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The unique role of Chelsea Pitch Owners

Chelsea have an arrangement unique in football: Chelsea Pitch Owners (CPO), a supporters’ group which holds the freehold to the land on which Stamford Bridge, the club’s home stadium since they were founded in 1905, sits. The creation of CPO is part of the bigger story of how Chelsea almost lost their ground. For the uninitiated, here’s a brief summary: in 1992, at the end of a long, attritional battle with property developers who wanted to evict the club from a hugely valuable plot of land in south-west London, Chelsea’s chairman at the time, Ken Bates, and his lawyer Mark Taylor set out to devise a novel plan to ensure it could never happen again. Bates’ initial idea was to divide up the freehold for the pitch into 70,000 squares and sell them to supporters for £100 each, but that ran into problems with VAT (a tax on nearly all goods bought and sold within the European Union), land registry and corporation tax. Bates and Taylor realised the same result could be achieved by esta
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Shareholder loans face new scrutiny

Shareholder loans are money loaned to a club by their shareholders. They amount to a form of funding, a means for owners to inject cash into the football project without seeking equity in return. Typically these are long-term arrangements, often free of interest payments.   Following the recent legal case involving Manchester City and the Premier League, they are coming under more scrutiny in terms of APT rules. And clubs are certainly fond of them. Fourteen of the 20 Premier League teams in the 2022-23 season had shareholder loans recorded in their most recent set of accounts and City’s legal team were only too happy to highlight the extent of their use during this case. It was cited that £1.5billion ($1.96bn) out of £4bn total borrowings across the division — 37 per cent — were through shareholder loans. “The main motivation (behind shareholder loans) is that it’s an easier mechanism for an owner getting their money back,” says Chris Weatherspoon, an accountant and financial anal

Ajax find life more of a challenge

Ajax supporters could probably find some choice words to describe the club’s 2023/24 season, though the board opted for “disappointing” in the recently published annual report. This was completely understandable, given that Ajax slumped to fifth place in the Eredivisie, while “another sporting low point” came when they crashed out to amateur club USV Hercules in the second round of the KNVB Cup. Despite only competing in the Europa League, they still failed to get out of the group, thus dropping down to the Conference League, where they were eliminated by Aston Villa in the last 16. As the club pointed out, financial prospects are often driven by sporting results, so the lack of success last season has also been reflected in the bottom line.   As a result, Ajax went from an impressive €55m pre-tax profit to a €13m loss in 2023/24, a massive €68m deterioration. This was largely due to revenue falling by €44m (23%) from €196m to €152m, while profit from player sales decreased by €3

New Europe opportunity for leading Welsh clubs

As part of a shake-up of the domestic game in Wales, plans are afoot for Cardiff, Swansea, Wrexham and Newport to enter the Welsh League Cup, alongside the current Cymru Premier (Welsh Premier League) clubs. The winners, if the proposal is agreed by the Football Association (FA), Football Association of Wales (FAW) and UEFA, the European game’s governing body, would compete at continental level in the following season’s Conference League. For Phil Parkinson, the Wrexham manager, the prospect is an exciting one. “To bring European football back to Wrexham would be amazing,” he says. “Great to test yourself against teams from different countries around Europe. Be fantastic to have that opportunity.” Speak to those pushing for change and there’s a sense it could be given the go-ahead before the end of this calendar year, meaning Cardiff, Swansea, Wrexham and Newport would enter next season’s Welsh League Cup, and its winners would enter the 2026-27  Conference League, UEFA’s third-tie

Bournemouth owner bids for Portuguese club

Bournemouth owner Bill Foley is in talks to buy Portuguese club Moreirense.  Foley, 79, is the managing partner of Black Knight Football Club, the group of investors who bought Bournemouth in December 2022 and then acquired a 30 per cent stake in French side Lorient a month later. Black Knight then bought Auckland, an Australian Professional Leagues (APL) expansion franchise in New Zealand’s largest city before buying a minority stake in Scottish Premiership side Hibernian. The group have been evaluating the option of buying a Portuguese club and had been in talks with Lisbon-based Casa Pia, but conversations with their owner Robert Platek broke down. Foley explained to The Athletic why he does not mind saying that Bournemouth are at the top of the Black Knight tree, an admission that has caused some annoyance in France.   “I’m just being honest,” he said. “Many players in Ligue 1 want to move to the Premier League, and we want to give them that opportunity. “We want Lorient t

City win or score draw?

The issue with Monday afternoon’s verdict from City’s legal challenge to the Premier League over associated party transaction (APT) rules is that there was room for both sides to claim victory. Even trained legal professionals could not reach a consensus on who had got the better of things, if anybody. On Monday, a Premier League statement said that City were “unsuccessful in the majority of its challenge. Significantly, the tribunal determined that the APT rules are necessary, pursued a legitimate objective and were put in place to ensure that the profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) are effective, thereby supporting and delivering sporting integrity and sustainability in the Premier League”. City had released their own statement highlighting the five significant blows they had landed on the league, and actually provided a direct link to page 164 of the independent panel’s document, which summarises the independent panel’s findings to back up their stance — although it is

City win legal battle with Premier League

A legal; ruling is seen to favour Manchester City over the Premier League, although the league also sees it as a victory losing on just some points of detail and says it will continue with business as usual:  https://www.premierleague.com/news/4144828 The key facts are: ·          Rules deemed unlawful because they did not take into consideration interest-free loans from shareholders to clubs ·          Likely change in the regulations could lead to City striking more lucrative deals and seeking damages from the Premier League ·          Clubs with high levels of borrowing now in danger of breaching Profitability and Sustainability Rules ·          Arsenal, City’s title rivals, have borrowing of more than £200million made up entirely of shareholder loans ·          Premier League’s stance was backed by Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, West Ham United, Brentford, Bournemouth, Fulham, and Wolverhampton Wanderers Manchester City have inflicted a potentially damaging defeat on the