Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

@KieranMaguire with a slightly strange article for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales - it does underline that clubs profit from employing very clever accountants though

Football clubs should target accountants this transfer window
Author: ICAEW Insights

Published: 12 Aug 2021

Football finance fanatic, co-host of viral podcast ‘The Price of Football’ and chartered accountant Kieran Maguire shares insight on the financial situation in English football as the new season kicks off.

Back in October of 2019, University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire and comedian Kevin Day joined forces to launch ‘The Price of Football’ podcast, following the money to find out what’s really going on behind the scenes of the beautiful game.

Fast-forward almost two years and the scripts are written for episode number 173, with listener numbers closing in on three million downloads. Ahead of a new Premier League season, Maguire spoke to ICAEW Insights about how signing the right accountant for the club can be the difference between securing silverware and the team collapsing.

Teams are being relegated based on their accounting
Football has a unique place in British society. The interim report from Tracey Crouch MP, an update on the government's fan-led review into football governance, summed up that while football clubs are businesses, they are not run in a normal manner - with the main metric of success not always profit or shareholder dividends.

However, clubs still need the financial controls, checks and balances that any business requires, along with governance. “I think that's where the world of accounting and finance can make a positive contribution to football, “ said Maguire. “We are seeing clubs being relegated or avoiding relegation based on their accounting, as well as what they achieve on the pitch”.

A prime example of this was Bury FC’s expulsion from the English Football League after 125 years of membership due to unpaid debts back in November 2020.

“Only recently, Sheffield Wednesday were relegated thanks to a points deduction handed down because of the way they accounted for an asset disposal,” added Maguire. “And Derby County were given a £100,000 fine in respect of the way that they treat their football players in the accounts and that might result in a future points deduction.”

He continued: “Accounting and finance has come to the fore in recent years, and without wanting to sound too twee, having a good accountant and financial lawyer on your team can be as important as signing a player because it can make a difference.”

Casino style management – ‘put it all on red’
The fate of finances of the football industry was precarious even before the pandemic struck. “If we take the Championship in the English Football League, wages were 107% of revenue in 2019 [before COVID hit]. And in I think six of the previous seven seasons, wages have exceeded revenue, so clubs were losing money before they even switched on the floodlights,” said Maguire.

The cumulative net debt held by Premier League clubs reached record levels of nearly £4bn at the end of the 2019/20 financial year, up from £3.5bn in the summer of 2019, according to Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance 2021. By the same token, Premier League Clubs’ total revenue decreased by well over half a billion pounds (£648m, 13%) in 2019/20 to £4.5bn as the average revenue per Premier League club reduced by £33m to £225m. This was the first drop in total revenue in Premier League history and the lowest total revenue level since 2015/16, with the financial impact of COVID-19 felt by all clubs.

“The finances of clubs with poor lack of cost control and casino-style management is worrying,” said Maguire. “Club executives are effectively putting everything on red, and sometimes red doesn't come up”.

Maguire believes that, in terms of the finances, there needs to be either an acceptance by owners that there's no alternative to the current status quo, or there needs to be an alternative where everybody buys into trying to run the clubs on a more sustainable basis.

“We've lost Bury, we've lost Macclesfield Town, both of which have got huge history and heritage for their towns they represent. We nearly lost Bolton and Wigan, and there are other clubs in a fairly rocky position at present. I think the finances of the game going forward, especially for medium-sized clubs and smaller clubs, is something which really focuses on the mind.”

Which teams have got their finances properly in check?
According to Maguire, many Scottish clubs manage their finances well as they operate more of a breakeven model. Because their owners don't pretend to be as wealthy and therefore are not prepared to underwrite the losses.

Maguire also thinks that some form of regulation has to come because self-regulation hasn't worked. “I presented to the fan-led review and we've seen the interim report, which appears to suggest a licencing system, perhaps some form of risk, certainly some form of redistribution of money because there is an awful lot of money at the top of the game. Without curtailing the fact that Manchester United and Liverpool deserve to be at the top of the table because they're global brands.

“It's a case of getting the balance right without turning it into a sort of a Soviet-style, flat income, flat costs league. There's got to be a better position than we have at present and that will involve both winners and losers,” explained Maguire.

[Chester Perry]

I must admit I was a little surprised by this I thought it was more, though it still equates to around £6.5m for each season in the Premier League, no small undertaking for a club our size when it comes straight from cashflow - @KieranMaguire has looked at the accounts of the 20 Premier League clubs over the last decade and extracted the infrastructure spend of each club - lots of stadium/training ground builds in there - of course we will have spent maybe £5m+ this summer given the main lounge in the North stand was a little over £2m - once all the new digital signage is in place and the two new huge screens it could be quite a bit more

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 3574643713

[Chester Perry]

On Tuesday I posted an article by Miguel Delaney that argued Messi's transfer was a true metaphor of football's ills and all the depressive stuff that goes with it - today he writes again and shows little uptake in mood even as football with fans returns - probably because he knows he is on the mark - from the Independent

New Premier League season marks a return to football as it is meant to be
From the return of supporters to hopes of a competitive environment, 2021-22 will bring new storylines, successes and excitement to the English game

Miguel Delaney - Chief Football Writer
14 hours ago

In the build-up to this weekend, some of the biggest players – from Bruno Fernandes to Kai Havertz to Thiago Alcantara – have been talking excitedly to teammates about experiencing their home crowds for the first time. It is a remarkable thing to consider, that fan favourites have barely played in front of those same fans. Some are really looking forward to revelling in it. Managers like Thomas Tuchel and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer have meanwhile been talking to their squads about the effects of it.

Crowds make it a different game, for all manner of reasons. It is the real game. This new Premier League season is a return to the real thing. It is football as it’s supposed to be.

One Premier League study showed that football in front of full crowds is a much more fluid game, and not just because of the emotion emboldening everyone. The effects were much more tangible. Officials found that players in empty stadiums were more willing to stop or slow down and look for the foul if there was contact, largely because they could hear it. That isn’t possible when there are thousands of people roaring.

It feels like that very prospect, of stadiums filled with raucous fans again, makes anything in the game seem possible again.

That is the tantalising emotion to be relished as supporters return to their stadiums and their seats this weekend. That’s the unmatched feeling that only the first game of a season can offer. There are now only hopes and dreams, with none of the complications that the reality of results bring.

That is also why this might be a juncture season for the Premier League. Full crowds are not just returning after one of the longest breaks the game has seen, but also one of the biggest crises the game has seen. The Super League was similarly a crisis that threatened the very social bonds that make fans go to games in the first place.

In one of the most uplifting moments in modern football, it was collective supporter power that banished that dismal plan, but the more depressing reasons for its genesis remain.

The elite game has for a long time been distorted by a hugely damaging financial disparity. A core of clubs have grown to problematic sizes, eroding competitiveness and variety, but creating new battles over future economics.

So much of this was articulated in Paris Saint-Germain’s depressing signing of Leo Messi, which also fostered the feeling that even the field of potential Champions League winners is narrowing. It looks like not even Barcelona or Real Madrid can now match an elite that only includes PSG, Manchester City, Chelsea and maybe Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Liverpool.

It is no coincidence that the only clubs fully stable and spending during this crisis are those owned by states or oligarchs.

The drastic decline of La Liga should also serve as a warning for the Premier League.

It has never been more important for the competition to display its competitiveness. That is its unique selling point that has gone much further than Spain’s recent ownership of the game’s megastars. It is crucial to fans who go to games, to foster that sense of hope, and crucial to those fans around the world, to seize their attention.

But is it already under threat?

The 2021 Champions League final did feel like a landmark in heralding the arrival of a future that had long been predicted, and City and Chelsea’s immense resources dominating the top end of the game. They have so far made the most assertive moves in the market. Chelsea have signed the one player they need, in Romelu Lukaku. City have signed a player who is essentially a luxury, since they don’t need him, in Jack Grealish.

It does have the sense of two clubs just pushing things to the maximum, leaving almost nothing unaddressed. The difference may come in the minor details, which is where managers as meticulous and obsessive as Tuchel and Pep Guardiola really show their influence.

The German appears to have a hold over Guardiola, having beaten him three times, culminating in the most significant defeat of the Catalan’s career. City may need to break that to retain the title. If they do, it will be four titles in five years – the most extensive domination since Sir Alex Ferguson.

That would be greater cause for concern, because of the changed complexion of the game.

Manchester United have made good signings and addressed key issues in Jadon Sancho and, soon, Raphael Varane, but they could still do with a midfielder. They still look that bit shorter than City and Chelsea, and that’s before you even get to the ongoing debate over Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. United have done calculated business rather than complete business, and it points to one of the reasons they were initially interested in the Super League. Prominent figures in the game talk of how “commercial markets are exhausted”. There is a staleness, that tends to only see spikes when big signings are made, or big trophies are won. United could do with finally lifting silverware again for all sorts of reasons.

Liverpool have faced similar financial issues to United, as illustrated by their own restrained business. There is still a belief in the club that they could enjoy a resurgence from the return of so many injured players. Whether that is enough for a title challenge remains to be seen, but it could well be enough to lock off the top four. We have maybe even returned to a new “big four”. Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur have just fallen away, the latter losing a position of real opportunity as soon as they got there. Arsenal’s decline has been over a longer period, with the attempt at an overhaul complicating Mikel Arteta’s time at the club so far. Many within the Emirates are keen to argue that this is also the “real” start of the Basque’s reign. There has been some promise, and Arsenal have actually been one of the best performing teams in the Premier League since Christmas, but Arteta now needs to show some end product. They still don’t look in anywhere near as good a place as Leicester City.

You would say Brendan Rodgers’s side are best placed to break the top four, except for the fact they have eventually – and very belatedly – hit a ceiling in the last two seasons. These fifth places are constantly cast as a psychological weakness. They are not. They are the opposite. They are the perfect articulation of the financial stratification of the division. Leicester missing out on the Champions League by the slimmest of margins and pushing right up against the ceiling is really Leicester pushing themselves to their limits.

They are in truth a model modern side, in the way they have articulated a progressive identity and maximised it. This is the lesson for the rest of the Premier League. This is another split in the Premier League, a consequence of the greater financial split.

Faced with less opportunity for upward mobility, many of the clubs must decide between looking to maximise what they are through an identity, or just consolidating their place and doing the universal basics well. The former is long term, and involves some risk. The latter is short term, and involves risk-aversion.

Burnley, Newcastle United, West Ham United, Watford, Wolves and Everton are those looking to hold their place, to varying levels, and with varying money. Some of it is signified by the managers, not least Rafa Benitez.

Brentford, Brighton, Leeds United, Norwich City, Southampton and – very recently – Crystal Palace are those looking to do something more distinctive.

Palace might be something of a case study in that regard, not least given the accelerated rate of change this summer. It is as if they are trying to make up for lost time under Roy Hodgson. The hope for Patrick Vieira is that they’re not trying all this too quickly.

An irony is that there feels like an awful lot of volatility among these clubs, with numerous potential candidates for relegation. It could be extremely competitive below the top seven, with seventh or eighth almost representing victory in the Premier League’s own mini-league – and what might have been had the Super League actually happened.

It is still the top end that defines the character and perception of a competition, though, regardless of its deeper substance.

For now, it feels like at least four clubs can win the Premier League. While that still points to a fixed financial domination of a different sort, it is the most of the major European leagues.

It is just more important than ever the Premier League shows that.

Football at its best isn’t just about having fans back. It’s about fans having something to cheer for beyond identity. It’s about competitive balance and variety. It’s about unpredictability.

It is the one concern going into a new season that a lot of it feels a touch predictable. For now, excitement prevails. You can sense it among the players. It needs to run through the whole season.

[Chester Perry]

The DFB's (German FA) investigation into it's bidding process for the 2006 World Cup was supposed to remain private - Das Spiegel has got hold of itm bribes were paid - I just wish it the rest of the article was not behind a paywall

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... xt%3Dissue

[Chester Perry]

There were a few comments of surprise recently when Matheus Pereira went from West Bromwich Albion to Al Hilal of Saudi Arabia - according to the Associated Press it seems that the Saudi's are looking to usurp China as the bisg spending league in the Asian Confederation

https://apnews.com/article/soccer-sport ... a2c6cc449e

Saudi league aiming to replace China as Asia’s top drawcard
By JOHN DUERDEN
today

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — When Shanghai Port paid almost $100 million to sign Oscar from Chelsea in 2016, the London club’s coach Antonio Conte expressed concern over the rise of the Chinese league.

Now Oscar is one of the few big names left in the Chinese Super League, with Saudi Arabia surpassing it as the Asian competition attracting the ire of soccer figures in Europe.

Al-Hilal of Riyadh beat European clubs earlier this month to sign Brazilian playmaker Matheus Pereira from West Bromwich Albion.

English football broadcaster Noel Whelan was not impressed, telling Football Insider. “From a football side of things, you’re taking yourself out of the spotlight, but you’re gaining financially … you’re certainly not showcasing yourself as you would do in Europe.”

The social media reaction was similar to when players were leaving Europe for China five years ago, although the amounts paid by Saudi clubs have not matched the peaks hit by Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. China was the world’s highest spending league in the 2017 winter transfer window, splashing out around $457 million.

A combination of tougher government regulations, including a so-called transfer tax that aimed to reduce spending, and China’s COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have changed the domestic football landscape. A number of Brazilians have had to quit Chinese clubs, with former Barcelona midfielder Paulinho and Talisca headed to Saudi Arabia.

“It was an honor to play for a big club like Guangzhou in China but I’m very happy to be in Saudi Arabia,” Talisca said after joining Al-Nassr. “There are a lot of great players coming here and the league has a lot of potential to grow. It’s an exciting time to be here.”

Saudi Arabia has long had ambitions to become Asia’s leading league. In 2018, Turki Al-Asheikh, then chairman of the government-run General Sports Authority, said the target was for the Saudi league to become one of the top leagues in the world by 2020.

The global pandemic has impacted the goals but the country has some advantages over China in terms of attracting players.

“Saudi Arabian football is more established at the club level ... and also at international level,” Simon Chadwick, Professor of Eurasian Sport at Emlyon Business School, told The Associated Press. ”There is a passionate intensity for the sport which makes it a legitimate destination for players from around the world.”

Saudi Arabia has five World Cup appearances and three Asian titles compared with China’s one trip to the game’s global showpiece.

Pereira replaces former Italian international Sebastian Giovinco at Al-Hilal, an Asian powerhouse with three continental championships. He joins former French international striker Bafetimbi Gomis, top scorer last season, Peruvian winger Andre Carrillo and new signing Moussa Marega from FC Porto.

Riyadh rival Al-Nassr signed Argentina’s Pity Martinez in 2020 for $18 million and ahead of the new season added Cameroonian international Vincent Aboubakar from FC Porto and Argentina’s Ramiro Funes Mori from Villarreal.

There’s been a similar pattern with coaches. In recent years some of the best in the world headed to China, including former World Cup winners Marcello Lippi and Luiz Felipe Scolari as wellas Fabio Capello, Felix Magath, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Manuel Pellegrini.

There’s been a drift west in recent seasons. Leonardo Jardim, who led Monaco to the 2017 French title, and former Brazil manager Mano Menezes are working with Saudi clubs this season.

There are issues to resolve, though, with some clubs relying on wealthy donors and state support.

In 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman intervened with $340 million to cover debts owed by Saudi Professional League clubs. The real test, according to Chadwick, will be long-term sustainability.

“There have been several state bailouts but there is a desire to float the clubs and expose them to the pressures of the marketplace, to force them to become more financially disciplined and commercially oriented,” Chadwick said. “There is an optimism and a buoyancy around Saudi Arabian football that is not without foundation.”

Saudi Arabia is growing its off-field influence, too, developing close links with FIFA’s leadership. There’s been speculation about a potential World Cup bid in 2030, and the Saudi football federation made headlines recently when it called for a study into hosting the World Cup every two years.

[Chester Perry]

In my last article for the London Clarets magazine "Something to write home about" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LB1brx ... OYlm1/view) I said that that the greatest fear of Europe's biggest clubs was that the Premier League would become super League all on it's own and they would not be able to be part of it,

I have just seen this and it made me chuckle - from the BBC

Real Madrid deny reports club have looked into joining Premier League

Last updated on11 hours ago11 hours ago.

Real Madrid say reports the club have looked into leaving La Liga for the Premier League are "completely false, absurd and impossible".

On Saturday, Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo said Real had been "studying for weeks" the possibility of leaving Spain's top flight.

It added that club president Florentino Perez's favoured option was the Premier League but information had also been compiled on Serie A and the Bundesliga.

Real denied the reports in a statement.

They added that such information "only intends to disturb, once more, the day to day of our club".

The reports come days after Real launched lawsuits against La Liga president Javier Tebas over a 2.7bn euro (£2.3bn) investment in the league from CVC Capital Partners.

Real, Juventus and Barcelona are the only sides not to have renounced the breakaway European Super League and have reiterated their intention to "keep developing the Super League project".

Real have debts of around £1bn, as do Barca and fellow La Liga side Atletico Madrid.

[Chester Perry]

regular readers of this thread will know I have been posting about the goings on at Rochdale for some time - here The Athletic look at the sorry tale of a takeover attempt

https://theathletic.com/2768648/2021/08 ... ed_article

[Chester Perry]

In my last article for the London Clarets magazine "Something to write home about" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LB1brx ... OYlm1/view) I said that that the greatest fear of Europe's biggest clubs was that the Premier League would become super League all on it's own and they would not be able to be part of it,

I have just seen this and it made me chuckle - from the BBC

Real Madrid deny reports club have looked into joining Premier League

Last updated on11 hours ago11 hours ago.

Real Madrid say reports the club have looked into leaving La Liga for the Premier League are "completely false, absurd and impossible".

On Saturday, Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo said Real had been "studying for weeks" the possibility of leaving Spain's top flight.

It added that club president Florentino Perez's favoured option was the Premier League but information had also been compiled on Serie A and the Bundesliga.

Real denied the reports in a statement.

They added that such information "only intends to disturb, once more, the day to day of our club".

The reports come days after Real launched lawsuits against La Liga president Javier Tebas over a 2.7bn euro (£2.3bn) investment in the league from CVC Capital Partners.

Real, Juventus and Barcelona are the only sides not to have renounced the breakaway European Super League and have reiterated their intention to "keep developing the Super League project".

Real have debts of around £1bn, as do Barca and fellow La Liga side Atletico Madrid.

I should say that it probably an untrue claim by El Mundo, but it does illustrate the fear in Europe as well as how the Magic Money Tree works - this thread from an @TariqPanja tweet on the story illustrates it to perfection

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 8134291463

[Vegas Claret]

the sooner it all collapses the better

[Chester Perry]

Interesting article in the Financial Times that looks at how elite sports people seek to look after their cone - the link is in front of apaywall but has a number of charts which is why I did not transcribe

https://outline.com/7ragCM

[Chester Perry]

This should be interesting - Adrian Goldberg for KeepyUppy on the just ow bad football has become

the blurb

After all the excitement of the Euros, here's a rarely spoken truth about English football - it's boring! Not on a match by match basis maybe, but season in season out, the major trophies are hogged by a handful of clubs. Meanwhile "the rest" desperately aspire to reach the Premier League knowing that once we get there, grim survival will be the order of the day, in a sport now dominated by money. This film is calling for a better way to run the game, free from the stranglehold of fear and finance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1voUMMM-84&t=3s

[Conroysleftfoot]

This should be interesting - Adrian Goldberg for KeepyUppy on the just ow bad football has become

the blurb

After all the excitement of the Euros, here's a rarely spoken truth about English football - it's boring! Not on a match by match basis maybe, but season in season out, the major trophies are hogged by a handful of clubs. Meanwhile "the rest" desperately aspire to reach the Premier League knowing that once we get there, grim survival will be the order of the day, in a sport now dominated by money. This film is calling for a better way to run the game, free from the stranglehold of fear and finance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1voUMMM-84&t=3s

Very interesting video, one all Burnley fans should watch.

[Chester Perry]

A little surprisingly this pairs well with that Adrian Goldberg video for KeepUppy - Jonathan Wilson in the Observer laments the modern game's (or is it the modern football fan?)focus on celebrity

PSG’s signing of Lionel Messi shows celebrity is trumping competition
Jonathan Wilson

Ligue 1 looks unhealthily one-sided and it is not alone: the domination of the game’s super-clubs is only just beginning

It gets to Sunday evening. You’ve done your chores. You’ve had your dinner.

You’re tired. You have work on Monday. You just want something to stick on the telly while you flick through the papers or doze on the sofa. These days you have choices. Next Sunday, for instance, if you have a comprehensive satellite package, you could watch Levante against Real Madrid, Roma against Fiorentina or Nice against Marseille. Which are you going to choose?

Perhaps you think Real Madrid, under pressure and having signed only David Alaba this summer, might slip up in the second of three away league games they face at the beginning of Carlo Ancelotti’s reign, so decide to watch La Liga. Perhaps José Mourinho’s first Serie A game in charge of Roma sounds fun, particularly given the combustible nature of some of his pre-season friendlies.

On this occasion, unless you have a particular love of football on the Côte d’Azur, the Ligue 1 offering probably won’t draw too many viewers. But when Paris Saint-Germain are playing it will. Leaving aside everything else – and that is, admittedly, leaving aside a lot – there is a great appeal in seeing just what happens when Lionel Messi links up with Neymar and Kylian Mbappé.

Which game floating punters prefer to watch may sound trivial, but it in fact reaches towards something fundamental. What is football for? What is it about? The probability is that Messi, Neymar and Mbappé will score dozens of goals this season. PSG may have been beaten to the title last season by Lille, but they surely won’t be again. There will, almost certainly, be some brilliant goals – dribbles, moments of interplay, outrageous individual skill – that will be cooed over in context-free 30-second clips on social media.

In that sense the profile of the league will increase. Certainly more people will be interested in watching PSG this season than in the recent past. The scrum at the airport and the queues outside the club shop to buy a Messi shirt are ample evidence of the enthusiasm he has generated (although the club’s suggestions that he will pay for himself should be taken with a pinch of salt).

But is that really what football is now about? Perhaps it is. There is certainly a strain of elite-level marketing departments that sees clubs as content producers. The CEO of Real Madrid, José Ángel Sánchez, has said Disney is the model, while at least one super-club is seriously considering the production of a semi-fictionalised soap opera based on dressing-room and boardroom drama.

We want to see how Messi and Neymar will link up and so we tune in. Some will revel in the beauty of the football and won’t care that scoring a hat-trick against OSC Patisserie may not be the highest level of sport (particularly not after OSC Patisserie were forced to sell their best players following the collapse of the Mediapro TV deal), as though football were like gymnastics or diving, to be marked against an imagined ideal, rather than about beating an opponent. There will be a short-term sugar rush but, however appealing macarons or financiers may be, you cannot live on patisserie alone.

The real footballing test will come in the Champions League. Are PSG better equipped to win it this season than they were last? Possibly, given the investment at the back, particularly the arrival of Achraf Hakimi in the full-back area, which had been an issue. But Messi presents a problem.

PSG already struggled in the biggest games because of the lack of protection Neymar and Mbappé gave the midfield and Messi is not going to resolve that. But that’s a detail to worry about next March.

More significant is what it says about modern football that PSG were one of two, perhaps three, sides in the world who could afford Messi (and yes, it would be nice if he had paused to consider whether he wanted to join a project that in effect exists to promote a state with a questionable human rights record).

England still has a semblance of competitiveness, with Chelsea likely to push Manchester City hard while Manchester United and Liverpool have the potential to challenge, but elsewhere the picture is bleak. PSG and Bayern Munich look all but certain to win their titles. Internazionale did end Juventus’s winning streak last season but are €600m in debt and have already lost their manager, their centre-forward and an accomplished attacking full-back. Juve aren’t such overwhelming favourites as PSG or Bayern (and in fact are a slightly longer price than City in the Premier League), but they are still odds-on to retain their title.

If Spain looks slightly more open, it is only because of the chaos at Real Madrid and Barcelona, both of whom are hundreds of millions of euros in debt and have been forced to alter transfer spending accordingly. But then the terms of the agreement reached on Thursday with the private equity fund CVC, to which Real Madrid and Barcelona (and Athletic Bilbao and an unnamed Segunda División club) have an opt-out, in effect giving up 11% of broadcast rights over the next 50 years in return for €2.1bn now suggests just how desperate the league as a whole is for immediate investment.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe a modern audience does just want to consume content, brief clips of spectacular moves whatever the context. Because if competition is anything like a priority, European football has failed. The economic issues that prompted the attempted Super League breakaway have not gone away just because that project was spectacularly bungled. The financial structures of the game led to the unhealthy perpetuation of an elite, into which system came three clubs whose wealth is not dependent on football and whose domination is perhaps only just beginning.

That was always the irony of Super League project: the plotters had identified the right issue, but their solution was wretched. It may be the only solution now is the financial collapse of the sport. And in the meantime, we’ll tune in to Ligue 1 and, ignoring what a broken structure it took for them to play together, marvel at Messi, Neymar and Mbappé turning their tricks. Ligue 1 is winning, celebrity culture is winning; football, perhaps, is not.

[Chester Perry]

@SwissRamble looks at how PSG are likely to still meet FFP despite all their summer signings - including Messi - it may surprise some that it does not just say because Nasser al Khelaifi is the most powerful and influential man in club football

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 7321433091

[Chester Perry]

This is significant in regards to a Super League reboot that has been discussed again in recent days - the 9 clubs that left Super League ahave now re-joined the European Clubs Association (remember all 12 resigned from the ECA when the Super League was announced) and had to make a legal commitment to do so - from the ECA

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

16.08.21
ECA EXECUTIVE BOARD ACCEPTS CLUBS’ REQUESTS TO RETAIN ECA MEMBERSHIP
Home News ECA Executive Board accepts Clubs’ requests to retain ECA membership, completing reintegration of the Clubs into European football

Following the receipt by ECA of specific requests asking the ECA Board to consider the withdrawal of their previous resignation requests of April 2021, the ECA Executive Board has agreed that the following clubs will retain their ECA ordinary membership for the current 2019-23 ECA membership cycle: AC Milan, Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC, Club Atlético de Madrid, FC Internazionale Milano, Liverpool FC, Manchester City FC, Manchester United FC and Tottenham Hotspur FC (“Clubs”).

In its decision, and after an exhaustive process of re-engagement by the Clubs and re-assessment by ECA over recent months, the ECA Executive Board took into consideration the Clubs’ acknowledgement that the so-called European Super League project (“ESL Project”) was not in the interests of the wider football community and their publicly communicated decisions to abandon said ESL Project completely. The ECA Board also acknowledged the Clubs’ stated willingness to engage actively with ECA in its collective mission to develop European club football – in the open and transparent interests of all, not the few.

This decision of the ECA Board marks the end of a regrettable and turbulent episode for European football and aligns with ECA’s relentless focus to strengthen unity in European football. Through this period of unprecedented challenge, ECA has firmly established itself as the only organisation through which the leading clubs in Europe can promote and protect their interests in football, whilst also developing the competition landscape and reinforcing the centrality of clubs in the governance of European football.

ECA can now proceed with renewed unity and solidarity to continue the important work needed to stabilise and develop European club football – at a time when this is needed the most.

[Chester Perry]

John Nicholson for Football points out that many clubs ruin their shirts with sponsor logo's that do much much more for their sponsors than they do for the clubs - if you look at the Burnley deal and take a way the brokers fee it doesn't even cover the manager's wage and that is before the bumper pay rise that is reportedly on the table - it does kind of equal our average infrastructure spend each year over the las 5 reported seasons though.

Are you supporting Manchester United or TeamViewer?
Date published: Monday 16th August 2021 9:34 - John Nicholson

A great new season, another great new shirt, another great new away shirt, another great new third shirt. All of them are quite expensive. Anywhere north of £50 is not untypical. Many of you love to buy a new one for the new season, believing you are supporting the club financially as well as spiritually by buying official merchandise. It’s understandable.

This endless churn of re-styling of shirts has become part of football’s way of life. I was reading a Newcastle United forum discussing their new variation of the famous black-and-white stripes. Some thought it was awful, others quite good. However, none mentioned that it has Fun88 and some Chinese writing across the front.

Stripes too wide, collar too small or too big, all valid style observations, but having Fun88 across the front seems the biggest design factor of all. And yet it was all but ignored, even though this is a company that on their website erroneously implores you to ‘experience the loyalty, spirit and tenacity of the Toon Army (and its fans) while taking up some up some (their typo) terrific betting opportunities’. Aye, right.

Awful, but then it’s all about the money they bring, isn’t it? It must be. No-one would opt to have Fun88 despoiling the shirt if there wasn’t some massive financial reward for doing so, would they?

And yet the initial three-year deal was only worth £6.5million. £2.16m per year which will pay half of one of the better paid player’s wages. That puts it into its proper context.

The sale of shirts is often sold to us as a valuable commercial asset. There was much purring about PSG selling 150,000 Lionel Messi shirts in seven minutes to net the club over 20 million quid. But numbers are deceiving. Shirts usually make clubs relatively little money per sale. Those 150,000 sales probably made anywhere from £1.125million to £3million for the club.

It’s not often acknowledged, because it doesn’t look as big a number and therefore not as good a headline as multiplying shirt sales by the retail price, but the reality is that the clubs do licensing deals with sportswear companies who in turn pay the club a fee to produce the shirts and a percentage of the retail value of the shirt. That percentage varies between 7.5% and on rare Liverpool-sized occasions, 20%.

So if your club sells a shirt for £60. It may have been paid £10million in the licensing deal, and get 10% of sales, ie £6.00 per shirt. Sell a million shirts and you’ve got enough to pay one highly paid player’s wage.

Of course, relatively few do sell a million shirts in a year. Those clubs with a global following lead the way. In 2018/19 Manchester United topped the table with 3.25 million sold, worldwide profit from which will just about have covered David De Gea’s wages for the year. In 10th position were Manchester City with just over a million. Below that, everyone is selling anywhere from less to much, much less.

Whether those numbers from Statista are based on what we used to call through-the-till sales (but which now obviously include online shopping) or wholesale shipments to retailers, isn’t clear. They seem suspiciously rounded-up numbers and how accurate can they really be? Do they account for stock still unsold? Are they really counting sales in every single store in every town in every country on earth? Easier to calculate it from wholesale shipments, which are not necessarily translated into sales.

The book industry has been known to inflate a book’s popularity by announcing how many books were shipped from book wholesaler to stores as though they were actual sales, even though they were sent on a sale-or-return basis and many may be returned. Even if they are supplied as bought stock, they’re still not retail sales.

So most clubs don’t make vast amounts from selling shirts. Where the shirt’s greater value lies is in being able to sell it as a billboard to various ‘partners’. While some deals – such as Manchester United’s with Chevrolet and now something called TeamViewer – are in the £50million-per-year range, they’re the outlier and many of these deals are often far removed from the lush upland pastures of wealth.

For example, the controversial gambling sponsors in the Premier League account for just £70million of income per annum (an average of £3.5 million per club), and just £40million in the Championship. It’s not nothing, but it’s not much. You would think, given gambling is so controversial, they could do without it. It seems desperate to sell the club’s most valuable real estate for so little.

Certainly in comparison to the £100-170 million they get for being in the Premier League, a million here or there is not significant, and yet it has a great impact on the aesthetics of the game and, in the case of gambling sponsorship, brings a very controversial partner to their table that increasingly troubles some fans.

The endless chasing of ever more money has brought companies into the game which we may not find acceptable. This was certainly the case for Norwich City recently

When we buy a shirt, we should understand that we are being sold by those companies as endorsing their brand, whether we like it or not. We are participating in their ongoing advertising campaign and are paying for the pleasure. Do we really want that?

Unbranded, ad-free retro shirts offer a better way to support the club without supporting the sponsors. They’re far nicer to look at then the current billboard shirts, are iconic of the club more profoundly, and surely they’re a better choice than endorsing companies that we often know nothing about, actively dislike and who know little about the club. We’re not helping the club much with our money, but we are helping the sponsors a great deal.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

https://twitter.com/SkySportsNews/statu ... 43973?s=19

Laporta has spoken about Barca's messy finances

[Chester Perry]

There has been an interesting press conference in Barcelona today - Joan Laporta teared into the previous regeime - from Marca.com

Laporta takes apart Bartomeu's 'eight lies'
He made clear that "no one will run away from their responsibilities"

16/08/2021 - 15:03

Joan Laporta held a press conference on Monday that saw the Barcelona president discuss the club's finances, during which he was very critical of his predecessor, Josep Maria Bartomeu.

In the last few days, Bartomeu himself criticised Laporta's administration in an open letter, making a few arguments, but the current Barcelona chief saw this press conference as an opportunity to dismantle Bartomeu's claims point by point in what was a response that lasted more than 10 minutes.

Laporta even acknowledged that when the time comes - once the audit, which is yet to be completed, is finished - he will try to demand accountability for the former board's mismanagement.

"It would be very hasty if I were to tell you what legal action we will propose," Laporta said.

"What is certain is that they are responsible from the time they resigned until the management committee [interim board] left. Nobody will run away from their responsibilities."

Bartomeu's eight lies, according to Laporta
The first lie
"I received the letter from the former president and the truth is that he wanted to make it public, I respect that," Laporta noted.

"After reading it I see that it is full of lies. It is an exercise in despair. They are responsible until March 2021. Until the date of their resignation they are responsible for the consequences of their administration, and no one will run away from their responsibilities.

"I don't want the maxim that if you repeat a lie it becomes the truth to remain at the club. It is a systematic deception.

"Everyone knows that we approved the accounts for technical reasons and so as not to paralyse the club's activity, but this approval does not validate the period from 2019 to 2020."

The second lie
"He says that he resigned because of the [Catalan government's Procicat] and his board resigned because the vote of no confidence was successful and they tried to escape so as not to be the first board to be deposed," Laporta stated.

The third lie
"They say that after resigning they could not take economic decisions and that is why 375 million [euros] was lost because of COVID," he explained.

"If all their assumptions were fulfilled, the profit would have been one million [euros]. They put more than 300 million [euros] in sales, almost 200 million [euros] in salary reductions, 100 million [euros] for Barca Corporate. None of this could be done.

"There was also the hypothesis of opening the stadium in February 2021, which was not realistic. None of the assumptions of the budget presented for the 2020/21 season have been fulfilled, and so this budget gives a negative result of 320 million euros.

"This results in a dramatic economic, patrimonial and financial situation. We find that on March 31, 2021, the debt was 1.35 billion euros."

The fourth lie
"The 12 percent [salary] reduction of the 2020/21 [season] and the 20 percent reduction planned for this season is also a lie. The reduction is not real. Those 68 million [euros] have been transferred and we have to pay them now. These salaries were not reduced," Laporta claimed.

The fifth lie
"The sale of Barca Corporate is the fifth lie. Add to that the income from the Super League and LaLiga's agreement with CVC. This is the old wives' tale," Laporta commented.

"It is serious enough for a Barcelona president to break the confidentiality of contracts, because it undermines credibility. It is also serious for Bartomeu to say that LaLiga's proposal to make us members would have benefited us, because it meant mortgaging the audiovisual rights for 50 years.

"It shows that the short-term strategy of his board was to plug holes and not look to the long term, [thus] mortgaging the club. This is how we have fared and the management [of the previous board] is disastrous and also very worrying. We will get out of this situation because we are working on it."

The sixth lie
"Neymar. At this point he says that we have forgiven him 16.7 million [euros]. Another lie," he stated.

"This is not true and I would also remind him of the damage done to Barcelona by the Neymar saga. It was an accumulation of lies. He made a shameful and self-serving pact with the prosecution to condemn Barcelona for the first time."

The seventh lie
"Sporting salaries shot up because otherwise we couldn't compete with the Premier League clubs," Laporta revealed.

"The truth is that the sporting policy has been disastrous in recent years, especially when they managed to sell Neymar for 222 million [euros]. They spent disproportionately and at lightning speed. This caused wages to skyrocket. We should have made more proportionate investments and with more sporting logic."

The eighth lie
"The Espai Barca [project]. Firstly, it has worked on activities with a lack of transparency," Laporta began.

"There is no information that the construction or refurbishment of a stadium with the presence of so many people entails an increase in costs and risks that are practically unaffordable.

"We also find that there are falsehoods when it comes to underestimating the costs of many of the items. The facilities were undervalued, there was no report that made this facility reliable.

"With the Espai Barca, we are reforming the project to make it viable. We are in a position to comply with a timetable that involves presenting financing to the [general] assembly, and once this process is completed we will begin work in the summer of 2022.

"We are also looking after the facilities of the [different sports clubs inside Barcelona] to make them compatible with the technical designs of the projects. The repairs were urgent and we are doing them.

"It is hard to understand why this issue was not presented in the assembly, but they did not dare because the project was undervalued. We have lost valuable time to bring the club and its assets up to date."

[Chester Perry]

That astonishing attack by Laporta was preceded by this set of financial data for FC Barcelona - from Marca.com

Laporta admits Barcelona have 'losses of 481 million euros'
The club have submitted these figures to LaLiga

16/08/2021 - 13:59

Joan Laporta revealed just how delicate Barcelona's financial situation is during a press conference on Monday, with a negative net worth of 451 million euros.

After comparing their situation to other clubs, Laporta recognised that Barcelona have been overspending on wages.

"Barcelona have a negative net worth of 451 million euros," Laporta announced, as well as having "a wage bill that represents 103% percent of the club's total income. It represents 20-25 percent more than our competitors."

The Barcelona president noted that they have not found it easy to encourage the players to accept lower-paid conracts.

[Chester Perry]

For the record I am very cautious about NFT's for sports - particularly in the realm of fan engagement, like almost everything else it is largely an arena for speculators - in fact so quickly did they come into the marketplace that it seems like it was created for speculators rather than fans.

This article from Sportico.com talks to a couple of McKinsey consultants about the market for Sports based NFT

McKinsey Analysis: Despite Slump, Sports NFTs Aren’t Going Away
BEN VONWILLER AUGUST 13, 2021

Today’s guest columnists are Dan Singer and Ben Vonwiller of McKinsey & Company.

The NFT skeptics are running a victory lap: Weekly sales of sports NFTs peaked at $138 million in February 2021 and have since declined by about 90%. Art NFTs have followed a similar pattern, peaking at $149 million and dropping to around $25 million per week. Online NFT forums (such as “NBA Top Shot Collectors” on Facebook) abound with remorse.

However, over the same time period, the monthly purchases of sports NFTs have grown by 19%. And our analysis of who is buying (and why) suggests that the sports NFT market is here to stay as a powerful medium for fan engagement.

From our research, which included an April survey of 2,500 U.S. consumers aged 18-65, we estimate that 0.5% to 1% of U.S. adults have bought a sports NFT so far, and another 5% are highly interested. If all of this segment were to spend $205 per year (the median self-reported figure in our survey), the sports NFT market would reach $2.5 billion from U.S. buyers alone.

Our research found that more than half of sports NFT buyers (accounting for almost two-thirds of the spending) are speculators and technology lovers. However, two additional segments of sports NFT buyers, who are more similar to traditional card collectors, account for close to half of the market.

• Speculators (35% of sports NFT buyers) are interested because they like buying and selling NFTs, negotiating deals and enjoying the “sweat” (i.e. the thrill of ripping open an NFT pack). They also trust the security of NFTs (“no issues with authenticity, grading, or condition”). NFTs virtually eliminate the risk of counterfeiting, which is a persistent problem in cards and collectibles.

• Tech-lovers (22%) are excited about the blockchain and cryptocurrency and consider themselves to be on the cutting edge.

• Collectors (20%) appreciate the artistry of NFTs and building out/displaying their collections.
  • The Community segment (24%) likes sports NFTs as a means of getting more involved in their favorite sports and spending time with friends who share their interest.

The price gyrations in the NFT market are of little concern to these last two segments. For example, just 7% of Community fans say they like the thrill of ripping a pack, and only 14% say they enjoy speculating on the value of NFTs. Only 14% of the Collectors say they are interested in blockchain technology.

Today’s sports NFT buyers (similar to trading card collectors) are avid participants in many other forms of investing, gaming and trading. For example, they participate in stock and option trading, fantasy sports, sports betting and casino gambling at rates 3 to 5 times higher than other U.S. adults. Yet to our surprise, few sports NFT buyers (aside from the tech-lovers) have ever bought other blockchain assets:

• Only 39% of the Collectors, 28% of the Community segment, and 41% of the Speculators have bought cryptocurrency.

• Only 13% of sports NFT buyers have bought an art NFT.

Sports NFTs have a lot in common with other forms of collecting, gaming and investing, but our segments see the similarities in completely different ways:

• Collectors think sports NFTs are most similar to trading cards and memorabilia.

• The Community segment sees them as similar to trading cards and virtual goods in video games.

• Speculators see sports NFTs as a new form of sports betting.

• Tech-lovers consider sports NFTs to be just another crypto asset.

NFTs are like a Rorschach test for sports fans. Their ability to appeal simultaneously to four different segments is a signal of their potential appeal to a broad swath of sports fans, regardless of whether prices rebound.

Similar to sports betting, the top 10% of sports NFT buyers account for 67% of the total spend. These whales over-index for interest in blockchain, and they see sports NFTs as a way to “make a lot of money.” Whales are also more bullish: They are three times as likely to say they plan to participate long-term, and 42% of whales expect the NFT market to be “hugely popular” in the future. Only 5% of whales say sports NFTs are “a short-term fad” vs. 22% for other sports NFT buyers.

Many trading card collectors have been notably reluctant to embrace NFTs, but some may eventually be won over. For instance, 25% said they rejected sports NFTs because they are “too expensive,” but now that the average price has dropped so much, they may change their minds.

For their part, many sports NFT buyers see advantages over trading cards, with 59% trusting “the security of NFTs more than physical cards and memorabilia.” However, 62% of those who buy both NFTs and trading cards say they will increase their spend on trading cards in the next year, and only 4% plan to decrease it. Therefore, we see minimal cannibalization risk so far.

NFT buyers are interested in a broad array of sports and leagues, eight of which appeal to at least 30% of NFT buyers. While the NFL has the largest U.S. fan base, its fan interest in NFTs lags behind NBA fans (possibly because of Top Shot’s head start in the market). NCAA, soccer and NHL all over-index for NFTs, perhaps due to their younger fan bases.

NFTs also appear to be strengthening the connections between fans and their favorite sports, with 86% of buyers saying that owning sports NFTs makes them even bigger fans.

The strong interest in established leagues’ digital memorabilia offers further evidence that sports NFTs are more than just another boom-and-bust cryptocurrency fad. We had assumed buyers would be skeptical about any centralized control over the creation and sale of sports NFTs, because cryptocurrency enthusiasts tend to distrust institutions. (For example, 59% of the sports NFT Tech-lovers say they “don’t trust the government to manage currency.”) But we were wrong:

• Two-thirds “prefer buying sports NFTs from official league websites/platforms.”

• 59% “think official sports NFTs (i.e. those licensed by leagues and players associations) are more valuable than other sports NFTs.”

Despite the well-publicized issuance of non-league-approved “ambush” NFTs by famous athletes (such as Rob Gronkowski and Patrick Mahomes), it appears fans prefer the assurance of scarcity and authenticity associated with league licenses.

The majority of sports NFT buyers are also excited about other blockchain-enabled experiences, including:

• virtual ticket stubs (63%)

• collectible digital merchandise, such as virtual team jerseys (61%)

• the chance to win a rare moment from live events they have attended (66%)

Even card collectors who have rejected NFTs showed interest in free collectibles bundled with a ticket (30%).

Notwithstanding the boom-and-bust cycle of NFT prices so far, we see proven, growing fan interest in the category. Sports NFTs are tapping into the emotions and attachment of traditional fandom, with ample opportunity for additional innovation.

For example, Sorare has created a fantasy game for soccer, using NFTs of leading EU players. Socios has used the blockchain to create “fan tokens” for pro clubs. These tokens trade like stocks and enable fans to vote on club decisions such as the new goal celebration song for Juventus or to access VIP rewards from Manchester City. Lionel Messi’s recent signing bonus included PSG fan tokens, which tripled in value on news of his joining the club. MLB just announced its NFT partnership with Candy Digital, led by Fanatics founder Michael Rubin, which could take NFTs in the direction of virtual team jerseys or flash sales. Turner Sports created basketball-themed NFTs for the NBA All-Star game in March—they could bundle NFTs with OTT subscriptions.

All of which indicates that sports NFTs are a movement, not a meme.

Singer and Vonwiller lead McKinsey & Company’s global sports and gaming practice. The authors are grateful to Kenny Gersh for his guidance and Brett Jacobs, Erik Johnson and Geoff Silver for their research and analysis for this article.

[Chester Perry]

Italy's Lega B has managed to do something no other league in Europe has - dramatically improve it's revenues particularly in broadcasting terms, in marked contrast to Serie A - here SportsBusiness look in depth at what has changed

Innovation, community and a commitment to youth: How Italy’s Lega B became European football’s surprise success story
Frank Dunne
August 10, 2021

• Italy’s second-tier league enjoys big growth in media rights value despite wider crisis

• League has had private equity interest but is focusing on cementing the foundations

• Commitment to developing youth is league’s calling card but is ‘not adequately rewarded’

Against a backdrop of financial crisis and a soft sports-rights market, in which accepted wisdom says only ‘must-have’ properties can prosper, one European league is bucking the trend: Italy’s second division, Lega B.

England’s Premier League managed to keep the value of its domestic media rights flat through an unusual roll-over arrangement with incumbent rights-holders, allowed by the government and regulators because of Covid. The value of domestic German Bundesliga rights fell slightly. Italy’s Serie A also experienced a drop. LaLiga is concerned something similar will happen in Spain.

Lega B heads into a new season – which opens next week with the match between Frosinone and a Parma side featuring goalkeeping legend Gianluigi Buffon – having doubled the value of its domestic media rights. It has also quadrupled the value of its international media rights, albeit from a low base. And it has increased the value of its central sponsorship revenues.

For the new cycle, 2021-22 to 2023-24, domestic rights income currently stands at €46m ($54.5m) per season, with free-to-air highlights rights due to be awarded this week. This compares with the €24.2m per season earned in deals with DAZN and state broadcaster Rai. International media rights income has increased from €700,000 per season in a deal with Perform, to at least €2.5m per season for the next three years.

With the additional income from the domestic highlights, Lega B could overtake the second-tier Spanish league, the Segunda División, for domestic media-rights income. The second Spanish league earns €47m per season. Lega B still trails England’s second– tier Championship and Germany’s 2. Bundesliga.

In February, Lega B’s naming rights sponsor BKT renewed for a further three years, from 2021-22 to 2023-24, at its existing fee of about €2.5m per season. The league was rebranded Serie BKT as part of the original deal and will retain the branding. Indian off-road tyre manufacturer BKT first agreed to sponsor the league for the 2018-19 to 2020-21 cycle. The deals were brokered by the Italian division of Havas Media Group, the commercial adviser to the league.

The results are the product of over two years’ work begun by current league president Mauro Balata. This has been based around building a distinctive brand identity as a league committed to youth, with deep roots in the local community. The league has also adopted innovative commercial strategies. The league’s website carries the phrase: “Lega B: For football which is more authentic and attentive to social responsibility.”

Talking exclusively to SportBusiness this week, Balata said: “We consider that we fill a void in the Italian football system. If you look at Serie A, which is the most important league in Italy, there are many clubs whose focus is increasingly on the international competitions. We are interested in protecting the ‘Italianness’ of our championship, promoting talent and developing young players in a concrete way.”

Balata, who became president in 2017, explains how Lega B positions itself: “The values we want to communicate are ethical behaviour, faith in young players, talent development and the Italian identity of the league. We want to tell the story of the cities where we are represented, including their social and economic realities, so we can create an empathy with all those people. Through our football, we tell the stories of their territory and of our country as a whole.”

He added: “The BKT renewal and the media-rights deals are the fruit of the work, together with the clubs, of stabilising the league, strengthening its credibility and brand through incorporating best practice. We hope it’s part of a journey towards the financial sustainability of the clubs.”

He said that BKT’s continued commitment was an important sign. “They married the philosophy of Lega B of taking its story into the towns and cities across Italy, trying to tap into the reality of fans’ lives, recognising their social realities,” he said.

Balata said that the commercial performance of the league needed to be set against a crisis which was costing the football system “hundreds of millions of euros” and was not yet over. “We’re proud of the ability of the league, in a moment of profound crisis, to create the conditions where we can help the clubs find stability. The market clearly considers Serie B as a credible football project. We are putting in place a system which is stable in a definitive way.”

The commercial growth of the league has not gone unnoticed. There have been expressions of interest in Serie B from private equity companies. For the moment, however, there are no concrete negotiations and this is not a seen as a priority. “First we want to stabilise our brand and establish our economic value in the market,” he added.

Innovative media strategy
When Lega B unveiled the invitation to tender for its domestic media rights earlier this year it was not easy to find commentators willing to express a view about it. Quite simply, nobody had seen a model like it before, one based on non-exclusive packages of rights whose price changed according to how many partners came on board.

The league offered two packages of rights covering all games, one for satellite and digital terrestrial and one for digital and mobile rights. The novel element was that the fee was based on a sliding scale of exclusivity. A bidder could acquire one or both packages, with the final amount paid depending on the number of buyers for each, and therefore the degree of exclusivity. At the time, rights consultant and former Canal Plus executive Pierre Maes said the new model was “the future”.

Sky acquired satellite rights. As the de facto exclusive broadcaster, it will pay €16m per season. Sky, DAZN and Helbiz Media acquired non-exclusive digital rights at €10m each per season.

To some extent, the league’s thinking was conditioned by the fact that Sky Italia, the country’s dominant pay-television platform, could not acquire rights for digital services on an exclusive basis, as a result of regulatory intervention in 2019, which was upheld in 2020 after Sky’s appeal. However, there was also wider strategic thinking at work.

“It was born out of an intuition we had in the league,” Balata said. “The objective was to achieve much more widespread exposure to reach all of the fans of the league. Opening the market up to multiple operators means there are different entry points for fans, both from the economic point of view and because there are fans who have new and innovative ways of accessing content. It meant reaching out to fans across non-traditional methods too. It’s no longer just about the TV.”

Helbiz ‘not a gamble’
When the league awarded its rights in June this year, one of the partners was a name completely unknown in the industry: Helbiz. The US-based micro-mobility and lifestyle company created a new division, Helbiz Media, with former senior Sky Italia executive Matteo Mammì as chief executive. The company acquired domestic digital rights and international rights and became the league’s ‘Official Micro and eMobility Partner’.

Helbiz’s strategy is to combine football and entertainment with micro-mobility through a subscription and cashback model. Its digital platform, Helbiz Live, will offer Serie B content in three different packages: aA monthly subscription to Helbiz Live at €5.99, of which €4 will be made available to the customer as credit for micro-mobility services; an annual subscription, at €49.99, with €30 of credit; and a package with unlimited access to its micro-mobility services for €39.99 per month.

Although international distribution has never been critical to Serie B’s finances, handing global media rights – and entrusting the global image of the league – to a complete newcomer appeared to represent something of a gamble, even though the lifestyle company was guaranteeing four times what the previous international distributor, Perform, had been paying. On top of the €2.5m per season minimum guarantee, the league and Helbiz share any upside earnings on top of that 50:50. Just as important as the increased fee was the confidence Helbiz had in securing coverage.

Last month, Helbiz agreed a deal with German lifestyle company CLIQ Digital, covering Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The deal was brokered by the Sports Media Venture consultancy operated by former IMG executive Floris Weisz. This week, it announced further broadcast deals across Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, the Balkans and Latin America. These deals were done through the Kosmos agency, the company co-founded by Barcelona player Gerard Piqué. The league is still in talks in multiple other markets, including China.

Balata said: “The process of trying to bring the league to wider audiences was also extended to international markets. There was a strong economic commitment, which is a good result for Serie B. We increased the value of the rights by a factor of four. The sales process continues and there are many new markets coming on board. There are territories where we are now closing deals where, in the past, we were not only invisible but not even taken into consideration by broadcasters. There is a huge interest out there for Italian football and, increasingly, for our championship.”

He added that the league was “absolutely satisfied” with Helbiz. “We didn’t risk anything by going with a new player. We increased both our revenues and our exposure. That’s the ideal outcome.”

Commitment to youth
As part of its drive to differentiate itself from the top division, Lega B introduced a rule that clubs could register a maximum of 18 players over 23, and an unlimited number of players under 21. Additionally, one of the criteria by which mutuality revenues are divided is the number of minutes a club plays U21 players in their first teams. It’s not a box-ticking exercise. The players play. “There are players in Serie B who play a full season at 17. We have the highest number of minutes played by U21 players of any league in Europe, according to Uefa statistics”, Balata said.

In Roberto Mancini’s triumphant Euro 2020 Italy last month, 17 of the 26-man squad had been formed in youth academies at Lega B clubs. In the Uefa Euro U21 tournament in Hungary and Slovenia in May and June, 13 of the Italy squad currently play in the second division.

The second tier became commercially and politically separate from Serie A in 2010 and was rebranded as Lega B. It receives solidarity payments from Serie A of six per cent of the latter’s annual media-rights income, as well as the income it earns for its own commercial rights. Additionally, the three clubs relegated from Serie A have been contributing 20 per cent of their parachute payments to a central league fund since the 2018-19 season. Balata believes that the existing solidarity mechanisms do not adequately reward the investments in player development made by the second-tier clubs.

“The concern we have is that the clubs may struggle to continue this level of investment, especially in the middle of a financial crisis. The young player that comes out of Lega B is now like the student that comes out of the world’s best university with the top grades. The clubs invest heavily in this. Investing in academies and infrastructure does not come cheap.”

He added: “At the moment, the national football system does not adequately reward the clubs for this. These young players go on to deliver for the national teams at various levels and for the teams in Serie A. They need greater support from the wider football system, because ultimately the work done by the Lega B clubs is in everyone’s interests.”

[Chester Perry]

todays Price of Football Podcast includes a discussion on fan token's

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

[Chester Perry]

@KieranMaguire with a depressing diagram that shows how money determines success in the Premier League - the triumph of Leicester only goes to show that the rule is true - in the first 29 years of the Premier League it was won 14 times by the club paying the highest wages, 9 times by the second highest wages, 4 times third highest wages, once by fourth highest wages and Leicester (15th highest wage)

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 25/photo/1

[Chester Perry]

Another interview from OffthePitch.com's series asking club executives what they learnt from the Pandemic

How thinking differently helped West Ham grow partnership revenues in the pandemic
16 August 2021 4:17 PM

• The London club recorded record partnerships revenue during a pandemic-interrupted 2020/21 season.

• Commercial director Nathan Thompson says the pandemic provided an opportunity to take a step back and find new and innovative ways of working with sponsors.

• This creative approach has helped retain current partners and attract new business while sparking ideas for future virtual activations.

• This article is part of a series of interviews with football executives asking what they learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic.

ROBERT KIDD contact@offthepitch.com

When football stopped, ticketing income wasn't the only revenue stream at risk of drying up.

Commercial partners, dealing with their own challenges from Covid-19, found that plans to promote their brand as part of the matchday experience had suddenly vanished.

Nathan Thompson, commercial director at West Ham United, oversees areas including partnerships, hospitality and ticket sales. He saw the challenge of the pandemic firsthand.

"First and foremost, it has confirmed and underpinned just how much our fans mean to us as a football club. When they're not there, it really highlights how much you miss your fans," he tells Off The Pitch.

"From a revenue perspective, it challenged us massively. A number of partners have TV facing assets and objectives they really want to fulfill at matches so whether we like it or not, the reality is it really dismantled the ability for a number of our partners to reach their goals."

They have all changed

In the adversity, Thompson and his team saw an opportunity to strengthen relationships with partners that were seeing their own businesses impacted by the pandemic.

"When a partner first comes on board, we showcase what the West Ham platform can do for their business. We understand what their challenges and their objectives are – but they have all changed incredibly during Covid," he says.

"It really gave us an opportunity to pivot with those individuals and say to them, 'look, this is a pit stop, how do we come out of this bigger and better? There's not much we can do about football taking place without supporters, but how do we look at our social channels? How do we look at engaging with our fans through other means?'

"It was about taking a step back and saying, 'there's some things that we can't do, but what can we do better?' It was taking brands and partners through that process of extracting curiosity, educating people as to exactly who they are and, at the right moment, converting."

They were probably impacted the most

Staff called West Ham's corporate hospitality members, with the goal of emphasising the "escapism" of returning to London Stadium after lockdown. To reinforce the message of the club being a "family" virtual events were held, including a Christmas party with players and staff including manager David Moyes and assistant Stuart Pearce.

When it became clear matches would be played behind closed doors, hospitality members were offered a credit or refund – over 95 per cent opted to keep their money with the club.

One thing I always say to our partners is, 'let us help you find that 0.5 per cent.' And often you get the response 'we don't need 0.5 per cent.' But that could be the difference between another couple of million pounds worth of revenue

There were also efforts made to find innovative ways of working with commercial partners. West Ham's destination partner since 2016 has been Experience Kissimmee, promoting travel to the city in central Florida close to well-known theme parks.

"Out of all of our partners they were probably impacted the most, because when you're locked down you can't leave your house, let alone go to Florida," Thompson says.

An idea before the pandemic had been a "Best Seat in the House" campaign, which would offer a fan a prime place in London Stadium alongside a former player. Rather than throw the concept away when matches were forced behind closed doors, it became a virtual experience.

Bring West Ham to them

The content series, which offered Hammers fans the chance to virtually watch matches with a club legend, was nominated for a European Sponsorship Association award.

The successful pivot of the campaign has highlighted the extra activation offerings available to sponsors as well as the opportunity to engage with international fans.

"Covid has been a massive challenge, but actually one of the things it has shown is these things work regardless the state of the world," Thompson says.

"Our DNA is in East London and Essex but we also have a global fanbase. There are West Ham fans who live in the US, Australia, the Middle East … and Covid or no Covid, they simply may not be able to come to the UK to see their heroes. What this has done is enabled us as a business to understand how we can better bring West Ham to them."

While examining ways to adapt work with partners from industries which were struggling, like travel and retail, the club targeted new partnerships with businesses from growing sectors. In February, West Ham signed a deal with payments platform Trustly to be the club's "official open banking partner."

That 0,5 per cent

From a revenue perspective, Thompson says the deal represented excellent value during a challenging time to secure new partners.

Existing sponsors have also been sufficiently impressed. The club announced five renewals, all for increased revenue, before the Premier League started last weekend.
It comes after the club recorded record new business growth last season, up 16 per cent year-on-year, despite the disruption of the pandemic. Thompson says he is confident on improving on that figure this coming season.

Navigating the pandemic has helped to build trust with partners, who are now more open to being challenged with different ideas.

"One thing I always say to our partners is, 'let us help you find that 0.5 per cent.' And often you get the response 'we don't need 0.5 per cent.' But that could be the difference between another couple of million pounds worth of revenue. I say to them 'don't settle, let's find another way'," Thompson says.

Massive growth opportunity

Thompson, who was named on the 2020 Football Black List, an initiative celebrating the most influential black people in football, highlights the role his team played during an uncertain period. The added pressure of working through the pandemic has forged closer working relationships and sharpened Thompson's strategy to establish "elite processes for elite outcomes."

"You can have all of the most wonderful strategies and ideas in the world but if your people are lost and unhappy, demotivated or scared, it's going to be challenging to fulfill some of the objectives that we have," he says.

"Because I have the relationship I have with them now, which has been helped by Covid, I can challenge them and say 'how are we going to do this together?' Because it's in our interest as a team to be the very, very best.

"There is a massive growth opportunity here for the club. I think we're in a great spot at the moment, on and off the pitch. We're in a great spot, but there's more to come."

[Chester Perry]

This is significant in regards to a Super League reboot that has been discussed again in recent days - the 9 clubs that left Super League ahave now re-joined the European Clubs Association (remember all 12 resigned from the ECA when the Super League was announced) and had to make a legal commitment to do so - from the ECA

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

16.08.21
ECA EXECUTIVE BOARD ACCEPTS CLUBS’ REQUESTS TO RETAIN ECA MEMBERSHIP
Home News ECA Executive Board accepts Clubs’ requests to retain ECA membership, completing reintegration of the Clubs into European football

Following the receipt by ECA of specific requests asking the ECA Board to consider the withdrawal of their previous resignation requests of April 2021, the ECA Executive Board has agreed that the following clubs will retain their ECA ordinary membership for the current 2019-23 ECA membership cycle: AC Milan, Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC, Club Atlético de Madrid, FC Internazionale Milano, Liverpool FC, Manchester City FC, Manchester United FC and Tottenham Hotspur FC (“Clubs”).

In its decision, and after an exhaustive process of re-engagement by the Clubs and re-assessment by ECA over recent months, the ECA Executive Board took into consideration the Clubs’ acknowledgement that the so-called European Super League project (“ESL Project”) was not in the interests of the wider football community and their publicly communicated decisions to abandon said ESL Project completely. The ECA Board also acknowledged the Clubs’ stated willingness to engage actively with ECA in its collective mission to develop European club football – in the open and transparent interests of all, not the few.

This decision of the ECA Board marks the end of a regrettable and turbulent episode for European football and aligns with ECA’s relentless focus to strengthen unity in European football. Through this period of unprecedented challenge, ECA has firmly established itself as the only organisation through which the leading clubs in Europe can promote and protect their interests in football, whilst also developing the competition landscape and reinforcing the centrality of clubs in the governance of European football.

ECA can now proceed with renewed unity and solidarity to continue the important work needed to stabilise and develop European club football – at a time when this is needed the most.

Correction

so as not to offend the Madrid Commercial Courts ruling on the Super League teams (no punishments) which we await the European Courts to pass final judgement on - there is no written agreement between the ECA and the repentant 9

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 4334086145

[Chester Perry]

Lionel Messi's departure from Barcelona is regarded as a tragedy by the club's fans - the real tragedy was how they managed him while he was there. this is an important lesson for sport (and fans) - from the Financial Times

The Lionel Messi saga is a lesson in how not to handle a prize asset
MICHAEL MORITZ AUGUST 16, 2021

The writer is a partner at Sequoia Capital

Some people who go to work at the Nou Camp, home of five-times Champions League winners FC Barcelona, must have forgotten the adage that graveyards are full of indispensable people. That became clear last week as the sorry saga of Lionel Messi’s departure from the club and free transfer to Paris Saint-Germain played out in full public view. Instead, the management of Barcelona provided the fodder for a Harvard Business School case about how not to manage an investment portfolio or an organisation.

The vitals: Messi, one of the greatest footballers the world has ever seen; loyal club servant since the age of 13; highest goal scorer in the history of La Liga; six-time Ballon d’Or winner. As much a part of Barcelona as Antonio Gaudi’s Basilica or its Gothic Quarter.

What’s an investment manager to do with an asset (for yes, footballers, like it or not, are assets) whose rate of growth is slowing, and whose value is sure to decline?

Investment managers worth their salt have an answer. They are not anchored to the past, or to the refuge which, in the argot of the trade, “names” provide, or to the idea of squeezing out another quarter or year of performance from a stock whose glory years are over. Instead they redeploy the money and purchase different stocks lodged on the right side of progress.

Barcelona’s management chose to do the opposite. They continued to devote much of their payroll to Messi (so triggering a series of pay demands — to which they acceded — from his teammates). It is hard to exaggerate the damage that this, and a series of terrible player purchases, has done to the club, which is now drowned in debt.

Some people may blame Messi, or the intransigence of his father, who acts as his agent. But it is hard to fault either. Both were responding to market conditions when they made their requests. Rather, the culprits are those who gave in to the demands. Remember, no investor is ever required to buy an asset.

Barcelona committed investment hara-kiri. Instead of selling Messi during the past few years, they continued to pay him more until they were left with no choice but to shovel the 34-year-old off their books. By contrast, Manchester United sold the then 28-year-old David Beckham to Real Madrid in 2003 for $34m — probably more than $100m in today’s market. If leaks of Messi’s contract are to be believed, Barcelona paid Messi €555m between 2017 and 2021.

The other aspect of the Messi debacle that seems so foreign to anyone from Silicon Valley is that he — and all other footballers — are paid in cash (albeit with bonuses tied to certain accomplishments). No vibrant organisation in my little world compensates valued performers in such a ham-fisted manner. Instead, they grant equity whose ultimate value is tied to the overall health of the business.

Pedants will argue this isn’t possible in the world of football. They will say that players come and go, or may just have their moments in the sun. Yet the same happens in Silicon Valley, where highly valued employees might work at one company for three or four years before moving to another.

I suspect the real answers are different. This approach flies in the face of accepted practice: it requires football club owners to act less like 19th-century textile mill owners; it means that agents would need to abandon self-dealing; and, above all, it would mean that players come to grips with the uncertainty associated with the value of long-term equity compensation.

Imagine if every football club set aside about 25 per cent of its equity for player compensation, requiring that players sell their shares upon leaving the club. If Barcelona had compensated Messi with a combination of 50 per cent cash and 50 per cent equity, both he and the club would be far better off today. Two years before Messi joined the club it had revenues of $123m which, during the pre-pandemic season, had risen to more than $1bn.

When Messi made his debut for Barcelona in 2004, the club was probably worth about $400m (precise figures are unavailable). Today it is worth about $4.8bn. If, as his value became clear, Messi had been granted shares or options, for about 10 per cent of the club, that would be worth about $500m today.

I know this sort of approach will be laughed out of town in the boardrooms of the world’s most valuable clubs. But I know too that, had it been adopted by the management of Barcelona, today they would not need to beg for money to pay for the maintenance of the graveyard they created.

[Chester Perry]

Socios Fan Tokens - if this is true then PSG are close to covering the cost of Messi's first year (when you add in all the other commercial/retail uplifts - there must have been a lot of people paying vastly inflated sums for the tokens based on the trading price

https://twitter.com/sgevans/status/1425775216379277313

"The price of PSG's fan token obviously rallied hugely this week - am told it brought in 30 million euros from new sales with PSG getting a majority of that."

Things to consider if this is true:
- If this is true then when combined with the commercial and retail uplift PSG will have more or less covered Messi's first year in wages in the first two weeks
- clubs benefit from the trade of/speculation in their fan tokens - just let that sink in - and then think about what transfer rumours can do in such an unregulated marketplace
- clubs appear to befit from trade whether the market is up or down
- the return to PSG appears significant but it took billions of euros of trade in their tokens to get that figure
- it is another area in which the biggest clubs will benefit the most because there are more people interested in them, which means they will attract more ordinary investors


and in the end while sophisticated speculators made a lot of money fresh faced fans who bought at the top of the market are sitting on a significant loss

https://twitter.com/uglygame/status/1427169009540141056

[Chester Perry]

La Liga President Javier Tebas has been making some strong claims about the benefits of the CVC finance deal, he believes La Liga will be stronger/bigger than Premier League globally in 7 to 9 years (that is within the next three tv cycles

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... 0e1f.shtml

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Interesting when they're saying on talksport that the next PL TV deal will grow again

[Chester Perry]

Interesting when they're saying on talksport that the next PL TV deal will grow again

The CVC money is meant to help clubs manage their pandemic losses strengthen their earning potential through infrastructure development and technology development designed to increase revenues. Whether it actually leads to the league being more competitive is another question and that is what they desperately need to attract audiences Too long have they been trading on interest in individual players (however great they may be). The CVC deal is a calculated gamble that the jump start the loan provides would be enough to provide the surge required to catch and surpass the Premier League

The US tv deals are key here, La Liga have that eight year $175m a season deal with ESPN just starting - the largest ever US soccer TV deal by total value, and we already know that the largest audience for football in the US is Spanish speaking.

The Premier League by way of contrast is in the final year of its circa $167m a year deal with real competition for the rights in the next cycle between incumbents NBC/Peacock (who fill a huge amount of schedule time with the Premier League, ESPN who already have most of the European big League rights (and are also benefitting been packaged with from parent organisations hugely successful Disney+) and CBS who have the Champions League. NBC/Peacock have ditched NHL in the next cycle reportedly so they can bid strong for the Premier League in the wake of that massive NFL deal.The Premier League has always done well when such competition exists. Ever since that massive Nent deal (circa £2 billion for six season) for the Nordics was announced I have wondered if the US could manage to equal or even exceed it. If they do then the Premier League could see even more distance between them and the rest as overall broadcast revenues would grow, despite the loss from the China deal.

Perhaps key to all La Liga's plans is that the Premier League will not be giving 11% of its broadcast revenues away for the next 50 years. It was interesting to se the universal appraisal of the CVC/La Liga deal was that it would not be something that the Premier League would ever do.

[Chester Perry]

Socios Fan Tokens - if this is true then PSG are close to covering the cost of Messi's first year (when you add in all the other commercial/retail uplifts - there must have been a lot of people paying vastly inflated sums for the tokens based on the trading price

https://twitter.com/sgevans/status/1425775216379277313

"The price of PSG's fan token obviously rallied hugely this week - am told it brought in 30 million euros from new sales with PSG getting a majority of that."

Things to consider if this is true:
- If this is true then when combined with the commercial and retail uplift PSG will have more or less covered Messi's first year in wages in the first two weeks
- clubs benefit from the trade of/speculation in their fan tokens - just let that sink in - and then think about what transfer rumours can do in such an unregulated marketplace
- clubs appear to befit from trade whether the market is up or down
- the return to PSG appears significant but it took billions of euros of trade in their tokens to get that figure
- it is another area in which the biggest clubs will benefit the most because there are more people interested in them, which means they will attract more ordinary investors


and in the end while sophisticated speculators made a lot of money fresh faced fans who bought at the top of the market are sitting on a significant loss

https://twitter.com/uglygame/status/1427169009540141056

also if true it dully explains this from Nasser al Khelaifi when PSD introduced Messi to the Press

"PSG president says world will be ‘shocked’ by revenues from Messi signing"

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/11/messi-p ... r=sharebar

[Chester Perry]

Apparently UEFA has overhauled it;s procedural rules that govern it's Club Financial Control Body - here Linklaters explain and summarise the changes

12th August 2021 Georgina King - Jason Shardlow-Wrest - Joseph Richmond - Shubham Jain Financial regulation of sports - Interaction of sports - Disciplinary processes and dispute resolution - Sports regulation and governance - Player contracts and transfer systems

Changing formation - UEFA re-writes the Rulebook for the Club Financial Control Body

Introduction
With many European football clubs’ transfer business in full swing, fans will be dreaming of the big money purchase that can drive their team on to success in the upcoming season. Away from the media spotlight, however, observant club lawyers will have noticed UEFA changing its procedural rules which support the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations (FFP Regulations). The FFP Regulations govern the finances of clubs participating in UEFA club competitions.

As we previously noted on the SportingLinks podcast and blog, recent decisions and the COVID-19 pandemic have raised questions about the effectiveness of the existing FFP Regulations. We highlighted the potential weaknesses in the FFP Regulations and in the structure and procedures of the Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), an independent UEFA body that enforces the FFP Regulations.

In the 2021 version of the Procedural Rules governing the CFCB (2021 Rules), UEFA has sought to address these issues. In particular:

• the CFCB has been reorganised to provide an internal appellate mechanism; and

• the Procedural Rules have been amended to enhance and clarify the CFCB’s enforcement capabilities.

• This article considers these changes and their likely impact on the financial regulation of club football and its enforcement in Europe.

A game of two chambers – the reorganisation of the CFCB
The CFCB is tasked with determining if any club is operating in breach of the FFP Regulations. In July 2021, UEFA announced that the CFCB’s composition had changed – new members were appointed and, crucially, new procedural rules were introduced.

Under the now discontinued 2019 version of the Procedural Rules (2019 Rules), the CFCB was divided between an Investigatory Chamber and an Adjudicatory Chamber. The Investigatory Chamber determined if there was a case to be heard by monitoring data and collecting evidence. Following its investigation, among other options, it could refer the case to the Adjudicatory Chamber. The Adjudicatory Chamber ruled on referrals and reviewed decisions of the Investigatory Chamber for manifest error. It could impose disciplinary measures and uphold, reject or modify decisions of the Investigatory Chamber.

The 2021 Rules refresh the CFCB structure. While two chambers remain, they are now rebranded the “First Chamber” (FC) and the “Appeals Chamber” (AC), each with new powers and functions.

The First Chamber

The FC, as the first instance decision-maker, is responsible for the opening of proceedings and collection of evidence. It has a reporting member in each case who establishes the facts and presents conclusions and recommended decision(s) to the entire FC. Where appropriate, the defendant is invited to rebut the case of the reporting member through written and oral submissions, and evidence. The FC (excluding the reporting member) then reaches a first instance decision. This improved ability for a defendant to present its case at first instance is a welcome change as it ensures a consultative process.

Another significant change is the power of the FC to impose broader sanctions. In addition to dismissing the case and concluding a settlement agreement with the club, the FC is now empowered (amongst other capabilities) to:

• conclude voluntary agreements (i.e. with the aim of complying with the breakeven requirement); and

• impose a full suite of disciplinary measures, including a points deduction, disqualification from UEFA competitions and even a withdrawal of a title or award.

The FC is also vested with a new power to take final decisions in particularly urgent cases, such as where the case concerns entry into a UEFA competition, giving the CFCB the ability to potentially accelerate enforcement.

The Appeals Chamber

The AC is strictly an appellate body. It hears appeals from FC decisions except for minor sanctions, small fines, exemptions and urgent cases. Interestingly, the AC may exclude substantial new facts or evidence submitted by a club if they could have been, but were not, adduced before the FC. This provision is likely to ensure that the FC can make an informed decision at first instance and that a club cannot overturn decisions with evidence that should have been raised earlier. The AC can dismiss the case, uphold, amend or overturn the FC decision, accept or reject the club’s admission to the UEFA competition and/or impose disciplinary measures.

As before, all CFCB decisions are final, except for the possibility of an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland. In exceptional cases, a further appeal might lie before the Swiss Courts.

In effect, the new CFCB structure combines the former Investigatory and Adjudicatory Chambers into a single FC and introduces an additional appellate mechanism in the form of the AC. This new construction creates an additional layer of adjudication before the CFCB decision becomes final, which may enhance the quality of decision-making and will arguably reduce the possibility of appeals before the CAS. In introducing this additional appellate mechanism, UEFA’s disciplinary procedure becomes more akin to that of other international bodies, such as FIFA’s Disciplinary Code, which provides for a similar two-tier adjudicatory mechanism.

Summer reinforcements – enhancement of CFCB enforcement capabilities
An efficient and clear procedural and enforcement framework is key to the success of any regulatory mechanism. The FFP Regulations and the Procedural Rules have previously attracted calls for change due to several legal challenges which have arguably exposed weaknesses in the regulations. The 2021 Rules bring in several important changes to address these weaknesses. These updates have the potential to enhance the enforcement powers of the CFCB:

• First, the rules on limitation periods have been changed. The 2019 Rules provided that prosecution is barred after five years following the breach of the FFP Regulations. CAS jurisprudence interpreted this to mean that the operation of the five-year limitation period occurred from when the breach first took place and “prosecution” meant the referral of the case to the Adjudicatory Chamber. This created enforcement issues, particularly if the CFCB was not aware of a breach or the investigation process took some time. The 2021 Rules change the limitation period to allow five years for the opening of proceedings from the breach. This could provide greater room for the FC to investigate, collect evidence and take decisions without the pressure of the clock running out.

• Second, Article 56 of the FFP Regulations places a duty on clubs to cooperate with the CFCB in respect of its requests and enquiries. However, the 2019 Rules did not expand on this duty which meant that UEFA could do little if the clubs did not proactively disclose material in their possession. Article 22 of the 2021 Rules seeks to fill this gap by introducing an obligation of full cooperation, much like the obligation on financial services firms in the UK per the Financial Conduct Authority’s Principle 11. It provides that a failure to cooperate (notably, such as a failure to provide documents) would allow the CFCB to draw adverse inferences. This change could go a long way in ensuring that the CFCB has all the material it needs to reach an informed decision and creates an additional enforcement route against non-compliant clubs.

• Third, in previous enforcement cases clubs were able to introduce additional evidence in proceedings before the CAS and the 2019 Rules were silent on the introduction of new material. However, the 2021 Rules include an explicit bar prohibiting CAS from taking into consideration “any substantial new facts or evidence that were available to or could reasonably have been discovered by the appellant and were not adduced by the latter before the CFCB”. Coupled with the AC’s power to disregard substantially new evidence not put before the FC (as discussed above), this rule may enhance the possibility of final resolution of proceedings at the CFCB without the need to go to CAS. It is also likely to ensure that UEFA is not blindsided during the CAS appeal process.

• Fourth, Article 26 of the 2021 Rules introduces the principle of recidivism; meaning it will be considered an “aggravating circumstance” if a club has committed another offence of a similar nature within a period of three years of a previous offence. This may act as a deterrent for repeat offenders as they will be subject to stricter sanctions. By targeting strategic violations of the 2021 Rules, it might ensure a more level playing field in the future.

Comment
These changes to the structure of the CFCB and the Procedural Rules suggest that UEFA is responding to the difficulties faced in enforcement in the past as it looks ahead to the future. The success of this strengthening of UEFA’s enforcement powers and capabilities will be determined in the coming years, especially as clubs seek to ‘return to normal’ following the belt-tightening made necessary by the financial impact of COVID-19.

However, the procedure is only one piece of the puzzle for UEFA. The remainder of the jigsaw lies in the FFP Regulations themselves. Public statements by UEFA suggest that the FFP Regulations are also due a significant revamp. UEFA’s 2021 European Club Footballing Landscape Report indicates that the intended overhaul would look to do away with the backward-looking breakeven requirements and push towards a more forward-looking focus on club wage levels and the scale of fees in the transfer market. While the reduction in expenses to sustainable levels might be acceptable to the clubs in principle, the actual form it will take will be the key for UEFA. A suggestion that some form of cap may be introduced is unlikely to be popular with the clubs and a “hard” cap (i.e. a cap with a fixed amount that applies to all clubs) seems prima facie unworkable given the divergence in the resources of clubs in UEFA competitions.

And the procedural changes may not yet blow the final whistle on legal issues surrounding FFP. While UEFA has successfully resisted competition law challenges to the breakeven requirements in the past, it may find itself playing a different ball game altogether if it imposes limits on transfer fees and salaries.

[Chester Perry]

The Telegraph with an article on how the sale of Academy players at the greedy six is what is allowing them into transfer market

Academy sales keep ball rolling in transfer market for Premier League's biggest clubs
Generally on much lower wages than established stars and with higher resale value, ‘Big Six’ academy graduates are attractive investments

By Sam Dean 17 August 2021 • 7:30am

For a brief moment, even the most cynical soul in the cynical world of football would have been moved by the sight of Trevoh Chalobah, a Chelsea academy graduate who joined the club at the age of eight, sinking to his knees after scoring on his Premier League debut this weekend.

Dreams really can come true in football, and the 22-year-old began to cry as he celebrated his goal. Up in the stands, Chelsea’s directors would have no doubt enjoyed the moment as fiercely as any of the supporters sitting around them. But while there were tears in the eyes of Chalobah, there might well have been pound signs in the eyes of Chelsea’s key decision-makers.

Chalobah could make it as a first-team regular, of course, becoming a key part of Thomas Tuchel’s team alongside another academy graduate, Mason Mount. But he might not and, if it is decided he is not a long-term option, it is inevitable that one day he will be sold. On the evidence of the last few years, and this summer in particular, he will surely fetch a decent price for the club that trained him.

This is simply the way of the footballing world at the moment. In a slow-moving market, ground to a near-halt by the financial impact of the pandemic, it is the academy kids who are bringing in the cash for England’s biggest clubs.

Chelsea have spent £97.5 million on Romelu Lukaku, yes, but they have raised almost £80m through the sales of Fikayo Tomori to AC Milan (£24m), Marc Guehi to Crystal Palace (£20m) and Tammy Abraham to Roma (£34m). All three of those players joined the club before they were 10. Slightly further down the chain, Chelsea have also sold Tino Livramento to Southampton for £5m, Lewis Bate to Leeds for £1.5m and Myles Peart-Harris to Brentford for £1.35m.

It is a similar story elsewhere. At Manchester City, Pep Guardiola made the point that Jack Grealish really only cost £40m, rather than £100m, because the club has generated £60m in sales this summer. The departures of Angelino, Lukas Nmecha and Ivan Ilic, all former youth-teamers, have helped City to reach this total. They also received £11.2m from Jadon Sancho’s move to Manchester United, as the England winger was part of their academy.

At Arsenal they have tried desperately to sell their unwanted fringe options but there have been few takers. The only player they have sold for a considerable fee is academy graduate Joe Willock, who joined Newcastle United for £22m. It was the same story last season, when former academy player Emi Martinez was sold for £20m, and the year before when Alex Iwobi joined Everton in a deal that could rise to £34m.

Liverpool, too, have made huge profits on players who came through their youth ranks. In the last 12 months alone, they have generated a combined £50m through the sales of Harry Wilson to Fulham, Rhian Brewster to Sheffield United and Ki-Jana Hoever to Wolves.

It all makes for quite the contrast with non-youth team products. The academy kids are flying off the shelves this year but buying clubs do not want to go near those who are more established.

The salary issue is a key reason why academy prospects are currently more attractive options than experienced professionals. These youngsters are generally earning less money than senior players, which means that the buying club can lure them without breaking the bank. Willock, for example, will now be earning far more as an expensive new signing at Newcastle than he was as a young prospect at Arsenal.

The likes of Guehi and Abraham will have resale value, too. Even if Palace are relegated this season, Guehi will surely be of interest to other clubs going forward. Palace might not get all their money back, but they would expect to at least get a decent chunk of it.

For the products of the Premier League’s most selective and impressive academies, there is also an element of quality assurance. To buy a player who has been developed by Chelsea – the champions of Europe – is to buy a player who comes with a footballing kitemark. From his CV alone, clubs will know that he is comfortable on the ball, tactically astute and physically capable.

The final, and potentially crucial factor, is one of motivation. It is not the case for every young player, but as a loose rule it is certainly fair to assume that up-and-comers are more eager to prove themselves than the big earners who are no longer wanted at their clubs.

The academy kids are cheaper, hungrier and safer as investments. In a slow market, they are the ones keeping the financial ball rolling.

[Chester Perry]

last night on Radio 5 Live there was an interesting discussion about Premier League finances with Kieran Maguire - from 39 minutes in

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000yt3q

[Chester Perry]

A great thread from @AndyHolt on how to build a club and why it takes an awfully long time

https://twitter.com/AndyhHolt/status/14 ... 3068835842

[Chester Perry]

In what seems a strange line-up Burnley have reached the finals of OffthPitch's 2021 Football Business Awards

• Off The Pitch and The Football Business Awards have partnered to celebrate Britain’s best financially managed football clubs.

• Among the 8 finalists are four Premier League clubs, two Scottish, one Championship and one League One club.

• Read why they have been selected.

MADS MEISNER AND JOSEPH MAILIL, ANALYST jm@offthepitch.com

For the first time in the history of the Football Business Awards the best financially managed football club will be celebrated at its annual awards ceremony on 23 September in London.

THE METRICS
The EBITDA margin sheds light on how well a club’s operations are driven relative to its turnover isolated from transfer activities. Clubs who do not disclose profits from player sales separately from overall revenues are excluded from the analysis, as this inflates the EBITDA margin.

The ROA-ratio (Pre-tax profit) gives indication to how good a club is at generating profits using its assets, which primarily concerns intangible fixed assets in the form of player registrations.

The Equity ratio’s purpose is to assess how large a share of a club’s assets is being financed by owners’ investments, or how large the share of leverage the club uses to finance its assets is.

Finally, a retribution weight for clubs getting relegated in the given financial year is applied.

Off The Pitch has analysed the accounts of more than 100 UK clubs to find the 8 finalists.

We have narrowed all financial figures in clubs 2019/20 annual accounts down to three key metrics, indicating how well the club is managing their operations and assets relative to debt. This method has also been chosen to adjust for the size of the club.

We have looked at the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) margin, return on assets (ROA), and equity ratio. To establish which clubs rank the highest when combining the three metrics, we have placed a weight on each parameter.

The weighting is allocated as follows: 50 per cent on EBITDA-ratio, 30 per cent on ROA, and 20 per cent on equity ratio.

Here are the finalists:

Burnley FC

Burnley had a highly satisfying 2019/20 season, despite EBITDA almost shrinking by half to just below £20 million, equivalent to an EBITDA-margin of 14.5 per cent. The main driver was wages rising from £87 million to £100 million, which in turn showed in the ROA parameter, as this was close to 0. The club managed to fund its assets through an almost even debt and equity capital structure.

Burton Albion

Despite a 15 per cent drop in revenues, Burton Albion increased its EBITDA-margin from a negative 20 per cent, to a 5 per cent surplus. The club acted quickly and managed to reduce wages by 25 per cent, to gear the business towards overwhelming liquidity shortages. The club also improved its ability to capitalize on core assets, as ROA before taxes swung from a 24 per cent deficit to almost breaking even. The club implemented these changes without any substantial allocation movements in the capital structure.

Chelsea FC

Chelsea were one of very few European top clubs to record a profit in 2019/20, its £35.6 million margin largely attributable to the transfer of Eden Hazard to Real Madrid. This contributed significantly to the club managing a ROA before taxes of 4 per cent. Chelsea also managed to reduce their current financial debt by more than £30 million and increased its equity ratio to 58 percent, the highest since 2015. The financial position going into the pandemic enabled the club to strengthen the squad last summer, and with the recent Champions League success, the club is back to having success off and on the pitch.

Kilmarnock

While the premature conclusion of the 2019/20 season ended in a disappointing 8th place, the financial outcome of the season was highly satisfying for Kilmarnock. The club showed virtually no Covid-19 related impact on the business, as the club’s turnover fell by just 6 per cent and its management brought down wages by almost a quarter of the value the year before, being among the few clubs which managed to reduce their wages-to-revenue ratio. The club operated with a low leveraged capital structure consisting of 75 per cent equity and 25 per cent debt. Thus, the club managed to finance its assets predominately through own funds in a very volatile end to the season.

Manchester United

The pandemic took a toll Manchester United’s account, as the club saw revenues decline by almost £120 million. However, with an adaption in wage-expenses, the club still managed an EBITDA-margin of 26 per cent. Despite it being the lowest since 2008, only Sheffield Untied and Tottenham managed a marginally higher ratio in that season, a testament to the stability of Manchester United’s business model. Despite a highly leveraged business model with equity making up 25 percent of total liabilities, the club did yield a sufficiently high score to be among the final eight short-listed companies.

Sheffield United

Sheffield United’s first season back in the Premier League since 2006/07 exceeded all expectations, with the club finishing 9th. The Blades not only performed beyond expectations on the pitch, but also financially as the club turned wages-to-revenue ratio from 195 percent in 2018/19 into the second best in the league at 54.4 percent. The club had an EBITDA-margin of 26.2 percent, second highest proportion of all UK clubs in 2019/20. United also managed to generate significant profits from their very limited assets, achieving one of the highest returns after taxes at 16 per cent. A very impressive season given the limited financial resources at the club.

St. Mirren

St. Mirren finished 9th in their second consecutive season in the Scottish Premiership. The Scottish club also managed its finances highly satisfactorily in 2019/20, as it improved its EBITDA-margin from a negative 12.3 percent to a positive 2.7 percent. The club doubled its cash at hand, ensuring it against liquidity bottlenecks in the pandemic, keeping the club’s equity ratio at a very high 90 percent.

Tottenham

Tottenham had the highest EBITDA-margin in the Premier League in 2019/20 at 29.1 per cent, largely attributable to the new stadium generating higher matchday and commercial profits, despite the abrupt conclusion to the season. This was also reflected in the capital structure, as the club proceeded to operate with higher leverage due to debt related to the new stadium. Yet equity still made-up 18.1 percent of Spurs’ asset funding in 2019/20.

[Chester Perry]

The CVC money is meant to help clubs manage their pandemic losses strengthen their earning potential through infrastructure development and technology development designed to increase revenues. Whether it actually leads to the league being more competitive is another question and that is what they desperately need to attract audiences Too long have they been trading on interest in individual players (however great they may be). The CVC deal is a calculated gamble that the jump start the loan provides would be enough to provide the surge required to catch and surpass the Premier League

The US tv deals are key here, La Liga have that eight year $175m a season deal with ESPN just starting - the largest ever US soccer TV deal by total value, and we already know that the largest audience for football in the US is Spanish speaking.

The Premier League by way of contrast is in the final year of its circa $167m a year deal with real competition for the rights in the next cycle between incumbents NBC/Peacock (who fill a huge amount of schedule time with the Premier League, ESPN who already have most of the European big League rights (and are also benefitting been packaged with from parent organisations hugely successful Disney+) and CBS who have the Champions League. NBC/Peacock have ditched NHL in the next cycle reportedly so they can bid strong for the Premier League in the wake of that massive NFL deal.The Premier League has always done well when such competition exists. Ever since that massive Nent deal (circa £2 billion for six season) for the Nordics was announced I have wondered if the US could manage to equal or even exceed it. If they do then the Premier League could see even more distance between them and the rest as overall broadcast revenues would grow, despite the loss from the China deal.

Perhaps key to all La Liga's plans is that the Premier League will not be giving 11% of its broadcast revenues away for the next 50 years. It was interesting to se the universal appraisal of the CVC/La Liga deal was that it would not be something that the Premier League would ever do.

A bit more on the growth at ESPN from SportsProMedia

Disney’s DTC revenue up 57% for Q3 as ESPN+ subscribers touch 14.9m
Media giant’s total subscriber count now at 174m across Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu.

Posted: August 16 2021 By: Ed Dixon

• ESPN+ subscriber base grows 75% YoY

• DTC losses fall 53% to US$293m

• Disney’s total revenue for period up 45% to US$17bn as operating income more than doubles to US$2.4bn

The Walt Disney Company saw a marked increase in subscribers across its streaming services over the last three months, with the ESPN+ over-the-top (OTT) platform growing 75 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to 14.9 million.

The media giant also announced that the number of Disney+ subscribers hit 116 million as of 3rd July, more than double the amount this time last year.

Factoring in Hulu, it means Disney’s total subscriber count across its streaming services sits at 174 million. Netflix still remains out in front with a subscriber base of 209 million, having added 1.5 million new subscribers in the last quarter.

Disney’s latest subscriber numbers were revealed alongside the company’s third quarter earnings. Revenue was up 45 per cent YoY to US$17 billion, with theme parks reopening, coupled with its expanding streaming network, credited for the increase.

The company’s media arm accounted for 75 per cent of the total revenue at US$12.7 billion, with operating income for the segment down 32 per cent YoY to US$2 billion.

However, while direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenue was up 57 per cent YoY to US$4.3 billion, the segment was still hit by a loss of US$293 million, though this was down on the US$624 million loss posted for the same period last year.

Linear networks revenue was up 16 per cent to US$7 billion, though operating income was down 33 per cent to US$2.2 billion.

Total operating income for the period came to US$2.4 billion, up more than 100 per cent than the US$1.1 billion in Q3 2020.

“We ended the third quarter in a strong position, and are pleased with the company’s trajectory as we grow our businesses amidst the ongoing challenges of the pandemic,” said Disney chief executive Bob Chapek.

“We continue to introduce exciting new experiences at our parks and resorts worldwide, along with new guest-centric services, and our direct-to-consumer business is performing very well, with a total of nearly 174 million subscriptions across Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu at the end of the quarter, and a host of new content coming to the platforms.”

[Chester Perry]

This looks like being an interesting discussion - The Unofficial Partner Podcast looks at betting technology in sport

the blurb

Unofficial Partner|8/13/2021
It’s become fashionable to use the term Gold Rush to describe the North American betting market. In 2018 the US Supreme Court overturned a federal bill banning gambling, which effectively signalled a shift that turned sports betting from an unregulated market to a regulated one.

Estimates as to the size of the sports betting marketplace vary wildly. But all agree that it’s growing quickly, and that media technology is going to play a major role.

Today’s podcast looks at the role broadcast technology is playing to make betting easier and more accessible to sports fans.

Our guests are Miheer Walavalkar, Co-founder and CEO of broadcast technology company LiveLike and Brian Josephs, Vice President of Digital Sport at Sportradar US, a leading global provider of sports data, betting and entertainment products.

Together, LiveLike and Sportradar have launched emBET, that integrates live betting content and data into sports broadcast OTT streams in real time.

We talk about what this means for all concerned, from the sports leagues and event rights holders through to TV companies and of course, sports fans.

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... technology

[Chester Perry]

An interesting article from OffthePitch.com looking at how Borussia Dortmund manages it's Chines fan base, it is the first in a series looking at how European Clubs are seeking to engage fans across the globe

Young, fiercely loyal, 48 per cent female – how Borussia Dortmund’s fanbase is helping drive its success in China
17 August 2021 3:35 PM

• When Covid struck last year Borussia Dortmund became the first football club to deliver a digital fan viewing party in China. The format, suggested by its Nanjing fan club, proved hugely popular, with 2.9 million viewers in China.

• BVB has continued to be innovative in China, with a fan event in Beijing marking the final stop on the club’s virtual summer tour ‘09 Days Around The World’ in July.

• Benjamin Wahl, Dortmund’s head of China, tells offthepitch.com that it benefits from a young and mostly loyal fanbase in China.

• The club reached 3 million Weibo followers in January, and also engages with its fans through its membership programme run via WeChat.

• This article is part of a series looking at how European clubs are expanding and engaging with their global fanbases.

JONATHAN DYSON dyson@offthepitch.com

As European clubs look to find new ways of engaging with fans in China, Borussia Dortmund continue to set a high bar around what can be achieved in the country.

In July, the club completed its virtual summer tour ‘09 Days Around The World’, combining on-the-ground activities such as stadium tours and store events with virtual fan experiences across nine countries – the USA, Brazil, Poland, India, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and China – from July 10-18.

With the squad once again unable to travel to China for a summer tour, the global concept complemented a range of activities in the country over four weeks, with a series of fan events in Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenyang and Beijing.

The Chinese capital saw the final stop of the 09 Days Around The World tour, with 200 fans and partners attending a parade of the German Cup trophy, which Dortmund won last season. There was also a live onsite Q&A with Cheny, one of China’s leading freestyle footballers, and the Chinese coach and former Bundesliga player Yang Chen, along with BVB legend Lukasz Piszczek, joining on video from Poland.

Benjamin Wahl, Dortmund’s head of China, says the event in Beijing marked the culmination of a broad array of activities that helped boost fan engagement in the off-season.

“Besides the emotional events with our great fanbase, a CSR event in Shanghai to pick up trash, and our cooperation with the WFFA [World Freestyle Football Association] were highlights of the summer tour this year,” he tells offthepitch.com

World-first virtual fan party

These built on a series of initiatives in China over the past 18 months which have acted as examples for other clubs to follow during the pandemic.

Last March, Dortmund ran a live stream digital fan viewing party in the country – said to be a world-first. Taking place following the suspension of the Bundesliga season and cancellation of a fan viewing party in Nanjing, the two-hour virtual event featured a football juggling challenge, fan reporter vlog and Dortmund China office documentary, as well as a range of activations with the club’s 12 commercial partners in China and digital broadcaster PP Sports.

The event attracted 2.9 million viewers in China, with a peak of 110,000, and achieved 1.2 million hashtag reads and more than 7,500 in engagement.

Dortmund worked with its digital agency partner Mailman to create the event just one week after the Nanjing viewing party had been due to take place, and Wahl says the concept was born following suggestions from its fans in the city. “The idea came from our Nanjing fan club. They knew about the content and what we wanted to do, and said ‘why don't we do everything digitally?’”

Dortmund held another virtual fan party the following month, attracting 5.5 million viewers, with around 20 other European clubs then delivering similar events in China as the pandemic continued.

We can now deliver most items within one day, so if you order in the morning, you get it in the afternoon

With most Covid restrictions now removed in China, Wahl says Dortmund is returning to its previous approach of holding physical fan viewing parties in different cities across the country, with typically between 50 and 300 fans attending each time, and streaming the event online so fans in other cities can also feel part of it.

“This is our approach – not only to be digital, but to do something on the ground and then spread it, so that we have offline and online at the same time,” he explains.

WeChat mini programme

The club is also enhancing its fan engagement in China through its membership programme launched in 2019. Among the first comprehensive Chinese membership schemes from European clubs to be run solely over WeChat, it is set up via a ‘mini programme’ (a sub-application within the WeChat ecosystem). Members have access to exclusive BVB content, as well as games, raffles, travel information about Dortmund and merchandise.

The programme, which is free to join, was introduced to complement Dortmund’s existing fan clubs in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong and has allowed new fan clubs to be set up through a registration process and approval from the club in Germany. In all, 15 new BVB fan clubs have been established in China over the last four years.

Wahl says the membership scheme allows Dortmund fans across China to join their local fan club and connect more easily. “Fan clubs can align within the app, exchanging information about upcoming events and club news,” he explains.

“The fans can interact between each other, and we can support and moderate it.”

While some European clubs charge their fans in China for access to certain levels of membership, Wahl confirms that BVB has no current plans to do this. The priority remains growing its fanbase in the country and engaging with it in different ways.

Coaching expertise

He explains that while extensive investment in its fan engagement represents the first pillar of its strategy in China, the second and third pillars – sponsorship rights and football knowledge – help deliver revenue.

The club has commercial deals with Chinese companies such as Pinlive – the distributor of Würenbacher, BVB’s official beer partner in China; watch brand Sea-Gull; and cosmetic brand Dr. Li, as well as German companies such as Stiebel Eltron and Duisport.

Dortmund also leverages its coaching expertise and strong track record of developing young talent through partnerships with schools and universities across the country.

SpongeBob range sells out in a few days

The club is generating additional revenue through merchandise manufactured and delivered within China. While the country is home to the biggest e-commerce market in the world, it has posed numerous challenges for European football clubs relying on their main global channels. For fans in China this has meant higher prices for merchandise, large postage and packing fees, longer delivery times of up to four weeks, and styles of clothing that may not be suited to the Chinese market.

Several clubs have established separate channels in China to deal with these issues. Last year Dortmund set up a warehouse in Nanjing and began working with the Shanghai-based agency Hupu, which manages the merchandise for a number of European clubs in the country.

“We can now deliver most items within one day, so if you order in the morning, you get it in the afternoon,” says Wahl.

It's cheeky

Dortmund runs promotional activities on Tmall and Douyin, including weekly live shows to sell items such as special jerseys or T-shirts, with a BVB player sometimes interacting with fans during the show from Germany.

Dortmund merchandise featuring the cartoon character SpongeBob has proved particularly popular in China. The club began a partnership with SpongeBob SquarePants, the American animated comedy series, last year to produce a limited edition range of hoodies and T-shirts featuring SpongeBob and other characters from the series dressed in the club’s home kit. The range sold out within a few days in China.

“It’s different – it's cute and it's cheeky, so it fits perfectly with BVB,” says Wahl. “In Asia, anything related to cartoons, and also a limited edition range works very well.”

Fierce loyalty

A key driver of Dortmund’s merchandise sales in China is the makeup of its fanbase, with 80 per cent aged under 30 and 48 per cent female. The club has a wider variety of women’s merchandise in China than in Germany, where only around 20 per cent of its fans are female.

Wahl notes that many of the club’s female fans in China are drawn to Dortmund’s young squad, and are particularly interested in the players’ lifestyles and what fashion brands they wear.

“They follow a lot of the behind-the-scenes topics on Weibo, like who's getting married to whom, what a player is doing in his spare time, where they spend their holiday – all those lifestyle stories we are doing about the players.”

Wahl acknowledges that the pattern at Dortmund of developing players only to see them move on poses challenges in a market where fans still often switch allegiance if their favourite player leaves. However, he points out that its fanbase continues to grow, reaching 3 million Weibo followers in January, with many displaying fierce loyalty, despite the club enjoying less success now than during the Jürgen Klopp era when many Chinese fans began to follow the club.

Pointing to the responses from fans after the string of defeats to arch rivals Bayern Munich over recent years, he observes: “In China, it's a victory market – people want to have success. So I have always been impressed when our fans posted online after those terrible losses that they are still proud to be a BVB fan. That showed to me that even though it's about losing face they're proud to be with the club, and for me it’s a sign we have loyal fans.”

The Terracotta Army

Most of Dortmund’s Chinese fans live in the major cities on the East coast – notably Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, as well as Hong Kong – while many can also be found in Xi'an, the partner city of Dortmund, which lies in the centre of the country and is home to the Terracotta Army.

While noting that there are major differences in the behaviours of BVB fans in China compared with other markets – such as being particularly digitally savvy and more keen on lifestyle and fashion content – Wahl stresses that they also understand the values of the club, with a survey finding that 70 per cent were against the European Super League, for instance.

“There are many similarities between our fans in China and those in Europe and other countries,” he asserts. “If you go to a fan viewing party, they're wearing black and yellow, they're singing the German BVB songs, they're cheering for the club.”

[Chester Perry]

Another podcast and probably another very worthwhile listen @UglyGame talks to the "All Stats aren't we" podcast about Socios fan tokens following the news that Leeds United had joined the platform

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

[Chester Perry]

Committing to the living wage at Burnley Football Club has been a bit of a hobby horse of mine for some time - it hasn't happened yet but finally the biggest club in the country has committed to paying all it's staff more than the Living wage (not quite De Gea's reported £350k per week but still good news) - just need them to sign up for the accreditation now - from the Independent

Manchester United commit to pay all matchday staff more than real living wage
The change impacting more than 1,000 casual and permanent matchday staff

Pa Sport Staff
3 hours ago

Manchester United have committed to ensuring all casual and permanent matchday staff will receive over the real living wage.

The Old Trafford club did not furlough staff through the coronavirus pandemic and continued to pay casual employees but faced calls from foodbanks and community group Greater Manchester Citizens to pay staff more appropriate wages.

United last week notified staff that all casual employees working directly for the club will receive an increase to ensure everyone is on a wage of at least £10 per hour.

The UK’s real living wage – a rate based on what people need to live – is £9.50 outside of London with the change impacting more than 1,000 casual and permanent matchday staff working for the club.

United chief operating officer Collette Roche said: “Taking care of our colleagues is a priority for us and we took the decision early in the pandemic to help provide security through goodwill payments to many of our casual staff.

“We were also able to repurpose some roles to allow colleagues to volunteer to help with community initiatives.

“Now fans are able to return to stadiums and our matchday staff are able to return to their roles we have reviewed hourly salaries to make sure there is a minimum £10 per hour across the board, and we’re looking forward to the season to come.”

[Chester Perry]

The EFL agree to give Derby another 6 days to refile their 2015/16, 2019/17 and 2017/18 accounts following the successful appeal against the amortisation approach Derby had been taken - still no word as to when Derby's 2018/19 and 2019/20 accounts which have never been published

https://www.efl.com/news/2021/august/ef ... rby-county

[Chester Perry]

Giles Morgan with a column for SportsProMedia that talks about how sponsors are changing and have changed about what they are looking for

Giles Morgan | Why the smart sponsors of the future will not be slaves to TV eyeballs
In the latest instalment of his monthly column for SportsPro, The Captain’s Broadside, pirate-podcaster and veteran sports industry consultant Giles Morgan looks back at the 'halcyon days' of sports sponsorship to see how far the industry has developed in 2021.

By Giles Morgan Posted: August 17 2021

For those of you who regularly listen to the Are You Not Entertained podcast, you might know that I recently snapped my Achilles tendon playing sport. Well, kind of. Lumbering between second and third base whilst 'batting' at the Sportable softball away day in Regent’s Park may not count as elite competition but it is a proper, recognised and faintly macho sporting injury that did hurt like hell. The irony of being temporarily one-legged given my current piratical alter ego is not lost on me.

However, the upside of being non-weight-bearing during the summer of 2021 has been the surfeit of sport on the television to feast on from all over the world. In between bouts of binge-watching every single Olympic event from my sofa has also been the luxury to look back and contemplate my 30 years of working in the sports sponsorship industry. Boy how things have changed.

For those of us who cut our teeth in sponsorship at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, life really was a blast, particularly if you worked for a sports sponsorship agency. Young twenty-somethings were despatched all over the world in the name of work to attend sporting events. Roles flitted between either managing champagne sozzled hospitality programmes for corpulent clients or being armed with various ingenious branding devices to try and increase media exposure.

I remember vividly my colleague 'Ghostie' Laird and I trying to place 55,000 branded cardboard hats under the seats of Murrayfield Stadium for our then esteemed whisky client before a particular Calcutta Cup match. Unfortunately, we had both underestimated the time this exercise would take us and the Scottish weather. Suffice to say our carefully planned branding campaign was a disaster, but we had a riot and the Famous Grouse whisky was delicious.

In many ways, it is the legion of stories like these from those halcyon times that perhaps explain why it is only now, 30 years later, that the sponsorship industry is starting to be taken seriously. Sponsorship activation back then was no more than an exercise in branding and badging, with the only available metric of the time the generation of TV and media exposure. It was this TV data that in turn created a need for sponsors to try and generate some additional sort of visual awareness. Rights fees were – and still are – calculated from the approximation of likely eyeballs to be viewing an event, which meant the more exposure for sponsors, the better the return on investment.

Historically, sponsorship was basically a poor man’s advertising, which generated varying degrees of efficacy. This model also handed a huge advantage to the televised sports to sell sponsorship over the non or less televised sports, because properties with TV exposure could boast live audiences and peddle media exposure that 'lesser' sports could only dream of.

What this created was a huge imbalance between the 'have TV crowd' and the 'don’t have TV crowd'. More pertinently, it also distorted and buried the real value of sponsorship investment – namely a vehicle that enables sponsors to directly market to fans, the opportunity to sell their wares to a loyal fanbase who are highly engaged.

Fast forward 30 years, fans now live and breathe their sporting passion in a different world. In addition to the live visual event and the TV broadcast, our daily consumption of sports comes through endless new digital channels. These platforms offer a space where our passions as fans are enriched and enhanced. The ability to grow fan engagement through owned and operated platforms is both providing rights holders and sponsors the means to hold our attention in a far greater way. It also provides them with the means to communicate with their fan in a two-way dialogue and, most critically, truly know their own fanbase.

It is this newfound ability of rights holders to create their own platforms that can engage and allow a better understanding of their fanbase that is creating the catalyst for a golden age of sports marketing and sponsorship investment. Through the power of their first party data, we are increasingly seeing forward-thinking rights holders come to the sponsorship market with a very different proposition to potential partners. In other words, offering sponsors a new value exchange, with the promise of dynamic, proprietary and insightful data about their own consumers. Where information about the fan used to be a latent and unknown quantity, it is now the manifest power of the sponsorship proposition.

This truly is manna from heaven for the sports with vast, untapped fanbases that have in the past valiantly begged sponsors to part with cash for some or little TV exposure. Often in vain.

As a result, there is now emerging a new breed of rights holders in sport who are seizing on the opportunity. Handball in Sweden has been galvanised by its Antourage-curated digital strategy of focusing on the superfan to generate engagement and new sponsor investment. World Table Tennis (WTT) has both rebranded itself as a dynamic and digitally enabled sport, radically overhauling how it positions itself in the global marketplace by working with Pumpjack Dataworks to really understand its global fan diaspora. This is the future. Primetime sponsorship real estate valued by the quality and quantity of known fans.

So other sports colossi like badminton, hockey, volleyball, cricket, kabaddi – let alone all the winter and equine sports – all have the opportunity to set out their new sponsorship stall with their well understood fanbases at the heart of their pitch.

The smart future sponsors will not be slaves to TV eyeballs for equivalent media values. Instead, they will want and demand to be associated with the coolest most engaging and authentic content created by, and for, the true fanatics.

The most forward-thinking sponsors of all will be those that can get alongside and invest in the fan-focused sport technology that helps properties, teams and individuals improve performance on the field of play, as well as enhancing fan engagement off the field. Think how Strava has revolutionised cycling, how Hawk-Eye has changed tennis or what Clippd is doing in golf.

When a sports technology startup like Sportable actually offers today a meaningful solution to adjudicate forward passes, touchdowns and rugby player statistics in real-time, these forward-thinking rights holders will sweep up the very best sponsors in the sport, because these are the platforms that will be demanded by the loyal fan – the target market for sponsors.

The sponsorship industry is no longer about awareness and TV data. It is no longer about twenty-somethings vainly looking for branding opportunities. It is now about 'meaning'. It is about finding content that supports the fanbase by backing tech that directly assists what is seen on the field.

[Chester Perry]

If you thought you were getting used to the introduction of technology in sports and fandom, the news is that it hasn't really got going yet - here Sportico.com talks about the metaverse and how at some point it is all going to come together and allow us to be fully immersed

What the Metaverse Means, And What It Means for Sports
JACOB FELDMAN AUGUST 17, 2021

It's worth understanding the metaverse, before it revolutionizes the sports fan experience. Adobe/Roblox/Fortnite/designed by mario paulis
There was blockchain, and cryptocurrency, and then DAOs. Ethereum, fungible tokens, gas fees. As our lives have become digitized and gamified over the last year, there has been a whole alphabet of new concepts to learn (or at least pretend to). For those still trying to keep up, in the last couple weeks alone The New York Times and The New Yorker have covered “Pudgy Penguins” and “Bored Ape Yacht Club,” respectively.

Now comes the final boss: the metaverse. If there is one tech buzzword to truly understand, it’s this one, because it encompasses most of what’s come before: Bitcoin and NFTs, Fortnite and Facebook. Plus, there’s no engineering prerequisite. If anything, the metaverse is more philosophy than mathematics. And it has the potential to transform the sports experience. So let’s get into it.

WHAT IS THE METAVERSE?

The short answer:

Depends on whom you ask. At a high level, the metaverse is being pitched as the evolution of online experiences, or Web 3.0 (with smartphones ushering in 2.0). “We’re almost building a new civilization,” GreenPark Sports CEO Ken Martin said.

The long answer:

When it comes to specifics, each company and thinker has offered a different definition, but most share two critical elements.

Presence
During an earnings call, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the metaverse as “a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces.”

If that sounds familiar, the metaverse last caught the zeitgeist in 2007 during Second Life’s peak as people interacted as avatars in a digital world. Since then, the concept has been mostly contained to games like Animal Crossing and Roblox.

Now though, the Zuckerbergs of the world see board meetings and dance classes taking place in similar virtual settings. Unlike a Zoom call, these places would be persistent (available around the clock) and offer a sense of movement. People would build unique identities while experiencing activities, from dating to weddings, synchronously. And users could access the spaces with virtual reality hardware, as well as other computing devices—and whatever tomorrow’s computers look like.

Commercial Interoperability
This is where the blockchain comes in. For now, there are many online worlds, but the companies building them see connections coming in the future. Hypothetically, a horse bought in Zed Run could be run in a race in Fortnite, which could be viewed in Facebook, for instance (“in” is the new “on” as the internet evolves). And the winners could get access to a private Discord room.

Interoperability will make it possible for users to get the benefits of inhabiting not one but many metaverse platforms, like earning a badge in one game that can be displayed in another.

To make that happen, the platforms need to be able to verify who owns what, using a universally accepted standard built on something like the blockchain. Provable ownership will also allow for the further development of a purely metaversal economy, where real estate and merchandise could be bought and sold, and entire businesses can exist solely in the digital realm.

HOW WILL IT IMPACT SPORTS?

The short answer:

Not that much. For now at least. “I don’t think it is likely to lead to new leading sports, nor fundamentally alter which sports are most popular,” said Matthew Ball, an Epyllion Co. managing partner who co-founded the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF. For further comfort, he suggested looking at the last wave of technological change. Big TVs and second screens made the at-home experience better than ever, yet ticket prices only continued to go up.

The long answer:

For many following sports business trends, what the metaverse promises may not even seem that new. One of its biggest impacts on sports, Ball says, will be on how we watch games. Rather than being stranded on a couch, fans will have the opportunity to view a game more like they are in the stands. In fact, everyone could one day have the best seats in the house, with their fantasy score or live bets shown on the jumbotron. At-home fans might even be able to impact the game the way a hollering home crowd can.

Beyond being updated, the spectator experience could be disrupted altogether. An entire digital NBA could spring up, with player stats based on their real world siblings but virtual teams wholly owned and controlled by the fans—or fan token holders. (If that sounds farfetched, you haven’t checked out Blaseball.)

But Ball added that there’s no need for the biggest leagues to jump in just yet. Just as Disney has done with its streaming service, major sports will be able to fully leverage their valuable intellectual property when the time is right. For now, they are mainly lending IP to existing online realities like Fortnite.

The metaverse could also have something to offer fans in physical seats. John Hanke, the CEO of Pokemon Go co-developer Niantic, recently wrote a blog post calling the metaverse “a dystopian nightmare.” In it, he argued instead for a “real world metaverse,” in which tech drew people out of their homes and improved their experiences by animating historical tours or bringing science lessons from the chalkboard to life. Hanke calls these possibilities “reality channels,” but that’s for another explainer…

Doug Scott, cofounder of gaming holding company Subnation Media, envisioned Go-like games that could be unlocked in arenas and played on phones during and between the action.

The metaverse will also mean that fandom doesn’t end at stadium gates. GreenPark already allows fans to compete in online games as members of their team-affiliated tribes. An interoperable metaverse with connections to the real world could allow leagues and retailers to sell physical sneakers and jerseys as well as their digital equivalents at the same time.

As metaverse development fuels further virtual and augmented reality research, athletic training will also fundamentally change, author and entrepreneur QuHarrison Terry said. Already, StatusPro and Sense Arena are using headsets to help NFL and NHL players, respectively. “If I was a younger athlete and I wanted to get a leg up,” Terry said, “I’d probably add some type of VR training regimen.” Even if the experiences are subpar now, he said, getting used to them could prove valuable soon.

WHEN IS THE METAVERSE COMING?

The short answer:

In some ways, it’s already here. Buy and trade NFTs, check out a concert in Fortnite, or watch an NBA game through the lenses of an Oculus VR headset, and you’ll get a sense of what the next version of the internet has to offer. Fortnite already gets as many visitors in a month (80 million) as the United States gets in a year.

The long answer:

It will take years for the full vision of unique digital avatars bouncing between digital spaces to come together, if it ever does. “I think we’re in the preseason,” Scott said.

For now, behemoths like Facebook, Microsoft and Epic Games each have their own conception of how the metaverse should work, while outsiders build more decentralized alternatives. Web 2.0 spawned a whole crop of new megacorporations (Uber, TikTok, etc.). Web 3.0 seems poised to do the same, though this time around it may have more to do with pudgy penguins and bored apes.

There are also concerns about the energy demands of a globally large, always-on platform that is constantly using the blockchain to ensure authenticity.

The metaverse’s growth will be gradual, Ball says. “There will be no clean ‘Before Metaverse’ and ‘After Metaverse,’” he wrote in 2020. “Instead, it will slowly emerge over time as different products, services and capabilities integrate and meld together.”

Don’t be surprised though, if you one day find yourself sitting in a virtual seat. There might even be a fake foam finger on your digital hand. In all likelihood, there will also be a friend next to you, asking you to explain whatever might be the tech buzzword du jour.

[Chester Perry]

Sam Wallace of the Telegraph has long been critical of the finances at both Barcelona and Real Madrid/ here he suggests it time that Barcelona lost it's members owned status and be subject to the same rules that were forced on other Spanish clubs in the early 90's (and for the same reasons) that of course would have consequences such as falling pray to Nation State seeking to make it's own soft power gains/

How to save Barcelona: Time for the fans to sell their club
SAM WALLACE AUGUST 17, 2021

More than once Joan Laporta said in his long disquisition on the grave state of Barcelona’s finances on Monday that the club would always be owned by their members, although the president of such a heavily indebted institution will know that only for so long can he ignore the obvious.

There is no simple way out for Barcelona, whose debts of €1.35 billion (£1.15 billion) are a consequence of financial mismanagement that predates the Covid era by many years and represent a problem this large will surely at some point require a solution that is equally profound. The club’s mythology is built around their fan-owned model, one of only four clubs in Spain permitted by law to operate that way for the past three decades, although in recent years that advantage has been given up by presidents who spent the money with little regard to the future.

The club’s negative equity calculation, the amount by which borrowing exceeds the value of assets, is – according to Laporta – €451 million. That number is significant. In the late 1980s, culminating in a change of Spanish law in 1990, all but Barcelona, Real Madrid, Athletic Club of Bilbao and Osasuna were forced to adopt the model of a public limited company. It was driven by the negative equity of clubs such as Atletico Madrid and Real Betis, then comparably small amounts compared to modern day Barcelona, but deemed enough for a major change in Spanish sport law.

Under the conversion, the value of the shares which could be purchased by the members of those clubs was calculated by doubling the size of the negative equity and dividing that number by the size of the membership. Although the Spanish law which gave the four member-owned clubs special status has since been declared illegal state aid in a decision adopted by the European Competition commission, the mechanism in transforming to a sports plc – sociedad anonima deportiva – remains the same. Barcelona’s constitution lays out the procedure for such a change. The question is not whether they want to do it, rather whether they can afford not to do it.

In Barcelona’s last published financial report, for 2019-2020, they claimed to have 140,175 paying members, or socis. Under a transformation to a sport plc, working on current negative equity calculations, each would be offered the chance to buy a share priced at around €6,435. It would raise €902 million to recapitalise the club and pay off a large amount of the debt, of which at least €525 million is owed to the US investment bank Goldman Sachs. It would leave around €435 million of debt remaining, a figure that is likely to grow. For many ordinary Barcelona members, €6,435 would represent a large outlay but it would also prove an astute investment. What would Barcelona shares be worth to a potential new owner who sought to take control of the club?

Manchester United, the closest comparable, are valued at around $2.76 billion (£2 billion/€2.35 billion) on the New York Stock Exchange. At a similar valuation, each Barcelona share would be worth €16,780 after a conversion to a sport plc under Spanish law. A tidy profit for the members.

It would be the end to the bold claims about mes que un club, and Barcelona would have an owner like any other. Perhaps even a sovereign wealth fund, which would make for some difficult questions. Either way, Laporta’s claims that there are commercial deals on offer which will help Barcelona climb out of their pit of debt sound fanciful. Any other club, especially those forced to run as a plc, would be involved in a firesale of their best playing assets to try to manage the debt.

The club are already controlled by its creditors, with Goldman Sachs chief among them; as well as the Spanish state; and many of its players on deferred wages including Lionel Messi.

When Atletico were forced to reconstitute themselves as a sport plc they fell under the control of the deeply objectionable Jesus Gil. Real Betis were acquired by Manuel Ruiz de Lopera, later convicted of tax fraud. It was from that kind of owner that Barcelona, as well as Real Madrid and Athletic and Osasuna, were protected. Their member-owned status also conferred on them tax privileges for which the EC has demanded it pay back a paltry €5 million for the 30-year period – the least of Barcelona’s worries.

The right to constitute themselves as a member-owned club was denied to so many others, and Barcelona have squandered it. While the Spanish state has always treated Barcelona, and Real Madrid, with the greatest leniency it is hard to see why institutional creditors would do so. Many elements of the club, including Laporta, would resist but life is changing fast.

Even one year ago it was deemed unthinkable that Messi would be permitted to leave and there were assurances that a solution would be found – yet none was. It has become clear that Laporta was holding out for the European Super League and when that crashed there was no alternative.

It would only take a 75 per cent majority at a general assembly which encompasses 5,000 of the members elected to represent the membership to vote for the change. That may well be seen by some as a betrayal of the club’s ethos. The process is much more democratic than at Real Madrid, where Florentino Perez has presided over a rule change that means none can generate the required bank guarantee to challenge him for the presidency.

But free-spending administrations with no liability have run Barcelona into the ground.

Laporta said more than once on Monday that when it came to the sport plc conversion “the board does not want it”, and one can see why he would. The club’s presidency offers the incumbent a global platform without the attendant financial risk. The question is what will enable the club to survive and emerge from the shadow of debt.

Each day brings more chaos, with Barcelona now locked into Perez’s two legal battles over the European Super League and with Javier Tebas, president of La Liga. Indeed, Perez came out to deny allegations that he had influenced Barcelona to end negotiations with Lionel Messi. It begs the question what is going on at the club.

Barcelona’s closest ally now seems to be their historic rival, although their biggest problem is the debt they have accrued and there are no easy decisions in that regard.

Barcelona’s debts total £1.15bn, the club’s president has admitted as he opened up on their “very worrying” financial situation.

Joan Laporta blamed his predecessor Josep Bartomeu for a “terrible inheritance” which he says sees club salaries representing 103 per cent of income.

Blaming a financial regime which was previously “full of lies”, he said the club face an even more “dramatic” situation following Lionel Messi’s departure.

He accused Bartomeu of countless “lies”, insisting that he and his board of directors must be held accountable.

Laporte, in his second spell as club president after winning the 2021 elections earlier this year, said the club was spending “20-25 per cent more than our competitors” on player-income ratios.

“The first thing we had to do when we arrived was to ask for a loan of €80m because otherwise, we could not pay the salaries,” he added. “The previous regime was full of lies.” However, he insisted Barcelona can reverse their poor financial situation within a year and a half, despite having ended last year €451m ($531m) in the red.

“I reckon that in a couple of years the club will be healthy,” he told reporters, adding that the team have many potential sponsorship deals open to them.

With their finances in dire straits after years of wage inflation and expensive transfers, the club could not afford to renew its contract with Messi, leading to his shock departure to Paris Saint-Germain last week.

Still, Laporta said he was optimistic for the future, stressing that the club had many options open to it, including some 17 investors interested in Barca Studios, which groups together the club’s audiovisual businesses and serves as a hub for events.

“We have a lot of proposals and this is obviously encouraging, our morale is very high,” he said.

Barca’s previous management had contracted investment bank Goldman Sachs to seek potential investors for the club’s commercial arm but none of the proposals were satisfactory, Laporta said.

The club’s debts total €1.35bn, €673m of which are owed to banks, Laporta said. Goldman Sachs had previously agreed to lend one billion euros to private equity firm CVC’s planned multibillion euro investment in Spain’s top soccer league, LaLiga, a deal which Barcelona opted out.

Along with rivals Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, Barca voted against the proposal at a general assembly last Thursday.

Laporta had previously slammed the deal as “mortgaging the club’s television rights for the next 50 years”, even though the cash injection could have allowed Messi to stay at the Camp Nou.

[Chester Perry]

A great thread from @AndyHolt on how to build a club and why it takes an awfully long time

https://twitter.com/AndyhHolt/status/14 ... 3068835842

In a completely opposite approach to build a club (or is it a brand) where admittedly the ambitions are somewhat different this extensive piece from the Athletic on Inter Miami covers a a whole range of things that makes you question what the game has become

https://theathletic.com/2773516/2021/08 ... ckham-mls/

[Chester Perry]

I said at the time there was no need to rush through the decision, after it had been steered in a specific direction by Andrea Agnelli - apparently UEFA are considering rowing back on the decision to run the Swiss system for the Champions League post 2024, taken on the morning after the announcement of Super League, partly because the fans have clearly spoken that they do not want it - that was known at the time too - from the Mail

UEFA 'may SCRAP safety net plan to award Champions League places based on historical performances' with review of new expanded format taking place in wake of failed European Super League breakaway

• UEFA's controversial plans to revamp the Champions League are being reviewed

• The football body plans to make sweeping changes which many fans are against

• Group stage was set to be axed and 100 additional matches were proposed

• Now, a meeting is to be held in light of the failed European Super League

By DANNY GALLAGHER FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 00:05, 18 August 2021 | UPDATED: 01:03, 18 August 2021

UEFA's highly controversial plans to revamp the Champions League are reportedly being reviewed, with football fans around the world now holding their breath.

Earlier in the year the football body outlined plans to make sweeping changes within European football's premier competition, including the axing of the group stage and an increase to 36 competing teams.

The proposed changes could now yet be amended or scrapped in light of the uproar caused by the doomed European Super League project of which six Premier League teams were part of, as iNews report.

Manchester United, City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham joined forces with leading European clubs in Spain and Italy in attempt to join a breakaway league, which brought about a huge backlash from the football world.

Now, as a result, UEFA are exercising caution when it comes to proposed changes to the much loved and well regarded Champions League.

A report in The Times states that one of the main elements to be chopped is the controversial awarding of two Champions League places based on historical performances in Europe.

As outlined, the idea of two spots being awarded based on UEFA rankings was originally included in reform proposals for an expanded competition from 2024.

For example, applying this rule in terms of last season, Tottenham Hotspur would have qualified for the Champions League despite finishing seventh, behind Leicester City and West Ham United, in the English top flight.

The revamped Champions League pledged to increase the number of teams competing from 32 to 36 every season and added four extra games for each club competing that year.

It is reported that since the Super League collapsed the reforms are being reviewed.

The report outlines that 'UEFA's Executive Committee, who sign off on changes, is due to meet next month and could make a final decision then. Any changes will come into effect from 2024 and will last for at least nine seasons.'

Many football fans have already shown anger towards the suggested removal of the group stage, while the increased fixture build-up in the football calendar has threatened domestic cup competitions across the European leagues.

Leading football clubs across the continent are understood to be willing to sit down and discuss with UEFA, in order to offer suggestions with the recommendations of their supporters.

The Premier League clubs involved in the attempted Super League breakaway were recently fined a collective £22million and made to agree to rules that meant any future attempts would trigger a 30-point deduction and an additional £25m fine.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 31489?s=19

Am I seeing this right, Derby's academy is a separate company from the club??

[Chester Perry]

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 31489?s=19

Am I seeing this right, Derby's academy is a separate company from the club??

A little unusual but certainly not too strange or naughty (actually makes FFP/Profit and Sustainability easier to calculate especially if it is/was in in a separate location to the training ground - lots of Derby Football club is in separate businesses, You would imagine it also allows Derby to gain a little extra revenue if it rents facilities, coaches and support staff to the Academy - which fals outside of the FFP/Profit and Sustainability rules. Derby are aware of every single accounting trick as that Al Jezeera investigation showed - Mel Morris talking about how future owners need to let him retain a minority shareholding so his loans could be written off over time thereby allowing benefit to the club as be would no longer be a person of consequence

Derby were the first to split their admin off into a separate business to help with FFP/Profit and Sustainability.

[Chester Perry]

The Athletic with a long and deep investigation into Socios fan tokens - and appears to come out with all the same conserns I have been posting about for the last two years - and not just because they have been talking to @UglyGame

https://theathletic.com/2774492/2021/08 ... ed_article