Usmanov

[Saint Domingo]

We've been playing by the existing rules.
The goalposts have just been moved.

Which is kind of the roundabout point I’ve been making. We get 10 mill from Cazoo in shirt sponsorship. Leicester are in 7th with 15 mill. The lowest of the top 6 get 40 mill.

Now 10 mill might be all we’re able to get from a ‘none related’ party on the open market in these current financial conditions. Yet if related parties are now allowed to invest but under certain guidelines to ensure fair market value, what’s to stop USM or Megafon sponsoring the shirt for 39 million a year, and if challenged they would rightly claim that it’s the 7th highest shirt sponsorship in the league, an increase in one place on the previous deal. Difficult for anyone to argue it’s not fair value, even though we would never get that figure on the open market.

They’re trying to stop Saudi Arabia sponsoring Newcastle for 200 million a season (and the players it would let them buy within FFP for that amount), but it might inadvertently open the door to some of the mid table teams to flex their owners muscles a bit more.

 

[Toffeelover]

Which is kind of the roundabout point I’ve been making. We get 10 mill from Cazoo in shirt sponsorship. Leicester are in 7th with 15 mill. The lowest of the top 6 get 40 mill.

Now 10 mill might be all we’re able to get from a ‘none related’ party on the open market in these current financial conditions. Yet if related parties are now allowed to invest but under certain guidelines to ensure fair market value, what’s to stop USM or Megafon sponsoring the shirt for 39 million a year, and if challenged they would rightly claim that it’s the 7th highest shirt sponsorship in the league, an increase in one place on the previous deal. Difficult for anyone to argue it’s not fair value, even though we would never get that figure on the open market.

They’re trying to stop Saudi Arabia sponsoring Newcastle for 200 million a season (and the players it would let them buy within FFP for that amount), but it might inadvertently open the door to some of the mid table teams to flex their owners muscles a bit more.

How much do Villa get I wonder?

 

[davek]

Interesting. I think in the top club’s scramble to stop Newcastle coming in with sponsorship deals worth 100s of millions they might actually have opened the door to someone like Usmanov putting a lot of money into us through various means as it could be argued to be fair market value.

We’re coming from such a low baseline. For example if we could argue that we had a short sponsor deal from an Usmanov company that was the 7th highest in the PL, that would still be massively higher than what we have now, and how could anyone claim it’s not fair value?

Exactly.

I'd like to see the fine detail of it, and I dont know when it comes into effect. but if the owners of Everton are of a mind to turn the taps on again it seems there's a mechanism to now do it.

 

[Martin Alvito]

They wont want to aggravate the clubs who threatened a breakaway. The rest of us will benefit through that.

Fair market value is where it gets interesting, but I cant see the PL in a Covid hit football industry haggling over definitions too much, as long as it's not taking the piss.

Remember that the money game has relative winners and losers. A zero-rules environment does not benefit us, unless you legitimately believe that a shady Uzbek multi-billionaire is going to be our knight in shining armor. That one's a bridge too far for me.

A zero-rules environment favors the sides backed by sovereign wealth; a high-rules environment favors sides like United, Liverpool and Arsenal. We probably want something in-between; the question is where we can find points of agreement with the sovereign wealth sides, and where we can find them with the old money, to put ourselves in the best position possible under the circumstances.

 

[Quadvod]

Couldn’t Usmanov have already done this over recent seasons if he wanted to though??

Exactly- I’m no longer convinced he’s the power behind it all - we’ve just had a transfer window where we spent the sum total of nothing, leaving us in a perilous state where a few injuries puts us in a relegation scrap. Could have been somewhat alleviated with a decent shirt sleeve sponsor

 

[davek]

Remember that the money game has relative winners and losers. A zero-rules environment does not benefit us, unless you legitimately believe that a shady Uzbek multi-billionaire is going to be our knight in shining armor. That one's a bridge too far for me.

A zero-rules environment favors the sides backed by sovereign wealth; a high-rules environment favors sides like United, Liverpool and Arsenal. We probably want something in-between; the question is where we can find points of agreement with the sovereign wealth sides, and where we can find them with the old money, to put ourselves in the best position possible under the circumstances.

Uzmanov / Moshiri's strategy for the stadium has to be going into it with a good team. That requires spending again. I dont see them backing away from that.

But in the long term we'll be looking to become a 'soveriegn wealth' backed club anyway. That's where we are headed when this stadium is in place and our curent owners will find willing buyers if that's what they're looking for.

 

[S of S]

Naming rights on The Old Lady would not be surprising, with the countdown to her last season and so on. There will be huge exposure in the media, you can see the sky darlings wheeling out ex players at every opportunity during the last season to reminisce!

 

[catcherintherye]

Which is kind of the roundabout point I’ve been making. We get 10 mill from Cazoo in shirt sponsorship. Leicester are in 7th with 15 mill. The lowest of the top 6 get 40 mill.

Now 10 mill might be all we’re able to get from a ‘none related’ party on the open market in these current financial conditions. Yet if related parties are now allowed to invest but under certain guidelines to ensure fair market value, what’s to stop USM or Megafon sponsoring the shirt for 39 million a year, and if challenged they would rightly claim that it’s the 7th highest shirt sponsorship in the league, an increase in one place on the previous deal. Difficult for anyone to argue it’s not fair value, even though we would never get that figure on the open market.

They’re trying to stop Saudi Arabia sponsoring Newcastle for 200 million a season (and the players it would let them buy within FFP for that amount), but it might inadvertently open the door to some of the mid table teams to flex their owners muscles a bit more.

There's a lot of truth in this.

If Newcastle just do the above, then the PL is going to find it very hard to uphold any rule around Everton not getting say a 100m sponsorship. People seem to forget, it won't be Jurgen Klopp deciding but an impartial court filled with people who understand business not the weird world of football.

I think the aforementioned clause got binned, probably because the Saudi's will have hinted they will take it to court, and secondly the PL will have been advised by lawyers the "related parties" rule won't stand up in court.

I mean, we could completely reasonably say that we are the 4th most successful team and one of only 6 every presents in the league, so a sponsorship in the range of 4-6th would be wholly reasonable from a legal standpoint. From a legal perspective, we have been greatly underselling our brand, and this would just reflect a move to a "fair value" position.

I hope so anyway. You see Usmanov is involved in negotiating the deal for this left back so I would not be surprised if a 50m a year deal was announced somewhere.

Remember when we announced what was a 15m option on the stadium, that was passed through as fine as well. So a ground sponsorship at would be well above that to actually sponsor the stadium, which the PL have tacitly agreed too.

It will likely lead to some owners wanting to put money in, and others not. It's one of them things. For me, it should be welcomed as a far fairer way of governing football.

 

[catcherintherye]

Uzmanov / Moshiri's strategy for the stadium has to be going into it with a good team. That requires spending again. I dont see them backing away from that.

But in the long term we'll be looking to become a 'soveriegn wealth' backed club anyway. That's where we are headed when this stadium is in place and our curent owners will find willing buyers if that's what they're looking for.

The information I have, is that the Russo-UK relations are thawing behind closed doors a bit. I suspect Usmanov may get more involved.

And yes, I wouldn't be surprised if Usmanov/Moshiri became minority shareholders to either an even wealthier, or Chinese investment group to come in when the stadium moves forward. The club, the area and the city remain an undervalued asset which will be very attractive to that sort of investor, who for the most part have avoided the big "blue chip" names (such as United, Liverpool, Arsenal etc as where is the fun in that?).

 

[BirkenheadBlue]

Remember when we announced what was a 15m option on the stadium, that was passed through as fine as well. So a ground sponsorship at would be well above that to actually sponsor the stadium, which the PL have tacitly agreed too.

£30m, wasn’t it?

 

[BrendanGOT]

How much do Villa get I wonder?

6m I believe

 

[Gardocki]

Fairly certain he has where posssible

It’s been possible to get higher value for sponsorships recently if we wanted to do a related party deals. It should have been possible to get a shirt sleeve sponsor. Not sure I’ve heard any reason why we haven’t.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Uzmanov / Moshiri's strategy for the stadium has to be going into it with a good team. That requires spending again. I dont see them backing away from that.

But in the long term we'll be looking to become a 'soveriegn wealth' backed club anyway. That's where we are headed when this stadium is in place and our curent owners will find willing buyers if that's what they're looking for.

OK, but "good" is also relative. If we spend, and City and Newcastle spend in an unlimited way, we still will not be "good". We need to chart a course that lets us turn the spigot on, but also that precludes us from getting buried in spending.

It's easy to make the mistake of seeing the big six clubs as a monolithic entity with mutual interests when they're really not; Tottenham's interests look vastly different from those of City.

I don't know that Moshiri et al will be looking to sell to, say, the UAE, but if you advanced the thesis that football is likely to become a game where only the 100 richest or so individuals worldwide can keep up with the nation-state owners, I wouldn't disagree.

 

[Legend78]

Yeah I get that. But the difference in wealth now seems an order of magnitude different - and its no longer about steady building off success and more of a lottery as to which sugar daddy you get on a whim. Its nothing to do with the pitch anymore.

Just think the footballing landscape has shifted now.. City and Chelsea are now the biggest Clubs in the country... would go as far as to say I can’t see historically big clubs like Arsenal.. Liverpool and Spurs winning the Premier League for a very very long time... even the biggest club in the world... United are struggling to stay in touch with the big two.. I think you may get the odd season where a Leicester City or Liverpool type club might sneek a league win but only because City and Chelsea have had a one off poor season like when those two won there solitary titles...

 

[chrismpw]

Just think the footballing landscape has shifted now.. City and Chelsea are now the biggest Clubs in the country... would go as far as to say I can’t see historically big clubs like Arsenal.. Liverpool and Spurs winning the Premier League for a very very long time... even the biggest club in the world... United are struggling to stay in touch with the big two.. I think you may get the odd season where a Leicester City or Liverpool type club might sneek a league win but only because City and Chelsea have had a one off poor season like when those two won there solitary titles...

Agreed.

Which makes football very, very, very, very boring.

How long before people stop showing up?