The Finances of Football

eventually utd aren't going to be able to continue paying off their purchase of the club

i thought this would have happened by now, but they keep refarming their debt and carrying on

Debt:
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/net-debt-by-premier-league-club-m#LFC

David Conn's churning things out almost daily at the moment, but with almost no content. It's most unlike him. The Birmingham one today could basically just be a hyperlink to any number of previous articles by him re Carsten Yeung.

is it along the lines of Yeung is just a front man but with nothing behind him? which is the story i've heard since he's been there more or less

I think so, basically. It goes something like this: Yeung started off making big promises of £80m investment, they have since been denied, he needs to tap the Hong Kong stock exchange for continued funding, is unlikely to get it in the amount sought, big hole appearing in Birmingham's finances due to drop to Championship, likely unable to operate within bank facilities available at present, auditors have raised doubts as to club's continuing as a going concern.

All good points to be sure. Conn seems most rankled by the unfulfilled £80m promise though, which is surely the least important thing there and like it's the first time an owner's money and mouth are in different places anyway.

That's what I don't get about Conn, really - he amasses the evidence forensically, then argues his case like a punter on the terraces.

fuckin a, it worked in rocky iii didn't it

Ishmael you're exaggerating a bit, from what I can see he mentions the non-existent £80m once, in the first paragraph. Most of the column is about how the club will survive in the Championship.

by kicking their opponents to death, same as every season

hey it's the national modus operandi tbf

Will Big Eck stay, I wonder?

he will til he's paid not to

Hm yes that's fair xp, apologies for that - I'm pretty sure he brings it up every time he writes about them though, when really it's nothing to give any heed to.. Promises of investment are the fluttery eyelashes of football finance imo.

There's a lengthy summary of Liverpool's situation on the Andersred blog today. I haven't read it, but it might interest some of you. Will link later.

Not read the Andersred piece yet but here it is:
http://andersred.blogspot.com/2011/05/liverpools-200910-results-underline.html

Good write-up on Swiss Ramble which includes some thoughts as to what FSG's strategy may be, in the form of a 15-point plan:
http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2011/05/liverpools-future-strategy.html

Good piece, even if the 15-point plan is a bit of a no-brainer.

Further progress from this level will depend on the new management team's ability to sign secondary sponsors. This is the area where United has proved so adept in recent years. United's secondary deals (Turkish Airlines, EPSON, DHL etc) will bring in around £44m in the current year, equivalent to all Arsenal's commercial revenue.

blimey

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/wenger-city-deal-is-platini-s-biggest-test?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arsenal-news+%28News+Feed%29

We always knew that this would happen. But Platini is powerless, right? No way Uefa are actually going to stand up to billionaires of any kind.

not sure what they could do that wouldn't run into EU legislative difficulties, but i may be underestimating the power of footballing bodies to implement a sectoral agreement type inhibition

Now i'm writing like it's an exam and i'll stop

idk ffp seems pretty hardline so far tbf?

i think rather than finding big blatant loopholes clubs will be looking to find enough small grey areas to dispute long enough to gum up the legal works until it collapses; in this case it'll be an argument about how "market price" of sponsorship is deemed

then it'll be a holding company buying 2 million shirts, etc

that was half laughable half terrifying, but can't help but feel that eejit sim was just a bluffer on an ego ride.

Huh what? What are you talking about?

panorama investigation into the sale of english clubs to unknown/shady/foreign consortiums.

Light on exactly what was wrong with any of it, tbh, just came across as v little england imo.

But the dude liaising as the front for this consortium was a real blowhard. Though tbf there was a lot of pics and evidence of a reasonably close relationship with jason ferguson's dad, which obviously raises questions

This was the Bryan Robson thing, right? I dunno, these programmes should set about uncovering real actual criminality or not bother imo. Breaking football-specific rules, why would anyone who isn't a footballer care about that? Might as well run a splash on breaches of solicitors' accounting protocols or something.

That programme a few years back that failed to uncover bungs and ended up with Harry admitting, casually in ordinary conversation like, that he'd be interested in signing a player who was under contract to another club was the worst.

'these clubs have hundreds of thousands of dedicated fans but are bought and sold like *playthings*'

smh

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/14490740.stm

^^^ This is important.

There will always be loopholes. I understand the desire to link spending to turnover etc but surely someone with a bottomless pit of cash should be allowed to spend it? If this sponsorship deal falls foul of the rules they can just do a "buy a brick" sale and sell Sheikh Mansour a brick for £400m.

In a free market? Fair enough. In a closed system like a professional sport? Maybe not.

I can't find the link just now, but Swiss Ramble analysed the deal recently and basically okay'ed it as not especially outlandish in a footy context.

It's here. It *is* outlandish in a footy context simply because it's so big, although maybe not in a global sports context. That said I'm not sure why Etihad would part with hundreds of millions more than they need to just because Sheikh Mansour was calling in a favour.

That's why the piece was an interesting read - the deal's so obviously a scam, I thought, that I was amazed to *almost* be convinced otherwise.

http://e-comlaw.com/sportslawblog/template_permalink.asp?id=448

In the 2009-10 season, the most recent for which accounts are available, Stoke's turnover was £58.98m, the Premier League's 14th highest. Yet Stoke are afforded many luxuries unavailable to their peers, thanks to being a subsidiary of an organisation with a turnover of £5.4bn a year. Stoke belong to bet365, and in the 2009-10 season were given a parent-company subsidy of £15.42m, serving as bet365's tax write-off – the company has been applauded, however, for keeping its entire betting operation in the UK, whereas most of its competitors' online and telephone-betting departments are offshore to avoid all tax.

It means Pulis was able to invest £20.58m, net, in new players in 2009-10 as the Potters spent £12.2m more than they earned that season, making their total subsidised expenditure £71.2m. Indeed, Stoke's parent-company structure gives them another great advantage: access to interest-free finance. That season Stoke's bank debt was a negligible £175,000, costing them £6,000 in interest fees. Everton, by contrast, must foot an annual interest bill of close to £4.5m – equivalent to two players earning £43,000 a week.

TV rights, anyone?

ta

it's coming to something when man utd and chelsea look askance at our greed

I'd be interested to know if Liverpool's proposal is defensible from any POV whatsoever besides "let the big dogs eat"

i think fergie was broadly - all the clubs in epl should get way more for overseas tv rights
LFC- Us, Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal should get way more for overseas tv rights.

I'm ignoring any nuance that underlies this i know.

yeah fuck that pool shit. 'can we plz have a monopoly - look at how well spanish clubs do!'

I think Ayre tried to frame it as part of 'competing' with European clubs who sell their rights differently. But don't think he came up with any plausible reason as to how this wouldn't make the epl even less competitive than it is now.

It's not about a monopoly though - it's about a European league sometime in the next decade.

The likes of Dave Whelan are right when they say this will kill half the Premier League, but their mistake is to think the big clubs care - they'd rather be playing among themselves every week, not spending time playing filler like Wigan. And anyway, he's not proposing everyone go back to the pre-1992 arrangements is he?

If Stoke get in on that league we can finally see what Messi's really worth on a rainy Tuesday evening in Stoke.

spurs are a big club

I think Messi will have to sign for Wolves before he and Stoke are in the same division of it.

i can't remember if this is true or if i made it up but were liverpool not also at the forefront of the 92 premier league breakaway?

getting a bit sick and tired of this myth that the epl is competitive unlike spain. Been the same 2 teams for the last 6 or 7 years winning the league. Short of a billionaire who can flush millions down the toilet with nary a pause buying a club that's not going to change.
Wonder if malaga finish top 3 this year.

The big 5 as it was then - Utd, LFC, Arsenal, Spurs, Everton?

xp

Overseas rights have always been shared equally, and while in 1992 they were almost nonexistent, the current deal, reflecting the game's global popularity, especially in the Middle and Far East, is worth £1.4bn over the next three years. So last season Blackpool received the same as United: £17.9m.

^ tbh i can sympathise with ayre a teensy bit when you see it like that. fuck it tho

Spain is in a pretty sick condition though by any standards xps. It just seems to me that most other leagues heading the same way, it's totally obvious that the elites in each will band together in one really good competition, rather than put up with half-a-dozen dysfunctional ones.

That said, Serie A's opening this year has been old-school.