Football's Magic Money Tree

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Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Oct 24, 2022 3:05 pm

It is a while since I posted a "The Vultures are at the Door'" piece. Private Equity News with an article about how new investors in Football are looking to sweat their real estate assets - this is part of a series of articles which unfortunately I am unable to access (£55 for a 30-day trial subscription - ouch)

https://www.penews.com/articles/footbal ... y-20221024

Football and Money #2: The property play
In the second of PEN's Football and Money feature series ahead of the Qatar World Cup, experts explain why football financiers think they’ve found a real estate goldmine


By Sebastian McCarthy
Monday October 24, 2022 12:09 pm

Music gigs, food markets and even rooftop swimming pools — football stadiums are getting a radical makeover.

Financiers looking to score a profit from the clubs that they own are turning their sights towards real estate in a bid to juice more revenue out of historic grounds across Europe.

Private equity houses and investment consortiums have been spending billions of dollars on buying football teams in the wake of the pandemic, acquiring cash-strapped clubs in divisions throughout England, Italy, France and Spain.

The new cohort of owners hope to profit from increasingly valuable broadcasting rights and sponsorship deals, but many of them are also turning their attention to the hard assets owned by their clubs.

“Everyone is in the process [of stadium development] or starting to look at it,” says Alfonso Diaz, chief executive of business at RCD Mallorca, a club that was promoted to La Liga, Spain’s top division, in 2021.

Once a site where the local team would play a match every other weekend, the football stadium is quickly being transformed into a multi-use venue, hosting American sports fixtures, live concerts, and hospitality events.

“Football is a dumb industry from a real estate point of view, because the real estate earns you revenues on 25 days a year. If you can double that, then you can double matchday revenues,” explains Kieran Maguire, a football finance lecturer at Liverpool University.

English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur — which has spent £1bn building London’s biggest stadium — is leading the charge.

The North London club’s new home includes the world's first “dividing retractable pitch”, which allows it to stage America football games put on by the US National Football League. The stadium has also hosted boxing matches, rugby league games and music performances from the likes of Guns N’ Roses and Lady Gaga.

The club is reportedly in talks with Google about selling lucrative naming rights to the stadium.

Maguire says the deal is likely to be worth "eight figures a year". Tottenham declined to comment and Google has not responded to a request for comment.

Tottenham’s new ticketing strategy is winning plaudits too.

“Everything has been thought through to a forensic level of attention. Look at the number of different price points you have in terms of season tickets. Most clubs have half a dozen [price points], but Spurs have 15,” says Maguire.

“If you want a slightly better seat, you have to pay more money, and they’ve done that all over the ground. What they’ve done is magnificent from a commercial and strategic point of view,” he said.

Other clubs around Europe are now hoping to emulate Tottenham’s model.

US investment giant Sixth Street struck a €360m partnership with Spanish club Real Madrid in May to develop new businesses at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium.

Like Tottenham, Real Madrid has been constructing a retractable pitch that would allow the club to host events other than just football.

A key focus is on improving fan experience, with Sixth Street owning a majority stake in Legends, a sports experiences and services company.

Through the Legends business, Sixth Street is teaming up with Real Madrid to bring in new and improved concessions at the ground, including a potential food hall with a farmers’ market.

Having worked with a raft of the biggest baseball and American football teams, Legends is expanding its footprint in Europe and there is an expectation that Sixth Street will look to strike similar partnerships with other top-tier clubs.

Elsewhere in La Liga, RCD Mallorca has been pressing ahead with stadium renovations following a 2016 takeover by a consortium of investors led by Robert Sarver, a US tycoon who currently owns several Phoenix-based basketball teams.

Through four phases of development, the club is removing a running track and building new stands, a full-time restaurant, leisure services, VIP seating area, a ticketing office, hospitality areas, an official shop and space for events.

“We’ve developed this project in order to have different options of experience for everyone who wants to attend a game: hospitality, VIP, premium seats and regular seats for those who just want to come and follow the game,” says RCD Mallorca’s Diaz.

Diaz adds that the redevelopment will also bring in new sources of sponsorship, such as naming rights, and revenues from events, especially when tourists flock to the island during the summer.

It is not only in Spain where US investors are hoping to reshape European football stadiums.

Earlier this year, private equity giant Clearlake Capital teamed up with tycoon Todd Boehly to buy Chelsea FC from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

Chelsea won consent in 2017 to demolish its 41,000-seat stadium at Stamford Bridge and replace it with a 60,000-capacity arena on the same site, but the planning application expired under Abramovich and the new consortium would have to re-apply for planning approval.

One dealmaker involved in the Chelsea acquisition says: “[The new owners] know they need to rebuild the stadium. They want to grow the club internationally but to have a global profile like Liverpool or Manchester United, they need the stadium to match it.”

Boehly has reportedly hired Janet Marie Smith, an architect who has renovated some of the best-known US sporting venues, to draw up potential plans for Chelsea's ground. Chelsea FC has not responded to a request for comment.

“We’re seeing an Americanisation where the matchday is turning into much more of an entertainment beyond just the sporting spectacle,” says Darren Bailey, a consultant at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys.

Under new owners, clubs like Chelsea FC are hoping to expand their club’s global fanbase, and that could also impact the way the real estate is run, whether it is developing new hotels near the stadium or building bigger mega-stores for tourists.

Bailey adds: “With the global nature of the sport evolving, there are more tourists coming in, and they need somewhere to stay as well as more entertainment.”

Just down the road from Chelsea FC, Shahid Khan, the billionaire Pakistani-American owner of Premier League club Fulham FC, has spent an estimated £160m redeveloping a stand in the club’s West London stadium.

Khan is planning to put in a hotel, terrace, live entertainment space and, most audaciously of all, a rooftop swimming pool.

He has said he hopes the newly-renovated stand will soon compare to London’s biggest tourist attractions such as Parliament and the Tower of London.

Investors owning clubs below the top division might not be drawing in masses of tourists, but many still see value in offering more tours and events inside the ground on days when the club is not playing.

“[We are seeing] the increased use of conference facilities with clubs renting out space to companies for team away days, or training events or conferences which is increasingly lucrative and well suited to the facilities the clubs have generally,” says Stuart Hatcher, partner and head of corporate at law firm Forsters.

Hatcher says some clubs, including lower-league English teams like Accrington Stanley and Plymouth, are implementing specific strategies “to make sure the stadium is available and these facilities become available for the community.”

More owners are now looking at how to improve data and technology at their clubs too, with areas such as ‘smart ticketing’ and bespoke products being offered to fans.

But as investors look to modernise clubs and expand the fan base, local supporters will be hoping that they don't get left out.

Bailey adds: “You've got to service older, more traditional fans with the desire to create a more global audience. It’s a difficult balancing act.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Oct 24, 2022 3:53 pm

Football Benchmark with an analysis of the Summer 2022 transfer window - you can kind of see why the Super League 3 are so keen to break the Premier league monopoly


SUMMER OF 2022: EPL DOMINATES THEIR PEERS IN THE TRANSFER MARKET
https://www.footballbenchmark.com/libra ... fer_market

These two charts highlight the issue

Image

Image

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Oct 24, 2022 6:15 pm

@SwissRamble takes a look at Barcelona's 2021/22 financial results

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1584 ... 79584.html

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Oct 24, 2022 6:19 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Oct 13, 2022 5:18 pm
Forbes.com doing what Forbes do

The World’s Highest-Paid Soccer Players 2022: Kylian Mbappé Claims No. 1 As Erling Haaland Debuts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirn ... 5e91edc1c1

you have to say for all the income he generates, Mbappe appears unhappy at his club and unloved by his team mates if current reports are anything to go by
So, while Forbes probably got it right with Mbappe being the top earner they could be short by a large margin as to how much he is actually expected to earn if these reports are correct

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 6238629888

which puts Klopps point about certain clubs into focus once more

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Oct 24, 2022 7:46 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 9:59 pm
It has been an interesting couple of days for John Textor

this time last year we just knew him as the American businessman who made some interesting claims about what he could do with Benfica the team whose owners apparently did not believe him so brushed him off

Since then he has become the major shareholder at Crystal PAlace and bought Botafogo in Brazil and Belgian second-tier club RWD Molenbeek

yesterday he wasn't happy with the refereeing performance in a Botafogo match

https://twitter.com/JohnTextor/status/1 ... 1489792006

which brings questions about levels of owner interference and behaviour (certainly the Premier League would not approve)

today the Athletic tells us he is about to close on a major stake in Olympic Lyonnais - a team that gets into Europe on a regular basis - should Palace fans be worried that they will become a feeder team? by my reckoning that is now 9 teams that various Palace shareholders will own - link to an archiver version of the Athletic article

Crystal Palace shareholder John Textor close to completing Lyon takeover

https://archive.ph/AAsND
Seems that John Textor is not buying football clubs with his own money - and has still not completed the deal to buy Olympic Lyonais

https://www.sportbusiness.com/news/text ... ogged_in=1

Textor’s Lyon takeover postponed again

The proposed takeover of French Ligue 1 club Olympique Lyonnais by Eagle Football, a company owned by US investor John Textor, has been delayed again as the American seeks to complete proof of financing.

In June, it was revealed that Textor was set to become the majority shareholder of Lyon. Textor, who owns Brazil’s Botafogo and second-tier Belgian side RWD Molenbeek and holds a significant share in English Premier League club Crystal Palace, had been in advanced talks with Lyon’s president and current majority shareholder Jean-Michel Aulas.

Textor is due to buy out the shares of French film production and distribution company Pathé and Chinese investment fund IDG Capital, who had an approximate 40-per-cent stake in the club between them, as well as part of Aulas’ family holding, Holnest. Overall, he will have a 66.5-per-cent stake in the club, which could eventually rise to 88.55 per cent.

Pathé and IDG Capital released a joint statement in March stating that they had engaged investment bank Raine to explore the disposal of their stakes in the club. The proposed deal was approved at a general meeting on July 29, with Textor due to inject capital of up to €86m ($84.6m).

The takeover had already been due to complete on September 30 and a joint statement from all parties involved in the deal was released after another deadline of October 21 passed without completion.

A new date for “completion of the operation” has now been set for November 17. The statement read: “To date, substantial progress has been made on all the steps that are necessary to complete the transaction.”

It continued: “With regard to the financing of the transaction, Eagle Football has informed OL Groupe that advanced discussions with the identified sources of all debt and equity investors supporting the transaction are ongoing.

“However, this financing remains subject to the finalisation by Eagle Football of the long form documentation, additional customary approvals (including by the football governing bodies) and internal compliance verification process of the lenders to the Olympique Lyonnais group. Therefore, such transaction could not be completed by October 21, 2022.”

In setting the new closing date, the five parties said they have agreed on “interim key milestones” for signing of the debt and equity financing final documentation “triggering termination right… if any of the relevant interim milestone is not met”.

In July, OL Groupe saw its revenue grow by 42 per cent to €252.5m for the 2021-22 financial year, with the figures boosted by player sales and the return of fans following the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Oct 25, 2022 6:21 pm

The Daily Mail with a story that Wigan are late in paying their players again

EXCLUSIVE: Wigan Athletic fail to pay their players on time AGAIN, as Championship club's Bahrainian owners miss wages deadline for a third time... leaving members of Leam Richardson's squad considering their futures
- The club had previously dismissed concerns they were facing financial problems
- Wigan were in administration in 2021 before the current owners bought the club
- Several members of Leam Richardson's squad are now considering their futures
- Wigan currently sit 19th in the Championship and host Watford on Saturday

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... -time.html

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Oct 27, 2022 5:03 pm

The Telegraph with a piece on how football is slowly moving to a full-blown managerial transfer market - imagine if that too was regulated by a transfer window

Managers are driving the changing face of their own transfer market
Unai Emery's move to Aston Villa is the latest example of clubs paying huge release clauses for new managers


https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fw ... -market%2F

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Thu Oct 27, 2022 5:08 pm

Wouldn't be the strangest idea in the world, but I'm not sure Watford would like it

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Oct 27, 2022 5:15 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Thu Oct 27, 2022 5:08 pm
Wouldn't be the strangest idea in the world, but I'm not sure Watford would like it
Watford have bigger issues, they have just factored a transfer for a player they sold to Udinese - the other club owned by the Pozzo family - Official records have it as Watford owned by Dad and Udinese owned by son, this just seems to be weird. I am surprised Macquarie went near it to be honest

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Oct 28, 2022 3:36 pm

A long report in The Athletic about the fight against more Super League legal preparatory work by Florentino Perez in Spain, all of which is about protecting his club at the expense of the league collective in Spain.

Tebas vs Perez and the ‘Sports Law’ talks that cast Super League shadow over Spanish football
https://archive.ph/ycFcL

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by RVclaret » Sat Oct 29, 2022 1:21 pm

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... sfers.html

Bit in here on how West Brom are looking to secure a £25m loan (from MSD) to fund January transfers. Interesting one, not sure how they’ll manage that given they’ve recorded losses in the past couple of seasons, and parachute payments run out next season.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Oct 30, 2022 10:58 am

For the first time Josimar Football are releasing an English Language international edition of their magazine - it is all about the impending World Cup

The editorial for it is a powerful piece like many of the articles we have seen over the years

http://josimarfootball.com/editorial-jo ... l-edition/
Editorial – Josimar International Edition
26/10/2022

Politicians, leading academics and international trade unions have praised Qatar for its reforms since they were given the hosting rights to the 2022 World Cup in 2010, following a corrupt process. But how are things really on the ground?

Are the reforms for real? In March, five journalists from Josimar travelled to Qatar.

Nearly everyone you’ll read about in this issue has taken a huge personal risk by talking to us. With one exception, all interviewees have been anonymised for their own safety. Qatar is a police state without freedom of expression, freedom of the press or freedom to organise. It’s a dystopian society where many migrant workers, and some citizens too, live in fear. One of the interviews was done by telephone shortly before we went to print.

Working as a journalist inside Qatar is difficult. We travelled there on tourist visas. After getting through immigration and customs at Doha’s international airport, we quickly deleted Etheraz, the smartphone app mandatory for every visitor. The app was introduced as a Covid-19 tracing tool, but it also has a number of properties that can be used for surveillance and manipulation. We brought extra phones that were not smartphones and we never used wifi.

We spent our days in labour camps for migrant workers. We went there without applying for permission. We knew any applications would have been rejected.

At the same time as Fifa president Gianni Infantino shouted Qatar, Qatar, Qatar, Fifa, Fifa, Fifa from a stage in a luxury hotel in Doha, we were in a nameless labour camp in the desert outside of the city. Here we met Joseph, who, about 15 years ago, reached the final of Norway Cup, one of the world’s largest youth football tournaments, with Kenyan team Mathare United, and dreamt of a future as a professional footballer. Joseph is now unemployed in Qatar.

Language barriers were an issue during some of the interviews. The workers have told their stories in what English they had and in some instances, where they have answered “yes” or “no”, we have written full sentences. For example, when we asked if they paid recruitment agents to come to Qatar to work (and the vast majority answered ‘yes’), in print the sentence can appear like this: “Yes, I paid a recruitment agent in Kenya to be able to come to Qatar for work.”

Mostly, though, their stories are written the way they were told. We have not corrected mistakes in grammar or syntax, in order to preserve their personal voices.

Outside a luxurious residential area in Doha, a Nigerian security guard told us that the reforms have benefitted him. He had long working hours, true, but his employer treated him well and he was paid decently. But, he added, for the people he had arrived in Qatar with, it was different. They still live in dirty labour camps with uncertain working hours, no health benefits, no possibility of changing jobs without their current employers’ permission, for a minimum wage of less than 300 euro per month.

Outside the Education City World Cup stadium, we talked to a crew of Indian workers who live in one of the most notorious labour camps, Al-Shahaniya, work eight hours every single day washing, sweeping and scrubbing the stadium and its surrounding area squeaky clean. They were trapped in Qatar, their passports confiscated by their company. Changing employer was not possible as their superiors refused to issue a No-Objection Certificate (NOC).

According to reforms from 2020, workers in Qatar no longer need a NOC to change employers.

A young man from Bangladesh who’d travelled to Qatar in the hope of creating a better future for his poor family back home had worked on a construction site without guidelines or security measures. He fell two floors. He fractured his leg badly. His employer did not take any responsibility, neither did the Qatari authorities. On Fridays, in a wheelchair, he begs outside Doha’s mosques, hoping to collect enough money for a flight home. When he has enough, he’ll return a cripple – not a breadwinner, but a burden to his family.

The common theme for the 32 people profiled in this issue is the systemic breaches of the introduced reforms: a minimum wage, the right to change employer, the law against working outside in the hottest periods of the year. The list goes on.

Josimar is in possession of text messages between two central figures in the World Cup organising body, The Supreme Committee For Delivery And Legacy (SC).

The messages reveal that the committee’s own employees – unlike Fifa, for example – are not at all convinced by the so-called reforms, and worry about the workers’ basic rights.

“Even [World Cup supremo] Hassan [Al-Thawadi] said that the WPS [Wage Protection System] is a massive failed system.”
“It’s getting harder and harder to talk about it from a personal and moral perspective.”
“How hard is it to make sure that they are paid […] they treat them in bulk like they have no names or IDs.”
“I know. Some of the employers are just the biggest bastards in the world.”
“Most of them.”
“99,9%”

Image

Still, the United Nations entity International Labour Organization (ILO) claims reforms have been implemented. ILO has been present in Qatar since 2018 and their presence is fully financed by the Qatari regime. In June 2021, according to ILO, about 70 000 workers had changed jobs as a result of the recent reforms. In November the same year, this number had suddenly risen to 240 000. If true, 170 000 migrant workers had changed jobs in four months. But the majority of the workers we met told a different story. They said that they had to pay their employer to receive a NOC – usually between 1000 and 1500 Euro. If the worker protested, referring to its abolishment, the employer would tell the worker he would call the police and say he is a troublemaker.

In mid-October 2022 the number was still 240 000, which, if true, meant that not a single migrant worker had changed employers in almost a year.

ILO’s figures are the Qatari authorities’ figures. Josimar has repeatedly asked ILO and the Qatari authorities to document these figures. We are still waiting for that documentation. How ILO operates is dubious. ILO has confirmed to Josimar that the source for the 240,000 figure is the Qatari Ministry of Labour even though the statistic is cited as an ILO figure. They are supposed to be in the country as an independent monitor, to make sure reforms are implemented. Instead they have become spokespeople for an authoritarian regime, taking their figures at face value.

A war for the truth is taking place.

ITUC, the world’s largest international federation of trade unions, originally one the fiercest critics of the Qatar World Cup, whose General Secretary Sharan Burrow had said that “more workers will die building these stadiums than players will play in them”, has u-turned to such a degree that the same Burrow is now criticising human rights agencies who highlight the plight of migrant workers. “It’s a little distressing […], because these are good people wanting to take a stand against human rights abuse,” she recently told AFP. “But for whatever reason, they’re not hearing the story of change, (of) incredible progress.” The voice of ITUC has become the voice of Qatar.

What is more credible? The stories of the people on the ground, backed up by high-ranking members of the Supreme Committee or statements and figures from the central government of a dictatorship?

Nobody knows how many migrant workers have died in Qatar since the country was awarded the hosting rights of the World Cup in December 2010. The debates about the number of deaths have turned into an escalating information war. According to an Amnesty report from August 2021, with Qatari authorities as source, 15021 non-Qataris died between 2010 and 2019. 9405 (63%) of these deaths were Asian nationals and of these, the vast majority (87%) were men. Amnesty estimates that as many as 69% of those deaths are unexplained.

How many of those worked directly on World Cup related projects?

What we do know is that the number of migrant workers doubled from about one to about two million in that period. It’s reasonable to believe that many, if not most, of the new arrivals worked on infrastructure that was vital for Qatar to host a tournament of this magnitude.

For Josimar it was never an option to cover the sporting tournament that is about to take place in Qatar. It is the latest in a long line of shameful events in football. The World Cup in Brazil was in a way a world championship of corruption, where a small number of Brazilians (read: politicians and businessmen) and Fifa shared the vast income. All that the common people were left with was an even more dire economic situation. Josimar wished to give as little exposure as possible to the 2018 tournament in Russia. We justified that with the fact that the country had been awarded the hosting rights through corruption, and that it was already clear at that stage that Putin was a war criminal and would use the World Cup as a tool to suppress his own citizens even further. The year before, Josimar had exposed the use of North Korean slave labour on Russia 2018 construction sites.

With Fifa at the wheel, football has steered towards a head-on collision with its most important value, fair play. Let there be no doubt about it, football’s public enemy number one goes by the name of Gianni Infantino. And already now, five months before the next Fifa congress in Kigali, Rwanda, he has secured his re-election. That means only one thing:

We’re nowhere near the bottom.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Oct 30, 2022 10:59 am

Meanwhile we have this from the Guardian

Qatar lavished British MPs with gifts ahead of World Cup
MPs who received gifts later appeared to speak favourably about Qatar in parliamentary debates

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... -world-cup

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Oct 31, 2022 3:20 pm

As much as I dislike Florentino Perez for what he has done and is still trying to do to the fame you have to say he has Chutzpah - Miguel Delaney in the Independent

Florentino Perez planned to move club to Real Madrid theme park
It was planned for ‘RealMadridLand’ to be the new home of the 14-time European champions, a new book has revealed


https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foo ... 14341.html

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Fri Nov 04, 2022 3:57 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 10:40 pm
Last month CAS ruled that Leeds must fulfil their contracted obligation to pay £18m to RB Liepzig's Jean-Kevin Augustin a player they quickly realised they didn't want - Leeds are still refusing to pay, but have not yet launched an appeal - here is the Mail with the latest

Leeds 'still yet to pay RB Leipzig £18m for Jean-Kevin Augustin' with Premier League side 'REFUSING' to cough up funds after failing to honour clause and sign striker, despite ruling by CAS
  • Jean-Kevin Augustin was a Leeds flop, making just three appearances in 2019-20
  • However, the Whites were obligated to make the deal permanent if promoted
  • Leeds rose into the Premier League but refused to pay RB Leipzig the £18m fee
  • CAS ruled against them, but the Germans are still yet to receive their money
By TOBY MILES FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 12:04, 16 July 2021 | UPDATED: 17:07, 16 July 2021

Leeds are refusing to budge in their stand-off with RB Leipzig over Jean-Kevin Augustin, with the Elland Road side reportedly still refusing to cough-up the £18m they owe.

Augustin was a certified flop under Marcelo Bielsa and could yet go down as a costly mistake, after playing just 48 minutes during a six-month loan from the Bundesliga and failing to contribute a single goal as Leeds lifted the Championship title in 2020.

Despite having a tough time in Yorkshire the striker looked to be staying, with a clause written into his loan deal stipulating that Leeds must make the deal permanent for £18m if they returned to the Premier League.

Bielsa certainly had no plans to permanently sign the forward and, according to BILD, Leeds are still yet to pay Leipzig despite the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling in favour of the Germans in June.

Leeds argued that the clause should have been voided after the 2020-21 season was delayed due to Covid-19, but lost the case.

The English club have 21 days to launch an appeal and a further 10 to make their case, which could be the reason behind the hold-up – with the £18m reportedly expected to be paid in instalments.

Wanted by neither club, Augustin left Leipzig last summer on a free transfer despite the ongoing row, landing with Nantes in Ligue 1.

It was another season of misery for the 24-year-old Parisian, who again managed just three matches and no goals in the entire campaign.

All of those were brief substitute appearances, none of them were victories, and Augustin didn't see any football after the 12th game of the Ligue 1 season.

It's been a dramatic fall from grace for the striker, who came through PSG's academy as a promising youngster.

His move to Leipzig initially looked promising, with 12 goals in 2017-18, but hamstring trouble and dreadful form have wrecked his career.
This is still ongoing.
Leeds ordered to pay £18m after losing CAS appeal over Augustin deal https://mol.im/a/11390461 via https://dailym.ai/android

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Nov 04, 2022 4:06 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Fri Nov 04, 2022 3:57 pm
This is still ongoing.
Leeds ordered to pay £18m after losing CAS appeal over Augustin deal https://mol.im/a/11390461 via https://dailym.ai/android
don't know why but this makes me :D

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Fri Nov 04, 2022 4:57 pm

I did start smiling when I read the article

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Nov 06, 2022 12:27 pm

How often are we going to see this - Football clubs are regularly blinded by the cheque without bothering to do some effective due diligence (the games authorities are little better) - The latest example being Fulham

from the Mail courtesy of Nick Harris otherwise known as :SportingIntel

SPECIAL REPORT: How could a Premier League club ever take on a sponsor like this? Fulham dump partners after The Mail on Sunday uncover outlandish financial claims and 'staff' - who were actually actors!
  • Fulham terminated a partnership after an investigation by The Mail on Sunday
  • It showed Titan Capital Markets glossiest of videos was populated by actors
  • Titan Capital Markets allegedly used their Premier League status for legitimacy
  • But Titan's head of sales in Ghana, Coach Gideon, claimed 'this is a solid project'
  • Clubs are under increased scrutiny of late around their commercial partners
  • Titan are nominally based in Australia, where they are also under investigation

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sport ... laims.html

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by RammyClaret61 » Mon Nov 07, 2022 1:25 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Sun Nov 06, 2022 12:27 pm
How often are we going to see this - Football clubs are regularly blinded by the cheque without bothering to do some effective due diligence (the games authorities are little better) - The latest example being Fulham

from the Mail courtesy of Nick Harris otherwise known as :SportingIntel

SPECIAL REPORT: How could a Premier League club ever take on a sponsor like this? Fulham dump partners after The Mail on Sunday uncover outlandish financial claims and 'staff' - who were actually actors!
  • Fulham terminated a partnership after an investigation by The Mail on Sunday
  • It showed Titan Capital Markets glossiest of videos was populated by actors
  • Titan Capital Markets allegedly used their Premier League status for legitimacy
  • But Titan's head of sales in Ghana, Coach Gideon, claimed 'this is a solid project'
  • Clubs are under increased scrutiny of late around their commercial partners
  • Titan are nominally based in Australia, where they are also under investigation

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sport ... laims.html
EMA??

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Nov 07, 2022 10:15 am

Manchester City declare a record turnover for the 2021/22 season, the second largest ever in English Football history

Official statement
https://www.mancity.com/news/club/manch ... b%20record.

The full report
https://www.mancity.com/annualreport2022/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Nov 08, 2022 12:08 pm

Interesting piece in the Athletic stating what most already know - it is like the chasing 6 will have to take turns in getting a season just right - a relay if you will - so City will not completely dominate

Manchester City’s dominance and the futility of the chasing Premier League pack
https://archive.ph/yQ8Ms

As for what that means to the 13 particularly the ambitious ones, however forlorn their attempts at getting into the European places on a regular basis, Everton, Villa, Leeds, Leicester, Wolves, Brighton (see what I have done there, that is thirteen who believe they can achieve (or are at least targeting) regular European qualification in the future

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Nov 08, 2022 5:49 pm

As ever the Premier League is prepared to give only if it gets something in return - The Telegraph reports on the Premier Leagues proposed New Deal for English football

Premier League clubs agree radical 'New Deal for Football' proposals
A key part of the new system of redistribution will be based on ensuring cash is spent on infrastructure rather than wages


https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fw ... oposals%2F

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Nov 08, 2022 6:13 pm

How not to win friends and influence people

A22 Sports Management, the company charged with promoting/delivering Super League met with UEFA and many representatives of the stakeholders in European football

this is how they represented their take on things
https://a22sports.com/wp-content/upload ... _talks.pdf

this is UEFA giving them a bit of a panning (and understandably so)
https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/news/02 ... statement/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Nov 08, 2022 6:23 pm

Some of you may be aware that Ecuador's right to a place in the World Cup was being challenged for fielding an ineligible player - Well a hearing has been held at CAS and everyone agreed that Chile was correct but because Byron Castillo held an official Ecuadoran passport (even though there is recognition that it contains false information), Ecuador can play in the World Cup Finals

How very CAS, no wonder people can run rings aground them

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... K295AsAAAA

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Nov 08, 2022 8:59 pm

An interesting piece in the Telegraph sparked by yesterday's news about Liverpool possibly being up for sale - there are others too, and plenty more looking for investment partners and even just debt financing or in Southampton's case re-financing - no doubt they are worried about what MSD will want from them in the summer if they are relegated (my guess is close to £45m

Liverpool owners join Premier League rush to cash in on 'ferocious' US interest
Exclusive: Liverpool are only one of the Premier League and Championship clubs currently seeking Wall Street investment

https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://ww ... ocious-us/

You wonder if the leading Championship club is Burnley, though it could just as easily be any of them

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Nov 09, 2022 6:15 pm

It is a topic that has regularly been a feature of this thread - Matt Slater in the Athletic with a revised article on

How do you value a football club?
https://archive.ph/DvJEf

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Nov 09, 2022 6:46 pm

the latest blog from the chaps at Vysyble is rather fascinating

https://vysyble.com/blog-022

Blog-022
9th November 2022

Liverpool’s owners have decided to look for ‘new’ shareholders. Translated from media double-speak, this would appear to be a statement of sale. However, given that it is football, there will be a few twists and turns along the way.

We have written at considerable length over the years about football’s failing financial and economic model, the lack of economic profits and value creation leading to regular capital injections and loans from owners and the influx of American investors seeking returns on their money.

The perspective delivered by the utilisation of the economic profit metric pointed to a structural shift which would enable clubs to guarantee revenues and control costs. The solution as we saw it was a closed league with minimal financial risk for its participants. In other words, a Super League. We first postulated this model with clear data-driven evidence in 2016. As events have subsequently proved, FSG came to the same conclusion.

In 2020, Project Big Picture was released. This vision of the future from the hands of the Glazer family and FSG pointed towards more financial power for the bigger clubs. A stepping stone, perhaps, to what was to follow…

When Super League finally emerged in April 2021, the influence of FSG was quite clear. Indeed, when the backlash from fans became too great to bear, John Henry, FSG’s owner, was one of the first leading figures to publicly apologise. Nevertheless, it revealed much about the American mindset regarding football and its financial modus operandi. Not that we didn’t know it already and indeed we explored extensively the American investor perspective in 2018. We expected Super League – it was not a shock.

Fast forward to last Monday (7th November 2022) and it seems that FSG is to be the first of the American big guns to head back home. For FSG, the game is not providing the economic returns it perhaps sees in its other sporting endeavours. Indeed, Liverpool FC remains the only Premier League club in the current divisional cohort to have achieved a collective economic profit during the period 2017-21. It is just £17.54m. From a revenue of £2.33bn That’s a ‘lotta lotta’ of work for a very, very small return.

In addition, with two state-funded Middle Eastern entities in England’s top division, the competitive landscape has moved. With a returns-focused approach, perhaps the thought of digging ever deeper into the cash reserves for talent to achieve parity on the pitch was just one step too far. The controls offered by Super League would have provided a more uniform financial landscape. Instead, the wild west beckons once again.

But there is an upside. The cost of money has been incredibly and historically low since the floodgates of quantitative easing were opened. The investment herd has moved from one asset class to another, inflating values along the way. Football has only become a stopping point in recent years. We read of the game being ‘undervalued’ and of it being a good investment opportunity. So, we speculate if FSG is calling the top of the market given that there is a global recession around the corner and the cost of money is heading upwards.

We have seen prices of £3-5bn being quoted for Liverpool FC. Manchester United’s market cap is £1.9bn. The latter loses more money as the former treads water and annual revenues are now broadly similar given United’s increasing lack of Champions League football. Of course, in a business that sees little profit, values tend to be relative based on the day’s particular multiples which appear to be derived from the direction of the wind.

Chelsea was sold for £2.5bn with an investment rider of a further £1.75bn despite averaging economic losses of £74m for each of the 10 years between 2012-21. The magnitude of change required to generate a return on these billion-level numbers beggars belief especially when Newcastle United was sold for £305m and currently sits in 3rd place in the Premier League. A bargain if ever there was one. But we wonder when the investment herd will move on to pastures new….

Nevertheless, if a price of £3bn+ can be achieved for Liverpool, it will represent a fabulous return on the original £300m purchase price over a 12-year period. The next owner may find such a return on the asset price a much bigger if not a near-impossible challenge.

Super League was a solution to a dysfunctional economic model. That solution has gone for now yet the dysfunction remains. One of its bigger supporters is getting out. Indeed, if a third state-funded entity were to enter an already-distorted domestic competition, the average fan may think that the game of football is nothing more than a pursuit to discover who has the deepest pockets. Losses become irrelevant for those owners who don’t care, relevant for those who do and painful for those who can’t afford it any more.

We’ve previously referred to a mid-Atlantic identity crisis as the game wrestles with its financial and economic imbalances. Maybe this sale brings home the fact that, for some, an easier life with a pocket full of money is a preferable choice than fighting a long-term losing battle.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Nov 10, 2022 9:35 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 5:49 pm
As ever the Premier League is prepared to give only if it gets something in return - The Telegraph reports on the Premier Leagues proposed New Deal for English football

Premier League clubs agree radical 'New Deal for Football' proposals
A key part of the new system of redistribution will be based on ensuring cash is spent on infrastructure rather than wages


https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fw ... oposals%2F
Absolutely no surprise that this story is breaking - again from the Telegraph

Exclusive: Premier League row erupts as Big Six split with rest over 'New Deal' funding
There is a divide behind the scenes on who will pay what for the new solidarity system demanded by the Government

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fw ... oup-new%2F

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Nov 10, 2022 10:32 am

This is an interesting article in the Athletics Sports Business section, not least because it makes reference to Limited Partnerships and the secrecy that is/can be involved in them - no one in the general public may ever know, This is important because it is a possible/probable route for new external investment in our club (if that ever happens

Liverpool FC, Commanders, Nationals and more: Why so many teams are being shopped
https://archive.ph/YLvky

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Nov 11, 2022 1:33 pm

When you include his stake in Real Salt Lake (former roost of Dave Checketts and Alan Pace, though neither benefitted from that $400m deal in January this year) the recent acquisition of a stake in Danish side Brøndby takes David Blitzers multi-club structure up to 8 clubs, 7 in Europe

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel

Image

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Nov 11, 2022 1:41 pm

Of course, the kings of multi-club football ownership are CFG whose Chairman also runs Mubadala the State Invesment Fund of Abu Dhabi - not content with just owning clubs the Mubadala are now investing in a reformed Brazilian League, which finally looks to be getting off the ground

Brazil’s Libra soccer league chooses Mubadala Capital as new investor
Abu Dhabi-backed firm to own 20% of league’s commercial rights for US$971m.


https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/bra ... hts-stake/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by RVclaret » Fri Nov 11, 2022 2:03 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Nov 11, 2022 1:33 pm
When you include his stake in Real Salt Lake (former roost of Dave Checketts and Alan Pace, though neither benefitted from that $400m deal in January this year) the recent acquisition of a stake in Danish side Brøndby takes David Blitzers multi-club structure up to 8 clubs, 7 in Europe

https://twitter.com/CIESsportsintel

Image
Wonder if he’ll want a bit of Burnley should we become a PL team again soon.

Edit - oops just show he’s already at Palace.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Nov 11, 2022 2:08 pm

The Times with a piece on 49ers Enterprises raising funds for what appears to be an earlier than scheduled complete takeover of Leeds United - the total valuation price of circa £400m has long been agreed

San Francisco 49ers investors set for Leeds United takeover
https://archive.ph/9oIjJ

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Nov 11, 2022 2:14 pm

RVclaret wrote:
Fri Nov 11, 2022 2:03 pm
Wonder if he’ll want a bit of Burnley should we become a PL team again soon.

Edit - oops just show he’s already at Palace.
He tried with his business partner and fellow Palace investor Josh Harris for Chelsea, as part of a consortium that ultimately failed in its bid.

That deal would have seen them sell their Palace shares to John Textor who is building up his own multi-club empire the latest addition of which is supposed to be Olympic Lyonais - the deal has been deferred 3 times already as Textor is struggling to raise the finance, which should be a warning to Palace you would think, where he is the largest single shareholder

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Nov 12, 2022 9:19 pm

A thought provoking piece from Jonathon Wilson in the Guardian about a potential cost of Qatar hosting the Wold Cup

Just like the hat, football’s grip could suddenly go out of fashion after Qatar
Football – facing fans’ disgust at this World Cup – should beware a plummeting status in the face of a critical mass of frustration

https://www.theguardian.com/football/bl ... fter-qatar

I particularly like the notion of a theory of the “trust thermocline” which is referred to here

Also, the research that Wilsom says Florentino Perez has refused to release, was if I am not mistaken published by the ECA just prior to the Super League announcement when it was under the iron-fisted control of Andrea Agnelli

That was the Fan of the Future report which you can read here https://www.ecaeurope.com/media/4802/ec ... fandom.pdf

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:40 pm

Interesting piece in the Guardian about Everton financial troubles relating to the new stadium

The football club, the billionaire – and the bills: Everton’s race to build its new home
Club’s bankers continue search for funds to complete £500m stadium after almost three years of trying

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... moore-dock

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:06 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:40 pm
Interesting piece in the Guardian about Everton financial troubles relating to the new stadium

The football club, the billionaire – and the bills: Everton’s race to build its new home
Club’s bankers continue search for funds to complete £500m stadium after almost three years of trying

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... moore-dock
Those interested in knowing about the Vibrac involvement in football or just wanting a refresher can start here

Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrac_Corporation

Premier League to ban unregulated offshore firms from lending to clubs
- Everton and Southampton among clubs to have taken loans with Vibrac Corp
- Such borrowing to be outlawed from the 2018-19 season

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... -loans-ban

the Guardian have been investigating the Vibrac/Everton relationship for years

Philip Green, Vibrac and Riverdance: the mystery of Everton’s ‘shadow investor’
An MP’s question in October detailed rumours of the retail magnate’s involvement at Goodison, but is there any connection between him and companies who have lent millions of pounds to Premier League clubs?

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... or-mystery

Tariq Panja wrote about Vibrac in his book 'Football's Secret Trade" and the Mail reported on Michael Tabor who is said to be a key investor in Vibrac

Michael Tabor named by new book as one of global football's biggest lenders with claims racing tycoon advanced clubs as much as £100m a year
- A new book names Michael Tabor as one of football's biggest money lenders
- The racing tycoon is part of the Coolmore Stud ownership set
- He has advanced money to Atletico Madrid, Everton, Southampton and Fulham
'- Football's Secret Trade' says he was lending up to £100million a year to clubs

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... nders.html

Reading got fined for using Vibrac financing after they were banned

Reading FC hit by Football League fine for breach of financial rules
Royals have been punished for borrowing money from the Vibrac Corporation, who have interests in three other Premier League club
s
https://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/foot ... ue-8949392

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Nov 13, 2022 11:03 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 5:49 pm
As ever the Premier League is prepared to give only if it gets something in return - The Telegraph reports on the Premier Leagues proposed New Deal for English football

Premier League clubs agree radical 'New Deal for Football' proposals
A key part of the new system of redistribution will be based on ensuring cash is spent on infrastructure rather than wages


https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fw ... oposals%2F
the above Telegraph article told us about the Premier League wanting to change the rules on Brexit signing system and that they were planning to use it in the negotiating on the New Deal for English Football - The following from The Athletic shows how united the Premier League seem to be about it

Premier League clubs united in belief post-Brexit signings system is bad for business
https://archive.ph/4f0XH

It is important to note that this desired change would help our club's new direction too

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Nov 15, 2022 7:55 pm

The news that we are no further forward on the White Paper that was supposed to follow the governments Fan Led Review into football comes as no surprise, though I am sure that the time frame in which Tracy Crouch is expecting it to be enacted - 5 years will frustrate many

Fan-led review of football governance still waiting for liftoff after 12 months
The government says it accepts the review’s central recommendation, which is the creation of an independent regulator for football

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... -12-months

The above document talks of an annual FSA review - those who want to read that can find it here

Fan Led Review - One Year On
https://thefsa.org.uk/wp-content/upload ... -11-22.pdf

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Nov 17, 2022 12:51 am

I am far from sure that I agree with all this, particular the claim of the title, but it is an interesting read nevertheless - from ESPN

https://www.espn.com/soccer/liverpool-e ... investment

Liverpool are for sale, and if you've got a few billion to spend, there's no better investment

6:16 PM GMT - Mark Ogden -Senior Writer, ESPN FC

What is the appeal of owning a Premier League football club like Liverpool? To those with the funds and ambition to even contemplate a deal that is likely to cost at least £4 billion, the answer is incredibly simple.

Who wouldn't want to invest in a global sporting brand that is regarded as recession-proof and with the potential to offer low risk, high reward, and an unfailingly loyal customer base? Oh, and the prospect of some fun along the way while trying to win Premier Leagues and Champions Leagues.

Fenway Sports Group, or FSG, the Boston-based sports investment company that also owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team and Pittsburgh Penguins NHL franchise, has done all of the above since buying Liverpool from American businessmen George Gillett and Tom Hicks for £300 million in October 2010. They transformed Liverpool from a sleeping giant into a team that has reached three Champions League finals in five years -- winning the tournament in 2019 -- and won a first Premier League title for 30 years in 2020. But with the club now regarded as being worth more than 10 times what FSG paid 12 years ago, figurative "FOR SALE" signs are now hanging above Anfield. And there is no shortage of prospective new owners.

"I can't really speak to FSG's motivations to sell, but what I would say is that for every American owner that wants to exit football club ownership, there's another 10 queuing up to come in," Chris Mann, head of mergers and acquisitions for New York and London-based global sports advisory group Sportsology, told ESPN.

"Over the past few years we've seen a really significant ramp up in U.S. investment in European football. In 2021, there were 15 investments in clubs in the big five leagues and two-thirds of those were by U.S. investors, either individuals or private equity groups.

"American interest in European football is part of a generational shift in that we've moved away from the previous kind of vanity investments by high net-worth individuals towards more hard-headed purchases by people and organisations that are looking for clubs that are going to give them big returns."

Liverpool earned £151.9 million in Premier League prize money during the 2021-22 season and a further £102 million in earnings from UEFA after reaching the Champions League final against Real Madrid in Paris. In its Financial Forecast 2022 report published in September, the football finance website Off The Pitch predicted that in 2023 Liverpool will overtake Manchester United for the first time in revenue, with Liverpool projected to announce turnover of £602 million and a pre-tax profit of £76 million.

That figure would fall short of the £613 million turnover announced by Manchester City earlier this month, but the vast majority of the Abu Dhabi-owned club's commercial revenue is generated by partnership deals with Abu Dhabi-based companies such as Etihad Airways, Etisalat, Emirates Palace and Masdar. For that reason, Man United continue to be regarded as the benchmark in English football due to their ability to attract sponsors from all corners of the globe -- therefore, eclipsing the Old Trafford club off the pitch would be a significant milestone for Liverpool.

It is such commercial power, and Liverpool's on-field success and history, that makes them such a compelling acquisition for potential new owners, particularly for American private equity funds who want success and financial growth.

"What football investors are seeking are clubs that match the fundamentals of teams in U.S. sports leagues," Mann said. "They're looking for big global brands with very low risk on performance -- teams with almost zero chance of relegation and a very high chance of either winning the league or qualifying for Champions League and getting on that kind of recurring broadcast revenue train.

"We've now had 20 years of pretty much interrupted year-on-year growth in sports media rights values, so if you take those criteria as a package -- the global brand, the low downside risk and the broadcast upside -- there's maybe only 20 clubs in Europe that meet all those criteria.

There is significant scarcity value and that scarcity value is driving valuations up very quickly. Given the criteria laid out, Liverpool are quite near the top of that very select group. With the dollar being stronger than the pound and Euro right now, there's obviously an opportunity to buy these big teams at a much more reasonable price than the majority of U.S. sports franchises, should the latter become available.

"Earlier this year, Chelsea were sold to Todd Boehly's consortium for £2.5 billion ($2.94b) -- quite a lot less than the Denver Broncos NFL franchise which was sold for $4.65 billion (£3.95b). If you think about the reality of the football market, it is very small if you are looking to invest in a team of the calibre of Liverpool. There's maybe ten of those that you can realistically go and get. And how many of them are on the market at any given time? One or two maybe."

The sale of Chelsea earlier this year, prompted by UK government sanctions on the club's previous owner, the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, resulted in huge interest in the two-time Champions League winners. Sources have told ESPN that over 200 expressions of interest were made by groups or individuals keen to take over at Stamford Bridge.

FSG have enlisted the investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to find a buyer for Liverpool and the six-time Champions League winners and 19-time English champions are expected to attract even greater interest than Chelsea due to the club's global fan base and status as one of football's most historic teams. According to Mann, Liverpool's pedigree on the pitch is only part of the attraction. "We are probably heading into a two-three year recession, but in the past, the revenues of big clubs have proven to be fairly recession-proof if you compare them to other asset classes and other industries.

"If you look at the 2008 global financial crash and the 2007-2009 revenues of the teams in the big five leagues, they went up 13%, year-on-year over that period. The S&P 500 (which tracks the performance of 500 leading U.S. companies on the stock market) lost 43% of its value over the same period. You can see similar numbers in the dotcom recession in the early 2000s.

"So if we're heading into what might be the third major recession of the century, football teams with low downside risk on the performance side are a relatively safe bet in an uncertain market."

Fan loyalty is another big appeal and Liverpool's global support is perhaps only surpassed by United, Real Madrid and Barcelona. In the past, that support has actively protested against owners, helping to force out Hicks and Gillett in 2010, while United fans have been engaged in a lengthy campaign to drive out the Glazer family, who have owned the club since 2005. But while supporter discontent can lead to a negative image of a club, it is unlikely to dissuade potential owners from buying a team like Liverpool.

"Even if a team has a year or two years where it's maybe not quite at the level that it should be or would be expected to be, football is not like a consumer business," Mann said. "If Apple's products went wrong for two years, everyone would go and buy a Samsung, right? It's not quite the same in football.

"It's probably the only form of entertainment that appeals to people all across the spectrum in every part of the globe, so it's delivering a really wide support base, but also an incredibly loyal one.

"People irrationally support a team from birth to death. We do it almost regardless of the quality of the on-field product, so clubs can kind of guarantee a level of commercial revenue knowing that they're unlikely to lose significant numbers of fans, even if the performance of the team isn't at the level that it's expected to be all the time.

"So that's a very privileged position for industry to be in. If you look at wider society, it's really only things like religion and healthcare that share similar dynamics."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Nov 17, 2022 12:50 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Jun 15, 2022 4:57 pm
and here is a piece to balance some of that positivity over the the Apple TV/MLS deal courtesy of the Huddle Up Newsletter - some very interesting points on MSL Franchise valuations

https://huddleup.substack.com/p/apples- ... =share&s=r
Apple have announced the pricing for its MLS packages in the 2023 season - to what is - shall we say - a mixed response, particularly from those who really matter - the potential subscribers

MLS, Apple announce details of new deal: What to make of pricing, later kickoff times
https://archive.ph/X61Wj

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Nov 19, 2022 7:41 pm

this is an interesting move and acceptance from Sorare - they have accepted that they will have some limited oversight from the French Gambling authority - it is an indirect acknowledgement that financial risk is involved for the games players

https://twitter.com/LionelRALaurent/sta ... 5479269376

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:27 pm

Not the longest article I have ever posted, and for those who read my contributions to the London Clarets magazine Something to Write Home About will know I have written much longer articles, but this article from Mother Jones sums up much of what this thread has looked at since its inception

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ower-ball/

How the Story of Soccer Became the Story of Everything
Oligarchs, private-equity moguls, and petro states took over the sport—and the world.

TIM MURPHYNOVEMBER+DECEMBER 2022 ISSUE

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One afternoon last October, thousands of fans began gathering outside St. James’ Park, the 130-year-old home of the English soccer club Newcastle United, to celebrate a new beginning. Some sported the club’s traditional black-and-white striped jerseys. Others toted cases of booze. There was no match that day, but that only improved the mood. In seven games that season, the team had yet to record a win. Newcastle, once one of the best sides in England, had endured years of mediocrity under the ownership of a miserly local sporting-goods magnate. Magpies supporters resorted to stockpiling cans of beer for the day their fortunes changed. That day had come at last.

The key acquisition who would turn Newcastle around wasn’t a new midfielder or a manager; he was a murderer. The club had been sold for $409 million to an investment group led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, an almost endless reserve of cash controlled by Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto head of state. In 2018, according to the US government, MBS had personally approved an operation to assassinate a Washington Post journalist. But as the news of the takeover sank in, the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi with a bone saw was the last thing on the minds of these supporters. To some, MBS seemed to be a point in favor of the deal. Outside the stadium and on social media, fans added a new flourish to the team’s uniform—they donned red and white head coverings, in imitation of the Saudi ruler. “We’re richer than you,” the crowd sang. One supporter wore an MBS mask.

The fans in Newcastle were unsubtle, but hardly unique. Soccer is undergoing a financial and geopolitical shake-up that has ushered in a gilded age of excess, dirty money, and inequality. Fueled by Wall Street and petrostates, the sport is more profitable than ever. But the consequences of consolidation and unchecked money have become clearer, too. The story of how teams like Newcastle win is also about what fans, institutions, and governments lose to get there. To watch the Premier League on Saturdays, or the World Cup this November, is to experience a crash course in capitalism and power today.

Just as the Moneyball era produced a generation of baseball fans who talked like Nate Silver, soccer’s age of decadence has turned fans into current-affairs obsessives. Sovereign wealth funds, sanctions, and debt seep into Saturday-morning chatter with the same frequency as counter-pressing or expected goals. The forces shaping modern soccer into something bigger, better, and more morally bankrupt than ever are the same ones that have blown up everything else. Following the sport is an education in oligarchs, oil, corruption, media, partisanship, politics, and the financialization of everything. You don’t even have to like soccer to learn from it—because in a lot of ways, the story of the sport’s last two decades hasn’t been about soccer at all.

Soccer has always been a mirror of the larger world, but the image it’s reflecting back is decidedly new. In 2004, Franklin Foer published How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. It was a canonical text for Americans who took an interest in European soccer in the early 2000s, coinciding with the US women’s World Cup victory and the men’s unlikely run to the quarterfinals; the movie Bend It Like Beckham; the actual David Beckham; and the emergence of satellite TV and illegal streaming. You used to have to travel abroad to access this world; now anyone could tune in.

The book’s title is a kind of carbon dating. Everyone had an unlikely theory of globalization back then; if you took too long in the McDonald’s drive-thru, Thomas Friedman would burst through a wall to tell you about “Golden Arches Theory.” Foer’s subjects trended toward the nationalistic—a Serbian fan club whose members formed a paramilitary unit; the Catalan identity of FC Barcelona. It makes for a terrific travelogue. But it also reads like a story from before the Flood. The forces and characters that have reshaped European soccer over the last two decades hardly show up. You won’t find any reference to Qatar, Vladimir Putin, leveraged buyouts, or the Super League. There’s an “oligarch”—but it’s Silvio Berlusconi.

That’s because something monumental happened just after the book came out: the Russian billionaire Roman Abramo­vich won his first English Premier League title with Chelsea, the club he’d purchased a couple years earlier after 15 minutes of negotiations. The arrival of a Kremlin-linked oligarch in London presaged a gusher of money that transformed the sport. It changed how the sport was funded, how it was organized, and where and when it was played—and in turn, it changed how people talked about the finances of the sport, or how they rationalized not talking about them.

The story of soccer’s glittery transformation, and the fight over what it will become, is fundamentally rooted in how the continent’s marketplace is structured. In England, and in each of the 54 other nations that constitute European soccer (with the exception of Liechtenstein), teams are organized into pyramids of leagues. There are 92 professional men’s teams in the English league system, split into four tiers, with a vast array of professional, semiprofessional, and amateur leagues below that. These pyramids are a bit like American professional baseball, but unlike it in a key way: Membership in the top flight—whether it’s La Liga in Spain or the Kategoria Superiore in Albania—isn’t fixed. Teams can be promoted to the league above them, or relegated to the league below them, at the end of each season. (Women’s soccer is similarly organized, with men’s and women’s teams often operating under the umbrella of the same clubs, but the sport’s benefactors have historically lavished their resources on the men’s game, so unless otherwise specified, those are the teams and competitions I’m referring to.) The teams at the tippy-top of each nation’s pyramid qualify to play in European tournaments the next season, of which the most prestigious is the Champions League. In 2020–2021, the 32 teams that participated in the final rounds of the Champions League split $2 billion in prize money. The winner, Abramovich’s Chelsea, took in $126.5 million. The top of the pyramid is where the money is—but it’s a long way down if you fall.

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Roman Abramovich celebrates Chelsea’s Club World Cup victory in Abu Dhabi in February. In March, the UK froze his assets. Michael Regan/Getty

For most of its history, the English pyramid was provincial, ugly, and unprofitable. Although the country had invented the modern version of the sport, its clubs were money pits, the domain of businessmen more interested in a good time than in a good investment. The action on the field was only slightly more refined than the action in the stands, where violence and hooliganism were so rampant that English sides were banned from competing for European cups for much of the 1980s. Between the rugged play and scant TV coverage, it was hard to watch, in every sense. But in 1992, the 22 biggest clubs broke away from the rest of the English pyramid and formed the Premier League. They would still have relegation, but they would no longer share TV revenues with everyone else. And they granted exclusive rights to a media mogul with the ability to make them famous and rich: Rupert Murdoch.

By the time Abramovich came calling in 2003, the Premier League had emerged as an enticing global product. But teams were still largely owned by the same local lads. Chelsea’s English owner had made his money in concrete, purchased the club for £1, and racked up substantial debt. The club’s savior appeared out of a fog. Abramovich’s biographers called him “the billionaire from nowhere.” A Russian news outlet once offered a million rubles to anyone who could produce a photo. After the fall of the USSR, when Boris Yeltsin sold off state assets in exchange for political support, Abramovich acquired a state-owned oil company for a fraction of its value with the help of a fellow oligarch. Later, he’d branched out into metals, emerging not just alive but richer after a period of violent market consolidation known as the “aluminum wars.” When Putin reined in the oligarchs, Abramovich avoided the same fate, serving as governor of the Siberian region of Chukotka. In 2003 Forbes called him the second-richest man in Russia, with a $5.7 billion net worth—a figure that would grow fourfold within a few years.

He had worked hard, and now, Abramo­vich announced, it was time to play hard. “There are lots of rich, young people in Russia,” he told the BBC in his first public comments in London. “We don’t live that long, so we earn it and spend it.”

Abramovich redefined what it meant to spend it. After paying $230 million for the club, he shelled out another $195 million on new signings in a matter of weeks. He molded the club in his own image—an unthinkably wealthy organization that gobbled up assets and widened the gap between the haves and have-nots. In two decades he won five Premier League titles and the Champions League twice—and spent $2 billion to do it. But he wasn’t just having fun. If you were following Chelsea, you might have noticed something else: This wasn’t just about what Abramovich could do for soccer—it was also about what soccer could do for Abramovich.

In 2021, Abramovich sued the investigative reporter Catherine Belton for defamation over quotes she included in an explosive book called Putin’s People. According to court filings, his attorneys took issue with comments from a former Putin ally turned dissident, and several other sources, speculating as to whether the Russian president had directed the purchase of Chelsea in order to gain new influence in the UK. When Belton agreed last winter to add new language emphasizing Abramovich’s strenuous denials and the lack of clear evidence for the claim (it “was never intended as a statement of fact,” she said at the time), Chelsea issued a triumphant press release.

Getting a soccer team to celebrate your settlement, though, reinforced a larger point: This was Abramovich’s foothold; he was the English gentry now.

“There’s this Russian word krysha, which literally means roof, but in reality means ‘protection’—every businessperson has to have an appropriate krysha, which would be a policeman you’re paying off or a politician. His krysha was London,” says Oliver Bullough, a British journalist who guides Kleptocracy Tours through the city’s richest neighborhoods.

Chelsea’s owner had arrived as the vanguard of a new era. Oligarchs ingratiated themselves into the UK’s most prestigious cultural and political institutions, which took their money without asking too many questions about its provenance. Abramovich spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to acquire dozens of UK properties. He paid rent to the queen, purchased an investor visa, hired expensive lawyers, and, according to tabloids, sent his daughters off to school in a helicopter. When the Isle of Jersey invited Abramovich to dock his billions in the offshore tax haven, it pointed to Chelsea and his UK visa as proof of his good standing.

But Abramovich kept his options open. His visa renewal application was delayed in 2018, after the UK started scrutinizing Russian investor visas following the poisoning of a Russian dissident in Salisbury—so Abramovich acquired Israeli citizenship. Later, he became an EU citizen by claiming Sephardic ancestry in Portugal, where he had been a generous supporter of Jewish causes. Chelsea was another passport, for a man who collected them.

At no point was Abramovich’s geopolitical value clearer than when he helped Russia win the rights to host the 2018 World Cup. Would the president of FIFA, the sport’s international governing body, have taken a private meeting with just any survivor of the “aluminum wars”? Well, it’s FIFA. But owning the English champions opened doors. (Abramovich’s spokesperson has said there was nothing “untoward” about his support for the World Cup bid.) Later, Putin told reporters that he thought the oligarch might “open his wallet” to help pay for the tournament. Abramovich, who was already spending millions on the country’s national-team manager and staff, soon did just that. The team spearheading England’s World Cup bid, desperate to understand their competition, hired a retired British spy to prepare an investigative report, which he gave to the FBI and which sparked dozens of criminal cases against soccer bureaucrats. This was Christopher Steele’s first Russia dossier.

Abramovich showed not just that you could buy success, but that you could buy a lot more than that. Status, security, strikers—there was a price tag on everything. He once, in a rare interview, asked a Le Monde reporter what the difference was between a hamster and a rat. “No difference,” he explained. “Just a matter of public relations.” To supporters of rival clubs, Abramovich, with his Kensington manse and private jets and gigayachts was a great villain—mysterious, foreign, nouveau riche. They referred to the club as “Chelski.” But Chelsea fans loved the success his money bought. Supporters raised a banner from the stadium’s upper level, with the owner’s face over a Russian flag, celebrating “The Roman Empire.” In March, a week before the UK government froze the assets of Abramovich and other Russians “whose business empires, wealth and connections are closely associated with the Kremlin,” Chelsea’s owner announced he was selling the club. At the team’s next game, fans interrupted a show of solidarity with Ukraine to chant Abramovich’s name.

Foer wrote about how soccer showed the resilience of community in the face of globalization. FC Barcelona’s motto was “More than a club.” Even as it attracted global superstars like Diego Maradona, the team was fundamentally for and of Barcelona the place. But the response from Chelsea fans to Abramovich’s departure took things to a new level: They were so intensely provincial about a sports team that they were shilling for a sanctioned Russian national. This was the kind of soft power only winning can buy.

The deluge of wealth that inundated real estate markets and eroded civic guardrails threw the soccer world out of sorts, too. Chelsea drove up the cost of everything—if they wanted a player, they could always just add another zero to the offer. But as Abramovich’s team racked up trophies, rival fans didn’t want to just beat Chelsea; they wanted to be Chelsea.

Abramovich “scared the **** out of everybody else,” says James Montague, who profiled the sport’s new breed of super-rich owners in his book The Billionaires Club. “They had to find somebody who could compete. Clubs went trawling into this pretty murky world of recently ennobled, recently enriched billionaires, looking for someone who might have the wherewithal and the bottomless pits and the naivety to pump the same amount of cash into their club.” The ensuing arms race would make some clubs very rich and leave many others behind.

There’s a reason I’m writing about soccer and not, say, the NFL. American leagues are self-contained and highly regulated. Membership is fixed. They impose caps on how much teams can spend and redistribute profits from big teams to small ones. Taxpayers help pay for stadiums. Teams are all but guaranteed to make money. Your team might not win, but it can never really lose. In soccer, when you fall off the top of the pyramid, the TV money and sponsorships that make owning a team potentially lucrative disappear. If the revenues aren’t there or the players aren’t good enough, a club can keep falling until it collapses.

The Premier League, like the UK itself, became a magnet for the ill-gotten spoils of the rest of the world. But finding another Abramovich carried obvious risks. The Russian mining oligarch Alisher Usmanov pumped tens of millions of dollars into Everton, until the UK froze his assets in March. Portsmouth experienced a brief period of success after the arrival of a French-Israeli investor, hailed as a “mini Abramovich.” But his money disappeared, and the club was sold to a Dubai businessman who hosted an Apprentice knockoff and financed the purchase by stealing money from his wife, and eventually the team fell into the hands of a Russian banker who was later convicted of fraud. Portsmouth ended up in the fourth tier—England’s Chukotka.

Wealthy Americans, less interested in winning than in engineering a world where they don’t have to, tried to export their own style to Europe, a blend of cravenness and soggy nepotism familiar to anyone who follows politics or the NFL. These newcomers weren’t looking for a golden passport; they wanted to generate income by capitalizing on marketing opportunities and the TV money available to teams that could consistently qualify for the Champions League. When the Glazers, owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, took over Manchester United in 2005 (Moammar Qaddafi’s bid reportedly fell through), they did so via a leveraged buyout—a financial engineering practice in which the acquisition’s own assets are used as collateral. Since then, the family has accrued dividends from the United brand, but the club itself is still more than a half-billion dollars in debt and hasn’t won a title in 10 years. This past spring, anti-Glazer protesters, angry at the perceived mismanagement, stormed United’s field before a game, forcing a postponement. When a McKinseyite and a corporate raider bought Liverpool in a similar fashion, it ended with the latter’s son telling a fan to “blow me, **** face,” and the Royal Bank of Scotland forcing them to sell the team.

Because the European soccer landscape naturally produces distressed assets, it also, increasingly, attracts the kinds of entities that feast on them—American hedge funds and private equity firms, swooping in with infusions of cash. The fleece-vest brigade can bring new ideas and a threshold of competency. But a bunch of MBAs taking a stake in your team, fans quickly learn, is not quite as fun as Roman Abramovich buying it. This kind of financialization introduces a new dimension fundamentally different from what the purpose of a soccer club traditionally was—some calculation other than wins and losses upon which every season might be measured.

The archetypes of modern wealth—oligarchs, sheikhs, grifters, hedge-funders, Americans named “Stan”—are constantly colliding with one another, so that on any given weekend you get a feel for each of them in turn. Following the money has become its own sport. This year, in lieu of a traditional preview, the Financial Times rated Premier League teams by how likely they were to be seized by the UK government.

There was one kind of money that no one else could match—a marriage of sorts between the world of investment funds and the world of geopolitics—and it shattered what Abramovich first cracked, and rattled the bones of the sport.

In 2007, when everyone was in the market for suitcases of nonsequential bills, Manchester City, United’s rival—beloved by Oasis, uncool in a cool kind of way, very New York Mets-y—was purchased by the recently deposed prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. But Shinawatra, whose assets in Thailand had been frozen, soon offloaded City to another buyer: the emirate of Abu Dhabi.

Technically, it was a private investment fund controlled by Sheikh Mansour, a member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, which effectively rules the United Arab Emirates. Mansour is a deputy prime minister of the UAE. His brother, the ruler of Abu Dhabi, is also the UAE’s president. Mansour quickly turned the club over to Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who runs one of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds and the office responsible for the emirate’s image. The ownership has always denied any link to Abu Dhabi or the UAE and insisted the purchase was just good business. Which it has been—Mansour’s City Football Group has total or partial ownership of a dozen clubs, with outposts in India, China, Australia, and the United States; in 2019 an American private equity firm paid $500 million for a 10 percent stake.

But it is almost impossible to separate the fortunes and finances of Manchester City from the goals of Abu Dhabi because so many of the same people are involved in both. Etihad Airways sponsors the jersey and the stadium. Abu Dhabi buys advertisements at the games. Mubarak himself once told a reporter that “there is almost a personification of the club with the values we hold as Abu Dhabi.” By “values,” he’s not referring to the alleged torture of dissidents or crackdown on journalists in the UAE; through City, the emirate, and by extension the nation, projects an image of a moderate and stable oasis. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the UAE emerged as a refuge for oligarchs. But City drew praise for a minute-long tribute to Ukraine at the Etihad stadium.

What Abu Dhabi got out of City—besides six Premier League titles and very expensive advertising—was both an earnest embrace and a purchased loyalty, from fans and suits alike. Supporters were so thankful they celebrated their absentee owner with a song. (“Sheikh Mansour, my lord, Sheikh Mansour.”) At the same time, the UAE’s billions in economic investment in places like Manchester and New York gave the regime political capital, which it wasn’t afraid to use. In a 2012 memo obtained by the Guardian, an English PR maven who serves as both a board member of City and a consultant to Abu Dhabi advised the emirate’s crown prince (and the country’s effective ruler) on how to negotiate with Prime Minister David Cameron. Given the money the UAE was pumping into the country, and the fighter jets it was prepared to purchase, Downing Street should “help” make the BBC more critical of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE considered an “existential threat.” The flack suggested telling Cameron the BBC was compromised by Islamists. Mubarak, the City chair­, separately lobbied the UK on foreign policy.

Soccer’s soft-power politics took different forms. Russia’s state-funded energy company Gazprom began spending $45 million a year to sponsor the Champions League and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into propping up a prominent German club as part of Putin’s quest to tighten his influence not over just the sport, but also the German economy. In 2011, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar purchased the French club Paris St.-Germain, which had sputtered for years under the control of an American private equity firm.

Qatar’s money turned PSG into a French dynasty and a global brand, and the Gulf state used television as a beachhead to the rest of the continent. Its state-owned network, beIN Sports, has spent billions to obtain the broadcast rights to leagues from Spain to Turkey. This dependence on Qatar’s money has given the country an incredible amount of influence. PSG’s president is the chair of beIN, sits on the board of the sovereign wealth fund, and serves on the executive committee of the sport’s European governing authority—alongside the chair of a Gazprom subsidiary.

As autocratic regimes softened their images by sponsoring soccer clubs, human rights groups coined a new term for the PR makeover they were getting: “sportswashing”—using the global game to clean up their reputations. PSG has won eight French titles in 10 years and boasts some of the world’s biggest stars, including Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé—the kinds of players you’d make your soccer-hating friend watch to show them what they’re missing. It wouldn’t be sportswashing if it sucked.

Unlike Abu Dhabi, Qatar wasn’t just interested in building a club empire. It wanted the same spectacle of legitimacy Putin had wanted for Russia—a World Cup. There were some complications to the country’s bid. Qatar didn’t, as yet, have any stadiums that could accommodate a World Cup. It has criminalized homosexuality. It is 110 degrees in July. There is only one major city. And in order to build the infrastructure that a World Cup would require, it would rely on a migrant-labor system known as kafala, which, in the words of Amnesty International, “traps migrant workers in a cycle of abuse” by legally binding them to employers, who often confiscate passports to prevent laborers from leaving. But Qatar, like Russia, exploited the system’s vulnerabilities. Although both countries have denied wrongdoing, in 2020, the Justice Department accused them of bribing FIFA officials to win their bids. The rest could all be smoothed out. Qatar circumvented the heat by moving the event to November. It is managing the intake of fans by limiting the number of people allowed into the country. Qatar resolved concerns about LGBTQ rights by—well, it has not resolved those concerns. It abolished the kafala system, at least on paper, in 2020, and talks up the legacy of the tournament, as if the mass death accompanying it—more than one migrant worker was dying every day, according to a 2014 report by a law firm commissioned by Qatar itself—was a kind of adversity that Qatari elites and South Asian workers mutually endured, for mutual benefit.

“It’s a very well-funded narrative and a very well-resourced narrative,” says Nicholas McGeehan, a co-founder of the human rights nonprofit FairSquare, of Qatar’s World Cup PR offensive. “The Qataris are saying all the right things, doing all the things, having all the photo opportunities that they could possibly have about all the various initiatives. None of it really changes the reality that what came was far too late, wasn’t serious enough, hasn’t gone far enough, and any progress that was made may just unravel as soon as the spotlight’s over.”

But Qatar’s friends are happy to spread the word. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who now lives in Doha, recently told an audience that Qatar had given migrant workers “dignity and pride” despite the “hard conditions,” while downplaying the reported death toll—the actual number of deaths at stadiums, he said, was three. In April, he expressed his hope that the tournament will be “the World Cup of unity and the World Cup of peace.”

This is the language of sportswashing, but it is fundamentally the language of well-compensated corporate bullshitters everywhere, seeking redemption from the damage they enable without ever acknowledging what really happened; make enough people money and enough people complicit and you never have to say you’re sorry. That flack who suggested smearing the BBC? City hired him from a firm that repped Union Carbide and Blackwater. David Beckham, who ended his career at PSG and officially serves as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, recently signed a $200 million deal to promote Qatar. You could catch him at the Doha Forum in March, posing for photos with Malala.

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Newcastle United fans prepare to watch their first game following the purchase of their team by the Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Ian Forsyth/Getty

In June, a soccer fan tweeted at the account of Venezia, a famously stylish but not famously good Italian club that was recently relegated to the country’s second division. A team with such a stunning location and high-fashion uniforms deserved to be in the top tier of the sport, the supporter said. It needed “an oil money takeover.”

“Appreciate that this was meant as a compliment,” the club replied. “but if that’s what people have to root for at this stage, then we’ve fully normalized a perverse paradigm shift in modern football.”

Or maybe we passed that point a long time ago. This spring, while the UK government was putting the final touches on the $3.1 billion sale of Chelsea (if you guessed “to a consortium backed by an American private equity firm,” congratulations), Newcastle fans were feeling better than ever about their own moral compromise. The Saudi money had allowed the club to bring in enough talent to keep it in the Premier League. At first, the new owners rebuked the fans who had cosplayed as Arabs. Then they changed their minds—like the banners at Chelsea, or the tourists flocking to Doha, this is how the Saudis win. The new owners promised to finally invest in the women’s team, which had hovered in the fourth division. Some Newcastle supporters have pointed to the fact that a British woman owns a stake in the club and is part of the executive team and its avowed support for LGBTQ rights as proof that soccer has the capacity to influence Saudi Arabia. The illusion of a give-and-take is part of the product—they are selling their capacity for change so that they don’t actually have to. One of the sport’s biggest institutions did briefly attempt to hold up the sale, though; Saudi Arabia, Qatar complained, had enabled the pirating of beIN’s broadcasts for years. While the Premier League and Newcastle continued to insist that MBS’ Public Investment Fund had no connection to MBS’ Saudi state, Newcastle unveiled a green-and-white jersey that bore an uncanny resemblance to that of the country’s national soccer team.

When I caught up with Foer recently, he was still thinking about those fans, “dressed as Arab sheikhs out of the ‘Rock the Casbah’ video.” The sport’s evolution had brought the sort of geopolitical backdrop he’d gone hunting for into the foreground.

“I think the bizarre way in which authoritarian regimes have tried to latch onto the tribal particulars of Western Europe really only proves my point,” he says. “Sport is a very convenient thing for the world’s goons because it allows them to attach themselves to institutions that essentially immunize them against criticism from fan bases.” It still explained the world; it was just explaining it in a radically different way.

No one was safe from the temptations or pressures of money. In its quest for revenue, Barcelona went from having no sponsor on its jersey, to offering free advertising for UNICEF, to signing a nine-figure deal with Qatar Airways—the Full Beckham. It lost its greatest player to PSG, and its manager to Munich. The club’s new defining feature was its incredible debt. “It just feels like they’re kind of mortgaging the soul of their club,” Foer says. Without oil reserves of its own, the club was giving a San Francisco private equity firm ever larger stakes in future TV revenues in exchange for cash upfront. The press began calling it “Goldman Sachs FC.”

There was a cumulative effect from all of this, beyond just turning title races into liquidity tests. The life force of the pyramids was this notion of upward mobility—that you would move up if you played well or go down if you didn’t. But the ultra-wealthy, and the speculators looking to profit off the game, are rewriting those rules.

In the spring of 2021, as lower-level clubs stared at their post-Covid bank accounts and wondered how they’d get by, a dozen of Europe’s biggest clubs (including Chelsea, Barcelona, and the Manchester rivals) announced plans for a breakaway “Super League,” with fixed membership, like the NFL, and financing from JPMorgan. Such a plan would be enormously profitable for member clubs, but ruinous for everyone else—domestic competitions, and the Champions League, would become irrelevant. In their hunt for inefficiencies, they’d zeroed in on the pyramid itself. These clubs had come to the same realization American owners—and indeed, tax-dodging, citizenship-shopping, yacht-owning elites the world over—have come to: Wouldn’t it be better if they could just silo themselves off from everyone else?

The move triggered a wave of protests from fans and players, including those whose teams were included in the deal. PSG read the room and opposed the move. According to a German newspaper, the Russian government was reportedly concerned that the move would undercut Gazprom, the country’s soft-power vehicle in the Champions League. The deal fell apart. A few executives and owners even apologized.

“That was a significant failure, but the conditions that created the impetus for it remain in place,” says Tariq Panja, who covers soccer’s muddy finances for the New York Times. Or maybe we should just accept that what Murdoch set in motion 30 years ago has reached its final form, that the league that broke away from everyone else is breaking away, financially, from everyone else again. English clubs spent more money on players this summer than the next three biggest leagues combined. “You’re looking at the Super League—it’s already here,” Panja says. “I believe it’s the Premier League.”

As the World Cup approached, the off-field action captured all the vagaries of modern soccer’s long game. PSG opened a flagship store near 30 Rock. Elon Musk set off speculation that he was buying Manchester United (he isn’t). FIFA’s president was spotted attending a boxing match with MBS—who is angling for a World Cup of his own. While European leagues put on their best show of Ukrainian solidarity, Russians cheered on the war at the stadium that hosted the 2018 World Cup final. The Premier League hinted that it might consider a “human rights component” for new owners, but hasn’t raised the issue since. Even the old faces look a bit different. Silvio Berlusconi was back with a new Italian team; his old one was acquired by private equity.

Soccer’s gilded age is intensifying, for now, without the man who kick-started it with hundreds of millions of dollars of spending and a new understanding of what winning could buy. But Abramovich appears to be landing on his feet. His giga­yachts made it to Turkey. His American real estate remains untouched. In March, his Boeing 787 Dreamliner took off from an airport outside Moscow and landed in a safe refuge, thousands of miles to the south. With London no longer hospitable, he was reportedly looking for a new home in the UAE.

Update, Nov. 14: This article has been updated to more accurately characterize Süddeutsche Zeitung’s reporting on the Super League.

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:39 pm

I am not sure if any of you will find this interesting, but CIES Sports Intelligence have produced this report on the governance structures of the 32 Associations competing in the 2022 World Cup

Governance Structures of Football National Associations
General Assemblies and Executive Committees

https://www.cies.ch/uploads/media/20221 ... rnance.pdf

frankinwales
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by frankinwales » Mon Nov 21, 2022 2:27 pm

Thanks as always Chester...it all stinks..

Up the Clarets.

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:26 pm

I cannot help thinking that we are just 3 weeks out from the Advisory notice of Super League's claim against UEFA from the European Courts that this is playing right into FIFA's hands. People forget that Florentino Perez has a long-standing agreement with FIFA President (who is to be re-elected unopposed - no doubt by acclamation - in March next year) with regards to a World Club Championship fed by continental Super Leagues - Africa's is almost ready to go as I have posted about previously. This new club competition on a global basis with FIFA oversight would bring in the annual revenues that have led to FIFA's covetous glances at UEFA's relative riches

from the Athletic - link to an archive copy to avoid the paywall issues

Denmark ready to discuss blanket withdrawal of UEFA nations from FIFA after armband row
https://archive.ph/f4xhR

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:38 pm

Tou will seel plenty of articles, threads and punditry on the Manchester United sale by the Glazer family, only few will hit the nail on the head though - to the current owners, their investment has been an incredible success as this piesce from the Business Pages of the Guardian clearly seeks to remind people

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ni ... -a-triumph

Glazer’s supposedly reckless financial Man Utd gamble has proved a triumph
Malcolm Glazer’s purchase of the team was an enormous risk. As his sons prepare their exit, they appear on the precipice of victory


Nils Pratley - Wed 23 Nov 2022 19.00 GMT

The Glazers, assuming they find a buyer, will depart Old Trafford as loathed by Manchester United fans as they were on arrival. They won’t give a damn, obviously. Malcolm Glazer, the penny-pinching patriarch who led the £800m takeover in 2005, was never hard to read and nor are his sons. They are interested in sporting success to the extent that it delivers financial success for them.

By the time Glazer died in 2014, the club’s equity was valued by the market at £1.5bn, which was a commercial triumph given the thin sliver of hard cash, as opposed oodles of debt, that supported the buyout. Leverage turned a good investment into an excellent one – for the Glazers, that is, rather than the club.

Strange as it now sounds, 17 years ago many thought the family would fall flat on its face. Yes, Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB had bid £623m for Man Utd in 1998 (and been blocked by competition authorities) but the value of TV football rights, some argued, would deflate with the popping of the turn-of-the-century dotcom bubble. The club’s revenues in the 2003-04 financial year were only £169m, so £800m looked a severe overvaluation. In late 2002, shares in Man Utd fell as low as 100p; Glazer paid 300p.

To get the deal done, the American was forced to the limit. Irish property and horse-racing tycoons JP McManus and John Magnier held a combined 28.7% stake, and the duo never knowingly undersell anything. They rebuffed Glazer’s first bid and rolled over only when the price was improved. Financial pips squeaked as the buyer had to pay interest at 14.25% – paupers’ terms – on the notorious PIK, or payment-in-kind, a higher-risk tranche of debt. It took until 2010 to get the PIKs off the books.

The first half of the gamble, in effect, was that Sir Alex Ferguson would get the club into the Champions League every year, that Old Trafford would remain full, that merchandising revenues could be boosted and Premier League TV rights had further to rise. On all scores, Glazer was correct. The moment of maximum financial danger passed when a minority stake was sold by listing Man Utd in New York in 2012.

The second half of the Glazer years has been a quieter financial affair. Before Monday’s announcement of a sale process, the stock had gone roughly sideways for a decade. The hundreds of millions of pounds being paid by the club in debt interest payments, plus the post-Ferguson decline on the pitch, also weighed on the valuation.

The real game for Glazers, then, has always been about the exit. If the £4bn-plus speculation is to be believed, they are about to win for a second time. Their victory will feel dispiriting to many. But one has to concede that a supposedly reckless financial gamble has proved anything but. Football just keeps inflating, which only feels obvious with hindsight.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Nov 24, 2022 12:34 pm

This is interesting - American Investment groups now targeting the Bundesliga - at least those clubs that can be

This story is actually from Bloomberg but behind a paywall, thankfully yahoo have published it under license


https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/777-p ... 09793.html

777 Partners to Buy Windhorst Stake in Berlin Football Club
David Hellier
Thu, 24 November 2022 at 8:45 am·2-min read

The US private equity investor has agreed to purchase a 64.7% stake in the Bundesliga team from Windhorst’s Tennor Holdings, it said in a statement on Wednesday. The transaction will mark the largest purchase by a foreign company in Germany’s top football league to date, it said.

It’s also the latest example of the growing trend of multiclub ownership that’s spreading through the world’s most popular sport. Miami-based 777, led by co-founders Steven Pasko and Josh Wander, is among the firms that have been buying up clubs to try and tap into the riches of football.

The strong appetite among these investors has even brought them to Germany, where strict ownership rules prioritizing fan needs over financial excess have for years deterred buyers.

Americans, in particular, are drawn by the growth potential and lower valuations in European football compared with sports franchises back home. This year, 777 has struck deals for Paris-based Red Star FC and Belgium’s Standard Liège, as well as Vasco da Gama in Brazil.

The firm, which targets historic clubs with deep connections to fan bases, also owns Italy’s oldest football team, Genoa Cricket and Football Club, and stakes in Spain’s Sevilla FC and Melbourne Victory FC in Australia.

Proponents of the multiclub model point to cost synergies and the potential to strike more lucrative sponsorship deals. Its critics say it stifles competition and creates feeder teams with no real prospect of success.

Hertha BSC currently sits in 15th place in the German Bundesliga -- just above the relegation zone.

Windhorst paid about €375 million ($387 million) for his stake in Hertha BSC. The controversial investor has faced allegations he hired an Israeli spy outfit to help oust the football club’s former president.

“The sale to 777 Partners is an excellent solution and we are very happy with this outcome,” Windhorst said in a statement.

The 777 acquisition is subject to the approval of both Hertha BSC’s board and German football body Deutsche Fussball Liga.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Nov 24, 2022 1:26 pm

Challenges on the horizon for a number of British clubs with Hummel kit contracts as a result of problems with Elite Sports Group going into administration following a long run dispute with Rangers. English clubs affected by this are Southampton, Millwall and Coventry. Everton's relationship with Hummel is via Fanatics. I must stress that it is not Hummel that have the financial problems.

https://www.footyheadlines.com/2022/11/ ... clubs.html

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by aggi » Thu Nov 24, 2022 3:04 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Nov 24, 2022 1:26 pm
Challenges on the horizon for a number of British clubs with Hummel kit contracts as a result of problems with Elite Sports Group going into administration following a long run dispute with Rangers. English clubs affected by this are Southampton, Millwall and Coventry. Everton's relationship with Hummel is via Fanatics. I must stress that it is not Hummel that have the financial problems.

https://www.footyheadlines.com/2022/11/ ... clubs.html
I do wonder what the actual situation is here, whether Elite Sports are just a distributor and Hummel are supplying the kit or Elite Sports have licensed the Hummel name and are responsible for manufacturing too? The latter situation is the case for some kit brands such as Umbro and would obviously have a bigger impact.

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