The Political Economy of Football V2

UK tax authorities probed Manchester City in 2018 over whether it used complex arrangements to underpay tax, nearly a decade before the club was found to have breached the Premier League’s financial rules, the Financial Times has exclusively revealed.  HM Revenue & Customs opened a civil investigation into Man City’s tax affairs in the wake of the publication of a trove of leaked internal emails by Der Spiegel in 2018, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The emails prompted a Premier League investigation, launched in December of that year, into whether the club had manipulated its accounts and disguised funding from owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, as commercial revenue. Last month, an independent commission found that Man City had artificially inflated its financial position by more than £900mn between 2009 and 2018 by arranging “sham” commercial deals. The club allegedly paid former manager Roberto Mancini thro...

Crystal Palace have hired Raine Group as they seek investment in the club at a valuation of £900million.  The investment banking firm Raine will handle the process as they did when John Textor hired them to sell Eagle Football’s 43 per cent stake in the club, concluding a deal in July last year with the New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. Palace — owned by chairman Steve Parish, Johnson and fellow U.S. businessmen Josh Harris and David Blitzer — are looking for ways to fund the redeveopment of the club’s Selhurst Park stadium and any external investment would likely contribute towards that. Parish, told The New York Times   last week that starting meaningful and major work on the stadium had taken longer than anticipated and that was in part due to finances not being in place yet, instead being redirected towards a playing squad which saw 11 new arrivals in the summer.  “We’re looking at different ways of funding, but that will be in place,” he said. “We’re workin...

As a supporter of another Championship club, I get mildly irritated by the way in which The New York Times coverage of the highly competitive division focuses on Wrexham.  But I suppose I am just jealous. Is Wrexham a model for other clubs?  Or does it represent an unwelcome Disneyfication of football (soccer)?   In the wake of events surrounding Manchester City, the answer might be a bit different from a few weeks ago.  But, as Simon Kuper has argued, why not let foreign owners spend as much as they like on a franchise, particularly if the club is located in an area with economic and social challenges. Wrexham may be just 50 miles from Manchester, the so-called capital of the north, but it is a different world. The trend of Americans taking over British football is long established — two-thirds of Premier League clubs are now at least part-owned by US investors. But Wrexham’s new owners added an improbable twist. Using a documentary series that mixes an underdo...

Don’t think that it’s just in England that clubs are instigating legal action against each other.  In Spain the tensions between metropolitan Spain and Catalonia form the geopolitical backdrop to tensions between Real and Barca.  My great-granddaughter is taught in Valnecios which is really a variant of Catalan which in turn is closer to French than Spanish. UEFA says it has received “a substantial amount of documents” from Real Madrid in relation to Barcelona’s payments to a former Spanish referees chief.   European football’s governing body released a statement on Thursday confirming the documents will be “assessed” by its “ethics and disciplinary inspectors” as part of an “ongoing investigation”. Payments totalling €8.4million (£7.2m; $9.4m at current rates), made by Barcelona between 2001 and 2018 to former Spanish referees committee vice-president Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, first came to light in February 2023. Back in June 2023, UEFA’s investigators decided...

Arsenal have ruled out a significant expansion of Emirates Stadium which would have potentially increased its capacity to 80,000. The club have spent more than two years exploring ways to upgrade their stadium, which opened in 2006 and has a capacity of 60,704, but have been put off by costs and logistical difficulties. Any significant works may have also required a temporary move to an alternative home ground, leading the club to instead pursue a “continued evolution” of the stadium, rather than a grander revamp. The Emirates was the biggest Premier League ground in London when Arsenal moved from Highbury 20 years ago but its size, facilities and earning potential have been surpassed by Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium, which opened in 2019, has a larger capacity of 62,850 and hosts other events such as NFL and rugby matches and music concerts. Arsenal told a supporters’ meeting that they would make smaller changes to the stadium. “We shared a commitment to the continued evolutio...

Britain's leading business paper the Financial Times reflects on the week's events at Manchester City in its Scoreboard newsletter. 'Legal experts have billed City’s chances of overturning the verdict itself a serious uphill climb. But with the club insisting it will pursue all avenues available, many expect the case to run and run. One lawyer described this week’s events as being more like the “end of the beginning” rather than anything approaching an ending. This is all pretty miserable for the Premier League. City, after all, are currently top of the league. Bookmakers currently rate the club as the second most likely to be crowned champions and the fourth most likely to be relegated. The uncertainty hanging over the competition will weigh heavily. In the short term, it’s hard to see much of a knock to the Premier League’s business. If anything, the soap opera may well make the action on the pitch even more enticing for subscription-paying fans. But if every result again...