryptocurrency might well be the future, but right now it’s confusing, and if you asked most people if they wanted to sign up to a cryptocurrency exchange and start trading today, they’d give it a cautious swerve. But signing up to this app is like signing up to an exchange that only sells one cryptocurrency. And that feels to me like the point of it all. Most clubs will prefer to keep their best content on their own channels, and to keep the peace, they will have to keep the fan votes on Socios fairly meaningless. The meaning for Socios is all in $CHZ.

Some of Angus Kinnear’s comments on the TSB podcast were replying to objections about ‘monetising fan engagement’. He said, “Professional football clubs are fundamentally about monetising fan engagement, whether that’s selling tickets or broadcast rights or, you know, when we want supporters to engage in the brand, often there’s a financial transaction.” That’s all true and I’ve no complaints there. Behind the modern language, those are some of the fundamentals of a football club. Fans buy stuff like tickets or shirts from the club for money, then the money is spent on players we can enjoy watching, hopefully winning. That’s been the deal for decades and I’m fine with that. The club is a lot better at upholding its end of that bargain now than it was under former owners. The question, though, is about why Socios need to be involved in this. They’re paying to be, which is to the club’s benefit financially, but is that enough?

One of the examples Kinnear gave for how Leeds United might use the app is for naming the third and fourth training pitches at Thorp Arch. Fans could vote to name them after former players, like Roma fans did last year. But speaking from one fans’ point of view, after using the Socios app, I can not see how this process will be helped, or made easier, or made more fun, or more engaging, or produce a better decision, by first requiring me to put money into an app to buy cryptocurrency to buy a fan token to vote. I think Socios will do quite well out of that process, as will cryptocurrency speculators if the price of $CHZ goes up. But when I engage with my football club, whether that’s input into ticketing, voting to name a pitch, or writing a critical blog post about a third-party cryptocurrency fan engagement app, I want to be helping my football club. I feel like anything I do with this Socios app will be in the service of Socios, not Leeds United, and certainly not me, and I think that welding youth-orientated fan votes to cryptocurrency trading in one phone app comes with too many potential pitfalls. There might well be a blockchain enabled future for football and football fans, and in other parts of society. Surely this isn’t it. ◉

[Wile E Coyote]

so when talk sport and their insipid presenters and the prince of inarticulate, business speak simon jordan are pontificating on strangely high fees being paid for rather average players, is this what lies lurking in the background?

[Chester Perry]

so when talk sport and their insipid presenters and the prince of inarticulate, business speak simon jordan are pontificating on strangely high fees being paid for rather average players, is this what lies lurking in the background?

you will have to give me some direction as to which story theme you are asking about - that covers a pretty wide range of then

[Chester Perry]

Simon Chadwick has been a busy chap in the last day of 2 - publishing 2 different articles (and being interviewed for a third) on the Messi move and how it plays for the geo-politcal ambitions of Qatar

What Lionel Messi tells us about Qatar’s global ambitions https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/what-l ... tions/What Lionel Messi tells us about Qatar’s global ambitions

Lionel Messi and Jack Grealish are ‘pawns’ in PSG and Man City’s proxy battle as the rest of football suffers https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/lion ... bi-1142777

Lionel Messi: why his arrival in Paris is a key part of Qatar’s game plan https://theconversation.com/lionel-mess ... lan-165982

[Chester Perry]

Simon Chadwick has been a busy chap in the last day of 2 - publishing 2 different articles (and being interviewed for a third) on the Messi move and how it plays for the geo-politcal ambitions of Qatar

What Lionel Messi tells us about Qatar’s global ambitions https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/what-l ... tions/What Lionel Messi tells us about Qatar’s global ambitions

Lionel Messi and Jack Grealish are ‘pawns’ in PSG and Man City’s proxy battle as the rest of football suffers https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/lion ... bi-1142777

Lionel Messi: why his arrival in Paris is a key part of Qatar’s game plan https://theconversation.com/lionel-mess ... lan-165982

The link on that first one has broken and the edit block is still in place unfortunately so here it is again https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/what-l ... ambitions/

[Chester Perry]

Sky have commissioned a report looking at modern football fandom in the UK - many of us are still coming to terms with the notion of "legacy fandom" which was a key phrase around the time of the Super League announcement and itself a product of an ECA survey on fandom and the fan of the future (https://www.ecaeurope.com/media/4802/ec ... fandom.pdf). Sky's report is somewhat different and what is presented seems a bit restrictive (i.e no the full report but still worthy of conversation)

due to Sky's presentation of it it is best to provide a link https://www.skysports.com/football/stor ... o-find-out

[Chester Perry]

An interesting (and possibly relevant to our club) interview from OffthePitch.com

Interview: How innovation and local businesses helped Real Sociedad increase season tickets sold by 50 per cent
11 August 2021 2:55 PM

• Juan Iraola is chief innovation officer at Real Sociedad and has helped the club use technology in areas including their stadium and fan engagement.

• An app-based loyalty programme featuring local brands saw a dramatic increase in the number of season tickets sold.

• The club are exploring new revenue streams from areas including content, e-learning and virtual reality experiences.

• Iraola says clubs should "question everything" and share ideas to best take advantage of technological innovations.

ROBERT KIDD contact@offthepitch.com

In 2009, Juan Iraola was a consultant advising companies how technology could help them to reach their goals.

He spoke to Real Sociedad and suggested they build a private social network to manage the relationship between the club and their fans.

"The first question was: 'what is a social network?'" Iraola tells Off The Pitch.

"I told them it would be like a kind of Facebook but in private mode. The second question was: 'what is Facebook?'"

Today, Iraola is chief innovation officer at Real Sociedad and leads a digital transformation that has seen the club become one of the most tech-savvy in Europe.

Four priority areas

An industrial engineer by training, Iraola joined the San Sebastian-based LaLiga club at the start of 2016 and implemented a digital strategy across all areas of the organisation.

At the time Real Sociedad were in the process of redeveloping their Reale Arena stadium but hadn't considered how data and technology could be harnessed as part of the renovation.

The stadium and physical spaces became one of four priority areas for Iraola and his team. The others were fan engagement, sporting excellence and business processes.

In terms of business processes, the club has added "small things that add value", like bringing in Office 365 across the organisation. There is also a mobile-first approach and about 80 per cent of all visitors to the club website arrive using their mobile phone.

New points of sale helped measure the purchasing behaviour of fans and has boosted ecommerce sales.

"In the last three years we have doubled the revenue we get from ecommerce every year," Iraola says.

Attracting more fans to matches

One of the most impressive returns Real Sociedad has seen from their bet on innovation is in fan engagement.

Before it was renovated, the capacity of the club's stadium was 30,000, with the average attendance about 20,000. The renovation took the capacity to 40,000, in a province with a population of 700,000.

"When the capacity for the new stadium was announced there was a lot of controversy and complaints because it didn't make sense to increase the capacity by 10,000 seats considering the average attendance was 20,000," Iraola says.

To attract supporters, a loyalty programme was designed which allowed season ticket holders to gather discounts on the price of their season ticket as a percentage of the purchases they made with participating brands. The brands that signed up to the programme included a local supermarket chain, a newspaper, an insurance company and a petrol provider.

A lot of clubs are gathering a huge amount of data. The question is how to interpret the data in the right way to make the right decision. This is the key right now

Suddenly, by filling up their car or doing the weekly shopping and tracking their spending in the loyalty programme app, fans could save money on their season ticket.

"This discount was applied to the season ticket fee that they have to pay annually. This attracted a lot of people and now the number of season ticket holders is 30,000," Iraola says.

"The next challenge is the bars in the stadium – we have 34 bars and the income is very low. One of the objectives is to increase the revenue. The only way to do this is to better know our fans and to deliver a better experience for them."

The importance of data

Using data to drive decision making is "the past, present and future" of the club's innovation strategy, Iraola says. He sees big potential as data analytics moves from descriptive analysis (analysing something that has happened) to prescriptive analysis (suggesting actions and showing the likely outcomes).

"Right now we are in the a descriptive phase of data analysis. In the sport area they have done incredible work in the academy and professional areas, for example monitoring the progress of players," Iraola says.

"We are making the foundation to keep going and maybe go to the predictive and prescriptive data analysis. A lot of clubs are gathering a huge amount of data. The question is how to interpret the data in the right way to make the right decision. This is the key right now."

Data insights are helping Real Sociedad in their search for new ways to connect with brands and fans.

They have experimented with wearable technology, releasing both a "smart scarf" and "smart shirt". Scanning a QR code on the shirt sends fans to a page offering discounts and experiences, while the scarf connects with the club app via an NFC (Near Field Communication) chip embedded within it.

Exploring new revenue streams

There is hope tech-enabled initiatives like this can lead to new revenue streams.

Before the 2019/20 season, Real Sociedad received zero revenue from digital assets. Now, as well as the increase in ecommerce sales, they have started monetising their YouTube channel and see opportunities in other areas.

Content is one of those and the club are in discussions with different vendors about creating their own OTT (over-the-top) service. Iraola says this will operate on a revenue share model, with money received from fan subscriptions and ads shared between the club and the vendor providing the OTT platform.

Other potential revenue streams are education, with the club working on an e-learning platform, and NFTs (non-fungible tokens). An NFT is a confirmation of authenticity for a unique digital item, collectable or artwork. The item is saved on a blockchain network. Last month Real Sociedad released NFTs relating to the club's shirt and their Copa del Rey win in April.

Even virtual reality experiences are in Iraola's future plans.

"There are companies that use tracking data to recreate, using virtual reality, a play of the game. And you can follow a player who was involved in that play," he says.

Collaborating with other clubs

With all these ideas, Iraola wants the whole football industry to improve how it uses technology, not only his club.

Real Sociedad are a member of both the Sport Innovation Alliance, which includes 32 clubs from 26 countries, and the Global Football Alliance, which currently has 12 clubs.

"We share different kinds of solutions that we consider would be interesting for the other teams," Iraola says.

If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough

"Everything from fan engagement to the sporting area to the stadium."

One area of concern for clubs all over the world is how best to engage Generation Z. Alliance members, including Wolves and Legia Warsaw, are devising a survey for Gen Z fans to learn more about how they want to interact with a football club.

With "incredible" technology available, Iraola has a disruptive approach. He aims to "question everything" and build a culture of challenging conventions.

To sum up his philosophy, he quotes former racing driver Mario Andretti: "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."

[superdimitri]

The link on that first one has broken and the edit block is still in place unfortunately so here it is again https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/what-l ... ambitions/

Forward it to Mr Pace please. Actually, I'd be surprised if he doesn't already know about it.

[Chester Perry]

well here is a way to bring two recent themes together - from the Telegraph

Lionel Messi's PSG transfer to include payment using crypto fan tokens
As a free transfer, Messi signed a deal worth £53.8 million per season before tax deductions are made

By Telegraph Sport AND REUTERS
12 August 2021 • 10:28am

Lionel Messi's transfer to Paris St Germain included a payment in cryptocurrency fan tokens, a source close to the matter said, providing another big name endorsement for new digital assets.

Messi, 34, left Barcelona and signed a two-year contract with PSG, with an option for a third year, on Tuesday.

PSG said in a statement the tokens included in his "welcome package", or signing on fee, had been provided by Socios.com who are the club's fan token provider.

The club did not state what percentage of the deal comprised the tokens but said he had received a "large number". It has also not disclosed the overall financial package.

Fan tokens are a type of cryptocurrency that allow holders to vote on mostly minor decisions related to their clubs. Among the clubs to launch tokens this year are Premier League champions Manchester City and Serie A side AC Milan.

Like bitcoin and other digital currencies, fan tokens can be traded on exchanges. They also share in common with other cryptocurrencies a tendency for wild price swings, leading some financial regulators to issue warnings to investors.

PSG said there had been a high volume of trading of its fan tokens after reports of Messi's move to the club emerged.

"The hype surrounding the latest signings in the club’s busy summer transfer window created a huge surge of interest in $PSG Fan Tokens, with trading volumes exceeding $1.2 billion in the days preceding the move," it said.

The fan tokens' price moves can have little connection to on-field performance or results.

PSG's token, which has a market capitalisation of about $52 million, soared over 130 per cent in just five days amid speculation over Messi's arrival to an all-time high of over $60 on Tuesday. They were last down 10 per at about $40, according to the CoinMarketCap website.

[Chester Perry]

Today's Athletic podcast should be interesting - looks at both the Messi Transfer and it's relationship with FFP, also the role of external investment in the game with a focus on that CVC/La Liga deal - about which there is a press conference happening right now I think

the blurb

Mark Chapman is joined by The Athletic's Oliver Kay to look at how Lionel Messi's transfer to PSG plays against the backdrop of financial fair play, nearly ten years after it was first introduced by UEFA. With Man City and PSG spending as much as they ever have, can we really say that FFP has worked? Has it merely supressed the middle and allowed the elite to break free? Is this latest spending spree just a quirk of the post-covid landscape?

We are also joined by Luis Garcia Alvarez - football investor and equity portfolio manager for MAPFRE - for a look at the deal La Liga have done with investment fund CVC Capital - selling a 10% stake for 2.7 billion - and whether it is a good deal for the Spanish clubs. Is it the way forward for European sports leagues to grow revenues sustainably? Or is it dangerous to put your destiny in the hands of profit-minded investors?

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

[Chester Perry]

Today's Athletic podcast should be interesting - looks at both the Messi Transfer and it's relationship with FFP, also the role of external investment in the game with a focus on that CVC/La Liga deal - about which there is a press conference happening right now I think

the blurb

Mark Chapman is joined by The Athletic's Oliver Kay to look at how Lionel Messi's transfer to PSG plays against the backdrop of financial fair play, nearly ten years after it was first introduced by UEFA. With Man City and PSG spending as much as they ever have, can we really say that FFP has worked? Has it merely supressed the middle and allowed the elite to break free? Is this latest spending spree just a quirk of the post-covid landscape?

We are also joined by Luis Garcia Alvarez - football investor and equity portfolio manager for MAPFRE - for a look at the deal La Liga have done with investment fund CVC Capital - selling a 10% stake for 2.7 billion - and whether it is a good deal for the Spanish clubs. Is it the way forward for European sports leagues to grow revenues sustainably? Or is it dangerous to put your destiny in the hands of profit-minded investors?

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

The associated Athletic article on ten years of FFP

https://theathletic.com/2763491/2021/08 ... ign=601983

[Chester Perry]

@PhilippeAuclair and Josimar Football come up trumps again with another investigation - our club and it's new and previous shirt sponsors get a mention too

The trillion-dollar gambling game
12/08/2021

Is the Premier League used as part of an unprecedented money-laundering operation?

By Philippe Auclair

Far Eastern gambling operators of whom almost nothing is known have become ubiquitous presences in the English game over the past decade. Mysterious brands invest millions in shirt sponsorships and commercial partnerships each season, often for a year or two before disappearing and being replaced by other operators which are just as mysterious. The opacity of these companies, predominantly operating from the Philippines, is such that they are widely suspected to be used for money-laundering schemes on a bewildering scale: it is estimated that 1 trillion US dollars of untraceable money is bet through unregulated bookmakers annually.

Yet, despite the regulations put in place by the British Gambling Commission, these operators have escaped all scrutiny. To avoid the gaze of the regulators, all they have to do is to use an intermediary which will obtain a UK licence for them – through a so-called “white label” agent, of which one, TGP Europe Ltd, based in the Isle of Man tax haven, dominates the British market. There they can then hide in plain sight with no fear of investigation, sponsoring club shirts and becoming ‘partners’ of some of the biggest clubs in the world. Josimar can now reveal, following a year-long investigation conducted with the help of gambling industry insiders, the true nature of this business and how English football has turned a blind eye to the origin of the tainted money on which it relies to a greater extent than ever before.

Of the hundreds of millions of viewers who watched Liverpool beat Manchester United 4-2 at Old Trafford on Thursday 13 May, in what is traditionally one of the most eagerly awaited fixtures of the Premier League calendar, most will not have paid attention to the message which flashed repeatedly on the stadium’s ‘digital perimeter boards’ during the game, promoting – in Chinese ideograms – a website called hth366.com. Three months later, this company’s purported British website, which is still under construction, appears to be geo-blocked in the United Kingdom itself.

Should you be able to access it, what this website promises to deliver, ‘COMING YOUR WAY SOON!‘, however, is the very opposite of a shock. hth366.com (hthbet.co.uk in its British incarnation) is – you guessed it – a betting and gambling platform (“a great new sportsbook and online casino offering”, according to their online blurb), one of a head-spinning number of such ventures, almost all of them based in the Far East, which have become major commercial partners of English professional football, both at Premier League and Championship level.

Eight Premier League clubs had gambling companies as their main shirt sponsors in 2020-21 (Burnley, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Leeds, Newcastle, Southampton, West Ham and Wolves). It will be nine in 2021-22. Norwich City, who won the Championship and were promoted, decided to cancel their agreement with Malaysian betting platform BK8 after a public outcry. Norwich, having come to the end of a ‘record deal’ with Dafabet, provoked a social media storm in England when it was discovered that BK8 used quasi-pornographic images of young female models to promote its brand in Asia. Interestingly, no questions had been asked about the mysterious ownership of BK8. But then, these types of questions are not asked in English football. There certainly were none, either from fans or the governing bodies, when Watford, another promoted club, closed yet another ‘record deal’ with Sportsbet.io, a subsidiary of the Coingaming Group which is already Southampton’s main sponsor (*). In July of this year, Watford moved on to yet another e-Gambling platform, Stake.com, “the leading crypto casino and sports betting platform worldwide” (*).

Regarding Sportsbet.io, it is striking, highly revealing, too, how their non-UK websites differ from the British version. The ‘foreign’ websites, which drive most of the traffic, allow their customers to remain anonymous when they make deposits in cryptocurrencies and place their bets, something which is illegal in the United Kingdom. Yet it is the UK, through the Premier League, which this company has made the nexus of its advertising and marketing strategy, despite the fact that it is not British punters it seeks to attract.

Nor does the gambling industry’s involvement in elite English football stop there. At the time of writing, Aston Villa had OB Sports (“one of the most trustworthy and reliable platforms in Asia”, according to a club statement) as a ‘sleeve sponsor’, whilst Arsenal, Brighton, Everton (previously sponsored by one of the most controversial betting platforms, SportPesa), Leicester, Manchester United, Tottenham and West Brom all had official ‘betting partners’. Four Premier League clubs also had specific ‘Asian betting partners’.

The supposed ‘crackdown’ on betting which, according to UK media, is being envisaged by the British government in its current review of football’s relationship with gambling certainly hasn’t discouraged clubs or bookmakers from cultivating what is a fruitful relationship for both sides.

It is no wonder that watching a live Premier League game on TV in the UK feels like sitting in a bookmaker’s shop, as viewers are bombarded with advertisements before, during and after the game. Whilst the players are transformed into running billboards for an industry which is responsible for life-destroying addiction, thousands of personal bankruptcies and an estimated 400 suicides each year in Britain alone, television keeps hammering the message away. 237,000 gambling ads were aired in the UK in 2007, in the wake of the deregulation which accompanied the implementation of the 2005 Gambling Act. In 2013, the figure was 1.2 million, which constituted over 4% of the total advertising revenue garnered by TV companies.

Show me the money!
It is difficult to establish how much gambling sponsorships and other commercial relationships of that kind are worth to Premier League clubs as a whole, as the exact figures are kept confidential. It is, however, possible to come up with reasonably accurate estimates as far as some individual clubs are concerned. When it comes to shirt sponsorship, gambling operators as a rule see no value in associating their brand with world-famous clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester United, as these commercial juggernauts have priced themselves out of that particular market. No betting platform would consider aligning itself on the 70 million euro Chevrolet used to pay to Manchester United per annum, for example, which is why it is ‘smaller’ Premier League (and Championship) clubs which are the betting industry’s main targets, as they’ll be ready to emblazon their shirts for fees which, according to industry specialists, range from 3.5 million to 10 million euro per season.

To these sums must be added the revenue of specific advertising campaigns from companies such as hth366.com, as well as income derived from secondary partnerships. One example: Manchester United is thought to have earned 3.5 million euro a year from its deal with Yabo Sports, a Chinese betting company which has also counted Leicester City as a ‘global partner’. Remarkably, Yabo, a company which was registered in 2018, managed to build a quite extraordinary portfolio of such partnerships within a year of its creation, signing deals with the Argentina National Football Team, Hertha BSC, AS Monaco, Serie A, Copa América, and FC Bayern Munich ‘amongst others’. AC Milan followed in October 2020. Just as remarkably, Yabo Sports does not appear to have any presence on social media, which begs the question: who is using their platform?

That a company which did not even exist four years ago should be able to invest tens of millions in marketing its brand globally says a lot about the scale of the business it is involved in – and of the profits that can be made. Industry insiders believe the worldwide online sports betting market (which operates mostly from Eastern Asia, which accounts for an estimated 80% of their activity) to be worth 1 trillion US dollars in terms of bets placed, of which 600 billion US dollars are thought to be wagered in China alone; give or take a billion or two, roughly the combined GDPs of Sweden, Finland and Norway.

In this context, paying millions for the privilege of being associated with an English football club represents excellent business for Asian gambling operators, almost all of which are based in countries where sports betting is severely restricted or illegal: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and, first among them, China (the territory of Macau excepted). To circumvent local legislation, these companies register their headquarters abroad, the Philippines being the country of choice for a majority of them, as we shall see. Their domestic customers bet exclusively online on platforms which guarantee anonymity, sometimes going through agents who add another layer of opacity to the transactions, not that the local authorities seem particularly keen to crack down on this huge industry despite words to the contrary. The biggest problem for the gambling companies, then, is not how to operate, but how to get known and attract customers, which is against the law of their countries; and this why they have turned to European football and, more specifically, to England’s Premier League to advertise their services.

The advantages are many. Firstly, the Premier League is immensely popular in their main markets. Advertising there guarantees huge exposure, be it through shirt sponsorship or messages rolling on stadium LED boards. The PL also has a reputation for the integrity of its competition, something that could not be said of many local Asian leagues, in which corruption and match-fixing are rife. PL games are a safe bet in more ways than one.

Tellingly, the partnerships which those Asian betting giants establish with English clubs are usually short-lived, as their aim is, first and foremost, to alert their potential customers to their existence, not to grow a business in the UK itself, where their clients typically number in the low thousands – if they have any, not that it seems to bother them: the English language twitter account of LaBa360, once the official sponsor of Burnley FC, had a mere 219 followers at the time of writing. Once the name of the company has received enough exposure to build a consumer base at home – or as was the case for Moplay, a former partner of Manchester United, has gone bankrupt – it’s time to move on and be replaced by yet another ‘new’ betting company which might very well be nothing but an avatar of the previous ‘Asian betting partner’.

A good example of this is how LoveBet ‘succeeded’ the already-mentioned LaBa360 as Burnley FC’s shirt sponsor when, in fact, both are brands of the same entity (*). Seen that way, the investment is minimal, far less than what (if allowed, which it is not) a full-blown advertising campaign would cost on local billboards and television screens. So much money is at stake. What’s an investment of a few million when the market’s annual turnover is 1 trillion US dollars, and a market research institute predicted that “the online gambling and betting market in Asia Pacific was anticipated to expand at a significant compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 14 percent between 2018 and 2026”?

It must be noted that this vertigo-inducing figure dwarves the revenues of household names in the European gambling industry. To draw a parallel, the two giants from the British Isles, Bet365 and the rapidly-expanding Flutter Entertainment, an Irish consortium which controls Paddy Power, Betfair, Skybet, Adjarabet, TVG and other subsidiaries, generate an annual combined revenue of 10.5 billion US dollars, from wagers totalling over 100 billion pounds. This sounds huge, and is, but only represents roughly 1/10th of the amount which is bet through unregulated operators.

The profits are colossal. Major European bookmakers generate operating incomes which range from 14 to 26% of their turnover, and there is every reason to believe that unregulated Asian companies, all of which are registered in a variety of tax havens, are even more profitable. As to where the money ends, nobody knows, as nobody knows who owns those companies – and this includes the Premier League and Championship clubs which cut lucrative deals with them.

They too have no idea of who they are dealing with, or where the money they get is coming from. Manchester United and the others will never deal directly with the Asian betting companies which pay millions to put their names on shirts and boards. They don’t need to. One wonders if they’d want to anyway.

Yet those – predominantly Chinese – gambling giants are allowed to operate freely, in full public view, in the United Kingdom, home of the world’s most popular league, without adhering to the regulatory framework which British companies must abide by. How can that be?

The answer is simple: through using so-called ‘white label’ companies/agents, most often based in the British Crown dependency of the Isle of Man, thanks to agents such as Douglas-based TGP Europe Limited. All they need to do is fill in some paperwork and pay their fees – which are modest in comparison with the profits to be made. Then what was already a murky business turns even murkier.

The Manx “white label” washing-machine
As far as TGP is concerned, it all started with a man named Joseph Frederick (“Joe”) Jennings, in 1961, the year in which bookmakers were at last allowed to set up shop on the British high streets, when they’d been operating on the fringes of legality at racecourses and sports fields for centuries. Betting has been a steady companion of sport in Britain ever since horses have been raced and runs have been scored at cricket. But that ever-present companion had lived in the shadows until then. No-one seemed to know exactly which regulations, if any, applied to gambling on sporting events. Jennings seized his chance and opened his first betting office in the small town of Harlow, in the county of Essex.

As his business grew, so did Jennings’ ambitions. In March 1988, he had a new company, Joe Jennings (IOM), incorporated in the Isle of Man, which would become the family’s main concern in years to come. The Isle of Man, a self-governed Crown Dependency which draws its own laws, offered multiple advantages, first of them a generous tax system which has attracted a number of individuals and companies, especially insurance and eGambling ventures, which each account for an estimated 17% of the island’s GNP, that is a little over 1.1 billion US dollars per annum.

“Joe” Jennings was one of three directors, the other two being Linda Jennings, presumably his wife, and (presumably again) their then 18-year-old son Jason, who was appointed two months after the company’s registration. This company then went through a series of name changes – Tigres, JenningsBet (IOM), Whitenet Solutions Ltd to name the three Josimar found when researching the Isle of Man’s Companies Registry – before becoming TGP Europe Limited shortly before 2012, Jason Jennings retaining executive control of the company after he’d moved to the ‘Beverly Hills’ of Dubai – Emirates Hills – in 2009. (Josimar has been unable to verify suggestions that TGP Europe is ultimately part of the SunCity Group, which is run by Macau-born, Portuguese national Chau Cheok Wa).

TGP Europe Limited was and is not a traditional betting company, however. It does not offer odds or take bets. Its customers are not ordinary ‘punters’, but overseas companies, overwhelmingly if not exclusively from the Far East, which use TGP, who hold a UK Operators Licence, to become “white label” companies – in short, to obtain a licence by proxy.

In practice, this means that the service provided by foreign gambling operators is rebranded as a TGP offer, which runs and ‘powers’ their UK website. The re-branding in itself is enough to get the coveted licence from the UK’s Gambling Commission – a kind of legal re-packaging which opens up a market which would be out of bounds otherwise. It doesn’t matter that this amounts to a game of smoke and mirrors in the end, as the true market which these operators are aiming at is not the UK. As long as they can exist and advertise their existence, the job is done, even if the turnover of their ‘British’ arm is negligible.

Thanks to their “white label” status, courtesy of TGP, and their ad hoc new UK offices (which they are required to have by law, but are mere shells, ghost cells manned by a handful of employees), they can then engage with clubs and strike the deals they need to publicise their offer at home – in line with has been decided in Beijing or Manila, not London or Douglas. If TGP does not limit itself to sports betting companies, including various on-line casinos on its extensive list of “white label” partners, football gambling, however, represents the core of its activity.

At the time of writing, TGP was providing its services to a majority of the (mostly) Chinese-controlled, Philippines-based gambling websites which have partnerships in place with Premier League clubs, such as SBOTOP/SBOBET, Sportsbet.io, LT.com, Yabo and Fun88. TGP, though dominant, is not the only “white label” provider active in Britain. BetConstruct, which holds licences in Malta, France, South Africa, Sweden and Curaçao as well as the UK, is the other major actor in this field, representing Vbet and LoveBet among others.

When contacted by Josimar, the UK Gambling Commission insisted that a “rigorous examination of the applicant’s suitability to hold a licence” was paramount to the granting of that licence. This examination, however, remains limited to the company which applies for the licence, that is: the “white label” structure which TGP has put in place for its clients. It does not extend to the ultimate owners and beneficiaries, whose identity is neither sought nor divulged.

None of the criteria which the Gambling Commission runs the book by (“competence”, “criminality”, “identity and ownership”, “finances”, “integrity”, “upholding the licensing objectives”) apply to the concerns which stand to benefit most from the licence in the end. Once again, no-one knows where the money comes from or where it ends up, despite evidence that its origin and destination could be criminal, and the near-certainty that it feeds match-fixing. Yet, “gambling businesses can run their business from anywhere as long as it is legal to do so in that region”, the Gambling Commission told Josimar; and thanks to the “white label” system, it all ends up whiter than white in the wash. The Isle of Man’s own Gambling Commission, when contacted by Josimar, made it clear that it considered its British counterpart to be the supreme authority in the matter.

Gamekeepers turned poachers
TGP certainly knows how to play the game. It has the right people for that. In December 2011, Garth Kimber, until then Head of e-Gaming development at the Isle of Man government, “decided to return to the private sector”. This meant taking on the position of CEO of TGP Holdings Ltd (the parent company of TGP Europe Limited, of which he is a director) as soon as he’d left his position as a public servant. Since that date, Kimber has also become the CEO of Xela Holdings Ltd, the Isle of Man branch of a gaming consortium, after being headhunted for that job by its Asian parent company. A case of the game-keeper turned poacher, in a neat reversal of the old expression.

Kimber is not the only Manx figure whose professional life has combined public service and executive roles within the gambling industry in the Crown Dependency. William (“Bill”) Mummery, like Kimber a former “e-Gaming ambassador” for the IOM government from 2004 to 2007, is a Director of the Isle of Man’s Public Service Commission, described as ‘the Employer Body for the IOM Government Staff’ in his LinkedIn profile. He is also a Director of the Manx Utilities Authority, a director and a council member of the Isle of Man Chamber of Commerce and the Chairman of Manx Radio, the official national broadcaster of the island. In other words, Mummery is one of the best-connected pillars of the Isle of Man’s establishment.

This impressive collection of public roles did not prevent him from becoming the CEO of e-Gaming company Celton Manx Limited, which launched the first online live casino from the Isle of Man in 2009, a venture which he himself said was aimed at attracting Asian gamblers. Celton Manx Limited appears to be a vehicle for SBOBET/SBOTOP – Leeds United’s main sponsor and the company which had headhunted Mummery in 2008 -, a company whose website is run by TGP and whose Asian arm, SBOTOPAsia, has its headquarters in the Philippines.

The ownership of those companies cannot be ascertained. All that can be said with certainty is that Celton Manx Limited is registered in the Isle of Man and its Asian pendants have Filipino headquarters.

A look at the list of shareholders on the Isle of Man Companies Registry would not necessarily help to clear the mist surrounding their structure. As stated on the Manx government website, under the stipulations of the Beneficial Ownership Act 2017, “sometimes the actual or beneficial owner will appoint a nominee to hold the shares in their name. This is entirely legal and may be simply a personal preference for not wanting others to be aware of the owner’s investment decisions”.

Yet it is instructive to dig deeper in what is made publicly available (for a modest fee) by the Isle of Man government, even if this means hitting a wall at the end.

Firstly, a look at the list of directors of Celton Manx illustrates how intimately linked that company is to Eastern Asia. Of its seven current directors, three are Singaporean, including Chief Finance Director Oan Chim Seng, one is Malaysian (Chief of Finance Siew Leon Ng) and the fifth is Taiwanese Strategy Consultant Yu-Cheng Lin. Some of these directors have been associated with the company since the very beginning, namely Oan Chim Seng and Canadian Chief Executive Jimmy Lai.

Interestingly, these two individuals were among the eight, all of them Eastern Asians apart from Lai, who transferred their shares of Celton Manx Limited to another company registered in the Isle of Man, Celton International Limited, some time in 2008 or 2009. But looking at the documents filed by Celton International Limited at the IOM Companies Registry reveals something else: all of its 10,000 ordinary shares are owned by yet another company, Cardenhill Limited, registered in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. There the trail ends, as it usually does when it’s led to the Caribbean tax haven.

It’s worth noting that “Bill” Mummery is listed as a company secretary of Celton International Limited, but not as a director or a shareholder. This suggests that his ultimate involvement with Celton Manx Limited, Celton International Limited and Cardenhill does not extend to holding shares of the business of which he is the influential, media-friendly public face on the Isle of Man and in the UK. After all, who would ask inconvenient questions to an affable man whose company has been sponsoring fireworks displays in Douglas for a number of years? Who would look deeper into the business of his Celton Manx Limited when their website makes the company look like a charitable organisation? Who cares about who the ultimate owners of SBOTOP/SBOBET are and why they never appear in public when the CEO and figurehead of their Isle Of Man company is such a respectable member of Manx society?

Makati, the Square Mile of online gambling
The bewildering complexity of the management and ownership structure of Celton Manx SBOTOP/SBOBET is typical of the way “white label” companies operate, and explains how the Asian/Chinese betting giants can prosper undisturbed, unquestioned even, even though there would be plenty of tricky queries to answer to. The Isle of Man government itself is unlikely to do the questioning. It actively courts the biggest names in Asian e-Gaming on their own patch and regularly sends envoys to the major industry shows which are held in the region. This is how Tony Ure, a former executive specialising in poker at IGT GTECH and the Head of e-Gaming at the Isle of Man Digital Agency since 2017, was present at the largest event of this kind in the region, the G2E Asia Gaming Expo held in Macau in May 2019, as he had been a member of the jury of the G2E Asia Awards the year before that.

Most of the Asian online gambling entities have brought their operations to the Philippines, where they cannot offer their services to Filipinos, but are free to propose them to anyone else. Setting up there, in the so-called “Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Freeport”, requires the payment of an application fee of 40,000 US dollars, which is topped up by another fee of 48,000 dollars once the application has been approved by the Filipino authorities, after which the licence will be renewed at a cost of 60,000 dollars a year. Despite opposition by local politicians, safeguards are virtually non-existent in the Philippines, perhaps a reflection of the contribution of gambling to the country’s finances : the gambling boom is said to have created 470,000 jobs and to contribute 11 billion dollars annually to the Filipino economy.

These steep fees have not deterred prospective applicants. It has been estimated that almost a third of office space in Manila’s business quarter Makati is occupied by at least 300 online gambling operators, of which about a sixth – the major actors – are known as POGOs (*). These operators bring in, sometimes illegally, their Mandarin-speaking staff, whose working conditions are so harsh (confiscation of passports, twelve-hour working days and employees manacled to their desks, for example), that at least one suicide was reported in the Filipino media.

Makati is the base from which the Chinese companies deploy their marketing campaigns in the UK, which then boomerang back home thanks to the popularity of the Premier League, whilsts agents on the ground – mainly on the Chinese mainland – take care of customers. ‘Taking care’, in this instance, is thought to include loaning money at shark rates to losing punters. There are no regulations, no safeguards, no limits. Whilst European gambling concerns will cap maximum bets at an ‘affordable’ level (100 pounds, for example), will also keep track of who exactly is betting and have a duty of care towards their customers (regardless of what could be said about the ethical nature of betting per se), those Far Eastern operators whose names are writ large on Premier League shirts will accept bets from anyone, in a number of currencies, including cryptocurrencies, with no maximum wager set. Some individuals will bet thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars on a single outcome. All transactions are cloaked in complete secrecy, just as is the identity of those who will continue to earn millions, billions even.

A ‘cancer’ which nobody seems willing to root out
It is not as if it were impossible to take action against those secretive e-Gambling companies. It is just that almost everyone seems reluctant to do so. The Chinese government’s attitude remains ambiguous. On one hand, it uses the fiercest of rhetorics to condemn gambling and, especially, e-Gambling, a ‘cancer’ which must be ‘eradicated’. On the other hand, it still allows it to flourish in “special administrative zone” Macau, just as it allows gambling operators to advertise their services in Hong Kong. It has seized more than 32.95 billion US dollars from bank accounts linked to online gambling and precipitated the closure of some operators, such as AG Asia Entertainment, but hasn’t cracked yet as forcefully as it could have, and most of its e-Gambling industry remains relatively unscathed as a result.

Why? Some have said that this was a means to gain political influence over countries such as the Philippines by maintaining the threat to move decisively against one of their key economic sectors – in other words, “tow our line, and we’ll leave you undisturbed”. Others suggest that corruption within the Chinese authorities is so rife that gambling operators can pay for their relative inaction. In any case, very little has changed in practice, and there are no clear signs this is to change in the near future.

Neither will decisive action be taken by Rodrigo Duterte’s government, which has ruled out banning offshore gambling companies in the Philippines outright, even if two of these, Suncity and Hong-Kong-based Don Tencess Asian Solutions, sought a cancellation of their licence following ‘tax problems’ with the Filipino authorities, the latter being dissolved in May 2020. This is despite multiple reports of suspected links between at least some of these companies with labour exploitation, flouting of immigration rules, bribery of officials, sex-trafficking (some Manila casinos double as brothels) and, especially, money-laundering.

Data gathered by the Filipino Bureau of Customs evaluate that 390 million US dollars were laundered in the Philippines through e-Gambling by Chinese criminal syndicates in 2019 – to which must be added 633 million US dollars of ‘suspicious’ cash which was brought into the country from September 2019 to March 2020. Isolated raids have been conducted (277 Chinese online scammers were arrested in one of these last year), but this constitutes a mere drop in the ocean. 56 predominantly Chinese POGOs (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators) have been granted a licence in the country since they acquired legal status in 2016 (*), which employ an estimated 250,000 Chinese nationals. As presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said in March of last year, “we still need their money”.

The Premier League itself, should it wish to have a closer look at the relationship of many of its clubs to “white label” e-Gambling platforms (something which these clubs might not be necessarily keen on), would not be able to do so, as, ultimately, it all falls down to the British Gambling Commission to apply the rules. And so we get back to square one: the “white label” system, as it exists today, makes it near-impossible to track down who owns these e-Gambling platorms and benefits from them. As long as this system is in place and companies can hide behind a screen of other companies and the ultimate shareholders can conceal their involvement by appointing nominees, nothing will change.

The biggest threat to the sports betting operators, in fact, has not been the governments of China or the Philippines, but the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the postponement and/or cancellation of almost all sports competitions worldwide from March 2020 onwards and also put an end to ‘VIP gambling’, as international travel became impossible and casinos had to shut down. Gamblers accustomed to bet on Premier League matches had to turn their attention to the handful of leagues which still functioned. For example, friendly games between amateur Swedish sides, some of which were broadcast live on YouTube, were offered on e-Gambling platforms (including those which sponsor Premier League clubs) and each attracted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets amidst allegations of match-fixing and player intimidation. But this represented only a fraction of the money POGOs churned up pre-COVID, and dealt a fatal blow to at least five of them in the Philippines, as well as at least ten of their local service providers. The others survived, however, and can prosper again now that full league programmes have resumed throughout the world.

All of this, thanks in part to the silent complicity of some of the biggest clubs in the world.

Josimar asked William Mummery and TGP Europe Limited for comment and provided them with a list of detailed questions. We have not heard back from either despite repeated inquiries.

(*) Burnley’s new shirt sponsor, Spreadex, is also an e-Gambling operator, which offers spread betting on sports events and on the stock market. They are based in the United Kingdom. It is worth noting that the “multi-million deal” announced by Burnley represents a surprisingly high proportion of their annual turnover, which was £49.06m over the last tax year.

(*) POGO = Philippine offshore gaming operators

(*) 45 were active at the time of writing, which include all of those which are currently linked with Premier League clubs.

(*) According to a statement posted on Watford FC’s website, “Founded in 2017, Stake.com is one of the leaders in its industry, with over 30 billion transactions per year accounting for over five per cent of Bitcoin transactions worldwide”. However, their UK website (for “UK customers only”) doesn’t appear to be operational yet. Stake.com is also UFC’s official partner for Asia.

[Chester Perry]

Not really a surprise and you wonder if CVC had already accounted for this in the cost and 50 year return model - Barcelona and Real Madrid will not benefit or contribute to the CVC deal - translated from Marca.com

CVC will not 'touch' the rights of Real Madrid and Barcelona to carry out 'LaLiga Impulso'
The investment fund has preferred that in its 10% there are not the rights of the clubs that have voted against, but that the agreement is put in place for the others

SERGIO FERNÁNDEZ
Updated 08/12/2021 - 15:59

' LaLiga Impulso' will go ahead in the Club Assembly with a last minute modification: the CVC fund will not negotiate within its 10% with the rights of those clubs that have voted against. That means, for example, that Real Madrid and Barcelona will not collect any of the 2,700 million offered by the agreement, but it will not have any influence on their rights or their income , present or future.

With this measure, both LaLiga and CVC have tried to resolve the doubts of the two clubs that oppose the pact. Of the 2,700 million that the fund injects into the clubs, the 300 that would correspond to Real Madrid or Barcelona would remain untouched, for three years, in case at some point they want to accept them, but for the rest of the duration of the agreement, CVC could negotiate with 10% of the volume of business without including anything from both teams (nor from all those who vote against).

Real Madrid and Barcelona , in this way, will not be affected by LaLiga Impulso or their assets, or their income. If anything, only in favor, because the structural enrichment of the rest of the clubs that do receive the injection of funds. That improves LaLiga as a whole, increases its value and even the clubs that do not want it will have the advantage that television rights will be worth more, so they will earn more.

The CVC fund has preferred this option, according to the employer's association, to simplify the launch of LaLiga Impulso and render the announced complaints that Real Madrid or Barcelona wanted to make senseless . It simply won't affect you at all except, as we say, tangentially for the better with the growth of others.

[Chester Perry]

An interesting article from FootballLondon.com that laments what the League cup has become

Lionel Messi's PSG deal offers grim but timely reminder of English football's biggest problem
In a week dominated by Paris Saint-Germain's latest extension of their financial muscle, English football's third competition played quietly in the background. It has never been more clear that fundamental change is required

By Alan Smith Chief football writer - 08:32, 12 AUG 2021

Remember when the prospect of a Super League threatened to become reality all the way back in April? English football began to ask overdue profound questions of the pyramid, the perilous financial condition of the game beneath the billionaire-backed behemoths suddenly appeared front and centre in the minds of decision makers.

For a few days, anyway, before the hand-wringing dissipated and many sought to sweep it all under the carpet like it was merely a huge misunderstanding.

The Super League blueprint, grotesque and wrapped in greed, fell to pieces within 36 hours. But during that frantic, nervous Sunday evening when European football flirted with detonation, the first item on the chopping block felt destined to be the English League Cup, the third-rate competition in which top flight clubs rarely field strong sides until the semi-finals, but still oddly carries an undoubted prestige and has served up a steady stream of classic games across more than six decades of history.

News of a closed-shop continental competition arrived a week before last season’s final – Manchester City defeated Tottenham in front of 8,000 at Wembley, in case you have forgotten – and the EFL, so often muted in their public dialogue when it comes to the state of financially-stricken clubs and the fit and proper test of owners, were quick to say it had “concerns” about the competition’s future in a statement that elsewhere played on communities, supporters and what the game should really mean.

Since then a renewed sponsorship deal with Carabao has been secured and the EFL have been more than happy to boast of an increased global audience with games being broadcast across 181 territories and more than 100 million people tuning in. The competition is said to be worth £90-100m in revenue per season and in April the governing body stressed that it “provides vital income to clubs.”

Yet it is hard not to take issue with that claim when examining the breakdown of prize money and how, instead of offering a cash sum for winning games all the way up to the last eight, the primary source of income is a 45% even split of gate receipts. The other 10% goes towards the prize pool.

Dangling the prospect of a pay day in front of the smaller clubs, should they be lucky enough to land a kind draw such as Manchester United away after navigating the first two stages, is far from ideal and this week’s opening round showed how little interest the regular matchgoing fan has in a competition that requires a dramatic overhaul.

During a week in which the sport again found itself grappling with an identity crisis born from financial disparity as Lionel Messi joined Paris Saint-Germain, football.london went to two first round games and found apathy in high supply.

Messi and early season cup ties packed with teenage debutants may not be directly related but they are two sides of the same coin and the past 48 hours have made it clear that the game as we know it is hurtling towards a reckoning - Super League or not.

---

Tuesday night at the Valley. It is an hour before kick off and there are almost as many police officers as supporters loitering outside Charlton station. The walk down Floyd Road is scarcely busier and when the teams emerge for their warm-ups there is barely a ripple of applause.

By the time owner Thomas Sandgaard’s new club anthem Addicks to Victory is blaring out just before kick off a few more have filtered in. There are 3,372 to be precise, including 584 AFC Wimbledon fans in the away end, and the level of interest can be contextualised by the attendance being less than a fifth of those who turned up for the Addicks' scoreless League One opener against Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday evening.

Charlton start brightly but find themselves behind after 25 minutes when Paul Osew finishes a low Dapo Mebude cross from the right with ease. It’s almost 2-0 three minutes later only for youngster Jacob Roddy to clear from Ethan Chislett. Early in the second half PSG confirm the acquisition of Messi and, frankly, it is hard to focus on the real life action for a spell when queasily watching the drone footage published on their social media accounts.

The hosts, who register a single shot on target, push forward late on but when referee Robert Lewis signals the end there are a handful of boos as they fail to score for a second game running.

Down in the media room Nigel Adkins is not exactly despondent. He has given debuts to teenage defenders Deji Elerewe and Roddy along with a first start for Charles Clayden and views the evening as an important step on their pathway.

“You’ll find in tonight’s fixtures that everybody would have made a lot of changes,” Adkins says. “Everyone’s got to be mindful of the players but for me it was a great learning opportunity for a lot of our younger players. At the end of the day there needs to be a pathway for the academy into the first team.”

Wimbledon’s manager Mark Robinson makes a similar point but insists it is wrong to frame putting out close to an entirely different side as devaluing the tournament. “People look at eight changes and think ‘Oh, we’re not taking the competition seriously.’ Not at all,” he says. “We’re a really young squad and I feel we have the talent there and the side we put out was more than capable of winning the game.

“Incredible competitions in this country have been devalued by people not taking them seriously. You have to take it all seriously, we want to win everything because that’s what the fans deserve. It becomes a healthy mentality to go for it – it’s there to be won.”

The new Plough Lane will be packed out for the first time on Saturday when Bolton Wanderers arrive and asked what the ideal draw would be, Robinson is clear that any top flight team to christen their new home “would be lovely”, but particularly Leeds United.

Unfortunately for Robinson the second round (sensibly) remains split by geography to reduce travel and the Dons end up with Northampton Town away.

---

A look at the recent roll of honour for the League Cup can make going far seem a futile pursuit. To remix Gary Lineker’s old quote: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and, at the end, Manchester City always win.

Pep Guardiola’s team will be looking to make it five in a row come the start of next spring, or seven in nine with the only interruptions from Chelsea and United. Such dominance must not only be a concern for the less well-heeled down the pyramid but their handful of Premier League rivals with enough squad depth to put out strong teams in the early rounds.

City can be pooled with PSG and, indeed, Chelsea when it comes to the widening gulf in resources and it is worth referring again to the League Cup’s prize money as an illustration of how going all out to win the tertiary trophy is not far off a fool’s errand in the mind of many owners.

Excluding gate receipts and TV money, worth a couple of million for those who go far, City got £100,000 for beating Spurs, who pocketed £50,000. Many old romantics will argue it is not about the money but, with league pressures forever intensifying because that’s where the dough is, can anyone blame those not at the top table from not bothering with a moonshot?

Thirty years have passed since the last non-top flight team won this competition – Sheffield Wednesday, then in the second tier, defeating Manchester United – and the last non-Premier League club to reach the final was nine seasons ago, when Bradford City ended up being thrashed 5-0 by Swansea City. Since then a pair of Championship and League One sides have reached the last four. A moonshot may be underselling it.

---

Wednesday evening and it becomes immediately clear from the gaggle of blue and white shirts at the exit of Leyton station that a game is about to take place. A sizeable contingent from west London have turned up for the Central Line Clasico between Leyton Orient and Queens Park Rangers and it is not long before they are chanting “We’ve got more fans than you” because the home end is no more than a third full.

The Rs are one of four clubs to have won the League Cup while in a lower division, back in 1967, and the mood of their supporters is refreshingly optimistic now their club is emerging cautiously from a financial black hole and the end of last season saw good football married with excellent results.

Mark Warbuton still makes seven changes, out of frustration for a demanding schedule that sees them go to Hull and Middlesbrough before hosting Barnsley in the space of a week from Saturday, but the Championship team look a level above from early on and deservedly lead through Rob Dickie’s powerful header from a Faysal Bettache corner.

Orient’s most recent League Cup campaign ended with a walkover against Tottenham Hotspur last season due to a coronavirus outbreak, denying the League Two club one of those healthy pay days from ticket sales. The long queues outside before kick off here are the result of a malfunctioning IT system than a surge in interest, though Kenny Jackett makes just a pair of changes to the XI that drew away to Salford in their League Two opener.

Aaron Drinan and Dan Happe both go close nearing half time as Orient improve on a slow start while the latter fires narrowly over again midway through the second half. But Drinan, a 23-year-old striker formerly of Ipswich Town, equalises with about 15 minutes to go for his first goal in E10. From there it is all Orient and Jordan Archer’s goal lives a charmed existence until the R’s take the spoils in a penalty shootout, with Albert Adomah striking the winning kick.

The celebrations in the away end are surprisingly raucous as Adomah, a boyhood QPR fan, climbs into the stand and rips his shirt off. For a few fleeting moments all the gripes around this competition are overtaken by pure joy. Then the R’s draw Oxford United at home.

So where does the competition go from here?

Managers' primary issue is around the additional playing load for athletes already forced into suboptimal condition by a brutal calendar. Removing extra time up to the last four, with drawn games such as Orient-QPR going straight to a penalty shootout, was eminently sensible but it is not enough to appease many of those who are unhappy. So too the decision to break the early rounds into northern and southern sections, even if the second round draw made last night was devoid of drama.

At the same time the competition’s greatest asset, for neutral observers at least, may be the two-legged semi-final format. One increasingly popular suggestion seems to be excluding clubs competing in European competition because it would a) leave them with fewer games and b) spread the trophy around.

Providing young players with opportunities to perform is another unintended strength but then what is the point in a Trophy competition that now includes Under-23 sides from Premier League clubs?

For all the EFL’s boasts about global TV audiences, the majority of these games were inaccessible for fans at home as clubs are not allowed to stream fixtures like they do for league action. If it is a way of trying to get more people through the gates, it is not working – especially when tickets at Charlton were marked up as a tenner.

The Super League may have gone away for now but, save for brief moments like Adomah’s celebration, the past 48 hours has shown how football is hurtling to a dark place where the wealth of a chosen few threatens to neuter everyone else. Change is needed across the board and the League Cup is primed for transformation. Meaningful change must provide those with less financial muscle with a genuine reason to believe.

[The esk]

I noted some of the earlier references to Socios, Chiliz etc. I put together a piece for Everton supporters to demonstrate why this is such a bad idea all round (unless you hold a few million $CHZ)

Good luck for the season ahead!

https://theesk.org/2021/08/12/chiliz-socios/

[Chester Perry]

I noted some of the earlier references to Socios, Chiliz etc. I put together a piece for Everton supporters to demonstrate why this is such a bad idea all round (unless you hold a few million $CHZ)

Good luck for the season ahead!

https://theesk.org/2021/08/12/chiliz-socios/

Have to say I agree Paul, and as ever that is a very well constructed argument.

as for the coming season there are reasons for fans from both our clubs to be pensive - I also noted that you had tipped us for relegation in the Observer - I am not quite so sure, but we would benefit from a couple of additions to the squad

[Chester Perry]

We have known that UEFA were planning to change/adapt it's FFP rules (and from what we have seen recently it is needed) but what are they thinking about - here The Times claims they are planning a luxury tax approach (which has been suggested for a while).

Uefa plans salary cap and ‘luxury tax’ for teams who breach it
exclusive
Martyn Ziegler, Chief Sports Reporter
Thursday August 12 2021, 5.00pm, The Times

Uefa will set out proposals next month to replace its Financial Fair Play rules with a salary cap and luxury tax by next year.

Under the planned system, clubs in European competition would be limited to spending a fixed percentage of their revenue — possibly 70 per cent — on salaries. Any clubs breaching the cap would have to pay a luxury tax, under which the equivalent or more of any overspend would go into a pot to be redistributed.

This would replace the FFP rules brought in 11 years ago, which state that clubs must break even over a three-year period.

The proposals will be unveiled at a convention on the future of European football that Uefa is hosting in Switzerland next month, involving national associations, leagues, clubs, players and agents, sources with knowledge of the plan have told The Times. That meeting will also discuss how to fend off the threat of any future breakaway European Super League (ESL).

The plan is viewed as fairer and more transparent than the existing FFP system and would allow some scope for wealthy owners to spend beyond their club’s income, but only if they are willing to pay the luxury tax. For example, if Paris Saint-Germain’s signing of Lionel Messi and other players this summer pushed the club over the salary-cap threshold, they could remain in European competition but would have to pay a substantial amount extra for the privilege.

Redistributing the money from salary-cap breaches to other clubs would also promote competitiveness, Uefa is expected to argue.

The draft proposals envisage adopting a similar system to those used in the United States in Major League Baseball and basketball’s NBA.

One example would be that for every Euro a club exceeds the salary cap, it would then have to pay a Euro into a fund distributed to the other teams in that competition. If the cap is breached the next year, the repeat offenders would pay €1.5 or €2 for every €1 they have gone over, depending on the scale of the breach.

Repeat offenders would also face possible sporting sanctions, up to the ultimate punishment of disqualification from European competition, as Uefa believes there still needs to be a strong deterrent to stop clubs overspending.

The proposed luxury tax would also be used on a sliding scale — for example, exceeding the cap by up to 20 per cent could mean clubs paying the equivalent amount of the overspend, but for anything over 20 per cent it could be 1.5 or two times that amount.

The review of FFP has been taking place internally in Uefa for the past year and officials believe that the salary cap/luxury tax system would be based only on recent spending by clubs and allow them to plan more easily for the future.

Under the existing system, clubs’ losses from as far back as four years ago can be used as part of the FFP calculation, something that has become almost unworkable after the financial impact of the pandemic on European football.

It is understood that the European Commission (EC) would be happy that a salary cap based on percentage of revenue would comply with European law.

There is also an idea of having one fixed salary cap at a very high level, for example €600 million (about £509 million), alongside the percentage of revenue to stop the elite clubs inflating their income to ridiculous levels via related-party sponsorship deals. That, however, would be less easy in terms of securing agreement from the EC.

A constant criticism of FFP has been that it maintains the elite clubs’ position because owners of smaller clubs who are trying to reach the same level are not allowed to put in money to cover losses.

The salary cap as a percentage of revenue would potentially have a similar effect as those clubs with the bigger revenues can spend more on wages, but it would be more flexible and would at least allow owners to breach the cap if they were prepared to pay for it.

The actual level fixed for the salary cap will be a key decision for Uefa. France’s Ligue 1 is implementing a 70 per cent of turnover restriction from 2023-24, so Uefa may follow a similar path.

Intriguingly, the plans for the ESL, which collapsed in April, also included a salary cap, but the member clubs would have been limited to spending only 55 per cent of turnover on salaries and transfers combined.

The ESL’s founder members, including the “big six” English clubs, would have earned up to £310 million in joining fees and about £220 million a year — twice as much as they get from the Champions League.

The ESL’s plans collapsed when nine of the 12 founder clubs, including the six English ones, pulled out only 48 hours after it was launched, though the remaining trio of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are still involved in court proceedings against Uefa.

Q&A
Why is Uefa ditching its FFP rules?
There is an acceptance at Uefa that the FFP rules introduced in 2010 have had their day and something more relevant is necessary.

What is the thinking behind the cap being a percentage of revenue rather than a fixed cap?
It is much easier to get the European Commission to ratify a percentage of revenue. Setting a fixed number could lead to legal challenges based on competition legislation.

Why is it called a “luxury tax”?
Clubs who breach the cap will have to pay for the luxury of doing so — for every euro spent above the limit they will have to contribute the same or more to a central fund to be distributed to rivals.

Which clubs would this system help most?
It will make it easier for the state or oligarch-owned clubs to inject more money into their teams to achieve success, so it may be a levelling up with the established giants of European football. For most clubs, it should be simpler to plan to stay within the cap rather than the complicated FFP calculations.

How will the new system be more transparent?
Clubs will know what the penalties will be for breaching the cap, so it won’t be a complex sanctioning system. Sporting sanctions would be imposed only on repeat offenders.

What is the likelihood of stakeholders giving this the thumbs-up?
It appears likely — most people in football agree that FFP needs a total overhaul and this system works well in basketball and baseball in the USA. There is no obvious alternative.

[Chester Perry]

With the £100m training ground (https://www.lcfc.com/news/1950709/leice ... he-numbers) now operational they have moved to start increasing capacity at the King Power and developing the surrounding area - today they released their plans for public consultation. The planned capacity is 40k, which is the minimum requirement of FIFA for host World Cup group games, but more telling is the desire to make it part of a wider entertainment campus (the bringing together of sport and entertainment in this way has been a regular feature on this thread over the years)

https://www.lcfc.com/news/2212985/king- ... n-now-open

[Vegas Claret]

wonder if they are planning on paying for it this time ?

[superdimitri]

wonder if they are planning on paying for it this time ?

Good joke. Of course they won't.

[TsarBomba]

https://twitter.com/ellehardy/status/14 ... 38632?s=21

Above article from Philipe Auclair arguing the PL is used as an extensive money laundering operation.

[Chester Perry]

https://twitter.com/ellehardy/status/14 ... 38632?s=21

Above article from Philipe Auclair arguing the PL is used as an extensive money laundering operation.

The full article was posted further up the page yesterday

[Chester Perry]

A little bit earlier than usual - BDO release their annual survey of Football Club Finance Directors

https://www.bdo.co.uk/getmedia/4da15de8 ... O.pdf.aspx

[Chester Perry]

OffthePitch.com talk to Brentford CEO Jon Varney - who has a lot to say

Brentford CEO ready to use Premier League status to help drive public debate in key issues
12 August 2021 8:15 PM

• Brentford will use its new status to apply pressure on government and social media companies to tackle racism and other discrimination.

• "Now we are here we want to be active participants, not just tourists. We want to be an active voice," says Brentford CEO Jon Varney.

• West London club will not change its strategy, based on player development, to compete in top league.

• Varney says the club will be at heart of thought leadership on sustainability and protecting the current structure of the Premier League.

• Brentford will exit the EFL’s digital programme, while a new data transformation programme will be developed to capture data from as many channels as possible to maximise revenues.

LAWRIE HOLMES lawrie@offthepitch.com

When Brentford host Arsenal in Fridays opening fixture, the first signs of whether the Premier League’s 50th member can compete at football’s highest level will be revealed.

Having won the world’s richest match in the Championship play-off final, that Deloitte calculates will deliver around £160 million over the next three years, the West London club will be keen to avoid a rapid exit from the Premier League.

“We're now in the most competitive league in the world, where three clubs will go down every year. We've got to do absolutely everything we possibly can to ensure that we stay in the Premier League,” says the club’s CEO Jon Varney.

“We aren’t going to change our strategy. We're certainly going to continue to invest in young talent, and look to develop and succeed with that young talent,” he says.

“Even though there are some very well-established teams with much, much greater resources than us, we will stay true to our approach. It's worked incredibly well for us to date and we believe it can work well for us in the next chapter,” adds Varney.

To maintain that momentum, Brentford’s Jersey Road training ground will undergo a major redevelopment costing several million pounds.

Reinvesting for the future

Varney says that key to staying in the top flight is ‘future proofing’ the club by “ensuring that some of the monies that we're generating out of our promotion to the Premier League are reinvested into the infrastructure of the organisation,” he says.

The income of the club will be massively increased through the value of broadcast rights and Premier League central sponsorship, but the chance for significant increases in wider commercial returns are also available.

Key to that success is the club’s opportunity to play in its new 17,250 seater Community Stadium, which was empty for most of last season. Moving from the old 12,300 capacity Griffin Park ground has seen matchday income of £8.5 million compared to £3.1 million for the 2019/20 season.

Annual sponsorship income has leapt from £1.5 million to £10 million over the same period. The club declined to comment on revenues from the sale and development of the Griffin Park site and around the Community Stadium, developed with Malaysian group EcoWorld International.

“We've sold everything out,” says Varney, referring to the sale of 10,000 season ticket holders, and extra 1200 Premium seat holders, leaving 1,725 seats for away supporters.

“After the allocation of Premier League tickets, sponsor tickets, player comps, we're left with around three and a half thousand tickets to sell on a match-by -match basis. Yeah. We’ve now got 10,000 members, therefore we expect all seats to be sold out.”

Created problems

Although becoming a Premier League club is a “game changer”, Varney says maximising returns from hospitality, ticketing and merchandising, can only come from having the best possible data and systems in place.

To that end, Brentford is investing in a digital transformation agenda over the next year, having given notice to exit the EFL’s digital programme. The club’s new venture will capture insights from data from every conceivable channel, in order to understand expectations of current and future supporters, sponsors and other interested parties.

“It will provide a much better opportunity for us to be able to service supporters both domestically and internationally, and be able to provide our corporate partners with a platform for them to really engage with our fan base.

But as we are now one of only 20 Premier League clubs, that gives us a much clearer and greater voice. And we need to use that.

“Our ticketing system has previously not been fully integrated with our CRM systems and digital platforms, this has created problems in the past which we aim to eradicate,” says Varney.

This investment will bring together the data-led approach that Brentford pioneered on the pitch with initial efforts to scope out the vast untapped opportunities of its catchment area.

Varney describes the area as “an incredibly diverse set of communities, that is also right in the centre of one of the country’s fastest growing commercial districts, West London is effectively the second largest economy in the UK.”

Global multinationals

He says that combination offers opportunities to build real purpose driven partnerships, with local businesses- many of them on the Heathrow corridor are global multinationals.

But key to establishing “deeper and more meaningful relationships with them on multiple levels” is being able to provide strong data points around involvement in areas such as community outreach projects that Brentford’s community sports trust has developed.

Now being a member of the top league Varney describes as “the most watched sports property on the planet” means that Brentford has the opportunity to raise its profile exponentially to a global audience.

“That is naturally going to give us a footprint on a global basis,” he says.

hilst there are many ways to build an international following, he insists what is key “is not to try and be something that you're not, where you can't be true to yourself.

“This football club, first and foremost, is a community club,” he says, recognising that although the club’s been under the control of ambitious owner Matthew Benham for the last 12 years, it was playing in League One just a few seasons back.

Mindful of not wanting to take a false step in developing the Brentford brand, Varney says the club is not set to star in an Amazon or Netflix blockbuster anytime soon. “I think we’ve probably had about 25 approaches for documentaries. But currently, we're keeping our powder dry,” he reveals.

Community responsibilities

Becoming a bigger club, as a Premier League member with a larger stadium, has its challenges - not least navigating the tail end of the Covid epidemic, which Varney concedes “will be with us for some time.”

He says there “will be some bumps in the road”, not least because “due to government legislation, there isn't formal Covid certification for the start of this season.

“But we will be encouraging all of our supporters that attend our opening games to make sure that they do maintain social distancing. We want them to wear face masks, and use all the hand sanitization stations that we have within the stadium,” he advises.

Brentford is keen to participate in a wider discussion about introduction of a Covid certificate.

We've got in the Premier League outstanding domestic broadcasters, and outstanding international broadcasters. That's not broken, so you don't need to fix it.

“We want to play an active role in that debate,” says Varney. We're constantly monitoring changes in government legislations and we have to be incredibly adaptable,” he says.

That includes being prepared to refund if Covid mutations were to force further closures. Fortunately, last season the vast majority of sponsors and season ticket holders, decided to freeze their packages rather than take refunds.

A greater voice

The club’s new status also prompts questions about how it can continue to be a pioneer in addressing racism and discrimination as the fanbase expands. Varney is quick to express that he himself, the owner, board members and several of the leadership team are lifelong supports of the club or close to the community ensures that value system will continue.

“I don't think it's difficult to keep your values, so I don't think we're concerned about losing focus in that area. But as we are now one of only 20 Premier League clubs, that gives us a much clearer and greater voice. And we need to use that.

“We were at the forefront of the social media boycott that took place the back end of last season. And we were very proud of the role that we played in that.

“We hold a very firm belief that, you know, racist abuse online is shameful. We believe these people are cowards, they, they sit in the shadows and hurl abuse at not only our players, but also our staff. And it's just totally unacceptable and has to stop. We will continue to be at the forefront of making sure that players, our staff don't receive any abuse online or in our stadiums,” says Varney.

There’s also a strong hint that Brentford will be at the heart of the movement to continue applying pressure on the issue. “Social media companies and the government have got a much, much greater role to play in policing in that particular area,” he says.

At the crossroads

Varney believes Brentford’s model could be a strong beacon for hope at a moment when he says football “is at an interesting time” and “is at a real crossroads”. The club have had a supporter on its board since 2003 which well pre-dates the fan-led review by Tracey Crouch.

“We’re not always going to agree with our fans on things like shirt pricing and ticket pricing, and there will always be difficult conversations, but by and large we believe we have a football club that is in touch with our community and supporters.

On the European Super League, that the Big Six Premier League clubs signed up to but now insist they are no longer committed to, Varney plots a careful course, describing “a challenging point for the Premier League.”

He says: “We’ve been a shareholder in the Premier League for five minutes so we pretty much arrived after that particular issue had been well aired, and discussed, between the Premier League clubs.”

“I think much of what happened with the so-called European Super League was some of the other European based leagues are going through really challenging times, with their domestic broadcast markets, and clearly were looking to access markets, where there's probably greater revenues and growth potential.

Don't expect a free ride

Keen to celebrate the positive that the Premier League has delivered, he says: “We've got in the Premier League outstanding domestic broadcasters, and outstanding international broadcasters. That's not broken, so you don't need to fix it,” he says.

“I think we are the epitome of the pyramid structure, that if you work hard, execute your plan and also get a bit of luck, then you can get to the promised land. That’s great for the rest of the football pyramid to see,” he says.

“We’ve waited a long time to get to the Premier League. Now we are here we want to be active participants, not just tourists. We don’t expect a free ride and to sit back and just take the Premier League cheque. We want to be an active voice, we want to add value to every conversation and we will do that to the best of our ability,” he says.

We would have liked to have seen it administered more strongly.

That leads to a discussion on the significance of Brentford’s sustainable model in light of the Premier League’s Financial Fair Play rules that are set to evolve post-Covid.

Brentford is broadly recognised as a club run within its means, supported by the wealth of gambling millionaire Benham. The club recorded a pre-tax profit of £24.3 million in the 2018/19 season mainly due to the sales of several high-profile players but the following season saw a pre-tax loss of £9.1 million and a negative EBITDA of £23 million.

“We were a strong voice for Profit and Sustainability within the Championship. We felt it was actually the right guardrails for the league. We would have liked to have seen it administered more strongly. We won’t change our thinking and philosophies around sustainability - we think it’s the right thing for football,” says Varney.

“We genuinely believe that what we’re trying to do here is build a sustainable football club for the future, and we won’t deviate from that,” he adds.

[Chester Perry]

Well that was prescient of me - Vysyble announce that the 6th Edition of Were So Rich it's Unbelievable - The illusion of wealth within football is coming soon (September). The good news for us is that it looks like being free to access again after the first 4 were subject to a substantial fee

https://vysyble.com/8th-august-2021-pre ... ssive-year

While they continue to work on the 6th Edition of "We're so Rich it's Unbelievable!" the chaps at vysyble have released this ahead of the weekends opening fixtures in the Premier League

https://twitter.com/vysyble/status/1426114660957306881

kind of says it all - remember folks revenue does not equal wealth

[Chester Perry]

The Guardian looks at the mess that Barcelona are in on and off the field

Boardroom turmoil, troubling finances and Messi's influence: why Barcelona are a mess
Sid Lowe - Thu 2 Jul 2020 00.01 BSTLast modified on Thu 2 Jul 2020 00.26 BST

Missing out on the Spanish title is perhaps Barça’s smallest problem – decline is setting in and most key players are above 30. This will take a long time to sort outeo Messi was the first off the pitch, heading down the tunnel alone as Barcelona’s anthem began echoing around a stadium as vacant as the look in the team’s eyes. It was almost midnight on the last day of the financial year and it was over.

Looking down at the scene were the club’s directors who had made it to July, surviving another season, but only just. Any lingering hope of winning La Liga had gone. Ten days before Gerard Piqué said it would be “very difficult”. Now, held 2-2 by Atlético Madrid, a third draw in four, it was virtually impossible.

At the side of the pitch Sergio Busquets said something about mathematical possibility, which is what players say when they have nothing else. Barcelona had decided to sack manager Ernesto Valverde when they were top and without a replacement ready; six months on, they are second, a point behind Real Madrid having played a game more. There are five left and no one is looking forward to those much. That is not the worst of it, either. Defeat, not definitive yet, is one thing; decline is another. Capitulation had been coming for a long time; they were flawed when they were first and well before that.

When the final whistle went Quique Setién turned to the bench, picked up some papers and stood there for a moment. A disciple of Johan Cruyff , this is not how he imagined managing Barcelona. And yet nor can he have been entirely surprised, not least because Cruyff fought battles too and Setién knew he had not been Barça’s first choice. He has problems of his own but most of his team’s precede him. Not least because they are not just the team’s problems; they are the club’s.

Against Atlético, Antoine Griezmann, Barcelona’s third most expensive player in their history, had been on the pitch four minutes. Ousmane Dembélé, their second most expensive, was not there: injured again, his career in Catalonia slipping from his control or anyone else’s. And as for their most expensive signing, Philippe Coutinho is in Munich on loan because they couldn’t sell him. He will be back soon and they will try to get rid of him again, another plan in pieces.

Coutinho was supposed to replace Iniesta, just as Arthur Melo was supposed to replace Xavi. But on Monday Arthur joined Juventus, travelling to Turin still in his Barça tracksuit. They were in a hurry, after all. Juventus paid €72m plus €10m in add-ons Barcelona said but this was effectively a swap deal with Miralem Pjanic, an act of accountancy more creative than the players and driven by finance not football. Driven, above all, by the board’s determination to escape liability for the budgetary shortfall, their short-term survival secured at the cost of deepening and postponing problems until another day.

They are not the only successors lost, the only plans gone awry. Neymar, the man who would play alongside and eventually replace Messi, should be taking the lead now. But he became impatient and Barcelona were powerless to prevent him leaving in 2018. They have become locked in a spiral of loss and nostalgia ever since, desperate to make amends to the point where they tried to bring him back again but did not have the money.

Worse, the €222m had long been spent, even though one director had insisted that doing so would be an irresponsibility for which they would have to resign. No one did. Not for that, anyway: this spring, six directors walked out, meaning 11 of the 21 board members who began Josep Maria Bartomeu’s mandate have gone. There have also been four sporting directors and as many directors of communication. And it goes back further. In 2014, Luis Suárez, Ivan Rakitic and Marc-André ter Stegen signed. Since then, Barcelona have brought in 28 players for almost €1bn. Those are the ones who did come – the failed pursuit of a striker ended up being comic – and none are an unqualified success.

None were easy to shed either, so they sold those they could, not always those they should. Arda Turan was a Barcelona player until Wednesday morning. He has not played for the club in three years. Griezmann eventually came a year later than planned and with no natural slot in the team, early hope floating off with the confetti.

Asked why he introduced the Frenchman only in the 90th minute on Tuesday night Setién said the alternative was not to put him on at all. He talked through the other players, the desire to keep Messi and Luis Suárez on, and concluded it was difficult to introduce Griezmann without “destabilising” the team.

A more telling line is hard to imagine.

The side grow old together and weaker, on the pitch at least. Off it they are powerful still. Ansu Fati is 17, Riqui Puig is 20. They may well be Barcelona’s future; too many of those alongside them are Barcelona’s past. Piqué, Suárez, Messi, and Vidal are 33, Rakitic is 32, Busquets and Alba are 31. And still responsibility lies with them.

It lies with Messi most of all, a weight he does not always welcome but one he will not, and should not, renounce. He has watched the peak of his career slip by without a European Cup in five years. Sometimes he must look around and wonder what he has done to deserve this. Actually, perhaps that is a more pertinent question than it first appears. There is a deference to him that dominates everything and is not without problems that will take a brave man to broach. Soon, though, someone must.

Problems dominate everything, so many they cannot fit on this page, so bad that Messi’s exasperation has been made public. Confrontations between players and board over pay cuts. The Barçagate scandal, the club accused of being behind sock accounts attacking opposition figures and their own players. Messi calling out the sporting director Eric Abidal for blaming the players over Valverde – a man whose ability to keep a lid on tension was not apparent until he had gone, a man some miss now.

His charisma may have been quiet but it was there; coaching this team – this club – is not as simple as many imagined. “It is what it is,” ran Valverde’s now infamous phrase, drawing intense criticism, but what if he was right? What if Xavi, Koeman, and Pochettino were right when they said no?

Setién stepped into the middle. He had seen what Valverde did; soon, perhaps, he saw why Valverde did it. Fault lines open easily at Barcelona, widened by the pressure that surrounds everyone. At Celta, footage showed Messi, Suárez and Rakitic apparently ignoring Setién’s assistant, Eder Sarabia. Reports alleged discussions in the dressing room. On Monday night, the president visited Setién’s house.

During an unexpectedly revealing and startlingly introspective press conference, Barcelona’s manager said: “I wasn’t an easy player to handle either,” adding: “I have to free my conscience.

“I have no problem admitting this is a new situation for me and I’m in one of those moments when you’re finding out many things. Bit by bit you do what you want to do. We all have to give a bit of ourselves, players included, for the good of the team. This is a team and it has to act as one.”

It may be facile, opportunistic, but a photo from Tuesday night brought that comment to mind once more, perhaps offering a portrait of where they are. During a drinks break, Atlético’s players are pictured gathered around Diego Simeone, as one. Barcelona’s are dispersed.

Some substitutes linger, others sit in the stands. Among them is Arthur, just sold to Juventus to save the board from a crisis of their own making on the eve of meeting Atlético, a game the president does not attend. One that starts with the league title at stake and ends with it virtually gone, each player going their own way at the full-time whistle.

Messi was the first off. The humiliation burning, Griezmann was the last. He had friends to talk to on the other team.

The mess at Barcelona that has dominated football headlines in the last week has led many back to this transaction last summer between Barcelona and Juventus designed to prevent the need for Barcelona's directors digging into their own pockets to make up for the shortfall they helped to create. For some of us it was a real alarm bell, mostly everyone else shrugged their shoulders as the the directors said there was nothing to see here. The Financial Times this week looked at the accounting practices that facilitated such an outcome that was legitimate but questionable

https://outline.com/esxGFc

[Chester Perry]

This deal was trailed by Miguel Delaney in the piece I posted yesterday (which if you haven't read yet you really should)though it has been industry knowledge since at least April - from SportsBusiness.com

Uefa planning ‘€6bn rescue package’ to support clubs, adds new FFP rules
SportBusiness Staff
August 13, 2021

Uefa, football’s European governing body, is reportedly close to establishing a fund worth up to €6bn ($7bn) as part of plans to ease the financial burden on clubs amid the ongoing difficulties posed by Covid-19.

Uefa is set to detail a “three-pronged strategy” to help clubs recover from the pandemic, according to Bloomberg. The news agency said that the funding facility would be worth between €2bn and €6bn and serve as an “emergency pot of money” should similar situations to the pandemic arise.

The plan is also said to include new rules on financial fair play, with The Times reporting yesterday (Thursday) that a salary cap and a so-called ‘luxury tax’ are among the measures being drawn up.

Clubs competing in the Uefa Champions League, Europa League or Europa Conference League would only be able to spend a fixed percentage of their revenue on salaries, with The Times reporting that this figure could be 70 per cent.

The luxury tax would be enforced to punish any club that went over this percentage, with the equivalent or more of the overspend to reportedly be assigned to a pot that would be redistributed. The new guidelines would replace the current financial fair play rules, whereby clubs are required to break even over a three-year period.

Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter, added that clubs would be granted access to funds at lower borrowing rates and be given the chance to restructure existing debt over five to seven years.

The news comes after Bloomberg reported earlier this year that Uefa was in talks with London-based investment firm Centricus Asset Management to finance the plans.

Uefa continues to be at loggerheads with Spanish LaLiga clubs Barcelona and Real Madrid and Italian Serie A outfit Juventus, with the trio refusing to back down from their proposed European Super League project.

The nine other clubs initially involved with the European Super League were quick to denounce the project following widespread backlash, but Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus remain committed to the idea.

Earlier this month, the three clubs claimed they “have the duty” to address the “very serious issues” facing the sport after stating they would press on with plans for the European Super League following a court ruling.

It came after the 17th Mercantile Court of Madrid ordered that Uefa end actions taken against European Super League founding clubs, including terminating the disciplinary proceedings against the undersigning three clubs and removing the penalties and restrictions imposed on the remaining nine founding clubs for them to avoid Uefa’s disciplinary action.

[Chester Perry]

As the Premier League gets under way for the 2021/22 Season SportsProMedia outlines all the commercial and major broadcast deals for the League and clubs - contains a number of tables so I will post as a link

https://www.sportspromedia.com/analysis ... ghts-deals