FootBiz newsletter #61: Global broadcast deals, Arsenal close on Edu replacement and Liverpool financials

Well, first of all, it’s probably important to say thank you.

Thank you to everyone who has read and shared FootBiz in our six months of existence, because it has resulted in us being nominated for best specialist sports publisher by the Sports Journalism Awards. 

Depending on who you listen to, they are the ‘Oscars of sports journalism’ (one former colleague of mine) or ‘a broadsheet wankfest’ (a former boss of mine) so we can decide which side of that particular debate we find ourselves on after March 24 when we discover whether we have won or not.

Matt, who provides much of the newsier content you see on FootBiz, was also nominated for two further categories individually for his freelance work and has a good shot at winning at least one.

And with thanks must come apologies.

We had meant to send out a message reminding people who were attending the Financial Times Business of Sport Summit last week to get in touch and arrange a coffee but forgot. In the end there were a few headlines from the event but it would have been even better to put some names to faces, so apologies on our part.

One interesting number that caught a few people’s eye at the summit was the declining amount of transactions taking place in European football.

Per UEFA’s upcoming Football Finance report, only 23 clubs changed hands in 2024. That is more than 50% down from the 2022 number (48) and had many people talking.

At least three more transactions (that we know of) would have happened in France if Ligue 1’s TV deal hadn’t gone kerplunk, but that would still represent a significant decline.

We have our theories, but are always open to hearing yours. Let us know via email and we’ll discuss in more detail down the line. This isn’t a topic that’s going to go away.

As for now, well how about today’s newsletter? Starting with what may become the future of broadcast rights deals in football… eventually.

Table of Contents

• The global broadcast deal is coming (at some point …

• Liverpool count cost of Klopp’s final season

• WSL to bin relegation?

• No CWC for women

• Red Ed to return?

• VAR clings on

• Arsenal close to Edu replacement?

• Tebas targets City, but not Newcastle

The global broadcast deal is coming (at some point)

The Premier League are actively considering a single, global broadcast deal as they plan for the future, according to Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly.

With many questions over what broadcast revenue will look like in the future amid flattening and/or declining TV deals, Boehly suggested that a unified deal allowing the league to market itself exclusively through one partner could be the way forwards for the football league with the highest broadcast revenue of them all.

“I’m not saying [one streamer] is the blatant answer right this minute, but I think that’s where we’re headed,” he said at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit.

“And of course, in order to repackage all of that, the owners have to be willing to take some level of risk.”

Boehly reiterated that the Premier League is “so valuable” because it is “so widely demanded” and so the competition’s rights should, notionally, be attractive to any streamer looking to achieve global penetration into every market.

“If you’re thinking about how do I launch a global product, you do it in partnership with content like this. If you really think about what it could do to unlock a global media platform, there’s nothing like this.

“It’s a long conversation, and [the Premier League] are on it. They are thinking about media rights going forward, they’ve got great leadership in that area, and they are thinking about how to get everyone to row simultaneously and be pulling for each other.”

Major League Soccer became the first league of any significant size to sign a deal for global rights when it inked a 10-year, $2.5bn deal with tech giant Apple in 2022, though Liga MX is understood to be among those considering following suit.

With MLS, the criticism of the Apple deal has been that the layers of paywall and Apple TV’s smaller subscriber base inhibit the league’s ability to grow in such a competitive sporting environment, even though the televisual product has been vastly improved. The Premier League, of course, is already the most-watched league in the world and could sign a deal of this sort without fear of its growth being significantly slowed.

This comes as broadcasters are increasingly looking for more in return for their huge rights fees.

ESPN has held talks over potential equity stakes with the NFL and NBA as a way to mutually assure growth in their partnerships, and American owners in football are similarly looking at the much longer contracts broadcasters have signed with the major leagues Stateside as an example to follow in order to increase upside for both sides.

Similarly, now that broadcast deals are no longer jumping with every renewal, the incentive to keep shorter cycles is reduced and thus leagues and broadcasters may well come to align on longer-term deals that allow for - and incentivise - more investment and certainty on both sides.

“The Apple deal for us is quite simple,” Garber said last year. “We weren’t getting enough in terms of exposure, in terms of schedule, in terms of promotion from the linear networks, because we’re not just competing against the other leagues, we’re competing against every single (soccer) league that is selling their rights in the United States.

Liverpool count cost of Klopp’s final season

Liverpool reported significantly increased losses of £57million for the 2023/24 season last week in a set of accounts which once again underlined the importance of Champions League income to elite clubs.

Jurgen Klopp's final season in charge at Anfield was the first in which Liverpool did not play in the Europe’s top-tier competition since 2016/17, with the loss of major matchday and broadcasting revenue resulting in the club's losses increasing by £48m.

Liverpool's strong commercial performance, which increased by £36m to £308m on the back of new sponsorship deals with Google Pixel, Peloton and Orion Innovation, helped offset these losses and took the club's revenue to over £600m for the first time. Another interesting footnote to the accounts was the £9.6m paid out to Klopp and his backroom staff in loyalty bonuses and part-payment for the times left on their contracts, despite the fact that they left the club voluntarily.

The importance of Champions League revenue cannot be overstated, however, particularly given the increased media rights deal and expansion of the group stage this season, which will be of particular concern to Manchester United at present. Having crashed out of the FA Cup at home to Fulham on Sunday, winning the Europa League is the only realistic route back into the Champions League for United, and Ruben Amorim's side face a difficult tie against Real Sociedad in the last 16 this week.

Given United's well-documented financial problems and ongoing battle to comply with profit and sustainability rules the minimum of £50m on offer for Champions League qualification would be a significant boost, with around £30m available for reaching the knockout stages plus approximately £20m in gate receipts for four group games next season.

A number of United's commercial contracts also contain penalty clauses if they fail to reach the Champions League, with kit suppliers adidas alone docking them £10m, so the club will be left counting the cost if they do not win the Europa League.

The Telegraph reported on Monday that United are budgeting for no European football next season.

WSL to bin relegation?

England's top 23 women's clubs will vote on a radical plan to scrap relegation from the Women’s Super League as part of a major expansion of the professional game at the end of the season. 

The Guardian revealed the proposals last Thursday, which would suspend relegation from the 12-team WSL for at least four seasons from 2026-27 as part of a gradual plan to expand both the top flight and the second-tier Championship to 16 teams.

The plans received a cautious welcome from the 23 WSL and Championship clubs at their quarterly shareholders’ meeting on Friday, which concluded with an agreement to vote on the matter at their next meeting in April.

The removal of relegation is the most controversial element of the proposal, despite the fact that one club would continue to be promoted from the Championship each season to grow the top-flight. Many clubs are equally concerned with the mechanism to be used to determine promotion from the Championship, with several clubs pushing for a playoff system to be introduced.

The proposals have been developed by the new chief executive of the Women's Professional League's Limited, Nikki Doucet, who has been given a mandate to pursue radical change in an attempt to grow the women's game. One of her fundamental tenets is the belief that despite the huge success of the England Lionesses women's football, it is a start-up business and must think differently rather than simply falling into line with perceived orthodoxies from the men's game.

No CWC for women

The FIFA Council meets this Wednesday and one of the first items we expect to have confirmed is that FIFA will postpone the inaugural Women’s Club World Cup until at least 2027 after stakeholders urged more time for proper planning.

Initially planned for January/February 2026 as a 16-team tournament, FIFA has still not announced a host, format, qualification criteria, or any broadcast or commercial deals. With less than a year until the proposed competition was supposed to begin, clubs, leagues, and confederations have urged FIFA to consider a smaller event of 4-6 teams in 2025, before a 16-team competition launches in 2027 on a four-year cycle.

This would mirror the men's structure, which will debut its expanded Club World Cup format this summer while still playing a smaller, annual Intercontinental Cup.

FIFA has not commented but last year’s announcement was simply a proposal by president Gianni Infantino and not a firm commitment, according to The Athletic. 

A new strategy of starting small and scaling up is likely to be the best approach given the current landscape in the women’s game, according to Camryn Novak of Rexana Ventures, a consultancy that specialises in women’s football and works with leading clubs and leagues:

“Financial viability is key for the tournament to be sustainable, given the significant travel and operational costs. Competitive balance is another challenge, as some leagues are far more developed than others.

“A smaller format could be a practical first step—testing feasibility while highlighting the strongest leagues in a competitive setting.”

Red Ed to return?

John Textor has offered former Manchester United chief Ed Woodward a place on the Eagle Football board as the multi-club organisation prepares for an IPO, according to Sky News.

Those who know Woodward feel he has recently been paving the way for a comeback in football after leaving Old Trafford in 2022 as something of a sacrificial lamb after United’s attempts to join the Super League.

Woodward played an instrumental role in the Glazer family’s leveraged buyout of United, spending 17 years at the club in which he grew them into a commercial juggernaut.

The footballing side of the club, however, rotted away after the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson with Woodward and the executive layer at Old Trafford unable to find a regime capable of arresting their sporting decline.

More from Textorland, and an unfortunate visual for the American as his Botafogo side were squarely beaten by Racing Club in the Recopa Sudamericana, South America’s equivalent of the UEFA Super Cup.

Botafogo’s form has been dreadful since winning the Copa Libertadores last year and that continued as Textor stormed out of his seat after his managerless side conceded the second, decisive goal.

The Eagle Football chief did reappear later to accept his second-place medal but threw it into the crowd where it was caught by a fan.

Unfortunately, it was the fan’s one-liner that dominated headlines the following day.

“He went to throw the medal away, he doesn't care about anything, he only cares about Lyon,” he said to the cameras while holding the medal.

Dan Edwards, a journalist who covers South American football, noted the swift turnaround in sentiment around Botafogo and how they are run.

“To think back in December Botafogo were the poster boys for everyone pushing private ownership on Argentine clubs.

“Since then Textor gutted the team to cover debts elsewhere, humiliation in Supercopa, humiliation in Recopa, 9th in the Carioca championship… and very possibly a relegation battle coming up unless something drastic changes.

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Both those humiliations, as an aside, at the hands of clubs which remain proudly member-owned.”

VAR clings on

Norwegian football will continue to use Video Assistant Refereeing (VAR) after lower division and amateur clubs voted against the wishes of the professional elite to scrap the technology in a controversial ballot held last weekend.

In January, the 32 clubs in Norway’s top two divisions — the Eliteserien and First Division — passed a motion by 19 votes to 13 to request that the Norway Football Federation (NFF) “adopt the discontinuation of VAR as soon as possible.”

The NFF remained supportive of VAR however, with the governing body's position endorsed last Saturday at an assembly of its member clubs, the vast majority of whom are amateur and do not use the system. The motion to scrap VAR was comprehensively rejected by 321 votes to 129, although the ballot raises interesting questions about the nature of democracy.

NFF president Lise Klaveness has been a strident critic of the lack of transparency in the global game, taking a lone stand in speaking out about FIFA's decision to award the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia last December, but Norwegian football's version of democracy is equally eye-opening. 

Whereas in England decisions only affecting the Premier League are taken solely by the 20 top-flight clubs, the NFF vote gave overwhelming power to the grassroots, who backed the organisation that in many cases are its paymasters.

Norway were late adopters of VAR in 2023 and its implementation has been blighted by controversy throughout. In July 2024 a top-flight game between Rosenborg and Lillestrom was abandoned after fans threw tennis balls, fishcakes, and smokebombs onto the pitch in protest against the new technology.

As Rob Draper wrote here in January, the VAR experiment appears doomed to failure in the long-run, at least judging by the high bar set by both the authorities and fans, as scrutiny of more and more refereeing decisions will inevitably lead to a higher number of controversial decisions, frustrating delays and the loss of spectacle. The twin aims of greater consistency and commonsense refereeing are mutually exclusive.

Read more: Why VAR is doomed

Arguably the best argument to keep VAR came in England this weekend when Jean-Philippe Mateta was knocked unconscious and left with 25 stitches in his head and ear after a diabolical foul by Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts.

The 30-year-old came flying out of his area and kicked Mateta in the head, only for referee Michael Oliver to wave play on. The UEFA elite group referee did not even consider the incident to be a foul and allowed play to continue until he realised Mateta was out cold and bleeding profusely from the head.

After a prolonged delay during which Mateta was taken to hospital, Oliver and the video assistants reviewed the incident and upgraded it to a red card.

“Can you imagine how poisonous the atmosphere would have been for the rest of the match if there was no card?” one Palace source asked.

For a game that had already been scheduled at lunchtime for fear of crowd trouble, Oliver’s refereeing could have had real-world consequences if VAR was not being used.

Arsenal close to Edu replacement?

Arsenal director Josh Kroenke has flown to London as the club enter the final days of their search for a new sporting director.

The names on the shortlist were Jason Ayto, Dan Ashworth, Andrea Berta, Roberto Olabe and Thiago Scuro according to David Ornstein, with a report in The Times on Monday suggesting that Berta is the frontrunner.

As we covered earlier this winter, Berta moved to England to begin preparing for a potential job in the Premier League after leaving Atletico Madrid. Arsenal and Manchester United were believed to be the clubs he was targeting.

FootBiz understands there to be some regret at Arsenal that they let Edu leave in November and that it disrupted their January window.

Tebas targets City, but not Newcastle

La Liga president Javier Tebas has been accused of hypocrisy in attacking Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain for benefiting from state funding while glossing over Newcastle United due to his own Saudi ties.

The Spaniard caused a stir at the Financial Times Business of Football summit last week by comparing City's alleged breaches of the Premier League's Financial Fair Play rules to the corporate fraud committed by US energy company Enron - surely risking legal action from City’s trigger-happy legal team - while he has also accused PSG of distorting European Union markets by agreeing inflated sponsorship deals with Qatari companies.

Tebas has not criticised Newcastle, however, despite the fact they aligned with City in opposing the Premier League's Associated Party Transaction rules, with their Saudi Arabian owners having had several proposed commercial deals blocked due to concerns over their value.

A source at another Premier League club not connected to City suggested to FootBiz that Tebas' silence on Newcastle is unlikely to be a coincidence, given both La Liga and the Spanish Football Federation have several important commercial deals with Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh Season have a three-year partnership with La Liga as official sponsors that was signed by Tebas last year, while the SFF have a 10-year deal for the Spanish Super Cup to take place in Saudi and are in discussions over a five-year extension.

“Tebas has got into bed with Saudi so their government money is fine," the source said. "It's the same story with him. He is using populist arguments to gain attention, and the media fall for it. He is all soundbite, no substance.”

Tebas was eventually asked about Newcastle at the FT Summit last week, and replied that despite being state-owned, the club had not done anything to arouse his suspicion. City and PSG declined to respond to Tebas' comments.