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Ben Hayes - Charlton Athletic programme
Only three of the teams in North America’s Major League Soccer competition are profitable: Los Angeles Galaxy, FC Dallas and Toronto FC. The last club might seem surprising given that they have served up two seasons of last place soccer. But there are plenty of British expats in that part of Ontario who are hungry for live soccer. However, a local correspondent tells me their presence is not the main factor and the club is attracting a much younger demographic who have no experience of live football in Britain.
Mike Ashley will now settle for a price of £280-£300m for Newcastle United which would still leave him with a profit of £30-£50m from his 15 months in charge. Prospective buyers would get a debt-free club and one with prime commercial property assets in the vicinity of the club’s St.James’s Park stadium worth in the tens of millions of pounds. Ashley is now taking a more sober view of the situation after his initial sales pitch launched in the Middle East a day after putting the club up for sale, during which he reportedly hawked the club for around £480m.
Although Harry Redknapp has denied that there will be any ‘fire sale’ of players in the January transfer window, concern about the financial situation of Portsmouth FC persists. They have the smallest ground capacity in the Premiership and are set to lose about £25m as staggered payments of player purchases become due in January and August. Top earners in the side such as Peter Crouch are pulling in over £50,000 in wages with others not far behind. The club currently brings in around £65m through ticket sales, TV money and merchandising, but £60m of that is swallowed up in staff costs.
Sheffield Wednesday are top of the Championship empty seats league with Hillsborough the most under-occupied stadium. Average attendances at home games is 19,005, leaving the 39,814 capacity stadium only 47.7 per cent full in the four games played there. Top of the Championship stadium filling attendance league are Cardiff City, although this shows that a lot depends on how big your ground is. On average Ninian Park is 93.3 per cent full even though their average gate is just 19,031.
Nine out of the 20 clubs in the Premiership are wholly or partially owned by non-British entrepreneurs and the number may well increase soon. Arsene Wenger has asked, what is the motivation for a billionaire to buy a Premiership club? It’s interesting to look at a perspective from the Gulf states where many of the owners are increasingly likely to come from. Jumana Al Tamini from gulfnews.com argues, ‘While the buyers’ motives might vary, they all share the same goals: more social exposure; huge profits and high financial returns.
Sheffield United will not allow West Ham to take the judgement by an arbitration panel over the Carlos Tevez affair to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. The CAS has already made it clear that it will not hear the case unless Sheffield United agree. West Ham are also exploring taking the case to the High Court as they believe the three-man FA tribunal ‘based much of its findings on opinion’. The panel chaired by Lord Griffiths has hearings on Thursday about when it will decide the amount of compensation.
Last week weekly paid players at Hearts didn’t get paid and those on monthly salaries faced delayed payments, but the problems should all have been sorted out today. Hearts maintain that the failure to pay employees was down to a technical problem. It appears that the problem arose when owners Ukio Bankas Investment Group, who regularly deposit money into Hearts’ bank account, stopped making payments earlier this month. HBOS, who have their own problems, refused to let the overdraft rise above £100,000.
If a bid by a Nigerian consortium for Newcastle United comes to fruition, they could become the first African owned club in the Premiership. Jokers are, of course, saying that owner Mike Ashley has already E-mailed his bank details. The front man for the bid is Chris Nathaniel of NVA Management entertainment group. He claims to have been ‘working hard to get wealthy and football-loving Nigerian entrepreneurs to buy the club’. Supposedly his consortium is willing to meet the asking price of £400m and have already collected £350m.
A FA arbitration tribunal has ruled in favour of Sheffield United and against West Ham in the Carlos Tevez affair. West Ham were found guilty of breaching league regulations in the signing of Tevez and Javier Mascherano in 2006. The Hammers survived in the Premiership in 2007 at the Blades’ expense. Rather than being docked points by the Premiership arbitration panel, West Ham were fined £5.5m. The FA panel has found that the presence of Tevez made the difference in terms of West Ham staying up.
The financial problems being encountered by Norwich City FC have their own specific local causes, but they are also typical of the challenges being faced by many lower league clubs. Little money from the Premiership now trickles down even to the Championship because few players from that level are signed by Premiership clubs who are either interested in foreign players or those British players who have already proved themselves at the top level. Bosses at Carrow Road are insisting that the club is ‘not in trouble at all’ and will not go into administration.
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