Platini talking FIFA’s Language

RTG has, in general, been a supporter of Michel Platini. It is no secret we support Financial Fair Play in principle, if it is properly enforced. Equally, however, we have consistently questioned whether he possesses either the financial clout or the resolve to enforce his proposals and suggestions (FFP in particular). Our suspicions as to Platini’s true motives were further reinforced last week when he came out in support of a Winter World Cup in 2022 in order that the tournament does not have to be played in the middle of the Qatar summer.

What is perhaps worse is that M. Platini actually had the nerve to suggest that this was for the benefit of the “fans”. "We have to go to Qatar when it is good for everybody to participate. What is better for the fans?" he told the Evening Standard last week. Might we suggest to M. Platini that, if he really wants to look after the well being of us supporters, perhaps it would be better to hold the World Cup in a location that is easy to travel to and around, has some football stadia in which to play the game and doesn’t boast summer temperatures of 45°C plus. While we’re at it, can we also suggest that you choose locations where all supporters, irrespective of creed, colour and sexual preference will be welcome and free to do as they please.

RTG is not suggesting that this ranks anything like the level of contempt for supporters that led to the Hillsborough tragedy but, if there was one thing that came out of that report a fortnight ago, it was that the needs and views of supporters have been consistently disregarded over a number of years by governments, administrators and law-enforcers alike. Choosing to vote for the World Cup in Qatar shows that we continue to be treated as an afterthought in the minds of these people.

Could it be that, in 10 years time, M. Platini fancies the idea of himself sat atop the stinking pile of corruption that is FIFA and that he may be best placed to “take advantage” of all that a World Cup held in an oil-rich nation has to offer?

UEFA Fair Play Watch

RTG promised to keep posting news about this issue and one of the more “challenging” aspects has reared its ugly head once more: the “related party transaction”. These are the rules that allow UEFA to identify and deal with revenue that has been “artificially” received by a club. So, for instance, Manchester City’s record breaking naming rights deal with a sister company of the City’s owners – apparently the City of Manchester stadium naming rights are worth twice that of Madison Square Gardens (!*£$!?) – should come under scrutiny for “fairness” and “value” in a re-assessment of their compliance.

Now Paris Saint Germain have announced an annual 100 million euro shirt sponsorship deal with the Qatari National Bank, another sister company of the owners the Qatari Investment Authority. This supercedes their current deal of 4 million euros by a factor of 25!

UEFA President Michel Platini has consistently stated that teams will not be able to skirt the rules by getting “sweetheart” deals from affiliate organisations. RTG has also been consistent in their fears that UEFA won’t have the stomach to implement the rules. Fuel has been added to our fire by the comments of PSG President, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who stated that the club will respect FFP rules, but added somewhat disingenuously “Platini said that we needed to be creative and we have some ideas”.

Supporter Power – The “Worms” are Beginning to Turn

With an economy in free-fall and the highest unemployment in Europe, Spain’s football supporters are providing a backlash to the indulgences of their football industry. And not just through falling attendances. This season has seen the introduction of a new 11pm kick-off time to accommodate, of course, television.

Malaga fans recently turned up to their 11pm home match dressed in pyjamas as a protest. Following this, Deportivo La Coruna supporters displayed a banner reading “We hate modern football, we hate television”. In RTG’s experience, the Spanish don’t seem to start their nights out until about 11pm anyway. All the more surprising to learn of the protests – but we most heartily support the sentiment!

Billionaires’ Largesse Creating Players in Limbo

Whilst undertaking a nostalgia trip flicking through a 1968 football magazine, RTG stumbled upon an article bemoaning ever spiraling transfers fees which, that year, had hit a shock record high…£2 million. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that Leicester City and Aston Villa (then struggling at the foot of old division 2) were by far the biggest spenders. Even mighty Manchester United only spent £37k more than Luton Town of the third division. Basically, it was a far more even playing field.

Today, with billionaire owners bankrolling their clubs to buy success. players and their agents gravitate toward them with the aim of securing big money moves and huge wage hikes or to use “interest” from these clubs as a bargaining tool to force the hand of their own clubs in negotiating a better pay deal.

This has created a body of players for whom wages and transfer moves are confined to only a few select clubs. When a transfer move goes wrong, or a player like this falls out of favour, they become suspended in a professional limbo, unable to ply their trade simply because nobody else can afford them. It also creates absurd situations like Adebayour’s at Tottenham, where City paid 65% of his wages in order to be able to secure the loan deal – a blatant abuse of the loan system which is perhaps for another discussion. With Spurs unable to afford his wages for a permanent move, City effectively had to subsidize his eventual transfer by letting him go for a fraction of his value the previous year.

Players of the calibre of Arshavin, Tevez, and Adebayour himself have severely resticted their options when things haven’t worked out. These weren’t the first multi-millionaire footballers who were happy to sit in the reserves, but some of these players – especially budding England stars such as Wright-Phillips, Parker and Sturridge – would do better to consider the pitfalls of falling into this professional limbo, lured by short term gains – however huge. It could be a career stunting disaster, but then, if you were paid millions to warm a bench on Saturday/Sunday afternoons, with occasional mid week trips to (sometimes) iconic European cities, would you worry?

‘Team England’: We Wish!

Several commentators have come out this week and said how much the England football team can learn from the Team GB’s Olympic successes. Perhaps we can, but the real lesson is that success in sport at the very top level requires a genuine desire from the people in charge, the funds to do it and the implementation of a long-term plan (remember the Olympic revolution in GB started over 15 years ago when we only won one gold medal in Atlanta, 1996).

The funds are definitely there, England being the richest football nation in the world, but too much of them will end up in the wrong hands. Not just agents and players’ salaries but also in the hands of the three archaic organisations that run English football that are still packed full of failed businessmen and fuddy-duddies. To be able to implement any lessons learned from the Olympics, English football needs to first reform the way its run from top to bottom – something RTG feels is right to campaign on.

UEFA Financial Fair Play Update

We’ve already made reference to Ed Thomson’s article on FFP in which he shows quite clearly how far both City and Chelsea are from meeting the current criteria. Chelsea may have netted £50M + from winning the Champions League, but they have reportedly already spent £64M this summer. Either Roman Abramovich has a scheme up his sleeve to address the already huge losses that he continues to bankroll on Chelsea’s behalf or he feels confident that, using the smoke and mirrors of accounting rules, he can circumvent UEFA’s new rules. Let’s face it, every single bank and international corporation have been thumbing their noses at fiscal regulations throughout the world for years. What hope do UEFA have?

Name That Ball

Try to keep calm if at all possible but excitement is brewing as Adidas announce the shortlist of names for the actual ball that is to be used at the 2014 World Cup and voted for by fans. So far Carnavalesca, Bossa Nova and Brazuca are in the running. As discussed in Andrew Jennings’ excellent book ‘Foul’, Adidas, through its founders and sister company, ISL, played the significant role in the now publicly acknowledged bribery of FIFA’s top brass including Brazilians Joao Havelange and Ricardo Teixeira.

Given also that the 2014 stadium construction has been hampered with numerous corruption enquiries can RTG suggest a more appropriate name for the ball - The Backhanderao?

Big Up to Brazilian Football Supporters

On top of the now customary corruption and bribery involved in construction contracts for major football tournaments, the Brazilians have also had labour disputes which has caused consternation to FIFA’s monitoring officials. However, a less reported delay was not so widely publicised. At the Maracana, fans protesting at the introduction of luxury corporate boxes caused further disruption to the construction.

Poder para o povo!

What's In a Name?

Last month RTG was pleased to recommend the Financial Fair Play website as a kindred spirit for the Reclaim the Game campaign. Following the recent rebranding of Cardiff City, in an article from FFP, Ed Thomson explores just how far clubs may go in order to exploit sponsorship opportunities.

Naming Rights - the next step. Could clubs incorporate sponsorship in their name?

Shortly after arriving at Wembley before the 1975 FA Cup final, FA officials insisted that Fulham black out the manufacturer’s name on their boots (you can see their name-free boots in this clip). Obviously a great deal has changed in 37 years and today there is precious little that isn’t sponsored - even the competition now calls itself ‘the FA Cup sponsored by E.ON’.

One of the consequences of escalating wage-bills has been the rather unseemly scramble for increased commercial revenue - clubs look to exploit every avenue in order to increase income. Newcastle abandoned the name St James Park and now play at the Sports Direct Arena. Liverpool and Chelsea are discussing changing their stadium name in the search for extra revenue. Outside the Premiership, Cardiff recently announced that they have changed the traditional colour of their shirt to suit the demands and commercial aspirations of their new owners – a cosmetically simple change from Bluebirds to Red Dragons. With player wage levels being slow to react to the 'soft salary cap' envisaged under FFP, traditionally important aspects of the club’s history and culture are now considered as options for commercial exploitation.

We would probably be foolish to believe that sponsorship has evolved as far as it can do – there is probably more to come. Perhaps, for a view of the future we should look at Indian Premier League cricket – a competition which makes the FA Premier League look distinctly understated – see clip
But what happens when there is nothing else is there to sell? Could a club sell its name? Could we soon see teams named something like ‘Melchester Big Mac Rovers’? We are probably some way off that at the moment but there are some important precedents. In 2010 Stirling Albion considered a tie-in with Compare the Market.com to rename themselves Stirling Albion Meerkats. This rather cuddly concept was vetoed by the SFA - a spokesman advising; "Given that a name change for commercial purposes would have huge implications, the integrity of the game would be paramount in any decision-making process."(link).

For the wealthy benefactor clubs, team naming rights might offer a solution to the thorny problem of how to balance the club’s books for FFP purposes whilst ensuring the club pay top dollar to secure the finest players. UEFA has established the "Club Financial Control Panel" to oversee the licensing process for their European Competitions. One of their duties is to review any commercial contract from a 'related party' (i.e. connected to the owner) and ensure it is for 'fair value' and not artificially inflated in an effort to help the club meet FFP. As the Panel looks at precedents, it would struggle to apportion a 'fair value' to any brand new kind of sponsorship from a related party. A club operating on a 'benefactor model’, willing to add sponsorship to the club name would, potentially, be able to argue that almost any figure (£50m, £80m, £100m?) represents 'fair value'. It is also possible that any naming rights deal could be front-end loaded so that the income could be timed to meet the club's immediate FFP needs. Although the recently announced Premiership TV deal for 2013-16 makes FFP compliance more attainable, the possibility of a top-flight club selling naming rights hasn’t receded entirely (and a lower deal after 2016 might put the issue back on the agenda).

In England, traditionalists can take some comfort from the fact that FA Council approval is currently required for any change of name from the Premier League down the Isthmian and Northern Premier Leagues. Fortunately any change in ‘playing name’ cannot be done overnight – an application needs to be submitted prior to 1 March for the following season (FA rules, page 97).

Headlines were made recently when a potential take-over of Bury by Rangers was muted. Although the story was swiftly denied, the idea was apparently for Bury to play Football League home games at Ibrox in a blue shirts and, ultimately, change their name back to Rangers. It all sounds rather fanciful until we recall events at Wimbledon – the club moved to Milton Keynes and in 2004, the Football League approved the change in club name to MK Dons.

As the FFP requirements start to bite, clubs will increasingly come under pressure to raise income. We should also consider how the Premier League bosses would react to a proposed change in club name for purely commercial reasons. They are unlikely to be at all keen on the idea of selling team naming rights. However, it would be deeply embarrassing for the Premier League to have one or more of their top clubs excluded from the Champions League because they could not meet the FFP criteria. It remains to be seen, but perhaps Peter Scudamore (the champion of the 39th game), or one of his successors, might view team naming rights as the lesser of two evils.

The FA aren’t as rooted in the past as many would believe and perhaps we shouldn’t rely on them indefinitely to protect our current value structure. We should remember how things have changed since 1975 – it now seems inconceivable that the FA would once have insisted that Fulham stick tape on their boots for the good of the game.

Across Europe there are some notable examples of clubs that have considered changing their playing name for commercial reasons:

Getafe/Team Dubai

Last year, it was announced that La Liga team Getafe had been bought for around E90m by the Royal Emirates Group and would in future be known as Team Dubai. It has since transpired that the REG have more in common with the Portsmouth’s former Arabian owners, than Sheikh Mansour. The funding for the purchase has stalled.

SV Austria Salzburg/Red Bull Salzburg

Red Bull Salzburg took over ownership in 2005 and have since changed the name, moved to a new stadium and changed the strip from purple to the Red Bull can colours (with, unsurprisingly, a bull on their badge). A splinter club has been formed under the old name and plays in the third tier of Austrian football.

PSV/Philips SV

PSV stands for Philips Sport Vereniging (Philips Sport Union) and for a couple of seasons tried to rebrand themselves as Philips SV. This change wasn’t very effective and was unpopular with the fans and the club has stopped pushing the Philips name.

Llansantffraid/Total Network Solutions/The New Saints

After winning the Welsh Cup in 1996 and qualifying for the Cup Winners Cup, Llansantffraid FC (nicknamed ‘The Saints’) accepted £250,000 from an IT company and became Total Network Solutions Llansantffraid FC. The ‘Llansantffraid’ was soon dropped and the club was generally referred to as ‘TNS’ by fans. In 2006, British Telecom took over the IT company and the sponsorship ended. After trying to sell their naming rights on ebay, the club settled on the name “The New Saints FC”.

RTG Recommends Financial Fair Play

Last month RTG reported on the likelihood that Manchester City or Chelsea would fail UEFA’s financial fair play rules (FFP) and whether UEFA would have the stomach to enforce them. Without looking at the empirical evidence RTG suspected that neither would meet FFP rules or make much effort to do so. We have found a site – www.financialfairplay.co.uk that provides detailed evidence and analysis to suggest we were correct.

Astonishingly, the assumptions made are generous to the extreme i.e. City to win the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup and that they would continue to increase their commercial revenue as dramatically as they have done so over the last couple of years. And still, they do not come close. We strongly recommend a visit to the site.

New TV Deal – Same Old Rip Off

The new TV deal that has been struck between the Premier League, Sky and BT is the richest ever and will be worth just over £3bn (a 70% increase on the last agreement). The team finishing bottom in season 2014/15 will actually make more money from TV than Manchester City did last season as champions. The deal is worth 10 times the original Premiership deal back in 1992 – considered even then as a ridiculously large amount of money.

Like the original deal, the money will be coming from supporters’ and subscribers’ pockets. Note also that, in that same period, admission prices have increased by a similar amount. Again like the original deal, this huge windfall will not be spent at grass roots level or in the development of our national game, but will go on players’ wages and agents’ fees. And once again it will be the supporters who are short changed.

Adding injury to insult is the announcement that the number of games shown live will increase to 154 – nearly 43% of all matches. Expect even more disruption to supporters with changes to kick off times and disruption to travel plans.

Media Reporting Fans the Flames of Euro Racism

When the media reported on the potential for racist chanting and violence in the run up to Euro 2012, it appeared that they were almost licking their lips in anticipation of trouble – particularly with the now absent English hooligans to follow and bait as in previous tournaments. In fact, some of the language in relation to the Ukrainian and Polish supporters was positively offensive.

Nobody wants to see a return to the UK’s dark old days of neo fascist supporters groups so it is essential that these issues are brought to the fore. But if we are to pinpoint racism amongst football crowds, there are very few (if any) European nations who remain totally guilt free. It seems hypocritical, therefore, for the English media to take this rather patronising and holier-than-thou attitude in the way they did (not to mention the fact that the ex-England captain will shortly be making a court appearance on racism charges).

Rather than going on the offensive toward the Poles and the Ukrainians, they should really have focused on UEFA’s constant inability over the last ten years to punish perpetrators across Europe as a whole (including players, coaches and supporters) and paying lip service to the campaign against racism.

Italian PM Laments Football’s Warped Morals

“Football should be stopped for two to three years. It is not a proposal by the government but a question I am asking as someone who was passionate when football was still football. It’s particularly sad when a world which should be an expression of the highest values – sport, youth, competition, fairness – turns out to be a mass of foul play, falsehood and demagoguery.”

Mario Monti, Italian Prime Minister

Words of wisdom from Mario Monti, Prime Minister of Italy, in response to yet more match fixing and corruption allegations within the Italian game.

As RTG has written previously, the more money that floods into the game, expect to see more corruption – a situation not helped when the world’s governing body is one of the worst culprits.