FootBiz newsletter #31: the texts that sent John Textor and Nasser al-Khelaifi's spat nuclear, plus drama in Mexico

There are, fairly inevitably, lots of owners in football who don’t get on with other owners.

It’s natural. These people are in high-stakes competition and their interests are almost always at loggerheads.

Rarely do those spats blow out into the open, and even more rarely does one of the owners seemingly leak a series of private text messages - well, one of them must have done - let alone post something on Instagram featuring one of those messages and mocking their rival owner.

If the details of that sort of billionaire soap opera appeal to you, then you’re in luck because we have a big hit on John Textor and Nasser al-Khelaifi’s beef today.

We also have coverage from Mexico, where owners beef and a contentious deal contributed to the resignation of the federation’s president just 18 months out from hosting a World Cup.

There’s also a story about the Mexican Premier League broadcaster potentially going under, as well as another FIFA v UEFA tussle, some M&A Murmurs and a scattering of other news items.

As ever, if you aren’t a premium subscriber yet then you are not getting the full experience. Upgrade below to read our deep dive on INEOS from last week (are INEOS any good at running football clubs?) or coverage of FIFA’s big week of confirming the World Cup hosts for the next decade amid calls for more democracy and transparency.

Table of Contents

• Drama in Mexico

• Owners fight in Ligue 1

• Blow for UEFA competition

• M&A Murmurs

• The test of free-to-air

• Down the Fox hole

• Social champions in Argentina

Drama in Mexico

Juan Carlos Rodriguez’s nickname is ‘La Bomba’ (the bomb).

And on Friday, the bomb exploded.

The president of the Mexican federation and Liga MX resigned suddenly for “personal reasons” at the beginning of a league owners meeting at which there was a vote planned on the $1.25bn investment package from private equity giants Apollo.

Enough owners were quibbling about details of the deal that there was no chance of a unanimous vote. While a simple majority would have passed the deal and more than half of owners are in favour, there has been acknowledgement through the process that this project would not succeed without full consensus. Ultimately the disconnect came because Rodriguez had been given the mandate to negotiate the deal by owners, but they wanted the opportunity to have input whereas Rodriguez felt he had carte blanche to do what he felt was best for the league as a whole.

The owners won out, and take forwards a deal that has been majority agreed.

Liga MX said in a release that it has appointed an interim president and that owners will now immediately form a committee to work on making amendments and negotiating with Apollo.

“The Assembly requested the Interim Commissioner to form a committee of 10 teams in January to continue negotiations with the investment fund, with a special emphasis on strengthening the corporate governance of the institution, and move forward with the all-important transformation project for our soccer,” they said in a statement.

A vote is now expected in February, with more confidence that the deal will pass.

Sandwiching the owners meeting were the two legs of the Liga MX championship, where the biggest club in the country, Club America, edged past Monterrey 3-2 on aggregate. America have now won the last three league championships, the first team to do three in a row since the league moved to playing two ‘short tournaments’ per calendar year.

Owners fight in Ligue 1

Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon account for 16 of the 24 French championship titles this millennium, and thus their Ligue 1 encounter unsurprisingly took pride of place in Sunday night’s primetime slot.

It saw a 3-1 win for PSG in a game for which build-up was unusually dominated by a spat between the clubs’ respective chairmen.

John Textor and Nasser al-Khelaifi have been jawing at each other for over a year but it exploded into life this week around the big game.

The American had made enough public comments about the PSG and BeIn Sports boss that, last summer, the Parisians actually sent Textor a letter threatening him with legal action over “defamatory and damaging statements” warning that they would be “forced to add to your growing number of lawsuits in Brazil with additional action in France.”

The letter, which FootBiz has seen but was first reported by L’Equipe, was sent by PSG after a July interview with Brazilian broadcaster Globo became the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In one of the sassier legal letters you’ll read, PSG general secretary Victoriano Melero scolds Textor while defending the French champions.

“You falsely state PSG has ‘a model of unbridled spending without restrictions’ while ignoring the fact your own club has had significant issues with UEFA and DNCG restrictions under your management,” it began.

“We also note that while complaining about unlimited spending, you said in an interview in February that FSR rules be abolished because ‘you are a billionaire and should be able to spend as much money as you want’.”

There was more where that came from too.

But the root of all these public barbs were the botched broadcast rights negotiation conducted by LFP president Vincent Labrune on behalf of the Ligue 1 clubs. After endlessly promising owners that he’d get €1bn in domestic and international rights, Labrune (who has since been re-elected!) managed to secure around half of that.

Textor’s anger, per L’Equipe, really blew up when Labrune and al-Khelaifi abandoned the league’s original back-up plan of launching their own direct-to-consumer (DTC) service should broadcasters not bid enough. Broadcasters, for what it’s worth, always suspected it was a hollow bargaining chip.

With Textor’s experience in the sector - he acquired FuBo, a sports streaming service that he led to an IPO - the American was annoyed that the DTC option had been discarded to instead sign such disappointing deals with DAZN and BeIn Sports. Lyon’s revenues, which were already failing to keep up with their outgoings, were also severely hit by Labrune’s broadcast deals.

This led to a heated WhatsApp exchange between the two, which also sparked this week’s ill feeling.

Textor said to al-Khelaifi: “you always claim to save everyone, but that’s megalomaniacal behavior,” per L’Equipe.

"I will never speak to you again, nor do I want to see you. Learn how to run a club and manage the media. This is the last time I let you talk to me,” responded the PSG chairman, before ending their exchange with the following:

"You don’t understand anything in football and waste of time to talk to you. And you will lose everywhere you go."

And it was that message which Textor included on an Instagram post before kick-off this weekend… holding the Copa Libertadores that Botafogo won recently.

It isn’t the first time that Textor’s mouth has gotten him into trouble.

When his Belgian club RWDM were promoted to the top flight, he talked about challenging for the title and “kicking the ass of Union and Tony Bloom.”

RWDM promptly finished last, getting relegated, and Union (of whom Bloom only owns a small piece these days) finished top of the league, seven points clear of second.

Some owners who are generally sceptical of Textor’s grab-and-float IPO scheme with Eagle Football are, however, broadly supportive of his calling out of al-Khelaifi.

The Qatari’s position as head of the ECA, chair of PSG, boss at BeIn and on the executive committee of UEFA is deemed a conflict of interests by many - with far too much leverage over French and European football.

Al-Khelaifi was called out by the Union of European Clubs only last week.

An interesting development from Bloomberg in recent days as they reported SportsBank, a group led by football financier Keith Harris, is interested in buying a stake in Textor’s Eagle Football vehicle.

Why is that interesting? Well, SportsBank were previously named as bidders for Textor’s minority stake in Crystal Palace of around 45%.

Eagle are still understood to be looking to shed that stake, which while substantial in size offers scant voting power, and observers still consider co-owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer to be the most likely eventual buyers.

An investment from SportsBank in Eagle Football would give them exposure to the Brazilian, Belgian and French leagues while Textor is known to be targeting an English club once he can divest from Palace.

Blow for UEFA competition

FIFA have struck a blow against UEFA in the ongoing battle for control of the global fixture calendar by moving to prevent players whose clubs will be involved in next summer's Club World Cup from representing their countries at the under 21 European Championship. 

As a result the likes of Noni Madueke (Chelsea), Rico Lewis and James McAtee (both Manchester City) will be unable to play for England in next summer's tournament in Slovakia despite all playing major roles for Lee Carsley's side during qualification.
FIFA have altered their own regulations to ensure primacy for their own competition, which clashes with UEFA's under 21 Euros.

"It is not mandatory for clubs participating in the competition to release their registered players to the representative teams of the country for which those players are eligible to play," reads a new clause in FIFA's rules governing international player release, which was specifically added to cover the Club World Cup. 

UEFA have reluctantly accepted the situation, which is likely to lead to many of the best young players in Europe missing their flagship youth tournament. With Real Madrid, Paris Saint Germain, Bayern Munich, Juventus and FC Porto all having qualified for the Club World Cup, many of the Europe's top sides will be missing some of their stars. 

In addition to the English trio, Portugal face losing Benfica’s Tomás Araújo, Chelsea’s Renato Veiga and Porto’s Francisco Conceição (who is on loan at Juventus.) France are likely to be denied Bayern Munich’s Mathys Tel, PSG's Warren Zaïre-Emery and Bradley Barcola, as well as Chelsea’s Malo Gusto. 

And Italy could be without their top goalscorer from qualifying Pio Esposito, who is on loan at Spezia from Inter Milan, as well as midfield players Cher Ndour (on loan at Besiktas from PSG) and Cesare Casadei (Chelsea.)

FIFA’s product will benefit, UEFA’s will be weaker.

M&A Murmurs

One of the biggest clubs in the Netherlands continues to be on the market but is rooted to the bottom of the second tier after being subject to another massive points deduction.

Vitesse Arnhem have now had 27 points taken off them this season, in addition to the 18-point deduction that essentially relegated them from the Eredivisie last year.

The club have been punished for breaking the Dutch FA’s licensing rules on four counts, putting hapless administrator Edwin Reijntjes under the spotlight.

He still claims five parties are interested in buying the club after a takeover by Swiss-based financier Guus Franke fell apart six weeks ago.

The good news for Vitesse is that even though they are bottom on -8 points, they can’t get relegated from the Dutch second tier. Whoever is eventually able to buy the club and clear up the debt situation will be picking up one of the five or six biggest teams in the country with a scenario where the only way is up.

The Vancouver Whitecaps ownership group has engaged Goldman Sachs to sell the team.

Part of Major League Soccer’s 2009 expansion process (beginning play in 2011) the Whitecaps have been one a fairly successful addition to the league by a number of measures.

They have a growing fanbase with an impressive enough on-pitch product, having reached the playoffs in three of the last four seasons. They also produced Canada’s best-ever player, Alphonso Davies, and made north of $20m selling him to Bundesliga giants Bayern.

With World Cup 2026 games taking place in Vancouver, the ownership hopes to capitalise on a pivotal moment in Canadian football history.

Questions for potential investors will centre around the need for a new, soccer-specific stadium or even moving the team to another city, which while unthinkable in European football is far more accepted in the world of major league sports.

MLS valuations tend to be provoke mixed feelings but with an estimated valuation of 10x revenues the Whitecaps should transact for around $450m.

Feyenoord will merge with Stadion Feijenoord, the entity which owns and manages their De Kuip stadium, in order to break a deadlock on much-needed renovation work for the atmospheric but dated stadium.

One of the traditional Dutch ‘big three’, Feyenoord have been somewhat left behind commercially by rivals PSV Eindhoven and (particularly) Ajax, who both count on newer stadia with better facilities.

With rising maintenance costs and pressure from stakeholders for a necessary facelift at De Kuip, Stadion Feijenoord added up the numbers and realised they couldn’t afford it by themselves and worked out a deal with the club to fold under the same corporate umbrella.

Pre-Covid, the club had plans for a new 65,000-seater stadium that would cost almost €400m, but they announced in 2022 they were abandoning the project due to financial uncertainties.

The test of free-to-air

Much has been made of FIFA's global broadcast deal for the Club World Cup with DAZN, who have committed to making all the matches available free-to-air, but an international presence does not guarantee viewing figures as the streaming platform's new investors in Saudi Arabia could tell them.

The Saudi Pro League have secured international TV deals in over 130 different markets, but whether anyone is watching is a moot point. 

Viewing figures are hard to come by, but L'Equipe reported last month's Saudi Pro League game between Al-Nassr and Damac attracted an audience of just 4,000 for French rights holders Canal Plus despite the involvement of Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored both of his side's goals in a 2-0 win. 

Another potentially worrying sign for FIFA is the fact that audiences for Ligue 1 in France have collapsed since DAZN took the rights from Canal Plus this season - with just 400,000 signed up, they have less than 10% of the previous rights holders' subscriber base.

While making the Club World Cup free will help boost numbers for many people, viewing patterns are dictated by habit and familiarity, as well as cost, leaving DAZN and FIFA will plenty of work to do to build an audience ahead of next summer.

As with most new platforms, getting people to download the app will be the biggest challenge. Should DAZN be able to pick up millions of new app users, though, it will smooth the ride to platform adoption if they can pick up other key rights packages in the future. That, fundamentally, is the bet they have made.

Down the Fox hole

CONCACAF have filed legal action against Fox Sports over non-payment of rights fees for the CONCACAF Champions League, in the latest sign that the broadcaster could go bust under the weight of its rights commitments.

CONCACAF claim they are owed $25m plus interest since the end of May, and they’re not the only ones. The NFL published a statement on Thursday night saying they have suspended Fox’s access to NFL content owing to non-payment.

Local fears are that the broadcaster could go under, with the Premier League and Formula 1 rights at risk as well as Major League Baseball and some other tier 1 properties.

Social champions in Argentina

In September we wrote about the ongoing battle in Argentine football as president Javier Milei, now a friend and example for Elon Musk, tries to change the rules to allow football clubs to operate as for-profit businesses.

So it was seen by many of the country’s traditionalists as a just victory when Velez Sarsfield won the league on Sunday night in Buenos Aires.

One of the most socially conscious clubs in South America, Velez has 71,000 members and puts out teams in 20 different sports while acting as a huge social hub in Liniers, its neighbourhood on the western edge of Argentina’s capital city.

Velez also decided to change its front-of-shirt sponsor earlier this year because it felt a betting company was not consistent with the values it tries to promote, and were praised by local charities for terminating the contracts of three first-team players accused of rape.