The Political Economy of Football V2

Shortly to receive the Royal Assent, here is a fan friendly guide to the Football Governance Bill which sets up the football regulator, opposed by many Premier League clubs and the league itskf:  https://thefsa.org.uk/news/whats-in-the-football-governance-bill/ It's step forward, a useful reform, but not a revolution.   Money will still talk.

Tomorrow night, the global champions of club football will be crowned in MetLife Stadium, the culmination of Fifa’s new month-long tournament.  Either Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain or Conference League title-holders Chelsea will win international bragging rights (of a kind) for the next four years. But regardless of the outcome in New Jersey on Sunday, the competition has been a huge financial boon for Chelsea and its private equity owners Clearlake Capital. Since the £2.5bn takeover in 2022, the club has been on a record-breaking spending spree. According to estimates from Transfermarkt, Chelsea have forked out €1.6bn in the last three years on new signings, considerably more than any other team in Europe. The pace of additions has not slowed. More than €200mn has been committed this summer to bring the likes of João Pedro and Liam Delap to Stamford Bridge. To help finance all this, Clearlake and a group of minority shareholders led by club chair Todd Boehly h...

The Football Governance Bill should receive the Royal Assent later this month, having overcome resistance by Premier League clubs.  We will have to wait and see how effective it is in dealing not just with rogue owners, but those out of their depth, Cardiff and Hull offering examples of this problem. Hull have been told by the English Football League (EFL) that their failure to maintain transfer payments would result in a penalty preventing them from spending money on new players until January 2027. Hull were quick to confirm their intention to appeal last Friday, citing misunderstandings over the £1m owed to Aston Villa after loaning Louie Barry in January, but there are bubbling concerns over the club’s financial health in the Championship. Now,  The Athletic  has revealed: Hull had future commitments of almost £22m to clubs for players signed under Ilicali at the end of May A debt of close to £3m is owed to former owner Ehab Allam Seve...

Crystal Palace being denied entry to this coming season’s Europa League is a “terrible injustice” and a “bad day for football”, the club’s chairman Steve Parish has said. A UEFA panel has recommended that Palace are denied entry to the competition after it found that the club breached the governing body’s rules on multi-club ownership. The south London club are now set to compete in the third-tier Conference League but intend to lodge an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Nottingham Forest, who finished seventh in the Premier League and originally qualified for the Conference League, could now replace them in the Europa League. UEFA’s rules state that no individual or legal entity can have “control or influence” over more than one club participating in a UEFA club competition, and European football’s governing body must be satisfied that the respective clubs are separate entities to maintain their tournaments’ integrity. Palace’s issue stems from Eagle Footba...

In just over a month, Barcelona will return to the Camp Nou for the first time since starting a €1.5billion (£1.3bn; $1.8bn) refurbishment project two years ago. At least, that’s what the club is hoping. Work on Barca’s stadium has already suffered several setbacks, with an original return date of November 2024 long since passed. Now the club is targeting August 10 — when Barca play their traditional season-opening friendly match, the Joan Gamper Trophy — for the big day. That date represents a fifth rescheduling of the team’s expected return. Delays to the project have already forced Barca to play at the city’s Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys much longer than expected, but the option of starting a third consecutive season there appears to have been ruled out. They no longer have permission to play at the ground, nor do they intend to apply for it. Work on the Camp Nou began in June 2023, with the aim of modernising the ground while increasing its capacity to 105,000, which would b...

Former Wales international Gareth Bale is fronting a consortium of US investors that is reportedly looking to purchase Cardiff City. As well as being one of the greatest ever Welsh footballers, Bale is also famously a son of Cardiff, so this story ticks many boxes. The Times reported that the consortium would be prepared to offer £40m for Cardiff, though it is debatable whether such a price would be acceptable to current owner, Vincent Tan, who has ploughed much higher sums into the club since his arrival in 2010. The Supporters Trust clearly thinks that the owner shoulders much of the blame for the club’s current predicament, “Relegation in all honesty has been coming since the 2021/22 season and the failure to address fundamental required changes from the top down has now come home to roost.” There was “a small marginal increase” in Cardiff’s pre-tax loss from £11.4m to £11.7m in 2023/24. Revenue fell £3.5m (13%) from £26.7m to £23.2m, while profit from player sales dropped fro...