Business of Football: When will Saudi tournaments take place in an already creaking calendar?

To quote Noddy Holder, the new sponsor of Bridgnorth Spartans Under-7s Reds and lead singer of English glam rock band Slade, “It’s Christmas”… and that means presents.

So, with just four shopping days left until the big day, it was with impeccable timing that FIFA announced on Thursday that tickets for next summer’s Club World Cup are on sale.

The cheapest seats for the opening game on June 14 between Al Ahly and Inter Miami were $167 (£133) each, which would be steep for a summer friendly but is apparently the going rate for world-class sport in Florida, as those tickets were snapped up within half an hour, leaving latecomers to weigh up spending north of $220 (£175) to see Lionel Messi and chums take on the third-best team in Egypt.

But they would not be the only ones mulling over the cost of FIFA’s revamped, 32-team club competition. As this column has previously discussed, world football’s governing body has managed to unite quite the coalition of opponents to the Club World Cup. The leading domestic leagues have teamed up with Europe’s players’ unions to file a formal complaint against FIFA at the European Commission, claiming that the governing body has not properly consulted them on calendar issues.

If anyone thought FIFA was about to tread carefully on that front for a while, they clearly have not been following the court of Gianni Infantino, FIFA’s influencer-in-chief who likes to skip through minefields wearing clown shoes.

As you probably heard, Gianni has fixed it for Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman to host the World Cup in 2034, which means another winter tournament for those of us in the northern hemisphere.

Of course, we have been here before, both geographically and in terms of interruption to the domestic calendar, as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar required a six-week break from club football in November and December of that year. Minding the gap will be even harder in 2034, as that will be the second edition of the enlarged, 48-team World Cup and FIFA’s player-release window will have to be at least seven weeks to allow for the additional games.

There is a further complication, as Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar when Muslims fast from dawn until sunset, runs from November 11 to December 10 in 2034, which rules out that slot. This means the tournament will almost certainly have to be squeezed into January and the first half of February, which global broadcasters and sponsors will not like as it means butting up against the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, which starts in Salt Lake City on February 10.

And there’s more. There is always more with FIFA.

In another story we have foretold here, much of the money needed to stage the Club World Cup next summer is being provided by UK-based sports streamer DAZN, which has decided to pay $1billion for the rights to the 2025 tournament so it can offer them to us for free.

How the company, which has been losing $1billion a year, expects to stop doing so is something of a mystery. It says it is going to sell a lot of adverts, will sub-licence some of the matches to national broadcasters and will collect a lot of useful potential customer data.

But the wider industry has also noted that it has been streaming an awful lot of Saudi-related sports content of late and there are stubborn rumours of a potential stake sale to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The fact the DAZN deal got Infantino out of a hole at around the same time he was arranging the coronation of the Saudi World Cup bid is clearly a coincidence.

Whether Saudi Arabia is helping DAZN help Infantino or not, there is a very good chance that the 2033 Club World Cup will be used as a dress rehearsal for the following WINTER’S World Cup… the emphasis is mine, just so you understand that the Premier League et al are looking at back-to-back, long mid-season breaks.

This is why many involved with domestic club football are digging in for a long war over the calendar. They do not think it is an accident that man-of-many-hats Nasser Al-Khelaifi has been telling reporters that he thinks the real cause of calendar congestion is not FIFA but countries with 20-team leagues, two cup competitions, cup replays and teams that play lots of summer friendlies (ie England).

Happy New Year, everyone, can we have one with more days in it, please?

What is going on with the Football Governance Bill?

Speaking of the precious asset that is time, the much, much discussed Football Governance Bill has been inching its way through the House of Lords these past few weeks.

Given the fact that this bill is very similar to the piece of legislation the last government tried to pass before running out of time and all three main national parties promised to bring it back as soon as possible during this summer’s election, you might think our second, unelected chamber would not spend too much time relitigating the past before handing it over to the House of Commons.

You would be wrong, though.

With the 20 clubs currently in the Premier League still unhappy about the prospect of an independent regulator telling them they have to share a bit more of the money the top division receives from media companies every year with the rest of the professional pyramid, as was the case before the Premier League broke away from the Football League, several representatives from the Conservative Party — the party that commissioned the report that led to the bill and then introduced it earlier this year – have spent the last few evenings playing their own version of Filibuster, the talking game for all the family.

The absolute master of this game, which involves talking for as long as possible in an attempt to stall a debate’s progress, is Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, who used to be former prime minister Theresa May’s special adviser but is now an expert on heraldry, it seems.

(Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)

On Monday, in the evening session of the fifth day of committee-stage deliberations on the bill, Lord Parkinson stood up to discuss amendment 237, his desire to change the two mentions of the word “crest” in the bill to “badge”.

“I appreciate that heraldic terms can seem confusing to the uninitiated but if we cannot get this right in your lordships’ house, where all members are armigerous, where can we?” he asked but did not wait for answer.

“It might be helpful to start with a brief glossary. A full heraldic achievement consists of many elements. The most common and obvious of these is the shield or escutcheon. On these, or on a diamond-shaped lozenge for women, is borne the coat of arms, the design of which is particular to the person or institution which bears them.

“We are surrounded by many splendid examples of these in your lordships’ chamber. Noble lords might have found their eyes hovering over them from time to time during some of our longer debates, as mine sometimes do. If noble lords’ eyes start to wander during the debate on this group, I will take that as a sign of focus rather than distraction.”

Ten minutes later, we got to the sad revelation that only 25 of the 106 clubs that will be regulated have proper badges. I know, shocking.

It was at this point that former sports minister, and fellow Conservative, Lord Moynihan leapt up to say Lord Parkinson was wrong, as he had forgotten about Leeds United’s old badge, but it turns out he was wrong, as this unofficial badge had not been recognised by the College of Arms.

Lord Addington, a Liberal Democrat peer, eventually got a word in edgeways and said: “All I can say after listening to the speech on this amendment is that I have learned much, but I am not sure when it will be useful.”

There is a semi-serious point here, though. Having failed to persuade two successive governments that it can be left to regulate itself, the Premier League appears to have decided that the best policy is to stall and has asked like-minded Lords and Baronesses to help it out.

And this follows the lobbying blitz and letter-writing campaign that we have already reported.

Will it work? No. Lord Kennedy of Southwark, a Labour peer, has already threatened to cancel Christmas for the committee if they keep rabbiting on and the government has made it very clear that it intends to get the bill through the Commons by Easter.

UEFA have a decision to make over the Unify League plans

On the topic of Christmas-related threats, A22, the men that nearly brought you the European Super League in 2021, were back this week with a new version of their European breakaway competition, the Unify League.

For those of you who missed this bold new example of market disruption, designed to get youngsters off TikTok for a couple of hours, it is a four-tier, midweek competition involving Europe’s biggest teams playing each other home and away for a few months, before moving on to a knockout competition. I know, you are shocked again, aren’t you?

Not only is this idea very similar to the one they suggested last December, it is very similar to the format UEFA used for about 25 years until this season. As my colleague Rory Smith pointed out this week, it seems there really is nothing new under the sun.

The reaction to A22’s Unify League launch has ranged from very positive (Real Madrid and Barcelona), to unbelievably negative (everyone else).

(Jakub Porzycki/Anadolu via Getty Images)

But now that the dust has settled a little, many in the game are wondering if the Unify League, with its Star, Gold, Blue and Union divisions, unclear qualification process and DAZN-like “football for free” business model is more of a legal gambit than an actual proposal for the biggest shake-up in the history of cross-border competition in Europe.

The theory is that A22 is not trying to win clubs over by proposing a better competition than the ones provided by UEFA, not yet, anyway. What the Madrid-based firm is really up to is daring UEFA to try to kill the idea at birth again by refusing to authorise it.

That is what UEFA did when the European Super League first crashed the party in April 2021. Backed by FIFA, European football’s governing body dished out pre-emptive sanctions to the 12 clubs that signed up to the rebel alliance and threatened players with bans from international competitions.

But, last December, A22 gained a significant win at the Court of Justice of the European Union when the Luxembourg-based body ruled that UEFA had overstepped the mark and it could not just bully potential new entrants to the market, providing they met certain criteria, such as having an idea that is based on sporting merit and a plan for distributing money throughout the industry.

While it will not win any awards for innovation, the Unify League does appear to tick the court’s boxes for authorisation. Well, that is certainly A22’s take on it.

So, UEFA now has a decision to make: block A22 again and risk legal action, or allow A22 to try to start its competition and risk losing clubs from its own competitions.

There is a third option, though: get the hint and let the clubs run the Champions League themselves, with no oversight from UEFA.

That would appear to be the real game being played here.

Takeovers past, present and future

Right, that was a lot of heavy political stuff. Let us conclude this final column of the year with some festive wrapping-up.

Well done to all who helped get Everton out of the football finance version of Accident and Emergency (ER, to our American readers) by delivering the Premier League club into the arms of The Friedkin Group.

This parish’s Paddy Boyland has written the definitive version of how that deal was done and it is interesting to see him confirm just how close Everton were to administration earlier this year as another proposed takeover collapsed and the debt piled higher.

Dan and Ryan Friedkin (Massimo Insabato/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

But it is also interesting to note that TFG has decided to do this deal without waiting for formal sign-off from Leadenhall, the British investment firm that is currently suing A-Cap, the American insurance firm that has taken on the debt Everton owe to 777 Partners, one of the club’s previous suitors.

Leadenhall and A-Cap are tooling up for a long legal battle in New York over a $600million (£480m) claim, and a court there has granted Leadenhall an injunction that should stop A-Cap from disposing any assets that might end up belonging to Leadenhall.

Working out if TFG doing a deal with A-Cap over the £200m ($250m) that Everton owe 777/A-Cap would break this injunction has been the most complicated aspect of the Everton takeover, with all parties hoping A-Cap would bring it to the court, as it is meant to, and Leadenhall would nod it through, as it has suggested it will, providing the deal does not impact their much bigger claim against A-Cap.

But A-Cap did not do that. Instead, it has just done a deal with TFG, which involves partial repayment now, with the rest to come in the future, without even seeking Leadenhall approval. TFG has clearly decided it really needs to be in charge of Everton well before the January transfer window shuts and it can live with the possibility of some legal blowback down the line. And what is really interesting, is that the Premier League is happy with this, too.

I had hoped to write a few paragraphs about Sheffield United’s takeover — another saga — but a late hitch has knocked that one back a bit. Do not panic, Blades fans, the club should soon be under the ownership of COH Sports, an American group led by Ohio-based investor Steve Rosen and Helmy Eltoukhy, who runs a biotech firm based in California.

Elsewhere, Leyton Orient have recently added a couple of new American investors to the ownership group in the shape of Dr Sulman Ahmed, the owner of a very successful dentistry firm in Texas, and Colorado-based businessman David Buckley. The League One club have big ambitions, including a move to a new stadium. Dr Ahmed will need to do a lot of fillings to make that happen.

But the wait for new custodians continues at Morecambe, Reading and Swindon Town, all of whom urgently need changes in the boardroom.

Sadly, there is no new news to report on any of those cases, although details of the legal case between Reading’s current owner Dai Yongge and Rob Couhig, the former Wycombe owner who thought he had sealed a deal to buy Reading only for Dai to change his mind, have emerged.

As ever with these things, the party that claims to be wronged has tallied up his losses, added a little extra for his trouble, applied a multiple for potential losses in the future and come up with a big number, £24million, that should scare anyone else off from buying the club.

But what The Athletic can reveal is that Couhig has also gone back to Dai and slightly increased his offer for the club in an attempt to end the lawfare and get the keys. Dai has chosen not to accept this offer so the lawfare will continue.

And on that not-very-cheery note, may your business this Christmas be brisk and fruitful, and here is to a sustainable 2025.

(Top photo: Francois Nel/Getty Images for Saudi Arabian Football Federation)