Football's Magic Money Tree

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Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:39 pm

Newcastle United release an update on it's legal and arbitration proceedings with the Premier League in regards to the Saudi takeover of the club. It is a long winded - we cannot comment at the moment

1st July 2021
Club statement

The Club continues to receive requests for updates on its current arbitration claim against the Premier League (‘EPL’) considering the lawfulness of the EPL’s decisions regarding the proposed takeover of the Club involving the PIF.

Unfortunately, the Club is unable to make any comment about the arbitration. The EPL Rules provide the entire arbitration process is confidential.

However, both parties can agree for it to be in public. The Club believes it should be.

The issues at stake, including the lawfulness of the EPL’s decision making process and the widely publicised alleged influence of the EPL’s commercial partners on the EPL’s decisions, are of far wider interest to other football clubs, fans and the public in general.

The recent attempted breakaway by some EPL clubs - and the reaction of the government and public to it - has again highlighted the need for transparency and fairness in football governance. Gone are the days when important decisions that affect clubs and their fans should be made secretly, behind closed doors and away from the public eye.

The Club has nothing to hide with respect to the arbitration and invites the EPL to agree that it should no longer be held behind closed doors. If the EPL has acted lawfully and properly, it should have no reason to be afraid of the public spotlight.

To date the EPL has strongly resisted any public scrutiny of its decision-making process. It tried, and failed, to prevent the High Court’s judgment about elements of the arbitration being published last February. It is currently attempting to prevent the competition courts considering a claim by the Club’s sellers from taking place in public, arguing that too should be held in confidential arbitration.

So the Club has invited the EPL to agree - as the claim raises such important issues of sports governance, transparency and openness - that it should be held in public. The Club is prepared for every stage of the process to be in public: the public should be able to see the parties’ evidence and arguments as well as the full decision of the Tribunal when it is made.

The government quite rightly threatened to intervene in reaction to the proposed breakaway from the EPL earlier this year, and the reaction of football fans and the wider public was instrumental in stopping the emergence of the European Super League (ESL).

If the EPL continues to insist that the Club’s claim must be determined behind closed doors, the Club asks that MPs, the government, the media and the general public call on the EPL to finally accept public scrutiny of its decision-making process.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:45 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Jun 04, 2021 10:48 am
This latest update on Swindon Town's proceedings looks far from positive, from the Swindon Advertiser

5 hrs ago
Questions over £4m ‘missing from Swindon Town directors’ account’

By Tom Seaward
Crime & Court Reporter

QUESTIONS have been raised over an alleged £4m missing from the Swindon Town directors’ loan account.

Lawyers for Michael Standing, the football agent who has staked a claim to 50 per cent of the County Ground club, say their client is still owed £3.7m from around £6m he invested.

In papers filed with the High Court, they say the amount outstanding on the directors’ loan account – essentially money they are owed by the club – should be £7.5m rather than the £3.2m shown on club records.

Colin West QC, counsel for Mr Standing in his court fight with Swindon Town chairman Lee Power, suggested in a skeleton argument prepared for the High Court hearing in May that the balance between the two figures had been taken out by Mr Power – and could have been used to buy out debentures held by former club owners.

He wrote: “The question to which this gives rise is: what has happened so as to reduce the amount owed under the Director’s Loan from £7.5m (on [Michael Standing]’s calculation) to the figure where it currently stands of just over £3m?

“The answer to this appears to be that the difference has been drawn out by [Lee Power] and retained by him. This is of course entirely contrary to the terms of the Agreement between the parties, which was that any sums taken out of the Club by means of working capital surpluses from time to time were to be shared on a 50/50 basis with [Michael Standing].

“That therefore amounts to a further sum of approximately £4m, half of which [Lee Power] was bound in equity to account for to [Michael Standing], which he has failed to account for and which remains unaccounted for as things stand.”

Mr Power has said that, if the club is sold to American buyers Able, he will write off the debt owed to him in the directors’ loan account. But if Clem Morfuni’s Axis buys the club he would “require repaying in full on any completion of a sale”.

However, if Mr Standing’s calculations about the amount in the directors’ loan are correct, it could be Mr Power who owes money to his alleged Swindon Town co-owner, the football agent’s lawyers claimed.

Mr West QC suggested that the money his client claims is missing could have been used to buy two debentures – or loans against the club – held by former owners Andrew Black and Sir Martyn Arbib.

“[Mr Power] has never explained where he obtained the money to purchase the debentures,” Mr West QC wrote in his skeleton argument, which the court has now released to the press.

“Throughout 2020 his position was that he was impecunious and would before too long run out of money to keep funding the club. Yet he was nevertheless able to purchase the £3m debentures from their previous owners, Black and Arbib.

“[Mr Power] has never said where he sourced such finance. In the circumstances, the obvious inference is that he used money he had obtained from the club by way of repayments of his director’s loan.”

Rob Angus of STFC Supporters’ Trust said he could not comment on the specific allegations. He said: “The Trust is deeply concerned about the governance of the club and the ongoing uncertainty as to ownership and the club’s financial position.

“After due diligence on Axis, the Trust believes the only way to secure the short and long term future of the club is a sale to Axis and urges Lee Power to do the right thing and sell to Axis.”

Mr Power was approached for comment via Swindon Town FC.
more financial worries from Swindon. the club have not paid their rent on the ground to the local council since April 2020,is this just a chancer taking advantage of temporary regulations over rent evictions

https://twitter.com/BBCWiltsSport/statu ... 3223768069

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:57 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 8:30 pm
Watford finally get around to releasing their 2019/20 financial results - a huge operating loss, absolutely enormous debts and a wage + amortisation to revenue ratio of 112%

https://www.watfordfc.com/storage/40495 ... Report.pdf

there has been a flood of these today so @KieranMaguire has only just had the briefest of looks

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 0535431178
This Athletic article on Watford's 2019/20 accounts is helpful read

https://theathletic.com/2683699/2021/07 ... ed_article

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jul 02, 2021 8:19 pm

Interesting opinion piece from Grimsby Town's owner in the Guardian

We bought Grimsby Town FC to help renew the place we love
Jason Stockwood
Many clubs have been unmoored from their communities. My business partner and I want to change that in our home town

Tue 29 Jun 2021 09.00 BST

293
When the sociologist Michael Young coined the idea of a meritocracy in 1958, he imagined a dystopian future where those who had succeeded on the basis of their inherited advantages would instead congratulate themselves on having done so as a result of their skills and capabilities. In Young’s satirical essay, the elite believed their success was down to individual merit, while a disenfranchised underclass were considered deserving of their social position. Young’s term is now frequently used with a straight face by those who understand neither its original negative connotations, nor what a travesty it is to suggest that merit is the primary factor determining a person’s life chances today.

For a long time, I told myself that my achievements were the product of the meritocracy I was born into, where hard work was both a necessity and a sufficient condition of success. I grew up in Grimsby, and like many entrepreneurial origin stories, mine began at school. To supplement my nonexistent allowance, I sold Opium (knock-off perfume, before you fall off your chair). My teachers called the police, and having spent the morning in the classroom, I sat out the afternoon in a police cell. Thirty years later, I had gone from working on the docks in Grimsby to dealing with private equity investors in New York as a tech CEO; from waking up in a house with ice inside the windows to a home with neighbours from “on the telly” and in the Premier League; from being the son of a single mum who worked three jobs to keep four sons fed and clothed, to becoming a parent who can afford to provide almost anything for my own children.

Yet I now know that the “meritocracy” people talk about is a reflection of their capital, both social and financial. Data and experience tells me I am an outlier in a country where inequality has risen and life chances have got worse for children born into circumstances like mine. It might sound odd, but these realisations are part of the reason I decided to buy my home-town football club, Grimsby Town FC, with my business partner Andrew Pettit. A football club that finished 92nd out of 92 teams in the English Football League in May, and was relegated to the National League. A club with one of the oldest stands in the football league, in dire need of investment, historically teetering on the edge of insolvency without the aid of local benefactors.

On paper, buying the club was a terrible financial decision – and yet when you consider the chance to rebuild civic value in the town where both Andrew and I grew up, it felt like one of the most valuable opportunities of our lives.

In Grimsby, problems that were already becoming clear when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s have crystallised in the years since: industrial decline, the slow demise of the once-dominant fishing industry and the social problems that followed from a lack of job opportunities and a general sense of abandonment. My brush with the law was tame compared to the reality some children in Grimsby face today, coerced into county lines drug gangs where they face the threat of shocking violence. In several of Grimsby’s wards, close to half of all children are living in poverty. The town continues to be failed by those who purport to care for it: framed by television cameras as a symbol of deprivation and decline, poked by thinktanks and prodded by journalists, caricatured as a victim of the Brexit that its people decisively voted for.

Yet this is nowhere near the whole story of the town I know and love. Grimsby deserves better than becoming the goldfish bowl of post-Brexit Britain, gawped at by the prosperous and socially conscious, a tourist attraction on the map of social and economic deprivation. Instead we should be looking to the town as a place where the voices we hear are not lamenting their lost past, but shaping their future. While many civic institutions and local businesses have faded away and shuttered over the years, professional football teams are one of the few institutions that have endured. Indeed, Grimsby Town FC has a 143-year history and a committed (if somewhat diminished) following today. The Mariners can still engender a sense of collective belonging and an identity that is deeply aligned to the performance of 11 men in black and white on a Saturday afternoon.

Often the only story you hear about Grimsby is about the lack of opportunity, aspiration and education. But dig deeper and you encounter people who avoided university because of the cost and are now building stable careers; twentysomethings running their own companies and people who neither wanted to leave nor felt they had to. “I love the town and never wanted to move away,” said the newest and youngest trustee of Grimsby’s new OnSide Youth Zone. She went on to become a partner at a local accountancy firm and told me: “It’s brilliant here. I grew up thinking everyone lived near the beach.” Young people who have pride in the town and know its problems should have a much greater role in determining the policies that will shape its future. Though we clearly need the support of central government, solutions have to be built as a partnership with the community itself.

Andrew and I became the major shareholders of the club on 4 May this year. This investment seems like the perfect counterweight to the ownership model of the “Super League” teams, a paradigmatic example of distorted capitalism where profit motives and dividend payments are regarded as the only measure of success. Football teams are viewed in high definition around the world but have become untethered from the communities that made them what they are today.

Buying Grimsby Town FC is an opportunity to place a football club and its values at the centre of a renewal that is already happening in the town, and to amplify the amazing community work that is being done by the football club’s charitable arm for education, diversity and inclusivity. We want to show that “levelling up” means recognising the myth of meritocracy and levelling the playing field, rather than assuming that opportunities trickle down. This can only work if it starts from within the community, with a shared identity that a 143-year-old football club is uniquely positioned to play a huge part in shaping.

Jason Stockwood is a technology entrepreneur, visiting fellow at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and chairman of Grimsby Town FC
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Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Jul 02, 2021 8:43 pm

Following the news that Derby will not be relegated before the coming season it seems that the authorities an France are far more on the ball and powerful when it comes to financial issues - as both Boedeaux and Angers recieve preliminary relegations - from GetFranceFootball

Angers & Bordeaux relegated to Ligue 2 preliminarily by the DNCG

French football’s prodigious financial watchdog, the DNCG, on Friday took steps to provisionally relegate two Ligue 1 clubs to the French second division: Angers and Bordeaux.

The decision for Le SCO occurred owing to financial irregularities, but club owner Saïd Chabane has told L’Équipe that he is not worried as he believes the decision came down to a missing document. Angers have appealed and will sit in front of the DNCG again on 12th July.

Chabane said: “This is a normal procedure and there are no worries that should be had.”

As for Bordeaux, the DNCG has decided to preliminarily relegate Les Girondins because of the decision made by current owners King Street to step back and place the club under the protection of a commercial court. Luxembourg businessman Gérard Lopez, who is attempting to finalise the acquisition of the club, has got the club to appeal the decision, and is confident that they will overturn.

Marseille and Nantes have also faced less aggressive action from the DNCG – the French football financial watchdog has informed Marseille that it will be “supervising its wage and transfer expenditure,” whilst Nantes are banned from “excessive transfer spending” and have been informed that they must minimise their wage bill over the course of this window.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jul 03, 2021 4:44 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:35 pm
The long running saga of attempts to get no American League games played on American soil has taken another twist - from SportsBusiness.com

Fifa warned banning international league games on US soil may breach antitrust laws
Bob Williams, US office - September 2, 2020

United States-based international soccer promoters Relevent Sports has been given a rare boost in its repeated attempts to stage official international league matches on US soil.

It has emerged that the US Justice Department warned global governing body Fifa that banning the se competitive regular-season games could violate American antitrust laws.

“Market allocation is a per se violation of the US antitrust laws,” wrote Makan Delrahim, the assistant attorney general who heads the Justice Department’s antitrust division, in a letter to Fifa president Gianni Infantino and United States Soccer Federation president Cindy Parlow Cone in March.

“Sports organizations are not categorically immune from liability under the rules. In particular, they apply to Fifa and its affiliates, including the United States Soccer Federation, in the same manner that they apply to any other organization whose activities substantially affect the United States. We specifically are concerned that Fifa could violate US antitrust laws by restricting the territory in which teams can play league games,” Delrahim wrote.

Relevent is looking to put on official LaLiga matches in the US following a long-term partnership with the Spanish soccer league. A planned match between FC Barcelona and Girona at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium in January 2019 was cancelled after widespread opposition from various stakeholders.

In April 2019, US Soccer also denied Relevent’s application to host a match between two Ecuadorian clubs.

In September 2019, Relevent filed an antitrust lawsuit against US Soccer in the Southern District of New York, alleging that the federation had conspired with Fifa and Soccer United Marketing – the commercial arm of Major League Soccer – to block official matches from foreign clubs being held in the States.

However, in July US District Judge Valerie Caproni dismissed the antitrust claim.

Relevent was given until September 1 to amend its complaint, which it has done so in a new lawsuit in the Southern District of New York. Relevent included Delrahim’s letter in the amended complaint, in which Fifa has been added as a defendant.

“Now that the government has weighed in, we call upon Fifa and USSF to join us in opening up our borders to the world’s game,” Relevent chief executive Daniel Sillman told the Associated Press in a statement.

Relevent has faced a series of setbacks to get this initiative off the ground. Last November, a Madrid court opted not to grant permission for a match between Villarreal and Atlético Madrid to be held in Miami.

In February, Fifa’s Stakeholders Committee recommended that soccer’s world governing body should formally ban teams from playing official league matches outside of their home territories.

In March, meanwhile, a Madrid court dismissed an appeal from LaLiga against the Spanish Football Federation’s (RFEF) decision not to authorize the Girona-FC Barcelona game in Miami. The Magistrate of Madrid’s Commercial Court No.12 ruled that the RFEF did not engage in unlawful conduct by not facilitating the match.
It has been a while since we have heard anything on the long running court hearing about in season league games from La Liga on American soil (which is in contravention of FIFA rules). The recent supreme court case that saw victory for college athletes over the NCAA is now being cited as a reason to rule FIFA's regulations illegal - you would think if that happens then it would help the Super League in their own legal battles.

https://theathletic.com/2673559/2021/06 ... t-lawsuit/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:05 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Sat Jul 03, 2021 4:44 pm
It has been a while since we have heard anything on the long running court hearing about in season league games from La Liga on American soil (which is in contravention of FIFA rules). The recent supreme court case that saw victory for college athletes over the NCAA is now being cited as a reason to rule FIFA's regulations illegal - you would think if that happens then it would help the Super League in their own legal battles.

https://theathletic.com/2673559/2021/06 ... t-lawsuit/
Get them playing in America ready to move the top franchises into an American World Series Super league?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:46 am

elwaclaret wrote:
Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:05 am
Get them playing in America ready to move the top franchises into an American World Series Super league?
No, more of anyone can set up in competition to authorised leagues and play anywhere that they want, when they want without sanction of themselves or the players - the particular case in the US with Relevent was all initiated by a Barcelona vs Real Madrid game in Miami in Relevent's summer tournament the ICC - Barcelona have always been keen to play an in season game in the US (or anyway actually that pays enough) Relevent have since become very close to La Liga, including playing a significant role in La Liga's new US TV deal, the biggest ever for soccer over there .

Of course the Premier League concept of the 39th game was interesting because it was not technically in season, but as I understand the points would have counted
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Sun Jul 04, 2021 9:45 am

https://twitter.com/reluctantnicko/stat ... 97472?s=19

"EFL. Going to go in hard on DERBY and SHEFF WED among others. Poss ten under scrutiny for recent financial issues. Next target is tough restrictions on signing players."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:44 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Sun Jul 04, 2021 9:45 am
https://twitter.com/reluctantnicko/stat ... 97472?s=19

"EFL. Going to go in hard on DERBY and SHEFF WED among others. Poss ten under scrutiny for recent financial issues. Next target is tough restrictions on signing players."
You have to say that Trevor Birch has got the bit between his teeth after his recent work at Swansea where he implemented a lot of what he is demanding from EFL clubs - there was a real shock to system at Swansea but they appeared to quickly bounce back with strong management and a coherent strategy.
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:52 pm

The police seem to like them in the case of local derbies, broadcasters in the far East like them because they can be shown at Prime Time, those teams that compete in Europe hate them because of lack of recuperation time and fans hate them on long away days. This article in the Guardian, though, gives us the best reason not to have early kick-offs in Football - though what it says about our country is thoroughly depressing.


Early kick-offs linked to more alcohol abuse and violence in the home
Study finds that football matches starting at midday fuel all-day drinking that ends in domestic abuse

Michael Savage - Sun 4 Jul 2021 09.06 BST

Alcohol consumption following football matches is fuelling domestic abuse in the hours after a game, according to new evidence suggesting that changing kick-off times could help reduce violence.

Instances of domestic abuse increased in areas where a major match took place at midday or in the afternoon, where perpetrators had the opportunity for longer drinking sessions. The findings raise questions about previous police requests to have some contentious games played earlier in the day. While early kick-offs can be easier to police, the findings suggest they could exacerbate domestic violence later on.

Researchers at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance examined eight years of call and crime data from Greater Manchester police, correlating with the timing of almost 800 games played by Manchester United and Manchester City between April 2012 and June 2019.

Their study found a 5% fall in domestic abuse incidents during the two-hour duration of a game. After the game, however abuse started increasing. It peaked about 10 hours after a game started, with about 8.5% more incidents than average at that point. There is no increase in domestic abuse when games kick-off after 7pm. The findings led researchers to make the case for more midweek fixtures, which kick-off in the evening.

Tom Kirchmaier, director of the policing and crime research group at the centre, said he believed the findings had “big implications” for policing and the timing of matches. “Police services were pushing for early kick-offs, because they’re easier to police,” he said. “People aren’t drunk and then they’re easier to manage. But what we actually substitute is a kind of visible crime for invisible crime. You have less crime around the stadium and so on, but you have issues more than eight hours later at home.

“It is actually much more problematic to intervene then. It also comes at quite huge economic, social and personal cost. What we uncover here is that there are huge problems to these early kick-offs, which nobody has really thought about. The increase is also only seen between partners living together – there was no similar rise in ex-partner domestic abuse.”

The researchers also suggested that alcohol’s role in abuse means professional teams should rethink their associations with alcohol brands. “One of our findings is the crucial role of alcohol,” said Neus Torres-Blas, a researcher at the centre. “Historically, football organisations have a very close connection with many alcohol sponsors. One of the recommendations… is we should rethink this close relationship.”

Domestic abuse charities said the sole responsibility was always with abusers. However, they are running campaigns with sports bodies to address the issue. “Football does not cause domestic abuse – abusers do. We do know, however, that football games and a related increase in alcohol consumption can exacerbate existing domestic abuse – in both frequency and intensity,” said Farah Nazeer, chief executive at Women’s Aid. “The idea that fewer earlier games could act as a solution to abuse is deeply concerning. We need to address the structural sexism and misogyny that underpin violence against women and girls if we are to tackle domestic abuse.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 04, 2021 2:56 pm

The Chaps at Vysyble pick up on strange note in CFG's 2019/20 accounts (which are separate to Manchester City's which where publish quite some time back). So when is a Share sale not a share sale and an Investment not an Investment but a working partnership with an intention to take up an investment option.

https://twitter.com/vysyble/status/1411246310523650048

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 04, 2021 3:42 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:44 pm
You have to say that Trevor Birch has got the bit between his teeth after his recent work at Swansea where he implemented a lot of what he is demanding from EFL clubs - there was a real shock to system at Swansea but they appeared to quickly bounce back with strong management and a coherent strategy.
This may have be part of what Nixon was referring to, though the EFL have no mention of it anywhere on twitter or their website

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 4696014854

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:02 pm

Bochum, newly promoted to the Bundesliga, are looking for an long term investor - which is much more complicated thing in that league - they have been talking to OffthePitch.com about what they are hoping for

Newly promoted Bundesliga club are searching for an investor who is in it for the long haul: "These days you cannot achieve success in football without money. But it isn't the only success factor"
2 July 2021 3:43 PM
  • Bochum have achieved promotion to the Bundesliga and want an investor who can help take the club to new heights.
  • High valuations in Germany, however, in combination with its 50+1 rule, means taking on a stake in the club is not as straightforward as in other leagues.
  • Managing director explains members are looking for a partner that wants to actively partake in Bochum's growth over the next ten years.
  • Simplicity and continuity are two of the club's unique selling points, rare in an industry that tends to favour short-term planning.
EMIL GJERDING NIELSON nielson@offthepitch.com

In an investment profile shared with Off The Pitch, VfL Bochum prompt the question: "What actions guarantee success, or at least increase the probability of success?"

When it comes to football, the answer could be successful youth development, shareholder independence, or excelling at commercial operations. And they might all be right.

But for Ilja Kaenzig, who has been acting as managing director of the newly promoted Bundesliga club for the past three years, the focus lies on something entirely different.

"For us, the main success factor is continuity, the biggest challenge in modern football to achieve. It's easy to say but very hard to implement," he tells Off The Pitch while busy preparing for the new season in Germany's top tier to which they have made a return after an 11-year hiatus.

Unique selling point

Since joining in 2018, the former Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Hannover 96, FC Sochaux-Montbeliard and BSC Young Boys chief executive officer has been working to implement structures in the organisation that can support stability.

That's because Kaenzig, along with sporting director Sebastian Schindzielorz, have identified continuity as a unique selling point to attract a partner who sees it as a key pillar in his or her investment portfolio.

"We need someone who sees continuity as a success factor. Someone with a very long-term perspective who is not entering football for yearly returns and is ready to wait ten years, and then another ten years, if the asset has not gained in value," Kaenzig says, adding:

"These days you cannot achieve success in football without money. But it isn't the only success factor."

He believes the club, who claim to have 13 million sympathisers in Germany, present an attractive investment case despite a more than two-year search involving over 100 business contacts not having resulted in any agreement yet.

"We know that we haven't missed anything yet from the talks we've had because the business models of the investors currently watching developments in European football are more suited to clubs in Italy, France and England," Kaenzig says.

"It has to be someone with the right mindset who wants to help us build on and speed up the positive cycle we are in."

North American interest

The club are particularly active on the domestic and North American market and are working with various partners and brokers to manage the amount of interest.

Kaenzig says the club want someone who is seeking to emulate the owners of some of football's biggest clubs. Albeit, for now, on a much smaller scale.

"The higher up you go in football the more long-term investors are. Owners at the top of the Premier League have ultra-long perspectives and are not dependent on having a yield on the money they invest. They see the potential in the long run and that's what we have to look at," he says.

That fits perfectly in line with what Kaenzig has been working to implement in Bochum where the desire to punch above their financial weight will never be compromised with straying from the core strategy.

"In Germany it's not the financially strongest clubs that get promoted or are successful in the league. Just look at Schalke, Werder Bremen and Hamburger SV. It's often the club who have continuity, and for us that means clear structures, so stakeholders know the club are in good hands," Kaenzig says.

Keeping it simple

And because of Germany's 50+1 rule which says club members must maintain the majority of the voting rights, stakeholder confidence is one of the Swiss managing director's most important areas of focus.

"The first things I wanted to implement were clear communication and decision-making structures: Who is talking to the public, who is responsible for what," he says.

Admitting that "it sounds so simple," however, he points to the fact that even the biggest clubs with the most professional communication often get it wrong.

"Communication, and in particular stakeholder communication, is an area where clubs still make mistakes, from those in the European Super League down to the smallest. If you invest time and energy into that you create trust and quietness around the club, and that allows us to build and work because all stakeholders feel part of what we are doing," Kaenzig says.

Concretely, the club have performed an organisational overhaul drawing a clear line of responsibilities in order to give employees a transparent understanding of who performs what duties.

"A solid structure starts with everybody knowing what their tasks are. Investing in our organisational structure has led to more responsibility, decision making power and ultimately motivation. That has made us more efficient and meant we are now using our resources more efficiently," Kaenzig says.

He makes it clear that Bochum are not "overcomplicating things" and that streamlining the organisation could involve something as obvious as sending out a newsletter to employees every week outlining what meetings management has in order to make everyone feel part of the process.

"Football is a strange industry because if you do the simple things well you are already beating 90 per cent of the competition. If you create a good product, that leads to increased interest, and in these days you can capitalise on that."

50+1 barrier

While there has been a flurry of investments in European football over the past couple of years in Germany there has generally been less activity. Kaenzig attributes this to clubs' general financial health which means the point of entry is significantly higher than in other leagues.

"Clubs in Italy, France and even the Championship in general sell for revenue multiples of one and upwards, while in Germany it's at least two and a half. So, investors won't find bargains here because there are no distressed assets. At the moment that is turning investors off, but I believe they will realise the values are justified," he says.

"In our case, because it’s the members that are selling, all of the money goes to the asset. That makes German football not look that expensive."

The club are not publicly speaking about their valuation but when the members, before Kaenzig joined, voted to initiate the investor search selling at least 20 per cent of the equity for €20 million was the idea.

But it all depends on the investor and the specific arraignment which Bochum eventually hope will be drawn up.

Kaenzig highlights that the 50+1 rule does not prevent investors from owning more than 49 per cent of a club's equity. An investor could own 100 per cent for that matter.

"Of course, the initial investment is higher than in a club in another country and that's why we are planning with someone who is willing to take on no less than 20 per cent and increasing that along the way."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:42 pm

Screenshot_20210704-164008.png
Screenshot_20210704-164008.png (750.43 KiB) Viewed 2959 times
They paid €60 million for him last year...Umtiti is also one they want to release.

They're a real mess

https://www.goal.com/en/news/barcelona- ... nwl1v5l5yc

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:50 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Sun Jul 04, 2021 4:42 pm
Screenshot_20210704-164008.png

They paid €60 million for him last year...Umtiti is also one they want to release.

They're a real mess

https://www.goal.com/en/news/barcelona- ... nwl1v5l5yc
that swap deal with Juventus that was done to boost revenues so the Barcelona board did not have to fork out for the budget shortfall from their own pockets - that board are no longer in place
Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Jul 02, 2020 12:58 am
The Guardian looks at the mess that Barcelona are in on and off the field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A more telling line is hard to imagine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 04, 2021 5:56 pm

A study shows that there has been a fall in gambling's sponsorship of sport - from SportsProMedia

Study: Betting sponsorship in English sport has almost halved since 2019
Three sectors overtake gambling industry as most prevalent sponsors across soccer, rugby and cricket.

Posted: July 1 2021By: Sam Carp
Study: Betting sponsorship in English sport has almost halved since 2019
Getty Images

- Gambling’s share of sponsorship market down from 15.3 per cent to 8.1 per cent in last two years
- Construction and engineering now leading the way with 11.2 per cent of main sponsor deals
- Betting brands remain most prevalent main sponsors in soccer, although share has dropped from 32.7 per cent to 15.2 per cent
- Betting sponsorship in English sport has almost halved over the last two years, according to a new study by Caytoo.

The sponsorship intelligence firm found that the construction and engineering, automotive and financial services sectors have all overtaken the gambling industry as the most prevalent sponsors of English professional soccer, rugby and cricket teams.

The study, which analysed the main sponsor of 221 teams across the three sports, found that gambling’s share of the market has dropped from 15.3 per cent to 8.1 per cent since 2019, when betting brands accounted for the most main sponsorship deals.

Construction and engineering companies now lead the way with an 11.2 per cent share of the market. Automotive brands account for 9.4 per cent of main sponsor deals, while financial services firms make up 8.5 per cent of the total.

Why an outright ban on gambling sponsorship would be a misplaced bet

Caytoo noted that the sharp decline in gambling sponsorship has been driven entirely by soccer, where the betting sector’s share has plummeted from 32.7 per cent to 15.2 per cent. However, betting brands remain the most prevalent main sponsors in the sport. Financial services firms have the biggest share of deals in rugby, while the automotive and construction and engineering sectors are leading the way in cricket.

The study comes as the UK government considers whether to introduce stricter regulations around betting sponsorship in sport as part of a broader review of the 2005 Gambling Act.

UK sports minister Nigel Huddleston has warned that allowing betting companies to sponsor sports teams and events could be banned if “evidence of harm” is found.

Commenting on the findings of the study, Alex Burmaster, Caytoo’s head of research and analysis, said: “This change has been driven by the greater demand from society for professional sports to be more socially responsible when it comes to their fans and communities.

“In addition to gambling’s drop, alcohol has seen the second biggest reduction in prevalence while environmental services and healthcare are among those with the biggest increases.”

The sectors that saw the biggest increase in the number of main sponsorships were IT services, automotive and telecoms. Caytoo noted that the growth in deals with IT firms came almost entirely from women’s teams, who were responsible for six of the eight new partnerships.

The most prevalent main sponsors are car manufacturer Kia, the Emirates airline and energy company Utilita, who are each the main sponsors of four teams.

Utilita and online car retailer Cazoo, which partnered with Aston Villa and Everton last year, have seen the biggest increase in team sponsorships since 2019.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:18 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 8:30 pm
Watford finally get around to releasing their 2019/20 financial results - a huge operating loss, absolutely enormous debts and a wage + amortisation to revenue ratio of 112%

https://www.watfordfc.com/storage/40495 ... Report.pdf

there has been a flood of these today so @KieranMaguire has only just had the briefest of looks

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 0535431178
@SwissRamble does his thing with Watford's 2019/20 financial results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 4133099520

he has also done a summary sheet

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 8714444801

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:47 pm

this is big news - Saudi Arabia announces it is going to start a major airline and have a middle eastern hub (my guess would be at the new sports city).

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 021-07-02/

So you may be asking why is this big news - well just look at who two of the biggest sponsors in Football are - Qatar Airways and Emirates Airways, the Saudi's are likely to follow suit with a major deal in each of the major Leagues - Real Madrid being the favourite in La Liga, given that the Saudi's have already agreed a huge deal with Real Madrid women.

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 6305126401

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jul 05, 2021 11:09 pm

Well this explains why Barcelona are desperately trying to get rid of players - they cannot even register their new players as they have to wipe 200m off their wage bill to meet the new salary cap from La Liga - translated from Goal.com

Barcelona and the salary limit: Departures and discounts that do not fix a disturbing panorama
Rubén Uría / Adrià Soldevila
Last update 1 hour ago
19:5905 Jul 2021

After "placing" Junior, Trincao, Konrad or Todibo, Barça need to remove Umtiti, Coutinho and Pjanic ... but neither could they register their signings
Josep Maria Bartomeu left a poisoned inheritance to Joan Laporta . Strangled by a suffocating wage bill, with a 30% drop in income caused by the pandemic and pending completion of the audit, the club's financial outlook is a horror movie: the club's total debt amounts to 1,173 million euros (730 short-term), owes 323 million for transfers (126 short-term), has a negative working capital that exceeds 600 million and another 350 million pending amortizations (about 143 per year). Laporta already commented that the club "is much worse than I thought." And so much. It is far worse than the partners expected.

Junior, Trincao, Konrad and Todibo, "placed"
Right now, as Goal advanced , Barça cannot register Messi, or Sergio Agüero, Memphis Depay, Eric Garcia and Emerson Royal right now . It has far exceeded the staff cost limit controlled by LaLiga and needs to reduce the salary mass with extreme urgency. As Goal has learned , Barça trusts that Javier Tebas will act like the rest of the European leagues and adopt the flexibility that UEFA will allow this season to clubs in the face of the salary cap problem. In fact, the talks are underway. But for now, and without an agreement with the employers, the club would have to assume a reduction of almost 200 "kilos" in salaries if you want all the chips to fit into the complicated puzzle of the salary limit, which was approved and voted by the 42 Spanish professional football clubs. The club has 'placed' Junior Firpo (Leeds), Francisco Trincao (Wolverhampton), Konrad (Marseille), Todibo (Nice) and rescinded Matheus Fernandes. For now, insufficient to achieve the goal.

Junior Firpo. Transferred to Leeds for € 15 million plus variables, of which Betis would receive € 2.2 million by having a percentage of the sale. To this should be added the "savings" of the € 10.8 million of outstanding amortization plus the gross € 5 million token that it receives per year. Total: +9.2 M €.

Francisco Trincao. Yielded with option to buy to Wolverhampton. Barça would have to continue paying the pending amortization for the Portuguese, but it would save its file, which amounts to about € 8 million gross per season. Total: + € 8 M.

Konrad De La Fuente. Transferred to Olympique de Marseille for € 3 million, to which should be added the savings on his annual record with the subsidiary, which does not exceed € 200,000. Total: +3.2 M €.

Jean Claire-Todibo. Transferred to Nice for € 8.5 M plus a bonus which, if all the variables were met, would reach € 14 M. Barça would also save their annual salary, € 1 million gross per season. Total: +9.5 M €.

Matheus Fernandes. The club has unilaterally terminated his contract by paying him compensation and the player will report his case to the courts, so he could have to allocate € 4.2 M in losses, which also affects the salary cost limit. Total: -4.2 M €.

'Save' the chips of Umtiti, Coutinho and Pjanic, priority
Barça, aware that this is not enough, is pressing to remove Umtiti, Coutinho and Pjanic. The problem, their high chips, unaffordable for any club interested in recruiting them. As "Mundo Deportivo" advanced, the club has offered the letter of freedom -not the termination of the contract, since it cannot do so-, to both, urging them to release them and continue paying their salary until they find a new team. Both have rejected the offer and Barça accelerates so that they agree to leave the club on loan. What would Barça release if they gave in to these players? Let's analyze it.

Samuel Umtiti. He rejects the letter of freedom, terminating the contract would end up imputing losses for Barça and as there are no buyer clubs, a transfer is being studied. If he could get out on loan, the club would save € 20 million gross of his salary this season. Total: + € 20 M.

Miralem Pjanic . Signed for € 60M in an inexplicable operation where Arthur ended up at Juventus, he still has € 45M of amortization pending. He has no offers and does not want to accept the letter of freedom. In case of leaving on loan, repeating the formula used with Arda Turan , Barça would continue to pay its annual amortization (15 "kilos"), but would save € 16 million in gross annual salary. Total: + € 16 M.

Philippe Coutinho. The most expensive signing in the club's history. With no transfer offers for the Brazilian , the club is working to find him a club that can afford his astronomical salary of € 14 million per year. If it were transferred, Barça would have to continue paying its annual amortization, but it would release € 28 million gross. Total: + € 28 M.

In this context, what is better for Barça, transferring players or selling them? Complex. If the question is to fit the 'fair play' of this season and there are urgencies because no offers arrive, in the short term, the transfer is the simplest solution. However, in the medium and long term, it would be advisable to sell players, because that way for future seasons Barcelona would free itself from what is strangling it right now, the million-dollar amortizations that it has pending.

This "clean" will not be enough to "square" the salary limit
Conclution. If Barcelona is able to yield to Umtiti, Pjanic and Coutinho, it would release € 64 M gross (28 + 16 + 20) which, together with the "savings" with Junior (9.2), Trincao (8), Konrad (3.2), Todibo (9.5) and Matheus (-4.2), would suppose an oxygen cylinder of about € 89.7 M. Enough? No way. Of that money, only 25% of that money could be reinvested in new signings and registrations , because Barça is in a salary mass of 110% with respect to its income and must follow LaLiga regulations (article 100), which in the case of exceeding this limit only allows you to spend that 25% of income.

That "saving" would not be enough to be able to register Messi (vital renewal because it generates more commercial income for the club than it earns), nor would the margin to register new signings be reached, without computing their respective transfer premiums to arrive as free agents. Enroll Kun (€ 12 M gross / year), Depay (€ 12 M gross), Eric (€ 2 M gross) and Emerson (€ 3 M gross) would be above 25% of the almost € 90 M that Barça would release from the salary cap if he manages to remove all the players mentioned.

This invites us to think that Barça will have to transfer / assign / terminate many more players , although the termination for most is more complicated than in the case of Matheus, since the Brazilian signed a clause that allowed the club to make the unilateral decision. , while in the majority of first-team contracts this option does not exist. In addition, now getting an extra sponsorship or selling the assets of the Barça Corporate project will not allow the Blaugrana entity to increase its battered 'fair play'. At least in this summer market. Any income that enters the club's coffers will be calculated in fiscal year 2021-22 , while LaLiga's salary limit will be drawn up with the close of fiscal year 2020-21., which ended on June 30 and for which the figures will be known once the audit commissioned by Laporta ends in mid-July.

Bartomeu and his board blamed Covid-19 for Barça's financial state, but the reality is that the management has been reckless, that it has lived beyond its means between credits and loans, and that the club now faces a dramatic reality. Solutions are urgent and time plays against. From the club they admit, openly, that the situation is extremely complex and that Barça needs, at the moment, time and patience to recover. Red alert at the Camp Nou.

Adrià Soldevilla / Rubén Uría

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Jul 05, 2021 11:12 pm

This thread gives even more insight to the mess at Barcelona that the new board is trying to clean up

https://twitter.com/ZachLowy/status/1412143891302780930

though the writer does not appear to know what Amortisation is - he should be clear that this is a book cost not a cash cost - and there is no possible way that Barcelina owe Liverpool an amortisation cost - there me be outstanding payments but that is not amortisation

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:01 pm

Matt Slater of the Athletic looks at the ongoing International rights auctions for the Premier League's next cycle that are progressing quitely this summer

https://theathletic.com/2686261/2021/07 ... ed_article

It largely echoes what I have been saying for a while now - longer term deals preserve the values and there are opportunities for growth in the US - but also French language territories (they are mostly bundled together) Italy and questions remain over China

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:22 pm

Speaking of China - PPTV was owned by Suning (major shareholders in Inter Milan) are about to find themselves with more new partners (after the government took a significant share in the group earlier in the year). This is likely a direct result of Government instruction.

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/ali ... w-28330466

Beyond the usual internal control influence of its biggest corporations It suggests a couple of things about how the Chinese government views their ongoing relationship with Italy - for those who remember Italy was a place of strategic importance in China's new silk road initiative that I have previously posted about.

Here Simon Chadwick, thinks that this move thinks the Chinese government is not ready for Suning to give up it's controlling influence at Inter

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 7183608834

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:31 pm

Back to international broadcast rights - this tie La Liga who have just agreed a deal for the Indian sub-continent - the partner (previously facebbook) shows a continued intent to reach the young audience that the Super League 12 were so concerned about - MTV, yes the music channel. I keep saying that sport is converging with entertainment, note that Reliance Industries are a shareholder in MTV India - from SportsProMedia

MTV to broadcast La Liga across Indian sub-continent
Viacom18 makes first sports rights acquisition in region.

Posted: July 6 2021By: Tom King

- La Liga returns to linear broadcast in India after Facebook partnership ends
- Agreement covers India, and seven neighbouring countries

Viacom18, the joint venture between Reliance Industries-owned Network18 and US-based media giant ViacomCBS, has become the exclusive broadcast for Spanish soccer's top-flight La Liga in a three-year deal.

As part of the agreement, Viacom18’s flagship youth television brand MTV will exclusively broadcast La Liga matches across the Indian sub-continent, with the company's regional streaming platform Voot, and Jio platforms providing digital distribution.

The financial terms of the deal, which is Viacom18's first sports partnership in India, have not been disclosed.

For La Liga, the deal again sees the Spanish soccer league seek to reach young audiences in the region after recently seeing its Indian broadcast partnership with social media giant Facebook end.

Inside the La Liga Global Network
Oscar Mayo, La Lga executive director, said: "Having set one of the highest standards of football globally, and India gaining tremendous momentum, we are confident that we will reach and engage with the youthful audience that MTV as a destination appeals to."

Anshul Ailawadi, business head youth, music and English entertainment at Viacom18, addded: "We've been doing some soul-searching at MTV and are very clear about our need to go after youth passion points irrespective of how they've been defined in the 'legacy world'. Football is one of these passion points, like reality, music and so on. In this context, LaLiga was a perfect fit given the support it enjoys amongst young at heart Indians."

The 2021/22 La Liga season will commence on 13th August 2021, with commentary in Hindi and English being offered across Viacom18's distribution channels.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:38 pm

And while we are talking about India this interview with Star's head of sports (it is India's biggest ppv sports channel and the Premier Leagues rights holder) - gives an insight into the market place - Star is owned by Disney who also own ESPN who have made massive investments in Football in the US this year. = from SportsProMedia

An expert’s guide to the Indian sports media market with Star’s Sanjog Gupta
Sanjog Gupta, head of sports at Star India, reveals the secrets to running India's biggest pay-TV sports network and why there is more to the local market than cricket.

By Tom Bassam Posted: July 6 2021

The Indian sports media market is unique, not just in its size but also in its economics. In terms of pure scale only China has more than its neighbour’s 815 million TV viewers, almost 700 million internet users and more than one billion mobile connections.

The cost of TV subscriptions and data are low, with the latter contributing to a growth of base internet users of between 20 and 22 per cent between 2019 and 2020. Unlike the West, TV is still growing but digital, powered by the mobile device, is accelerating faster.

Another quirk is that media revenue in India is almost equally divided between advertising and subscription fees. While average revenue per user (ARPU) remains low, the enormous reach means that marketers are prepared to pay significant fees to access the consumer.

Also, if you thought the dominance of the National Football League (NFL) in the US was remarkable, on average 85 to 95 of the 100 most-watched broadcasts in India annually are live cricket. Linear broadcasts of the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Twenty20 competition, including non-live programming, are watched by around 500 to 550 million domestic viewers every year.

There are two other sports on the radar of the Indian consumer, soccer and kabaddi. Similar to the US, India is an amalgamation of local markets. While cricket is undoubtedly the universal number one sport across all of them, the others vie for second place, with their popularity differentiating by region.

Across all of it sits Disney-owned Star India, arguably the country’s lead pay-TV broadcaster. It has major broadcast partnerships with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for both the IPL and national team cricket and the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) – the elite national competition. It also holds a 35 per cent stake and long-term broadcast rights in the Indian Super League (ISL), which is on a roadmap to usurp the I-League and become the sole top domestic soccer competition.

The Premier League, the only overseas competition to have earned mass cut-through in India, is also among Star’s rights portfolio.

This has not come cheap. Over the past ten years, industry sources suggest that Star has invested close to US$10 billion in cricket rights and rights production marketing. Its 2013 ISL investment was reportedly worth I₹2,000 crore (then US$324.7 million), while the recent renewal of its PKL rights is costing I₹180 crore (US$24.1 million) a year.

To get a better understanding of what it takes to run a premium sports network in one of the world’s largest countries, SportsPro spoke to Sanjog Gupta (pictured left), head of sports at Star India.

India is very much a cricket-obsessed nation, how does this impact Star’s approach to sports broadcasting?
The interesting part of this journey, at least over the last decade, has been our belief in the vision that India has the potential to be a multi-sport sporting nation eventually and should actually progress in that direction.

Broadly speaking, obviously the largest chunk of our investment continues to be in cricket, but we've also invested significantly in football and in an indigenous sport called kabaddi, which is a short format contact sport.

Those three sports now constitute almost 95 per cent of total sports consumption in the country.

In fact, maybe more. Maybe it's between 95 or 97 per cent depending on how many events are happening that year in these three sports.

So, it is a market dominated by cricket with two green shoots in the form of football and kabaddi, which have now started registering quite prominently amongst fans in the country. There are pockets of passion for the sports in the country, which we've seen significant consumption at times even more than cricket. So, in the eastern part and the south western part of the country football is very big, and in the southern part of the country and parts of and western parts of the country kabaddi is very big.

That actually is a great segue into the next big thing that makes media in India and sport in India quite unique, which is unlike most media markets. India's almost an agglomeration of multiple media markets, multiple regional media markets. So, there are many regional entertainment channels, there have been many regional entertainment channels in parts of the country, which have significantly higher levels of consumption than any of the national networks. In fact, the concept of a national network in India is almost fluid, because there are multiple languages spoken in the country and regions have very strong cultures of their own.

There isn't one universal or a national network that is equally watched across the length and breadth of the country. The one thing that does unite the country like nothing else is cricket. Cricket is equally popular in all parts of the country which is what makes it as dominant a property and as attractive a property for customers and for rights holders as it is because it allows you to really speak to viewers across the length and breadth of the nation.

Because these states also have uniquely differentiated cultures, even the consumption of cricket or the way cricket is served in these regions tends to be different. So, for example, we run a mix of national and regional sports channels. Our sports network is an agglomeration of 15 different channels of which six are our regional sports networks, which contribute disproportionately to the overall consumption of sport in the country.

TV is still growing in India, with advertising and subscription fees equally important. Do you see this shifting any time soon?
I think in the near term, we won't see a significant shift in the share of revenues from the two streams, because there are forces at play, which are perhaps causing an expansion of advertising revenues. But at the same time, with digital consumption growing significantly and Disney+ Hotstar being the leading OTT service in the country, this has really taken subscriptions on to a scale that no other player has been able to reach.

So we're seeing a push to subscriptions on our digital platforms. We've seen significant growth in subscriber numbers for Disney+ Hotstar over the last year, which is when we've been very focused on driving subscriptions.

On the TV side, we are seeing significant growth in ad revenues for properties like IPL, basically marquee properties that aggregate audiences. What we are seeing in other parts of the media ecosystem and in other content genres, is fragmentation of audiences. The only real aggregator of audiences at this scale seems to be cricket. Thus, it is now deriving a premium from advertisers for delivering that scale of reach which no other media property can.

So, it's an interesting trend TV. We’re seeing faster growth in ad revenues for sport and digital is seeing significant growth in subscription revenues for sport. Given the relative size and scale of TV versus digital currently, we don't see a significant shift.

Although at least for all major sports properties, ad revenues do have a higher share of the pie than subscription revenue. But it's more or less at a 50-50 juncture and that's where we see it remaining for the next four to five years.

How does this model impact your sports rights acquisition strategy?
When we do business modelling for arriving at what the value of any set of rights is, our ability to charge a certain price and sell a certain volume of ad inventory on enables us to actually acquire those rights. So, when we typically estimate the value of rights we will keep in mind three broad streams of revenues.

Firstly, now that we are the leading player in the TV and digital side of things, all our decisions are firstly governed by our ambition to continue to dominate the media and the sports media ecosystem. So it's not a TV only or a digital only strategy. It's truly a TV plus digital strategy.

The way that we see it is our ambition or our goal or our vision is to solve the sports fan and make quality content available to the sports fan, irrespective of the screen that he or she may want to use to access the content. Thus, our fundamental principle of acquiring sports rights is to acquire it across screens because we believe we can deliver significantly more value if we have rights to both TV and digital - it allows us to also create more value for the consumer and the customer.

So it's come from being at one point, maybe five or six years back, that digital didn't play a significant role in our acquisition strategy. It now plays an equally important role in the decisions that we are taking to acquire certain properties versus the other and also the values that we're willing to pay.

Now we have streams of subscription and advertising revenues across TV and digital - and an estimation of both - our ability to also corner the market to bring in those revenues plays a huge role in at least signalling to us the rights that we should go after, as well as what is the appropriate value to pay for acquiring those rights.

Is it fair to say that India is a market where domestic properties are a priority, take soccer for example?
So, other than Fifa World Cup, which is obviously the global marquee property for football, it is domestic football that draws more significant consumption. In fact, the consumption of domestic football has grown significantly over the last six years since we launched the Indian Super League in 2014.

We've seen significant growth over the last six years in the consumption of football largely on the back of the growth of the ISL. So much so, that national football consumption now is several times the consumption of the total consumption of international football, both in terms of number of minutes watched, in terms of number of viewers who are tuning in to watch the property, and in terms of the revenues that are the commercial value of the property itself.

All three sports that India watches at scale are actually domestic in some sense. India watches India cricket, which includes the Indian Premier League, India watches the Indian Super League and Fifa World Cup - which is watched primarily because it is the iconic event in the world of football - and India watches kabaddi which is an Indian sport.

So, India is a domestic sports market. The total consumption of international sport in India in most years would not be more than a per cent or two per cent of the total consumption. When I say international sport, I'm basically counting all the sporting properties that are broadcast in India, which don't have any Indian representation.

What do overseas sports properties need to understand to be a success in India?
I think the important word here is ‘relevance’.

There is value in niches, but the value is not at the same scale as the value in domestic sports. The big driver of commercial value, and value in general in sport, is the ability of the sport to aggregate audiences at scale.

The qualitative aspects of consumption that are unique to sports - the passion with which viewers engage with the content, the sense of community, the sense of pride - some of those also play a part in driving the salience of messaging around that sporting property, which obviously creates more value for those other stakeholders associated with it.

What tends to happen with most international properties that are currently broadcast in India, with the exception perhaps of the Premier League, is that these properties are watched by a very small niche of audiences and tend to be seen as premium properties delivering a certain segment of the audience which may be of interest to certain advertisers. Largely, the other value that they offer advertisers is the associated value, so the association with a premium sports brand like the NBA is the belief it will rub off on brands that are associated closely with it.

The only property in India that has managed to scale both commercially and in terms of consumption has been the Premier League. That is largely on account of their continued focus on the Indian market in terms of building a strong connection with Indian viewers by way of marketing activities.

Activations by the major clubs are driving fan engagement in a focused manner, working closely with the broadcaster to continually look at ways of expanding the reach of their properties and figuring out how to widen the funnel of audiences.

I think that's something that any league trying to gain a foothold in India has to do at the end of the day. They have to be of relevance to Indian audiences, which ideally should come from representation. But even if representation isn't immediately on the cards, there has to be a focus on developing an audience or developing a market for the property instead of just airing it and believing that the property, due to its evolved nature globally, will automatically find fans in India - that will not happen. It has to be a push strategy instead of a pull strategy to begin with for any league trying to establish itself in India, irrespective of how iconic the league is in its own region, or how popular it is around the world.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:28 pm

The vultures are at the door

An opinion piece on sport becoming an investment asset class of it it's own from SportsBusiness.com

Nic Couchman | The evolution of sport as an investment asset class
Nic Couchman, partner at Charles, Russell Speechlys, examines the ways sports rights-holders have worked with private equity houses and considers the key features of successful investment partnerships

July 6, 2021

In an article published a year ago in SportBusiness, as the pandemic began to bite hard on the sports sector internationally, I wrote of the likely surge of interest from private investors in the sports sector. The sudden loss of revenues and uncertainty as to their return shook the commercial foundations of sport and accelerated a change of attitude amongst rights owners to the concept of partnerships with private equity (PE) investors.

Despite the savaging that sport has suffered in the last 15 months and some negative market data (such as the ongoing decline in traditional TV sports rights values), at least some PE players seem finally to have accepted that sport is an investable asset.

Investment deals in the last year in sports as diverse as football, rugby and volleyball have heralded a new era. A transforming and disrupted industry has increasingly opened its doors to PE investors, both to help mitigate the damage caused by Covid, and to assist in creating a more stable and commercially innovative platform for future growth.

Sport is not a standard business. It is more akin to a multifaceted organism with commercial value. As investors are finding out, a strategic and creative approach, combined with a long-term view – and an abundance of patience and persistence – is often essential for securing a successful partnership with sport.

Private investment in the industries that support sport has been well established for a long time. Media, sports industry suppliers, apparel brands, betting companies and sports equipment manufacturers have long been funded by PE and the capital markets. Ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWs) and latterly PE funds have bought into many of the top football clubs and US sports franchises, attracted by their committed fanbases, contracted commercial revenues and growing international brand value. In many cases, however, the concentration of risk on the continued success of a single asset is too great for institutional money from PE.

PE investment in sports and competitions
A more recent development, however, is the investment by PE players into sports and their competitions themselves. National federations (such as the New Zealand and South African rugby unions), leagues (such as, in football, the Italian Serie A and the German Bundesliga), have all been in negotiations with private equity players, in the wake of CVC Capital Partners’ investment into the Six Nations rugby tournament and Kosmos’ investment in the International Tennis Federation’s Davis Cup team competition.

Although sport can be a complex asset for financial investors to engage with, they are nonetheless attracted to the sustainable value inherent in consumer demand for sports content. By investing at a strategic and structurally ‘senior entry point’ in a sports vertical, such as a league or governing body, PE can spread their investment risk more widely, and actively participate in the development of the commercial platforms of sport and events. This is a step change in the evolution of sports investment, bringing not just capital but new thinking, professionalism and ways of doing business into the heart of the sports sector.

With the convergence of sports, fitness, data, health and social media also continuing at pace, the early-stage tech scene around the sports sector has never been more buoyant and diverse, with extraordinary technology developments and products, unthinkable just a few years ago, now becoming a reality.

And it is perhaps those sports which recognise the shift to a ‘direct-to-consumer’ model for sports themselves, who will reap the benefits in a rapidly changing market.

As the infographic [below, click to enlarge] shows, there is now an extraordinary breadth of subsectors and types of investment opportunities across sport and fitness, which has now truly become a distinct investment asset class in its own right.

Scaling up
Several established and new suppliers to the sports sector have taken advantage of the wall of money available from PE and IPOs to tech-centric businesses with large current or future portfolios of sports-related IP and data assets. The focus has especially been on companies with fan engagement solutions, betting rights, and/or content distribution. Some companies, such as Sportradar, have sought investment in order to scale up their businesses and build war chests for rights acquisitions.

Consolidation and M&A will undoubtedly follow, as the key players position for longer-term market share in a global market, whilst the ‘people businesses’, such as the traditional agencies, band together to provide multi-disciplinary support to a more sophisticated and demanding sports client base.

At the time of publication, in the UK, broadcaster BT Sport is for sale, with DAZN, Amazon and Disney all seen as potential strategic investors. And sports themselves are looking at mergers of their commercial interests, driven by PE strategy, such as the discussions in tennis between CVC Capital Partners, the ATP and the WTA.

Sports themselves have also become investors, leveraging the value they bring to their commercial partners to achieve capital upside, such as the NFL receiving equity in sports data specialist Genius Sports as part of its partnership deal. Athletes too are leveraging their brand profiles and credibility to secure equity stakes in growth tech businesses.

Managing the stakeholders
A key feature of successful partnerships will be the effective marrying of investor interests with those of the existing stakeholders of sport. This includes the fans – as the aborted launch of the European Super League recently showed, taking sport and its fans for granted in pursuing commercial aims is a big mistake.

Sport typically has a complex, stakeholder model, with multiple interest groups which need to be both understood and carefully managed. The recent dispute over the proposed investment by Silver Lake in the New Zealand RFU, led by the players association, illustrates that in sports transactions there is often more than one decision-maker in practice.

Patient capital
PE groups will find that access to capital alone is rarely sufficient – the decision to allow funding partners into a sport on a long-term basis is a big one, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime choice for those affected. Those investors that approach their targets well-prepared, with a long- term game plan and due sensitivity to the values and concerns of existing stakeholders, will have the best chance of a successful hearing.

The risks of ignoring PE
Sports organisations are at a crossroads. Many now need to decide whether or not they position themselves to receive third-party investment. Do they pass up an investment opportunity and so risk becoming less and less relevant as better-resourced competitors (both from sports and outside) capture the attention of fans and participants in a new sports economy increasingly moving towards a direct-to-consumer model? Or do they push forward with new investment partners hoping to reach their potential, but risk making ill-conceived, hasty decisions to join forces with investors motivated only by financial returns, with negative long-term consequences?

And a year from now?
Despite the pandemic, the ecosystem around sport remains vibrant and innovative. It is hoped the backing of private equity will help to drive and energise the industry, allowing sports to get back to business as usual, whilst also investing for the new sports economy around the corner.

The world of sport has retained its appeal in extremely challenging circumstances, but its ownership and funding model could look very different in a few years’ time.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jul 06, 2021 5:21 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:31 pm
Back to international broadcast rights - this tie La Liga who have just agreed a deal for the Indian sub-continent - the partner (previously facebbook) shows a continued intent to reach the young audience that the Super League 12 were so concerned about - MTV, yes the music channel. I keep saying that sport is converging with entertainment, note that Reliance Industries are a shareholder in MTV India - from SportsProMedia

MTV to broadcast La Liga across Indian sub-continent
Viacom18 makes first sports rights acquisition in region.

Posted: July 6 2021By: Tom King

- La Liga returns to linear broadcast in India after Facebook partnership ends
- Agreement covers India, and seven neighbouring countries

Viacom18, the joint venture between Reliance Industries-owned Network18 and US-based media giant ViacomCBS, has become the exclusive broadcast for Spanish soccer's top-flight La Liga in a three-year deal.

As part of the agreement, Viacom18’s flagship youth television brand MTV will exclusively broadcast La Liga matches across the Indian sub-continent, with the company's regional streaming platform Voot, and Jio platforms providing digital distribution.

The financial terms of the deal, which is Viacom18's first sports partnership in India, have not been disclosed.

For La Liga, the deal again sees the Spanish soccer league seek to reach young audiences in the region after recently seeing its Indian broadcast partnership with social media giant Facebook end.

Inside the La Liga Global Network
Oscar Mayo, La Lga executive director, said: "Having set one of the highest standards of football globally, and India gaining tremendous momentum, we are confident that we will reach and engage with the youthful audience that MTV as a destination appeals to."

Anshul Ailawadi, business head youth, music and English entertainment at Viacom18, addded: "We've been doing some soul-searching at MTV and are very clear about our need to go after youth passion points irrespective of how they've been defined in the 'legacy world'. Football is one of these passion points, like reality, music and so on. In this context, LaLiga was a perfect fit given the support it enjoys amongst young at heart Indians."

The 2021/22 La Liga season will commence on 13th August 2021, with commentary in Hindi and English being offered across Viacom18's distribution channels.
This is how MTV India celebrates that LaLiga deal on twitter - not sure how Javier Tebas will look on that

Petition to call the third wheel in every relationship Atlético Madrid.
#LaLigaOnMTV

https://twitter.com/MTVIndia/status/1412284848694206478

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:11 pm

Following that piece on sport as an investment class this makes for interesting reading

GOLDEN AGE OF SPORTS M&A TO TAKE PLACE OVER NEXT 24 MONTHS

https://www.sportico.com/business/finan ... 234633370/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jul 07, 2021 12:26 pm

Back in May the editors of London Clarets magazine "Something to write home about" asked me to write an article about the the recently published 2019/20 accounts. The brief was wholly encompassing not only covering the accounts but also trying to take in where I see the club standing pre and post takeover, how initiatives such as Project Big Picture and Super League may impact together with some wider issues that may have a direct impact on the clubs finances. I was asked to close it with an estimation of the revenue and equity value growth that would be needed to allow the club to remain "competitive" though none of us have a clue how that can be defined given our performances in the past 5 seasons.

The prime constraint was page space (though some would consider it a long and intense article) and it would have proved an impossible task without the help of Phil Whalley in his editorial role. The final piece was worth the effort though (even if if I couldn't squeeze in everything I wanted too) and London Clarets seem to agree as a month after the magazine's publication they have decided to publish the article for all to see on the internet.

it can take a little while to load https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LB1brx ... OYlm1/view

you can follow London clarets on twitter here https://twitter.com/LondonClarets

and learn more about them here https://www.londonclarets.org.uk/
Last edited by Chester Perry on Wed Jul 07, 2021 8:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:37 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Jun 23, 2021 5:12 pm
Here is another example of the benefits of right's owners working with media partners rather than looking for a "quick buck" - there is always a bigger picture

https://twitter.com/martingrantross/sta ... 3603507204

It is why the Premier League essentially partner with Sky/Comcast in every market in which they operate (Sky Germany won Premier League rights for the next cycle, it was announced last week) and I can see a similar relationship developing for them with NENT who have now spread out of the Nordics and into a number of European markets with an aggressive rights purchasing plan, which in Holland especially has turned the marketplace upside down this year.
So Nent pick up six year deals for multiple countries around Europe including Holland - from SportsBusiness.com

Nent lands Premier League in Netherlands, Poland and Baltics in six-season deals
Reginald Ajuonuma
July 7, 2021
(Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Media company Nordic Entertainment (Nent) Group has acquired exclusive rights to the English Premier League across the Netherlands, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for the six seasons from 2022-23 to 2027-28.

The inventory comprises live rights to all 380 matches each season in all five countries.

Nent will exploit the rights on its Viaplay subscription streaming service, which launched in the Baltics in March and will be rolled out to Poland and the Netherlands in August this year and the first quarter of next year, respectively.

The broadcaster’s coverage will include local commentators, experts and studio programming.

It acquired the rights after an invitation to tender launched by the Premier League in late May, covering over 40 European and Central Asian countries.

Participating broadcasters were asked to lodge bids for both the three-season (2022-23 to 2024-25) and six-season (2022-23 to 2027-28) contract periods.

Four different live rights packages were on offer in the Netherlands and Poland, including a package containing all 380 matches. In the Baltic countries, which were treated as a single territory, only one live package of all matches was available.

Nent’s rights across the Netherlands, Poland and the Baltics were agreed in two separate deals. It will replace incumbents telco Ziggo in the Netherlands and Canal Plus in Poland.

The IMG agency holds the rights in the Baltics until the end of 2021-22, which it sublicensed to the Saran agency, which sublicensed them on to pay-television broadcaster All Media Baltics.

Peter Nørrelund, Nent’s group chief sports officer, told SportBusiness that the broadcaster did not have plans to sublicence any of the rights in the Netherlands, Poland and the Baltics.

He added: “If you want to run a subscription business in sports, you first of all have to be strong in football. When you have a strong base in football, then you can start acquiring subscribers and also look at all the rights that are more specific for the territory in question.”

Earlier this week, Nent unveiled its pricing for the Polish service, which launches on August 3. The service will cost PLN34 (€7.53/$8.90) per month.

Nent has already acquired Bundesliga rights for its Viaplay service in the Netherlands, Poland and the Baltics in two-cycle deals running for a total of eight seasons from 2021-22 onwards.

The broadcaster’s latest long-term deals follow the six-season deal it announced last year for the Premier League in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden from 2022-23 to 2027-28.

Nørrelund told SportBusiness: “We like long contracts; we like to build relationships with IP owners. I’m very happy the Premier League has started to licence six-season agreements.”

The Premier League has already struck a number of large deals for the new rights cycle. It agreed a three-season deal in sub-Saharan Africa with pay-television broadcaster SuperSport. A renewal was also agreed in the Middle East and North Africa with pay-television broadcaster beIN Media Group in a deal that includes live rights to all 380 matches each season.

Domestically, the Premier League has ensured the same level of revenue from its existing broadcast agreements. The league voted to roll over its existing deals with Sky, telco BT, online retail giant Amazon and public-service broadcaster the BBC for the 2022-25 cycle.

The league currently earns a total of £1.53bn (€1.8bn/$2.1bn) per season for its domestic media rights, out of total media-rights income of about £2.82bn per season.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jul 07, 2021 7:42 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:45 pm
more financial worries from Swindon. the club have not paid their rent on the ground to the local council since April 2020,is this just a chancer taking advantage of temporary regulations over rent evictions

https://twitter.com/BBCWiltsSport/statu ... 3223768069
there have been more events in the last week in regards to Swindon Town so much so the EFL have issued a statement as a growing number of people see parallels with Bury - I do not think at this stage it will come to that - not least as there is a buyer in waiting who has been talking and relatively open with fan groups

https://www.efl.com/news/2021/july/efl- ... ndon-town/

EFL Statement: Swindon Town
7 Hours ago

The EFL continues to monitor the ongoing concerning developments at Swindon Town alongside proceedings in the High Court in respect of ownership issues at the Club.

As part of the ongoing court case, it has been determined that through Axis Football Investments Ltd, Mr Clem Morfuni has the option to acquire the shareholding off current owner Lee Power and as a consequence, control of the Club. Mr Morfuni has now made an application to the EFL for prior approval in accordance with the EFL’s Regulations before determining whether to take up that option.

The League continues to work with Mr Morfuni, considering his application, such that if Mr Morfuni does acquire ownership, he is in a position to meet his obligations required under current rules.

The EFL does, however, reserve its position in respect of any matters arising out of the ongoing situation at the Club and will take the most appropriate action available to it under its Regulations.

As it stands, the EFL powers are limited to those as set out in its rulebook and it does not have any right to step in or take control of Club operations in situations such as this with Clubs having rejected the opportunity to explore this further as part of the Owners’ Conduct review in 2017/18.

As part of that review the EFL Board did implement a policy of taking action against individuals and as matters develop and subsequently conclude elsewhere it will determine what, if any, action against individuals is appropriate in the circumstances.

The EFL will continue to work with the Club and relevant stakeholders as they seek to ensure a successful and viable long-term future for the Club and all those associated with it, particularly its players, staff and supporters.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Wed Jul 07, 2021 9:33 pm


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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jul 07, 2021 9:35 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Wed Jul 07, 2021 9:33 pm
https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 31842?s=19

Interesting from the EFL
Good, if FIFA and UEFA can do it, it shouldn't be beyond the capacities of our leagues to be transparent with the charges they are raising agains their members

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Jul 07, 2021 11:40 pm

And speaking how to run proper controls, this article in the Athletic about Barcelona's current difficulties gives lots of detail on the finanical controls La Liga impose on it's members

https://theathletic.com/2689613/2021/07 ... nel-messi/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:24 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:06 pm
So have Blackburn Rovers had a very bad year financially or are Venky's going all out for a promotion push - they have put another £29.5m into the club it seems

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 1799447560
today's Price of Football Podcast suggests that another Championship club has sold it's ground to itself before the rule change last week that stopped it from be used for FFP purposes

who do you think are likely candidates?

Stoke City, Blackburn Rovers are at the top of my list of likely candidates

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:34 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:24 pm
today's Price of Football Podcast suggests that another Championship club has sold it's ground to itself before the rule change last week that stopped it from be used for FFP purposes

who do you think are likely candidates?

Stoke City, Blackburn Rovers are at the top of my list of likely candidates
Back up a little bit, I've missed that then.
What's made the rule change happen on ground selling?
Apart from it being obviously a **** take that is...

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:44 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:34 pm
Back up a little bit, I've missed that then.
What's made the rule change happen on ground selling?
Apart from it being obviously a **** take that is...
Not formally announced and the rules for next season have yet to be published but Maguire has mentioned it quite a few times now and I believe I have posted about it somewhere, just not on this thread

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:46 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Jul 07, 2021 12:26 pm
Back in May the editors of London Clarets magazine "Something to write home about" asked me to write an article about the the recently published 2019/20 accounts. The brief was wholly encompassing not only covering the accounts but also trying to take in where I see the club standing pre and post takeover, how initiatives such as Project Big Picture and Super League may impact together with some wider issues that may have a direct impact on the clubs finances. I was asked to close it with an estimation of the revenue and equity value growth that would be needed to allow the club to remain "competitive" though none of us have a clue how that can be defined given our performances in the past 5 seasons.

The prime constraint was page space (though some would consider it a long and intense article) and it would have proved an impossible task without the help of Phil Whalley in his editorial role. The final piece was worth the effort though (even if if I couldn't squeeze in everything I wanted too) and London Clarets seem to agree as a month after the magazine's publication they have decided to publish the article for all to see on the internet.

it can take a little while to load https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LB1brx ... OYlm1/view

you can follow London clarets on twitter here https://twitter.com/LondonClarets

and learn more about them here https://www.londonclarets.org.uk/
I would be interested to hear what people think about this?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Sat Jul 10, 2021 8:49 am

Good article that Chester.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:25 pm

Screenshot_20210710-142339.png
Screenshot_20210710-142339.png (389.96 KiB) Viewed 2535 times
This has made me chuckle today

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:28 pm

I am not overly surprised by that GIADJ, though I cannot see how it would work there are new stars coming in Spain (Pedri looks amazing) but for the broadcasters around the rest of the world having Messi is imperative

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:36 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Jun 02, 2021 12:07 pm
Things have not been going well behind the scenes at Rochdale for some time now - last night however has appeared to have drawn a few things to a head - from RochadelAFCnews.com

https://rochdaleafcnews.com/2021/06/02/ ... lder-meet/

Major decisions made at Rochdale AFC shareholder meet
Jun 02 2021

The Rochdale AFC board of directors has withdrawn the four resolutions proposed for releasing new shares in the club and has agreed to instead explore alternative ways of generating new investment.

The decision was made at tonight’s host of Annual and Extraordinary General Meetings.

Rochdale AFC shareholders also voted to remove club chief executive David Bottomley and Graham Rawlinson from the board of directors during the five-hour marathon event.

The collective shareholders expressed concern at a proposed resolution that would have seen them waive their rights to purchase new shares for the next five years, as well as those to issue unlimited, 697,042 and 397,042 shares respectively.

Should the resolutions have been passed, it was revealed that the board had already identified preferred investors for the club, who intended to acquire a 51% stake. The identities of these investors were not revealed due them having signed Non-Disclosure Agreements.

However, after several compelling presentations from shareholders, the board agreed to withdraw the resolutions and explore alternative ways of raising funds and attracting investors.

It was then down to the other business of the evening.

Part of the Supporters’ Trust’s call for an EGM concerned the reversal of shareholders Dan Altman and Emre Marcelli’s decision to join the board of directors, claiming this was based upon “serious internal issues” at the club and their dissatisfaction at the club’s handling of those concerns. The attending board members were grilled by attending shareholders on key issues such as the extending of first-team manager Brian Barry-Murphy’s contract by a further year, and not informing the supporters, as well as questions around pay rises awarded to unnamed executives.

As a result, the two members put forward prior to the meetings, David Bottomley and Graham Rawlinson, were voted off the board of directors. This leaves only interim chairman Andrew Kelly, Tony Pockney and the newly elevated Nick Grindrod as full board members. Bottomley does, of course, retain his employed position as chief executive.

What remains now is for the shareholders and remaining board members to collectively decide on the future of the football club. Investment is desperately needed and that is not up for debate, but not at the risk of the club’s long-term future. Fresh leadership is needed too, with Kelly stepping down in the coming months.

Chairman of the Supporters’ Trust, Colin Cavanah, said: “I am personally delighted that the club’s share proposals have been withdrawn this evening. Had they been approved, we’d have been giving authorisation to sell the club to a board consisting of three people with a combined shareholding of less than 15% of the club. We are not averse to the club asking shareholders to approve the sale to a named individual or group, but it cannot be acceptable for shareholders being asked to approve a ‘blind’ sale.

“Under no circumstances should any of the outcomes from tonight’s meeting be considered personal or a vendetta, and it is both hurtful and offensive to the Dale shareholders to even suggest that. You only have to look at the number of people who have voted the same way as the Trust tonight.

“Dale fans share a common concern about the governance of any football club, and it is without doubt that there is a genuine pride among the fanbase that we remain the one EFL side in the Greater Manchester area to have never been in administration. Tonight’s outcomes indicate a real need for the club to engage with the fanbase and ask what supporters want from their football club.

“We will provide a full update to our members and fellow supporters via our website on Wednesday.”

The club has also been approached for comment.
More strange goings on at Rochdale, where fans thought new investors were in place - on Tuesday the Supportes Trust met with who they believed was a major new investor and they released this on Wednesday

https://www.daletrust.co.uk/2021/07/tru ... -investor/

since then the EFL have been in touch with them and effectively rubbished much of what they were told by the "investor" which has led to this statement

Trust update re: investors
July 9, 2021 Dale Trust Statements: Trust update re: investors

We were contacted by the EFL yesterday morning with regards to the statement that we put out on Wednesday morning regarding the potential investors and our meeting with them on Tuesday afternoon.

The EFL had a problem with these two lines:

He has acquired over 40% of the shareholding in the Football Club
He has provided proof of funding to the EFL
The first bullet point had been confirmed to us at the meeting on Tuesday. We now believe that the shares are not “acquired” until the share transfers have been signed by the Club. As such, we immediately amended the article changing the first point to “agreeing to purchase” rather than having “acquired”.

The information in the second bullet point was given to us via an email from the investor on Monday evening that stated “I’ve also provided proof of my funds to the EFL evidencing I have the money to support the Club for the next few years.”

We deleted the bullet point and subsequently contacted the EFL with regards to seeking further clarity on whether proof of funding had been provided to the EFL. The EFL Head of Governance Ryan Hyde wrote to us on Friday afternoon and confirmed that they “cannot find any evidence of the source and sufficiency of funding on behalf of the potential purchaser having been provided to us.”

Having previously informed our members that proof of funding had been provided, it is important that we provide our members and fellow supporters of Rochdale AFC with what the EFL has confirmed to us. We have informed the Investor on Friday evening with the information provided to us by the EFL.

Should proof of funding be provided to the EFL, we will update our members at the earliest opportunity but only when we have received full confirmation from the EFL.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:57 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:28 pm
I am not overly surprised by that GIADJ, though I cannot see how it would work there are new stars coming in Spain (Pedri looks amazing) but for the broadcasters around the rest of the world having Messi is imperative
Sets a very dangerous precedent doesn't it though?
He's probably not far off retiring and what they gonna do then?

Barca, or Real, could make similar demands in the future if they've got the next Messi/Ronaldo

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jul 10, 2021 3:24 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:57 pm
Sets a very dangerous precedent doesn't it though?
He's probably not far off retiring and what they gonna do then?

Barca, or Real, could make similar demands in the future if they've got the next Messi/Ronaldo
In essence it shows the weakness of the league and the problems with the modern focus/commercial reliance on individuals rather than clubs, that the Galatico approach brings. You have to being through a new stars - hence the desperation around acquiring of Mbappe and Haaland (and the numerous overpaid failures - Coutinho, Dembele, James Rodriguez etc). The financial stupidity and failures in that approach from Spain's big two over much of the last decade had finally caught up with them at a time when they are at their most fragile and their usual resorts of aid (local and central government and the Spanish banks) are not able to come to the rescue due to their own challenges and European Legislation. Long term you would hope it could be more healthy for the league though the sheer size of the big two and their now well established relationships (Barcelona with Qatar and Real with Saudi Arabia) means there are other fall back opportunities for them, add in their sheer commercial size and the lack of real competition is likely to prevail.
This user liked this post: GodIsADeeJay81

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jul 10, 2021 3:34 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Jun 29, 2021 10:17 pm
The vultures are at the door - Private Equity seeks to reshape the Brazilian league model - this is a hugely detailed piece

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... irao.ghtml
Tariq Panja in the New York Times with more detail on that suggested break-away league in Brazil

Brazil’s Top Clubs Are Planning a Breakaway League
JULY 08, 2021

Whenever Rodolfo Landin has turned on his television over the past few weeks to watch matches from this summer’s Copa América, he has done so with mixed emotions.

As the president of Brazil’s most-popular club team, Flamengo, Landin has felt pride in seeing five members of his roster line up for their national teams in the tournament. But he also has watched with increasing frustration because Flamengo has had to make do for a month without those same five key players in the Brazilian championship.

That is because, much to the annoyance of Landin and the leaders of the rest of Brazil’s leading clubs, the country’s national federation, known as the C.B.F., has insisted that league play continue even on dates when South America’s national teams are playing, including competitions like the Copa América, which is being held in Brazil this summer, and next month’s Tokyo Olympics, when Flamengo will be without the services of two other young talents for several weeks.

The brewing resentment over those decisions — not just that teams have lost key players for important league games, but the general sense that club soccer is an afterthought for Brazil’s soccer leaders — has led to a revolt.

After an all-day meeting on June 15 with the heads of 19 of the 20 teams in Brazil’s national league — the president of Sport, a club based in Recife, was resigning that day and did not take part — Landin marched to the C.B.F. headquarters in one of Rio de Janeiro’s upscale beachside suburbs and presented the federation’s leadership a letter. In it, the clubs demanded control of the league, and the right to decide when games would be played and under what conditions.

Essentially, the clubs said, they were prepared to break away from the structures that have underpinned Brazilian soccer for as long as anyone can remember, structures they now say no longer work for them, and form their own competition.

While Brazil’s top clubs have been in discussions about breaking away for some time, Landin and other club executives said, a crisis that has created a leadership vacuum at the federation this year has accelerated the process. Brazil’s soccer federation is currently being run by an interim president, Antonio Nunes, during an internal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and bullying against the elected president, Rogerio Caboclo. Secret audio recordings recently made public also revealed that Marco Polo del Nero, a former C.B.F. president banned for life by FIFA and indicted on corruption charges by the United States, has been steering key decisions.

“I think the idea was maturing over the years with the club presidents,” Landin said in a telephone interview. But the recent cascade of scandals, he added, may have “helped the clubs to decide that enough is enough and we have to organize ourselves.”

The confrontation at federation headquarters last month did little to dissuade them. No sooner had Landin and the others explained why they wanted to speak to the C.B.F.’s leadership, than Nunes said he felt unwell and left the meeting. The clubs’ letter was instead handed to Fernando Sarney, the federation’s most senior vice president.

The clubs’ plan, initially at least, is to form the league with the federation’s blessing, said Julio Casares, the president of another top club, São Paulo F.C. Casares and several other team presidents interviewed by The New York Times contend the federation is so preoccupied with the national team, a symbol of Brazil around the world as much as a sporting institution, that it has allowed club soccer in the country to languish. “But these players are not born in the national team, they are born in the clubs,” Casares said.

“We don’t want a rupture with the federation,” he said. “We want to work with them.”

The clubs’ argument is that they can take better care of their needs by professionalizing the league’s management — Brazil’s league system is currently run by the federation — and by bringing in executives whose sole mission would be its success. They would not, for example, allow the league’s main broadcaster, Globo, to insist midweek games begin well after 9 p.m. so that they do not clash with the network’s popular soap operas.

While no official breakaway has been announced, the level of consensus is different from previous efforts by the teams to set up their own league. After the top division clubs agreed to the principle of setting up their own competition, a second meeting was held in São Paulo on June 28 that included 20 teams from the second division. Those clubs, too, pronounced themselves eager to be involved in what would be a new two-division setup.

The teams’ intent to proceed is clear in their timeline: They say they want to get arrangements formalized within 120 days, and to take the first steps toward the new league structure as early as next year. Some existing television contracts mean it might take until 2024, at the earliest, before they can fully commercialize what they believe will be a championship that can rival European competitions like Ligue 1, France’s top division, as well as scores of other secondary championships around the world that have lured Brazilian talents with salaries far higher than they can make at home.

Earlier this month, the clubs listened to pitches from groups, domestic and international, eager to play a part in the new championship, which they believe could be worth multiples of its current value. Over a Zoom call, one group that included Charlie Stillitano, the U.S.-based sports entrepreneur connected to the billionaire Stephen Ross’s Relevent Sports, and Ricardo Fort, Coca-Cola’s former head of sports marketing, pitched a plan including the sale of 20 percent of the league to private equity interests in return for as much as $1 billion.

The money would be used to clear huge debts incurred by some of the teams thanks to years of chronic mismanagement. The group, which was assembled by the Brazilian sports lawyer Flavio Zveiter and also includes former senior executives from FIFA and ESPN, discussed how Brazilian teams should follow the example of the Premier League. That league, a breakaway created by leading English teams in 1992, is now the most popular domestic championship in the world.

“We looked and thought, This is a moonshot,” Stillitano said. “The more I looked at it, ‘I said if you do this right, pull this off you are talking about an incredible opportunity.” The group even called on Rick Parry, the Premier League’s first chief executive, to explain what needed to be done.

Not all of the ills of Brazilian soccer can be laid at the door of Brazil’s federation, of course. The clubs, mostly member organizations who elect their own presidents, are often poorly run, with mounting debts linked to unpaid taxes, salaries or transfer fees. Any cash injection, any reformulation, therefore, must have regulation at its center, said Romildo Bolzan Júnior, the president of Grêmio, one of the nation’s biggest teams.

“Money on its own does mean greater organization,” he said. “All of this must be accompanied by a cultural change, better management within clubs and stronger rules on governance.”

Bolzan said he felt the breakaway process was “still fragile,” and recalled moments at the start of the century when similar ideas collapsed amid what he described as “difficult politics.” “Everyone will want to maintain privileges,” he said, “but if we do that the league will not be successful.”

If they get it right, though, Brazilian soccer could find itself on an upward trajectory it has not enjoyed for decades. Fans have become used to seeing their teams, and their league, used as a talent factory for teams elsewhere.

On Monday night, for example, Landin watched with bittersweet feelings as Brazil overcame a stubborn Peru side to reach Saturday’s Copa América final in Rio. (Brazil will face its archrival, Argentina, for the title.) The winning goal was scored by Lucas Paqueta, a former Flamengo player.

Paqueta had played only two seasons at Flamengo before he was sold to A.C. Milan at age 21. His teammate Vinícius Júnior had agreed to join Real Madrid before he had played his first game for Flamengo. Reinier, another prodigiously talented teenager, made the same journey a year later. Most of those exports will only return when their best days are behind them.

That type of player movement, Landin said, is what a stronger, more stable Brazilian championship might be able to correct.

“What happens is, the best soccer players play here until they are 18 or 19 and then after they are 32 when they are getting close to retirement,” he said. “This is really bad, and that’s what really makes me think we need to do something better.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jul 10, 2021 3:43 pm

We have read often about the profitability and value creation in owning American Sports franchises, and how they are wanting to bring the same to European Football - this article shows a different angle on how these (often) Billionaire franchise owners profit from their sports holdings

https://www.propublica.org/article/the- ... s-in-taxes

embedded in the article is this video about the article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YZOJJ2U8SM

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by ecc » Sat Jul 10, 2021 5:29 pm

Hi Chester,

Re. your post concerning Bordeaux and Angers.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


"Angers & Bordeaux relegated to Ligue 2 preliminarily by the DNCG

French football’s prodigious financial watchdog, the DNCG, on Friday took steps to provisionally relegate two Ligue 1 clubs to the French second division: Angers and Bordeaux.

The decision for Le SCO occurred owing to financial irregularities, but club owner Saïd Chabane has told L’Équipe that he is not worried as he believes the decision came down to a missing document. Angers have appealed and will sit in front of the DNCG again on 12th July.

Chabane said: “This is a normal procedure and there are no worries that should be had.”

As for Bordeaux, the DNCG has decided to preliminarily relegate Les Girondins because of the decision made by current owners King Street to step back and place the club under the protection of a commercial court. Luxembourg businessman Gérard Lopez, who is attempting to finalise the acquisition of the club, has got the club to appeal the decision, and is confident that they will overturn."


_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The French FA was - I believe - the first to set up a form of FFP way back in the late 80s. The DNCG is much-feared by clubs and whilst its existence is crucial IMHO it sometimes goes to far.

I like to see Angers do well. They're a small club that has established itself in Ligue 1 by prudent financial management, investing moderate sums in lower division players and then selling them on for a handsome profit. Same Chairman and, until very recently, manager for ten years or so.

But their income was 90% based on TV rights and the farce that was Mediapro did for them like the vast majority of French clubs.

Their appeal is on Monday and it looks like they will stay in L1 as Wolves have decided, as was expected, to take up the option to buy following the loan of full-back Rayan Aït Nouri.

In England, Angers would be a shining example of how to run a football club but the system in France is draconian and the antithesis of the EFL's FFP.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Jul 10, 2021 6:01 pm

ecc wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 5:29 pm
Hi Chester,

Re. your post concerning Bordeaux and Angers.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


"Angers & Bordeaux relegated to Ligue 2 preliminarily by the DNCG

French football’s prodigious financial watchdog, the DNCG, on Friday took steps to provisionally relegate two Ligue 1 clubs to the French second division: Angers and Bordeaux.

The decision for Le SCO occurred owing to financial irregularities, but club owner Saïd Chabane has told L’Équipe that he is not worried as he believes the decision came down to a missing document. Angers have appealed and will sit in front of the DNCG again on 12th July.

Chabane said: “This is a normal procedure and there are no worries that should be had.”

As for Bordeaux, the DNCG has decided to preliminarily relegate Les Girondins because of the decision made by current owners King Street to step back and place the club under the protection of a commercial court. Luxembourg businessman Gérard Lopez, who is attempting to finalise the acquisition of the club, has got the club to appeal the decision, and is confident that they will overturn."

As for Angers their pre-season looks more like a throwback to Dave Basset

https://twitter.com/GFFN/status/1413800311966380032

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The French FA was - I believe - the first to set up a form of FFP way back in the late 80s. The DNCG is much-feared by clubs and whilst its existence is crucial IMHO it sometimes goes to far.

I like to see Angers do well. They're a small club that has established itself in Ligue 1 by prudent financial management, investing moderate sums in lower division players and then selling them on for a handsome profit. Same Chairman and, until very recently, manager for ten years or so.

But their income was 90% based on TV rights and the farce that was Mediapro did for them like the vast majority of French clubs.

Their appeal is on Monday and it looks like they will stay in L1 as Wolves have decided, as was expected, to take up the option to buy following the loan of full-back Rayan Aït Nouri.

In England, Angers would be a shining example of how to run a football club but the system in France is draconian and the antithesis of the EFL's FFP.
Glad to here positive news about Angers though I believe St Etienne are in danger of receiving the same treatment

https://theathletic.com/2695742/2021/07 ... =twitteruk

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:52 pm

I have posted previously about the recent decisions to de-nationalise Saudi football and open up Saudi sport in general to foreign investment, here offthepitch.com looks at the situation and adds a clear warning to those thinking of investing

Has football’s last hermit nation opened up to the world?
8 July 2021 5:19 PM
  • Privatisation of Saudi football clubs and investment platform opens up the Kingdom to foreign investors.
  • Saudi Arabia is the Middle East’s most successful football nation and an Asian football powerhouse but questions remain about its human rights record and respect for rule of law.
  • Changes part of a wider strategy that may culminate in a World Cup bid or the creation of an international sports broadcast network.
  • “Saudi Arabia is a young, very young population, an economic driver in the region. On the face of it, investing in Saudi sport would be a no brainer,” one expert says.
  • But despite all the massive opportunities there is also another side of the coin.
JAMES CORBETT corbett@offthepitch.com

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Sport has launched a deregulation programme designed to open up the country’s football clubs and other sporting institutions to foreign investment. The programme is part of a wider strategy which may see the launch of a Saudi-backed TV sports network or open the country up to a World Cup bid.

Historically, all competing clubs across Saudi Arabia’s sports federations are government owned and funded, but just a few weeks ago the Ministry launched Nafes, an online platform aimed to increase the participation of the private sector in the growth of the Saudi sport industry.

The platform is primarily focussed on club licensing, but in parallel the privatisation of the Kingdom’s sporting clubs is taking place.

In a statement, Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal, the Minister of Sports, said: “We are inviting the world to partner with us on our journey of sporting transformation. Our country’s incredible passion for sport is well known and, as more get active and take up sport, the economic opportunity is exciting.

“Sport is an integral component of our kingdom’s transformative Vision 2030, and we would not have achieved these massive strides if it were not for the unconditional support by our kingdom’s leadership.

“Nafes is our invitation to overseas partners to drive our sporting investment to the next level and to collaborate across our sports clubs, academies and centres. It is a turning point for the kingdom’s sports sector. Our message to investors and the private sector both in Saudi Arabia and across the globe is direct and clear: establish your clubs, compete and draw the future path of Saudi sports investment.”

Great enigma

Chief among these assets are Saudi’s football clubs. The Saudi Pro League (SPL) is the most popular league in the Middle East and arguably one of the biggest on the continent. There are currently 170 registered football clubs across the Saudi Football Federation’s divisions.

Saudi football is historically the most successful at club and international level in the Gulf Middle East region. The Saudi Pro League has average attendances of around 8,500, with giants like Al Hilal and Al Ittihad drawing in 10,000 more than that on average. In a region where football is culturally more widely watched at home, these are big numbers.

“Saudi football is this great enigma,” says James Montague, the award-winning author of When Friday Comes: Football, War and Revolution in the Middle East.

“When you look at the Middle East, there is no doubt that Saudi Arabia is absolutely one of the biggest and most fiercely supported leagues in the region. It's incredible when you go there and you see a game there and you see the Hilal-Ittihad derby, the Jeddah Derby, the Riyadh derby - these are some of the biggest derbies in the region. They can get 40, 50, 60000 people at them, passionately supported.

“Saudi Arabia is a young, very young population, an economic driver in the region. On the face of it, investing in Saudi sport would be a no brainer.”

Vision 2030

The launch of Nafes and deregulation comes under Saudi Arabia’s ‘Quality of Life’ sports programme, which is part of the kingdom’s Vison 2030 project to diversify the Middle East nation’s economy.

The Ministry of Sport aims to position Saudi Arabia as a hub for global sports and welcoming private sector investors to the industry. It claims that Saudi has become one of the fastest growing sports markets in the world, with sports participation up from 13 per cent to 23 per cent in four years, with an aim of hitting 40 per cent by 2030.

Sports’ contribution to the national GDP increased from SAR2.4 billion (€540 million) in 2016 to SAR6.5 billion (€1.45 billion) in 2018, say the Ministry.

Research by Grant Liberty, a London-based rights group, estimates that Saudi Arabia has spent $1.5 billion hosting recent international sporting events, including the F1 Grand Priz, Spanish and Italian Super Cup Finals and high profile boxing matches.

FIFA relations

These ambitions reportedly extend further. Earlier this month the New York Times reported that the Saudis had engaged Boston Consulting Group to develop a strategy for how the Kingdom could win a bid to host the 2030 World Cup finals, just eight years after its neighbour and regional rival, Qatar.

The Saudi bid is considered a long shot and would likely need require alterations to the football calendar, but would be boosted by its close ties with the FIFA President, Gianni Infantino.

These ties to Zurich saw the Saudis offer to financially underwrite a plan to significantly expand the Club World Cup. These plans are on ice for now, but emblematic of the country’s ambitions. In the near term, the Kingdom is understood to be working on the creation of an international sports broadcast network to rival Qatar’s Bein Sports.

This would at a swoop internationalise the Kingdom’s influence, bringing it close contact with international federations and other rightsholders. Such influence was at the heart of Qatar’s exponential growth in world sport.

Although the Saudis were influential in FIFA in the 1980s and 1990s, more recently it has been considered an antagonistic or malign influence. In particular, the Kingdom’s backing of a pirate TV network, BeOutQ, to undermine Qatar during a regional blockade of its tiny neighbour, brought it into conflict with many rightsholders and may have seen attempts by its sovereign wealth fund to buy Newcastle United blocked.

Wild East

The academic and author, James M. Dorsey, wrote in a recent post on his blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, that Saudi Arabia’s increased focus on football served a number of purposes.

“It offers Saudi youth who account for more than half of the kingdom’s population a leisure and entertainment opportunity, it boosts Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman’s burgeoning development of a leisure and entertainment industry, potentially allows Saudi Arabia to polish its image tarnished by human rights abuse, including the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and challenges Qatar’s position as the face of Middle Eastern sports.”

Indeed problems undoubtedly remain. The Khashoggi murder brought into global focus Saudi Arabia’s shocking human rights record and Amnesty International and other rights organisations regularly lambast the kingdom for “repression”, “arbitrary detention”, “harassment”, attacks on “government critics, women’s rights activists, human rights defenders, relatives of activists, journalists, members of the Shi’a minority”, use of the death penalty, and “abuse and exploitation” of migrant workers.

The incarceration – with allegations of torture – of leading members of the Saudi royal family and business community in the Riyadh Ritz Carlton in 2017 and 2018, was portrayed locally as an “anti corruption drive” but seen internationally as a power grab and shake down of the country’s elites, including some foreign citizens.

Human Rights Watch accused the Saudis of “extorting financial assets of detainees in exchange for their release outside of any legal process and seeking the death penalty against detainees for acts that do not resemble recognizable crimes.”

Rule of Law

Montague says that the privatisation of football clubs is a necessary response to a situation prevalent in all Gulf countries where “a lot of the clubs are essentially playthings for members of various different branches of the royal family” but says that the lack of respect for rule of law is deeply troubling.

“The problem you've got in investing – and this is not just in football, but in Saudi Arabia in general and in a lot of the Gulf countries – is the rule of law. Because if you invest in business or invest in a football club and you fall out with a member of the royal family who is the patron of the club or essentially behind the scenes running it you have no recourse.

“This is something that on a on a wider scale has happened under Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince. Look at what happened in the Riyadh Ritz Carlton where several business rivals - political rivals essentially - were held there and had their fortunes taken from them all under the cover of an anti-corruption drive. But essentially it was a way of securing business and power for the new crown prince.

“When you have a system like that, it doesn't engender confidence. And you can see that with all these rounds of investment talks they've had about this this new city [Neom] they're building on the Red Sea coastline. People aren't rushing to invest because ultimately it's not like you're investing in English football or French football. You fall out with the wrong people, you're going to lose your shirt.

“The privatisation is a good first move because the power has to be taken away from people who think it's their right and their plaything. But ultimately has the power really been taken away from them? Saudi society hasn't democratised. It hasn't shown yet that it is a place where you can kind of do business fairly.”

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Jul 11, 2021 4:11 pm

I have posted about this before but this article gives a deeper insight into the the geo-politics witnessed in the sponsorship of the Euros this summer, even when translated from the original Norwegian - The fact that it is from a Norwegian publication is itself significant given that the debate over whether to boycott the 2022 World Cup has been most publicly discussed in that country

https://www.vg.no/sport/fotball/i/w88Ge ... -bekymring

PROFESSOR SETS SPONSOR ALARM AT EM: − GREAT CONCERN
LONDON (VG) Chinese, Russian and Qatari sponsors will have a big place at the European Championships. According to professor, they have completely different intentions than the Western actors.

ARILAS BERG OULD-SAADA

published: Yesterday 08:53

The championship has 12 official "partners," UEFA's website states.

Four of them have all-European origins: the beer brand Heineken (Netherlands), the travel agency Booking.com (Netherlands), the car brand Volkswagen (Germany) and the food delivery service Just Eat (UK).

Two are from the United States: soft drinks giant Coca-Cola and shipping company FedEx.

"For these companies, the goal is profit. They are looking to sell products and services. For the other sponsors, it's different," Simon Chadwick told VG.

He is a global professor of Euro-Asian sports and has sponsorships in sports as one of his disciplines.

With "the other sponsors", he refers to the players who make up the other half of the championship's partners:

Gazprom is a Russian energy company and Russia's largest group.

They are behind plans for the North Stream 2 European gas pipeline, which has been met with sanctions from the US. The US government believes the project will divide Europe and weaken European energy security.

"They use the EM sponsorship as a diplomatic tool to build a better relationship with Europe. They exert soft power in an attempt to dispel the perception that Gazprom has bad intentions, Chadwick said.

Qatar Airways is the state airline of Qatar.

Soft power
The country is organising the 2022 World Cup and has come under the spotlight for what Amnesty describes as "gross human rights violations," including in connection with the conditions of foreign workers at the construction sites.

"For them, of course, it's also about selling airline seats and outperforming Dubai as the preferred link for travelling further out into the world. But it's also a tool of soft power," chadwick says, explaining:

"Everyone who has flown with Qatar Airways knows that they have a standard of service that is much higher than that of other airlines. This is to send a signal that Qatar has high standards, high expectations and believes in high quality.

"This is related to what they want to achieve as an EM sponsor. They build their image as a country by marketing themselves during this hugely popular championship," says the professor.

China is represented by as many as four sponsors: the social network TikTok,the payment service Alipay,the electronics company Hisense and the technology company Vivo.

"The Chinese also have a consumer-oriented approach to marketing. But this is also about several things, Chadwick points out:

"This is an indication of the growing economic strength of China. They have enough money to outperform their European and North American rivals.

He believes this reflects how much stronger Chinese industry has been compared to European over the past 10-20 years:

"What is happening is that China is trying to make Europe dependent on Chinese money. UEFA and others will be relying on Chinese companies to improve the finances of the tournaments they host. With addiction comes power, and with power comes the ability to influence what others do.

It's not just during the European Championships that China puts all the cloths on the sponsorship side. Copa América, which is also currently starring Lionel Messi and Neymar, has both Chinese social network Kwai and Chinese electronics company TCL among a small selection of main sponsors.

Candidacy of the dictatorship
According to Chadwick, all this is also part of China's candidacy as a World Cup organizer in 2030. The election will be held in 2024.

"They will need votes from Europe, South America and Africa, and are therefore active on the sponsorship side on all these continents. This means that the agreements are not only a tool for marketing, but also a diplomatic tool," he says.

"What are the challenges associated with allowing these types of sponsors to market themselves in connection with such a popular championship?"

"It should have been a concern for Europeans that our companies are not as globally competitive as they once were. This reflects a failing situation in Europe," says Chadwick.

"In addition, the sponsors have motives that are not only commercial, but political. It is particularly significant as we are talking about countries that have very different systems and ideologies than us. It's a big concern for me that rival ideologies and systems are starting to dominate.

"How do UEFA's campaigns against racism, homophobia, discrimination and human rights violations stand in the style of working with companies with close ties to countries with conflicting views and practices?"

"They find them in a difficult position. It's inevitable. They balance on a very thin line. They need to think about the needs and demands of people in the West, but at the same time the need to be commercial and global. It's an eerie task to try to be one thing in one part of the world, and another thing in another part of the world," chadwick says.

UEFA: Not surprising
VG has sent an inquiry to UEFA's media department with questions related to the EM sponsors and the professor's statements. They say the EU's global appeal also gives non-European companies an incentive to market themselves during the tournament.

"It is not surprising that they want to be a partner with our flagship national team tournaments. We don't have a specific strategy to focus on the Chinese market, but we're committed to including a global audience – just as brands want. When we negotiate with a potential partner, UEFA accepts the best deal on the market," UEFA wrote to VG, saying factors such as business activity, geographic footprint and market potential play a role in the decision.

Furthermore, they point out that all agreements have a clause that insures social responsibility, in part by ensuring that "rights adopted by international employee organisations are respected and in the event of potential violations can lead to an internal process".

NRK will broadcast the European Championship final between England and Italy on Sunday evening. On the ad-free state channel, the controversial sponsors get to enjoy prime time.

"NRK is familiar with the issue, but in this type of international rights we are contractually obliged to show the posters from sponsors UEFA has entered into an agreement with. Although we can be concerned about UEFA's choice of commercial partners, we have no way of influencing the negotiations as long as they relate to Norwegian law," sports editor Egil Sundvor of NRK told VG, adding that they are not familiar with the sponsors UEFA chooses when they buy the rights.

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