The Week In Football Business #3
A famous old team enters admin, Wolves get takeover off, La Liga embarrassed
For Liverpool fans, the success last week in the Champions League at Eintracht Frankfurt aside, the past few weeks have been pretty miserable.
Four defeats in a row in the Premier League, and five in their last six in all competitions means that it is hard to just throw out the old ‘blip’ line, it seems a little more than that, and what is required to remedy the situation needing Arne Slot and his charges to dig deeper to find the answer.
The answers to the big questions relating to Liverpool’s form don’t lie on these pages, sadly. But, what I can offer with this week’s The Week In Football Business is some nuggets of football finance information from across the globe that might take the minds of Reds fans off the actual football (the part we’re all supposed to enjoy) for a little while. Well, however long it takes you to speed read your way through to the end of this week’s instalment.
As ever, there has been plenty going on with the game behind the game in the past seven days. Some of it pretty bleak as it relates to the future of one of English football’s most famous clubs, and other bits seeing grand plans to take competitive European football to the United States landed with a bloody nose.
Let’s dive into what’s been the week in football business.
WEDNESDAY BLUES
For every reason why the Premier League and its CEO Richard Masters might push back on the idea of the independent regulator for English football, the very future of the finest pyramid system in all of world football may well depend on it in years to come.
In my time covering the business of football I’ve written plenty on the financial cost of missing out on the Champions League or falling short in the bid to make it to the latter stages of European club football’s greatest prize.
I’ve also covered in great depth the impact that it has financially when clubs fall through the Premier League trapdoor into the Championship. The parachute system we have in place is designed so as to provide a softer landing for clubs exiting the world’s most lucrative domestic league, and over three years those relegated clubs get financial assistance on a sliding scale. That system, while offering some critical financial protection for relegated clubs, also has thrown up the very real phenomenon of the ‘yo-yo club’. Those clubs that just bounce between the top two tiers because the parachute payments mean that they have greater resource.
But when you miss the boat and success doesn’t come, and the financial burden of trying to live the dream becomes too much to bear, that is when we see real crisis. Leeds United, Portsmouth, Nottingham Forest, Ipswich Town, Birmingham City. While some of those clubs have made it back to the promised land it was after decades of trying and failing.
Sheffield Wednesday is another grand old name. At the end of the Premier League’s inaugural season in 1992/93, Wednesday had the sixth best attendance in the country. The four-time English champions and three-time FA Cup winners remain one of this country’s most famous clubs, but these are dark days indeed for the blue and white half of the Steel City.
Last week saw Wednesday placed into administration. After 11 years at the helm, the deeply unpopular owner Dejphon Chansiri finally had operational control removed, with debts at the rock-bottom Championship club spiralling and debts to HMRC in relation to unpaid tax sitting at around the £1m mark.
The club had already been hit with EFL charges for failing to pay its players on time, and with some fans choosing to boycott games until such time that Chansiri departed, the move into administration, which Chanshiri decided upon last week, while it brings with it a 12-point deduction to leave the Owls on minus-six points, those boycotting fans have now pledged to return as focus moves to trying to find a willing buyer to take on the beleaguered club.
Kris Wigfield, joint administrator and managing partner at Begbies Traynor said: “The joint administrators have taken over the running of the club with immediate effect to protect the interests of creditors, and to ensure Sheffield Wednesday can continue operating while we seek a new owner as swiftly as possible.
“Like many football clubs, it has been trading at a significant loss for several years, with those losses historically funded by the former owner Mr Chansiri.
“Due to increased financial pressure on the club, the owner has chosen to place the club and the stadium company into administration which will enable us to market the club and the stadium as a whole, which is great news for supporters of the club.”
The Wednesday players had not been in receipt of their wages on the day they were due for five of the last seven months. But with the club sitting at the bottom of the table, and 18 points from safety, the players reaffirmed their commitment to the cause for the supporters.
“To all fans of our club. We, the players, want to say directly to you, our supporters, how much we appreciate the lengths you have gone to, to protect this great club that we all love so much.
“Whilst we fully understand your stance and the measures you have took to force change, as a group, not having you in the ground has been felt by all of us.
“After what has been a period of division and a feeling of ‘disconnect’ between the club, the players and the fans, we now hope this is the time we can all come back together under the badge and enjoy our football again!
“So we ask you, starting tomorrow against Oxford, please come back to Hillsborough and cheer the team on. Let’s make the ground a place for teams to fear as we do everything we can to get the points we are going to so desperately need.
“Think back to the comeback against Peterborough, wins against Arsenal and Newcastle. That was you in the stands as much as us on the pitch.
“We won’t give up and we ask you not to give up on us. Together we are stronger. Together we can fight.
“The players.”
For one of the famous names of the English game, here’s hoping for some positive news in the coming weeks. To protect clubs such as Wednesday is the exact reason why an independent regulator is required for the greater good of the game in this country.
TEXTOR BIDS FOR AN ENGLISH CLUB…AGAIN
I wonder how long it might be before it is easier to list the clubs that John Textor hasn’t been linked to than the ones he has.
The saga at Crystal Palace that played out over the summer, where Olympique Lyonnais owner Textor eventually sold his shareholding in the club so that they could compete in Europe, but the where the delay in doing so saw them miss the March deadline and the FA Cup winners for 2025 demoted from the UEFA Europa League to the Europa Conference League, was one of the many twists and turns of Textor’s time in the English game.
Through his Eagle Holdings company, which he had aimed to float on the New York Stock Exchange, majority ownership of an English side has long been seen as the play. Eagle already owns Lyon, Botafogo in Brazil and RWDM Brussels in Belgium. Given the desire to see the pathway for South American talent to Europe, and the plan to float Eagle on the NYSE, Textor needs an English club to replace what he had in Palace.
He has been linked with plenty of clubs over the past 18 months, including declaring his intention to bid for Everton while he held a significant minority stake in a rival Premier League team. He has also been linked to the likes of Queen’s Park Rangers, Charlton Athletic, Watford, Derby County and financially stricken Sheffield Wednesday.
The latest development came via a report in the Athletic, where Textor was reported to have submitted an offer to Wolverhampton Wanderers owners Fosun International to take over the club, the price point being in the region of £410m.
That bid was made in the same week Textor appeared in courtrooms across three jurisdictions. On Monday, a Florida judge rejected his request to move a $93m shareholder dispute with Iconic Sports to the US, citing Eagle Football’s UK registration and contract terms requiring English jurisdiction. On Friday last, a London court refused to dismiss the case, which will now proceed to trial next year.
Earlier in the month, Textor was in Lausanne at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, contesting a $6m transfer instalment dispute with Atlanta United and Major League Soccer over Thiago Almada. He is also challenging MLS’s single-entity structure, where the league owns contracts centrally and not the clubs, arguing it denies players their share of transfer fees.
Elsewhere, he has lost two cases in Belgium involving RWDM’s former owner Thierry Dailly, and remains in dispute with ex-Botafogo manager Bruno Lage, who incidentally used to manage Wolves.
But the bold American billionaire, who made his fortune through over-the-top streaming service FuboTV, an early participant in the streaming wars, hasn’t been shy about wanting to acquire a majority stake in an English club, and also about the state of regulation in the English game.
At the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in 2024 I heard first hand what Textor thought.
“I hear ‘what about sustainability or if a multi-club goes bankrupt?’ It’s the free market, clubs will be clubs and fans will be fans. There is always going to be somebody who will pick up a club.
“I’m an anglophile in my love of football, I’ve been watching small games here for years; Stockport County, Leyton Orient. Has this really been a problem that everybody’s going bankrupt? No. The biggest problem is the sustainability issue is a fraudulent issue.
“Somebody shows up and tells (Evangelos) Marinakis (Nottingham Forest owner), who is an incredible guy in terms of resources and assets, and says you got to fit your competitive club between this cap on revenues. ‘We know you have it, but we are worried about you, Mr Marinakis, don’t spend it! You lost £105m over the last three years so now we are going to put you back in the second division.
“Is that sustainability or is that anti-competitive behaviour?
“If somebody tops me out and says I can only spend 70% of revenues, but I’m already big and people love my brand all over the world, and I’ve got to find a way to put Crystal Palace against Erling Haaland, and if you have an injury, Palace, you don’t get to pull a £50m player off the bench, because you can’t afford to have that player on your bench,’ that is not sport. Is anyone really having fun with this?
“I think it would be great if someone like Sheffield United, one of the great champions of our past, had the chance to win the English title again. It’s broken.”
LA LIGA GETS PIE ON ITS FACE OVER USA GAME
A couple of weeks back I had written about how Spanish football’s top tier had struck a landmark deal, one that European football’s governing body UEFA had ‘reluctantly’ accepted.
The idea was for Barcelona and Villarreal to face off in a competitive game in Miami, Florida in December. It was all agreed. The old side of Inter Miami hero Lionel Messi coming to his new stomping ground, the optics of it would have been a marketing dream for both sides.
So, too, would it have been great news for Relevent Sports, the US-based company fronting the project and backed by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. Relevent has long pushed for European league fixtures to be staged abroad, and the December match at the Hard Rock Stadium would have marked a first: a competitive La Liga game played on foreign soil.
But while there remains plans for Serie A to host a similar project in Perth, Australia, in January, with AC Milan and Como the teams to face off in a competitive league game, the plan for La Liga’s game has now collapsed.
La Liga confirmed the cancellation late on a Champions League night last week, citing “uncertainty in Spain” and insisting the project was essential to the league’s global growth, making the usual point of blaming the Premier League for simply being too lucrative and that plans such as this are the only way for other leagues to get a slice of the action. UEFA had already expressed discomfort, saying matches should be played “on home soil,” and the backlash from players and clubs proved decisive.
Real Madrid filed two formal complaints with Spain’s sports ministry. Atlético Madrid manager Diego Simeone questioned the sporting integrity of moving a home fixture thousands of miles away, and Real goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois said: “It’s not fair to change the rules mid-season without consulting us.”
Players across La Liga staged silent protests at kick-off last weekend, standing still for 15 seconds. Courtois later accused the league of trying to hide the protest in its broadcasts.
The match would have seen Villarreal give up home advantage against Barcelona, with Messi’s return to Miami used as the commercial hook. But the optics that once made the fixture attractive were ultimately outweighed by the optics of player unrest and fan alienation.
Relevent, in its own statement, said it had informed La Liga of the need to postpone, citing insufficient time to execute the event and begin ticket sales. Neither statement from Relevent or La Liga acknowledged the negative fan sentiment towards the plans, which mirror what major league sports such as the NBA, NFL and MLB have done in taking a selection of regular season games abroad.
The Premier League, which shelved its own “39th game” proposal back some 15, has been pressed on the issue and a potential change in stance as the league becomes ever more global, but so far it has shown no appetite to revisit the idea. Chief executive Richard Masters recently said there was “no need” to follow La Liga’s lead, given the league’s global strength.
AND THERE WE HAVE IT…
Another week in the books. A win for Spanish fans, if we’re looking at the positives, but a pretty bleak outlook for fans of Sheffield Wednesday.
We’ll keep across what’s been happening away from the pitch in relation to the beautiful game ready for another instalment of The Week In Football Business next week. Hopefully, by then, the Reds will have punched their ticket into the next round of the EFL Cup and got back to winning ways in the Premier League with a win over Aston Villa. Then, all it needs is a win over Real Madrid in the Champions League and all is right with the world.
Easy, right?