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 » Sun Apr 17, 2022 8:41 pm

Simon Chadwick questions the level of seriousness UEFA have on preventing/managing related party sponsorships - could it be that PSG's Chairman is also the President of the ECA and Chair of BeIn Sport one of UEFA's major media partners, he also sits on UEFA's Executive Council, and is the Chair of the Qatari State Investment fund that owns PSF and at least a portion of Qatar Air

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 0182084613

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 18, 2022 1:36 pm

How many of you noticed that on Saturday the FA broke it's own sacrosanct rule about a live match over the period covered by the 3pm blackout - you may not but I am willing to bet that the Premier League did - there has been a quietly growing campaign to ditch this rule - I am still a long way from supporting that idea whatever the recent Covid influence experience. Here Jim White in the Telegraph talks up the idea, and not for the first time - the link takes you through the paywall

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 18, 2022 5:19 pm

Came across this interesting blog piece today when doing so more research into MSD UK Holdings - there is a distinct political flavour to it (where isn't there these days) but it has some very interesting additional data that I have not seen before

http://www.lyddonconsulting.com/who-wil ... -football/

Who will drain the swamp of English professional football?

Recent news coverage of the football clubs Derby County, Newcastle United and Bolton Wanderers has slightly lifted the veil on the murky financial jiggery-pokery of the English football industry but it goes nowhere near far enough. Further research since my first article on this subject has revealed a state of affairs that needs to be taken in hand at government level, and then publicly disclosed.[1] This must focus on the relationship between football clubs and HMRC, the public’s ownership stakes in football clubs, and the reliability of the defences against the sport being penetrated by economic crime.

Using the general public as a bank

Derby County group (in administration) owes £29 million+ to HMRC.[2] This has built up from about £1 million in the middle of 2018, the last time the group filed its accounts. In the meantime many payments have been made by the group – to others – such as £2.9 million to a former captain, a reported £6 million to the former manager and his coaching staff, and many more. Why did HMRC allow itself – or rather us – to become the main banker to Derby County and to take a back seat while others were being paid? Was Derby on the ‘Making Tax Digital’ system? What discussions were had with Derby about clearing the arrears? Were representations made by Derby in those discussions about its inability to pay HMRC, and have they turned out to be true or not true? Were fraudulent representations made that have resulted in money being syphoned off for undisclosed purposes, the upshot of which is that the general public have been landed in such an exposed position, given that surely no-one in their right mind at HMRC would have agreed to the situation unfolding as it has? If that proves to be the case, are there mechanisms for the funds diverted away from the club to be clawed back, so that they can be applied to Derby’s HMRC balance? The general public would, I am sure, like to be convinced that HMRC demonstrated high standards in its handling of the case, and that Derby reciprocated.

The inquiry needs to go further. Are all Premier League and English Football League clubs on ‘Making Tax Digital’? What are the current arrears? What are the plans for getting the arrears paid up to date?

Inducing the general public to invest in a bankrupt company

It was reported that the British Business Bank, which comes under Kwasi Kwarteng at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has made us an 8% owner of Bolton Wanderers Football Club.[3] This 8% came about by the bank making a loan of £5 million which was convertible into shares, and which has now been converted. I have issued a detailed paper on this matter.[4]

From an examination of various Companies House filings made by Bolton (or rather by Football Ventures (Whites) Limited), there is a reasonable possibility that the British Business Bank now owns 30% of Bolton, that it made an extra payment of another £4+ million when its loan was converted, and that it has obligations to cover current and future cash shortfalls. Its £5 million loan was converted into shares in October 2021 along with other loans of £7.5 million. All £12.5 million was converted with accrued interest, a sure sign that the borrower was cash-poor and in financial trouble.

We really do need to know what shares the British Business Bank was allotted upon conversion, whether it had to make an extra payment for them, what the company’s share capital consists of, and how many shares the British Business Bank now owns.

This is for good order’s sake as it does not matter in a material sense. The investment is worthless, whether it is 8%, or 30%, or anything in between: the company had an enterprise value in 2020 of a negative of £18.6 million. Nor was the company creditworthy as a borrower, with a negative Tangible Net Worth of £16.4 million. It was loss-making, had recently been in administration, and had negative interest coverage, making it a certainty that the loan would be converted into shares, a worthless minority interest in an unquoted company.

We need full disclosure about the public’s ownership of this club, how it came about, how big it is now, how much was paid out, and the nature and size of any obligations to put more money in.

Economic crime

That football as an industry has become a channel-to-market for gambling, for cryptocurrency and Non-Fungible Tokens is not an economic crime in itself, nor that gambling companies and Buy-Now-Pay-Later companies are or will become sponsors or club owners.

There are two immediate issues in play under this heading. These are the operations of lending companies that do not have a banking licence, and the assurance that the public needs that those market actors who are ‘obliged entities’ within the meaning of the UK’s Money Laundering Regulations have fulfilled their obligations in law, particularly when dealings are undertaken with what are known as Politically-Exposed Persons and high-risk jurisdictions.[5]

The acquisition of Newcastle United was undertaken with the involvement of Politically-Exposed Persons, and Saudi Arabia is at least a medium-risk jurisdiction. It is therefore unacceptable that there can be a dispute – between Mike Ashley as the club’s former owner and Amanda Staveley as one of the new owners – that casts doubt on whether Ms Staveley’s source of funds for her shares was the sale of a hotel in the USA, or was a loan from Mike Ashley.[6] The lawyers, bankers and accountants handling the transaction were under a duty to verify the source of funds, and to carry out Enhanced Due Diligence given the persons and jurisdictions involved. The depth and correctness of their verification work needs to come into the public domain.

The Derby situation involves a company called MSD UK Holdings Limited (MSD) making a £20 million loan to the group, secured by a fixed-and-floating charge on the group’s assets and by cross-guarantees whereby each group member guarantees the loan obligations of all the other group members to MSD.[7]

MSD holds no banking licence, yet it has a US$208 million portfolio of commercial loans to football clubs in the UK. This portfolio was all put on in six months, between its incorporation date of 29 June 2020 and its annual report date of 31 December 2020.[8] It has no other business.

Its portfolio of US$208 million loans granted is matched by US$208 million of loans received, whilst its share capital is US$137.[9] This shows that the company is a conduit with no substance itself, and no loss-absorption capacity itself as would be needed by a bank if it was taking credit risk. The 34-page annual report contains long sections on ‘Significant Accounting Policies’ (pp. 18-26) ad on ‘Financial Risk Management’ (pp. 28-31), inferring it is running and expertly managing significant credit risk: which version is the true one? Is it a banking operation or a conduit? If it is the latter, the sections in the annual report about ‘Significant Accounting Policies’ and ‘Financial Risk Management’ are at best a smokescreen and at worst what?

The security granted for MSD’s loan to Derby has the effect of making MSD a preferred creditor, ranking in the creditor queue in front of the ordinary creditors. Why would MSD be willing to run a £20 million risk on the value of Derby’s assets? Our understanding, gained from verbal discussions with people who have in turn had discussions with the administrator, is that MSD enjoys a further block of collateral backing the entire loan and interest and that it includes a property in Sandbanks in Dorset and two properties in Chelsea, which belong to the club’s former owner. If that is true, it betokens that MSD sees this collateral as its primary security for the loan it has made, and that the charge it has on Derby’s assets is held for the benefit of its former owner, on what might be known as a fiduciary basis: MSD are acting for someone else. What is the true version? Is what we are looking at actually a product that MSD has sold to 10-15 owners of English clubs within a six-month period, on a production line basis? There needs to be an inquiry into whether this even legal as a scheme, but there needs to be a further inquiry into how it was marketed and whether its promoter was identified and duly authorised (by the Financial Conduct Authority) to offer financial products.

MSD demonstrates characteristics of a shell company, with connections to two known tax havens.[10] Its registered address is at LegalLinx on Churchill Way in Cardiff, the address of the company formation agent called 7SIDE Secretarial that is the company’s ‘Secretary’.[11] Its ‘Administrator’ is given as Citco Fund Services (Cayman Islands) Ltd with a P.O.Box address in Grand Cayman, while its auditor is Deloitte’s in St. Helier in Jersey.[12] It purports to get its money to on-lend from a company in the Cayman Islands, called MSD UK holdings Limited, a company known in the accounts as ‘the Offshore Fund’.[13] Its name differs from MSD’s only in that the first letter of ‘Holdings’ is not capitalised in the case of ‘the Offshore Fund’.

The ‘persons with significant control’ of MSD (Marcello Liguori, John Licciardello and Robert Michael Platek) are all US residents. Being a ‘person with significant control’ means meeting the criteria laid down in the UK government’s guidance; the guidance speaks of ‘beneficial owners’ rather than ‘Ultimate Beneficial Owners’.[14] Ligouri and Platek are also directors. Liguori operates from the same address as the Michael S Dell Family Office.[15] He signed the debenture agreement quoting that address, and is a partner of MSD Partners LP, an SEC-registered investment adviser which in turn set up MSD Capital to ‘exclusively manage’ the assets of the Dell family of computer fame. The other director, and the only one who is a UK resident, is a Tina May Westwood, appointed on 24 February 2021.[16] Tina May Westwood has 44 director appointments.[17] This would indicate that she is a nominee director.[18] She appears to be the Tina May Westwood of Maples Group, another company formation agent but on an international basis.[19] This Tina May Westwood attests to being an expert in ‘fiduciary services’.[20]

Since MSD UK Holdings is not a bank, it is not an ‘obliged entity’ itself, but its lawyers, bankers, accountants and trust/company service providers (like Legallinx and 7SIDE Secretarial, and possibly Maples Group as well) are, and their files need to be investigated. Have they ever met any of these people? Are they sure they exist? Were they all duly classified as Politically Exposed Persons by dint of their connection as agents for Michael Dell? What account was taken of the jurisdictions (Cayman Islands and Jersey) that MSD is connected to as well as to the USA and UK? What is the source of wealth of MSD UK Holdings that enables it to make these substantial loans? What was the source of funds for the loan made to Derby? What exactly is this ‘Offshore Fund’ in the Cayman Islands? Who is the Ultimate Beneficial Owner of it? Is it plausible that these three US-resident individuals are ‘persons with significant control’ of MSD not just in the sense of their being registered as the owners of the shares, but also of being beneficial owners? Is it not more plausible that they are nominees for someone else, both as directors and shareholders?

Conclusion

Are you feeling perfectly well and not taken over by any sense of nausea? I personally feel quite sick that the sport has fallen so low as to engage in these antics, but still worse that the taxpayer is subsidising it. Even this small number of occurrences gives rise to many issues of public interest and concern. The government needs to step in and ensure all are inquired into and not just at Derby, Bolton and Newcastle. A thorough draining of the swamp is needed. That can only be done by people and organisations unconnected with any of it. The sport has surrendered its right to police itself

[1] https://www.brexit-watch.org/theres-a-c ... rs-expense

[2] The six companies in administration owe respectively: Gellaw Newco £0, Sevco 5112 £657k, Derby County Football Club £26,639k, Derby County FC Academy £914k, Stadia DCFC £951k and Club DCFC £182k. Source: administrator’s AM03 Proposals document of November 2021

[3] https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/19 ... s/?ref=rss accessed on 27 January 2022

[4] http://www.lyddonconsulting.com/wp-cont ... 6feb22.pdf

[5] UK’s 2017 Money Laundering Regulations: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/692

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... a-staveley accessed on 16 February 2022

[7] Companies House MR01 Registration of Charge of 25nov21 incorporating the debenture on the club’s assets

[8] MSD UK Holdings Limited annual report from Companies House, hereinafter ‘MSD AR’

[9] MSD AR p. 14

[10] Financial Action Taskforce guidance on shell companies: https://www.fatf-gafi.org/publications/ ... rsons.html accessed on 17 February 2022

[11] Company number 02707949, also registered at Churchill House, Churchill Way, Cardiff, Wales, CF10 2HH

[12] MSD AR p. 1

[13] MSD AR p. 2

[14] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/people-with ... ntrol-pscs accessed on 17 February 2022

[15] Companies House MR01 Registration of Charge of 25nov21 p. 29

[16] Companies House filings on MSD

[17] https://find-and-update.company-informa ... pointments accessed on 16 February 2022

[18] https://www.thecorporategovernanceinsti ... -director/ accessed on 17 February 2022

[19] https://maples.com/en/people/t/tina-westwood accessed on 17 February 2022

[20] https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/superv ... vices.html accessed on 17 February 2022
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Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 18, 2022 9:31 pm

Simon Chadwick with more (as always) on the Geo-political economy of sport and the complexities it creates for business interests - I just find it fascinating

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 6745053188

elwaclaret
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Mon Apr 18, 2022 10:00 pm

Read the article above, fascinating reading as you say. These networks are nothing knew, its just that society is catching up with them. Thank God for that it is way over due. I know you arn’t into history but I suggest you cast you eye over complete Vipor’s nest of the East India Company and how it infiltrated right to the point it dictated Government policy. Truth is its always gone on, just now and again someone thinks to draw everyone’s attention, but stuff like that has always itself led to the Peterloo Massacres of the past… because its everywhere. Where there is ‘money’ there is corruption.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 18, 2022 10:07 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Mon Apr 18, 2022 10:00 pm
Read the article above, fascinating reading as you say. These networks are nothing knew, its just that society is catching up with them. Thank God for that it is way over due. I know you arn’t into history but I suggest you cast you eye over complete Vipor’s nest of the East India Company and how it infiltrated right to the point it dictated Government policy. Truth is its always gone on, just now and again someone thinks to draw everyone’s attention, but stuff like that has always itself led to the Peterloo Massacres of the past… because its everywhere. Where there is ‘money’ there is corruption.
Iy is not that I am not into history, just don't have the physical time - I am aware of some of the broad strokes of how East India went about their business, very little different to the licensed privateers under Queen Elizabeth 1st from what I know and nothing's changed

how about this in regard to the man who chairs the PIF, Newcastle's owners

https://twitter.com/VickyPJWard/status/ ... aM44cqAAAA

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:24 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Apr 18, 2022 5:19 pm
Came across this interesting blog piece today when doing so more research into MSD UK Holdings - there is a distinct political flavour to it (where isn't there these days) but it has some very interesting additional data that I have not seen before

http://www.lyddonconsulting.com/who-wil ... -football/

Who will drain the swamp of English professional football?

Recent news coverage of the football clubs Derby County, Newcastle United and Bolton Wanderers has slightly lifted the veil on the murky financial jiggery-pokery of the English football industry but it goes nowhere near far enough. Further research since my first article on this subject has revealed a state of affairs that needs to be taken in hand at government level, and then publicly disclosed.[1] This must focus on the relationship between football clubs and HMRC, the public’s ownership stakes in football clubs, and the reliability of the defences against the sport being penetrated by economic crime.

Using the general public as a bank

Derby County group (in administration) owes £29 million+ to HMRC.[2] This has built up from about £1 million in the middle of 2018, the last time the group filed its accounts. In the meantime many payments have been made by the group – to others – such as £2.9 million to a former captain, a reported £6 million to the former manager and his coaching staff, and many more. Why did HMRC allow itself – or rather us – to become the main banker to Derby County and to take a back seat while others were being paid? Was Derby on the ‘Making Tax Digital’ system? What discussions were had with Derby about clearing the arrears? Were representations made by Derby in those discussions about its inability to pay HMRC, and have they turned out to be true or not true? Were fraudulent representations made that have resulted in money being syphoned off for undisclosed purposes, the upshot of which is that the general public have been landed in such an exposed position, given that surely no-one in their right mind at HMRC would have agreed to the situation unfolding as it has? If that proves to be the case, are there mechanisms for the funds diverted away from the club to be clawed back, so that they can be applied to Derby’s HMRC balance? The general public would, I am sure, like to be convinced that HMRC demonstrated high standards in its handling of the case, and that Derby reciprocated.

The inquiry needs to go further. Are all Premier League and English Football League clubs on ‘Making Tax Digital’? What are the current arrears? What are the plans for getting the arrears paid up to date?

Inducing the general public to invest in a bankrupt company

It was reported that the British Business Bank, which comes under Kwasi Kwarteng at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has made us an 8% owner of Bolton Wanderers Football Club.[3] This 8% came about by the bank making a loan of £5 million which was convertible into shares, and which has now been converted. I have issued a detailed paper on this matter.[4]

From an examination of various Companies House filings made by Bolton (or rather by Football Ventures (Whites) Limited), there is a reasonable possibility that the British Business Bank now owns 30% of Bolton, that it made an extra payment of another £4+ million when its loan was converted, and that it has obligations to cover current and future cash shortfalls. Its £5 million loan was converted into shares in October 2021 along with other loans of £7.5 million. All £12.5 million was converted with accrued interest, a sure sign that the borrower was cash-poor and in financial trouble.

We really do need to know what shares the British Business Bank was allotted upon conversion, whether it had to make an extra payment for them, what the company’s share capital consists of, and how many shares the British Business Bank now owns.

This is for good order’s sake as it does not matter in a material sense. The investment is worthless, whether it is 8%, or 30%, or anything in between: the company had an enterprise value in 2020 of a negative of £18.6 million. Nor was the company creditworthy as a borrower, with a negative Tangible Net Worth of £16.4 million. It was loss-making, had recently been in administration, and had negative interest coverage, making it a certainty that the loan would be converted into shares, a worthless minority interest in an unquoted company.

We need full disclosure about the public’s ownership of this club, how it came about, how big it is now, how much was paid out, and the nature and size of any obligations to put more money in.

Economic crime

That football as an industry has become a channel-to-market for gambling, for cryptocurrency and Non-Fungible Tokens is not an economic crime in itself, nor that gambling companies and Buy-Now-Pay-Later companies are or will become sponsors or club owners.

There are two immediate issues in play under this heading. These are the operations of lending companies that do not have a banking licence, and the assurance that the public needs that those market actors who are ‘obliged entities’ within the meaning of the UK’s Money Laundering Regulations have fulfilled their obligations in law, particularly when dealings are undertaken with what are known as Politically-Exposed Persons and high-risk jurisdictions.[5]

The acquisition of Newcastle United was undertaken with the involvement of Politically-Exposed Persons, and Saudi Arabia is at least a medium-risk jurisdiction. It is therefore unacceptable that there can be a dispute – between Mike Ashley as the club’s former owner and Amanda Staveley as one of the new owners – that casts doubt on whether Ms Staveley’s source of funds for her shares was the sale of a hotel in the USA, or was a loan from Mike Ashley.[6] The lawyers, bankers and accountants handling the transaction were under a duty to verify the source of funds, and to carry out Enhanced Due Diligence given the persons and jurisdictions involved. The depth and correctness of their verification work needs to come into the public domain.

The Derby situation involves a company called MSD UK Holdings Limited (MSD) making a £20 million loan to the group, secured by a fixed-and-floating charge on the group’s assets and by cross-guarantees whereby each group member guarantees the loan obligations of all the other group members to MSD.[7]

MSD holds no banking licence, yet it has a US$208 million portfolio of commercial loans to football clubs in the UK. This portfolio was all put on in six months, between its incorporation date of 29 June 2020 and its annual report date of 31 December 2020.[8] It has no other business.

Its portfolio of US$208 million loans granted is matched by US$208 million of loans received, whilst its share capital is US$137.[9] This shows that the company is a conduit with no substance itself, and no loss-absorption capacity itself as would be needed by a bank if it was taking credit risk. The 34-page annual report contains long sections on ‘Significant Accounting Policies’ (pp. 18-26) ad on ‘Financial Risk Management’ (pp. 28-31), inferring it is running and expertly managing significant credit risk: which version is the true one? Is it a banking operation or a conduit? If it is the latter, the sections in the annual report about ‘Significant Accounting Policies’ and ‘Financial Risk Management’ are at best a smokescreen and at worst what?

The security granted for MSD’s loan to Derby has the effect of making MSD a preferred creditor, ranking in the creditor queue in front of the ordinary creditors. Why would MSD be willing to run a £20 million risk on the value of Derby’s assets? Our understanding, gained from verbal discussions with people who have in turn had discussions with the administrator, is that MSD enjoys a further block of collateral backing the entire loan and interest and that it includes a property in Sandbanks in Dorset and two properties in Chelsea, which belong to the club’s former owner. If that is true, it betokens that MSD sees this collateral as its primary security for the loan it has made, and that the charge it has on Derby’s assets is held for the benefit of its former owner, on what might be known as a fiduciary basis: MSD are acting for someone else. What is the true version? Is what we are looking at actually a product that MSD has sold to 10-15 owners of English clubs within a six-month period, on a production line basis? There needs to be an inquiry into whether this even legal as a scheme, but there needs to be a further inquiry into how it was marketed and whether its promoter was identified and duly authorised (by the Financial Conduct Authority) to offer financial products.

MSD demonstrates characteristics of a shell company, with connections to two known tax havens.[10] Its registered address is at LegalLinx on Churchill Way in Cardiff, the address of the company formation agent called 7SIDE Secretarial that is the company’s ‘Secretary’.[11] Its ‘Administrator’ is given as Citco Fund Services (Cayman Islands) Ltd with a P.O.Box address in Grand Cayman, while its auditor is Deloitte’s in St. Helier in Jersey.[12] It purports to get its money to on-lend from a company in the Cayman Islands, called MSD UK holdings Limited, a company known in the accounts as ‘the Offshore Fund’.[13] Its name differs from MSD’s only in that the first letter of ‘Holdings’ is not capitalised in the case of ‘the Offshore Fund’.

The ‘persons with significant control’ of MSD (Marcello Liguori, John Licciardello and Robert Michael Platek) are all US residents. Being a ‘person with significant control’ means meeting the criteria laid down in the UK government’s guidance; the guidance speaks of ‘beneficial owners’ rather than ‘Ultimate Beneficial Owners’.[14] Ligouri and Platek are also directors. Liguori operates from the same address as the Michael S Dell Family Office.[15] He signed the debenture agreement quoting that address, and is a partner of MSD Partners LP, an SEC-registered investment adviser which in turn set up MSD Capital to ‘exclusively manage’ the assets of the Dell family of computer fame. The other director, and the only one who is a UK resident, is a Tina May Westwood, appointed on 24 February 2021.[16] Tina May Westwood has 44 director appointments.[17] This would indicate that she is a nominee director.[18] She appears to be the Tina May Westwood of Maples Group, another company formation agent but on an international basis.[19] This Tina May Westwood attests to being an expert in ‘fiduciary services’.[20]

Since MSD UK Holdings is not a bank, it is not an ‘obliged entity’ itself, but its lawyers, bankers, accountants and trust/company service providers (like Legallinx and 7SIDE Secretarial, and possibly Maples Group as well) are, and their files need to be investigated. Have they ever met any of these people? Are they sure they exist? Were they all duly classified as Politically Exposed Persons by dint of their connection as agents for Michael Dell? What account was taken of the jurisdictions (Cayman Islands and Jersey) that MSD is connected to as well as to the USA and UK? What is the source of wealth of MSD UK Holdings that enables it to make these substantial loans? What was the source of funds for the loan made to Derby? What exactly is this ‘Offshore Fund’ in the Cayman Islands? Who is the Ultimate Beneficial Owner of it? Is it plausible that these three US-resident individuals are ‘persons with significant control’ of MSD not just in the sense of their being registered as the owners of the shares, but also of being beneficial owners? Is it not more plausible that they are nominees for someone else, both as directors and shareholders?

Conclusion

Are you feeling perfectly well and not taken over by any sense of nausea? I personally feel quite sick that the sport has fallen so low as to engage in these antics, but still worse that the taxpayer is subsidising it. Even this small number of occurrences gives rise to many issues of public interest and concern. The government needs to step in and ensure all are inquired into and not just at Derby, Bolton and Newcastle. A thorough draining of the swamp is needed. That can only be done by people and organisations unconnected with any of it. The sport has surrendered its right to police itself
somewhat surprised that this has not provoked any comment even if it is a blog piece from a guy with a very specific political bent

Paul Waine
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Paul Waine » Tue Apr 19, 2022 3:48 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:24 pm
somewhat surprised that this has not provoked any comment even if it is a blog piece from a guy with a very specific political bent
Hi CP, just finished reading the above lyddonconsulting stuff.

1) I'm fully in agreement with lyddon consulting re PAYE/NIC debt to HMRC, especially when the debt is run up by large organisations paying "fabulously high" and often otherwise unaffordable wages. PAYE/NIC deducted from footballers wages should be immediately paid to HMRC, not used as cashflow for their club and paid, if paid at all, sometime later.

Not sure why he's particularly got this in this blog. Insolvent companies defaulting to HMRC has gone on forever. It's not specifically a sign that English professional football is in a swamp....

2) Bolton Wanderers and British Business Bank: I'd not heard of BBB taking investments in football clubs before. I'll read more.

3) MSD £20 million loan secured on Derby County assets: this is good research on you part. Lyddon is providing more information than we've had previously on MSD security/charges/collateral backing their £20m. However, given that this guy's website says he's been consulting since 2000, focusing on "payments and cash management" in "international banking" I wouldn't have expected him to make the mistake of suggesting that banking licenses, and, therefore, capital reserves or "loss-absorption capacity," as he terms it, are required to lend money, they are not. Putting that aside, I like all the details lyddon quotes re MSD, though we both know he could have gone further and put some borrowers names against the $208 million loan portfolio MSD reported at 31-Dec-2020. We also know that "$137 share capital" is £100. As an accountant, I'm disappointed lyddon doesn't appear to know anything about accounting standards: "Significant Accounting Policies" and "Financial Risk Management" disclosures are required by Company Law and are the exact opposite from "at best a smokescreen and at worst what?" he quotes in his blog.

His next statement "The security granted for MSD’s loan to Derby has the effect of making MSD a preferred creditor,....." makes the guy sound very naive and almost childlike. I can't believe anyone can have been consulting in any aspect of "payments and cash management" in "international banking" for 20 days, never mind more than 20 years without being aware of the ranking of creditors in insolvency. He's also hopelessly on the wrong track to think that there is any way that MSD is holding any assets for the benefit of its former owner (Mel Morris), on what might be known as a fiduciary basis. Wow, that is way out there as nonsense... Similarly, his comments about Financial Conduct Authority authorisation show just how far out of his area of expertise he has drifted.

interesting research and find on your part.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by aggi » Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:17 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:24 pm
somewhat surprised that this has not provoked any comment even if it is a blog piece from a guy with a very specific political bent
It's a bit of a weird article, I don't know whether they're trying to use football as a proxy for greater issues or what but the first couple of points (HMRC as a bank and issues with the BBB loans) are nothing new across the whole of the business world.

The MSD stuff seems a bit all over the place though. I'm not really sure what the banking licence bit is about and I don't understand why he thinks all those associated with Michael Dell (or Dell himself) are PEPs. He asks Why would MSD be willing to run a £20 million risk on the value of Derby’s assets? but the answer of them being a preferred creditor and Derby having more than £20m of assets seems fairly obvious.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:34 pm

Cheers Paul, the writer definitely got lost with his Brexit focussed angles.

I have confirmed his statement about MSD UK Holdings Ltd (the small 'h' was a typo, there is a confirmation statement that corrects that) is indeed in the Cayman Islands as we suspected - it is stated clearly in the MSD UK Holding Limited accounts. Slightly more interesting is the fact that the auditors statement in those accounts confirms the Ultimate parent of MSD UK is a New York Based Investment Fund -though it is not named

As you are aware I had already made the Westwood/Maples and 7side connections, what do you make of the 'obliged entity' element of his rant - which we know covers serious territory and responsibilities (money laundering etc) bearing in mind that we also know that both the MSD UK Holdings entities have specific SEC agreement for cross-funding and investment (along with another 40 or so MSD entities).

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Paul Waine » Tue Apr 19, 2022 5:49 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:34 pm
Cheers Paul, the writer definitely got lost with his Brexit focussed angles.

I have confirmed his statement about MSD UK Holdings Ltd (the small 'h' was a typo, there is a confirmation statement that corrects that) is indeed in the Cayman Islands as we suspected - it is stated clearly in the MSD UK Holding Limited accounts. Slightly more interesting is the fact that the auditors statement in those accounts confirms the Ultimate parent of MSD UK is a New York Based Investment Fund -though it is not named

As you are aware I had already made the Westwood/Maples and 7side connections, what do you make of the 'obliged entity' element of his rant - which we know covers serious territory and responsibilities (money laundering etc) bearing in mind that we also know that both the MSD UK Holdings entities have specific SEC agreement for cross-funding and investment (along with another 40 or so MSD entities).
Hi CP, I've checked out Bob Lyddon on LinkedIn. He's got a first class degree from Cambridge in the 70s (they didn't give away 1st class degrees at any university in those days). OK, his degree is in modern languages and then he developed his career in the payments and cash management side of international banking. But, he leaves me thinking he's had a very "limited" working life and not got into the real guts of international banking and international finance. I'm pretty sure the "offshore fund" he mentions in the context of MSD is "offshore USA." US tax gives some advantages to US citizens investing offshore. It's all perfectly legitimate and normal for US citizens. I don't think you needed to be "high net worth" to hold those sorts of investments.

I don't understand his "obliged entity" reference. Only way I can give it context (I may be wrong) is he's making parallels with banking obligations...

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 19, 2022 6:15 pm

Paul Waine wrote:
Tue Apr 19, 2022 5:49 pm
I don't understand his "obliged entity" reference. Only way I can give it context (I may be wrong) is he's making parallels with banking obligations...
certainly the way I took his meaning

thanks for all the other input and background checking - nice to know I am starting to understand this stuff a bit more

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Paul Waine » Tue Apr 19, 2022 6:23 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Apr 19, 2022 6:15 pm
certainly the way I took his meaning

thanks for all the other input and background checking - nice to know I am starting to understand this stuff a bit more
I've now read the Addendum in "Something to Write Home About." Thanks for the "thanks."

Given the club needs a new manager and whole new coaching team, plus 3 points from each of most of our remaining games, the financial accounts for the year to last summer are no longer the "top priority."

UTC

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by ClaretPete001 » Wed Apr 20, 2022 9:48 am

I think the article is not naïve it's just making a broader based political point about modern capitalism.

Just because practices are common place does not making them ethically right and I think it is true to say football has largely avoided such practices up to this point.

It's also true the tax payer is suffering much of the risk of American style capitalism and supply side economics. I don't think this point was widely understood until the banking fiasco of noughties and early last decade. Further exacerbated by New Labour's policy of subsidising capital and forcing the tax payer to "make up" low wages.

The problem is shell companies and tax havens all serve to undermine the tax and spend aspirations of centre left liberalism, which holds the social fabric together while capital behaves as it does.

I think much of this played into the frustration that led to Trump and Brexit and the rejection of mainstream neo-liberals like Hilary Clinton. I fear Keir-Starmer may suffer the same as chaotic buffoons like Boris and Farage are seen as anti-establishment when in fact they are anything but....!

Obviously, it's useful to understand the minutiae of how companies are structured but it doesn't change the wider political and ethical landscape of neo-liberal capitalism that is increasingly being recognised as toxic for ordinary people and communities like Burnley.

In this landscape, I think ALKs business model will increasingly be seen as backward and predatory. Rightly so.

I hope those who just want to talk about Burnley Fc can tolerate the pompous waffling's of those who want to engage in this kind of stuff. In my defence, I did go to Barden so I haven't always been like this...! Once upon a time, my mind knew only the delights of Carlsberg and the sticky carpets of Angels - oh to be back in simpler times.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 20, 2022 9:58 pm

At various times in this thread and non more so than the build up tot he Super League announcement a year ago I have posted research papers on the changing nature of fandom - The ECA's on commissioned research was the fundamental basis of Super League and it's spin off the revised Champions League post 2024

In that spirit I add this latest piece published for free access this week - it is academic but worth a perusal
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.117 ... 2211021529

‘All Avatars Aren't We’: Football and the experience of football-themed digital content during a global pandemic

Garry Crawford, Alex Fenton, Simon Chadwick, ...
First Published July 6, 2021 Research Article
https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902211021529

Abstract
This paper explores the contemporary nature of association football consumption. In particular, we argue that the coronavirus 2019 pandemic reveals the contemporary and particular nature of the relationship between football and its supporters, which is increasingly focused on the consumption of themed digital participatory experiences. During this pandemic, what fans missed was not only live football, but also the sporting ‘experience’ and the opportunities for participation that this provides. Hence, here we saw fans, clubs and media providers employing new digital technologies to create themed experiences that facilitated (and mediated) participation and interaction. Following Žižek (2014), we suggest that the coronavirus 2019 pandemic can be understood as a global mega event that creates a seismic, reality alerting schism, whose aftermath requires new ontologies and theories. Our response is to utilise a number of key and illustrative examples and to offer a new synthesis of theories and literatures, most notably, on the experience society, theming, participatory culture, neoliberalism and digital culture. This new context and (re)combination of theories then provides a new, and essential, perspective that reveals a great deal about the contemporary nature of the sport, what fans buy into, and also, how this may change post pandemic.

Introduction
This paper explores contemporary association football (referred to as ‘football’, here on) fandom, relating this discussion to changing patterns of digital consumption. Moreover, we examine how the recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic has revealed the contemporary and particular nature of the relationship between football and its supporters, which is increasingly focused on the consumption of themed digital participatory experiences.

A key tenet of this paper is that during the pandemic, what fans missed was not only live football, but also the sporting experience and the opportunities for participation that this provides. Hence, during the pandemic, we saw fans, clubs, and media providers working separately and together to use digital technologies to create themed experiences that facilitated continued (and mediated) participation and interaction. This then reveals a great deal about the contemporary nature of the sport, what fans buy into, and also, how this may change post-pandemic.

The paper begins with a brief discussion of the impact of COVID-19 upon professional football, specifically in the UK – and the examples used here, and throughout the paper, have been purposefully selected to illustrate particular characteristics of digitally mediated football during the pandemic.

The next section provides a brief overview of what we see as the key trends in the academic literature on football fandom and contends that this paper contributes to, and advances, a new and developing ‘digital football studies’ – the literature that focuses on the increasingly central role of digital media in the production and consumption of sport.

Next, we chart the changing nature of consumer society. Here, we argue that due to a number of inherent weaknesses within consumer society we have seen an evolution of a new kind of economy, based around the creation and consumption of experiences.

Thereafter, the paper identifies that, although at the turn of the 20th-century television seemed to be the dominant way most fans consumed football, for a newer generation of supporters, new digital technologies, such as social media and mobile devices, offer both greater convenience and more opportunities for participation. However, importantly, we argue that this does not necessarily provide fans with any greater access, power, or connection, but in many ways, may further isolate and disempower supporters.

The following section highlights the central role of theming in an experience society. Theming is not necessarily new in the sale and consumption of sport; however, we suggest that new digital technologies offer greater opportunities for the creation and consumption of participatory football-themed experiences.

We then reflect more broadly on the development of an experience society and participatory culture and consider if this can be understood (more positively) as changes in audience needs and demands, or (more negatively) as part of a wider neoliberal culture and economy. Then, finally, the paper concludes by asking if the COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated this shift to a primary engagement with football through new digital technologies.

Therefore, although undoubtedly there is an existing (and developing) literature on areas such as sport and the digital, theming in sport, and sport in an experience society, none have brought these (and other) strands together as we do here, in a way that allows for a better understanding of the contemporary consumption of football – as a themed digital participatory experience. The synthesis of these, and various other, literatures in this paper not only advances our understanding of the contemporary consumption of football, but moreover, is crucial for considering the increased shift towards the consumption of digital experiences we witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we would suggest, will continue to accelerate post-pandemic. This context and (re)combination of theories then provides a new, and essential, perspective that reveals a great deal about the contemporary nature of the sport, what fans buy into, and also, how this may change post-pandemic.

COVID-19 and football in a time of a global pandemic
On 12 March 2020, the English and Scottish Premier Leagues and Football Associations, Scottish Professional Football League, English Football League, and Women's Super League collectively suspended all professional football matches – the first time football had paused in this way since World War Two. This similarly occurred, at around the same time, in most other countries around the world. The last football league to hold out against closure was the Belarusian Premier League, which in March 2020 signed at least 10 new television deals, (The Guardian, 2020a). However, live matches in this league, like all others, soon ceased.

This unprecedented pausing of live sporting experiences created major logistical and financial problems (Stone, 2020a), as it reduced the flow of content of major sporting brands. Once the supply of traditional content was halted, football clubs and media providers were left with a major issue of how to keep fans entertained and engaged.

Response was that many football fans and clubs turned to digital media as a means to fill the void left by live sport. One of the first to do so was Leeds United, whose game against Cardiff City on 15 March 2020 had been postponed indefinitely, who decided to let the video game Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA 20) simulate the game, broadcasting this live on social media (Sobot, 2020).

The game was promoted on the day on the Leeds United official Twitter feed with one simple tweet, ‘Anyone else bored? How about we let #FIFA20 decide today's result’. The game ended in a 3-3 draw and attracted over 50,000 views on Periscope (Sobot, 2020). The response from those who followed the game on social media was mixed. Many fans were clearly engaged and commented on the game as if they were following a ‘real’ game (a physical, in-stadium, football match), such as celebrating the goals. Some seemed largely bemused by it all, but most seemed to be, at least in part, entertained, and were actively joined in by tweeting comments during the game – such as one Leeds fan tweeted, ‘all avatars aren’t we’ with a laughing emoji, a play on the famous Leeds’ chant of ‘all Leeds aren’t we’.

Another early example was on 4 April 2020, the day that Wolverhampton Wanderers (Wolves) had been due to play their local rivals Aston Villa in a Premier League game. The (then) Wolves player Diogo Jota took on Villa's Ezri Konsa at FIFA 20, playing for their respective teams, in a game that was streamed live on Twitch. The contest had live commentary from Wolves TV commentators, match highlights were posted on Twitter, and local newspapers, like Wolverhampton's Express and Star, ran articles on the match much as they would have for any Premier League game. Another alternative was presented by the non-league outfit, Whitehawk in their game against Guernsey. Whitehawk and Guernsey decided at the end of March 2020 that they would devise a script for their scheduled game, and then post on Twitter, as if reporting on a live match – which in the end, turned out to be a 12-goal thriller that finished six goals apiece. However, probably the biggest and most visible organised event was the Ultimate QuaranTeam eSports contest.

The idea of the tournament originally came from the media team at Leyton Orient, who invited 63 other English teams to join them in a FIFA 20 knockout tournament. However, the teams involved grew far beyond the original list and outside of the UK, with, in the end, 128 teams from 16 different countries participating (Ouzia, 2020). Some of the teams were controlled by players from the respective clubs, like Crystal Palace player Andros Townsend, and Blackburn Rovers’ Bradley Dack. Other clubs enlisted fans to represent them, while some, like the eventual winners’ Wolves, already had professional FIFA players signed to represent the club. All of the games were then streamed live on Twitch, and all major gambling companies took bets on them like they would for any other football match. Clubs also posted social media updates in exactly the same way they would with a ‘real’ match.

Fans also sought to produce or play out their own football-related alternatives. Examples included a series of social media chain posts, where individuals posted their favourite football-related pictures, along with copied text about how much they were missing football and then a nominated person whom they were asking to carry on the chain, or similarly, a chain post asking a nominated person(s) to share pictures of their five favourite footballers. Gamers have also been taking to playing football simulations in large numbers. Sports Interactive made the latest version of their video game Football Manager available for free at the end of March 2020 for 1 week, but due to popular demand, extended this for another week (Hawkins, 2020). However, even before the game was made free, during the first weeks of the first coronavirus lockdown in the UK, the game was racking up record numbers of players on the video game service Steam (Gallagher, 2020).

These are, of course, just some illustrative examples, as media outlets, football clubs (as well as other sports), and fans, sought to create and deliver content to fill the void created by the absence of live matches. However, what unites all of these (and numerous other) examples is that they all provide fans with not only an alternative (most often digital) themed experience, but also an opportunity to participate in this, such as by playing out sports-themed video games, or posting or commenting on social media.

Undoubtedly, therefore, the consumption of football, like much of the rest of society, changed radically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, we would suggest, that this pandemic constitutes what Žižek (2014) would see as a global mega-event, similar to the global financial crisis of 2007, which creates a seismic, reality-alerting schism, whose aftermath requires new ontologies and theories – or here we would propose a (re)combination of theories – that better capture emerging social and cultural developments.

Football fandom and consumption
Consumption has always been part of football, as have all organised spectator sports, but from the mid-20th century onwards, consumption became ever more central to professional football (Crawford, 2004). Undoubtedly, football fundamentally changed in England after 1961 with the removal of the players’ wage cap that had been in place since 1904. This, for sociologists such as Taylor (1969), marked the start of what he saw as a ‘bourgeoisification’ of the game.

From the early 1990s onwards, football then underwent what Giulianotti (2002) defines as a ‘hypercommodification’. Certainly, in the UK, the last decade of the 20th century saw significant changes to the nature and consumption of football. In 1990, the publication of the Taylor report, after the Hillsborough tragedy of the previous year, recommended and led to all professional football stadia in the UK becoming all-seater venues. This was also the year when English football teams were readmitted to European club competition for the first time after a 5-year ban, the men’s English national squad came agonisingly close to cup glory in the 1990 World Cup Finals, losing in the semi-finals to West Germany on penalties. All of this was then followed by the creation of the English FA Premier League, and its subsequent deal with BSkyB television (Lawrence and Crawford, 2019).

It is also in this period that we saw the development of a body of work focusing on, what was termed, football's ‘new fandom’. Writers, such as Taylor (1995), Redhead (1997) and King (2002), set out to chart the changing nature of football, but more specifically, argued that we were the creation of a new kind of supporter, what King (2002) referred to as ‘new consumers’ – whose primary means of connecting with the sport was through the consumption of large quantities of official club merchandise (such as replica football shirts) and televised matches.

Although the new fandom literature was undoubtedly a key development in the academic study of football, an inherent problem with much of this work, as with much of what had gone before it, was that this tended to, either explicitly or implicitly, romanticise an (largely imagined) era of traditional (primarily White male) working-class ‘real’ fans, as opposed to what the authors saw as a new ‘inauthentic’ (middle-class and family-based) consumer audience. This was an assumption subsequently challenged by several authors, including Crawford (2004), who argued that a more useful theorisation was to understand all sport fandom as an act of consumption, as this avoids value-laden categories of authenticity.

It is then on the foundations of this early literature that at the turn of the century we saw the rapid growth and establishment of football studies as a significant area of academic research. This includes (but is not limited to) the work of authors, such as Poulton (2007), Millward (2012), Dixon (2013), Gibbons (2014), Doidge (2014), and Pope (2017). These, and others, helped significantly move the discussion of football fandom into new areas, and in ways that left behind old typologies based around outdated ideas of authenticity. For example, this new research gave more consideration to previously marginalised topics, such as female fans (for example Pope, 2017), and Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic supporters (for example Lawrence and Davis, 2019).

However, much of this literature engaged either directly or indirectly with what David et al. (2017) have referred to as the ‘Murdochization of football media’. That is to say, how the changing relationship between football and broadcast media (and more specifically satellite and cable television) from the early 1990s onwards shaped the nature and consumption of sport.

Lawrence and Crawford (2019) suggested that what we have started to see in recent years is a new wave of football fan literature, which they refer to as ‘digital football studies’. This emerging literature considers the ways fans are now engaging with football via digital technologies, including peer-to-peer live streaming (such as David et al. 2017), podcasts (such as Pipini, 2019, Rivers and Ross, 2019), and video games (such as Crawford, 2015), to name but a few. As Miah (2017: 3) argues, we are witnessing ‘a transition [in sport] from an analogue to a digital way of producing and experiencing sport’. This new literature is therefore engaging with, and documents, how new digital media is increasingly central to the production, consumption and experience of football – and in particular, it is to this literature, that this paper adds, and moves forward.

Consumption and the experience society
In this section, drawing most notably on the work of Miles (2021), we argue that due to a number of inherent weaknesses within consumer society, we have seen an evolution of a new kind of consumer society, based on the creation and consumption of experiences. This, as we shall argue, has particular consequences for the nature of football and how it is consumed.

The work of Miles (2021) is one of our key starting points, as Miles’ study is both the most up-to-date and also most comprehensive attempt to understand the location of sport in an experience society. However, Miles’ work primarily focuses on the importance of broadcast (the ‘Murdochization of football’), rather than digital, media, and consequently, ideas such as theming and participatory culture are not particularly prominent in his work – certainly not in respect to their role in the consumption of sport. Moreover, Miles’ work was written before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is our argument here, that it is this that makes even more visible the central role of themed digital participatory experiences in the consumption of football. Hence, the work of Miles (as well as others, such as Pine and Gilmore, 2011) on the experience society offers the first, of several, strands we seek to weave together − which includes, most notably theming, participatory culture, neoliberalism, and digital culture − in order to offer new perspectives and insights into the contemporary consumption of football.

Miles (2021) highlights that there are, at least, five inherent limits to consumer culture. First, as highlighted by Adorno and Horkheimer (1979) consumption never fully delivers what it promises. In particular, capitalism (most notably through advertising) sells false hopes and desires that it never fully delivers on, and hence, ‘perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1979: 145).

Second, though we may draw on consumer products and resources in the performance of our identities, how others perceive this may not necessarily match our own, or intended, self-image. As Miles (2021: 30) argues ‘one individual's idea of good taste is another's “crass consumerism’”. Then, of course, how others see us often impacts on our own self-image. Hence, for example, the football shirt a fan might initially love may soon lose its appeal if they think others (whose opinion they value) are judging them negatively for wearing it. For example, King (2002) highlights how supporters at clubs like Manchester United who wore replica football shirts, may have thought they were demonstrating their loyalty to the club, but by others, they were often dismissed as not ‘real’ fans.

Third, Miles (2021) argues, that not only do consumer goods never fully deliver on their promise, but neither does their novelty last long. For an item to have any prolonged meaning, it needs to be associated with a particular, or certain types, of experience. As he writes ‘they could be the shoes we wear to go dancing…But in order for the self to feel that it belongs…they need to be more than mere shoes. The shoes are merely one element of a more impactful and less transitory experience’ (Miles, 2021: 30). This, is of course, what some of the new fandom literature failed to grasp – that is, that the meanings people attach to objects, such as a football shirt, matter. As Kendall and Osbaldiston (2010) highlighted, a football shirt is much more than just a piece of synthetic material, and for many, can be a sacred item deeply imbedded in personal narratives.

Fourth, as Bauman (1998) highlights, certain consumers are inevitably ‘flawed’. This describes those who aspire to consume, but for various reasons, such as lack of economic capital, cannot, or certainly cannot at the level they aspire to. And, to not consume, (to use Bauman's terminology) is to become a ‘vagabond’ – an outcast from (consumer) society. Again, links here can be made to the new football fandom literature, which argued that many traditional supporters were being priced out of the game.

Fifth, Miles argues that the consumption of objects, our investment in them, and their power in determining our social status, are less important than they once were. Of course, as highlighted above, the links between how we think something will make us appear, and how it actually does, has always been far from straightforward. However, partially due to increased concerns about excessive consumption and its impact on the environment, Miles (2021: 27) argues, that ‘there are signs that consumers are less drawn to objects as a means of self-expression’.

Hence, Miles (2021: 30) argues, consumption is ‘a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction’. Although consumer products offer us an almost endless supply of products, ‘they are always transient and empty of permanent meaning’. Hence, ultimately the consumption of goods and products has failed us because they never fully delivered on what they promised, or what we wanted them to.

It has therefore been suggested that what we have increasingly seen from the end of the 20th century onwards, is a shift towards what has been termed an ‘experience society’ (Miles, 2021) or ‘experience economy’ (Pine and Gilmore, 2011). This constitutes a new form of consumer culture, based not upon products or services, but instead on the consumption of staged experiences. As Pine and Gilmore (2011: ix) suggested, ‘in a world saturated with largely undifferentiated goods and services the greatest opportunity for value creation resides in staging experiences’. For Pine and Gilmore, this ‘value creation’ is mutually beneficial for both the producer and the consumer – as the consumer gets a more enjoyable, engaging, and prolonged encounter, while the former profits from being able to sell something customers seem to want.

For Pine and Gilmore (2011), the origins of the experience economy can be found in the Disneyland theme park, but it is the subsequent rapid development of new technologies that have enabled a ‘whole new genre of experience, such as video games, online games, motion-based attractions, 3-D movies, virtual worlds, and augmented reality’ (Pine and Gilmore, 2011: 4). In particular, the development of the experience society is closely linked to technological innovations and informational modes of capitalism that have enabled greater consumer interaction and participation.

Therefore, central to an experience society is participation. As Salen and Zimmerman (2004: 314) succinctly write ‘experience is participation’. While Salen and Zimmerman may be overstating their point, as experience is obviously more than just participation – as experiences are most commonly staged for our consumption – this does highlight the centrality of participation to the experience society. There is certainly no experience without the active participation of individuals or groups in the events that are staged. In particular, the experience society constitutes part of an intertwined process of the increased blurring between acts of consumption and production, or what Toffler (1980) referred to as the rise of the ‘prosumer’.

Of course, we use terms like ‘prosumer’ with a great deal of caution, as experiences are often sold to consumers on the basis of their participation. For example, this is particularly the case with video games, which are often promoted on the basis of the gamer's ability to mould the game to their own experience. However, the ability of the gamer to personalise their gaming experiences are often greatly overstated (Crawford, 2012). Video games, like all staged experiences, are limited in what they offer – limited by not only what the technologies involved, but also by the intentions and ideologies of the designers behind the staging of the experience. However, it is certainly the case that individuals often feel involved with the experiences they participate in, as these provide a (real or imagined) sense of being involved in the creation of the overall experience. This is because, in an experience society, consumers feel increasingly empowered to make choices about what and how they consume, and hence, feel more invested in it – even if that feeling of empowerment may be largely imagined.

Football in an experience society
Football (as with other sports) has always been an experience. For fans, historically, this experience came first and foremost from being there, at the live event. This changed with the advent of televised football. However, for most fans, watching sport on television has always been a secondary and poor replacement to the live experience. Hence, the aim of many media providers has been to deliver a more engaging experience for those consuming sport at a distance. This they have done by adding elements such as, action replays, expert commentary, and multiple camera angles, which are all aimed at making the televised experience less of a substitute, and in some respects, surpassing the live experience.

However, Jenkins (2006) argues, changes in media consumption patterns are not just top down or technologically driven but can also be shaped by changing audience profiles and needs. In particular, it has been suggested that in recent years we have seen a steady decline in viewing figures for live televised sport, but in kind, a marked increase in the number of streaming sports footage, both live and after the event, most often via mobile devices (Evens, 2017).

Generation-Z consumers (those born between the mid-1990s and 2010) are not watching sport in the same way as older generations did (Özkan, 2017). Rather, for this new generation, live streaming plays a much bigger role in how they consume content, and they are much more likely than older football fans to use streaming apps and unauthorised streaming services (Evens, 2017). This is then, what Rowe et al. (2010: 301) referred to as the ‘post-hegemonic broadcast age’, where sport fans are increasingly consuming sport via digital content and devices. As Evens writes:

It is no secret that live television is under pressure, most significantly by the rise of connected viewing practices, which form part of an impending revolution in how screen media is created, circulated and consumed. The migration from one screen to many, upending traditional business models and provoking multi-platform strategies, challenges traditional television viewership (Evens, 2017: 284).

Engaging with sport on a digital device offers important advantages over broadcast television. First, it allows consumers a more individualised experience – they get to see what they want, when they want it, and where they want it. Second, this more easily facilitates engagement with social media, allowing fans to share content and connect with others online. Digital media therefore replicates, or at least offers a surrogate, for the types of participation and interaction that sport fans have always experienced and desired.

Experiences are social and communal, as they are often undertaken with others, most commonly, friends or family members. This is certainly the case for live sporting events, such as a football match. However, this is also increasingly the case for mediated experiences, such as streaming a football match online, which can also facilitate interaction with others, such as via social media. However, it is important to recognise that it is often the communal nature of experiences that are sold to (individual) consumers – it is the experience of community and belonging that consumers are often, at least partially, buying into, and this is as much true for those following sport online as it is for those attending live games.

However, what happens when the central experience you are selling ceases to be available? As it turned out to be the case from mid-2020 onwards when football leagues and competitions around the world stopped playing. This, we would suggest, helps reveal the contemporary nature of football and its relationship with its fans, and in particular, the central role that theming plays in the experience society and in the staging of football.

Football-themed experiences
Theming is central to the experience of society. Gottdiener (2001) suggests that the origins of theming can be traced back to American fast-food restaurants, where themes are used to create a consistent and enjoyable customer experience. However, it is evident that theming is, and has been, part of the promotion and sale of sports experiences for a considerable time. For example, items such as scarves and replica shirts have all been sold for decades (if not longer), carrying the brand (or theme) of particular clubs.

However, the real power of themes is in their ability to be applied to other related (or sometimes unrelated) products, services, and experiences, such as sports-themed cafés, like Manchester United's Red Cafés. Themes can be applied and used to sell a wide variety of different things, but Crawford (2015) suggests, that with football one of the most successful here has been football-themed video games.

Crawford (2015) argues that one of the reasons sport-themed video games are so successful, and we would extend this argument to suggest, fit so well within an experience society, is that they offer the gamer a sense of control, individualisation of experience, and involvement. Gamers feel like they are controlling the game action and taking it in a direction that is unique to them – (co)creating the experience. This fits well with sport fans, who have often felt an active part of the clubs and sports they support – such as encapsulated in comments like ‘we won on Saturday’ (Sandvoss, 2003).

However, football-themed experiences are not just limited to video games. In recent decades, social media and other new digital technologies, such as (official and unofficial) social media pages, and football-themed apps, have allowed (and fostered) greater supporter involvement and interaction and there is a rapidly growing literature on this (that includes, McCarthy et al., 2014, Vale and Fernandes, 2016, Fenton et al., 2020). As we have set out above, interaction and participation are now an accepted and expected part of the experience society, and it is this, at least in part, that sport fans then miss once some of the possibilities for this are taken away, such as happened in mid-2020.

The response of football clubs, leagues, and media providers to the pandemic is then interesting when viewed in light of the location of sport, and more specifically, football, in an experience society. Part of their response, certainly at the beginning of the pandemic, was to show football matches from alternative leagues that were still playing, such as in Belarus and then later Germany, and while there were no games being played at all, re-showing classic games, such as ITV in the UK did by screening Euro ’96 in its entirety (Kershaw, 2020). However (as set out at the beginning of this paper), clubs, leagues, and media channels also provided a wealth of digital football-themed alternative content to keep supporters engaged, such as using video games or social media to play out cancelled games.

However, there were numerous other ways that football clubs, associations, and football-related businesses sought to remain connected with, and offer opportunities for fans to participate in themed experiences. For example, at the end of March 2020, the English FA launched a mobile app aimed at children, called Superkicks, that is filled with football-related tasks, such as designing a football team kit and drawing Wembley Stadium (The FA, 2020). In Japan, the J-League introduced an app called Remote Cheerer that allowed fans to use their mobile phones to record their cheers, which were then replayed via speakers into football stadiums during live games (Whiting, 2020). Furthermore, the CEO of the technology company Screach, Robert Rawlinson, outlined how some sport-themed pubs were using social media to continue to engage with their customers while the pubs were closed (Stone, 2020b). This, Rawlinson indicates, included pubs posting on social media videos of crowds in their venues, and asking customers to find themselves in the crowd, or hosting online sport-themed quiz nights. As Rawlinson suggests ‘there's plenty of scope for them [sport-themed pubs] to share lockdown content from the wider sporting world to remind customers that the pub is very much part of their sport experience’ (Stone, 2020b, emphasis added). Similarly, many football clubs themselves offered these kinds of activities, like Wolves, for example, hosting online club-themed quiz nights. Additionally, there was a plethora of football-themed user-generated content posted on social media. All of which provided further opportunities for fan social interaction and participation.

Therefore, the consumption of football-themed content during a pandemic illustrates how in an experience society, when the traditional focus of a particular experience is missing, content providers and audiences alike work together to create new and themed experiences. This then allows traditional content providers (such as football clubs) to keep their audience actively engaged. This also provides audiences (in this case, football fans) with the kinds of themed content and participatory experiences that they have become accustomed to.

A final question though, is to what extent and in what ways this has been grassroots driven, by audience needs, or rather top down, by commercial interests?

Critically reflecting on an experience society
For Pine and Gilmore (2011), the proliferation of staged experiences is the only way to overcome the limitations of commodity and service capitalism and create new added value for consumers. They argue that whereas ‘commodities are fungible, goods tangible, and services intangible, experiences are memorable’ (Pine and Gilmore, 2011: 17). This is because even though experiences end, their value lingers ‘in the memory of any individual who was engaged by the event’ (Pine and Gilmore, 2011: 18). Similarly, in audience and fan studies, we have seen writers, such as Jenkins, celebrating the rise of what he sees as a more participatory culture.

Jenkins (2006) suggests the development of a participatory culture is the result of three interrelated processes. First, Jenkins (2006: 136) suggests that there has been a rise in what he refers to as ‘transmedia’ texts – where narratives increasingly crosscut different media texts and platforms. This, then requires more active participation, as audiences need to follow multiple sources of content and narratives. For example, for football fans, this may include watching games on television, following and posting on various social media streams, reading reports and news on official and unofficial club websites, listening to podcasts, playing football-themed video games, and much more beyond.

Second, is the rise of digital media technologies that allow new forms of both top-down and bottom-up media engagement. For example, social media and on-demand television, have allowed media producers to distribute a much wider range of material, and have this made available for a longer period of time than was previously possible – such as football clubs showing ‘classic’ games on their television or social media channels. This then allows audiences to seek out a wider range of things to interest them, and also, find others who share their interests. However, and crucially, this is no longer (if it ever was) a one-way top-down process, but these technologies also allow audiences to actively engage with others and the texts they consume.

This, Jenkins (2006) links to a third development, which he terms the rise of the ‘DIY culture’. Jenkins sees this as something that began in specific subcultures, such as bloggers and video game modders (and we would add to this football fanzine creators and contributors), but this is now something that has spread from the margins to the mainstream. To produce media content is no longer subcultural or even unusual, but it has become an everyday and rather mundane activity, such as posting on social media.

Hence, for Jenkins, the rise of participatory culture has been driven by audience needs and technological advances, as much as (and probably more so) than media conglomerates’ desires to sell more content, services and (increasingly) experiences. There is, however, an alternative reading, and one that sees participatory culture and the rise of an experience society as part of the growing power and influence of neoliberalism.

McGuigan (2010: 117) suggests that neoliberalism ‘is a truly hegemonic phenomenon of our time’. At its core, neoliberalism is a laissez-faire economic and political system that encourages an open and free competitive market. There is nothing particularly new about neoliberalism, as it is an idea first developed in the early 20th century. However, it is after the economic crises of the 1970s that neoliberalism rose to prominence – replacing a more social-democratic model that had dominated much of mid-20th century. In this deregulated economy, it is the power of the consumer to choose that dominates – to choose where they will go, what they will do and who they will be. It is therefore a society and economy based upon participation. However, this is a participation that is required – as to not be an active participant in a neoliberal society, is to be, as Bauman (1998) highlights, a flawed consumer. Moreover, critiques of neoliberalism argue that this is not a participation that empowers, but rather individual choice leads to an increasingly individualised society, where recognition of our collective position and collective struggle has been lost in the pursuit of individual happiness (McGuigan, 2010). This is what Taylor (1995) feared. In a neoliberal football free market, supporters are able to choose any team from around the world to support, or possibly more accurately, football clubs, leagues, and media providers, are able to market their products and services more widely – such as Fleischmann and Fleischmann (2019) argued that many European clubs and leagues are increasingly looking towards more distant supporters in ‘emerging football markets’, such as China and other Asian nations, as new and more lucrative audiences. However, Taylor argued that this freedom to choose does not empower fans, but rather individualises and undermines any collective power they may have once had.

New digital technologies considerably extend the control and power of neoliberalism by increasing its market reach, and our and others’ (including new and old corporations’) capacities to track and monitor behaviour − greatly increasing self and social surveillance (Elis and Gill, 2018). Moreover, though it could be argued, as Jenkins does, that new digital media allow more opportunities for ‘grassroots’ content creation, Rivers and Ross (2019) suggested, as fan-created media channels become more successful, such as in the case of Arsenal Fan TV, they have a tendency to start to resemble the ‘corporate machine’ its creators originally set out to offer as an alternative.

Such arguments, therefore, add weight to the perspective that new digital media, rather than challenging, may be aiding, or even driving, a reconfiguration of capitalist modes of production and consumption. This shift then becomes even more pertinent and accelerated during a global pandemic and enforced isolation, where sport fans are primarily connecting with sport, and each other, through new digital technologies such as mobile devices. For, though engaging with others online, such as via social media, may give the impression of being in control and communal, ironically the more we seek connection and social interaction with others online, the more we disconnect from the material world and those around us – a condition that Turkle (2011) referred to as being ‘alone together’.

Conclusion
With the return of live football towards the end of 2020, albeit initially without spectators in the stadia, The Guardian (2020b) posed the question ‘sport fans, what have you missed the most (or not at all) during lockdown?’ The article continued:

What do you miss most about the old normal? Gathering in the pub for a big Champions League night? That quickening walk to the ground as you hear the team being read over the Tannoy? Sitting down to watch Match of the Day with your family? Being part of an ongoing soap opera that punctuates your weekends, connects you to your friends and gives you something to talk about with people you have never met before? (The Guardian, 2020b: online).

Most of the activities listed in the quote above are communal, but to what extent was this already a fading idea of what sport fans do? Certainly, evidence would suggest that we are starting to see a decline in the viewing of sport with others via broadcast television and in contrast an increase in the consumption of sport alone via mobile devices. The question is, therefore, how may the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated this? However, also, whether football clubs need fans in the stadium at all? As Ronay (2020) argues in The Guardian ‘it turns out that real life fans, while important, just aren't central enough to football's business model. Not at the top end anyhow’. Further evidence of this was provided in mid-2021 by the failed attempt of 12 of Europe's top football clubs to found a new break-away European Super league. Here, the BBC Sport reporter Dan Roan claimed that this was – at least in part – a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the clubs’ desire to seek out new ‘fans of the future’ and rely less on what they saw as their ‘legacy fans’ – a term used to describe football's traditional, stadium-attending, supporters (Williams, 2021). As Ronay wrote in early April 2021, ‘football's biggest clubs have discovered what they already knew – that they don't actually need those troublesome, noisy humans in the stands, that this crisis is also an opportunity’ (Ronay, 2021). However, the fan protests that followed, and the subsequent backing down of the breakaway clubs and the end (or pausing) of their Super League dreams, may suggest that these clubs do still, at least for now, need their traditional match-attending supporters – but the question is, for how long? Many football clubs, in particular, the wealthier ones, are clearly looking towards their ‘fans of the future’, who will be more likely to connect with the sport via digital devices, which of course, enables them to consume the sport at distance, and allows football clubs to more readily tap into distant and lucrative ‘emerging football markets’, such as most notably, those in Asia (Fleischmann and Fleischmann, 2019).

Hence, for a new generation of sport fans, we will probably see a continued (and, we would suggest, now accelerated) shift towards the consumption of content via digital devices, as this offers the kind of individualised and personalised experiences that they have become accustomed to, but more importantly, this offers clubs, leagues and media providers new ways of connecting with new (and often more distant) audiences. Baudrillard (1993) may have famously predicted a future where football was played in empty stadia, but where he was wrong was to suggest that the consumption of this sport would shift solely to the mass spectacle of broadcast television. Instead, when the stadia did empty, it was to their individual digital and mobile devices that many supporters turned (or were directed) as a way to remain connected to the game that they love – and the global pandemic way well have accelerated this, already in process, shift in the consumption of football increasingly towards themed digital participatory experiences.

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ClaretPete001
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by ClaretPete001 » Wed Apr 20, 2022 11:39 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Apr 20, 2022 9:58 pm
At various times in this thread and non more so than the build up tot he Super League announcement a year ago I have posted research papers on the changing nature of fandom - The ECA's on commissioned research was the fundamental basis of Super League and it's spin off the revised Champions League post 2024

In that spirit I add this latest piece published for free access this week - it is academic but worth a perusal
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.117 ... 2211021529

‘All Avatars Aren't We’: Football and the experience of football-themed digital content during a global pandemic

Garry Crawford, Alex Fenton, Simon Chadwick, ...
First Published July 6, 2021 Research Article
https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902211021529

Abstract
This paper explores the contemporary nature of association football consumption. In particular, we argue that the coronavirus 2019 pandemic reveals the contemporary and particular nature of the relationship between football and its supporters, which is increasingly focused on the consumption of themed digital participatory experiences. During this pandemic, what fans missed was not only live football, but also the sporting ‘experience’ and the opportunities for participation that this provides. Hence, here we saw fans, clubs and media providers employing new digital technologies to create themed experiences that facilitated (and mediated) participation and interaction. Following Žižek (2014), we suggest that the coronavirus 2019 pandemic can be understood as a global mega event that creates a seismic, reality alerting schism, whose aftermath requires new ontologies and theories. Our response is to utilise a number of key and illustrative examples and to offer a new synthesis of theories and literatures, most notably, on the experience society, theming, participatory culture, neoliberalism and digital culture. This new context and (re)combination of theories then provides a new, and essential, perspective that reveals a great deal about the contemporary nature of the sport, what fans buy into, and also, how this may change post pandemic.
Interesting. A skim read so I my have missed the point but it seems to argue a central contradiction, which is that fans enjoy a participatory experience but then adopts the default mode of suggesting that participation will necessarily be digital.

One things seems to me to have emerged from the Covid19 experience is that almost everyone enjoyed the participatory and experiential feel of a live game including those watching on Digital devices.

It is possibly the case that it is because there is a critical mass not brought up wired to devices. Only time will tell.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 20, 2022 11:51 pm

ClaretPete001 wrote:
Wed Apr 20, 2022 11:39 pm
Interesting. A skim read so I my have missed the point but it seems to argue a central contradiction, which is that fans enjoy a participatory experience but then adopts the default mode of suggesting that participation will necessarily be digital.

One things seems to me to have emerged from the Covid19 experience is that almost everyone enjoyed the participatory and experiential feel of a live game including those watching on Digital devices.

It is possibly the case that it is because there is a critical mass not brought up wired to devices. Only time will tell.
All these studies point towards the same thing - and in some ways it is generational, but it is also an opportunity, think of international fans attending matches virtually, with friends and family from other locations - it is a market opportunity that is being seriously invested in - Manchester City are right up there globally, helped by the fact that this 'experience' ties in nicely with CFG/Mubadala partners such as Silver Lake in the US and Reliance Industries in India and China Media Group even Softbank - it is also no coincidence that CFG have a teams in New York, Mumbai and Chengdu

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by ClaretPete001 » Thu Apr 21, 2022 12:39 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Wed Apr 20, 2022 11:51 pm
All these studies point towards the same thing - and in some ways it is generational, but it is also an opportunity, think of international fans attending matches virtually, with friends and family from other locations - it is a market opportunity that is being seriously invested in - Manchester City are right up there globally, helped by the fact that this 'experience' ties in nicely with CFG/Mubadala partners such as Silver Lake in the US and Reliance Industries in India and China Media Group even Softbank - it is also no coincidence that CFG have a teams in New York, Mumbai and Chengdu
I get it, but academic research is quite often historical and post hoc.

The problem is whether the product is partially dependent upon the live experience. None of us know because we aren't at the critical point of mass digital adoption of digital experiences replacing live experiences.

And you have to wonder why a club based in Manchester would garner global support without the tribal loyalties of a local fan base, which others can feed off vicariously. Indeed, you have to wonder whether a product that is so far removed from it's community requires actual real world players.

Surely, the ultimate digital experience is to actually play in the match and not be a spectator?

And if you want to extrapolate it out to the nth degree you get to the point where Zizek diverges from Marx and wonder how is anybody going to pay for these digital experiences if there are no events, no players, no footfall on live event days, no security and no event organisers and we are all engaged in a digital world playing for Real Madrid?

And this is Silicon valleys biggest nightmare that the products they create replace the jobs of the consumers who they need to buy their products.

And on that cheery night I'm off to bed...!

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 21, 2022 6:05 pm

As you know I have come across some interesting stuff in the life of this thread

here is another one - the could if passed give more credence to the notion of Football's Magic Money Tree

https://twitter.com/BillyCorben/status/ ... pV1CAYzPdA

you think it is a rant until you find out who the person is doing it

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 21, 2022 11:17 pm

If this actually happens then it is a higher price than I imagined possible for a club in the Championship even on parachute payments

Sheffield United: Henry Mauriss has £115m bid to buy Championship club accepted

By Ian Dennis - BBC Radio 5 Live senior football reporter
Last updated on1 hour ago1 hour ago.

American businessman Henry Mauriss has had a £115m bid to buy Sheffield United accepted by the Championship club.

Mauriss previously bid £350m to buy Newcastle United in 2020, before a Saudi Arabian-backed takeover went through the following year.

Prince Abdullah Bin Mosaad Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud owns the Blades after winning a legal case in 2019.

The club are sixth in the Championship, occupying the final play-off spot with three games remaining.

Mauriss, who previously entered a period of exclusivity when trying to buy Newcastle before the deal fell through, confirmed to BBC Sport that the deal would be to buy 100% of Sheffield United Football Club.

Any deal to buy the Blades would be subject to the EFL's owners' and directors' test, but Mauriss' company believes they have demonstrated the financial capability to purchase and sustain the club.

Abdullah, a Saudi prince, won a High Court battle to take control of Sheffield United after their promotion to the Premier League under Chris Wilder.

He had owned 50% of the Blades since 2013 after former shareholder Kevin McCabe searched for fresh investment in the club when they were in League One.

Sheffield United Ltd, the company run by Mr McCabe and his family, eventually made an offer to buy out the prince for £5m.

But the offer also gave the prince's company, UTB LLC, the option to buy Mr McCabe's shareholding at the same price and a counter notice was served in January 2018.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 22, 2022 3:29 pm

I have been pointing out the syndicate nature of new owner groups in the Premier League for a little while now - this piece in the Athletic today gives an explanation for the trend that is only going to grow - it is one VSL have been trying to press ahead with at our club since the arrived, there whole model depends on it to fully bloom

link to an archive view negates the paywall

https://archive.ph/708RG

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 22, 2022 5:07 pm

as ever another interesting podcast and new series from Unofficial Partner

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... arsenal-fc

the blurb

UP240 For What It's Worth: Arsenal FC

This is the first of a series in collaboration with Turnstile, looking at alternative ways of valuing sports sponsorship and other commercial inventory.

The conversation took place at the Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal Football Club and our guests are Juliet Slot, Arsenal’s Chief Commercial Officer and Dan Gaunt, general manager of Turnstile.

We talk about what a football club is selling, the hidden value of Intellectual Property, the role of the No More Red anti knife crime campaign and the burgeoning sponsor interest in women’s football.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by ClaretPete001 » Fri Apr 22, 2022 6:16 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Apr 21, 2022 11:17 pm
If this actually happens then it is a higher price than I imagined possible for a club in the Championship even on parachute payments

Sheffield United: Henry Mauriss has £115m bid to buy Championship club accepted

By Ian Dennis - BBC Radio 5 Live senior football reporter
Last updated on1 hour ago1 hour ago.

American businessman Henry Mauriss has had a £115m bid to buy Sheffield United accepted by the Championship club.

Mauriss previously bid £350m to buy Newcastle United in 2020, before a Saudi Arabian-backed takeover went through the following year.

Prince Abdullah Bin Mosaad Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud owns the Blades after winning a legal case in 2019.

The club are sixth in the Championship, occupying the final play-off spot with three games remaining.

Mauriss, who previously entered a period of exclusivity when trying to buy Newcastle before the deal fell through, confirmed to BBC Sport that the deal would be to buy 100% of Sheffield United Football Club.

Any deal to buy the Blades would be subject to the EFL's owners' and directors' test, but Mauriss' company believes they have demonstrated the financial capability to purchase and sustain the club.

Abdullah, a Saudi prince, won a High Court battle to take control of Sheffield United after their promotion to the Premier League under Chris Wilder.

He had owned 50% of the Blades since 2013 after former shareholder Kevin McCabe searched for fresh investment in the club when they were in League One.

Sheffield United Ltd, the company run by Mr McCabe and his family, eventually made an offer to buy out the prince for £5m.

But the offer also gave the prince's company, UTB LLC, the option to buy Mr McCabe's shareholding at the same price and a counter notice was served in January 2018.
They still have a couple of years of Premier League broadcasting revenue so in some ways it is a smart gamble.

Big city club but with surprisingly low non-broadcasting revenue.

Highest attendances in the Championship.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 22, 2022 6:23 pm

ClaretPete001 wrote:
Fri Apr 22, 2022 6:16 pm
They still have a couple of years of Premier League broadcasting revenue so in some ways it is a smart gamble.

Big city club but with surprisingly low non-broadcasting revenue.

Highest attendances in the Championship.
you also have to remember the Prince got the club cheap but had to pay over £50m for associated properties including a hotel and the training ground

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 23, 2022 11:46 pm

Nothing new here but it is a story worth repeating - and yes I do it quite regularly

https://www.theguardian.com/football/bl ... as-arrived

By stealth rather than in one swoop, the European Super League has arrived
Jonathan Wilson

As this week’s semi-finals lineup shows, the Champions League is no longer a fair competition but in the grip of a few franchises

Sat 23 Apr 2022 20.00 BST

The two best teams in Europe, the most successful club in the history of the competition, a gritty outsider – in some ways the lineup for this week’s Champions League semi-finals is perfect. Each offers in addition an intriguing subplot: Pep Guardiola fighting the curse of overthought, Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool chasing an implausible quadruple, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema raging against the dying of the light, the frankly hilarious prospect of Unai Emery returning to Paris for the final and making a point to Paris Saint-Germain, a club that never took him seriously (perhaps he could have a three-day party to celebrate and invite Neymar along to cut the cake as the Brazilian had him do during his 26th-birthday celebrations).

And yet, and yet … the four clubs come from only two countries and those two countries are England and Spain, who have between them produced 62.5% of all semi-finalists over the past two decades.

Even the outsiders are Villarreal. Theirs may be a remarkable story, a team made up almost entirely of Tottenham flops and targets hailing from a town with a population, as surely everybody knows by now, of only 50,000, who have overcome the might of Juventus and Bayern Munich thanks to the tactical ministrations of a manager who was essentially written off by Arsenal because his Vs sound a bit like Bs – but they come from La Liga. The Anglo-Spanish hegemony goes on.

There are no outsiders any more. What other giant-killers have there been recently? Atalanta – a small club who have performed miracles given their budget, but a team from Serie A. Ajax – the biggest club in the Netherlands. Tottenham – a wealthy club from the Premier League with an enormous modern stadium in London who are funded by a tax exile. RB Leipzig – who come no closer to a fairy story than Red Bull having used Sleeping Beauty in an advertising campaign; they may obey the letter of the Bundesliga’s 50+1 ownership legislation but they have obliterated its spirit.

Of the 80 semi-finalists over the past 20 years, 26 have been from Spain and 24 from England. Portugal has provided one, the Netherlands two, with the rest coming from Germany, Italy and France. This is not a pan-European competition any more, it is a global tournament that has de facto franchises in a tiny handful of western European nations.

Uefa’s decision to establish the Europa Conference League is at least an acknowledgement of that, a competition that offers six high(ish)-profile group games to the champions of places such as Norway, Slovenia and Israel, plus a number of other mid-ranking sides otherwise shut out of European competition. It threw up a diverse spread of quarter-finalists – from seven different countries – but it is far too little, far too late.

Perhaps nobody cares; perhaps even to think that football should be more inclusive, to yearn for Reims and Nottingham Forest, Malmö and Steaua Bucharest, is to be hopelessly nostalgic. The protests that surrounded the collapse of the proposed European Super League a year ago hinted at a desire for another world, for a way of doing things that wasn’t just about commerce, but it was a moment that vanished on the wind.

If West Ham qualify for the Champions League by winning the Europa League, they will receive 4% of what Chelsea get
There has been no fan protest against the takeover of Newcastle by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia; indeed a vocal minority have attacked those who have wondered how healthy it is for this venerable community institution to be sold off to a body representing a state accused of a catalogue of human rights abuses.

Now that Chelsea fans have been forced by sanctions to contemplate their ownership, the main question seems to be which billionaire who might take over will spend the most money. Are Arsenal fans in any way concerned that they bear on their team’s sleeves an imprecation to “Visit Rwanda”, whose president, Paul Kagame, has been accused, among a litany of allegations, of assassinating political opponents?

This is the tragedy of modern English football. It has never been so successful. It has never been watched by so many people, either in the stadiums or on television around the globe. It has never generated so much revenue. Yet still everybody is holding out for a bigger sugar daddy, wondering which billionaire or oligarch or sovereign wealth fund or hedge fund might buy them even more glitzy players. This is the story of modern Britain: ask not the source of the money, just how much of it there is.

What were those protests about? If they were protesting against a system that perpetuates the dominance of the elite, it’s already here. In August 2016, in the interregnum between the suspension of Michel Platini and the election of Aleksander Ceferin as Uefa president, a deal was driven through by Bayern’s Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Juventus’s Andrea Agnelli that has meant that since 2018, 30% of broadcast revenues from the Champions League are distributed to the 32 sides in the group stage based on performances in Uefa competition over the past 10 years. Or to contextualise that, if West Ham qualify for next season’s Champions League by winning the Europa League, they will receive 4% of what Chelsea get.

And still this stitch-up isn’t enough. Still the existing elite are looking to fortify their own positions, demanding that two places form the revised 36-team group stage to come into effect from 2024 be allocated according to coefficient. They are already incredibly rich. They already have huge established fanbases. They already have a system stacked in their favour, and still they want another safety net.

It means clubs can be as badly run as Manchester United and Juventus have been for the past decade and remain at the highest table. It may have a different name. It may disguise its intentions. It may be come by creeping increment rather than in one clumsy swoop, but the Super League is here.

Football as corporate entertainment product thrives, and is undeniably good to watch, the quality and drama in the latter stages of the Champions League unprecedentedly high. But football as sport, football as an expression of something beautiful in the human soul, as the most democratic of sports, open to all, has been dying for years. All we are doing now is deciding what the sarcophagus will look like.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 24, 2022 10:52 pm

of course the above creates huge problems at domestic levels - witness this in the New York Times from Rory smith (link bypasses the paywall

Is Bayern Munich Breaking the Bundesliga?

https://archive.ph/1SgpJ

and it is not just the money that UEFA pays, it becomes a self fulfilling virtuous circle on the commercial front too

look at shirt sales (note Bayern are huge in China)
https://twitter.com/tifosy/status/15170 ... 7e0o0qAAAA

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 24, 2022 11:50 pm

fascinating stuff from Simon Chadwick on the issue of the chase for money without due diligence (or caring about anything other than the cheque) - Gazprom being the example of choice but not the only

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 2501431298

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 24, 2022 11:57 pm

talking about hindsight and things you would rather forget - only one club has successfully managed to extricate themselves from the super league -paywall circumvented via archive link

Explained: The binding contract that means all six English clubs are still part of the Super League
https://archive.ph/hIkDd

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 25, 2022 1:32 am

Meanwhile the government continue with their plans for reform n the game - still waiting for the Brexit style campaign about UEFA distortions

this from Skysports

Govt reveal plans for reform of English football | 'An enormous step'
skysports.com 27 mins ago

The Government will today set out its plans to deliver a major reform of men's football in England.

In doing so, they will deliver on the manifesto commitment to fans to ensure a sustainable future for the national game.

The announcement comes two days after the news that an in-depth review of women's football in UK will be launched this summer.

The Government will endorse the 10 key strategic recommendations set out in its fan-led review of football governance, published by Tracey Crouch MP in November 2021, which will improve financial sustainability and corporate governance across our national game, and place fans squarely at the heart of decision-making.

An independent regulator will be backed by primary legislation to provide it with the statutory powers to license and sanction clubs as part of its remit to tackle the most pressing issues throughout the football pyramid.

It comes as an independent study commissioned by the Government to be published today will highlight the widespread culture of clubs operating unsustainable financial practices, placing the pursuit of success over sound financial management. This includes an overreliance on owner funding which can leave clubs dangerously exposed if owners decide to pull the plug on cash injections.

Premier League and Championship clubs are now regularly exceeding UEFA's guidance on spending no more than 70 per cent of club revenue on wages, leading to weak finances and balance sheets across the industry that would be unacceptable in any other field.

The regulator will also be given the power to exercise financial oversight of clubs, including information gathering, investigation and enforcement powers. The review recommended looking at financial distribution, including solidarity payments. It is the Government's view that this should be solved by the football authorities in the first instance. Further details on the Government's preferred option, including on regulatory 'backstop' powers will be set out in the white paper.

The new independent regulator will also be tasked with applying an enhanced Owners' and Directors' Test, both ahead of an acquisition of a club but also on an ongoing basis. This will include a new 'integrity test' for all owners and executives, and enhanced due diligence - including sources of funding - upon an acquisition. This will be to ensure that skilled, experienced owners and executives are in place to run these vital community assets. It will replace the current tests administered by the Premier League, English Football League and the FA.

Today's announcement follows the Government delivering on its manifesto commitment to launch the fan-led review of football governance in April 2021, to explore ways of improving the governance, ownership and financial sustainability of clubs in the football pyramid. It was launched following a series of crises, starting with the collapse of Bury FC in 2019, followed by Bolton Wanderers, Derby County, Macclesfield Town and Wigan Athletic, culminating in the widely discredited plans to form a European Super League.

The review was based on engagement with supporters' trusts, fan groups, women's football representatives, football authorities, club owners, players representatives, and underrepresented interest groups, alongside over 20,000 fans responding to an online survey. The final report, supported by an expert advisory panel from the world of football, was submitted to the Government in November 2021, with 47 recommendations put forward in total, including 10 key strategic recommendations.

It concluded that football requires a strong, independent regulator to secure the future of our national game, and found a significant part of the reason for the perilous state of football was due to reckless financial decision-making often being prioritised by unsuitable owners and directors in the pursuit of glory, putting the future of clubs - and their status as community assets - at risk.

A white paper setting out full details on these measures and an indicative timetable for legislation is expected to be published this summer.

Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston said: "It's just over a year since the failed European Super League bid but it is clear that radical change is needed to protect the future of our national game.

"We will work at pace to establish a strong, independent regulator. However the football authorities can take action now to tackle issues currently facing the game such as the issue of fair distribution of finances throughout the football pyramid and giving fans a greater say in the running of their clubs."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "Football brings friends, families, and communities together, which is why we are taking forward the fan-led plans to secure the future of our national game - from the £230m investment to level up grassroots pitches to strengthening the voice of fans in the running of their clubs.

"Whether you're cheering on at home or away, this government will ensure fans are once again at the heart of the game."

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said: "Football is nothing without its fans and for too long the football authorities have collectively been unable to tackle some of the biggest issues in the game.

"The Government took decisive action to conduct the fan-led review and today we have endorsed every one of its 10 strategic recommendations and the approach set out by Tracey Crouch.

"We are now committed to fundamental reform, putting football on a more sustainable financial path, strengthening corporate governance of clubs and increasing the influence fans have in the running of the national game."

"Some clubs have spent beyond their means" - FA welcomes 'new independent regulation'
After the FA was contacted for comment, a spokesperson said: "English football is the envy of the world, but with success, comes challenges. While many clubs are at the centre of their community and are prospering, some have spent beyond their means in order to chase success.

"We agree that stronger financial regulation and cost controls are needed in the English game to ensure that fans and sustainability always comes first. New independent regulation is needed and we will continue to work with the Government to ensure that we are protecting the future of clubs whilst also supporting the global appeal of English football."

Crouch: An enormous step forward, but delays could be 'catastrophic'
Tracey Crouch says the Government's endorsement of the fan-led review she chaired is "an enormous step forward" for major reform in football but says the unspecified timeframe for implementing change is "worrying" for clubs and fans alike.

Crouch gave the Government's initial response a cautious welcome and said in a statement issued to the PA news agency: "I am grateful to the Government for publishing its response to the fan-led review of football governance.

"I am exceptionally pleased it has accepted or supported all the strategic recommendations of the review, including committing to legislation for a statutory independent regulator which will regulate financial resilience as well as ownership of clubs.

"This is an enormous step forward in providing much-needed reform for football. I am also very pleased by the commitment to a review of women's football, as well as to the long-overdue review of the outdated legislation relating to football supporters and the sale of alcohol.

"While fans will be reassured by the commitment to an independent regulator and its powers, they will remain nervous that this commitment will be delayed or watered down by the vested and conflicted interests in the game which have resisted the much-needed reform for so long.

"Fans fully recognise the complexities of the recommended reforms, but the unspecified time frame for implementation due to a white paper at some point in the summer is worrying.

"Further delays could be catastrophic for clubs, communities, and fans seeking a more secure and certain regulatory environment."

She added: "It is noticeable and disappointing that there has been no progress on discussions between the football authorities on the redistribution of finances, and I share the view of government that this needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency."

Safe standing, sale and consumption of alcohol also to be reviewed
The Government will also work with relevant football bodies and the police to consider the safety and economic case for piloting the sale and consumption of alcohol in sight of the pitch at matches in the men's lower leagues, as per the recommendation within the fan-led review.

The latest action builds upon the government's strong record of placing fans at the heart of the sport and backing the game from the bottom of the pyramid upwards. In January 2022, it launched an 'early adopters' programme to pilot the rollout of licensed 'safe standing' during the remainder of the 2021/22 season, meeting another of its 2019 manifesto commitments.

Interim evidence published last week by the Sports Grounds Safety Authority indicated that licensed safe standing is having a positive impact on spectator safety and is improving the matchday experience for fans as a result of the pilot.

Under the Government's commitment to ensure it has the robust evidence in place to assure the safety of fans and the backing of supporters' groups, a final report will be provided to Ministers at the conclusion of the pilot programme. This will help to further inform their decisions about the potential wider roll-out of licensed standing for Premier League and Championship clubs that wish to introduce it and have met strict conditions.

The Government is putting the grassroots game at the very centre of its plans to level up access to sport for all. In March 2022 it announced the first tranche of recipients as part of a £230m package to build or upgrade up to 8,000 grassroots football and multi-sport pitches across the UK by 2025.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 26, 2022 12:38 am

A New Blog from the Chaps at Vysyble - on the inevitability that the status quo 9f competitive formats challenged by Super League will be challenged again in the future

Same but Different

https://vysyble.com/blog-018

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:03 pm

I have been saying this for quite some time now - from the Athletic but link takes you to an archive to beat the paywall

Is the Premier League the real European Super League?

https://archive.ph/MKe2d

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by ClaretPete001 » Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:07 pm

Interesting articles.

I suppose phe point of the Super League is to end relegation and leverage the TV money across Europe. The Premiership is the best league in Europe but it doesn't resolve the problems of the big 6s exposure to risk and capacity to generate growth

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 26, 2022 2:09 pm

interesting stuff (again) from @UglyGame - this time on the new owners of Crusaders - 'fit and proper' comes under the spotlight again

https://theuglygame.wordpress.com/2022/ ... lub-owner/

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 27, 2022 9:10 pm

Adrian Chiles with an opinion piece on Iref (Independent regulator for football) in the Guardian - a couple of interesting points too

Football needs more than a new regulator to save it from itself
Adrian Chiles

The government has decided that the English game’s governing bodies can’t spot ‘fit and proper’ people to run football clubs. I have two questions to help the new Iref show bad owners the red card

Wed 27 Apr 2022 14.14 BST

About 15 years ago, I made a little film about a day in the life of a postman. It was an early start. As I helped him sort out his bag, we chatted about football. He was a Chelsea fan. I asked whether he had a season ticket at Stamford Bridge. I will never forget the look he shot me. It was like I had asked what kind of Ferrari he drove. “I can’t afford to go and see Chelsea,” he said. “I’m a postman.”

So here we had a football club owned by a fantastically wealthy Russian, which was pricing out a normal working man. Here, before dawn in a sorting office, somewhere in the generous sprawl of south London, this anomaly felt stark. In football, we always have a lexicon of cliches ready to go; I reached for one now as I said to myself: dear God, the game’s gone.

This isn’t to blame Roman Abramovich for everything. However ill-gotten his gains may be, he is not directly to blame for the pricing out of many ordinary football supporters by clubs up and down the country. But his entry into the game highlights the fault line at the heart of professional football’s problem: clubs can’t find a way of living within their means. That leads to desperation, which invariably leads to desperate measures. And that entails all manner of desperadoes getting involved.

Whether you are into football or not, it won’t have escaped your attention that some of the owners of these football clubs have a certain dodginess about them. Many are morally dubious; others are plain incompetent. Some clubs have owners who are both dodgy and hopeless, a terrible combination indeed.

England’s three football authorities – the Premier League, English Football League and Football Association – each have had their own tests for owners and directors. They are designed to establish that potential owners are fit and proper for the job. It remains unclear just how unfit or improper you have had to be to fail this test. It’s a low bar indeed.

Now the government is stepping in with plans for an Independent Regulator for English Football, or Iref – see what they did there? Clever! It will now be down to Iref to keep the wrong ’uns out. I offer my suggestion for the very first question Iref should put to any prospective football club owner. It goes like this: do you want to own a football club? If the answer is yes, then I’m afraid they need to be shown the door because the chances are they are either mad or bad; neither fit nor proper.

There is no rational financial reason to own a football club. However big its income – be that from TV rights deals or other commercial activities – all of it, or usually much more than all of it, will end up in the pockets of players and their agents. How else do you explain the fantastical levels of debt even the world’s greatest clubs have accrued: Manchester United, about £500m; Barcelona, more than £1bn. What kind of person or country wants a piece of these businesses? However cleverly structured the debts may be, debt is debt.

So if you are not buying a club to make money, and will surely lose money, you must be doing it for some other reason. This could be because you’re a great person who loves the club, or football generally, and want to do the right thing. If so, great. But if you’re not, I’m not sure what Iref or anyone else will be able to do about it.

The likes of Russian and Chinese squillionaires, and oil-rich countries with sub-optimal human rights records, will always have the riches to tempt owners to sell. Fans will end up turning a blind eye to anything other than what success that money could help bring their beloved clubs.

If the owner of your club wants to sell it for, let’s say, £250m, and they have a buyer who wants to give them £250m for it, I can’t see how a whole squad of red-card-brandishing Irefs are going to stop it happening. Anyone who’s about to trouser that £250m, or who’s intent on spending £250m, will have much more to spend on lawyers than Iref, or anyone else, to get the deal over the line.

Iref’s proposals to keep out the baddies are detailed enough. They call it an “integrity test” – their quote marks, not mine. The use of the word integrity echoes the endless debate in the game regarding the laws on handball. Referees are asked to decide whether the handball was “deliberate”. How can they know? Surely, only the player on the end of the hand in question can answer that; it’s between them and their god, if they have one. We are told that a regulator will make an “overall, evidence-based judgment using expert opinion to assess whether an owner or director would be a suitable custodian of a club”.

I wish them well. Here are the two questions I seriously think they will need to ask of any prospective owners. 1) Do you appreciate that when it comes down to it, you can never really own a club? Whatever the legal documents say, morally you’re merely the club’s custodian, charged with loving and cherishing it for the next generation. 2) When you move on, do you appreciate that you can’t just sell the club as you please to the highest bidder? No, you’ll have to go with whoever can look after it as diligently as you have.

This might not make the price of a ticket affordable to your average postal worker, but it might just send an undesirable packing.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by ClaretPete001 » Thu Apr 28, 2022 9:59 am

It's a bit rambly this article and ends with a fans utopian view.

Debt is not in itself a bad thing if it is used to grow the business and the debt can be identifiably seen to cost less than the revenue it generates. The problem is when debt is not recycled or not spent on revenue growth.

The big six are global corporates (or will be) and you have to look at them separately to normal football clubs.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:26 pm

.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon May 02, 2022 11:20 pm

interesting stuff on the new FIFA+ channel from Unofficial partner

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... 2-fifa-wtf

the blurb

Dave Roberts is one the primary architects of FIFA+, the football governing body’s newly launched global streaming service.

It’s an opportunity to peak below the surface, at what the initial plan was; how it works and how that’s evolved; who’ll watch it and what they’ll watch; how and when it will be commercially viable; and what it says about how sports governing bodies view themselves in 2022.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon May 02, 2022 11:49 pm

incredible stuff from Gianni Infantino today

When you give work to someone, even in hard conditions. you give him dignity and pride."

talking about the exploited immigrant workers for Qatar 2022, like he believes it - this guy who has effectively moved FIFA to Qatar as he enjoys that personal private jet at Qatar's expense for the last 3 + years

https://twitter.com/RobHarris/status/15 ... 4199020544

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon May 02, 2022 11:59 pm

remember what I posted about the Premier League being the Super League - here is Phillip Lahm in the Guardian

Premier League’s pull could spell trouble for Bayern Munich and Bundesliga
Philipp Lahm

A 10th title in a row has not translated into Champions League success for Bayern and club face challenge to stay at the top
Mon 2 May 2022 10.49 BST

From 2013 to 2022, the title winner in Germany bears the same name. Bayern Munich are celebrating a 10th championship in a row. A decade of dominance is a novelty in the five strongest leagues in Europe. Such statistics are otherwise known in Europe only from clubs such as Skonto Riga, Dinamo Zagreb, Rosenborg or Dynamo Berlin from the old East German Oberliga.

Bayern are a club who win titles. In the past 50 years of the Bundesliga, they have ended up on top 30 times. They owe this to their unique identity: as the club of players. One successful generation takes over from another. And former players have been at the helm for a long time.

The foundation was laid by Sepp Maier, Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller, homegrown players and world-class footballers. They were a gift to the club and the football nation. From their team, which won the European Cup three times, the leadership of the following decades was recruited.

At the end of the 70s, a footballer, Uli Hoeneß, took over responsibility for the club. He led it for more than 40 years, for a long time with his former teammates Beckenbauer and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. They combined an understanding of football with leadership qualities and helped the club to achieve an exceptional position in Germany.

Since then, the club have relied on a principle that only it can afford in Germany. The best Germans or the best in the Bundesliga are identified and bought by Bayern. There they have to assert themselves among strong competition.

A regular German player at Bayern practically automatically plays for the national team. In the early 80s they were called Rummenigge and Paul Breitner, in the late 80s Lothar Matthäus, Andreas Brehme and Klaus Augenthaler, from the mid-90s Oliver Kahn, Jürgen Klinsmann, Matthäus again and later Michael Ballack.

If the players come from the city or the region, that unleashes a power, an additional identification with the club. This is how great teams are formed. From 2005, just like 40 years before, a team of homegrown players of world class grew up. Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Müller and I gave a special touch to the Bayern motto “mia san mia”: the attitude that the club always trusts itself with everything and everyone else always trusts it with everything. Today, Müller and Manuel Neuer guarantee titles with Robert Lewandowski. In 2020, the team repeated the treble of 2013.

Bayern and Munich have everything that helps with success: a modern stadium, a great city, lots of fans. Actually, there are enough locations in Germany with similar potential. But Hamburg borrowed money from the fans and were relegated like Schalke, Frankfurt, Berlin and Köln. Dortmund almost went bankrupt two decades ago, hanging on the drip of Bayern Munich. And so the Bundesliga, the second most financially powerful league in the world, has been waiting since 1997 for someone other than Bayern to win a European Cup.

On the one hand, this makes things comfortable for Bayern. Because the national competition is no match for the international competition, they benefit more than anyone else in Germany from the economic growth in top European football. Since 1998, they have increased their turnover more than sixfold. Hardly anyone else bids for the players they want. This huge advantage even allows for phases of weakness.

On the other hand, danger now looms. From the late 1980s, when Italian industrialists cross-subsidised football as patrons, Serie A was the dominant league for a good decade. Matthäus, Brehme, Klinsmann, Rudi Völler and Thomas Häßler, the bulk of the German world champions of 1990, played in Italy in their best years. During this period, when hardly a final was played without Juventus or Milan, Bayern did not win the Champions League.

Now we may be facing a decade of the Premier League, financed by very rich entrepreneurs from all over the world, but also states that want to improve their reputation with big sporting events. This year we may see the third English final in four years. Only the 2019-20 season, when the Champions League was played in a mini format and under complicated pandemic conditions, was the exception, and Bayern managed to win it again.

This parallel to the Italian era could have consequences. In 2014, Lewandowski came to Bayern from Dortmund. Today, the best coaches in the world succumb to England’s pull and the most sought-after players in the Bundesliga no longer switch to Bayern as a matter of course. Erling Haaland will probably go to the Premier League, like Kai Havertz two years earlier, and there is speculation about Serge Gnabry leaving.

If several of the outstanding talents of this generation see the greater appeal in the English league than in the German one, this will become a problem for Bayern and the Bundesliga.

Bayern will not be able to count on support from Germany in this competition between leagues, and the weakness of the Bundesliga could also weaken the club in the long run. Perhaps this process is already under way. From 2010 to 2016, Bayern reached the semi-finals six times and the final three times in seven attempts. From 2017 to 2022 they made the last four twice in six attempts. This season they were eliminated before the semi-finals for the second time in a row, this time against outsiders Villarreal.

This comes at a time when the old management generation is saying goodbye. For a long time, Hoeneß, for whom Bayern was a life’s work, led the club like an owner. Today, two former players are again at the helm, Hasan Salihamidzic and Kahn, Champions League winners from 2001.

Their mandate is to strengthen the team now that everyone is crying out for investment and no one is talking about their own young talent – in a way that suits the club and the nation, with national and international stars who will make their home in Munich. Belonging at the top of Europe – that is the aspiration of Bayern Munich.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue May 03, 2022 12:07 am

There has been much speculation this week about just what a regulator will do - as Paul MacInnes of the Guardian recognises there is still much to be confirm


Questions over Premier League reform remain despite government’s grand plans
Paul MacInnes

An independent regulator looks set to be introduced with the FA the preferred overseeing body – but when will it happen?
Sun 1 May 2022 08.00 BST

Last week the government finally issued a response to the fan-led review of football it commissioned, and everyone in the game is still busy trying to work out what it means.

On the one hand it was unarguably a seismic moment. The government, in its response and in the words of the sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, explicitly committed itself to creating an independent regulator.

It also guaranteed an enhanced owners and directors test, with an “integrity test” included, promised fans control over their clubs and insisted the Premier League would have to give more money to support teams lower down the football pyramid.

Then again there remains no clear definition of what the regulator will do, where it will sit and, even, if “independent” could mean sitting within the purview of the Football Association, whose board is made up of representatives from the professional game.

The integrity test remains undefined. With regards to fan representation, plans for a golden share and shadow boards suggested by the fan-led review are in limbo and could be shelved altogether. As for the Premier League’s money, it has been told to offer up more before, with the end result being absolutely no change whatsoever.

The government has said there will now be no more detail on the process until the publication of a white paper in the summer, where even the definition of the summer remains uncertain. All of which means speculation – and lobbying – will continue to be the order of the day for some months yet.

To understand how unclear things remain, including for the parties involved, consider the Premier League which – on the face of things – is the loser under the week’s announcements. It is opposed to the creation of an independent regulator and believes it gives enough money to the lower leagues already. Any changes, it has long argued, could kill the success of the English top flight, a competition that is the envy of the rest of Europe.

In private the league now accepts that an independent regulator is coming. While it has not increased the amount of money it is willing to share, it is discussing how it might be distributed. The offer on the table for the EFL is an arcane one, with payments weighted according to league placing and broken up over three years.

It is an idea that may never see the light of day, but it shows – at least to an extent – that the previously all-conquering Premier League is having to change its ways. Many thought its formidable lobbying capabilities would stop reform altogether. That hasn’t happened.

Others suspect a long game is being played, that with every month that passes without a regulator in place, the more likely any legislation comes up against the deadline of a general election. The response to that argument is that there is such a political consensus behind the idea of an independent regulator now that if a Conservative government doesn’t do it, a Labour one surely would.

This is where the FA comes in. The Premier League would be happy with the FA and not, say, the Financial Conduct Authority, overseeing a regulator. The FA would be happy too. It has been keenly trying to improve its own governance of late, primarily through the appointment of nonexecutive directors in order to prove its suitability.

Huddleston seems unconvinced it has changed enough, telling the media it “would be difficult to imagine the circumstances where it would, at least currently, fit the criteria”. But there is briefing going on elsewhere in the corridors of power that it is not too late for the FA to make the grade.

At the beginning of April the new chair of the FA, Debbie Hewitt, wrote to Nadine Dorries. Among the issues she addressed with the culture secretary were the possibility of an owners’ and directors’ test that held “prospective owners to higher standards than would-be investors in other sectors”, draft regulations that would protect club heritage (one of the key powers of the mooted golden share) and a leading role in negotiating improved redistribution.

Were the FA actually to deliver on these things by the “summer”, the end point for this long-awaited and still uncertain reform might finally become clear.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue May 03, 2022 12:09 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue May 03, 2022 12:07 am
There has been much speculation this week about just what a regulator will do - as Paul MacInnes of the Guardian recognises there is still much to be confirm- and yes I continue to be sceptical


Questions over Premier League reform remain despite government’s grand plans
Paul MacInnes

An independent regulator looks set to be introduced with the FA the preferred overseeing body – but when will it happen?
Sun 1 May 2022 08.00 BST

Last week the government finally issued a response to the fan-led review of football it commissioned, and everyone in the game is still busy trying to work out what it means.

On the one hand it was unarguably a seismic moment. The government, in its response and in the words of the sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, explicitly committed itself to creating an independent regulator.

It also guaranteed an enhanced owners and directors test, with an “integrity test” included, promised fans control over their clubs and insisted the Premier League would have to give more money to support teams lower down the football pyramid.

Then again there remains no clear definition of what the regulator will do, where it will sit and, even, if “independent” could mean sitting within the purview of the Football Association, whose board is made up of representatives from the professional game.

The integrity test remains undefined. With regards to fan representation, plans for a golden share and shadow boards suggested by the fan-led review are in limbo and could be shelved altogether. As for the Premier League’s money, it has been told to offer up more before, with the end result being absolutely no change whatsoever.

The government has said there will now be no more detail on the process until the publication of a white paper in the summer, where even the definition of the summer remains uncertain. All of which means speculation – and lobbying – will continue to be the order of the day for some months yet.

To understand how unclear things remain, including for the parties involved, consider the Premier League which – on the face of things – is the loser under the week’s announcements. It is opposed to the creation of an independent regulator and believes it gives enough money to the lower leagues already. Any changes, it has long argued, could kill the success of the English top flight, a competition that is the envy of the rest of Europe.

In private the league now accepts that an independent regulator is coming. While it has not increased the amount of money it is willing to share, it is discussing how it might be distributed. The offer on the table for the EFL is an arcane one, with payments weighted according to league placing and broken up over three years.

It is an idea that may never see the light of day, but it shows – at least to an extent – that the previously all-conquering Premier League is having to change its ways. Many thought its formidable lobbying capabilities would stop reform altogether. That hasn’t happened.

Others suspect a long game is being played, that with every month that passes without a regulator in place, the more likely any legislation comes up against the deadline of a general election. The response to that argument is that there is such a political consensus behind the idea of an independent regulator now that if a Conservative government doesn’t do it, a Labour one surely would.

This is where the FA comes in. The Premier League would be happy with the FA and not, say, the Financial Conduct Authority, overseeing a regulator. The FA would be happy too. It has been keenly trying to improve its own governance of late, primarily through the appointment of nonexecutive directors in order to prove its suitability.

Huddleston seems unconvinced it has changed enough, telling the media it “would be difficult to imagine the circumstances where it would, at least currently, fit the criteria”. But there is briefing going on elsewhere in the corridors of power that it is not too late for the FA to make the grade.

At the beginning of April the new chair of the FA, Debbie Hewitt, wrote to Nadine Dorries. Among the issues she addressed with the culture secretary were the possibility of an owners’ and directors’ test that held “prospective owners to higher standards than would-be investors in other sectors”, draft regulations that would protect club heritage (one of the key powers of the mooted golden share) and a leading role in negotiating improved redistribution.

Were the FA actually to deliver on these things by the “summer”, the end point for this long-awaited and still uncertain reform might finally become clear.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue May 03, 2022 2:06 am

interesting take from Simon Chadwick on the weeks events re the Chelsea sale

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 5358581760

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Tue May 03, 2022 12:22 pm

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

FA looking to appoint a former player to the board, hoping it will stop the government appointing a regulatory body

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue May 03, 2022 12:28 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Tue May 03, 2022 12:22 pm
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sport ... plans.html

FA looking to appoint a former player to the board, hoping it will stop the government appointing a regulatory body
it would need to appoint fans (like representatives from the FSA) to get any kind of movement from the government you would feel - not sure that the FA or the Premier League are willing to do that

Still there is some way to go yet and the first concession I am expecting is for unused parachute payments to be given to the EFL - which could be quite sizeable if Fulham are joined by Bournemouth and Sheffield United in promotion

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Tue May 03, 2022 12:49 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue May 03, 2022 12:28 pm
it would need to appoint fans (like representatives from the FSA) to get any kind of movement from the government you would feel - not sure that the FA or the Premier League are willing to do that

Still there is some way to go yet and the first concession I am expecting is for unused parachute payments to be given to the EFL - which could be quite sizeable if Fulham are joined by Bournemouth and Sheffield United in promotion
Have you heard the idea being floated that the government are going to take £750 million from the sale of Chelsea for grassroots football?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue May 03, 2022 12:53 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Tue May 03, 2022 12:49 pm
Have you heard the idea being floated that the government are going to take £750 million from the sale of Chelsea for grassroots football?
that could be difficult on a legal basis - it is a populist notion which fits the government but can it really be done - I suspect not

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue May 03, 2022 3:15 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Tue May 03, 2022 12:49 pm
Have you heard the idea being floated that the government are going to take £750 million from the sale of Chelsea for grassroots football?
more twists and turns - seems that there is now talk of the loans being repaid at Chelsea - of course it could just be a game with the government as to where the money goes - his charity decision or theirs

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Tue May 03, 2022 3:16 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue May 03, 2022 3:15 pm
more twists and turns - seems that there is now talk of the loans being repaid at Chelsea - of course it could just be a game with the government as to where the money goes - his charity decision or theirs
The loans from Roman to the club?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue May 03, 2022 3:19 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Tue May 03, 2022 3:16 pm
The loans from Roman to the club?
yep - The Times reporting it
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chel ... -sxjn5h8d7

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Tue May 03, 2022 3:28 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue May 03, 2022 3:19 pm
yep - The Times reporting it
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chel ... -sxjn5h8d7
Just posted the same report, retweeted by Craddock-Adams and the price of football on the RUSSIA INVADES thread, under the ongoing title ABRAMOWICH WATCH

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

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