Football's Magic Money Tree

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Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 22, 2021 3:04 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:24 pm
Maybe I am becoming old a cynical, but I have very little time for football clubs financial strife at the top level. If I bought everything on HP and lived well beyond me means I would eventually be taken to court and lose it all as a lesson. I would not expect the national press to run in-depth analysis of how I could fund me out of my stupidity.. so I do not accept those with most power are victims. They are idiots, rich idiots but idiots nonetheless.

Independent management for me is what is required to re-shape football, not just businessmen but supporters groups, ex-managers, players and club owners... the German system for example spits out Dortmund for a period, Bayern remain largely dominant, even in Europe without getting involved in ridiculous high jinks... I’m not saying they have it nailed but it far closer than the rest of major European football.
I suspect the Bayern side of things re super league was more to do with senior executives being ex footballers - the reaction of those with football's history ingrained within them has been extremely consistent in coming out against this.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Apr 22, 2021 3:17 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Apr 22, 2021 3:04 pm
I suspect the Bayern side of things re super league was more to do with senior executives being ex footballers - the reaction of those with football's history ingrained within them has been extremely consistent in coming out against this.
Agree... but I am also sure I have read that German football is by default joint owned by the interested parties, and if I read that it was most likely on your own superb thread.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:21 am

It has taken longer than expected, but the French Ligue has a club enter administration - I am not sure how the fact it is American owned Bordeaux will be viewed -

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... ue-du-club

Private Equity group Fortress Investment had lent Bordeaux over Euro 50m, they are currently in talks to lend a large sum to Inter Milan, It will be interesting to see if that goes through and at what rate of interest. I suspect financing in European football is about to get quite a bit more investment.
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:34 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:21 am
It has taken longer than expected, but the French Ligue has a club enter administration - I am not sure how the fact it is American owned Bordeauz will be viewed -

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... ue-du-club
Terrible and it isn’t a small one either, plenty of past glory there.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:43 am

elwaclaret wrote:
Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:34 am
Terrible and it isn’t a small one either, plenty of past glory there.
The fact that major shareholders have refused to continue the funding is the intriguing issue from a public reaction perspective, these guys bought out Joe DaGrosa, who was there for a year and initiated this mess - this is the guy who has ambitions to set-up a large multi-club franchise and has been sniffing around Southampton for well over a year
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:49 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:43 am
The fact that major shareholders have refused to continue the funding is the intriguing issue from a public reaction point, these guys bought out Joe Dagrosa, who was there for a year and initiated this mess - this is the guy who has ambitions to set-up a large multi-club franchise and has been sniffing around Southampton for well over a year
I know we differ on the way forward but this again shows, yet again clubs up and down Europe need protecting and not governing bodies only interested in chasing the money.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:56 am

elwaclaret wrote:
Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:49 am
I know we differ on the way forward but this again shows, yet again clubs up and down Europe need protecting and not governing bodies only interested in chasing the money.
This is a bit different given that clubs
- were forced to end last season by the government,
- have lost around Euro 35m a club as a result of TV deal (which was a 60% increase on the previous deal) collapse that, they will have budgeted for (think contracts)
- have lost a full year of matchday revenue
This user liked this post: elwaclaret

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:12 am

I have listened to a number of podcasts about the collapse of Super League (Matt Slater seems to have been on most of them) this I think has been the best of them - from SportsProMedia featuring Tariq Panja and Matt Slater (of course)

https://podfollow.com/689306502/episode ... 993b7/view

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:03 pm

The Independent with a different perspective on how the Super League was brought down and a statement of the obvious as to why the 12 are likely to get off rather lightly

Did we just get lucky over Super League collapse?
The games governing bodies have received a wake-up call to how close they were to disaster

Vithushan Ehantharajah
Sports Feature Writer

21 minutes ago


The saying goes that experience is something you get right after you need it. Across the last six days, you could argue the football community had the best of both sides.

Fans, for instance, now know their true power. How their noise can intimidate the 12 who saw themselves above the rest. How cross-club anger can combine to shake the foundations of the ivory tower. And while the European Super League was a step too far in a familiar inching of the game away from the people, the brazenness of this particular scheme was so easy to call out that none of the pain it threatened to cause needed to be endured.

Those previously unknowing or ambivalent to the darker workings of football are more au fait and emboldened. In an industry like football, knowledge and distrust rise in sync. Thus a heightened awareness to the moves boards make, not just the Shameful Six in the Premier League, will breed greater vigilance. And what we might have lost in romanticism by seeing the game used as a means to nefarious ends, the bond with it has ended stronger with the realisation it is still within our control.

Any temptation to revel in this victory has been discouraged from all quarters. Like horror flick aficionados, the warnings are that the threat is never really gone, even if this last battle felt like a show-stopper. There were 12 Halloween movies, and Michael Myers was present in all of them.

But as the dust begins to settle on a tumultuous week, it is hard not to wonder how different things could have been. Because amid the jokes about Andrea Agnelli and his clown car of executives and owners lies an uncomfortable truth. Considering how far they were allowed to stumble before being tackled, who knows what they might have achieved with even a degree of competence and self-awareness they now have?

That seems to be the prevailing sense behind the scenes at Fifa and Uefa. A week that began with defiance looks to end in relief. The kind of relief that suggests the European Super League possessed the clout to fight and win if they were better-organised.

Both governing bodies were brought together by a common enemy. Even having to work together on Monday, which was supposed to be a public holiday for the canton of Zurich before Sunday’s drip-feeding of the Super League, was further common ground.

Statements from Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin and his Fifa counterpart Gianni Infantino were coordinated to pack a punch. A combination threat of expulsion from European club competition and players from rebel clubs banned from taking part in international tournaments worked. That was underpinned by the prospect of leagues considering points deductions and other sanctions to their rebel teams.

And yet the whispers suggest the majority will get off the hook. On Wednesday the Premier League’s remaining 14 were divided on whether The Six should face punishment. La Liga president Javier Tebas said Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid would get off altogether, beyond the public shaming all three have endured.

Similarly, the comfort Uefa and Fifa feel deep down is that their threats would have been tough to execute. At a time when associations and entire nations are looking to recoup losses incurred through the pandemic, banning marquee players from competing would be the last thing they need.

The 2018’s men’s World Cup, for instance, generated almost $5.4 billion, of which around $3billion was broadcast rights. The provisos on that figure relate to having the best of the best on show.

Uefa were wary of cutting off their stars from a Euros that had already been delayed by a year. Quietly, there was a feeling that had this been in any other odd number year - one without a delayed competition - they’d be able to punish completely, knowing there would be some contrition from the 12.

But with two high-profile international money-spinners in 18 months, following through on this threat would have been tough to justify. Even in the corridors of Fifa, 2022’s Qatar World Cup is being mooted as the finale of the Cristiano Ronaldo-Lionel Messi rivalry. Just imagine the marketing opportunities that would emanate from such a Godzilla versus Kong showdown.

Justification of those thoughts comes with the knowledge that by acting as they have, the Premier League’s top six have already damaged things for the rest by lowering the prospective value of the competition.

This was outlined by Conrad Wiacek, head of sport analysis at GlobalData, when it was reported some broadcast companies were looking to pay big money for the first set of media rights. “While good news for the teams involved, this will be a disaster for the English Premier League, which is due to go to market with its new media rights tender in the months ahead – and with its current multi-billion-dollar deal is expiring at the end of the 2021/22, no less.

“With six of its top clubs contemplating potentially joining the Super League, the collective bargaining position of the English Premier League will be severely weakened, leading to a cratering of the value of media rights for the Premier League, which currently generate in excess of £5bn domestically.”

Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur will take time to recover from the body blow of this week. They may never be trusted implicitly by their fanbases, wearing this blemish for a generation.

But the onus is on how they are allowed to recover. Not just in their contrition and how they learn their lessons, but how they are kept in check. Because the powers that be can only be so forceful without harming themselves. As one insider puts it, “it’s not even about the apology, it’s about time”. Those in power, even those on the right side of this particular argument will hope people forgive but will rely on people forgetting.

Whether it is the Super League or the Champions League reform, the fear is these clubs will be able to re-emerge as they once were. The only mistake they will learn from is what to do better next time, rather than what to do right. By over-estimating their power, they have merely set a marker for how powerful they are now and how much more powerful they could be.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 12:33 pm

Naturally the FSA have taken this weeks events as an opportunity to further their cause and seek significant involvement in the review of the game

https://thefsa.org.uk/news/fsa-statemen ... ce-review/

I have no issue with that, fans must be equally involved as should all the other stakeholders (and that includes billionaire remote owners). My issue with this review is that almost everyone is approaching it from within their own narrow perspectives with solutions that suit them. I would also add that this level of government interest and commitment appears to result from the slight the Prime Minister feels after being in a meeting with Ed Woodward just days before the Super League announcement

My experience (and I used to do this for a living after first getting a MSc that was hugely focused on the subject) is that no right and proper solutions (it will not be a single of solution but a range of solutions) can be found to a problem without first defining it clearly, that in itself will require extensive input from all stakeholders, and more importantly no one dismissing any of that input, This is a time for empathy not recrimination.

Today's announced terms of reference for this review https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... governance are in my view overly defining. Many will say years of DCMS hearings have provide structure to this review, I have watch a number of those hearings. and nothing I have seen has significantly contributed to the overall problem definition

I fear for any outcome when so many are approaching this with pre-determined notion of problem and solution, which is what I am seeing a lot of.

There is also something else to remember, acting in isolation can have a detrimental effect internationally, what about the power brokers at UEFA, FIFA and the other confederations? We saw on Monday that UEFA ignored the European Leagues, by ratifying an agreement with the the ECA, an agreement brokered by club executives that resigned from the ECA and UEFA roles that very morning. It was also significant that FIFA President Gianni Infantino who has previously spoken openly of working with Florentino Perez on a Global Super League/World Club Cup and has been championing African and North American Super Leagues this year did not speak on the subject until the direction of travel was known. With populist isolationism being a theme of our current government there is so much to be wary about.
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:04 pm

In the US the New York Times is known as a newspaper of record, this account by Tariq Panja and Rory Smith of the Super League's rise and fall shows why

How the Super League Fell Apart
APRIL 22, 2021

LONDON — For 48 hours, soccer stood on the brink. Fans took to the streets. Players broke into open revolt. Chaos stalked the game’s corridors of power, unleashing a shock wave that resonated around the world, from Manchester to Manila, Barcelona to Beijing, and Liverpool to Los Angeles.

That internationalism is what has turned European soccer, over the last 30 years, into a global obsession. The elite teams of western Europe are stocked with stars drawn from Africa, South America and all points in between. They draw fans not just from England, Italy and Spain, but China, India and Australia in numbers large enough to tempt broadcasters across the planet to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to show their games.

But while soccer is now the biggest business in sports, it remains, at heart, an intensely local affair. Teams rooted in neighborhoods and based in small towns compete in domestic leagues that have existed for more than a century, competitions in which the great and the good share the field — and at least some of the finances — with the minor and the makeweight.

An uneasy truce between the two faces of the world’s game had held for decades. And then, on Sunday night, it cracked, as an unlikely alliance of American hedge funds, Russian oligarchs, European industrial tycoons and Gulf royals sought to seize control of the revenues of the world’s most popular sport by creating a closed European superleague.

How that plan came together and then spectacularly collapsed is a story of egos and intrigue, avarice and ambition, secret meetings and private lunches, international finance and internecine strife. It lasted just two frantic, feverish days, but that was more than enough time to shake the world.

The Secret
Last Thursday, Javier Tebas and Joan Laporta were supposed to be having a cordial, celebratory lunch. A few days earlier, Laporta had been elected to a second term as president of F.C. Barcelona. Tebas, the outspoken, unashamedly bellicose executive in charge of Spain’s national league, wanted to be among the first to congratulate him on his victory.

It did not turn out that way. Laporta revealed to Tebas that Barcelona was almost certainly joining a dozen or so of Europe’s most famous, most successful teams in a breakaway competition, one that would effectively unmoor its members from the game’s traditional structures and, crucially, its multibillion-dollar economy.

The threat was nothing new. There has long been a perception, at least among soccer’s rich and powerful teams, that since they have the most fans, they generate the bulk of the sport’s revenue. It follows, then, that they should be treated to a greater slice of its income. Like clockwork, every few years they would float a plan to group the best teams together in a single competition. And, like clockwork, the grand plan would fail to materialize, the big clubs bought off by promises of more power and more money if only they would agree to stay.

But Tebas felt this new effort was more serious, more real. Laporta told him that a half-dozen teams had already committed. Several more had been told that they had until the end of the weekend to decide.

Tebas raised the alarm. He called officials in leagues across Europe. He called executives of powerful clubs. And he reached out to Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, the organization that Tebas knew had the most to lose.

Ceferin, a lean, plain-spoken 53-year-old lawyer from Slovenia, was baffled. Only a few weeks earlier, his close friend and ally Andrea Agnelli, the president of the Italian league champion Juventus, the scion of one of Europe’s great industrial families and the leader of the association representing European soccer clubs, had assured him that whispers about a new round of breakaway talks were only “a rumor.”

Just a day earlier, in fact, Agnelli and his organization had recommitted to a suite of reforms to the Champions League, European soccer’s crown jewel and its biggest moneymaker. Everything was set to be approved on Monday.

Still, the drumbeat of rumors continued, and Ceferin felt he needed to be sure. So as he slid into the front seat of his Audi Q8 on Saturday to start the eight-hour drive from his home in Ljubljana to his office in Switzerland, he decided to get to the bottom of things. He placed a call to Agnelli. His friend did not pick up.

Ceferin — the godfather to Agnelli’s youngest child — texted the Italian’s wife and asked if she might get the Juventus president to call him urgently. He was three hours into his journey when his cellphone rang. Breezily, Agnelli reassured Ceferin, again, that everything was fine.

Ceferin suggested they issue a joint communiqué that would put the issue to rest. Agnelli agreed. Ceferin drafted a statement from the car and sent it to Agnelli. An hour later, Agnelli asked for time to send back an amended version. Hours passed. The men traded more calls. Eventually, the Italian told Ceferin he needed another 30 minutes.

And then Agnelli turned off his phone.

The Revolt
The reason that the threat of a superleague had carried so much menace for so long is that much of soccer’s vast economy rests on a fragile bond.

Both domestic championships — like England’s Premier League and Spain’s La Liga — and Pan-continental tournaments like the Champions League to some extent rely on the presence of the elite clubs to attract fans and, through them, broadcasters and sponsors. Without them, the revenue streams that filter down to and sustain smaller teams might collapse.

For decades, the system rested on appeasing the rich teams just enough to encourage them to retain their loyalty to the collective. All of a sudden, that trust was fraying.

As he arrived in Switzerland, Ceferin fielded two more calls that made clear how real the threat to European soccer’s future had become. Two teams, one English and one Spanish, informed him that they had been pressed to sign up for the breakaway league. They had decided to accept, but wanted to remain on good terms with European soccer’s governing body.

Ceferin’s response was polite, but blunt. If they allied with the rebels, they should prepare for an all-out attack.

With his inner circle, Ceferin got to work. They broke the news to some board members of the European Club Association, the umbrella group of about 250 European teams. Its president, Agnelli, and senior executives like Manchester United’s Ed Woodward had misled them about supporting the Champions League reform plan, they said.

They told the clubs that, even though the breakaway clubs intended to remain in their own domestic leagues, too, the plan would see the value of those competitions’ broadcast deals collapse. Sponsorships would evaporate. It would decimate the rest of soccer’s finances. “They were outraged, they couldn’t believe it,” Ceferin said in an interview on Wednesday. “Even mafia organizations have some sort of code.”

By lunchtime on Sunday, the roster of the insurgents was known. Ceferin started referring to them as the Dirty Dozen. As well as Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid had signed up from Spain. There were six from England: Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. In Italy, Juventus had been joined by A.C. Milan and Inter Milan.

Not all of them were equal partners. Executives at Manchester City and Chelsea, for example, had only learned on Friday that the plan was in motion. They had been told that they had no more than a day or so to decide whether they were in or out. Either way, they were warned, the train was leaving the station.

City quickly succumbed, but others proved more resistant. Bayern Munich and Paris St.-Germain, the dominant forces in Germany and France, had both been approached. They had declined the offer, preferring to stay — at least for the moment — aligned with the rest of Europe.

They supplied some of the intelligence that allowed UEFA and national leagues in Spain, Italy and England to plan their counterattack. When the group learned that an official statement revealing the creation of the new competition, called the Super League, would be made late Sunday, they made plans to issue their own — disavowing the project.

But before they could, the news leaked. The public outcry, particularly in Britain, was immediate. Fans hung banners outside their teams’ stadiums, and lawmakers took to the airwaves to denounce the rebels for their greed and disrespect toward soccer’s traditions.

Gary Neville, a former Manchester United captain, unleashed a several-minute tirade against his former team and Liverpool, English soccer’s two most popular teams. The screed went viral, and it was soon being shared by opponents of the project via the messaging application WhatsApp.

This was precisely what some of those involved with the project had feared. There had been doubts that the plan was ready to go live; insiders worried that it might not survive a fierce initial backlash. “This is not the time to do it,” an executive involved in the project warned. The executive suggested holding off until summer.

By then, it was hoped, the clubs might have found a frontman for the breakaway. Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, had been the driving force behind much of it; it was, to some extent, his brainchild. But his peers were aware that he would struggle to convince an English audience, in particular.

The Manchester United co-chairman Joel Glazer, whose family also owns the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Chelsea’s Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich; and Arsenal’s Stan Kroenke, who controls nearly a dozen professional teams, almost never speak publicly. Manchester City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, doesn’t speak to reporters at all. And others considered for the role — like Liverpool’s majority owner, John W. Henry — were unwilling to accept it.

There were also concerns that the rebels’ communications strategy — marshaled by Katie Perrior, a political operative close to Boris Johnson, the British prime minister — was too focused on winning governmental, rather than popular, support. There had been no effort to consult, involve or win over fans, players or coaches. An outcry might destroy everything before the lobbying effort could begin in earnest.

Those concerns were not heeded. Agnelli, theoretically a voice for all of Europe’s clubs in his governance roles and a close friend of Ceferin, was feeling the strain of being, in effect, a double agent. He had protected the rebels’ secret for weeks, shading the truth — or worse — in talks with friends and allies. On Monday morning, though, he would have to sit on the dais with the rest of the UEFA board as it voted to approve changes to a Champions League that would be under mortal threat from the Super League.

He knew the league was happening. With the signatures of Chelsea, Manchester City and Atlético Madrid in hand, the founding members were set. The financing, delivered by the Spanish advisory firm Key Capital Partners and backed by the American bank JPMorgan Chase, would mean billions in new riches. Agnelli simply needed the news out.

Glazer, one of Manchester United’s co-chairmen, agreed. He was adamant it was time to press the button.

And so, despite all the doubts, the clubs showed their hand just after 11 on Sunday night in London. An official announcement, published simultaneously on the 12 teams’ websites, revealed that they had all signed up to what they called the Super League. But by then, the narrative that the project was driven by the greed of a few wealthy clubs and their leaders had taken shape.

“It was dead in the water by 11:10,” the executive involved in the plan said. “Everyone had climbed their hill and would not be able to come down.”

Uncivil War
By first light the next day, the battle lines had been drawn. And it was quickly clear that the breakaway 12 had next to no support.

But rather than mount a public defense, sending out a phalanx of officials to make a case that the league was good for soccer’s entire pyramid, arguing that it would shower millions on the teams and leagues left behind, the Super League’s first act was to deliver a letter to Europe’s governing body, UEFA, and soccer’s global leadership at FIFA.

The league, the letter informed the governing bodies, had already filed motions in several European countries to prevent anyone from blocking the project.

Ceferin, meanwhile, was back to working the phones to rally opposition. He sought the support of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, even though the men rarely saw eye to eye. He also had a lengthy call with Oliver Dowden, the lawmaker responsible for sport and culture in Britain. Dowden said the British government would do everything in its power to stop the breakaway clubs from “stealing” the game.

Soon Johnson, the British prime minister, was being interviewed on television, staking out a position against the plan in a savvy play for public support. His French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, issued a statement condemning the plan. Prince William posted a tweet expressing his “concerns” about the Super League.

By the time he appeared in public on Monday, Ceferin had led a UEFA executive committee meeting where Agnelli was notable by his absence. Agnelli had resigned his board post — and his role as head of the European clubs group — minutes after the Super League’s late-night announcement. With his seat empty, the remaining members voted through changes to the Champions League, and then got back to work in their effort to crush the new league that was threatening it.

Ceferin, stern-faced, then excoriated the breakaway group in his first comments to reporters. He reserved specific vitriol for Manchester United’s Woodward, who he felt had misled him, and for Agnelli. Ceferin called the men “snakes” and “liars,” and described how they had led him to believe he had their full support for the Champions League revisions.

“Agnelli is the biggest disappointment of all,” Ceferin said. “I have never seen a person who would lie so many times and so persistently as he did.”

By then, the acrimony was spreading across the European soccer landscape. The Premier League held a meeting without its six rebel teams, and the remaining 14 clubs discussed what punitive measures to take against those who had signed up for the Super League. Daniel Levy, the chairman of Tottenham, one of the rebel clubs, asked Paul Barber, the chief executive of Brighton, to share a message of regret at the meeting. He did, but few seemed interested in Levy’s sentiment.

In Italy, a hastily arranged meeting was even more febrile. Owners and executives of the teams in Serie A, the country’s top league, turned on officials from Juventus, Inter and Milan. Tensions were already soaring; cash-poor teams, their budgets devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, had been arguing with their richer rivals over television contracts and whether to accept investment from a consortium of private equity companies.

Now Agnelli, who had quickly become a lightning rod for the Super League, was called a traitor by the chairman of Juventus’s crosstown rival, Torino. Agnelli, in a typically pugnacious manner, was said to have retorted with an expletive, saying he did not care if Juventus remained in Serie A.

“It’s a betrayal,” the Torino president, Urbano Cairo, told reporters. “It’s what a Judas does.”

English teams, notably Liverpool and Chelsea, had other reasons to be concerned. Their fans were already gathering outside the stadiums from which they had been barred by the pandemic, hanging banners denouncing the Super League on walls and entry gates.

Late in the afternoon, hundreds of angry supporters surrounded Liverpool’s team bus as it made its way to Leeds United’s Elland Road stadium for a game. Inside the stadium, the Leeds players wore T-shirts expressing solidarity with soccer’s current system during warm-ups. When Leeds scored a late goal to secure a 1-1 tie, its official Twitter account mocked the visitors.

Players, too, were starting to make their views known. Manchester United’s squad had demanded a meeting with Woodward to express not only their fury at being forced to find out about the plan through the news media, but their disapproval of the idea itself. Several other high-profile stars, playing for teams not involved in the breakaway, had posted messages disavowing the plan on social media.

On Monday evening, after his team’s game with Leeds, Liverpool’s most senior player, James Milner, revealed that he and his teammates had not been consulted about the club’s involvement in the plan. “I don’t like it, and I hope it doesn’t happen,” he said.

Inside the clubs, unease was mounting. The plan had been kept secret even from high-level executives — “It was an ownership thing,” said one executive at one of the teams involved — and there had been little warning of what was to come. At some clubs, an all-staff email flashed around just before the statement was released.

At others, high-profile figures were left to read about it on social media. Paolo Maldini, a legendary former player and now an executive at A.C. Milan, had heard nothing until it was announced. Michael Edwards, Liverpool’s sporting director, was blindsided. Some started to worry about the safety of their families as the outrage spread.

In Switzerland, Ceferin was in his hotel room, drafting and redrafting a speech he was to make the next day at UEFA’s annual meeting. He had already started to field calls from Super League clubs, mainly from England, concerned about the growing backlash and the possible consequences they — and their players — could face by signing up for an unsanctioned tournament.

In January, FIFA had warned clubs and players that anyone taking part in a breakaway league risked banishment from events like the World Cup. Earlier Monday, Ceferin had repeated the threat, but now his tone was softening.

“I had a feeling they wanted to repair this mistake and they didn’t know how to do it,” Ceferin said. So he changed his speech. Now, it offered an olive branch to those teams he knew were searching for one.

He inched closer to winning them back when Pérez, the Real Madrid president, made what was in hindsight the disastrous — if brave — decision to defend the Super League plan on a flashy, late-night television show.

Largely unchallenged by the hosts, he pledged that the league was an altruistic venture even as it funneled ever more billions to a handful of rich teams, and to lambast the Champions League reforms that Agnelli, now the Super League’s vice chairman, only weeks earlier had described as “beautiful.”

In the headquarters of the other Super League clubs, executives held their heads in their hands. Still, though, they remained mute, unwilling to go public to defend a plan that Pérez claimed had been designed expressly to “save football.”

The Collapse
As Ceferin prepared to deliver his keynote address on Tuesday morning in Montreux, reports began to emerge that several teams — Chelsea and Manchester City among them — were considering dropping out. Television networks and sponsors had come out against the breakaway plan, and the British government was threatening official action to block it.

Any doubts among the teams hardened as FIFA’s Infantino dispelled growing speculation that he secretly harbored hopes the project would succeed.

“If some elect to go their own way, then they must live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” Infantino said, raising again the possibility that the renegade clubs and their players could face excommunication. “Concretely this means, either you are in, or you are out.”

Then it was Ceferin’s turn. He talked about greed and selfishness, but also about soccer’s importance in the fabric of European culture, and in the lives of the millions who follow the game across the Continent. He then made his direct pitch to the English clubs, the one he had written into his draft hours earlier.

“Gentlemen, you made a huge mistake,” he told them, staring directly into the cameras. “Some will say it is greed, others disdain, arrogance, flippancy or complete ignorance of England’s football culture. It does not matter.

“What does matter is that there is still time to change your mind. Everyone makes mistakes.”

Within hours, the project’s demise started to snowball. In a meeting with the Premier League chief executive Richard Masters and fan groups from all six English teams, Johnson said he was considering detonating “a legislative bomb” to halt the putsch. More and more players came out against the idea. Marcus Rashford, Manchester United’s homegrown striker, posted an image on Twitter that read: “Football Is Nothing Without Fans.” Liverpool’s entire squad released a simultaneous message disavowing the project.

The team captain, Jordan Henderson, had convened a meeting of his counterparts at every Premier League team to discuss a concerted response. Manchester City’s respected coach, Pep Guardiola, declared his opposition to the mere idea of a closed league of superclubs, saying that “it is not sport if you cannot lose.” It was a turn of events that the rebel clubs had not foreseen.

As evening drew near, hundreds of fans gathered outside Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s home stadium, to protest the plan before the team’s game with Brighton. They blocked streets, and surrounded the bus carrying the players when it arrived. Petr Cech, a club legend, went out to try to speak to the protesters. Inside, team officials leaked the news that Chelsea was exploring ways to exit its Super League contract.

But it was Manchester City that was the first to break ranks officially, releasing a short statement saying it was pulling out.

The Super League executives were stunned, unsure of what was happening. That night, Arsenal and its North London rival Tottenham announced their departures within minutes of each other. Manchester United confirmed that Woodward — its top executive and one of the main architects of the Super League — would leave the club at the end of the year. Then came a statement from the club that it was withdrawing, too. Almost immediately, Liverpool confirmed it was out.

The Super League, having lost half its members, and its entire foothold in England, was finished. Inter Milan dropped out a few hours later, and then, as the clock ticked to the 48-hour mark since its grand announcement, the Super League released an unsigned statement acknowledging that the plan was no longer viable.

By then, Ceferin was back in Slovenia, having completed the eight-hour return trip from Montreux. He stayed up until about 2 a.m., digesting the news. He released a statement welcoming back the English teams into the European fold. He started to respond to the thousands of messages that had swamped his phone over the previous two days.

Then he closed his laptop, and helped himself to a double whiskey.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:13 pm

Aston Villa have announced their 2019/20 Financial Results (in a season where a historically unique goal line technology failure at Villa Park meant they avoided relegation) - nothing to see here though just a £99m loss

https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2021/april/ ... -Accounts/

the full accounts can be found here https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 2:33 pm

Finally someone acknowledges that ECA "fan of the Future" report from last Thursday

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 5035957250

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 7:33 pm

There are some interesting reports emanating from Germany around the Super League - here is one that underlines the soft power/sports washing/legitimisation theme on this thread

From @TariqPanja

There is an interesting line in a story published SDZ newspaper in Germany (translation attached) that Vladimir Putin told Roman Abramovich that It was not in Russia’s interest for Chelsea to join Super League. Coincidentally Euro 2020 host St. Petersburg got extra games today.

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 90/photo/1

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 8:33 pm

There has been a lot in the last few months on this thread about American Investors in European football, little has looked at the investment in the lower leagues - here the BBC look at 3 such investors in the English lower leagues and they do seem a little different to those that have been in the headlines this week

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56674024

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 10:30 pm

Intriguing stuff from Rick Parry tonight - apparently the Championships watchword is sustainability, as he jumps on the back of the weels events to justify his position in Project Big Picture - from the Telegraph

Rick Parry: Super League collapse means Project Big Picture should be back on the table
TOM MORGAN APRIL 23, 2021

The "best of Project Big Picture" should be back on the table after the collapse of the European Super League, the domestic breakaway's main architect has declared.

Rick Parry said the fiasco of the past week underlines why the English Football League chairman held extensive talks with Manchester United and Liverpool last year.

Like the European scheme which collapsed just 48 hours after launch, Project Big Picture, a domestic plot uncovered by Telegraph Sport, was derailed amid national uproar.

Parry has consistently argued that the clandestine talks he held, primarily with Liverpool, United and Greg Clarke, the former FA chairman, would have helped safeguard the future of the pyramid.

The reforms would have given the "Big Six" increased voting rights on commercial decisions, with the Premier League trimmed to 18 clubs. However, Parry had championed the prospect of a cash injection that would have seen the EFL given £250 million immediately, plus 25 per cent of revenue from future top-tier TV deals.

At the time the plot was perceived as a power grab by the big clubs, but Parry has told Telegraph Sport that some of Project Big Picture's merits must be brought back to the negotiating table as the Government triggers its fan-led review.

"We want to input the best of Big Picture to the Premier League strategic review and we'll import it to the Government's review," Parry said. "It's very simple - we (the EFL) want 25 per cent of the total TV revenue, we want an end to parachute payments, we want a narrowing of the cliff edge between the Championship and the Premier League, because our watchword, our entire focus, is on sustainability."

The loathed Champions League breakaway led by United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester City, along with six of their richest European rivals, comes after the most punishing of years for Parry and the stricken football league.

With Championship clubs on the edge of a financial abyss during the pandemic, Parry was forced to personally secure a £117.5m loan from the private sector after a deal with the Treasury collapsed over player bonus demands.

An emergency funding package from MetLife Investment Management amounts to around £8m each for Championship clubs on the brink of collapse, but the loan would have been unnecessary under ideas in Parry's plan.

"One thing that the pandemic has reinforced is how important our clubs are at the heart of their communities," Parry said, as he reflected on the dismay caused by the biggest clubs this week.

"The genuine communities clubs have been magnificent during the pandemic, not just in terms of keeping alive and getting the season finished, which was a huge challenge, but above and beyond that they've been working with the NHS, they've been delivering food parcels, they've worked on mental health issues. I mean, the community efforts have been enormous."

The collapse of Big Picture left the EFL with little bargaining power with the Premier League and Government, who repeatedly said football should find its own financial solutions during the pandemic.

England's top tier signed off a potential £50m grant package for League One and Two in December, but promised £15m towards covering only the fees in the alternative loan sought by Parry.

The payouts to Championship clubs will help cover estimated £150m losses in gate receipts and other matchday revenue streams. Relations between the EFL and Government remain strained.

Ministers on Thursday night announced new ownership structures at clubs will be assessed as part of its review brought forward by the Super League debacle.

It will also assess if an independent regulator may have a beneficial impact, with sports minister Nigel Huddleston saying it "must be a watershed moment in our national game". Tracey Crouch MP will chair the review and report its recommendations back to the Government and FA. The review will consider ownership models including those used in Germany, where the 50+1 rule means clubs cannot play in the Bundesliga if one commercial investor owns more than a 49 per cent stake. Such a plan is likely to face stiff opposition from owners across the four tiers of elite football.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 10:34 pm

You may have noticed that there were a few protestors outside the Emirates Stadium tonight wanting amongst other things for the Kroenke's to sell up, well someone who can actually afford them and has been a long time fan has chucked his hat into the ring - Spotify founder Daniel Ek

https://twitter.com/eldsjal/status/1385667437929062403

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 23, 2021 10:43 pm

Meanwhile the Red Knights who tried to buy Manchester United off the Glazer family a while ago have offered their thoughts in an open letter the the Glazers as to how they might begin to ear the trust of the fans (as they said they wanted to after pulling out of Super League - somehow I don't think the suggestions are going to be taken up

https://news.sky.com/story/red-knights- ... w-12284461

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:22 pm

Some financial news we missed on Monday as we were distracted by events surrounding the Super League. The Premier League posted their financial results for the 2019/20 season, a season that saw the beginning of a new rights cycle that was to have generated am 8% up lift in overall revenues but for various reasons actually witnessed a 10% drop

the accounts can be found here

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

This report from SportsProMedia gives you a summary overview

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/pre ... s-covid-19

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:28 pm

UEFA also released it's 2019/20 financial accounts on Monday

financial report

https://editorial.uefa.com/resources/02 ... -20_en.pdf

financial report annex including full Accounts

https://editorial.uefa.com/resources/02 ... 020_bd.pdf

again there is a report from SportsProMedia

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/uef ... ons-league

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 24, 2021 3:47 pm

The new head of the European Leagues speaks to OffthePitch.com about the events of the past week - he brings up a number of issues that I have also been talking about particularly the coefficient payments and qualification

https://offthepitch.com/a/european-leag ... -alliances

European Leagues chair calls for increased dialogue after Super League collapse: "Depending on alliances with individual big clubs has proven to be an unsustainable model"
21 April 2021 9:00 PM
  • Claus Thomsen, the recently appointed chair of the European Leagues, speaks to Off The Pitch after plans for a breakaway Super League collapsed.
  • Recognising fans' and stakeholders' response to the proposal, he calls on the industry to further take base in its European values.
  • That means UEFA's club competitions reform mustn't give additional Champions League spots to the top four leagues.
  • In addition, solidarity payments for non-participating clubs should be doubled to increase the competitive balance.
EMIL GJERDING NIELSON nielson@offthepitch.com

It's still hard to grasp the events that have unfolded since Sunday. The full extent and implications of the breakaway Super League, which now seems to have entirely collapsed, will likely not be known for some time.

What is clear, however, is that the project has yet again forced the industry to take a hard look at itself. And most hope this will lead to changes for the benefit of the whole system.

That's because many of the feared consequences of the Super League are already present in the current football pyramid, and many expect UEFA's 2024 reform of its club competitions only serves to further embolden these structural issues of a sport unequal in so many ways.

It's somewhat of a surprise that it has come at this point

One of those hoping for change is Claus Thomsen, the chief executive of the Danish football league, who was recently elected as chair of the European Leagues, a lobby organisation representing 37 professional football leagues and associations from 30 countries counting more than 1000 clubs.

Thomsen, who was earlier this month appointed to lead a newly formed management board replacing outgoing president Lars-Christer Olsson, spoke with Off The Pitch following a tumultuous week for European football. This is what he had to say.

Big clubs already get their share

What are your thoughts on the process of the past few days?

"It's hard to have an opinion about – I wouldn't call it a process. In comparison to 2016 in particular and 2019 there has been a sensible dialogue over where to take European competitions and their effect on national leagues. That's why it's somewhat of a surprise that it has come at this point."

Why did the sensible dialogue stop?

"Cheekily I could say it's because some clubs have not performed proper costs controls. That's what it's about. These clubs have seen the opportunity to build a franchise which they believe could grow their revenue considerably. And they've executed on that at a somewhat odd moment."

Isn't it fair that big clubs want to grow their businesses and earn more on their considerably larger fan bases?

"Yes, that could be argued. But they already get their share. When FC Midtjylland qualify for the Champions League they earn about €24 million. When Real Madrid do they are guaranteed about €100 million. It's not that they haven't been taken care of.

Of course, they bring more to the table in terms of commercial value, but they do benefit more from it than most others. Unless they have a really crappy team one year and lose out, but that's life and the nature of the European sporting model.

If I were them I would have solved that issue in another way. By entering a dialogue about how to implement costs controls in the system. And I recognise that would be extremely difficult but that's a dialogue the biggest clubs could have had."

Are you now certain the Super League will never happen?

"Never say never. The clubs are legally within their right to establish a Super League. But what you've seen is that fans, clubs and leagues want to keep the European model. Where it's sporting performance that decides moving from one level to another, and where European tournaments are European and not a closed shop."

Still a lot of issues with UEFA's reform

Speaking about sporting performance, is the proposed two access spots for UEFA's club competitions from 2024 a sensible idea?

"No, I don't think so. And it's my expectation that will be discussed further in phase two where everything is arranged more specifically. That's what European Leagues has proposed. Speaking about access, it makes little sense to give the four additional Champions League spots to the big five leagues. It's very unfortunate for the national tournaments – also that you're increasing the number of participants from each country from five to six. The big leagues are not happy with that either.

It's fair that the fifth largest league, the French, receives another spot because they also help pay it down the system in the same way that the top four leagues do. But you should let three out of the four spots go to national champions through the champions path to increasingly make the tournament European."

What about the increase in matches?

"The other issue is the four additional match days in the calendar. It's too much and it is going to hurt. It will push the national leagues and cups, and it will especially hurt the big clubs' willingness to release national team players for the national team.

The Swiss model does allow for adjustments. You can scale it up or down because it's not bound to the number of matches. You can have a structure where you have six or eight match weeks instead of ten as proposed."

What expectations do you have in terms of working out solidarity payments and revenue distribution under UEFA's 2024 reform?

"The most important thing in terms of revenue distribution is raising the share for non-participating clubs. And there have been some positive messages for the 2021-24 cycle. It's important that you move further in that direction after 2024. Whatever it's 100 or 56 additional matches it will take an increased share of the media revenue from the national markets. You should compensate for that."

How much are your aiming for?

"Right now it's four per cent. What's unacceptable is cutting it further because it's already been cut for this cycle from five to four per cent. In my view it would be fair to double that."

Do you think there is a healthy competitive balance at the moment?

"It could easily be better, and I think you should aim for that. That could be by changing the compensation for clubs not participating in European competitions, making it fairer. Because they deliver the value and keep the match days open. You can't be blind to that.

And then you should, for the same reasons, look to invest more in the Europa League and the new Conference League to have a more equal distribution in those tournaments.

It's incredible what the historic coefficient does in the Champions League where you don't have to perform to get a big share of the distribution. And there has to be a difference because some contribute more than others. But the way football Europe reacted to the Super League tells me more fair compensation and distribution is what's wanted."

Don't force our hand

Why is competitive balance important?

"You need to have an adequate competitive balance in all tournaments or they lose their value. Nobody is saying you can't have big clubs – neither in national nor international tournaments. The issue is if they start winning – especially in the national tournaments – without a real challenge.

Smaller clubs euro for euro are much more efficient at creating a good team. The price of increasing the performance of a big team by just five per cent compared to a smaller team is much greater.

Some want a closed system and if they want it they can go make it. That's how it is, the EU is a free an open economy. But don't tell the rest of the football world that this is how it's going to be and try to force them to accommodate to that."

How does the European Leagues plan to position itself in the future?

"We want to be responsible for a range of principles including transparency and openness of why we do what we do and believe what we believe. We'll always defend sporting performance as the thing that carries this system more than anything else. And then we'll keep pushing to keep a sensible competitive balance."

How do you repair the relationship with the Super League clubs?

"To start off with you shouldn't reward someone for stepping out and wanting all the money for themselves and then coming back again. Everyone is welcome back, of course, but you have to move in the direction football Europe has asked for. Not the direction of how we make these 12 clubs happy again. They should be really happy that football is welcoming them back with open arms.

Then UEFA has to move in the direction of taking basis in the leagues and associations who are its members. Depending on alliances with individual big clubs has proven to be an unsustainable model. It's not that you shouldn't take them into account, but you already do that in a considerable way.

If the big clubs can't live with that they can drop out as they've been trying, but they obviously saw that was a bad idea when it came to the point. They wanted to partly drop out and partly be in, and obviously you are not going to be allowed to do that."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 24, 2021 5:31 pm

A powerful and emotive thread by Rory Smith aimed at those fans calling on billionaire owners involved in the Super League to show contrition by showering even greater largesse on their clubs

https://twitter.com/RorySmith/status/13 ... 2447831043

It is a subject he tackles again in this long and detailed piece in the New York Times about what comes next following the collapse of Super League, but are fans really ready to accept the consequences of their demands

The Super League Is Gone. What Now?
APRIL 23, 2021

Sign up for Rory Smith’s weekly newsletter on world soccer, delivered every Friday, at nytimes.com/rory.

After all that, there is one thing we still do not know. We know what the dozen venture capitalists and industrialists and petrochemical princelings behind the Super League intended to do. We know what the future they had mapped out would have looked like. We know, or we can at least imagine, the damage they might have done.

What we do not know, not really, is why.

We have the platitudes, of course, the blandishments offered by Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, in that brash appearance on a gaudy Spanish talk show: that this was the only way to save soccer, that the rising tide lifts all boats, that there was no other option.

And we have the presumption, too, the Occam’s razor explanation: that deep down this was about nothing more than money, the relentless, insatiable, metastasizing pursuit of it, a cynical and grasping attempt to hoard as much of it as possible, made by those who already have far more than most, and far more than they need.

But while one of those points is considerably more valid than the other, neither quite satisfactorily explains what united these 12 disparate club owners behind a single, slapdash scheme like the Super League. They have, after all, spent much of the last decade quarreling among themselves. Their motivations, priorities and concerns are all quite different. They are, in the cold light of day, not so much one another’s solutions as they are one another’s problems. So the question stands: Why?

It is easiest, perhaps, to divide the 12 into three groups. In one, there are the English teams under American, or American-inflected, ownership: Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham. Their aim is not just to make more money, it is also to spend less of it. They want cost controls, salary caps, financial regulation. They want stable income, and restricted expenditures.

Their issue is the presence, in European soccer, of the second group: the outlier teams, Manchester City and Chelsea, backed by owners who would favor the abolition of such limitations. Their principal interest is in using their private wealth to gain a competitive edge. They are not involved in soccer to make money. They care little for the bottom line. They are here to win popular acclaim, and, through it, obtain cultural and political legitimacy.

And then there is the third group, comprising the six Spanish and Italian teams. Their problem is not only the bottomless wealth of Manchester City and Chelsea and a few others, but also the existence of the first group. The financial juggernaut that is the Premier League has inflated salaries around Europe. It has placed Real Madrid, Barcelona and the rest at a disadvantage in the transfer market. It has forced them to build up mountains of debt, leaving teams that believe themselves to be in soccer’s front rank facing a second-class future.

Clearly, they all decided — some with rather more consideration than others — that a superleague was their way out. The first group could write in various cost-control measures, denting the power of the second group, leveling their private playing field; in exchange, City and Chelsea would get the prestige that made their projects work. The third group, meanwhile, would no longer have to gaze longingly at the Premier League’s broadcasting deals.

That it did not work is a blessing, of course. That it was scuttled within 48 hours of its launch — undone, almost immediately, by a startling combination of amateurish planning, botched communications and underestimated backlash — was greeted as a victory for the sport as a whole, a blow delivered by the masses to the aristocrats, a bloody nose for the forces of global capitalism.

And, to some extent, that is precisely what it was. The threat of a superleague, in one form or another, has hung like a cloud over European soccer for decades. It has been wheeled out every few years, surfacing in every negotiation over how the money generated by the Champions League, in particular, should be divided.

Now that has gone. It is possible that, by the end of this weekend, as either Manchester City or Tottenham celebrates winning the League Cup, as Bayern Munich inches ever closer to yet another Bundesliga title, as Inter Milan closes in on a Serie A crown, all of this will feel like a fever dream. On the surface, it will be behind us. The insurrection will have been defeated, condemned to the past. Everything will be back to normal.

But that is an illusion, because though the Super League never had a chance to play a game — it barely had time to build out a website — it may yet prove the catalyst to the salvation of soccer. It has, after all, stripped the elite of their leverage. They played their cards, and the whole thing became a bluff. Now, for the first time in years, power resides in the collective strength of the game’s lesser lights.

They will need to use it. The Super League was wrong on almost every level, but though its architects never quite had the nerve to come out and say it, they did get one thing right. Soccer’s economy and ecosystem, as they stand, do not work.

This was recognition of what ultimately explains how 12 teams, in those three distinct groups, could stand together under the same flag, albeit briefly, albeit without seeming to notice that it was adorned with a skull-and-crossbones.

The status quo does not work for the American owners who need cost controls. It does not work for the grand old houses of continental Europe, who cannot compete with the Premier League’s riches. And infinitely more important, it does not work for almost everyone else.

It does not work for the teams condemned to life as cannon fodder for Manchester City or Paris St.-Germain, or for the domestic competitions withering in the long shadows of the Premier League, La Liga and the Bundesliga, or for the famous names — Ajax and Benfica and Red Star Belgrade — reduced to bit-part roles in European tournaments, ever farther from a return to their glory days.

Aleksander Ceferin, the president of UEFA and the man who led the counterattack in what will come to be known as the Sunday-Tuesday War, knows that. The issue of competitive balance is the one that animated his rise to his current position. One of the many ironies of this whole sorry farrago is not only that those whom Ceferin fought know it, too, but that they have given him the perfect opportunity to do something about it.

Those governing bodies that resisted the Super League make for unlikely heroes. UEFA has, after all, been no less complicit than the domestic leagues and national federations in selling out soccer to the highest bidder. It has, for decades, not only sat by and watched but also actively encouraged the influx of money into the game, never once questioning where it might all be heading.

A charitable interpretation would be that all of them were in thrall to, or in fear of, the elite teams. Suddenly, though, there is no longer need to be afraid. Behind Ceferin there is a confederation of governments and executives and players and fans, all of whom have made plain their objection to soccer’s inexorable journey down this same path.

Now there is the impetus and the appetite for change: not their change, the kind that would barricade the elite in their palaces, insulating them from the currents and the crisis outside their gates, but change that might allow more teams to benefit from the rewards the breakaway clubs sought to cordon off for themselves.

What form that might take is open for discussion. The rolling back of the reforms to the Champions League, passed this week while soccer was engulfed by civil war? A rebalancing of the way money is shared in the Premier League, after years of gradual erosion of the egalitarian principle that stands as the competition’s bedrock? Increased solidarity payments from UEFA across the Continent?

Whatever the next move is to be, it requires more than the commitment of all of those who stood against the Super League and the willingness of lawmakers to take action, rather than just to score cheap political points. It also needs fans to establish, among themselves, quite how far they are willing to go, exactly what they mean by change.

In those first few hours after the Super League was announced, a narrative took hold, particularly in England. This was, it went, an attempt by American owners to remake soccer in their own image: They wanted a closed league, one more like the N.F.L. or the N.B.A., one in which stability of place brought security of income.

The parallel was imperfect, of course; it was, really, nothing more than a shorthand to explain and to demonize the structure of the proposed breakaway. Indeed, if anything, it is the suggestions for changes made in the aftermath of the Super League’s launch and swift collapse that might remake European soccer along more American lines.

The prime difference between sports in the United States and soccer in Europe is dynasty. Dominant teams will, occasionally, surface in the major leagues of North America: The Golden State Warriors will win three championships in four seasons; the New England Patriots will sustain their success over nearly two decades.

But as a rule, there are checks and balances in place — through player drafts and the presence of a salary cap — to ensure that today’s weak have at least a chance to become tomorrow’s strong.

Soccer has no such mechanisms. It is, instead, driven by a desire not just for success now, but for success in perpetuity. It is a sport defined by dynasty. It is that which encourages not just teams like Barcelona and Real Madrid — owned, in theory, by members, and therefore run by presidents who must seek re-election — but also private entities, like Juventus and Manchester United, to spend recklessly in the pursuit of success.

It is not possible, the executives of those teams know, to sit out a season. It is not possible to rebuild slowly and carefully toward some distant aim. Teams are expected to compete now, to contend now, to win now. If they do not, managers are fired and players are sold and new managers are hired and new players are bought.

A season in which Bayern Munich does not win the Bundesliga is a disaster. Juventus, this summer, might fire a rookie coach because he has not won Serie A — not just in his first season at the club, but in his first season, full stop. Liverpool has been treated, at times, as a laughingstock because a lengthy injury list stopped it from winning a second Premier League title a year after claiming its first in 30 years.

This is the sport’s dominant ethos: That, as Alex Ferguson used to put it, once a trophy is won, you forget about it and seek to win the next. But while that is part of soccer’s appeal — that one victory is never enough — it gives those that run its clubs a problem: There is always another triumph to plan, always another peak to conquer, always another player to buy. That is, ultimately, what fans have been conditioned to expect, and so that is what they demand.

Pérez, instinctively, understands that. It is why, in his second television appearance of the week, he mentioned that, without a Super League, Real Madrid could not countenance signing players like Kylian Mbappé or Erling Haaland. The finances, in his eyes, simply do not work (though that has, in fact, never stopped him before).

It was a transparent ploy, a form of emotional blackmail. Pérez knows that what matters most to Real Madrid fans is that the club should be making the sort of signings, building the sorts of teams, that can win the Champions League — not just this year, but next, as well. Give us what we want, he said, and we can give you what you want.

But that approach is not sustainable in a model where wealth is spread more evenly. That does not make it bad; it does not even make it worse than what soccer has now. But that does make it different and, without changes in the way the sport is governed and in fan expectations, might also make it unsustainable.

It would not be possible, of course, for the elite to be forced to relinquish more of their revenue in a game that was still open to investments of the sort that supercharged the rise of Chelsea and Manchester City. It would not hold: All that would happen is that Everton or Newcastle United or Harrogate Town, with the aid of new backers, would trample unencumbered across the landscape.

More complex is that fans would have to redefine what success looks like. When Manchester United fans ask for the introduction of the admirable 50+1 rule — borrowed from German soccer — are they prepared to tolerate what follows? A watering-down of their own team’s chances of trophies?

Will the Liverpool fans sincerely decrying their owners’ greed be happy to have a year or two of seventh-place finishes as the team rebuilds? Do the Chelsea fans on the streets want a world where a good decade means one league title? It is this that Pérez was driving at: He has to spend money because his fans demand it, so to meet that demand, he needs more money.

The desire to share more of the lavish fruit of soccer’s growth is sincerely held, and it is morally sound. The idea of a dozen or more teams harboring genuine championship hopes at the start of every season — rather than the handful of clubs that do so now — sounds faintly idyllic, like a return to soccer’s roots.

But it would come at a cost: It would mean that at the end of the campaign, your traditionally elite team would be less likely to be the one standing tall. The redistribution of wealth means the redistribution of success, too.

Here, then, is another thing we do not know: Do those fans who stared down their owners this week for their greed and their ambition and their hubris want this to be the start of something new, or simply the safeguarding of the old? How much soccer can ever change will depend on the answer.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat Apr 24, 2021 6:22 pm

Sky Italia take a leaf out of Canal+ book and are seeking to block Serie A's deal with DAZN in the courts - from SportsBusiness.com

Sky appeals award of Serie A rights to DAZN
Martin Ross April 23, 2021

Italian pay-television broadcaster Sky Italia has moved to block the recent award of domestic Serie A broadcast rights to DAZN, the subscription streaming broadcaster, in an appeal lodged with a Milan court.

The appeal is to be heard on May 5, according to Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, with Sky said to be arguing that Lega Serie A has disproportionately allocated the rights packages and placed the balance of power with a single operator.

Last month, DAZN secured the majority of domestic rights to Serie A from 2021-22 to 2023-24 after finally receiving the necessary backing from clubs. DAZN will hold rights to seven exclusive fixtures per matchweek and co-exclusive rights to three matches after submitting the leading offer of €840m per season.

DAZN has teamed up with Telecom Italia, the Italian telecoms operator, on the Serie A project and will also end its linear carriage deal with Sky for the DAZN1 satellite channel before the new rights deal kicks in.

Ahead of the award of rights to DAZN, Sky sought to increase pressure on the clubs by flagging concerns over the effect on market competition of the DAZN-TIM proposal.

A letter from Sky, seen by the Italian news agency Ansa, claimed that TIM would “benefit from preferential treatment in the distribution of DAZN, despite TIM being the incumbent operator with greater market strength in Italy, in particular in the broadband segment”.

Maximo Ibarra, the Sky Italia chief executive, wrote that “such a preferential distribution agreement could therefore generate potential competitive and compatibility issues with the Melandri Law”.

Lega Serie A clubs were meeting this afternoon as they looked to award a second package comprising non-exclusive live rights to three fixtures per matchweek.

A recent offer from Sky worth an average of €87.5m per season failed to secure the necessary backing from the clubs. The league said at the end of last month that it would issue a new invitation to tender for that second package of rights.

Serie A’s existing domestic rights deals with Sky and DAZN (from 2018-19 to 2020-21) are worth €973m per year.

Following on from the loss by Sky of the majority of domestic Serie A rights, Ibarra has resigned to take up a new role at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, the Italian technology company backed by private equity firm Bain Capital.

Jobs cuts at Sky Italia were also communicated by national unions in Italy earlier this month.

It is thought that Sky is preparing to cut its total workforce by 25 per cent as part of a wider four-year transformation plan. The unions said the job cuts intend to save Sky around €300m at a time when the broadcaster is facing increasing competition in the Italian market from streaming services such as DAZN, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Wile E Coyote » Sun Apr 25, 2021 1:47 am

A truly great read. Informative and thought provoking.much better to be concise than listen to arsenal fans chanting "what do we want" ad infinitum. Admirable post.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 25, 2021 12:10 pm

Regular readers of this thread in the last few months will be aware of the 11 - 9 splits in Serie A over the Domestic TV rights deal and the the proposed commercial partnership with Private Equity. Well it has emerged again as one side seek retribution against Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan.

https://twitter.com/_GIFN/status/1386037416360808450

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Sun Apr 25, 2021 2:25 pm

Sorry if I've missed it, but have you seen what's going on at Bordeux?
Owners have announced they're no longer bank rolling the club and its been placed into administration

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/bor ... nistration

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 25, 2021 2:40 pm

GodIsADeeJay81 wrote:
Sun Apr 25, 2021 2:25 pm
Sorry if I've missed it, but have you seen what's going on at Bordeux?
Owners have announced they're no longer bank rolling the club and its been placed into administration

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/bor ... nistration
yes posted late on Thursday night, no problem with that - there was a big protest about it in the centre of Bordeaux yesterday
This user liked this post: GodIsADeeJay81

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Wile E Coyote » Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:36 pm

during todays match on BBC, the commentator mentioned how we had spent just 2 million during summer.
He was referring to our presence in the premier league .
Just out of interest, can anyone shed a bit of light on how we compare with our peers in this division and even in the championship. It seems beyond incredible that with the imbalances financially, we can muster a decent showing considering how little we have at our disposal.
Brings into focus that the super league fiasco is not the only debacle regarding clubs spending powers.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:59 pm

Wile E Coyote wrote:
Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:36 pm
during todays match on BBC, the commentator mentioned how we had spent just 2 million during summer.
He was referring to our presence in the premier league .
Just out of interest, can anyone shed a bit of light on how we compare with our peers in this division and even in the championship. It seems beyond incredible that with the imbalances financially, we can muster a decent showing considering how little we have at our disposal.
Brings into focus that the super league fiasco is not the only debacle regarding clubs spending powers.
Sean Dyche said this week we only spent £750k last summer

West Ham and Brighton made profits on last summers trading and officially Wolves broke even

West Ham have since completed the transfer of Benrhama taking them into a positive transfer net spend

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 25, 2021 9:33 pm

There are reports suggesting that Ed Woodward's meeting with Downing St officials in the week prior to the Souper League announcement included discussion of Super League and that he was given an ok by then - you always hope in these circumstances that someone was actually recording the conversation

https://twitter.com/cazjwheeler/status/ ... 5871827970

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sun Apr 25, 2021 11:43 pm

Sometimes it is useful to get a distant perspective on events that are close to home - The article from ABC news Australia's The Ticket does a good job of bring the events of last week into the wider web that we have been following for years now on this thread

ANALYSIS
The European Super League may be on hold, but it will be back
By Tracey Holmes for The Ticket - Posted 2 days ago, updated 15hours ago


There was a time when British cricket authorities described Australian media mogul Kerry Packer as the brash leader of a sporting circus.

That was because under their noses he devised, signed, sealed and delivered a rebel competition called World Series Cricket that revolutionised the game.

He had hit on something that has grown in value every year since – a sporting contest designed for television audiences.

Twenty years later, war was proclaimed in rugby league.

Packer’s rival, Rupert Murdoch, bankrolled a rebel competition called the Super League, designed to attract subscribers to his Fox pay-TV network.

It was in opposition to the established competition backed by Packer and Optus Vision.

The two sides faced off in drawn-out court battles that ended lifelong friendships.

The negotiated peace was the highly successful NRL competition that has been in existence since.

The outcry was loud and predictable
This past week, 12 of the most successful and powerful football clubs in Europe announced they had formed a made-for-television competition called the European Super League (ESL).

The outcry was loud, swift, and effective. It was also predictable.

People, generally, do not like change – sports fans especially.

If the ESL went ahead, said fans and other critics, it would signal the "death of football". They claimed it was akin to "a declaration of war", and the game was being "stolen by the rich", led by a group of "liars and snakes".

It was emotional stuff providing the type of fertile ground politicians crave, allowing them to be painted as a man or woman of the people.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson seized the moment.

The new competition, he said, offended "the basic principles of competition" and he would take "whatever action necessary" to prevent it from taking place.

"These clubs, these names, originate from famous towns and cities in our country," he said.

"I don't think that it is right that they should be somehow dislocated from their home towns, home cities, taken and turned into international brands and commodities that just circulate the planet, propelled by the billions of banks, without any reference to fans and to those who have loved them all their lives."

Could this be just another power play?
The cheering was so loud it was difficult to find a pause long enough to consider what had actually been said.

The English Premier League clubs the British PM was referring to were Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham — half of the 12 teams named as "foundation members" of the ESL.

All of them, with the exception of Tottenham, have been owned by foreigners for years.

The clubs have been "international brands and commodities" for some time owned by Americans, a Russian and an Emirati, who have injected millions of dollars into making them the most successful teams in the world’s number one domestic football competition.

They have fans and supporter groups right around the world.

The ESL had made no mention of ripping the teams away from their loyal fans.

“Our 12 founder clubs represent billions of fans across the globe and 99 European trophies," a statement read, adding the plan was to create “a regular flow of headline fixtures”.

It said little else, leaving many close observers to wonder whether this was just another power play on the twisting road of football politics designed to eke out a greater share of the next broadcast deal being negotiated by the European governing body, UEFA.

Away from the headlines, a different story was unfolding
What was at stake, if the new league actually went ahead, was the certain relegation of the top-tier English Premier League — itself created from top teams breaking away from the Football League as they chased a more lucrative television deal.

Fans, convinced their teams were being hijacked by billionaires in private jets tearing them from the clubs they’d been reared to support, became the public face of the latest in a history of so-called rebel leagues.

They have since been congratulated widely for the collapse of ESL only hours after it was floated.

Privately, away from the media headlines, a different story was unfolding.

The full facts might never be known, such is the multi-billion-dollar reality of opaque sports governance where conflicts of interest are the norm rather than the exception.

While the UK Prime Minister was at one with the fans during the week, some of his staff and trusted advisors were busy behind the scenes.

According to The Times, Mr Johnson’s most trusted aide and envoy to the Gulf, Lord Udny-Lister, told officials in the United Arab Emirates that participation in the ESL would damage bi-lateral relations.

The Emiratis were quick to respond.

Almost immediately, Manchester City, owned by the UAE’s Sheikh Mansour, announced it was withdrawing from the ESL.

Rumours began circulating that European Super League signatories would not be welcome at certain grounds, that security and policing at games would not be provided, and visas for international players would be difficult to obtain.

One by one, each of the Premier League teams that had signed up, withdrew.

It won't be 'the last chapter'
Dr Katarina Pijetlovic, author of EU Sports Law and Break Away Leagues in Football, believes anybody involved in the formation of the ESL "would have instantly foreseen practical, legal and political risk".

She told The Ticket it was "partly, at least, a hoax".

“This wasn’t a serious or genuine attempt because any serious breakaway league or alternative league of any kind, particularly the Super League where the money involved – we're talking billions and we’re talking powerful investors such as JP Morgan behind them – everybody would do their due diligence," she said.

“[This] hasn't happened, not even the basics were covered.

“I can’t see that this was a genuine attempt … if this was a serious project then it was extremely badly planned, organised, executed, communicated … and so on every level it has not been thought through."

Dr Pijetlovic said that while it would not be the "last chapter we are going to see", it was unlikely the ESL would go ahead "in the form that it was proposed".

Now, a government review into English football might consider restricting foreign ownership of teams and hand some of the power to fans, as is the norm in Germany where clubs operate under what is known as the "50+1 rule".

Put simply, investors can buy into German teams, but more than 50 per cent of the shares must always be held by the club's members.

The Law in Sport knowledge hub, with more than 21,000 members globally, held a two-hour webinar midweek discussing the European Super League with experts from commercial law, employment law, broadcast deals and more.

Almost without dissent, the panellists agreed the ESL proposition was not dead and there was more to come.

Asked whether he could dispel the idea that the ESL announcement was a stunt designed to wrestle power from the controlling body UEFA, Law in Sport CEO Sean Cottrell said: "I’m not sure you can".

“I wouldn’t dispel anything at the moment," he said.

“One of the problems in all of this, for me, has been the lack of transparency across the board.

“Most of the analysis … is based on a lot of assumptions … as we see who does or does not take [legal] action on either side we will have a much clearer idea of what’s actually happened.

“I do think there's real tensions between ownership, between clubs in the ECA (European Clubs Association) structure, the ECA’s power and influence in UEFA, and power and influence in world football. I think that’s part of the story.”

Household names in Australia
Until this week, the Chairman of the ECA had been Andrea Agnelli, the president of Italian club Juventus, recognised as the driving force behind the ESL cartel.

At the same time he was representing the collective of European clubs in negotiations with UEFA, he was plotting with 11 others to announce the European Super League.

His position being untenable, he resigned.

The void was filled by Qatari Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the president of French powerhouse club Paris St Germain, fanning geo-political flames further.

Khelaifi is the chairman of beIN Media, with a large portfolio of global football rights, including the UEFA Champions League.

He is the chairman of Qatar Sports Investments, the Qatar Tennis Federation and is a member of the organising committee for the Club World Cup.

His country will host the FIFA Men’s World Cup in 2022 but it is also at the centre of a diplomatic crisis and blockade with other Gulf States, notably the UAE – owners of Manchester City.

Gulf entities have become household names in Australia, too, through sports investments and sponsorships.

It’s not unusual to see the logos of Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad Airways on team uniforms and sponsors boards at Australian sports grounds.

But it’s not only the Gulf region making inroads.

Sport is 'low-hanging fruit'
China has stated its intention not only to host a future edition of the FIFA Men’s World Cup, but to win it.

The chairman of Chinese conglomerate Suning, Steven Zhang, owns Inter Milan – another one of the clubs that signed up to the ESL.

China is waiting on the sidelines, according to Professor of International Security Studies at the USAF Air War College in Alabama, Dr Amit Gupta.

He says the amount of money China plans to spend will dwarf anything else in sport.

“If you're talking money, [President] Xi Jinping has laid out a sports plan for China," he said.

“He said, ‘we want to set up an 850-billion-dollar sports industry’.”

That is double the size of the current worth of the global sports industry.

China is strategically going about its World Cup plans, Dr Gupta says.

“They have gone to Portugal, which is a country that punches above its weight in European football, and they’ve told the second division 'take two Chinese players into each team, and three coaches, so that we can raise our standards'," he said.

“They are pumping money in there just as they are pumping money into Portuguese telecommunications and ports and so on.”

According to Gupta, sport is "low-hanging fruit".

“These things can be picked up quite easily and I know the Chinese are looking for sports, the Qataris are looking, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are looking because this is part of soft power and brand imaging," he said.

Clubs are global commodities
Gone are the days when players belonged to a local club for life. Now, they are bought and sold as global commodities and supporters essentially follow the club shirt, more than those who wear it.

Back in the 1970s when Kerry Packer was looking for made-for-TV sport and hit on World Series Cricket, he went about shoring up three things – the players, the venues and, crucially, the support of influential politicians.

Former Australian player Bruce Francis was part of the inner sanctum at the time working for Packer.

“The difference between the government and the ESL, and Kerry Packer, is that Kerry Packer had [Prime Minister] Malcolm Fraser in his pocket and he had [NSW Premier] Neville Wran in his pocket, so he knew there wasn’t going to be interference," he said.

“One time I was sitting in the office with Kerry, and I asked how the visas were going with players coming into Australia and he said, 'Look I don’t know, I’ll make the phone call'.

“He phoned and asked to speak to Malcolm Fraser who was tied up. I think Phillip Lynch was the deputy PM at the time and he wanted to speak to him, but he wasn’t available either.

At the time, South Africa was banned from international sport because of its apartheid regime.

Francis says the voice at the end of the line was then foreign affairs minister Andrew Peacock.

The concept is far from dead
While much has changed in global sport since then, some truths remain the same.

In his 1979 book, A Pitch in Both Camps, author Alan Lee recalled what Packer had told him about the value of a television audience.

“The crowds at the ground are of secondary importance," he said.

“Certainly it’s great when they come, but it’s television that counts.”

It’s an observation that has been given new life as sport emerges from the global COVID pandemic playing in mostly empty stadiums.

UK broadcaster of the English Premier League, Sky, reported increased interest in "big games".

The proposed ESL was all about the "big games".

While the proposal has been put on ice, for now, the concept is far from dead.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 12:47 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Sun Apr 25, 2021 9:33 pm
There are reports suggesting that Ed Woodward's meeting with Downing St officials in the week prior to the Souper League announcement included discussion of Super League and that he was given an ok by then - you always hope in these circumstances that someone was actually recording the conversation

https://twitter.com/cazjwheeler/status/ ... 5871827970
No surprise that the story of Ed Woodward's meeting with Downing St officials is getting more press and political scrutiny - this from the Guardian

Boris Johnson urged to reveal if he endorsed Super League plans
PM pressed to explain nature of meeting with Manchester United CEO days before ill-fated launch

Aubrey Allegretti

Sun 25 Apr 2021 22.30 BST

Boris Johnson has been urged to reveal whether he signalled his endorsement of the European Super League (ESL) when he met the chief executive of one of the English football clubs leading the breakaway in Downing Street days before it was unveiled.

After the ESL plan was officially announced, the prime minister said he was firmly against the idea of what he said amounted to a “cartel”, and has said he found out the surprise news at the same time as everyone else.

However, it was later revealed that Ed Woodward, the chief executive of Manchester United, was invited for a meeting with the prime minister’s chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, in No 10 days before the announcement, and briefly spoke to Johnson.

After the Sunday Times reported that sources said Woodward departed with the wrong impression that Johnson was in favour of the proposal, Labour has said the prime minister has “questions to answer”.

Jo Stevens, the shadow culture secretary, has written to the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, to renew her call for any minutes and correspondence concerning the meeting to be made public.

She has asked when the meeting was arranged, why, who else was present, and whether Johnson or other government figures have recently met representatives of the other five clubs that were poised to join the Super League before they pulled out following a fierce public backlash: Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.

Stevens said: “Yet again, Johnson’s integrity and honesty are in question,” adding: “The public has a right to know what exactly was promised to Manchester United by both officials and the prime minister.

“If Johnson gave the European Super League his backing and then publicly turned on the plan then the British people deserve a full, clear and immediate explanation and apology.”

Government sources have strenuously denied Johnson had any knowledge of the plan and said the prime minister’s conversation with Woodward was a short, chance encounter as they bumped into each other in a corridor in No 10.

In the days of controversy before the six clubs U-turned on their breakaway, Johnson was keen to burnish his opposition to the idea, threatening to drop “a legislative bomb” to forcibly prevent one of the biggest challenges ever seen to the footballing pyramid.

He said: “How can it be right when you have a situation where you create a kind of cartel that stops clubs competing against each other?”

Johnson condemned the idea that clubs could be “dislocated from their home cities, taken and turned into international brands and commodities that just circulate the planet, propelled by the billions of banks, without any reference to the fans and those who have loved them all their lives”.

Downing Street also said Johnson had sent his “unwavering support” to football authorities over the issue, and condemned the ESL’s “closed shop” plan, under which 15 of the 20 league members would have permanent status and be free from the risk of relegation.

It added that the prime minister “was clear that no action is off the table and the government is exploring every possibility, including legislative options, to ensure these proposals are stopped”.

Labour had stood poised to support plans to introduce legislation, if it were necessary and the clubs had refused to heed the wishes of an overwhelming number of fans. “If the government is determined to do something about it, we will back them,” said the Labour leader, Keir Starmer. “There is no block in parliament to action if action is needed.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 2:40 am

A key financial stat of the weekend for the Premier League

Immediate promotion of Norwich and Watford from the EFL Championship will result in a saving of about £83 million in parachute payments by the Premier League over two years. This will be shared by clubs in the Premier League.

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 0640683010

once of a day this money would have been added to the EFL distribution pot, that was stopped quite some time ago. You wonder if the Premier League will:
- be rooting for Bournemouth to come up via the play offs so that figure rises to over £130m
- be using those monies to offset the losses on the China deal now rather than distributing them to the Premier League next season and the season after (which is how it would normally work)

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Vegas Claret » Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:05 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 2:40 am
A key financial stat of the weekend for the Premier League

Immediate promotion of Norwich and Watford from the EFL Championship will result in a saving of about £83 million in parachute payments by the Premier League over two years. This will be shared by clubs in the Premier League.

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 0640683010

once of a day this money would have been added to the EFL distribution pot, that was stopped quite some time ago. You wonder if the Premier League will:
- be rooting for Bournemouth to come up via the play offs so that figure rises to over £130m
- be using those monies to offset the losses on the China deal now rather than distributing them to the Premier League next season and the season after (which is how it would normally work)
is that equal distribution or 70 million between the super league clubs and 13 for the rest of us ?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 12:26 pm

Vegas Claret wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:05 am
is that equal distribution or 70 million between the super league clubs and 13 for the rest of us ?
Equal distributions that should be paid over the seasons the parachute monies were to be paid, it is one of the things that has regularly confused us about published central distributions and TV revenues in the annual accounts down the years (an occasional discussion point on this thread), along with UEFA solidarity payments, EPPP Academy payments and FA Cup/League Cup payments.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 12:29 pm

@SwissRamble looks at some of the financial reasons the Dirty Dozen sought to break away and form Super League

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 8417593349
Last edited by Chester Perry on Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:07 pm

The last week has caused a lot of people to look at differing models of Football Club ownership, with many citing the 50%+1 rule in Germany - like many I had fallen into the trap that was about ownership - it is not it is about voting rights as Union Berlin's English pages explain

http://union-berlin.com/2021/04/25/expl ... -football/

@Honigstein also explained the system to BT viewers last week

https://twitter.com/btsportfootball/sta ... 3685046285

There is also this piece in the Guardian about how it has been possible to get round the rule

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... -the-rules

and it shouldn't be forgotten that that the 50% + 1 rule is built on a socio-economic idea that his now all but lost in this country (despite attempts to regenerate the co-operative ideals since the Financial Crisis of 2008)

https://twitter.com/AdrianTempany/statu ... 5773560834

of course the German model while admired does not mean that the league is competitive - in fact it is totally and utterly dominated by the success of one club as this Tifo Football piece showed last week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB9cpKlBVKQ
Last edited by Chester Perry on Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:18 pm

There are of course fan owned clubs in this country, most famously AFC Wimbledon the club that was created by fans that were subjected to the English games dalliance with franchising, an event that created such a backlash from fan groups that it has not happened again (of course rumours post the orient game had it that our then board had looked into doing the same thing with Cardiff).

Last summer the Wimbledon Way blog published this proposal for fan led clubs - by ex Supporters Direct officer Dave Boyle - it came at a time divisions had appeared the club over financing of the new stadium the previous season (which had been reported in this thread)

https://wimbledonway.home.blog/2020/08/ ... wimbledon/

A PROVOCATIVE PROPOSAL FOR FAN OWNERSHIP AT AFC WIMBLEDON
Posted on August 7, 2020 by thewimbledonway

THE PURPOSE FOUNDATION & DONS TRUST ACCOUNTABILITY WITHIN A NEW FUTURE-PROOF STRUCTURE
By Dave Boyle, with input from Graeme Price, Charlie Talbot, Damian Woodward & Xavier Wiggins.

A) Initial Thoughts

The benefits of being fan-owned are long-term.

The purported benefits of significant cash injections are short-term. Football, especially in the second tier and upper echelons of the third tier, has normalised clubs spending way beyond their means, with the rewards accruing to those who can pull this off with the most aplomb.

This creates a disconnect in fan discussions around this subject. In the short term it can result in a largely negative perception that fan-ownership is largely what is holding the club back, eg losing out in signing a player, or being out-bid on a player’s wages by a rival prepared to spend more money now. On the other hand, the benefits of club ownership over a long-term basis offer a more distant sense of satisfaction and long term stability.

B) German Lessons – why can’t we just copy them?

The 50%+1 model prevalent in Germany is consistently cited as an ‘ideal’ position on which to settle. It balances the long-term fan ownership for current and future generations, but also allows commercial/private influence to augment the club’s finances.

It is hard to overstate the central importance of the fact that the Bundesliga rule is a rule. It is enforced by the league and breaching it carries significant penalties – this means no-one breaches it.

This in turn creates a level playing field which means since no club is stealing a march on you by selling equity, you don’t have to match them. Furthermore, since no club can sell equity, each club must acquire funding from third parties on the basis of those parties’ funding being treated as revenue, not capital.

Since we don’t have that rule in English football or English law, if we simply vote to allow the trust to move to a 50%+1 ownership rather than 75% it will simply move similar debates to the ones we are currently having to a new battleground. Namely, from those prepared to chase immediate success on the pitch right now above all else, there will be a clamour for more investment through any means necessary, even if it means dropping the ownership percentage down further. Since the minority shareholders will have more ability to try to force changes through any PLC votes, eventually this debate will be be lost (or won, depending on your preference) and the club will cease to be fan owned.

Furthermore, in doing this, the individuals who have provided the money will have bought a long-term asset – equity in the plc – when we simply needed short and medium-term money. We sold a one-off for something we need every year. This need to repeat also creates a further pressure to have to keep on selling equity.

But could we achieve something like this in our own way?

C) Systemic alterations

We contend that any system at AFCW that sought to guarantee the majority ownership of fans/the DT would be worthless unless it was genuinely beyond debate that this could be changed. In other words, even if fans of a German club want a magic oligarch to come in and buy their club, there is no way it can happen. The strongest weapon in the hands of would-be club purchasers – the biddability of the club’s fans – is taken off the table as a weapon.

Taking sale of shares off the table removes the ‘easy’ way out for the plc and Trust to fudge the issue of how to generate value, as any board can always go to the cupboard, have a rummage and find some shares to pass over. We saw this with our own board with regard to the funding shortfall in late 2019 – selling control was presented as the only sensible way out (a unique solution to a unique problem, if you will).

Indeed it is precisely this inability to “sell out” which makes German clubs comparatively more commercial, more aggressive and more innovative. So, taking the shares off the table preserves something the majority want, whilst also making the club leaner and hungrier and more innovative.

D) How could we do this?

Clearly, the FA or respective leagues we play in will not perform the same role that the Bundesliga performs. So any mechanism to put the sale of the club’s shares beyond use must be found in the corporate structure, rather than the operating environment of English football.

E) The Purpose Foundation

The Purpose Foundation is an organisation based in Berlin with a brief to promote and support ‘steward ownership’. This is broadly defined as the ownership of an enterprise in the interests of the longer-term interests of its core stakeholders, usually employees. Some employee-owned firms have determined that if the immediate financial interests of employees can be served through accepting an offer for a company, then the company can and should be sold, regardless of the impact on the future employment conditions of those employees. The short-term interests of the employees trump their longer-term interests.

The Purpose Foundation has therefore created a Trust based in Switzerland which has a single mandate: to always act in defence of the continuation of steward ownership in any company in which it has been given rights.

Steward-owned enterprises create a separate class of shareholding which acquires certain rights over the company’s constitutional and governance arrangements. It operates as a silent party, taking no active role save that at any general meeting, should a proposal seek to dilute or otherwise reduce the steward ownership of the company, it will vote against it.

The board of the Purpose Foundation is elected from members of the Foundation who comprise the various organisations who have consented to have the Foundation operate in it.

F) AFCW and the Purpose Foundation

The Purpose Foundation would be issued shares in AFCW Plc which gave it rights to block any issue of equity beyond a number that preserved the DT at 50%+1 of voting power, and block any transfer of shares from the DT to another body.

We then need to decide how to preserve or adapt the DT’s role and the question of how to ensure the ability of fans to be involved in certain decisions through the DT or Purpose Foundation oversight committee.

G) Existing share classes and minority stakes

A shift in structure utilising the steward ownership of the Purpose Foundation would also enable the club and Trust to address some of the confusion arising from the two classes of shares available in AFCW plc currently. Currently there are shares with three votes attached and others that grant only a single vote: clearly the three vote shares are more valuable although not on a linear basis. The Purpose Foundation would potentially allow us to also tidy up this mess and confusion: any voting equalisation could sit outside the holding of the Foundation.

Thus far many of the current Dons Trust Board appear relaxed about diluting the DT shareholding in AFCW plc below 75% (though most want to keep it over 50%) but it’s worth a small aside looking at the potential future threats from aggressive minority shareholders, as between 75% and 50% is the killing zone of complacent shareholders.

Any acquisitive investor can leverage their position massively once in situ. Ask any private equity investor and they will tell you that you do not need to hold the majority of shares to control a business. Control comes in a variety of forms: one classic example is the lending of money to a business, which when repayment difficulties emerge is then turned into equity, either directly or via an insistence on a rights issue under the guise of protecting pre-emption rights of existing shareholders. When not all of them take up their allotment, the individual (or entity) with the debt can act as the underwriter and hoover up all the rights to new shares that are not taken up.

The other method to exert control is to block progress – namely to utilise restricted actions in reverse of how we currently envisage them being used. If an acquisitive individual or individuals have over 25% in total, these tactics can be deployed to gain extra seats on the board or to block what may be necessary to keep everything in its agreed format. In this example think of in property a ransom strip or someone buying a property and allowing to fall into disrepair to increase their chances of getting change of use planning permission.

In short if we were to stay with a purely UK company structure, we would need to be comfortable not only with our investors now, but also certain about who might buy or accumulate shares in the future – especially as the votes allocated through the Seedrs share issue are a single voting block wielded by Seedrs itself. And we would also need to be certain that we had a sufficiently robust structure to ensure that we will remain fan-owned even after an initial drop below 75%. This is fraught with potential future problems – all removed if we switch to the Purpose Foundation model.

H) Raising finance for the club within a new structure

In tandem, the club would have to seek to develop a system where individuals who wished to make significant injections into the club were awarded some rights but those rights were not transferable. Our imagination needs to be expansive here in designing this.

For example, it could be that people buy the right to sit on the (plc) board for 10 years for a certain price, and that should they wish to give up this right, the club can sell it on to a third party, but the person to whom it is sold firstly can’t be introduced by the current owner of the right, and secondly, must be reimbursed in full for their amount paid, but the surplus on top of the sum paid is distributed 25%-75% to them and the club.

So, individuals would purchase a right which had value, and could see the value returned to them, but they couldn’t be the person who did the identification of their replacement. They could suggest, certainly, but the club would be forced to undertake a beauty contest, rather than enter a sweetheart deal.

Alternatively, the value of the right might degrade by 10% per year, so that by year 10, it’s worth 1/10th of the original value, meaning the replacement of them as a leading light gets easier as time goes on, and they can’t hold out for a certain value as a form of ransom.

The remaining equity would sit outside with the DT to be sold to whomever fits the bill, with the profits on subsequent sale to be split in the agreed portion with the DT and the seller of the shares. The DT would have first refusal to purchase and at the point of sale should make offers to small shareholders to enable them exit at the agreed price if they so wished.

There are doubtless other ways we could do this. All start from the recognition that firstly, we have a scarce supply of, and therefore a market price for, the right to be involved in decision-making at the club, and secondly, that this right must not supercede the overall ownership structure of the club that places the DT in the box seat.

I) Final thoughts – Changing Role of the DT Board

The Purpose Foundation taking on ones of the current core tenets of the DT’s existence and externalising it for protection of fan ownership would remove all threats to club ownership in the future.

There is then a second crucial question around who we want to sit on which boards and by which means we want our club and Trust to be run and governed.

As a club, we have three levels of governance – the club, the plc and the DT. This is two more than most clubs, and one more than most fan-owned clubs. If Bayern Munich get by with two boards, then we can too.

To continue the German model, the DT could be the Supervisory Board, which is needed to approve revenue plans each year, and oversee things like intellectual property (club colours, crest etc) and signed off on all exploitations of these, and would also undertake to provide advice on season ticket prices etc.

In this scenario, what the Purpose Foundation would be defending is the right of those fans who are decision-makers to veto and make certain decisions that affect their experience of the club – to ensure the club’s spending plans and player budgets aren’t fantastical or threatening medium and longer-term sustainability. That the club was not neglecting the AFC Wimbledon Foundation, nor pricing itself in such a way as to make the club unaffordable to its community.

There is still a debate to be had around exactly what role the DT Board takes in this and, more importantly, how it consults and reflects the views of its members. And, to look at how club growth and financial support is provided by increased Dons Trust membership (akin to how Australian clubs have grown their membership bases). This is a topic to which we will return.

The crucial point is for us to decide what we want fan ownership to mean, and then, what is the best way to make that fan-ownership deployed in the pragmatic and messy set-up of the club. Once we have defined what that is, we then get the Purpose Foundation to stand behind it.

Comments welcomed below and a copy of this proposal has been sent to all DTB, AFCW plc and AFCW Ltd Board members.

By Dave Boyle, with input from Graeme Price, Charlie Talbot, Damian Woodward & Xavier Wiggins

7th August 2020

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:44 pm

As ever John Nicholson has lots of ideas, though few that I can totally agree with, following the (temporary?) collapse of Super League

https://www.football365.com/news/opinio ... table-fans

if you missed his rant last Monday you will see he has calmed down a bit today, but as always remains essentially very peeved off with he game and most people in general - and no I do not necessarily link this to the fact he is a life long Middlesbrough fan

last Monday's rant - https://www.football365.com/news/big-si ... -nicholson

between those two columns was this one on the "self Serving greed merchants" in the game

https://www.football365.com/news/uefa-p ... -nicholson

His message over the years is relatively consistent, the tone varies between dismay and despair sprinkled with frequent eruptions of volcanic anger or white hot rage. I may rarely fully agree with him but I will always listen to what he has to say.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Vegas Claret » Mon Apr 26, 2021 4:00 pm

The 50 + 1 thing is why I posted the Stephen Howson and Kieren Maguire interview the other day, KM explains the value of it in terms of voting on key issues so the owners can't do whatever the **** they want

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 4:33 pm

Vegas Claret wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 4:00 pm
The 50 + 1 thing is why I posted the Stephen Howson and Kieren Maguire interview the other day, KM explains the value of it in terms of voting on key issues so the owners can't do whatever the **** they want
I am still trying to get to the bottom of whether or not that is really true, given that:

- The commercial spin-off that can own the physical and playing assets of the club can be bought and sold in a free market and UK business Law is different
- RB Leipzig is a small membership club that are effectively at the behest of the commercial business owner who employs the very small number of members
Last edited by Chester Perry on Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Mon Apr 26, 2021 11:54 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Sun Apr 25, 2021 9:33 pm
There are reports suggesting that Ed Woodward's meeting with Downing St officials in the week prior to the Souper League announcement included discussion of Super League and that he was given an ok by then - you always hope in these circumstances that someone was actually recording the conversation

https://twitter.com/cazjwheeler/status/ ... 5871827970
As we know Downing Street have been denying that anyone spoke to Ed Woodward about a Super League let alone gave it the ok when he met with them to discuss the return of fans - however and yes it could be coincidental but how about this for a piece of investigative work from @TariqPanja

his last 3 posts on this thread

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 1915156480

A Daily Mail article from the 25th of April https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... eague.html names Dan Rosenfeld (No 10's Chief of Staff) as meeting with Ed Woodward prior to the Super League announcement

a quick search on Rosenfeld revealed this https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 68/photo/1 his father in law is Daily Mail journalist Alex Brummer

on the night of the Super League announcement Brummer published an article in full support of the Super League idea https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... eague.html

as I said it is all fantastic coincidence
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:29 am

Over the weekend in an interview UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin, reflecting on the resistance of fans to the Super League said it was perhaps right to have fans represented with in UEFA, in the way, Associations, Leagues, Clubs. Players and Commercial Partners are. Almost at the same time fans groups from across Europe were meeting to discuss their desire to stop the expansion of the Champions League

https://www.fanseurope.org/en/news/news ... ction.html

The change was ratified by UEFA the day after the announcement of Super League, at a point where fans had already clearly voiced their disapproval of those plans (along with Leagues and players). On Monday morning their voice and thinking was deemed irrelevant, by the weekend after "fans saved Football" or was that even UEFA they have a a right to be heard. The scale and the power of the reaction by fans, not only got the clubs to backdown and swayed politicians to seriously get involved but also got a lot of commercial partners very twitchy, with at least one ditching Liverpool as a direct result - there is still potential for more to do the same once they have scrutinised the small print of their contracts and assessed the reputational damaged.

Fans currently have a moment to be heard, but such scale of unity and visible ferocity as witnessed last week over Super League will be much more difficult to achieve on this issue, the target needs to be the broadcast and commercial partners, mass organised boycotts are probably the only way forward - lets learn from the German experience that ended Monday night football over there.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:05 am

This is a deeply fascinating article about gambling sponsorship in the Premier League

https://theathletic.com/2517118/2021/04 ... ed-article

While we hope that our current shirt sponsors liquidity problems and new owners personal beliefs will see the end of the club's association with gambling, it is still going on, just changing. Particularly that targeting the Chinese market in the way LoveBet has done. Such gambling is illegal in China and new crackdowns are making it harder for the Chinese to bet (possibly a contributory factor to LoveBet's problems. The new generation of sponsors that are coming through are offering something different though, something much more difficult to trace and consequently much more open to fraud and money laundering - crypto gambling.

If you cannot read the article then it's writer has produced this thread

https://twitter.com/josephmdurso/status ... 0556730369

What is surprising is that the first major sponsor focusing on these markets has a deal with Chinese owned Southampton - the same owner that past speculation suggested was directly influenced by the Chinese State.

Even more surprising is the fact that mo one is talking about this in terms of match fixing - with match ficing, betting patterns are assesed and the perpetrators are found by following the money trails - how do you do that with crypto-currency?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:31 am

Not sure how I managed to miss this over the weekend from the Telegraph - it just goes to show how fearful the Premier League is about going to market for domestic rights in the next cycle - this proposal helps the broadcast partners maximise ROI with surety while the Premier League no doubt hopes that it will minimise the impact of rebates, it is also repeats a successful strategy recently employed with BeIN Sport for the MENA rights deal. There is still a competition authority hurdle regarding it not being an open tender - though there are likely to be no more than a couple of organisations that could meaningfully bid for games

Premier League scrambles to avoid TV rights crash
BEN WOODS APRIL 24, 2021

The Premier League is in talks to scrap its television rights auction in favour of rolling over existing deals with Sky, BT and Amazon, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Football bosses are in sensitive discussions with the broadcasters and the Government about the potentially controversial move as they seek to avoid the risk of a hefty blow to the value of the rights from Covid.

Under its normal schedule the Premier League is due to auction domestic rights spanning three seasons to 2025 before May.

But Sky and BT were widely expected to rein in their spending, prompting sports rights experts to predict the value of those games to fall by more than £900m.

Football and media sources said a private sale is among the options being pursued as a means of securing greater financial security. Broadcasters are said to be open to the idea, which may deliver a small discount and would provide more certainty for their own businesses.

A deal could be structured to allow Sky, BT and Amazon to retain similar positions to those agreed in 2018 when TV rights spend fell by 10pc to around £4.7bn for the three seasons to 2022. Sky spent £3.75bn on 128 live games a season, while BT invested £975m on 52 matches a season. Amazon picked up the final packages of 20 matches a season for its streaming service, Amazon Prime Video.

However insiders fear repeating the agreements could trigger complaints from potential challengers such as the sports streaming specialist Dazn, which has said it plans to explore an auction bid for the rights. Its joint-chief executive James Rushton said earlier this month that “once the tender comes out, we’ll review it”.

The Premier League has been in discussions with the Government about the legal implications of a private sale.

It has sold international rights without an auction before, but such a move on home soil has not been attempted since a Brussels ruling in 2006. European competition watchdogs said the Premier League must sell its rights to more than one broadcaster.

It is understood the implications for a private sale of domestic rights are being considered at the Treasury in light of Brexit. One senior source said the failed breakaway bid by the competition's “big six” clubs last week “has further complicated matters”.

The Premier League’s boss Richard Masters is under pressure to shore up income after record TV rights growth under his predecessor Richard Scudamore.

However, a channel sharing deal struck between Sky and BT three years ago has cooled the competitive tension needed to increase the value.

Mr Masters is seeking to skewer any future attempt by a Premier League club to join a breakaway European league by overhauling the sport’s rules.

He has teamed up with the FA to carry out a governance review to stop the so-called “big six” – Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea – from threatening to undermine the league by pursuing more lucrative opportunities with rival competitions.

Those clubs joined the Super League last Sunday before carrying out a volte-face days later when confronted with a furious backlash from fans, players, and the Prime Minister. It prompted a string of apologies from the club owners and architects of the new competition.

JP Morgan, which was primed to furnish the clubs with £4.3bn of debt financing, said it “misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community”.

The Premier League, Sky, BT and Amazon declined to comment.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:41 am

The vultures may still be at the door

An interesting piece from OffthePitch.com that speculates that the events of the last week may spur more American Investors to come into European football rather than put them off

Super League collapse proves no deterrent to American investors – they might even be hungrier than ever
25 April 2021 9:30 PM
  • Both institutional investors and private individuals from the US would still be very keen to purchase clubs in Europe. The Super League meltdown could be seen as a stabilizing factor in the industry.
  • Revenues might even take a jump if fans feel empowered to protect the structure of leagues and competitions they like.
  • European sports teams are extremely cheap compared to US franchises – but one source points out that the financial problems in European clubs are massive.
  • Super League failure may see new type of US investors enter the industry as certain clubs may seek new owners.
KASPER KRONENBERG kk@offthepitch.com

The pattern of new American owners entering European football set over the past few years is set to continue, despite the dramatic collapse of European Super League just days after its announcement.

American investors do still see great value in European football clubs, and they have not been scared by the events of the past week.

Off The Pitch have talked to a number of sources familiar with M&A-trends in the football industry and all of them are convinced that deals involving US capital, funds and individuals are unaffected by the chaos that took place last week.

“The Super League [break down] will have no impact on American investors considering buying a European football club. The value of American sports franchises have risen during the pandemic and MLS teams still obtain 10x revenue in value (enterprise value/revenue), so if you are looking for value and growth in sports, European football is still the place to invest where you can invest at less than 1x revenue,” says Paul Conway, who has bought no less than six European clubs the last couple of years through Pacific Media Group.

Unpredictable manner

Conway’s view is backed up by Charles Baker, co-chair of the Sports Industry Group at New York-based law firm O’Melveny. Baker has been working as an advisor for investors in European football in 30 years.

“We are still seeing strong interest by US investors in European football investment. If anything, the breakdown of the Super League should give US investors even more confidence in the stability of the European system to buck any transformative change that would significantly impact financials in an unpredictable manner for the vast majority of clubs.”

Baker explains that while in the US, there’s still a lot of “dumb money” chasing European football clubs, the “smart money” recognises the underlying value and the historic compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of investment in these clubs over the last five, 10 and 20 years.

“Not surprisingly, we’re advising both private equity and high net worth investors on these deals now. Also, with the Covid-19 impact on club’s revenue and liquidity, many clubs are in need of capital infusions, which is where the smart money can play a strategic role,” he says.

Passive approach

A very experienced M&A-source explains that at this stage the whole system is in a state of shock, but once everything has calmed down US investor interest would be the same as it was before last Sunday when the European Super League plans were first officially revealed.

“The interest from institutional investors is there – and it will also be there in the future. Maybe last week’s events might even lead to ownership changes taking place.

"Some big clubs with significant financial problems could have had a passive approach because they thought the European Super League could save them. That didn’t happen – and now they might need to look for new owners,” says the source who would like to speak under anonymity.

The M&A-advisor says that if some of the giants in European football suddenly became available for sale then a new type of US investors could enter the market.

At the moment it looks as if the European Super League is a vision that will never happen. Nevertheless, Real Madrid President Florentino Perez seems confident that sooner or later the Super League will see the light, because the demographic and financial development in football would force the biggest clubs to create a new league better suited for the future football fan.

Juventus chairman, Andrea Agnelli, also seems convinced that the founding clubs at some stage would be able to create a solution that could work alongside the domestic leagues and UEFA’s Champions League.

Too risky a sector

The question is whether the events last week should be seen as a long-term acceptance that you can’t develop a American kind of league in Europe, with no relegation and promotion, or whether things are just on hold for now.

Another question would be if prospective American investors considering a purchase of buying a European club might now be scared off if the dismissal of the Super League is seen as a proof that European football is too risky a sector as promotions and relegations will always be there.

The prospect of relegation or not being able to qualify for international club competition could be seen as too hard a prospect for certain owners in relation to their revenue and market position.

Charles Baker can’t see a scenario where US investors would back off because they had hoped that the European League-system would transform into the same structure that they know in the US.

On the contrary he is convinced that the strong reaction from fans all over Europe could have an even bigger investor interest.

“We often cite the passion and loyalty of sports fans as one of the key reasons why a group or individual would want to invest in a sports team. Here, we have a great example of just how strong that passion is for European football. As a result of the situation leading to the collapse of Super League, it’s certainly possible we see revenues increase across the board as fans become empowered to participate in the “governance” of the leagues through their activism.”

Just plain stupid

Paul Conway, the club owner from Pacific Media Group, says that last week’s events should just be seen as a reminder to American investors that they should only acquire a European club if they are willing to spend significant time in the local community to better appreciate local history and values.

“I would advise foreign investors to improving the commercial revenue of a football club as it is still a very sustainable way to grow a club, its budget and make it more competitive. Ignoring the beliefs and values of your supporters, many who have been dedicated to their club for generations is just plain stupid.”

Conway says that the biggest issue with foreign investors is that they tend to be absentee owners.

"If investors were more involved in the communities that they invest in Europe they would know that any American-style restructuring of a very traditional European pyramid sporting structure would be met by a huge backlash from their supporters.

"We have invested in clubs in England, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark and two clubs in France. All of these countries have different customs and languages,” he explains.

Not a revenue-issue

Another source recognizes the perception from Conway that there is a lot of revenue building to be done – but overall he believes that clubs would have to lower theirs costs instead of trying to increase income.

“There is a cost-issue in European football. Not a revenue-issue. They simply need to spend less money. That is the problem they need to solve if they want to be long-term profitable businesses.”

Despite the strong investor appetite – what about prices. Would they be affected short-term because of the Super League break-down?

“Values will not be down materially, however it will be difficult for investors in European clubs to get liquidity for their shares in the next year as most investment opportunities will be primary capital invested in a club to fund deficits, some created by the pandemic.

"Some large clubs have this capital need for the first time in their history, which will attract some new American investors,” says Paul Conway.

Charles Baker could even see prices go up.

“The new opportunity for increased revenue, not to mention the attendant publicity that the Super League triggered, and a number of other factors, should invite a new group of investors. The fans’ passion has never been higher and investors may see the fury surrounding the Super League as an opportunity to capitalize on that passion,” adds Baker

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:35 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:13 pm
Aston Villa have announced their 2019/20 Financial Results (in a season where a historically unique goal line technology failure at Villa Park meant they avoided relegation) - nothing to see here though just a £99m loss

https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2021/april/ ... -Accounts/

the full accounts can be found here https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history
@SwissRamble looks at Aston Villa's 2019/20 Financial results - (year end 31 May 2020)

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 6275812354

One for the accountants - Is it possible to surmise here that in a pre pandemic/current cycle of TV deals season the first two (of 3) Premier League central distributions added up to £78m?

as ever these days he has done a summary sheet too

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 9898233862

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:53 pm

Last week NSWE owners of Aston Villa chucked another £10m at the club in the form of share capital

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

That is over £280m in loan conversions and cash injections that they have pumped into shares at the club since they took over in July 2018 not including the ground sale

Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:15 pm

A good piece n the Athletic today picking up on that piece I posted last night from OffthePitch.com - The American Super League team owners are extremely unlikely to be leaving and there is mixed opinion about whether more vultures are coming. Everyone believes that the Americans will still seek to stabilise revenues and seek cost controls that provides a route to regular and consistent profit, and the prime reason why? Equity value increases, less than 10 times equity value increases under their tenure is likely to be regarded as abject failure by the owners themselves.

https://theathletic.com/2543613/2021/04 ... ed_article

Matt Slater put it a little differently in this tweet https://twitter.com/mjshrimper/status/1 ... 5844643842

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:28 pm

Liverpool release their 2019/20 Financial report (year end 31st May 2020) £46m loss before tax looks relatively healthy given how much revenue was not booked

https://d3j2s6hdd6a7rg.cloudfront.net/i ... ements.pdf

club statement

https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/announ ... ay-31-2020
Last edited by Chester Perry on Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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