Premier League clubs approve new Associated Party Transaction rules, Leicester City sponsor BC.Game declared bankrupt
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Hello and welcome to The Price of Football, the show that looks at the money behind a beautiful game with me, Kevin Day, and Liverpool University's Kieran Maguire. I'm really, really trying not to... In an attempt for Kieran to look less like a rave DJ than he did the last time we spoke, he now looks like he's going to. He's got a skin-tight... What is that you're wearing there, Kieran? It's a Marmite cycling top.

There's not many of them about. No, no. By which I should explain to people, it's not a cycling top that some people might like and some people might not. It's actually a Marmite. It's a Marmite branded cycling. Is there a Marmite cycling team that I don't know about? No, no, no. There's no team yeast extract around. It's just...

My very good friend Paul got this for me one of my birthdays a few years ago. It's very kind. I think advertising rules mean we should call it Team Yeast Extraction, mate. Yes. Other cycling shirts are available. It's Newsday, Kieran. I think in the interest of openness, as always, we should reveal that we are having to record this late on Tuesday night. So if a big story breaks on Tuesday,

Then apologies. But having said that, we've got plenty big stories to talk about. Plenty big stories to talk about. But before we get into those, Kieran, we talked on the questions pod about the FA Cup. And of course, it turns out that we have a secret FA Cup minder. Of course it does. And I think you and I have been married long enough, Kieran, for me to be a bit cross. You're...

I'm going to sit you down and tell you, just talk me through. Because there should be no secrets in our relationship, Kieran, but you keep surprising me with these various other people in our relationship. There's going to be an interview on Panorama when I say, well, actually, in the end, there were 48 people in our marriage. The secret FA Cup mind has been in touch about a question from the last pod, Kieran.

That's absolutely right. Yes, one of our listeners contacted us following the Monday show where we were talking about the FA Cup trophy. And they said, I used to work in a JJB sports shop.

And a few years ago, our shop managed to get the FA Cup into the shop for a photo opportunity with the public. How they managed that, I've got absolutely no idea. So all of a sudden, they're quietly minding their own business in the shop. And two fellas turned up in a random car and unloaded what looked like a bomb-proof case out of the boot. And

Since that day, I occasionally get the random thought whilst on the motorway that the car in front could have the FA Cup in the boot. They just turn up.

And to cut a long story short, he says, apparently the base of the cup, which has the inscribed winners on it, is not allowed to leave Wembley because, to quote one of the security people that brought the cup, the base is uninsurable. The cup itself, he believes, is insured for around about £1.5 million. And he's kindly sent me a photograph of

And I can see in the photograph, yes, it is definitely the FA Cup as we know it. It's got the ribbons on it and it's got a sort of a...

A Hale and Pace-style couple of blokes by the side looking suitably burly as the management. So there we have it. The FA Cup does get out and about, but it is very well looked after, except the base, which won't go out of FA HQ. I hate to say this, Kieran, but this chap's credentials are not as impressive as you led me to believe they were.

Because he's gone from secret FA Cup miner to bloke in JJB Sports who once saw the FA Cup being brought in. I've heard several stories about the number of FA Cups. Somebody asked me this morning, oddly enough, about engraving the names on the FA Cup. Is that when West Brom won it, does the poor engraver say, can I put WBA on it?

He might be paid by the letter, though. He can't believe his luck when West Bromwich Albion win. Imagine that, Brighton and Hove Albion. No, I don't want to imagine Brighton and Hove Albion winning the letter. We have a lot of stories to start the news podcast, four of them, in fact, about the Premier League, all of them significant in different ways. And the first one is about the vote that took place last Friday now, I think, isn't it? The

following the Premier League versus the Man City case just a few weeks ago. That's right. Before the vote took place, the stories that were coming out in the media was that it was going to be too close to call. But it looks as if on the morning of the vote...

a couple of clubs who had been wavering decided to go ahead with the Premier League's propositions. So these are not the rules that were introduced in February. These are the ones which have been tweaked since we've seen the Manchester City verdict. So what has happened as a result of that? In order to have consistency,

between those clubs that potentially get an advantage from having a sponsorship arrangement with somebody vaguely connected to the club and those clubs which get an advantage from having owners who lend clubs money interest-free, that loans will now have

of interest applied to them for PSR purposes. So the owner won't actually get any interest, but the Premier League will effectively impute a rate of interest. And for me, I think this raises an intriguing question because I was talking to some of my friends that work in the credit industry, in the debt industry, and they said, well,

Well, they're going to have to go and charge different rates of interest to reflect different rates of risk. And he said, yeah, if I was honest, if these rules were also going to be applied in the championship, your club, Brighton, would never have got promoted. So from your point of view, Kevin, it's going to be good news because you have to be realistic about

No commercial bank would have lent money to Brighton in 2009 when they started to build the stadium. So therefore, you'd effectively have to charge what we sometimes refer to as junk bond rates of interest, which are probably around about 14%. So if you've got three years of borrowing money at 14% on Tony Bloom's lent interest,

a thick end of 400 million to Brighton, some of which has gone on the stadium construction, some of which was gone on terms of running the club. So even if half of those loans had been included, then you would have been in breach of PSR every year. And the same would effectively apply

in the Premier League, and I've not managed to get a straight story yet. I've spoken to a series of journalists, and they seem to think that there's going to be three rates of interest being charged. So what you might call the blue chip part of the Premier League, the clubs that are never going to get relegated, Manchester United, Spurs, Chelsea, Manchester City, we've got to be careful about Manchester City, we don't know what's happening with regards to the other case. They could legitimately say,

interest rates are a function of risk. So the biggest risk in the Premier League is losing your revenue coming from TV. So those clubs charge a low rate of interest, will then have the middle classes and will then have perhaps the three clubs that have just been promoted from the championship and some waifs and strays. And who decides which of those clubs goes into which pots?

I don't know where the Premier League will get their advice. So if that is the case, and it should be the case, you know, as much as

as a fan of both our clubs, we've got it tough enough as it is trying to be competitive with the big boys. But we know that there's a chance that we can go down and we know that there's no chance of those other clubs getting relegated. It is going to increase the gap between the very rich, the moderately rich and the recently arrived, which seems a strange ambition.

The Premier League has said that these new rules will help to achieve competitive balance. Well, actually, it'll be the exact opposite of that. It also says that

the rules will not be a problem for investment. And yet, when the loan interest rules were originally approved by the Premier League, and I think it was a 19 to 1 majority, that you could let lend interest interest-free, it was stated at the time that this will encourage investment. So

Does it now mean that the Premier League is saying that in order to allow us to have more rules stacked against the likes of Aston Villa, Manchester City, Chelsea voted against, Newcastle voted against, in order to have rules which make it more difficult for those clubs to have sponsorship, we want a competition which is going to discourage investment.

The whole thing is a mess and we're still awaiting the final judgment of the commission itself. So you put that all together and it's a fairly sorry state of affairs because I've been sort of monitoring Premier League meetings for years upon years. And normally every vote would go through on a 20 to zero majority, 20 to zero vote. And even when it goes 19 for one, a few years ago, yeah, that's a bit rebellious.

And now it's a 16-4, which is a very resounding victory as far as the Premier League is concerned. That's seen as being some sort of norm, which is evidence of the decaying relationship between clubs in the Premier League at the present time. Two questions off the back of that, Kieran. The first is about the vote, the 16-4 vote. Because as you said, we were talking last week about

just ahead of this vote being taken, that all the tabloids were predicting that it was 50-50, too close to call. So does that imply then that overnight or in the last hours before the vote was taken, there was some lobbying from interested groups? And secondly, these imputed interest rates, would they be fixed for a free six, 10-year period or would they be subject to fluctuations due to a budget change

interest rate raises by the Bank of England, etc. Right. If I deal with those in turn, it looks as if two of the clubs which were wavering were Wolves and Everton, and they decided for whatever reason to go along with the Premier League proposals.

So by all accounts, they were clubs which could have taken it down to 14-6. You need 14 votes. So if anybody else had had reservations, I think Forest at one point, we know that they've been very unhappy with the Premier League. So would they have jumped on the other ship? Not necessarily for their own best interests, because Marinakis at Forest has tended to put money into the club in the form of equity rather than loans, but just to go and thumb their nose.

at the Premier League. But clearly, whatever was said prior to the meeting, and it all went through very quickly because the Premier League meeting started on the Friday. I think it started at five past nine and at 20 past nine. I think it was David Ornstein who was the first to then put it out. So I think that took a lot of people by surprise. In terms of the interest rates,

you could have a long-term fix in terms of interest rates. But again, that wouldn't reflect market rates. And the whole point behind having associated party transactions is that they're supposed to represent a fair market value. You don't get fair market values in terms of interest rates. They fluctuate according to economic conditions. So if that is going to be the case, then the Premier League, again, is not going

being consistent with what it claims to be its own ideals and its own principles. The second Premier League story, Kieran, we've discussed at some length recently the notion that, in effect, the Premier League broadcasting rights money is frozen, that they probably won't be getting any more. So if you look at it over a 10-year period, it's not actually the best. But it seems that there is going to be a rise in Premier League TV rights in the next couple of years.

That's right. The domestic rights have frozen. Right.

Sky need the Premier League more than the Premier League needs Sky. So I think that's beneficial. If we take a look at overseas broadcasting, this is where the growth is coming in. So there's a new deal with the United States. There's a new deal with Asia. There's a new deal in Serbia and Scandinavia and so on. And you've got to give the Premier League here a lot of credit because it is the one product that's

that all broadcasters globally want to have because there are increasingly fewer and fewer types of linear TV which people are watching live. And if you take a look at the United States, for example, of the 30 most watched programs in the United States live last year, 29 were NFL. So, you know, sport...

But streaming a sports game is ridiculous. Even you or I, as devoted as we are to our clubs, if the match took place yesterday and you're going to watch 90 minutes of it, you'll be watching most of it on fast forward because you only want to see the highlights. Yeah, of course. So it's...

It's testament to the Premier League getting in early, having a competitive product. And the irony here was if it was not for perhaps the likes of Abramovich at Chelsea and Mansour at Manchester City, we would have a less competitive product because prior to the arrival of those two disruptors, Premier League was a bit boring. It was Manchester United won it 70% of the time and Arsenal won it the other 30%.

So having new clubs come in to increase the pool of clubs that can potentially win, that increases jeopardy, that increases uncertainty. And jeopardy and uncertainty are two driving forces as to why we watch live TV. It's the same with Strictly. Why do people watch Strictly? Because you don't know what's going to happen next. You don't know how the public vote's going to be. You don't know what the...

the judges votes are going to be and there are relatively few programs that can deliver that level of you've got to be there because in 24 hours it's dead news

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I was in Prague at the weekend, as I mentioned. Got back to the hotel quite late on Saturday night and channel hopping. The Italian version of Strictly was on. Oh, right. Oh, my God, it went on for about four hours. But I'm so stubborn, I thought, I'm not going to let this beat me. I'm not going to bed until this bugger's over. All I will say is, Ken, some of the costumes wouldn't be allowed on our version. LAUGHTER

This is a terrible thing to admit. I was trying to write a clever ad lib at the start of your answer to that question. Did you put a figure on how much the Premier League TV rights have been rising over the next three years? Well, I think it's 17%, which I think will take the period, take the total of that period from international rights to something like £12 billion to...

To give some sort of context, I think the Premier League is getting eight times as much from international rights as the French League and probably three or four times as La Liga, Bundesliga and Serie A, who are the other, what we refer to as the big five when it comes to European football. So it's fantastic negotiation by the Premier League and they deserve a lot of credit for putting out a product that so many people in so many markets want to watch.

And the Premier League are taking some of their media stuff in-house. That's right. Historically, the Premier League's international broadcast distribution has been organised by IMG. And they've done a fantastic job. And...

I think there's a place, it's somewhere like Bracknell, where Premier League TV actually takes place. And it's sort of a fairly nondescript looking building. But that is very much the nerve centre. And it's not just the matches which people see at the weekend. It's also quiz shows. It's also sort of Vox Pops. It's interviews at clubs and so on. Some quite good documentaries as well. Yeah, there's some really high quality content there.

that's being produced independently, it looks now as if the Premier League have said, well, thanks very much, IMG, because you have been fantastic partners for us. But we've been watching what you've been doing and we think we can do it ourselves. And of course, that means we're not paying a third party to do it. So some people are now speculating that this is only going to be clearly for the international markets to begin with.

is this the move towards the Premier League at some point in time, deciding to take everything in-house and offer a streaming service independent of the major broadcasters? The advantage that would give the Premier League is it potentially becomes more profitable. You can offer a pay-per-view option and things like this. So we await developments, but...

IMG have done a great job. They seem quite happy. They know that relationships don't last forever in the world of broadcasting. They've made a significant contribution to where football is today as far as it being a global product very much brought by the Premier League. It's an interesting one though, Kieran. I know from experience how many people outside the broadcasting industry think that the broadcasting of various things

The sport, comedy, et cetera, is actually quite easy and they'll probably be able to do it themselves, only to learn that it's a very difficult thing to do. So that's one to keep an eye on. Now, the final Premier League story isn't 100% Premier League, but it's kind of mostly associated with the Premier League. And that is the fact that the independent regulator bill, the football governance bill, is going through the House of Lords and they've turned into...

surprisingly busy little beast, Kieran, as you said. Somebody's woken the House of Lords up. Out of a 10-year stupor, they've gone, well, we need to... Although, to ask the look to some outside eyes, they are possibly trying to scupper it as well, Kieran. It's...

Yes, it does seem a little bit strange, especially, you know, I repeat, Richard Masters historically said, you know, we're not going to lobby against the bill. This is the will of the government. This is the will of football fans. They're important stakeholders, blah, blah, blah.

But the House of Lords has been at the committee stage as far as the bill is concerned. So it's already been through the House, both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. And this is a slightly tweaked, a slightly beefed up bill compared to the Conservative Party administration, which Rishi Sunak's government introduced sort of six weeks before he then decided he was going to have an election. And

What I find weird is that given that the previous bill had made reasonable progress, we've got something like 338 proposed amendments to the bill. And I'm not party political on this. The vast majority of these appear to come from Conservative peers. And there's one particular peer who has made 23 proposals.

And this is Baroness Karen Brady of West Ham, of the Premier League, who just happens to be opposed to the regulator. So, yeah, look, we're not a cynical show and we pride ourselves on not being a cynical show.

But if I was a cynic, I would say that this looks like classic filibustering. It would be an attempt by people with vested interests to delay the passing of the bill for as long as possible because every week that it...

If every week more that it takes for the bill to be approved is one more week where the Premier League doesn't have to come up with a proposal to the EFL in terms of the distribution of funds. And that's that's the core issue. That's what's driving it. If the Premier League genuinely doesn't want the football governance bill, I don't want a football governance bill.

but I think we need one because of the behaviour of those in charge of the game. All it has to do is to pick up the phone to Rick Parry or Trevor Birch and says, let's get round the table, let's thrash this out. And if the EFL are happy, you've got the Premier League not wanting the bill. The EFL are happy. The National League, and I know Mark Ives said he was in favour of it. He didn't seem hugely in favour of it. And the FA...

sort of just living in their own little world. And I think you've then got a very difficult case to justify the costs of running the independent football regulator if there's some form of cast iron agreement between the major players in football in terms of the distribution. But again, a cynic in me says the Premier League reckons that

if the regulator is delayed and finally arrives, it's then going to take another 12 to 18 months before the regulator says, right, I'm going to give you plenty of time. We're now going to sort out a deal. And again, that's another 12 to 18 months where the dice is very much loaded towards the Premier League in terms of the distribution rights. And it's simply done its sums. And even if the regulator costs £10 million a year, the

the Premier League would have made so much more money that it would have paid for that £10 million many, many times over in terms of the money which has been kept within its own coffers. Let's hold off on that cynicism, Kieran, until our next pod. Because as you say, we're not naturally cynical, but I have a friend, comedian Matt Ford, who is as obsessed with politics as

as you are with Football Finance. I'm going to ask him to check how many times Karen Brady has previously appeared in the House of Lords.

Before we get cynical, because it may be she's there every second day. Who knows? It may be that she's there taking an interest in some kind of rural bus stop legislation and she just happened to be, as a coincidence, oh, is it the Football Governance Bill? Oh, I might sit in. So let's hold off on that, Kieran, because I'm going to be really interested to see how that... Now, this next story, Kieran, we've...

I'm ashamed. We've laughed in the past, Kieran, in a terrible insular English way. We've laughed at continental teams losing a sponsor halfway through the season because they've lost all their money. And here we are, it's happening to a Premier League team.

Yes. At the start of the season, or just prior to the start of the season, Leicester City announced a sponsorship arrangement with an organisation called BC Game. And I know what he was saying to you. He said, Kevin, my life has been missing something. And what?

What I have been missing is an opportunity to interact with a Caracal-based crypto casino. And now, thanks to Leicester City splashing the name of BC Game over the front of its shirt, that lost dream, that missing Christmas present has now arrived as an opportunity. And

And unfortunately, what happened last week was that BC Game were declared bankrupt in Caracal, which was, was it the Netherlands Antilles? Yes. I've got a feeling it's Curacao, as in the liquor.

I believe. I mean, obviously, no one should ever take my word on it, on geography or pronunciation. Especially not mine. I can marvellise anything. But the BC game have

have rejected the bankruptcy. They say, oh, there's nothing wrong with our funds. So I was researching this particular story just before we went on air, and another story broke that the Curacao Gaming Authority are apparently going to take away the license of BC Game. So, you know, taking away...

the joy that people have from spending their hard earned cash in a crypto casino, not only at the light of the odds stacked against you in a casino, but they're strapped against you if you're using a magic beans through which you can go and place your bets. So it doesn't look good. Lester are very much giving the, Oh, this is nothing to worry about, you know, all pass along. Yeah.

If they've got the cash, then there is nothing to worry about. But we did see Chelsea with Wales a couple of seasons ago where they didn't get it. Clearly, there's been digital bits as far as Italian clubs are concerned. We've had Nottingham Forest and QPR with the...

the stock market for football players which wasn't a stock market for football players and that disappeared as well when they went bust and that wasn't a Ponzi scheme according to everybody that was in it until it turned out of course to be a Ponzi scheme Do we know Kieran if Leicester have been paid up front for this by this sponsor?

We don't know the details, no. I mean, the club are being very tight-lipped on this. What normally tends to be the case is that a sponsor would pay a sizeable deposit upon signing of the contract and then instalments would be made. But there's no reason why Leicester can't have forced this all through at the date of signing. They might have offered a discount here. It might have been a £12 million deal. But if you give us £10 million up front, we'll call it quits, that type of thing. Yeah.

Interesting, Kieran, all over the London Underground in the last week and on quite a lot of London train stations as well, there are adverts now plastered everywhere for a cryptocurrency company whose name I won't mention. But the strap line is we go where money can't, basically. But as much of the advert is taken up with, literally, for God's sake, be careful, it says you could, one bit says you could lose everything you've got.

which sums up the whole crypto thing. And also as another aside, the Steve Cooper dismissal, I think was something we should look at. We're not a football pod, but the Athletic and the Guardian both implying that there were reasons other than football that might explain Steve Cooper's dismissal, some of which could have been financial. So that's something I think maybe we could have a little dig into later.

and find out about. In Germany, Kieran, which is a country whose football we love, there's been a significant development at Borussia Dortmund. Yes, I think it was a year ago, the German armaments company Rheinmetall approached Borussia Mönchengladbach with a view to a front of shirt sponsorship deal.

And Mönchengladbach rejected the proposal on the grounds of morality. It says, we don't particularly want to be associated with an organization which makes a product whose aim is to kill people. And that sort of went under the radar. So they therefore alternatively approached Borussia Dortmund. And Borussia Dortmund said, oh, is that a big check? Yeah, we'll have some of that.

But this is one of the areas where the German 50 plus one rule kicks in.

because it had to be approved at the annual general meeting of Borussia Dortmund. And the fans voted, and the fans voted very significantly, I think it was at least two to one, to reject the sponsorship arrangement, and therefore Rheinmetall will have to go and find somebody else to advertise their bombs, or whatever else they're doing in terms of the armaments industry. So...

This is a bit of fan power. This is a bit of a stakeholder in the game. And we must always remember, yeah, we're not fans. We are stakeholders in this industry. And...

When you as a football club make a decision, you need surely to take into consideration our views. And I know that you've had issues at Palace with regards to your front of shirt sponsor this season and the reservations a significant proportion of the fan base have had. And that's fallen on deaf ears because, as we often say, clubs, especially club owners, tend to be blinded by the cheque. But

But because of the increased democratisation of ownership in Germany, clubs have to be a little bit more sensitive to the views of the fan base. Yeah, and also you'd like to think, you know...

Germany's just down the road from Ukraine. These people understand. They can see visibly on their TV screens every day what these things are. But there will also be people, Kieran, there will be newspaper commentators and TV pundits going, well, these arms companies provide hundreds, thousands of jobs. Why are we treating them any differently to other industries, gambling, et cetera, et cetera? Is there a difference between gambling and armament? Yes, there is. Of course there is. But these people will be arguing that there isn't.

Yes, I understand that. And if you go to, I mean, Pablo Escobar provided employment for many, many people. So where do you draw the line? Yeah, yeah, fair point. There are many football fans in England, Kieran, paranoid and full of conspiracy theories about the amount of American owners of our clubs.

And I think those people in Italy who feel the same way are going to be shaking their fists and going, I've told you so this week, aren't I? They are. It now appears that Verona are going to be bought by a US investment fund. So rather than an individual, once again, it's an investment fund. And...

Investment funds have got no interest in football. As far as they're concerned, football is just an extension or part of the broader entertainment industry where we spend our discretionary dollars.

they're fully aware that the cost of buying into a US franchise sport, if you're going to buy in the Dallas Cowboys or the Knicks, it's going to cost you $5, $7, $8 billion, whereas you can buy a football club for far, far less. So this means now that half of Syria...

is now American owned. And I was saying earlier, the TV rights have flatlined domestically. They're struggling in Italy to sell the international rights because the Premier League got there first. And yet we are still seeing this huge influx of American excess cash.

That's partly due to the fact that the American economy is doing so well, regardless of who's present. The American economy has over the past 12 years grown at twice the rate of that of Europe. That

American rich people have become richer and richer and richer. And it's too expensive to invest in American sports because there's a limited number of those to buy. And they're also not over keen on private equity money. Whereas our approach here in Europe, with the exception of what we've just seen in Germany, tends to be you want to give us some money, give us some money.

But that money is going to come with strings attached. And that's my concern. What is this investment fund looking for in terms of a return? Is it going to try to sell Verona in a few years of a profit? If so, good luck would be my comment there, because I don't see a huge amount of growth in Italian football at that level. But clearly, they've seen something or

They think that there's somebody will be lined up such as the interest in the industry as a whole and that's going to keep prices buoyant.

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Two things here, Keira. I mean, and first of all, in my best Yosemite Sam accent, hang on a... Hang on a... I won't do the accent. Hang on a...

Just to cut on picking secondly, are you saying that when Donald Trump has implied that the American economy is flat-lighted in the past four years, he may not have been telling the actual truth? And secondly, for those Italian conspiracy theorists amongst us, and I take my hat off to all of you, are Serie A rules similar to the Premier League, were there enough American investors, American owners of Italian clubs that they can change the rules of football in Italy?

In answer to your first question, the US economy has done very well under Joe Biden. It also did pretty well under Donald Trump, 2016 to 2020. So setting aside any personal views of Trump with regards to his broader view of the world, economically, the US has done extremely well. As far as...

the constitution of Italian football is concerned because they don't have the equivalent of a breakaway league. And that's what the Premier League is, of course. People forget that the Premier League...

Italian football has to look after sort of a broader remit. And it's effectively, if I'm honest, it's Serie A and Serie B, whatever it is in Italy. So it will be the top two divisions. So I think in terms of what we fear as traditional fans most of all, which is the abolition of football.

and promotion and therefore the de-risking of the game at the bottom end, I still think we're a long way away from that. And what will bring out the Italian fans' resistance is if they try to take away those issues. They might try to dilute it in terms of how many clubs go up or having some form of playoff system, but I don't think they'll try to get rid of it. I find it very interesting when you say that the Italian

scope for growth in Italian football is very limited. So you do wonder then what they see in the investment. But from Italy to Spain, La Liga has dropped some, shall we say, controversial plans that they had earlier this season.

Yes, there was a view that Barcelona versus Atletico, which was due to take place, I think, in January or February, was going to take place in the United States. And that would have brought huge interest in terms of the TV rights at the time. The ticket prices would have been sky high because everybody wants a ticket and

The approach of American punters to live sport is different to that of us. They are willing to pay market rates. They tend to not be too bothered at the idea of scalping fans, very much market-driven in terms of prices. Yeah.

So this is on the back of FIFA changing its own constitution earlier in the year, which now allows domestic matches to take place in third party locations. But Tebas has made it very clear that if this was perhaps a bit premature, 25, 26,

They want to get themselves organised a bit better in terms of marketing, in terms of selling the broadcast rights for that particular match, in terms of ticketing, in terms of getting the players to go on to do the Vox Pops for NBC and Fox News and whoever else wants to get involved. That is...

where they want to be and what I expect to be the case is that if that is successful then there will be pressure put on the Premier League to go the similar way and the way it's going to be sold to us as fans is well we don't want to do it but hey you know we need to we need to keep up with um the whatever is the Spanish for the Joneses I'm oh that's a good question last last that's oh

That's pure speculation. I've got no idea what it is. I know some of our listeners, Kieran, do accuse us of being too political, but like many Guardian-reading liberals, I assume that everybody I talk to has the same point of view about the world as I have. So it won't be a surprise for most of our listeners to learn that you and I, in general, oppose Donald Trump and absolutely every fucking thing he stands for. But...

There are some people in golf who say that he might be able to unite the warring factions in golf, but when it comes to football, it seems he has less interest in the potential outcome of some of his economic decisions. That's right. Donald Trump has said that on day one of his presidency, he is going to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada,

of 25% which, you know, for somebody from an economics background, I'm thinking that means that American consumers are gonna have to go and pay 25% more on all of the goods. And you can't just switch, you can't just go and change your supply chain and so on. And I think Canada is one of the biggest exports of

of natural resources, for example, to the United States. So there will be implications here for consumers. Whether it's an empty threat, we'll have to wait and see. Now, in terms of the justification, because that's the what, and as I always tell my students, people pay you for the whys rather than the whats. What Trump is claiming is that in Mexico,

There's a lax approach to border crossings. And also he is blaming the huge crisis that exists in the United States with regards to synthetic opioids, which are killing 75,000 people a year. And I've watched quite a few of the opioid programs and certainly there's

certain pharmaceutical companies, which ironically were based in the United States, were very much guilty at starting off this particular epidemic. It's killing 75,000 people a year. That's absolutely horrendous. That's a town the size of Burnby or something like that is being killed every year through this absolutely horrendous product. But

That's the claim there. In terms of Canada, he says that Canada is, I think, again, border issues and fentanyl and so on. If that is his approach...

And I'm not a cynic, you know, as we've established. I've been looking at causes of death in the United States. And one of the biggest causes is obesity, because that kills 300,000 people a year in the United States. So one would assume that if it's 25% for killing 75,000 people and obesity is killing four times as many people, presumably Donald Trump is going to put a 100% tariff on McDonald's and Coca-Cola's products.

And then he's going to outlaw guns because guns killed 43,000 people. So it could be that he could be a force for good. Yeah. In terms of not being cynical, Kevin, it almost seems a bit crass after learning about the numbers of opioid, gun and obesity deaths to ask how these decisions by Donald Trump might affect the World Cup. But clearly, will this have an issue, an influence on...

People crossing the borders between all three countries to watch games. Are Mexico and Canada likely to respond with various terror? Would it mean ticket prices going up? It's not a good look, is it, when one of the countries involved in hosting the World Cup is at the throats of two of the others?

That's right. And, you know, the World Cup is taking place in 2026 and it's being hosted by those three countries. Having been monitoring on The Economist and The Guardian and various other news sites during the course of the day, it looks as if Canada and Mexico are going to not take this lying down.

So there will be implications. What happens if you're right? We go to the World Cup in 2026. We're in the United States. We want to then see a match in Mexico or Canada. And things start to get a bit twitchy or testy when you're crossing the border. And we've seen this historically between countries. And I think it would just be a shame. Well, I mean, because we know how well supported Mexico are in particular.

there won't be, it won't just be people crossing the border. I mean, there'll, it seems to me there's inevitably going to be tensions. I mean, and Donald Trump will exploit those border tensions for his own good. And also I can always, I can almost picture in my mind now that,

the Infantino Donald Trump holding each other's arms aloft in some football stadium somewhere in Miami because Infantino doesn't give a flying monkeys about Donald Trump's impact on global football. And speaking of FIFA, they've reacted. It's taken them a couple of weeks, but the Sanadiara verdict finally seems to have filtered through to them.

Yes, FIFA have something called a disciplinary committee. And what the disciplinary committee does is that it investigates and it rules on disputes between players and clubs. And quite often those disputes can be that the player wants to move, the player hasn't been paid, the player feels that there has been inappropriate behaviour by the club.

But as a result of the Lasana-Diara verdict, which appears to indicate that a player can rip up the contract because tying somebody to working for an employer for an extended period of time, and by that I mean more than what you might consider to be

a reasonable gardening leave period of, say, 12 months, 18 months at a push. And we've got players locked into eight and nine year contracts. So what FIFA has done, it's suspended all of those ongoing cases because we need to get some form of verdict. Now, we have been in contact with

the lawyer who's acted on behalf of Diara. He's also acted on behalf of Jean-Luc Bosman from many years ago. So we're hoping to get him on the show to

to say what he can say in relation to the direction of travel that we are seeing here with regards to the rights. I get asked on a regular basis, is this going to end in anarchy?

I don't think so. There's no indication to me from either FIFPro, which is the Football Players Global Union, or the PFA, which is the domestic union, that they want the transfer market to be destroyed. Because it does actually also provide protection for their members. They simply want to be able to now say to clubs and to leagues,

We think that we're not being given an appropriate level of rights within the game and using this as a negotiating chip to come to a global agreement. Now, just because you have a global agreement doesn't mean that a footballer can say, well, I'm not a member of the union and I'm going to take up a separate case. But I think...

the majority of players in the unions will be more than happy for their representatives of the union to act on their behalf. It wouldn't be a Price of Football news pod, Kieran, without a Manchester United story. And I think we've kept our listeners waiting long enough, but here's the latest one.

Yes, Manchester United earlier today, and we're recording this show on Tuesday, they announced their results for the first quarter of 24-25. And once again, the press release...

quite bullish. And when you start to delve amongst the weeds, things aren't perhaps as rosy as the press office would like us to think. First of all, the positives. The club broke even over the course of the first quarter and they lost money last year. Why have they broken even? Well, to be fair to Manchester United, they

And historically, they've been pretty mediocre in the transfer market when it's a case of getting players out of the door.

But in the last quarter, the sales of Scott McTominay and Mason Greenwood has meant that they made substantial profit. And that allowed them to cover the losses that they were making elsewhere. The wage bill is down. Now, the club is saying that the wage bill is down due to players moving on. And yeah, those two players have just mentioned and moved on, as has Anthony Martial and some other players who've retired.

And they're sort of inferring, look, we're saving money now because we made all of those people redundant. I've looked at Manchester United's results before.

in years in which they've not qualified for the Champions League. And lo and behold, the wage bill goes down because players are on substantial bonuses. So I think the club's being a bit disingenuous here, saying that the driving force for the reduction in wages is due to getting rid of 250 people in terms of day-to-day staff and also moving those players on.

Again, good news. The club's got £150 million of cash in the bank account. So that allows it to pay its bills. The downside is that they borrowed £200 million during the quarter in order to have £150 million in the bank account.

So, yeah, the results are OK. Matchday income on a match-by-match basis appears to be going up, and certainly anecdotally from comments I've heard from Manchester United fans, they are very much targeting ticket resales, and we've spoken about that at length historically, and also the corporate sector in terms of what they're charging. So INEOS are...

squeezing squeezing the fans um to be fair tend to be squeezing the corporate fans rather than the the the regular guys and gals from ermston and and gordon and so on but once once they've got as much out of the corporates i suspect they're coming for the the local fans next sorry can i just be clear on this so this is the first um report since in the os took over

This is the first report. This covers the period, the 1st of July to the 30th of September. So it's really sort of the first one where they've been able to have an impact. They've been effectively determining the transfer policy, recruitment policy.

It doesn't include, from what I can make out, Eric Ten Haag's redundancy payments, although there were £8 million of redundancy payments in the quarter. I think this is to do with existing staff members or non-coaching staff members. Well, I'm a bearer of a small brain, as we know. I'm slightly confused that one of the UK's richest men has needed to borrow £200 million from

in order to have £150 million in the bank. Why is that, Kieran? Yeah, that doesn't look too clever. I guess the reason is that they needed money by the end of September in order to pay the wage bill in October and November. Remember, October and November, both of which are months in which there are international breaks, so that reduces the number of home matches. Manchester United probably only generate...

Yeah, I say only generate. They generate £4 million to £5 million per match at Old Trafford. That's not a lot of money when your monthly wage bill is in the region of £25 million to £30 million. It's going to come as a surprise to a lot of people, Kieran. A shock, in fact, that a club the size of Manchester United has to borrow money ahead of paying the wage bill.

It's the nature of the football industry. Your cost base is quite constant and your biggest cost is going to be your payroll cost. And they've got to find that 25 to 30 million pounds every month. Your revenue streams are very erratic. So they get a big amount of money from Adidas. They get a big amount of money from Snapdragon. They get big amounts of money from the Premier League in June and July when the new TV deal kicks in and sponsorship arrangements roll over.

They've sold all their season tickets last March and April so they got all the money from that and they've got 47,000 season ticket holders so they're only getting you know 25,000 people physically paying to attend matches and that's not a lot of money for a business which has huge overheads. For over 50 years, Burlington's legacy has been great deals on coats for all weather conditions. So before you're caught unprepared for the winter weather,

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It does indicate the precarious nature of football finance, though, doesn't it? I mean, the fact that even five years after we started this, I'm still surprised by this information. Yes, football as a case study, from my point of view, is absolutely fascinating because football

If you were to draw up a template of how not to run an industry, what we have is a perfect example. And then you could say, right, we need to go through a series of issues to fix this. But those decisions to fix it, which is mainly to do with cost control, because as we've established, the Premier League's increasing its media revenue by 17% on the international deals over three years. Bringing the money in is fantastic.

superb textbook. Pricing models, price discrimination models, all of these things, absolutely superb. And then it says, right, we've done the hard work and now we're just going to give it all away. Yeah, our final story, Kieran. I'm a Palace fan, as everyone knows. I've also got a massive soft spot for Hibs. So I'm going to put my cards on the table and say I've got no interest whatsoever in this last story. Really, I might just cut straight to the buy everybody, Patreon, and then...

Morally, I think we're probably obliged to do it. I don't know legally what the situation is, but you crack on. I'm going to doodle something. In fact, Smudge has just come in. I'm just going to go and tickle her under the chin for a couple of minutes and go to my happy place. This is...

This is in the city of Edinburgh. This is Hart, the other team, or one of the other teams, should I say, in the magnificent city of Edinburgh. And they've just announced a deal with a company called Jamestown. And Jamestown is an analytics company. And that's owned by Tony Bloom, the Brighton owner. And by all accounts, Jamestown is...

the advisory part of Tony Bloom's empire of companies, which cover a variety of industries. And I think Jamestown have been advising Brighton. I think they charge Brighton three million pounds a year, by the way, for their services.

in effect, and it helps clubs to identify talent, to identify talent early and to identify talent at price points, which work out to be beneficial for the club because those players then get moved on. So why have they announced this deal with Hearts?

Well, it looks in addition to this that Tony Bloom is potentially, certainly in discussions from what I'm hearing in Edinburgh, to invest £10 million into Hearts to try to turn the club around. Hearts have not been having a good season. They've not been having a good few seasons on and off. And therefore, as a fan of the club, as a fan of Tony Bloom,

We don't know what he does, but clearly it is working. I think he has used this at other clubs. I think he's using this at Grimsby Town. There was supposedly a relationship with Ipswich Town as well. Remember, Ipswich Town went from League One to the Premier League in a season. But I think under the terms of the deal, Jamestown can only deal with one club in an individual division at the same time. And I suspect that Brighton get priority over Ipswich.

Two things, Kieran. It's not that long ago since Brighton and Hibbs had an arrangement, which I think was called an information sharing arrangement. So firstly, this is obviously very different. Secondly, during our live gig in Brighton a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned that access to Tony Bloom's laptop would possibly cost somebody money.

upwards of you you said the value of Brighton Football Club if they were bought by somebody else would be much much higher if it came with access to Tony Bloom's laptop so is this access to Tony Bloom's laptop or is this at a level far lower than than that holy grail

Yeah. I think if we deal with those questions in turn, yes, Brighton certainly did have some form of working relationship with Hibbs. I think that relationship has now been taken over by Bournemouth. Oh, right. So Foley, Bill Foley at Bournemouth, he's now got that relationship. And that was more of sort of coaching, sort of giving players opportunities and so on. So that sort of died a death relationship.

Yeah, I did say somewhat facetiously at the live show, somebody asked me to value Brighton. They did, yeah. And I would say if you get Bloom's commitment for five or ten years, even if it's just via Jamestown and so on, then I think you'd probably be looking at somewhere in the region of £600 million to £800 million. And without it, half of that figure, because without Brighton,

It blooms, whatever it is. And I've only spoken to the guy once in my life. And I've always said I'm very privileged. I work in the world of finance. I work on Wall Street in the summer. I've got all these smart professors around me. And I just consider myself to be street smart.

not super smart like they are. And then I listened to Tony Bloom speak for about 10 minutes and he's talking on a completely different level. And he makes things sound so simple and you go, I've just never considered that. So he is a true genius. He does understand the benefit of metrics and he's

um hearts will have access to this but you know brighton were fishing in a particular pool they were they were in that that five to ten million pound market in terms of when they found the likes of mcallister and kai shadow and so on if we're realistic hearts are looking in the 250 grand to perhaps one million pound bracket so it will be a different type of player for a different budget

Even I have to admit, Kieran, much as I would love to get Steve Parrish as a guest on this pod, if we could get Tony Bloom on, I would be very excited because he's... It's the way you describe him. He's becoming this mystical figure who is... Forget Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a lightweight amateur living on Mars. If Tony Bloom wants us to live on Mars, we'll live on Mars. It's fine. I can't tell you how annoying it is as well. It's really...

Why did he choose Brighton? When he threw a dart in a map of Southern England. Thank you to everyone who's donated to the pod via our Patreon page. If you'd like to make a small monthly contribution as well, that'd be very kind of you. It'll get you access to our chat community and our regular quizzes. Christmas coming up. That's hot.

I'm saying that with less enthusiasm as each pod goes by. You can do that at patreon.com slash priceoffootball because even I'm getting anxious waiting for this new announcement that I keep promising. I've been promising it for six weeks. I know it's coming, but even I'm on tenterhooks. If you've got a question you'd like answered on the show, email us at questions at priceoffootball.com. Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter X and you can find us on YouTube. Increasingly, you can find us on other social media sites. I know there's discussion online

is being had about a managed transfer over the next year or so. And if you'd like to buy our book, which is now on our own paperback, you can find details on the website, priceoffootball.com. We'll be back on Tuesday with our next questions pod. In the meantime, I shall hand you over to Mr Kieran Maguire for his customary farewell.

Well, as always, thank you for everybody who gets in contact. The fact that we do have a secret FA Cup unpacker and observer really tickled me. So I was very touched when you got in contact. And for all of those other people that give us information which we can sort of pass on in part, we very much appreciate that.

If you want to listen to the show interest-free, then Patreon is a route which you can go down. And if you just want to help us in general, give us a review. It really does make a difference in terms of our voice, in terms of what is an ever-increasing world of podcasts. And we're being squeezed by the big corporates as much as anybody, I can assure you. It doesn't matter what you say as far as...

The comments in your review go, so you could even say, you would rather have the show presented by Karen Brady than Kathy Burke. Oh, oh. That would be wonderful, wouldn't it? Oh, we've got to make that happen. Oh, my God, we have to make that one happen.

Oh, we're not political, Kieran, but I know who my money would be going on. That would be, we've genuinely got to make that one happen. I love Cathy DeBitts. Oh, she's brilliant. She's fantastic. She's, yeah, I'm on her side. Bye, everyone. Bye.

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