Mike Ashley’s crusade against what he sees as a cosy establishment in the football-kit market is now into its third decade. His latest target is Newcastle United, the club he owned for 14 tumultuous years.
In a claim filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) in
March, Sports Direct argued that Newcastle’s decision to prevent it from
selling the club’s kit for next season was “transparently designed” to reduce
price competition to the benefit of the club’s own shops and to the detriment
of consumers.
The new arrangements are coming into effect after Newcastle
signed a new £30 million-a-year kit contract with Adidas. Sports Direct argues
that the club is abusing its dominant position by opting to sell the kits
exclusively through its own retail operations and through JD Sports, Sports
Direct’s arch-rival.
Now the battle is heating up. Ashley’s first broadside was
knocked back last month when the CAT rejected Sports Direct’s request for an
injunction to force Newcastle to supply its kit for the 2024-25 season. The
tribunal ruled that the club was not guilty of abusing its dominant position by
failure to supply, and then denied Sports Direct the right to appeal.
Undeterred, the retailer is now taking the case to a higher
court, the Court of Appeal, with a hearing expected in the next fortnight. And
there was a further twist last week when, at Newcastle’s request, the CAT added
JD Sports as a co-defendant. JD Sports said it disagreed with the decision and
was seeking to have it reversed.
Ashley, 59, got wind that Newcastle was planning to freeze
Sports Direct out of shirt sales last October, when Adidas representatives let
the news slip during an informal chat at the bar with the retailer’s head of
football.
Ashley subsequently discussed the issue with Amanda
Staveley, the financier who brokered the controversial £300 million Saudi-led
takeover of Newcastle in 2021. Staveley, according to Sports Direct, said
Newcastle was reluctant to supply it with kits out of concern it would discount
them and compromise the club’s ability to maintain higher prices.
Newcastle has enormous financial resources at its disposal
following the takeover, yet to afford the top players it desires the club must
boost its commercial income to ensure it complies with the Premier League’s
financial fair play regulations.
Sports Direct has marched to the top of the sports industry
by ruthlessly undercutting rivals on everything from tennis rackets to
tracksuits. Yet Ashley has long believed that retailers shy away from
discounting football shirts, which can retail for as much as £125, out of fear
that the big manufacturers will stop supplying them.
Sources close to Ashley insist the legal action against
Newcastle is not motivated by an animus towards the club or Staveley herself
and that he would have brought the case against any big club seeking to
withhold shirts from Sports Direct. Yet the tycoon’s turbulent relationship
with the club lends the dispute added spice.
“The reputation of Sports Direct with the Newcastle fans is,
for want of a better word, toxic,” the club’s lawyers argued to the tribunal.
“The unpopularity of Mr Ashley and Sports Direct with fans was so bad that it
led to boycotts, not just of Sports Direct but of Newcastle season tickets.
There were protests, all manner of problems.”
Regardless of the outcome of its injunction application for
next season, Sports Direct intends to sue for damages arising from market abuse
and obtain an injunction securing future supply of Newcastle kits.
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