FootBiz newsletter #99: Why Chelsea may face registration issues, Tottenham lawsuit

It may seem like peace has broken out in the Premier League and beyond but do not let the serene and sun-drenched smiles of August confuse you ahead of the grittier battles to come.

Indeed, UEFA's next regulatory battle with a Premier League club following their showdown with Crystal Palace is likely to involve Chelsea, who will spend the next two weeks negotiating with European football's governing body over how many of their new players they can register for the Champions League.

Under the terms of a financial settlement between Chelsea and UEFA agreed in June, the club can only add players to their Champions League squad if their transfer fees have been offset by sales.

Chelsea have since added Liam Delap, Joao Pedro, Jamie Gittens, Jorrel Hato and Estevão (which I believe translates as ‘Big Steve’) to their Premier League squad at a combined cost of £210m, with only £190m raised through player sales.

To exacerbate matters, UEFA will only take into account the transfers of players who were named in Chelsea's Conference League knockout stage squad last season, with the £110m raised from the sales of departures of Joao Felix, Djordje Petrovic, Armando Broja and Lesley Ugochukwu having no impact whatsoever, thus leaving the club around £130m behind before they can register new players and with much work to do. The same restriction would apply to high earners Raheem Sterling and Ben Chilwell if they are sold before the end of the month also (though those salaries are proving to be stumbling blocks with any and all suitors currently). 

The sales of Noni Madueke, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Mathis Amougou do count, at least, as would those of Nicolas Jackson and Christopher Nkunku if they are successfully offloaded, but even so Chelsea may still struggle to register all of their new signings before the September 2nd deadline.

The restrictions apply only to Chelsea's 'A List' of 25 senior players. Youngsters born after January 1, 2004 who have been with the club for at least two years can be registered on their 'B List.'

Table of Contents

• Bundesliga’s fight for visibility

• Ligue 1+ tops 600k subs

• United owner sues Tottenham

• Freed from Diriyah

• Sikh and ye shall find

• WTFord is that price?

Bundesliga’s fight for visibility

It has felt for a while like a turning point was coming for broadcast rights sales in European football, where a strategy centred on visibility was far better in the big picture than simply finding a random channel who’d bung you some cash to show a few games.

In markets where the rights weren’t going to be huge revenue drivers anyway, partnering with free-to-air broadcasters was the first port of call but the Bundesliga made a groundbreaking move last week by announcing they were partnering with a couple of well-known YouTube channels to distribute live games.

Just as significant as the Bundesliga's headline-grabbing move to sell TV rights to prolific YouTuber and professionally angry Manchester United fan, Mark Goldbridge, is the breadth and depth of that media rights process.

Goldbridge's That's Football have bought joint watchalong rights for 20 Friday night Bundesliga games along with the Overlap, owned by another United fan who is not short of opinions, Gary Neville.

The Bundesliga have also sold rights to more established broadcasters, with the BBC securing one weekly Friday night game to be shown on its website and BBC iPlayer and Sky Sports getting Saturday and Sunday fixtures, while YouTube have got the rights for all Friday matches as well as those in Bundesliga 2.

La Liga followed a similarly approach when concluding their rights process earlier this month, with Disney+ buying a weekly Saturday evening fixture and Premier Sports retaining exclusive rights for the other 340 games. In addition, La Liga also sold digital clip rights to Goalhanger, the production company co-owned by Gary Lineker, who will use them in their Rest is Football podcast and across their other digital and social channels.

In contrast, the Premier League have adopted a more streamlined strategy in the new four-year domestic rights deal which began this season, with Sky Sports, TNT Sports and the BBC also having clip rights on top of their various live and highlights packages. 

The Premier League are selling from a far stronger position than the Bundesliga and La Liga, of course, but will be monitoring their rivals’ media products with interest and may explore separate clips and watch-along packages from 2029 onwards.

Whilst the Prem has increasingly taken a lead from some of the American major leagues in business strategy recently, the English top flight remains fiercely protective of its copyright whereas the NBA has been much more flexible in allowing content creators to use their footage if there is worthwhile, value-adding content being made about the league.

Broadcasting games live is obviously a new frontier but it’s been inevitable for some time.

And people still underestimate YouTube — while overestimating TV audiences. 

Free-to-air Match of the Day, which shows the Premier League highlights, gets around 1.3m views every week. Mark Goldbridge’s That’s Football channel on YouTube averages slightly above that.

It might not be to your taste, but it has the viewership and that is what partners will pay for and leagues are after.

As Ed says often, the best time to start your own YouTube channel was yesterday. It’s the world’s free-to-air television channel.

Ligue 1+ tops 600k subs

Ligue 1 have taken a radically different approach this season following years of bungled broadcast deals, with their direct-to-consumer platform Ligue 1+ launching last weekend. 

LFP Media chief executive Nicolas de Tavernost described the opening weekend as “an exceptional start” as the streaming service has already attracted 600,000 subscribers, although given they are only paying between €9.99 and €14.99 each month the financial returns will not be huge.

For context, though, DAZN pulled the ejector seat on their deal with the league because their higher-priced subscription never reached 500k subs despite an initial target of 1.5m.

LFP’s business plan is based on the channel retaining between 1.1m and 1.2m subscribers by the end of the season, which would generate ~€150m in revenue to add to their meagre mainstream broadcast deals. In a piece of exceptionally detailed reporting this week, L’Equipe demonstrated just how little those contracts are worth.

The 18 Ligue 1 clubs are entitled to €205.5m gross domestic rights (€85m in DAZN termination fees, €78.5m from beIN Sports for Saturday's match plus €40m from beIN for Ligue 2 ), and €129.1m in international rights.

This total of €334.6m will be reduced by €182.6m of operating costs however, according to L’Equipe, with €54.5m of the remaining pot going to CVC, the investment fund who invested €1.5 billion in LFP Media in return for a 13.04 per cent share of their lifetime revenue.

After deducting €5.25m in payments to relegated clubs, Ligue 1 clubs will only share €80.5m, with next season’s champions projected to receive just €4.67m in domestic TV income, and the bottom club €1.44m.

In contrast, Premier League clubs receive a facility fee of just under £1m on average from a single televised game.

So yes, sacre bleu, the extra Ligue1+ income is badly needed. 

United owner sues Tottenham

Sir Jim Ratcliffe's Ineos are counter-suing Tottenham for more than £1m following the breakdown of a sponsorship deal that was worth £17.5m to the club.

In a new claim reported by the Daily Telegraph earlier this week, Ineos have accused Tottenham of holding talks with Audi over a new commercial arrangement, in doing so breaching the terms of their exclusive deal.

Tottenham had made the first move by suing Ineos for almost £11m after they served notice on contract guaranteeing their Grenadier as the club's "official 4x4 vehicle partner," with two-and-a-half years remaining. The club launched legal action in June claiming Ineos failed to pay a £5m-plus annual instalment due on Dec 1, having earlier not paid an inflation-related figure of almost £500,000, plus more than £5m in damages.

In a defence and counterclaim submitted to the High Court last week as reported by The Telegraph, Ineos allege that Tottenham's Chief Commercial Officer Todd Kline, who is now at Chelsea, began negotiations with Audi in the summer of 2023.

Freed from Diriyah

Matt Hobbs is joining Crystal Palace as sporting director two months after leaving Wolves.

The 45-year-old will replace long-serving Dougie Freedman, who left Palace in March for Saudi Pro League club Al-Diriyah, after eight years at Selhurst Park. Al-Diriyah are owned by Saudi’ Public Investment Fund, who previously sounded out Freedman for the sporting director role at Newcastle.

Hobbs was at Wolves for a decade in a variety of roles including academy recruitment, chief scout and head of player recruitment before becoming sporting director two years ago.

UEFA are a funny bunch when it comes to deciding what they will and won’t punish, so it will be interesting to see if they take any action against Crystal Palace fans for their songs about European football’s governing body and Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis.

The likelihood is they won’t, but with Forest visiting Selhurst Park on Sunday it might become a tune the Sky Sports audience becomes familiar with for a full 90 minutes after a strong and fairly consistent airing during last night’s 1-0 Conference League win over Fredrikstad.

Sikh and ye shall find

National League club Morecambe have appointed Ashvir Singh Johal as the first Sikh to manage a professional team in Britain. The 30-year-old, who replaces the sacked Derek Adams, has also become the youngest manager in the top five tiers of the English pyramid.

Singh Johal was appointed by the club's new owners, Panjab Warriors, who completed their long-running takeover from Jason Whittingham earlier this week.

Although it is his first management job Singh Johal has considerable and well varied experience in coaching, having previously worked under Kolo Toure at Wigan Athletic in the Championship before Cesc Fabregas at Italian club Como.

WTFord is that price?

Gino Pozzo has been looking to offload his entire portfolio of football clubs, and what used to be the jewel in his multiclub crown is now struggling to sell.

Watford have fallen comfortably back into the middle of the Championship after years of yo-yoing between the Premier League and the second tier, but the Italian is still seeking nearly £140m for the Hertfordshire club.

Their revenue for the 2023/24 season was just shy of £60m, less than half the figure they enjoyed in the Premier League during the 2022/23 campaign. Without promotion, it’s hard to see how the valuation doesn’t keep declining even if the asking price in the marketplace has stayed resolutely steady for now.