The Political Economy of Football V2

Representatives of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will fly into the North East next week for a crunch “off-site” meeting about Newcastle United. In previous years these meetings have taken place in the grandiose surroundings of Alnwick Castle, as captured by Amazon’s fly-on-the-wall series,  We Are Newcastle United .   It is not known where the meeting will take place this time but the chief executive, Darren Eales, is expected to be there, as is the sporting director, Paul Mitchell, and Jacobo Solis, recently appointed to the club’s board of directors. There are two potential plans left on the table. One is to stay on the present site and expand the Gallowgate End to a capacity of 60,000 (it cannot go bigger because of restrictions to the East Stand). The other is to build a new stadium, a giant bowl structure, beyond the Leazes End, in Leazes Park, with a capacity of 70,000. The Times understands that senior figures have already been walked around the potential ...

Alan Shearer is not slow to express his opinions on Match of the Day and now he has told The Athletic that his beloved Newcastle United are drifting.   ‘As a team, they’ve gone stale and as a club, they’ve stalled, robbing them of the extraordinary momentum that was fuel for a couple of years. That rate of progress was never sustainable in this frustrating world of financial restriction — don’t get me started — and it was never going to be a journey free of potholes, but as a columnist and fan, it does feel like the great, post-takeover “project” has reached a crossroads. Off it, there are legitimate questions to be asked and how about these for starters: what’s happening with the chief executive?      What’s happening with the stadium? What’s happening with the training ground? What’s happening with new signings? In turn, Newcastle would have some legitimate answers, like due process, not rushing huge decisions and the millstone of profit and sustai...

Newcastle want to become the best-supported overseas club in Saudi Arabia. Senior club officials know that the quickest way to unlock the vast wealth of Newcastle’s owners is to grow commercial revenue, raising their financial fair play ceiling.  The Saudi-themed change shirts of the last two seasons are part of the same drive. Premier League clubs have been wary of this strategy — though their motivation has appeared to be based more on competitive than moral reasons — implementing rules to try to stymie any sudden injection of Saudi capital.   Simply put, the big six don’t want to become a big seven. This includes rushing through legislation on related-party transactions, preventing outsized sponsorship deals with Saudi companies, while UEFA introduced regulations ensuring every transfer would be “fair market value”, stopping PIF-owned teams in the SPL from paying Newcastle excessive transfer fees for unwanted players. Newcastle’s new shirt sponsor Sela,...