Football's Magic Money Tree

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Zlatan
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

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

Just wanted to post the 7000 post
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Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

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

Zlatan wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:28 pm
Just wanted to post the 7000 post
naughty !!
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

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

Chester Perry wrote:
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
Get this in April last year Liverpool tried to furlough a couple of hundred staff, until their fans had something to say about it, at the end of may last year they had £149.3m in cash at the bank - this is the same ownership that worked so hard to pursue the marketing gold of being a people's club with the "We are one" marketing campaign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK2BgRfwILE

following last weeks debacle and that of Project Big Picture you do wonder if John Henry has actually seen this stuff his club have produced

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:16 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
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.
This would suggest that the Premier League has gotten over it;s regulatory hurdle and confirmed that the next domestic cycle is the same value and deal as the current domestic cycle - https://twitter.com/clmmcrthy/status/13 ... 2201515010

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:31 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 11:54 pm
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
More on this meeting between Ed Woodward and Downing St officials
1 he did not inform Premier League it was happening
2 the DCMS were unaware
3 EW has not discussed fans return even with the Premier League...

From the Times

Ed Woodward kept meeting at Downing Street a secret
Martyn Ziegler, Henry Zeffman
Tuesday April 27 2021, 12.01am, The Times

The Manchester United executive Ed Woodward did not inform the Premier League that he was meeting officials at No 10 in the days leading up to the launch of the European Super League.

Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman, met Boris Johnson’s chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, at Downing Street on April 14, four days before the launch of the Super League, which collapsed less than 48 hours later.

Downing Street has insisted that Rosenfield and Woodward discussed only the return of fans to stadiums, and that the Super League proposals were not raised.

However The Sunday Times has quoted sources saying that Woodward felt “emboldened” after the meeting, which included a brief introduction to Johnson, to proceed with the Super League’s launch, which precipitated the biggest crisis in the game for decades.

The suggestion that Woodward was talking about the return of fans came as a surprise to Premier League chiefs, according to sources, given that the United executive has not pushed the issue with them significantly, is not on any of the working groups planning for their return and did not inform the league of what could potentially have been such an important meeting.

It is understood that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which has taken the lead on the return of fans, was also unaware of the meeting.

Woodward resigned from his United position last Tuesday with the Super League proposals collapsing as Chelsea and Manchester City became the first of England’s “big six” clubs to pull out. The government, including Johnson, had threatened a “legislative bomb” to prevent the breakaway.

A No 10 spokeswoman said: “Ed Woodward had a meeting in Downing Street last week with officials. The meeting was to discuss the safe return of fans and Covid certification, as part of ongoing work on events pilots. The Super League was not discussed.”

At a separate briefing for reporters, Johnson’s spokesman was asked whether Rosenfield knew about the Super League plans before they became public. “No,” the spokesman replied. Asked about the possibility that Rosenfield told Woodward the government would not oppose the Super League plan, the spokesman answered: “No, that’s not correct”.

Sources said that Woodward had been introduced to the prime minister only briefly when he and Rosenfield bumped into Johnson in a corridor. One source said that Rosenfield was as angered as the rest of the government when the plans were unveiled, and that it was his idea for Johnson to meet fan groups last Tuesday.

Before the No 10 briefing, Labour’s Jo Stevens said Johnson needed to explain exactly what had transpired during Woodward’s visit.

The shadow culture secretary said: “If Boris 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.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:32 pm

It seems that Seri A is still struggling to sell that 2nd package of domestic rights for the next cycle - with a huge difference in the League's expectations and the best offer they have received to date - from SportsBusiness.com

Serie A ‘reduces asking price’ for second live rights package
Imran Yusuf
April 26, 2021

Lega Serie A, the governing body of the top division of Italian club football, is thought to have lowered the asking price for its second package of live domestic rights for the 2021-22 to 2023-24 period.

Italian pay-television broadcaster Sky Italia had offered an average of €87.5m ($106m) per season for exclusive direct-to-home and digital terrestrial rights, and co-exclusive OTT rights, to three games per round. However, this bid failed to secure the necessary backing from Serie A clubs.

The clubs held a virtual meeting on Friday at which it was agreed reduce the asking price for the package from €250m per season to €150m per season, according to multiple reports in Italy.

Last month DAZN secured the main package of live rights to seven exclusive fixtures per matchweek and co-exclusive rights to three matches after submitting the leading offer of €840m per season.

Sky Italia has moved to block this by lodging an appeal, reportedly due to be heard on May 5, with a Milan court. Sky is said to be arguing that Lega Serie A has disproportionately allocated the rights packages and placed the balance of power with a single operator.

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

Sky Italia’s broadcast rights for the current rights cycle are comprised of two packages, the first of which, Package 5, includes rights to three matches per weekend for a total of 114 per season, including the 8.30pm (CET) game on Sunday. Sky also acquired Package 6 – four matches per weekend or 152 per season, including the 8.30pm match on Mondays.

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”.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:14 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
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.
DCMS again showing why have little faith in their ability to do things properly

Chris Sutton "DCMS now asking Gordon Taylor about the European Super League on a concussion and brain injury discussion after not asking questions they should have. What an absolute farce..."

https://twitter.com/chris_sutton73/stat ... 1666000899

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Vegas Claret » Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:26 pm

Gordon Taylor and the word farce are synonymous aren't they ?

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:35 pm

Another article on the Super League that touches on a number of issues I posted about on this thread down the years, I will follow it with one about a survey last week that suggest some of these thoughts are mistaken - This from the Yorkshire Evening Post

European Super League idea arose because global fans not interested in tradition
Outrage. Complete and utter outrage. That’s how the notion of the European Super League was greeted earlier this week.
By Nick Westby
Saturday, 24th April 2021, 6:11 am

How dare 12 of the biggest clubs in Europe, six of them right here in England, act like they are so big that they have become immune to the principles of competition the beautiful game was founded on a century and a half ago.

For once, fans of rival clubs were united in protest. Players got together to make their voices heard. The media was angry and demanded blood. The noise was deafening.

The chutzpah of the ‘greedy dozen’ was maddening, which made the unravelling of it all on Tuesday night all the sweeter.

But – and there should be a but here – was there merit in what these clubs were, and still are, looking for?

In the interests of balance The Yorkshire Post has sought the opinion of two leading academics who, while not necessarily agreeing with the manner in which the concept of the European Super League was introduced, can at least see the reasons behind it.

Dr Paul Widdop, a sports business lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, believes these breakaway clubs are no longer community clubs, but global brands with fanbases that extend far beyond the cities where they belong.

“Sport is an entertainment industry and that’s how a lot of businesses see it,” says Dr Widdop. “The way we look at the world is changing, media consumption is changing rapidly, and football will change with that.

“I’m not going to use the word ‘legacy fans’ because that’s an awful concept but inside these clubs they’ll be thinking ‘we already have a core supporter base that is socialised into the culture of the pyramid system, familiar with the Wimbledon's rising to the top etcetera’. That’s a way of life to us, a norm that has been created, it’s our European system and we will fight to save that system.

“But if you think of someone like Real Madrid, they’ve got millions of fans around the world, a lot of those fans haven’t been brought up in that tradition of the pyramid system, sense of place, sense of community and the sense of localised history.

“Young people from China, India, the Middle East, they’re not socialised into the tradition.

“These are global clubs, in global cities in a globalised world. Different fans have different needs and values. I don’t think we’ve talked about it enough how there’s new fandom and that fandom has rapidly changed the way we consume content.”

Dr Widdop’s colleague at Leeds Beckett University, Dr Renan Petersen-Wagner, falls into the category of academic but also this breed of ‘new fan’.

For his PhD, he studied Liverpool supporters in his homeland of Brazil and also in Switzerland. He now follows Liverpool because of that.

“Some of the people I interviewed were Liverpool fans because they liked playing video games,” says Dr Petersen-Wagner. “They saw Michael Owen score against Argentina in France ’98 and wanted to play with him on their video game so they ended up supporting Liverpool.

“They then want to see Liverpool against the best teams. They don’t want to see them against West Brom.

“People cite the German model of 50+1 of fan ownership. But who is that fan? Is that local ownership or is it a million people from China who became members of Liverpool, and now suddenly they are owners of Liverpool.

“These international fans are the ones they are trying to attract.”

Another motivation of the breakway 12, believes Dr Petersen-Wagner, is the saturation of football and the increased competition football faces from other content streams. The new 36-team Champions League format was approved by UEFA only this week, at the height of the outcry over the Super League. But what the bigger clubs want is more games between the top teams and fewer, if possible zero games, against unmarketable opposition.

“If there’s so much there you lose the value,” argues Dr Petersen-Wagner.

Dr Widdop feels that with international owners, particularly American owners bred on the closed shops of the NFL and the NBA, it is inevitable that football will continue to explore this route. “They want stability in the market so they can invest in talent, knowing that you will not be penalised if you fall out having spent big,” he says.

“A super league would be huge, it would rival the NBA, the NFL, there’s no doubt about it.

“We’re so outraged now, and yet you, me, every fan that has watched Sky Sports and paid money for replica shirts is complicit in this move towards where we’re going.

“We’ve sleep-walked into this situation for the last 30 years.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:39 pm

Much was made, especially by Florentino Perez that Super League was effectively being demanded by Gen Zers, this study reported by SportsProMedia suggests otherwise

Study: European Super League opposed by 80% of Gen Z soccer fans
Supporters felt breakaway competition was ‘out of step’ with what they wanted from soccer.

Posted: April 26 2021By: Ed Dixon
  • 90% of Gen Z fans in Western Europe, North America and South America against ESL
  • Real Madrid president Florentino Perez insists project is not dead and clubs have “binding contracts”
A new study published by the Ear to the Ground creative agency has found that 80 per cent of Gen Z soccer fans were against the creation of the European Super League (ESL).

Plans for the breakaway competition featuring 12 of Europe’s biggest clubs were unveiled last week, but the proposal collapsed some 48 hours later after a fierce backlash from across soccer.

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, one of the ESL’s leading architects, had said the league was created because young people are “no longer interested in football” due to “a lot of poor quality games”.

However, Ear to the Ground’s research is at odds with Perez’s comments. The percentage of Gen Z fans opposing the ESL rises to 90 per cent in Western Europe, North America and South America. Supporters in those regions felt the league was ‘out of step’ compared to what they wanted from soccer.

In Nigeria, China, Japan and Indonesia, 72 per cent of Gen Z fans were against the ESL.

For the study, Ear to the Ground used its fan intelligence model to collect data from 11,000 18 to 28-year-old soccer fans across six contents. According to the agency, the group does want to see more matches between top clubs but ‘not at the expense of what they value about football’. It added that Gen Z ‘wants to be on the right side of societal issues’, but feels the ESL goes against that.

“It’s about knowing what your audiences care about, and the role you play for them,” said Owen Laverty, director of fan intelligence at Ear to the Ground.

“We know there are smart people working across all of these clubs, but it feels like these decisions about a breakaway league were made in boardrooms by individuals who were disconnected from the real world and potentially misunderstood the values of the people that this mattered to the most, the fans who they needed to follow it.”

Despite the negative reaction to the ESL, Laverty added that younger fans were still keen for the game to evolve, but in a more effective way.

“This isn't a sign that fans want things to stay the same, it's that they want them to get better,” he said.

“It feels like the worst thing that could come from this for fans, is the game doesn’t improve and innovate, but in a positive way.”

The ESL fallout has also seen supporters from several of the 12 breakaway clubs call for a change in ownership. Now, according to The Telegraph, Daniel Ek, the co-founder of audio streaming giant Spotify, is preparing a takeover offer for English top-flight side Arsenal.

Ek, who has an estimated net worth of US$4.5 billion and is a fan of the Gunners, is reportedly working with three former Arsenal legends – Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Viera – on a bid to buy the club from Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE).

A tweet from Ek on 23rd April read: ‘If KSE would like to sell Arsenal I'd be happy to throw my hat in the ring.’

However, a separate report from The Times said that Arsenal are sceptical about the seriousness of the offer. Club director Josh Kroenke, the son of principal owner Stan Kroenke, told a fan forum last week that KSE are not looking to sell.

According to The Times, KSE values Arsenal at about UK£2 billion (US$2.8 billion).

Meanwhile, Inter Milan, another of the clubs who initially signed up to the ESL, are in advanced talks with US-based Oaktree Capital Group over a €150 million (US$181 million) loan to shore up their finances, according to Bloomberg.

The report added that a deal with Inter could also lead to Oaktree becoming a minority shareholder in the Serie A leaders.

Inter posted losses of €102.4 million (US$124 million) for the 2019/20 financial year and speculation has mounted over the continued involvement of current owner Suning Holdings Group. In February, the Chinese conglomerate said it would be doubling down on its retail business, suggesting it was looking to step back from its involvement with Inter.

In January, Inter chief executive Giuseppe Marotta said that the club’s owners were “considering the opportunities in the interest of Inter and in respect of the history of the club”.

Amidst all of this, Perez is refusing to give up on the ESL and has said the 12 clubs that agreed to join have “binding contracts” and “cannot leave”.

“Some of them, due to pressure, have said they're leaving. But this project, or one very similar, will move forward and I hope very soon,” Perez told Spanish newspaper AS. He added that it was “not true” that JP Morgan, which was the financial backer of the league, had walked away.

Ten of the 12 teams have withdrawn from the ESL. Real Madrid and Barcelona have not yet officially turned their backs on the project.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:43 pm

Simon Chadwick (who it should be noted often partners with Dr Widdop in his research) was much less certain about the last studies findings

https://twitter.com/Prof_Chadwick/statu ... 5019823106

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:30 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:16 pm
This would suggest that the Premier League has gotten over it;s regulatory hurdle and confirmed that the next domestic cycle is the same value and deal as the current domestic cycle - https://twitter.com/clmmcrthy/status/13 ... 2201515010
More from the Telegraph on the extension of the current Premier League domestic rights deal with all live broadcast partners - not unsurprisingly given it has now found a populist position for itself with football, the government may seek some populist guarantees if it allows regulatory hurdles to be skipped says the Telegraph

Government to demand pyramid payment assurances over Premier League TV rights deal
Exclusive: While any deal is unlikely to now involve an open-market auction, Whitehall may intervene to redistribute money through the game

By Tom Morgan, SPORTS NEWS CORRESPONDENT and Ben Woods
27 April 2021 • 5:56pm

The Government will demand guarantees from the Premier League over pyramid solidarity in return for approving surprise plans to roll over TV rights deals.

Sensitive talks could conclude within days over proposals - first disclosed by The Telegraph - to allow Sky, BT and Amazon to continue screening games on broadly the same three-year £4.5billion term.

Whitehall is being given input and must sign off the plans, with senior figures within Government pushing for a response which could be "creatively helpful" amid the recently triggered fan-led review of the game.

The Telegraph reported on Sunday how the Premier League and broadcasters were in advanced talks over agreeing a deal without going to open-market auction.

Values were estimated to fall for the next term, but an immediate renewal by next month has some appeal to senior broadcasting executives due to post-pandemic market uncertainties. One source close to talks said on Tuesday that there may be a minor reduction in value under the terms, and that the new deal could be arranged pro-rata over two years rather than three while the market readjusts.

The Government, meanwhile, has significant clout to intervene amid the current furore around the so-called Big Six club owners following the Super League breakaway fiasco.

With tougher regulation looming, senior figures within broadcasting and sport are keen to keep ministers on side, with a plan being considered in Whitehall to redistribute money through the pyramid.

The Premier League had been due to auction domestic rights spanning three seasons to 2025 by May, but Sky and BT were widely expected to rein in their spending. Some rights experts predicted the value of the package could fall by more than £900m - to an overall sale of around £3.9billion.

The competition 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 then that the Premier League must sell its rights to more than one broadcaster. Now, in the post-Brexit landscape, advice and competitions approval from Government on the deal is key.

Broadcasters may yet secure a small discount which 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.

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 implications for a private sale of domestic rights are being considered at the Treasury predominantly 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 chief executive Richard Masters is under pressure to shore up income after record TV rights growth under his predecessor Richard Scudamore. Masters declared in February that he was confident in values, but BT chiefs admitted the trajectory was flat to down. A channel sharing deal struck between Sky and BT three years ago has cooled the competitive tension needed to increase the value.

Masters, who is also seeking to skewer any future attempt by a Premier League club to join a breakaway European league by overhauling the sport’s rules, has teamed up with the FA to carry out a governance review.

The scrapping of parachute payments is being championed by EFL chairman Rick Parry, who told Telegraph Sport the “best of Project Big Picture” should be reconsidered following the collapse of The Super League. Under that plan, payments would have been replaced with a cash injection that would have seen the EFL given £250m immediately, plus 25 per cent of revenue from future top-tier TV deals. The EFL is currently asking for a share of Norwich City and Watford’s £83 million parachute payments following their immediate return to the Premier League.

The Premier League, Sky, BT and Amazon are yet to comment.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:42 pm

The Financial Times add a bitt extra to the extension on Premier League domestic rights by private sale - apparently the big clubs have stalled on this idea for a few months - yet when looking at that Telegraph piece and adding in the Super League nonsense last week it could cost all the clubs at lot more in revenue share - the big clubs will not be bothered about losing parachute payments too much as it doesn't affect them, but you have to suspect the delay was in part about having broadcasters either not suing for the debaluation of Super League, or having money to spend on Super League rights

Premier League seeks government approval to scrap TV rights auction
NIC FILDES APRIL 27, 2021

The Premier League is seeking UK government approval to scrap its upcoming domestic media rights auction, and instead roll over its existing £5bn broadcasting deal with Sky, BT and Amazon.

English football’s top division is pushing for the move, according to people familiar with the talks, after clubs involved in the failed European Super League had sought to “stall” the decision as their focus switched towards the money-spinning breakaway tournament.

The Premier League’s attempt to scrap its planned auction represents a marked change from its past tactics of pitting broadcasters against each other in regular rights sales, helping stoke the steady inflation of its multibillion-pound television deals. This money has fuelled huge increases in transfer fees paid to buy star players and pay their multimillion-pound wages.

Instead of the planned auction, the Premier League hopes to conduct a private sale to its existing partners Sky, BT and Amazon, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions.

It would then be able to offer deals for the three seasons between 2022 and 2025 on terms broadly similar to those signed in 2018.

The aim is to provide financial stability to elite English clubs that have faced steep revenue shortfalls due to the lack of gate receipts.

Meanwhile, rival national leagues in Germany and Italy have recently suffered a fall in the value of their screening deals over the past year.

English football’s top division still needs approval to scrap the rights auction from ministers, who have the power to block the move on competition grounds. But the government is considering the proposal due to exceptional circumstances caused by the pandemic, according to people close to the talks.

Premier League executives have wanted to move ahead with the plan for several months, but some of its biggest clubs sought additional time to review the proposals, according to other executives familiar with recent talks across the division.

That decision to stall the media rights sale caused further anger last week when England’s so-called “Big Six” clubs; Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, announced they would join a European Super League.

Rival club chiefs were furious with the Super League concept, which was quickly scrapped in the face of mass protests from fans and politicians, believing it would damage the value of Premier League TV rights contracts.

A key part of the Premier League’s appeal to broadcasters is the intense battle between teams to qualify for European competition — a race that would be made redundant by a Super League in which clubs would be guaranteed their places each season.

Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League, has also warned that clubs are set to miss out on £2bn of revenues across the two seasons disrupted by the pandemic, due to lost ticket sales and rebates paid to TV companies for postponed fixtures.

Across Europe, a combination of advertising losses during the pandemic and the “cord-cutting” of younger viewers switching to digital services is leading traditional broadcasters to rein in spending on sports rights.

Simon Green, head of BT Sport, told the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in February that “there’s certainly going to be a rights correction and it may be seen and interpreted by many as rights deflation”.

Italy’s Serie A last month approved a domestic media rights sale, led by sports streaming service DAZN, worth about €810m a season between 2021-2024, a roughly 20 per cent drop on its existing deal.

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:44 am

I have talked about this as being a greater issue for clubs since early last summer, no fans and rebates, mean these outstanding liabilities on transfer fees become a much heavier burden.

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 7804037122

Before our club was burdened with debt and had a chunk of it's cash holding given away, the club was in prime position for a strong exit from the pandemic (though I am still far from convinced that next season will start or even finish with full matchday attendances). It would not (and perhaps should not) all happen in a single window, there is still too much doubt, but it would I allowed for significant squad additions.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 28, 2021 3:42 pm

This is an interesting article in the Telegraph looking at the next step in player development, AI has been a pretty obvious area for this kind of development for some time and some clubs are already investing in the early stage technology (including Norwich https://www.pinkun.com/sport/norwich-ci ... ol-7790656)

Arsene Wenger on the future of football - the next step is to train a player's brain
JEREMY WILSON APRIL 28, 2021

After pioneering a 25-year revolution in the physical preparation of footballers, Arsene Wenger has predicted that neuroscience will unlock the next major evolution in professional players.

Now 71, Wenger said that he was still trying to “anticipate the next step” in the ongoing improvement of footballers and he believes that vast advancements around diet and physical fitness have left one obvious untapped area for specialist coaches.

“We have gone from the football player to the athlete-football player with the measurement of the physical performances,” said Wenger. “All the players who could not produce the quantity demanded have been kicked out of the game. Because of the physical qualities, the space available and the time available to make decisions has been reduced.

“We have seen from feet to head everything has improved. The physical time dedicated to improve is now limited. Maybe the next step is to see what's going on in the brain. The next step could be speed of decision-making, quality of information taken and the flexibility of decision making.”

In that, Wenger said he had already been shown three-dimensional technology which enables players to train their brains so that their anticipation, vision and split-second choices are sharpened.

“I see the next step being technology used to train our brain,” he said. “We could see that in three-dimensional training. [Where] you can put your ‘cask’ on and see the game in your position, and practice your brain to make quick decisions, to anticipate what's going on. It looks quite impressive when you are in. You can put the right-back in his position, and see the exact same vision as he has when he is in the game.

“The vision factor, and the quality of information you get before you get the ball, will certainly be a decisive evolution. The modern manager has to be very open minded to all kinds of influence that can make him better. You must always try to move forward.”

Wenger was previously among the first coaches to use psychologists and mannequins in training sessions, before famously overhauling the diets and physical training of players at Arsenal when he arrived in England in 1996.

He will be speaking on Thursday alongside basketball legend Magic Johnson and former Netflix director Patty McCord during a summit about learning and development. For all the innovation, Wenger believes that people-management and human interaction remain the most important single factors in leadership.

“You must detect a person’s qualities and aspirations and make sure their needs are met,” he said. “We all want to know where we could be and where we could go. We all want to be better. We underestimate communication.

“Sometimes you feel the individual initiative is reduced in favour of everybody being absolutely 100 percent in the model. I think to get that balance right you have to consider as well the potential of players.

“If someone has a very creative part and limited stamina and power — and you make him run like mad every time you lose the ball — he will not be capable to express his talent anymore. The game is to find the right balance between the global collective rules and individual freedom to express yourself.”

Wenger also says that a key managerial challenge is to “accept the stress” in making decisions — by mixing intuition, experience and data — without ever knowing if your choices are correct. “At some stage you have to decide and accept making the decision,” he said. “I tried always to be rational but you never completely know. The rationality of a decision has increased phenomenally. At the start of my career, it was all down to my subjectivity. At the end of my spell at Arsenal, you were surrounded by science and had more objective measuring. You also manage more downwards at the start. At the end you manage the team around the team and you have to manage upwards as well to convince the fans and the media.”

In his current role as Fifa’s chief of global football development, Wenger has been creating an online platform to educate coaches in pursuit of what is now his overriding purpose. “The goal is to give a chance to every child in the world to play football in good conditions - to give a chance to talented people to achieve something,” he said. “For example. [Kylian] Mbappe, is one of the best players in the world. If he was born in Cameroon, would he have the same possibilities to raise to the potential of now?

“The untapped potential is unbelievable. We have 211 countries [in Fifa]. Of those, 133 countries have never been at the World Cup. A country for example like Finland has never been. I think I can use what I have learned in my life in a positive way. There is a time for everything. I will certainly not have times to finish the work, but I will start it. There is huge work to do.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 28, 2021 3:52 pm

I have posted previously about my grave doubts about offering solutions ahead of the governments football review - here is another example that smells of bandwagon jumping to further a groups own interests and importance, there is no one solution that fits all, and even AFC Wimbledon have difficulties in getting their fans to agree a course of action, most of the issues up for discussion in the review could be managed with in game regulations from what I have seen - from the Independent

Government must create £400m fund to help fans buy football clubs, new report claims
The government has put fan ownership on the table as part of their fan-led review into football’s governance following the launch and subsequent collapse of the European Super League

Ben Burrows 3 hours ago

The government must create a community fund to enable fans to buy and take back control of their football clubs in the wake of the failed European Super League, a new report has claimed.

The report from Power to Change – which supports communities to take ownership of the buildings, places and businesses that matter to them – calls for authorities to put a Community Club Ownership Trust at the heart of reforms to the game.

The government has put fan ownership on the table as part of their fan-led review into football’s governance following the launch and subsequent collapse of the breakaway competition last week.

Supporters, including those at Arsenal and Manchester United, have protested the proposal by their club owners in the days since it fell to pieces with a move towards a more German model of ownership gaining support in political circles.

The trust would be “funded through broadcast revenue or a levy on the gambling industry” with the £400m figure able to support it for a decade.

The report calls for changes to football through the fan-led review process to ensure better financial management throughout the game, ending the “casino culture that incentivises short-term gambling over long-term sustainability.”

It hopes the creation of such a fund would give fans a chance to purchase clubs when they come up for sale as well as giving a viable alternative to liquidation in many cases.

Vidhya Alakeson, CEO of Power to Change, said: “Coming from Wimbledon, where our beloved football club was ripped from the town and transferred to Milton Keynes, I understand very personally how the business of football has come to dominate the game in recent decades.

“Last week’s announcement of a proposed European Super League was a dramatic illustration of organisers failing to recognise that football clubs are much more than just businesses – they are communities embedded in their local area.

“With such a focus on the business and income generation around football, it is mind-boggling that so many successful football clubs find themselves on a perilous financial footing – run for glory rather than long-term sustainability.

“A new Community Club Ownership Trust has the potential to create both a more financially sustainable approach to football that protects these vital local institutions into the future, and importantly also reconnects them to local fans and communities – without whom there can be no beautiful game.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:05 pm

The Financial Times with a piece about BeIN Sport and how piracy has affected their approach to buying sports broadcasting rights - all ground I have covered before including the fact they walked away from Bundesliga and Serie A rights as a result of lack of support, but remain in partnership with the Premier League (who secured an extension of the current deal for the next cycle), la Liga and UEFA.

Streaming pirates threaten sports leagues’ income
MURAD AHMED APRIL 28, 2021

Yousef Al-Obaidly, chief executive of beIN Media Group, issued a warning to the sports industry two years ago. In a speech at the Leaders in Sport conference in London, an annual gathering of executives, he said the rise of piracy — when viewers watch their favourite games illegally for free on the internet — was negating the need for millions to sign up to expensive pay-TV channels.

Al-Obaidly’s own Qatari broadcast group has spent $15bn acquiring the rights to screen many of the world’s biggest sporting events, from English Premier League football matches to Formula One grands prix and the Olympic Games. But he predicted: “The glorious media rights bubble is about to burst. And while most people here think they’ve got their house in order, the truth is that our industry is completely unprepared.”

Piracy undermines the business model of leading sports leagues, many of which rely on multibillion dollar broadcasting contracts. A 2020 study by Ampere Analysis found that 89 per cent of fans worldwide paid for a TV subscription to watch sport but just over half also tuned into a pirate sports service at least once a month.

And the problem persists across sports leagues, broadcasters and nations. “Piracy has existed for a long while — digital piracy at least 10 years — and in many forms,” says Claire Enders, founder of Enders Analysis.

“[But] there has been a generational decline in legitimate sports subscriptions in the under-35s. That is caused a little bit by piracy but mostly by the attractions of so many other attractive smartphone options.”

Diplomacy by other means?
Al-Obaidly was particularly exercised, however, by the emergence of beoutQ, an Arabic-language pirate network streaming content for which beIN had acquired exclusive rights across the Middle East.

BeoutQ emerged in 2017 shortly after Saudi Arabia and three Arab allies cut diplomatic and transport links to Qatar. The World Trade Organization would later rule that the Saudi government had “infringed” international trade agreements because of the country’s involvement in the beoutQ network — a position that Riyadh still rejects.

“I can tell you that, as the largest buyer of sports rights in the world, because of beoutQ in [the Middle East] and piracy generally, we now regard all sports rights as non-exclusive and our commercial offers will reflect that,” said Al-Obaidly in his speech.

BeoutQ appears to have shut down at about the time that Saudi Arabia and Qatar re-established diplomatic ties in January this year. But beIN is sticking to its word by spending billions of euros less on the rights to screen matches in many of Europe’s top football leagues.

“It was piracy at an industrial level,” says Caroline Guenneteau, a deputy general counsel at beIN. “It is true that beoutQ increased our effort in order to fight against piracy but we were engaged in [the fight] for years already.”

BeIN’s new approach is already having an effect on Serie A, Italy’s top football league. Last month, the league said it expected a significant drop in the future value of its international TV contracts, currently worth $170m a season.

“Our biggest problem is beIN,” said Luigi de Servio, the Serie A chief executive at the time. “BeIN was worth 50 per cent of our [international TV rights] package and they’ve decided not to take part in our auction.”

Richard Verow, chief sports officer at beIN Media Group, says that Serie A’s decision to play its Supercoppa matches in 2018 and 2019 in Saudi Arabia sent a “mixed message” on its stance on piracy.

By contrast, beIN paid $500m for a new television deal with the Premier League in December 2020, extending its lucrative agreement to screen top-tier English club matches across the Middle East until 2025.

That decision came after Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund pulled out of a £300m takeover of Newcastle United, a deal that had become stuck in the Premier League’s process to approve club takeovers.

BeIN denies that its decision to renew its TV contract is directly related to the collapse of the Saudi-Newcastle deal, but the value of the agreement does reflect its view that the Premier League has shown itself as “best in class” in dealing with piracy. The Premier League, which remains in a legal dispute with Newcastle’s owner over the failed Saudi takeover, declined to comment.

Whack-a-mole
Last year, the Premier League secured a so-called Super Block from UK courts — an enhanced legal power that allows it to force internet service providers to block computer servers hosting illegal streams as soon as they are identified by its anti-piracy operatives.

Despite this, several UK viewers told the Financial Times that they have been able to access pirate streams of Premier League matches in recent months.

“It’s whack-a-mole, isn’t it?,” says Verow of the attempts to take down the illegal streaming sites that keep popping up. But he says beIN values “the constant fight and investment, looking for [piracy] and dealing with it”.

To that end, beIN is encouraged by efforts being made by other competitions, such as Spain’s La Liga football league, as well as governments — such as France’s, which this month introduced legislation to tackle digital piracy.

Critics of Doha-based beIN claim it is punishing sport groups that declined to side clearly with Qatar during its dispute with Saudi Arabia. BeIN’s chair, Nasser al-Khelaifi, is also president of Paris Saint-Germain, the French football club owned by the Qatari state. And, next year, the Gulf state will host the football World Cup — a move seen as an effort to project soft power and improve the country’s global image.

But Guenneteau says it is about the broader principle. “Can you imagine that you can enter a bakery and take the bread without paying anything?” she asks. “[Look at] the negative impact that [piracy] had on the music industry. It’s terrible. It’s not just a problem for Qatar’s interests.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:20 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
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
One of the things I forgot to say about these Liverpool 2019/20 financial results yester day is that they now fall below us in the all time Premier League profitability table - We are now 4th after 6 seasons of reporting and never making a loss - that in itself is probably a Premier League record - all that and less than 1m in earnings from European competition, which you cannot say about any club above us

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 8126821383
This user liked this post: Royboyclaret

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:23 am

This is an interesting tweet about a stat that looks at the relative competitiveness of a league by focussing on the multiple of the lowest salary cost to match the highest salary cost in the league

Tutul Rahman
@tutulismyname
Salary payroll difference between top spending team & lowest spending team by league

NFL: 1.2x
NHL: 1.4x
NBA: 1.8x
MLS: 2.7x
MLB: 5x
EPL: 9x
Serie A: 11x
Ligue 2: 18x
La Liga: 21x
Bundesliga: 23x

https://twitter.com/tutulismyname/statu ... 0132097031

It makes a very good point, but I begin to doubt it's validity because the Premier League one is definitely wrong more like a 5x and now possibly even less

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by huw.Y.WattfromWare » Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:50 am

Just seen this from Kieran McGuire on twitter. List of all time biggest money makers from the PL. sorry I Had to stretch it so long but wanted to show how poorly run the sides in 40th and 41st were back then.
1FA4CF0C-085E-4342-950A-AF5143655CD2.jpeg
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by huw.Y.WattfromWare » Thu Apr 29, 2021 9:01 am

Also from twitter but no source I’m afraid.
5A800F0B-127D-4346-9AC5-7786D1B60E8E.jpeg
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 4:07 pm

Both are already on this page - but not in that form, so less clicking for some - and both are from @KieranMaguire

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 4:12 pm

This could be potentially significant for domestic and UEFA rights going forward - The Telegraph suggests that BT are wanting to sell their Television arm BT Sport

BT Sport up for sale in broadband push
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS APRIL 28, 2021

BT is in talks with Amazon, Disney and others to offload a stake in its television arm, The Telegraph can reveal, as the pandemic casts doubt over the future of sport.

The telecoms operator has appointed the investment bank Lazard to explore a partial sale of BT Sport as it focuses on upgrading Britain’s broadband network.

It is understood that BT is in talks with potential partners including Amazon, Disney and Dazn, an international sports streaming venture funded by Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the Ukraine-born billionaire.

A British broadcaster is also involved in the discussions and potentially leading the bidding, City sources said.

BT has a longstanding partnership with ITV, although has also worked with Channel 4 and the BBC. Any traditional broadcaster could seek to show more top-flight football on terrestrial television.

The same source said Dazn, which recently agreed a sports broadcasting partnership with BT’s Italian equivalent, was “most keen”.

The discussions pit a traditional broadcaster against Dazn, a streaming upstart, and two global media giants. Potential private equity partners including CVC, a major investor in rugby, and Silverlake, a shareholder in Manchester City are understood to have backed away from talks.

A source said: "The world of sport has been rocked by coronavirus. It's no surprise that BT is rethinking how best to keep growing the business."

Multiple sources said the uncertainties of sports rights auctions and the pandemic made it impossible to say whether a transaction will be agreed. The talks are underway with no strict timetable against a backdrop of turmoil in sports rights as buyers and sellers struggle to predict the appetite for live sport after the pandemic.

BT, under chief executive Philip Jansen, has cut its payout to shareholders to pump billions of pounds into replacing tens of millions of copper telephone wires with faster and more reliable fibre-optic broadband lines.

The Premier League is seeking approval to roll over its current £4.7bn domestic television deal with Sky, BT and Amazon for a further three years, as The Telegraph revealed last weekend.

Premier League TV rights at a crossroads
It is understood the plans have been approved by the Department for Culture, the Department for Business and the Treasury and are now awaiting a final green light from the Prime Minister.

One deal insider said: “Sports broadcasting is a horrible business. Every three years you don’t know if you will retain your rights in an auction or whether you will lose the lot.”

BT is seeking a new investor in BT Sport less than a decade after it launched an assault on sports broadcasting. In 2012 it ambushed Sky by seizing a portion of Premier League television rights.

BT escalated its rivalry the following year by acquiring exclusive rights to the Champions League for almost £900m, laying the ground for a series of bidding wars with Sky.

Insiders said BT is seeking a partner in sports broadcasting after an internal review found sport was not the best use of its own capital.

BT Sport began as a free service to entice broadband subscribers and made losses in the hundreds of millions of pounds a year. However, following a series of steep price rises it is now profitable, according to BT sources.

The future of BT Sport will depend on whether a deal can be agreed and the strategy of the new partner. According to deal insiders, BT is offering the BT Sport brand, its rights agreements and its state-of-the-art studios in east London to any potential joint venture.

Sports industry sources said BT is keen to retain a stake having invested billions of pounds in sport over recent years with questionable returns. With the value of sports rights in flux, “there are people with better motivation to pay for rights”, a source said.

The person added: “For BT there may still be upside, but there are higher priorities.”

All parties declined to comment.

Analysis: why BT is stepping back from sport
Jake Humphrey was showing off a little. Flanked by a reporter and a camera operator, the presenter gave a walking tour of Europe's largest television studio at London's Olympic Park.

The vast broadcasting centre spread across a single floor was home to a football studio, a rugby studio and a half-sized sports pitch for real-time analysis.

It was the new home of BT Sport, the three channels launched by the broadband and mobile operator BT as it began to claw back the thousands of broadband customers fleeing to rivals. That was nearly a decade ago. Today the landscape is markedly different.

After spending billions of pounds to disrupt Sky's dominance, BT has begun beating a retreat for live sport and stands poles apart from its position nine years ago.

Rivals were stripping the telecoms operator of about a million customers a year - an assault on market share that risked dragging it into terminal decline.

Taking on Murdoch
Sky was the problem. The pay TV broadcaster led by chief executive James Murdoch had bulldozed into the broadband market in 2005 through a £211m takeover of Easynet.

By creating a "triple-play" service - where customers could buy satellite TV, broadband and a telephone line in one place - Murdoch had launched a smash and grab on BT that contributed to the loss of around a third of its consumer customers.

Restoring BT's might fell to Gavin Patterson, the former Procter & Gamble executive who joined the telecoms firm as the consumer boss in 2004 before rising to chief executive nine years later. Patterson built on a counter-offensive cooked up with his predecessor Ian Livingtone.

With huge spending power at his disposal, BT launched a £1.5bn charge into sports TV: launching the Olympic Park studio, recruiting presenters Jake Humphrey and Clare Balding, while seizing 39 live Premier League matches over three seasons.

The three new BT Sport channels were offered to broadband customers free of charge.

BT also undercut Sky's TV package for pubs and clubs by 80pc, while the cost of BT Infinity - its high-speed broadband product - was reduced to £15 a month.

It shaved 6pc off Sky's share price, before Patterson increased the bombardment.

In November 2013, BT outbid Sky and ITV with a £900m cheque for exclusive rights to Champions League and Europa League football.

"It was a surprise that Sky didn't play dirty and squeeze us out of everything," a source close to BT's rights negotiations said. "They stepped aside and allowed us to get Premiership Rugby. The big one was the Champions League because they were told we were just going for the Europa League.

"We gave false stories to people we knew would leak them to Sky. It was a pivotal moment. When BT got the rights and announced them the next day on Saturday, Sky were left flat-footed. On Monday morning, Sky's share price went down by double digits. They just weren't prepared for this."

In the year that followed, BT signed up 4m subscribers to BT Sport - viewers it could transform into paying broadband customers.

Sky - bound by the regulator to carry the BT Sport channel - was left feeling sore. "Sport isn’t a marketing gimmick to promote another product," said Stephen van Rooyen, Sky's then boss of sales and marketing.

For the Premier League, BT and Sky's rivalry played straight into the hands of its chief executive Richard Scudamore.

BT's incursion increased the value of domestic rights by 71pc to a record £3bn over three seasons when sold in 2012.

Premier League broadcasting Rights
The rise was the start of a remarkable run for Scudamore, who was able to increase the value by a further 70pc to £5.1bn in 2017 as BT and Sky locked horns. It would not last.

BT increased the cost of BT Sport to £3.50 by August 2017 amid pressure from investors to explain why it was spending so much on sports rights when the UK's full-fibre broadband infrastructure was lagging behind most of Europe.

By December, BT had reached a peace deal with Sky to take the heat out TV auction process.

The two broadcasters struck a channel sharing deal to sell their TV packages on each other's platforms.

Without such rivalry at play, the Premier League auction price fell 8pc to about £4.7bn for the three seasons from 2019-20.

It was an outcome that underscores the shifting priorities already taking place before Patterson made way for Philip Jansen two years ago.

A sports TV channel demanding huge cash injections to survive has struggled to justify its place when Jansen has suspended the dividend and promised £12bn to help upgrade 85pc of the nation to gigabit speed broadband by 2025.

Nearly a decade after exploding into sports TV, BT is now looking to offload a stake in BT sport and forge a strategy with a new partner after an internal review found its capital could be better spent elsewhere.

Marc Allera, BT's consumer chief executive, is understood to be the architect of the plan to bring a new investor into BT Sport. With BT concentrating on full-fibre, it has concluded that a partner would be better placed to invest in sports TV rights.

Streaming giants could step in
A deal with Amazon would intensify Amazon Prime Video's challenge to Sky after picking up 20 matches a season at the last Premier League TV rights auction.

Meanwhile, Disney could add another dimension to its fast-rising streaming service Disney+ as it bears down on Netflix.

The platform is believed to have attracted more than 4m UK subscribers since launching in March last year and sports rights could turbo charge that growth.

Disney Plus subscribers
DAZN also made clear that it was exploring a Premier League auction bid this year. Its joint chief executive James Rushton said earlier this month that “once the tender comes out, we’ll review it”.

Those comments came before The Telegraph revealed the Premier League was in talks to scrap its television rights auction in favour of rolling over existing deals with Sky, BT and Amazon.

Still, the loss-making platform backed by billionaire Sir Leonard Balvatnik's Access Industries has shown an appetite for teaming up with telecoms giants to get what it wants.

In March, Dazn landed the live TV rights to Italy's top-flight football league Serie A for three seasons from 2021-22.

The country's biggest broadband provider, Telecom Italia, backed the swoop, in a move that will distribute matches through its on-demand service TIMvision.

After being battered by the pandemic, the Premier League is desperate for a return to growth for domestic TV rights.

This year it will not be so lucky. But with streaming services muscling in, competitive tension capable of driving up rights value could be close at hand.

BT was once the bull charging into live sports. Now, it is hoping to team up with a new challenger who may foot the huge bill when going toe-to-toe with Sky.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 4:19 pm

The Telegraph also offers this in why Investors would be pleased if BT sold off FT SPort

https://outline.com/xmejTd

The Financial Times are also reporting the same story

BT opens talks over potential sale of sports broadcasting business
MURAD AHMED APRIL 28, 2021

BT has opened talks with a number of potential investors as it considers a sale of its sports broadcasting operation, looking to focus on its core broadband and telephony business and blow the whistle on the content business.

The telecoms company has appointed investment bank Lazard and held initial talks with companies including Dazn, Amazon, Walt Disney and private equity companies over a potential investment in the business, said a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

The move could encompass a full disposal of BT Sport, forming a joint venture or partnership with a media business, or selling a stake in it to bring in outside investment.

Discussions are still at an early stage with a number of partners, said multiple people with knowledge of the process.

“BT can confirm that early discussions are being held with a number of select strategic partners, to explore ways to generate investment, strengthen our sports business, and help take it to the next stage in its growth,” the company said on Thursday. Shares rose 2 per cent to 163p.

The move reverses BT’s strategy of building a sizeable presence in the sports market over the past decade to take on Sky, which had encroached on its core broadband business. The company is instead looking to revert to a role as an aggregator of content, offering a suite of apps, including Sky, Netflix and Amazon Prime, through its BT TV service.


BT has reduced operating costs at BT Sport in recent years and the unit breaks even within the BT Consumer division but the telecoms company has decided to consider options for the media business as it looks to focus on fibre investment and building its 5G network.

The disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has had a knock-on effect on live sport, has also contributed to the review.

News of the talks was first reported by The Daily Telegraph.

BT Sport could be a valuable asset for a media company looking to acquire an established presence in the UK market, including studios and around 2m customers. Although it operates as a TV channel, BT Sport has increased its role as a streaming platform by introducing monthly passes to watch games on its app to non-BT customers over the past year.

Dazn, the sports streaming service that would be seen as an obvious buyer for the business, and Disney, which owns US sports channel ESPN, both declined to comment. Amazon, which streams tennis and a small number of Premier League games in the UK, was not immediately available to comment.

Jerry Dellis, an analyst with Jefferies, said BT Sport costs the company around £800m a year, predominantly due to football rights, but that it has struggled to define how the broadcasting arm creates value for the business. He added he attributes no value to BT Sport in his forecasts so any proceeds raised from a stake sale or disposal would be positive.

BT has spent billions establishing itself in the broadcasting market as it transformed BT Sport into the second-largest player in the UK by winning the rights to Premier League football games, rugby union and niche sports including Australian Rules Football and UFC fighting. It landed its biggest blow when it won the exclusive rights to Champions League football in 2013.

That fuelled a sharp rise in the value of sports rights — with those for covering the Premier League almost trebling between the 2009 and 2017 auctions. But the climbing cost left BT, which initially offered BT Sport for free to its broadband customers, nursing heavy losses. Sky and BT subsequently signed a cross-licensing deal to carry each others sports channels.

The push into sports was a key pillar of Gavin Patterson’s growth strategy when he was chief executive but the media business has become less prominent since Philip Jansen took over, with BT’s consumer business less willing to overpay for sports rights and the company focused on expanding its full-fibre network.

This is the latest example of a telecoms company pulling back from the content market, having struggled to make the convergence of media and connectivity pay off.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 4:42 pm

There are still rumblings about the exit fees from those who have withdrawn from Super League - Two separate individuals who have seen the documents have both said today there are ways to walk away - as long as it is within a timeframe - which appears to be July this year

@TariqPanja covered it with this thread

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 7120699393

and Matt Slater covered it in todays Business of Sport Podcast which featured ex Real Madrid President Ramon Calderon

https://podfollow.com/1488521447/episod ... ae17f/view

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 6:15 pm

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 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.
Bloomberg with an article about Bordeaux and it's reported dale price - which should prove be a challenge to find I would expect

With Hedge Fund Out, Bordeaux Club’s Suitors Need $120 Million
By David Hellier and Angelina Rascouet
29 April 2021, 15:38 BST Updated on 29 April 2021, 17:50 BST

- French club was placed in hands of administrators this month
- Rothschild working to help find buyer for Ligue 1 soccer club

FC Girondins de Bordeaux will require at least 100 million euros ($121 million) of fresh investment if it’s to survive financial collapse amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter.

The club is looking for new owners after being placed in the hands of administrators and potential buyers have been told they will need to pay this initial amount to cover debts as well as projected losses for the next two years, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Bordeaux President Frederic Longuepee last week put the club under the protection of the City’s commercial court until a “sustainable solution” can be found. Court administrators have hired Rothschild & Co. to advise on a sale process, one of the people said.

Deliberations are ongoing and the value of any rescue deal could still change, according to the people. Representatives for Rothschild and the Tribunal de Commerce de Bordeaux declined to comment, while a spokesperson for Bordeaux didn’t immediately provide comment.

Soccer clubs across Europe have been dealing with the financial impact of the Covid-19 crisis, which has forced the closure of stadiums for more than a year. In France, the situation has been exacerbated by the breakdown of a lucrative media rights deal with the Spanish broadcaster Mediapro, which has seen clubs suffer further declines in revenue. Earlier this month French club AS Saint-Etienne was put up for sale amid these pressures, Le Progres reported.

Bordeaux said in a statement last week that its position became perilous when backers King Street Capital, a U.S. hedge fund that gained control of the club in 2018, took the decision to stop investing in the team. Bordeaux competes in France’s top Ligue 1 division, making it the first club in any of Europe’s top five soccer leagues to have had administrators called in before the end of the pandemic.

Founded in 1881, Bordeaux has won France’s top division title six times in its history. Over the years it has been home to some of the country’s most celebrated players, including World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane.

Its plight has already caught the attention of French billionaire Francois Pinault, a major investor in luxury conglomerate Kering SA who also owns Chateau Latour, one of Bordeaux’s premier vineyards. In a letter made public in French daily Sud Ouest this week, 84 year-old Pinault urged other Bordeaux wine estate owners to help rescue the soccer club, saying he’d been “moved” by the thought it could disappear.

While he can’t buy Bordeaux because he already owns Stade Rennais FC, a team in his home region of Brittany, Pinault said he’d be willing to participate in any rescue led by others. Pinault’s fortune is estimated at $50.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

— With assistance by Myriam Balezou

(Adds Bordeaux history in seventh paragraph)

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:25 pm

this could prove interesting Gary Neville talks to Richard Scudamore (former CEO of the Premier League about the big six, super League and more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0joKOIqguA

it has already led to this article from the BBC


European Super League: There must be consequences for 'big six' - Richard Scudamore
Last updated on50 minutes ago50 minutes ago.

There must be consequences for the six English clubs who tried to join the ill-fated European Super League, according to former Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore.

He said the decision from those sides to join the controversial league had changed English football forever.

Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham all withdrew from plans last week.

"I don't believe life will ever be the same after last Sunday," he said.

All six Premier league sides withdrew from the plans on Tuesday, 20 April, after widespread criticism and protests. It was just 48 hours after the plans were announced. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was among those who criticised the league publicly.

Speaking to Gary Neville's The Overlap YouTube channel, Scudamore, 61, who ran the top division for 19 years, added: "I think the actions of the six have altered the dynamic forever. There has to be some consequences. Things have to change.

"There is no switch you can turn that suddenly builds back trust with these people and the fan base. It is a long and difficult road back. After a period of some healing, we have to rebuild this thing.

"I cannot explain why any of them thought it was a good idea. I am the person who had been telling them for years it was a crazy idea and could not happen. What's happened in the last week is that it's been stopped and that's the right thing.

"Anyone who knows me would know I found this completely unacceptable.

"There has to be some consequences. I think something will have to be extracted by way of undertakings or attitude. I am not going to get involved about whether there should be punishments or sanctions."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 9:11 pm

The Telegraph with more on that Richard Scudamore chat with Gary Neville

Richard Scudamore: Super League six plunged Premier League into civil war – life will never be the same
BEN RUMSBY APRIL 29, 2021

The six Super League plotters may never fully regain the trust of their Premier League rivals after their failed coup “altered the dynamic of English football forever”, Richard Scudamore has warned.

Manchester United, Liverpool and the four other clubs who last week plunged the game into civil war have broken the bonds of trust of the Premier League, according to the man credited for turning the top flight into the world’s richest football competition, and Scudamore also accused the plotters of failing to heed his warnings that a Super League “was a crazy idea and could never happen”.

In an interview with Gary Neville on YouTube channel The Overlap, Scudamore said: “I don’t believe life will ever be the same after last Sunday. I think there will be changes.

“The actions of the six have altered some of the dynamic forever. I would like to think that the six will get back round the table at some point. Not right away – there’s too much anger out there for that right now.

“It might be self-regulatory change. And, yes, there might be some external regulatory change.”

The plotters have already lost their seats on various Premier League working groups, with United’s Ed Woodward, Liverpool’s Tom Werner, Chelsea’s Bruce Buck, Manchester City’s Ferran Soriano and Arsenal’s Vinai Venkatesham all forced to quit.

The Premier League also plans to change its rules to expel any club who tries to join a breakaway competition in future.

But Scudamore, the Premier League’s former executive chairman who led it for two decades and is now a consultant to current chief executive Richard Masters and chairman Gary Hoffman, warned of further action to follow, adding: “There has to be some consequences. It just can’t happen with there being no consequences.

“There has to be something extracted for what they’ve done.”

In a sometimes-heated exchange, Scudamore dismissed Neville’s call for an independent regulator to be imposed on the game, insisting the fact the Super League plot was foiled had proven football’s rules were fit for purpose.

European Super League
He was also scathing about the apologies clubs had issued following the spectacular collapse of the scheme.

He said: “You see people even in their apologies saying things like, ‘We spent a lot of time thinking about what our fans would want us to do’. And, yet, you didn’t spend one iota talking to those fans that have reacted. You don’t know where to start in terms of your contempt for the ill-thought-through nature of the whole thing.”

He added: “There’s no switch that you can turn that suddenly builds back trust with these people for the fan bases.

“So, I’m afraid it’s a fairly long, fairly difficult road back.

“The fact is English football has built those clubs into what they are and my hope is that they will reflect, take a jolly good look in and say, ‘Right, what can we do now to make sure English football continues to be strong’.

“After a period of some healing, we have to rebuild this thing.”

The Super League fiasco has sparked calls for fans to have a seat on the board of Premier League clubs and even for the English football to adopt Germany’s ‘50+1’ model of supporter control.

But Scudamore said: “A seat on the board is difficult, isn’t it?

“What you can’t do, in my view, is alter the fact that somebody can own a significant percentage and those who own a significant percentage would have most of the votes.

“You can’t entirely hand ownership over but, yeah, I do believe this is now a time where clubs are going to have to look at the way they consult with their fan base.

“It’s almost like there’s an elastic band that’s snapped in the last week. It’s been stretched and stretched and stretched and stretched and stretched and there’s been a snap. And that hurts. And, therefore, things will have to be looked at and things will be different going forward.”

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:12 pm

The Telegraph are reporting that the government are close to approving the domestic rights extension for the Premier League - it will be a major fillip if they manage it

Premier League TV rights roll over heading for government approval as BT announce potential sale of Sport division
TOM MORGAN APRIL 29, 2021
The Premier League's £4.5billion TV rights roll over is heading for Government approval within days, with players warned meteoric wage rises are expected to flatten.

In what is a coup for England's top tier, the surprise proposal - disclosed by The Telegraph on Sunday - is set for the green light from three departments within a fortnight.

However, with the TV market cooling amid separate Telegraph revelations that BT Sport is preparing for a sell off, analysts last night marked the beginning of the end of sharp wage rises.

Since BT came to the football market almost a decade ago, the correlation has been stark between rights and player salaries - with both trebling prior to the impact of the Covid pandemic.

"I think we're reaching a plateau," said Kieran Maguire, a lecturer in football finance at Liverpool University. "Wages and costs in the Premier League have always been closely aligned to revenues, and especially in 2013/14 and 2016/17 when on both occasions there were significant rises in the overall value of the domestic packages. That quickly felt fed through into increased wages."

In what was billed last night as a "seismic moment" for sports rights, BT bosses are seeking a partnership with a media company as they aim to focus resources and attention on upgrades to the national broadband network and customer service. Analysts speculated that a 50pc stake in BT Sport could be worth up to £500m.

The decision by the Champions League and Premier League rights-holder to back off from sports broadcasting marks an end to a decade-long arms race with Sky. Talks are underway with no strict timetable against a backdrop of turmoil in sports rights as buyers and sellers struggle to predict the appetite for live sport after the pandemic.

Talk of the bubble bursting is too early, analysts say, with Amazon and DAZN aggressively extending their rights offerings in recent years. However, warnings of "deflation" in the market had been raised by the likes of Simon Green, the head of BT Sport in February. He admitted then that a "rights correction" beckoned, while Sky have consistently talked of diverting more money towards drama. As a result, the Premier League's agreement with BT, Sky and Amazon to roll over current agreements is seen as a victory for Richard Masters, the league's chief executive.

How Premier League TV rights have grown with player wages
Julian Aquilina, of market experts Enders Analysis, told The Telegraph it was a "well recognised" that competition between Sky and BT was falling "not just because rights have skyrocketed in value over the last decade but also also because they now have carriage deals with each other, which means that customers will be able to access content".

BT had initially entered the market to protect its broadband services from rival packages from Sky. However, the demise of that rivalry has prompted other sports to embrace private investment. The Super League plotters that included England's so-called Big Six had also signed up to multi-billion pound funding from JP Morgan without inviting bids from broadcasters.

David Kogan, the Premier League's chief media rights adviser from 1998 to 2015 and a key architect of its global financial success, said the Super League revelations followed by the Premier League roll over and BT sell off were a seismic shift for his industry - but he said it was too early to predict where valuations were heading.

"If you take those three things together, there's 14 days worth of tectonic shifts," Kogan told Telegraph. "The assumption that somehow this is going to make it all fall apart is not clear yet." He added that he imagines some of "the rights holders may be quite happy" to see a fresh competitor such as DAZN or Disney enter the market with new ambitions.

"Since I started working with the Premier League, we had Sky and a cable company in 2000, then we had Sky and Setanta, then we had Sky and ESPN, then we had Sky and BT. What that proves is there's always somebody who's prepared to step up and buy those rights. Now you've got Sky, BT and Amazon. If we're left with Sky, Amazon, and a third party, why is that necessarily a bad thing?"

The Telegraph reported on Sunday how the Premier League and broadcasters were in advanced talks over agreeing a deal without going to open-market auction.

Values were estimated to fall for the next term, but an immediate renewal by next month has some appeal to senior broadcasting executives due to post-pandemic market uncertainties. One source close to talks said there may be a minor reduction in value under the terms, and that the new deal could be arranged pro-rata over two years rather than three while the market readjusts. As previously disclosed by The Telegraph, assurances will also be demanded by Government over pyramid solidarity.

Broadcasters may yet secure a small discount which 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.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:43 pm

/
Last edited by Chester Perry on Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:44 pm

the interesting thing about both these stories in the Telegraph today (BT Sport sale and Premier League domestic rights extension) is that a few months back Claire Enders said these were the options that were likely to be sought - this from todays Unofficial Partner Newsletter

Claire Enders was right, Parts 1 & 2
The UP Pod #107 contained prescience.

She predicted the BT Sport sell off:

Sport has been crippling for BT. They broke the bank and it broke them

She predicted the Premier League would test the legislation on rights terms.

Frank Dunne had a lovely scoop in SportBusiness on the Premier League’s move to roll over their current rights deal with existing broadcast partners.

The three year terms are a legacy of EU legislation against Sky in the early 2000s, and was referenced by Enders as an anachronism of a pre-FAANG era. (The long answer lies in the EU’s Audio Visual Directive here).

Longer terms put a premium on prediction, carrying risk of rising or falling values and so leaving value on the table for both rights holder and broadcaster.

Also, from the WhatsUP Group, Dan Johnson, former comms director of Premier League:

Exemption from anti-trust laws helps. A lot. Three years is as low as the PL could get away with our friends from Brussels and Ofcom crawling all over every domestic deal. You can see why the US broadcasters like it though. They can properly develop partnerships, brand, and deliver/guide the investment narrative. Something which needs to be done better in the U.K., but is logistically difficult. You’ve just got your deal away, and then you’re having to market test and plan the next...

He’s not wrong. The US market, (and the IOC’s media strategy) is based on longer terms. The recent NFL mega deals stretch to the end of the decade. Here’s an SBJ graph, shown previously, to illustrate why the US market is currently undergoing such excitement: It’s renewal time, for the first time for most major rights holders since 2014.


© 2021 Unofficial Partner Unsubscribe
PO Box 6945 London, W1A 6US United Kingdom

Publish on Substack

Chester Perry wrote:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 6:56 pm
Getting ready to settle down to an evening of Podcasts - this has just moved up to the Prime Slot - the excellent Unofficial Partner Podcast talks to Claire Enders

https://www.unofficialpartner.com/podca ... ire-enders

This is the blub they have around it

Today’s guest is Claire Enders, who has been the UK’s pre-eminent media and technology analyst, strategist and forecaster for over thirty years. After working across cable, satellite, and commercial Public Sector Broadcasting she set up Enders Analysis in 1997, to build comprehensive models for all parts of the UK media, telecoms and technology sectors and provides its research and expertise to over 140 organisations. During this time Claire Enders has built a reputation for outspoken and contrarian analysis of the prospects for technology, telecoms and media across Europe. She famously predicted first Dotcom crash, the advertising collapse of 2009 and has analysed every major sports rights deal of the last three decades. Someone once said of her that clients credit her with the ability to "see through the walls of boardrooms, and intuit the decisions they will make”.
So, of course, we talked about the market for sports media rights generally, and the Premier League specifically, Amazon and the FAANGs, DAZN, the Netflix for Sport hype, the lessons of Disney+, audience behaviours for sport, the implications of private equity bidding for sports rights and the Premier League’s China problem.

As ever, Claire Enders did not pull her punches.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:27 am

Chester Perry wrote:
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.
Tom Reed, offers his two penneth as how to help fix the game. He has been thinking about this for a long long time, he specialises in writing about fan culture and comes from a similar perspective as John Nicholson and @UglyGame - as with those two, I cannot always agree with him but will listen to what he has to say. I think it helps to know he is a Northampton Town fan.

There are some interesting ideas and reasoning here, but Ias I keep saying it is important to overlay his perspective with that of others with different ideas, and interests to gain a fuller picture

https://www.football365.com/news/short- ... all-reform

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:19 pm

Chester Perry wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:25 pm
this could prove interesting Gary Neville talks to Richard Scudamore (former CEO of the Premier League about the big six, super League and more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0joKOIqguA

it has already led to this article from the BBC


European Super League: There must be consequences for 'big six' - Richard Scudamore
Last updated on50 minutes ago50 minutes ago.

There must be consequences for the six English clubs who tried to join the ill-fated European Super League, according to former Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore.

He said the decision from those sides to join the controversial league had changed English football forever.

Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham all withdrew from plans last week.

"I don't believe life will ever be the same after last Sunday," he said.

All six Premier league sides withdrew from the plans on Tuesday, 20 April, after widespread criticism and protests. It was just 48 hours after the plans were announced. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was among those who criticised the league publicly.

Speaking to Gary Neville's The Overlap YouTube channel, Scudamore, 61, who ran the top division for 19 years, added: "I think the actions of the six have altered the dynamic forever. There has to be some consequences. Things have to change.

"There is no switch you can turn that suddenly builds back trust with these people and the fan base. It is a long and difficult road back. After a period of some healing, we have to rebuild this thing.

"I cannot explain why any of them thought it was a good idea. I am the person who had been telling them for years it was a crazy idea and could not happen. What's happened in the last week is that it's been stopped and that's the right thing.

"Anyone who knows me would know I found this completely unacceptable.

"There has to be some consequences. I think something will have to be extracted by way of undertakings or attitude. I am not going to get involved about whether there should be punishments or sanctions."
Just got round to watching this - I have to say that Gary Neville comes across as a petulant child on the subject of an Independent regulator and more equitable financial distribution across the game - I thought Richard Scudamore absolutely schooled him, which was quite easy to do because he is absolutely closed to seeking to understand what other perspectives are driving different actions and having empathy for everyone else, something that has driven the thinking of Perez, Agnelli, the Glazers and FSG

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:34 pm

While I was delighted by the stand Gary made, it does not make him mastermind... but as long as he keeps pressure on for a repositioning of power away from the six, he has my tacit backing.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:09 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:34 pm
While I was delighted by the stand Gary made, it does not make him mastermind... but as long as he keeps pressure on for a repositioning of power away from the six, he has my tacit backing.
An accord will never happen without people coming to together and fully empathising with those they currently perceived as enemies - thousands of years of history have taught us that, yet people still want to take sides and become more intransigent, which even makes the more accommodating elements turn away from them. It is stances such as this that ensure that confrontation will persist rather than accord being found.

The Premier League give away over £500m each season across the game at all levels from grass roots to the EFL and players Union, they also take part in an EFL competition that generates 60%+ of EFL commercial revenues (over £70m), money which is primarily generated by Premier League involvement but actually distributes little to the Premier League. Premier League clubs also take part in the FA Cup, which again provides over £175m of commercial revenue to the FA and Premier League clubs see little of that, instead it is distributed though the nearly 800 clubs that take part in the competition, yet the major reason the commercial revenue is there is the Premier League clubs. This is both greater sum in monetary terms, range of impact and percentage wise than any other country in the game.

Much is also made of the distinction in TV money between the Top of the Championship and the bottom of the Premier League being around £90m, very few talk about, talk about the difference between the difference between the top of the Premier League (with Champions League monies and the bottom of the Premier League where the gap is around £150m, The Champions League giving close to what the bottom cluns get from the Premier League.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:25 pm

this was teased yesterday when it was revealed that NT Sport was open to offers - The Telegraph says that ITV want a share so they can bring live football back to free to air tv

ITV in the race for BT Sport
TOM MORGAN APRIL 29, 2021

ITV is in talks to bring top-flight football back to free-to-air television as it explores taking a stake in BT Sport.

The broadcaster has emerged as a contender to seal a television partnership with BT, alongside Amazon, Disney and Dazn, a sports streaming challenger bankrolled by the billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik.

Media sources confirmed ITV’s interest after The Telegraph revealed that BT had appointed investment bankers to explore potential partnerships.

The discussions are at an early stage and may not lead to a deal, but could result in a partial sale of BT Sport, a joint venture or other structures designed to allow BT to focus more on its broadband business.

A deal with ITV would allow some Premier League and Champions League matches to be shown free on terrestrial television, according to insiders.

BT Sport has held rights to the Champions League since 2015 when it paid almost £900m to secure exclusive rights. The competition was previously shared by Sky and ITV.

BT bosses are seeking a partnership with a media company as they aim to focus resources and attention on upgrades to the national broadband network and customer service. Analysts speculated that a 50pc stake in BT Sport could be worth up to £500m.

Although it lacks the financial firepower of the other potential investors in BT Sport, ITV would bring large audiences and advertising sales prowess at a time when the economics of pay-TV football are under strain from the pandemic and changing viewing habits.

It would also forge closer ties between two companies that cast themselves as national champions for connectivity and television. They are already partners in YouView, the set-top box technology venture, and BT has considered investing in Britbox, ITV’s subscription streaming service.

BT shares rose 2.5pc to 163.8p - a 15-month high - as shareholders welcomed the prospect of a new backer for BT Sport.

The company confirmed The Telegraph’s report in a stock exchange announcement, saying it would “explore ways to generate investment, strengthen our sports business, and help take it to the next stage in its growth”.

The talks are underway with no strict timetable against a backdrop of turmoil in sports rights as buyers and sellers struggle to predict the appetite for live sport after the pandemic.

ITV declined to comment.

BT pointed to its stock exchange announcement, which said its discussions with potential partners in BT Sport were confidential.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by clansman » Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:26 pm

The tension between what the ESL sought and what ordinary fans want summed up nicely in an article in today’s money week magazine. A top financial publication.
“Every business has existing customers and then all the new ones it might hope to reach if it just tweaked the product a little.
There is often a tension between the two. In the North of England people want to watch Liverpool play Burnley and Leeds.Across Asia they would rather see them play Barcelona and Man City.They don’t know where Burnley is, and don’t really care!.”

The article was critical of the poor business judgement of the owners.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:27 pm

A bit of history here, covering the first attempt of a football league breakaway - called Super League - in the mid 1980's, led by 10 English clubs, that were planning to invite European clubs into their fold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-rG98UjL4U&t=24s

This was at the time of the Heysel ban and while it never came to fruition, it eventually morphed into the Premier League
Last edited by Chester Perry on Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by elwaclaret » Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:28 pm

Totally agree with the above comment. However, it is the Big 6 that needs to be first on the block. Even the playing fields somewhat from the top where the disparity is most damaging the value of the competition. Fix Premier League first, then look at finance steaming down. It is best always to deal with big problems one chunk at a time..( and for the older fans) sweet Jesus that’s all I’m asking from you.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:38 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:28 pm
Totally agree with the above comment. However, it is the Big 6 that needs to be first on the block. Even the playing fields somewhat from the top where the disparity is most damaging the value of the competition. Fix Premier League first, then look at finance steaming down. It is best always to deal with big problems one chunk at a time..( and for the older fans) sweet Jesus that’s all I’m asking from you.
I actually would suggest that The EFL needs to work better at making itself stronger and more sustainable, through it's own activities - The championship are correct in that it does not do a good enough job at promoting itself.

There is also the issue of distribution within the EFL:
- Championship 80%,
- League 1 12%
- League 2 8%.

The EFL also exercises the same parachute practices as the Premier League in retaining parachute payments if clubs are promoted back up the league quickly.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Tue May 04, 2021 4:32 pm

https://theathletic.com/2563640/2021/05 ... ed-article

Interesting to see Preston, who are reliant on a rich owner, trying to block the EFL taking out a loan to support clubs because they're worried about rivals being reckless with money..

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Wed May 05, 2021 1:34 am

It is still a surprised to me that people think that Manchester City's victory over UEFA at CAS (because of UEFA's elapsed time rule) means that the Premier League's own investigation into the club's financial action's is over - the Premier League does not have an elapsed time rule - this from the New York Times

Manchester City and Premier League Wage Secret Fight Over Cost Controls
City, the Gulf-backed soccer team on the cusp of a fourth English Premier League title, is fighting an investigation over financial control rules.

By Tariq Panja
May 4, 2021

LONDON — Manchester City, the English soccer team that is on the cusp of winning the Premier League for the third time in four seasons, is involved in a secret legal battle with the league over whether it complied with financial rules as it surged to become one of the sport’s dominant forces.

The Premier League has been tight lipped since confirming in 2019 that it was looking into City’s finances a few months after the German news weekly Der Spiegel, citing internal club information, said the club had disguised direct investment by its owner, Sheikh Mansour, as sponsorship income. City has always insisted it has not broken any regulations and on Tuesday it again denounced the stolen documents as “out-of-context materials purported to have been criminally obtained” and then published as part of an “organized and clear attempt to damage the club’s reputation.”

City has spent millions of dollars defending itself since the allegations first emerged. Its lawyers are fighting against the league’s arbitration process, arguing that the club will not get a fair hearing, according to documents. The Premier League did not reply to a request for comment.

City is challenging the Premier League in Britain’s civil courts, where hearings have been held behind closed doors, and where publication of material related to the case has been kept confidential despite intense public interest in the case. It is not known what action the Premier League would take if it found City to have breached its rules. Penalties in its rule book include points deductions and fines.

City, backed by the billionaire brother of the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, one of the richest men in the world, waged a successful battle in 2020 when it won an appeal against a two-year ban from the Champions League after being found to have breached separate cost control rules by the European soccer governing body, UEFA. City won its case at the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration after convincing judges that a time limit had elapsed on the evidence against it. The Premier League’s rules do not have similar deadlines.

City needs only one more victory to wrap up its third Premier League championship in four years. It is also on a charge toward a bigger prize this season: its first Champions League crown. On Tuesday it eliminated Paris St.-Germain, another Gulf-controlled club, to seal its first trip to the final, on May 29 in Istanbul.

The case is taking place against the backdrop of major scrutiny of owners in English soccer. A protest by fans of City’s crosstown rival, Manchester United, led to its game against Liverpool being postponed on Sunday after the two clubs joined City and three other English teams in signing up to a planned breakaway European competition. The plans were abandoned within 48 hours after a torrent of criticism and the threat of government action.

Still, City won plaudits after becoming the first of the rebel English clubs to announce it had backed away from the project.

City’s battle against the Premier League bears the hallmarks of its approach in the UEFA case. Before finding salvation through a technicality in the rules that set a five-year time limit on the infractions eligible for punishment, the club tried to have the case thrown out at the CAS before UEFA had even ruled.

City’s stance in the Premier League case is a second major recent assault on the league’s governance structures. The owner of Newcastle United started legal action last fall against the league after it failed to clear a sale to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

City’s relationship with UEFA has strengthened significantly since it successfully appealed the Champions League ban. UEFA resisted appealing the CAS judgment even after Der Spiegel published new revelations that appeared to cast doubt on some of the evidence a senior City official provided to the court.

UEFA told The New York Times in a statement that it had sought legal opinion on the chance of appealing the CAS decision after Der Spiegel published new emails. “The clear view was that such an appeal would stand little chance of success in forcing CAS to rehear the case and on the slim chance it did, the chance of success at a second hearing was also limited. A similar view was also taken on the possible success of a prosecution under the UEFA disciplinary framework,” said UEFA.

Its president, Aleksander Ceferin, praised City personally, issuing a statement minutes after the team last month became the first to withdraw from the proposed breakaway competition.

While the superleague proposals continue to attract widespread criticism, those involved in the negotiations insist part of the rationale behind them was to cool rampant spending that has imperiled the futures of some of the elite clubs as they seek to keep up with teams backed by wealthy benefactors, particularly those controlled by the Gulf nation states.

Documents reviewed by The Times showed each team would have had to submit detailed financial information to financial auditors, as well as agree to rules forbidding owners from artificially inflating teams’ balance sheets. Penalties for breaches included a suspension or ban from the competition, as well as millions of dollars in fines.

City’s backers say existing rules have been designed to keep historically dominant clubs from facing competition from up-and-coming teams. Sheikh Mansour has plowed more than $1 billion into turning City into the dominant force in English soccer over much of the past decade. His largess has been spent on acquiring top executives, players and Pep Guardiola, the pre-eminent manager of his generation.

City has also spent millions on rejuvenating the deprived Manchester neighborhood where it plays its home games, building new facilities and creating jobs in an area that had suffered from high unemployment.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Wed May 05, 2021 2:50 pm

https://theathletic.com/news/premier-le ... GkDglN5ys0

An estimated drop of £600 million in last seasons revenue due to Covid.
This includes lost gate receipts and tv rebates.

This seasons numbers will potentially be a lot lot higher.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Thu May 06, 2021 5:51 pm

Today's Business of Sport podcast from The Athletic looks at the future of Premier League TV (domestic) rights and is particularly notable for the fact that Sean Harvey actually talks quite a bit of sense - it is well worth a listen, though much has previously been covered on this thread at some point.

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

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by GodIsADeeJay81 » Thu May 06, 2021 9:22 pm


Chester Perry
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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri May 07, 2021 9:09 pm

UEFA announce punishments for the ESL clubs - many are going to be disappointed - from the BBC

European Super League: Nine clubs given financial sanctions by Uefa over breakaway
Last updated on1 hour ago1 hour ago.

Nine of the original European Super League clubs, including the Premier League's 'big six', have been given a financial punishment by Uefa.

The nine - Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, plus AC Milan, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid - have also committed to the European governing body and its competitions.

However, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are set to face "appropriate action" under Uefa's disciplinary process.

The trio have refused to renounce the breakaway league.

Fans should not travel to Turkey for Champions League final, says UK government
The ESL was announced on 18 April but within 48 hours the plans had fallen apart with the English clubs withdrawing after fan protests and UK government pressure.

The nine clubs have agreed to make a combined 15m euros (£13.4m) goodwill contribution to benefit children's and grassroots football across Europe.

They will also have 5% of Uefa competition revenues withheld for one season, starting in 2023-24, and this money will be redistributed, including in the UK.

Manchester United co-chairman Joel Glazer will pay his club's portion of the goodwill contribution and the competition revenue, which will not come out of club funds.

Arsenal's owners, Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, are committed to meeting all costs incurred by the ESL while a Tottenham statement said: "Any fines will be the responsibility of the owners."

The nine clubs face fines of 100m euros (£86.9m) each if they seek to join an unauthorised competition in the future, and a fine of half that if they breach any other terms of the declaration, Uefa said in a statement.

They will also rejoin the influential lobbying group the European Club Association.

Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said: "I said at the Uefa congress two weeks ago that it takes a strong organisation to admit making a mistake, especially in these days of trial by social media. These clubs have done just that.

"In accepting their commitments and willingness to repair the disruption they caused, Uefa wants to put this chapter behind it and move forward in a positive spirit.

"These clubs recognised their mistakes quickly and have taken action to demonstrate their contrition and future commitment to European football.

"The same cannot be said for the clubs that remain involved in the so-called Super League and Uefa will deal with those clubs subsequently."

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Fri May 07, 2021 9:19 pm

Meanwhile Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are refusing to let the Super League die - if only because they believe (somewhat mistakenly from my understanding) that they can get millions in penalty clauses - fron the New York Time

For Super League Founders, a Humbling Admission and a New War
MAY 07, 2021

Less than two weeks after they became partners in a European Super League that would have cast aside the structures and organizations that have underpinned soccer on the Continent for nearly a century, a group of the sport’s biggest clubs are now engaged in a new battle behind the scenes.

This time, their fight is with one another.

At the heart of the new battle are two documents. One, a so-called club commitment declaration agreed to by nine of the Super League’s dozen founding clubs and released on Friday, formally renounced the Super League project and recommitted the breakaway teams to Europe’s existing system.

In a statement welcoming back the nine clubs, European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, said the teams “acknowledge and accept that the Super League project was a mistake and apologize to fans, national associations, national leagues, fellow European clubs and UEFA” for taking part in it. It also said the nine teams had pledged never to try a similar breakaway again.

  • UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin said: "The measures announced are significant, but none of the financial penalties will be retained by UEFA. They will all be reinvested into youth and grassroots football in local communities across Europe, including the UK."

    — UEFA (@UEFA) May 7, 2021


The humbling recommitment by the teams — Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City; Inter and A.C. Milan; and Atlético Madrid — came with a cost. The nine clubs agreed to donate a total of 15 million euros (about $2 million per team) to a UEFA youth charity; surrender five percent of the revenue they would have received from Continental competitions this season; and pay a fine of 100 million euros (about $121 million) if they ever again join an unauthorized competition.

UEFA had demanded that the league’s founding clubs sign the commitment declaration, which would complete the formal demise of the Super League, as a condition to the clubs’ return to the formal structures and bodies that run European soccer.

But in agreeing to the terms of their reinstatement, the nine teams set up a significant — and potentially expensive — fight over the second document: a letter sent on Thursday by the three Super League holdouts threatening to extract millions of dollars in damages from any club that walks away from the project.

The holdouts — Real Madrid, Juventus and Barcelona — say they are refusing to let the Super League die. Doubling down, they said this week that they would pursue legal action and financial penalties against their former partners, and press a broader argument against UEFA’s influence over club soccer in the European court system.

The Super League, announced by its 12 founding teams in a late-night news release on April 18, collapsed 48 hours later amid a popular and political backlash. In the days and weeks since that humiliating retreat, club presidents and owners of some of the teams have held emergency meetings with leaders of soccer in their own countries and with UEFA to try to limit any punishment they might face for being part of a breakaway that would have devastated the value of leagues and clubs across Europe.

UEFA had said it would treat repentant clubs more kindly than those that refused to back down. Those that refused, it warned, risked the most severe penalty available to the organization: a two-year ban from the Champions League, Europe’s richest and most high-profile competition.

Documents, messages and conversations with executives involved in the talks this week suggested that eight teams of the 12 original Super League members had agreed to sign the declaration, one short of the number required to force through the liquidation of a company set up in Spain to run it. The ninth club committed on Friday, but all now expect a long and expensive series of recriminations.

The dispute between the founders, and UEFA’s efforts to isolate or punish any holdouts, is an indication of just how badly and how quickly relations between the top teams have soured. It also underscores how even after its brief life and sudden death, the Super League continues to tear at the fabric of European soccer.

Several top club officials, including Liverpool’s John Henry and the Glazer family that controls Manchester United, have issued public statements of contrition in the wake of the Super League fiasco. On Friday, less than a week after angry Manchester United supporters stormed their team’s stadium, forcing the postponement of a game, the team’s famously distant co-owner Joel Glazer wrote to fans and vowed to hold talks with them on a series of contentious topics and make a series of new investments in the club.

The Super League started to wobble even before the formal announcement of its creation. Within a day, some of teams started to make private entreaties to UEFA, acknowledging that agreeing to join had been a mistake.

Less than 48 hours after the league was launched, Manchester City became the first team to officially announce its intention to withdraw. That started a cascade, with all six Premier League teams releasing public statements revealing their plans to withdraw.

The defections left teams in Spain and Italy acknowledging the league was no longer viable in its original form, but not formally declaring they would not try to revive it.

Despite the popular backlash to the project, opinions have hardened among the three clubs — Real Madrid, Juventus and Barcelona — that were the most committed backers of the project. In their letter, sent on Thursday, the clubs accused the teams that had publicly declared their intention to leave the Super League with committing a “material breach” of the founders agreement.

All breaches of the shareholder agreement, they wrote to the departing founders, “have caused us significant damages, which continue to accrue.”

They also vowed to press ahead with legal action to prove that soccer’s current rules are incompatible with competition and free trade laws.

Yet their options now may be limited. According to the Super League contract, the withdrawal of nine clubs can force the liquidation of the entity that was created to run the competition. That dissolution was one of UEFA’s requirements to put the entire chapter to rest for the clubs involved.

The breakaway efforts continue to roil soccer on a domestic level, too. In Italy, the national association has introduced new regulations aimed at preventing any new breakaways, while in England discussions are taking place over similar rule changes and also about how to punish teams whose actions threatened the interests of the Premier League.

The Premier League is expected to announce the result of its consultation within days. One plan involves securing long-term commitments from member clubs not to join any unsanctioned competition, or to withdraw from the domestic competition, with severe penalties — including fines of more than $50 million — if they do.

Finding a suitable punishment is proving difficult, however. Soccer’s leaders are aware that the collapse of the Super League owed much to the public opposition of fans of the English teams that had agreed to join it; punishing the teams in ways that do not anger those same fans is now the goal.

That means clubs are unlikely to be hit with sporting sanctions, but rather with financial penalties aimed at the owners that backed the Super League plan. For now, one tangible response has been ostracism: Officials from the six breakaway clubs have been removed from the league’s internal committees.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by Chester Perry » Sat May 08, 2021 12:36 am

The Telegraph are suggesting that the Premier League is planning significantly more stringent financial penalties on the big six for their part in the Super League

Exclusive: Premier League to hit rebel clubs with big fines over Super League breakaway plot
SAM WALLACE MAY 07, 2021

The six English Super League rebels will be fined substantially by the Premier League over their attempts to break away to join last month’s failed closed-shop European competition, despite relatively lenient financial measures imposed by Uefa.

Telegraph Sport understands Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur will face much tougher sanctions from the Premier League having received Uefa fines totalling around £7million each for their part in the short-lived European Super League.

The Premier League fines will be significant, in order for them to have an effect on the league’s six wealthiest clubs and to make clear the seriousness with which the other 14 shareholders and executive regard the offences. Uefa announced that nine of the 12 rebel clubs had agreed to apologise and terminate their contracts with the Super League, leaving Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus as the last three refuseniks.

The participation in next season’s Uefa competitions of those clubs, who have won 33 major Uefa trophies between them, is now in serious doubt.

Uefa said in a statement that it “reserved all rights to take whatever action it deems appropriate” and will refer the matter to its disciplinary bodies. The Premier League’s financial measures against its own six are due to follow soon although there is no momentum behind issuing a points deduction. The Premier League’s legal team have been working intensively on the process – crucial to healing the deep wounds left by the breakaway – since the dramatic announcement and subsequent collapse of the Super League between April 18 and 20.

It is by no means certain whether the Super League rebel six will be able to appeal the size of their fines. Uefa announced it will fine all nine - including Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan and AC Milan - five per cent of their annual Uefa prize revenue. It was unable to immediately clarify whether those financial penalties will be calculated on this season's European performances.

If so, the winner of the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester City would face the highest pay-out of around £4.5m. In addition, the nine clubs will also make a combined payment of €15m [£13m] towards what Uefa called a “gesture of goodwill” to benefit children, youth and grassroots football. The ownerships of United, Chelsea and Arsenal all confirmed that they would cover those penalties out of personal funds.

The nine clubs have also agreed that in the event they again seek to play in an unauthorised competition the fine will be €100m [£86m] or €50m [£43m] if they breach any other commitments to Uefa as part of the settlement.

The Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said: “The measures announced are significant, but none of the financial penalties will be retained by Uefa. They will all be reinvested into youth and grassroots football in local communities across Europe, including the UK. These clubs recognised their mistakes quickly and have taken action to demonstrate their contrition and future commitment to European football. The same cannot be said for the clubs that remain involved in the so-called ‘Super League,’ and Uefa will deal with those clubs subsequently.”

As part of the Uefa measures, the nine clubs have also submitted to a “Club Commitment Declaration” setting out their commitment never to break away again. The nine clubs were ordered to re-join the European Club Association as a result of the agreement and are now "fully committed" to the new post-2024 reforms, which sees the competition increase from 32 teams to 36, with the total number of matches extended by 100.

Kieran Maguire, a lecturer in football finance at Liverpool University, said the punishment from Uefa was "wishy-washy" but the three clubs still intent on pushing through the Super League will face "punitive punishment".

"To put this current punishment into context, you get €2.7million for winning a single Champions League group game," he added.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by superdimitri » Sat May 08, 2021 5:11 am

Chester Perry wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 12:36 am
"To put this current punishment into context, you get €2.7million for winning a single Champions League group game," he added.
The UEFA fines are a joke. The FA should fine the clubs and split the money through the pyramid. I hope the fine by the Premier League is massive.

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Re: Football's Magic Money Tree

Post by RammyClaret61 » Sat May 08, 2021 6:20 am

superdimitri wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 5:11 am
The UEFA fines are a joke. The FA should fine the clubs and split the money through the pyramid. I hope the fine by the Premier League is massive.
I still think they should have a points deduction. They’ll just carry on next season like nothing happened, finish top six and get their money back. A 15-20 point deduction would make the season very interesting, some would miss out on champions league qualification. Thus hitting their pockets again.
Fining multi billionaires €2m is like fining me 20 quid.
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