FootBiz newsletter #57: Protests, PSG and Liverpool ticket prices

A slightly shorter newsletter today due to illness, though it is not short of interesting stories.

I would, however, nudge you gently in the direction of some of our recent pieces of analysis that premium subscribers have already read, digested, shared and reacted to.

From Friday, Rob Draper’s fairly damning look at Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s time in charge at Manchester United.

Then yesterday’s analysis by Matt Hughes of the Manchester City legal attacks that have now completely paralysed the Premier League.

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Here’s the newsletter…

Table of Contents

• A weekend of protests

• Chelsea tax scheme under the microscope

• Qatar to exit France amid corruption probe?

• Not so Super League

• Critical Mas

• Mex sense

• Liga MX vote delayed

• Liv a little

A weekend of protests

Protest is an act of love, not of anger. And so it seems like there is a lot of love in football right now.

Perhaps it was just the games that I ended up watching this weekend, but there certainly appears to be an unhappiness permeating football that could become hard to shift.

Tottenham vs Manchester United is probably the most sensible place to start, with Spurs chairman Daniel Levy getting the sort of rough ride that United owners the Glazer family should probably be getting instead.

The frustration at Tottenham is understandable. It’s a brilliantly run business, but a poorly run football club. And fans don’t cheer the quarterly financial results, they cheer for a team that wins games and trophies.

“24 years, 16 managers, one trophy, time for change” read one banner, fairly succinctly describing the issue at hand.

“Our game is about glory. Your game is about greed” read another banner visible way up in the south stand of Tottenham’s glittering shrine to mediocrity.

Fans are angry at paying some of the highest ticket prices on the planet to support a team that never gets better and executives somehow remain perplexed.

Slightly cheaper tickets arguably far worse underachievement is the case at Old Trafford, where Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s tough first year as minority owner has come as a real boost for the Glazers.

Gone are the green-and-gold protests against their ownership and, instead, a British petrochemicals entrepreneur paid them over a billion pounds for the privilege of being their human shield and a magnet for all criticism. What a deal!

With every poor decision, with every layoff of a beloved, long-serving staff member, Ratcliffe becomes the face of a distant cruelty that not even the Glazers had been forced to deal with before. They were just the family who took a ton of money out of the club and left United to pay the interest as the team declined and declined. They must be chortling at their luck.

I caught a bit of Real Valladolid’s pumping by Sevilla as well, with one of the emptiest stadiums I have ever seen in top-flight football.

It turns out the stadium was fairly full at kick-off but not so after Sevilla’s third goal. The general malaise around rock-bottom Valladolid stems from the very top, and their absentee president Ronaldo.

The former Brazil striker is a persona non grata in the city these days, but that isn’t really an issue for him as he clearly has no intention of going there anyway.

With Ronaldo now focused on becoming the next president of the Brazilian football federation (CBF) the club he still owns (in case he has forgotten) is about to be relegated from La Liga.

He has somehow turned one of the most passionate fan bases in the country into one that is apathetic and resigned to its fate until he sells the club.

Chelsea tax scheme under the microscope

Premier League clubs have claimed millions in government funding over the last five years using a tax scheme designed to support innovations for the public good in science and technology, according to an investigation by The Times published yesterday.

Chelsea have been the biggest beneficiaries of public money, with the club receiving over £2 million in research and development (R&D) tax relief payments from HMRC between 2020 and 2023.

Nottingham Forest claimed a tax credit of £607,000 according to their last set of accounts, while Fulham FC claimed £86,000 in credits between 2019 and 2021. The significant sums being handed over to top-flight clubs for unspecified R&D projects has raised eyebrows in football, particularly at a time when the Premier League have yet to make an offer of a new financial settlement to the EFL that has been under discussion for almost five years.

The clubs are also attempting to resist the introduction of an Independent Regulator that was in the Labour Party manifesto, and has cross-party support in the House of Commons.

Under the R&D scheme companies that have made advances in science or technology can apply for either a cash payment from HMRC or a credit to reduce their tax bill. The rules state that a company can only apply if it has made an advances which benefits the entire sector, not just its own business.

Given the secrecy and inherent competitiveness of technology usage, data and sports science in elite football, several sources expressed scepticism at the thought that a top club would voluntary pass on details of their own innovations.

The tax credits received are recorded in the Chelsea, Nottingham Forest and Fulham accounts, but there is no record of what they were given for. HMRC has faced repeated criticisms for its handling of the R&D scheme, with its cost ballooning from £1.1 billion in 2010 to £7.5bn in 2023, with £4.1bn of that attributable to fraud and error, according to The Times.

Qatar to exit France amid corruption probe?

Nasser al-Khelaifi is in legal trouble in France as local authorities formally placed him under investigation for corporate vote buying and abuse of power offences.

Al-Khelaifi was charged on February 5 with complicity in the alleged buying of votes during a tussle for boardroom power at Lagardere Group.

The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) was the biggest shareholder and had aligned itself with one party in the power battle, only for Lagardere to allegedly call Nasser, resulting in the flipping of the QIA vote days later.

Al-Khelaifi is the ECA chairman, a UEFA ExCo board member, chairman of BeIn Sports, president of Paris Saint-Germain and chairman of Qatar Sports Investments, but there is a question how much longer QSI will remain at PSG.

QIA have been quietly selling off a number of hotels and other real estate in Paris over the last year or two, while QSI sold 12.5 per cent of PSG to Arctos Sports Partners, an American investment group, two years ago and are open to further diluting their 87.5% stake in PSG as part of this wider sell-off.

Not so Super League

The Super Unity League, presented by A22, has gone awfully quiet since they showed the world their big new plan a few months ago.

Of course, our hunch has been all along that A22’s scheming is just a way of achieving leverage, a lobby group of sorts, for the richest clubs in Europe to further get their way. The Unity League as described made no sense.

But what perhaps we didn’t expect was president of the Union of European Clubs, Alex Muzio, to call out A22, even mocking CEO Bernd Reichart’s announcement video that he filmed in a hallway.

Muzio called it “a Mario Kart cup competition” and poked fun at the format.

“How is your viable project that definitely isn’t just a lobbying mechanism?”

Critical Mas

In a new breed of associated party transaction, Inter Miami’s new Official Sports Hydration Partner is Mas+ by Messi, the brightly coloured energy drink owned by… Inter Miami’s very own Lionel Messi.

You can only assume it was a tough negotiation.

Mex sense

When DAZN were announced as the global broadcaster for the Club World Cup, there was a very clear line in the press release about the possibility of sub-licensing those rights in certain markets.

And we’re starting to find out which ones.

Mexican broadcasting giant Televisa have struck a deal with DAZN to show games across three of their channels; TUDN, Univision and UniMás.

Mexico is a crucial market for the Club World Cup, with three teams competing in the shape of Monterrey, León and Pachuca. Only Brazil boasts more, with four.

León and Pachuca are owned by the same company, Grupo Pachuca, in contravention of FIFA’s rules but everyone seems to have just kind of forgotten about that and both will apparently take part in the Club World Cup.

Liga MX vote delayed

Liga MX owners were due to vote this Thursday on a revised proposal from Apollo to invest in the league but with negotiations ongoing, a vote has been pushed back until something resembling a deal is finalised.

Liga MX president Juan Carlos Rodriguez resigned at the last owners meeting after the agreement he had found with Apollo came under fire.

The private equity giants were set to invest $1.2bn into the league as part of a sweeping modernisation and professionalisation of the league’s governance, centralising of its broadcast and commercial rights and investment in infrastructure.

Liga MX is the biggest league in the world that doesn’t sell broadcast rights on a centralised basis, which would be addressed under the new regime if Apollo’s investment gets the green light after further negotiations.

A key piece of the deal is the governance reform, with much of the league tired of the excessive influence held by media conglomerate Televisa. The last four Liga MX presidents have all been former Televisa executives, and with the country’s biggest club, America, also owned by Televisa there is momentum for change in how the league’s executives are chosen.

Liv a little

Liverpool have laid down the gauntlet to the rest of the Premier League at the start of season-ticket renewal season by announcing they will freeze admission prices for next season.

The most expensive general admission ticket at Anfield will remain at £61, with adult season tickets ranging from £713 to £904. Adult seats on the Kop will cost between £39 and £45, with childrens tickets available for just £9. Manchester United, Chelsea, Aston Villa and Fulham in particular have all faced strong criticism from fans for increasing their prices this season, but after speaking to supporters Liverpool have taken a different approach.

Ironically Liverpool will feature in the most expensive match to attend this season, with Chelsea charging £12,5000 for their VIP dugout experience behind Enzo Maresca when the runaway Premier League leaders visit Stamford Bridge on 3 May. The same experience for Liverpool fans behind the away dugout will be a relative snip at £7,500, particularly given there is a decent chance of Arne Slot's side winning the title that afternoon.