Football’s search for solutions

This week hundreds of movers and shakers from the beautiful game gathered together in London’s Peninsula Hotel for our annual Business of Football Summit.

Despite the somewhat gloomy backdrop of cooling markets in media rights, player transfers and M&A, we hope attendees came away with a spring in their step and a notebook full of ideas. If you were there, let us know how you found it.

Before the Scoreboard team collapses in a heap like defeated World Cup semi-finalists, we thought we’d bring you a quick snapshot of the main talking points from our two days of keynote interviews and thematic panels. Those who registered for the event can watch it all back on demand.

We’ll be digesting and revisiting a lot of the big issues in the days and weeks ahead. But for now, do read on — Josh Noble, Sports Editor

Boehly points the way to Netflix

The long-term prospects for football’s broadcast model is always a hot topic of debate, but Chelsea chair Todd Boehly floated one idea: sell global Premier League rights to Netflix.

Boehly’s interests in sports include stakes in the LA Dodgers baseball team and the LA Lakers in the NBA, and he has a history of making moves when it comes to media rights. So he’s someone worth listening to. His point was that the Premier League is a rare beast: content that is in demand globally.

“If you really think about what it could do to unlock a global media platform, there’s nothing like this. I’m not saying that is the direct answer right this minute, but I think that’s where we’re headed,” he said.

Read more on Netflix and its sporting ambitions here.

Big Tech under fire over piracy

Illegal feeds have long been a big problem for football rights holders and their partner broadcasters. Some of the frustration the issue generates is now being directed at Silicon Valley.

Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, took aim at Google, saying the company was benefiting from hosting URLs that direct users to pirated feeds. He said the Spanish league had taken legal action. “We are going to go right to the end with Google. We have had lots of meetings with Google related to this subject and they just ignore us.”

Meanwhile Sky warned that illegal streams were costing the industry hundreds of millions of dollar a years, and called on Amazon to do more to tackle the use of Fire Sticks to tap into unauthorised live match broadcasts. Read more here.

Time for a luxury tax?

Most US sports have some form of cost controls. But to handle the issue of “aspiration” — teams that want to spend a lot more to improve performance — some also have a luxury tax system. That means there’s a spending limit, but if a team wants to go over it there’s a toll rather than a sanction.

Private equity executive Steve Pagliuca, who owns Italian club Atalanta and co-owns the Boston Celtics in the NBA, said that such a framework could be worth looking at in European football. “It’s something they should consider”, adding that the experience in the US sport with luxury taxes and salary caps had made sure that “it’s fair and everybody has a shot at winning a title”. Pagliuca called for salary caps in football at the same event two years ago.

Warning of Premier League ‘paralysis’

The spectre of a new independent regulator and the growing number of legal cases in football have left the Premier League in a state of “complete paralysis”, according to Crystal Palace chair Steve Parish. Uncertainty about the impact a new watchdog will have had made it far harder to find consensus on some of the questions facing the sport.

But Premier League chief Richard Masters rejected the idea that decision making at the league had ground to a halt. “The Premier League feels like the wind in its sails rather than being paralysed,” he said. Read more here.

Why Fifa’s Club World Cup matters

The pending relaunch of the Club World Cup as a 32-team, month-long mega tournament this summer in the US has sparked not just consternation, but legal action too. Players unions say it is asking too much of athletes, Europe’s domestic leagues complain of overcrowded calendars and Fifa mission creep.

But Victor Montagliani, president of Concacaf and Fifa vice-president, was eager to point out that the European viewpoint is not the only one that matters, and the push for a serious global club competition has a lot of support elsewhere in the world.

“From a global perspective this is much needed. At the end of the day, there’s only one organisation that can give you the title of world champion, whether you’re a national team or whether you’re a club team. And that’s Fifa.” he said. “For us, it’s huge. It’s an opportunity for our players to showcase themselves against some of the best players in the world.”

Have players hit their limits?

The question of whether the demands on players have reached breaking point became a topic of debate after research from the FT data team showed that the number of minutes played per season and the distances travelled per game have barely budged for top flight men’s footballers over the past 20 years. Instead, it is the speed at which players move and the number of times they pass the ball in a single game that have soared. Matches are simply more intense rather than more frequent.

Even so, former Italian international Giorgio Chiellini – now an executive at Juventus – said the calendar was “completely full”. “What is not easy is to find a solution in which all the stakeholders are happy. What I think we should do is to at least sit at the table and try to figure out something that could work better.”

Women’s football charts an independent path

There’s no shortage of financial losses in men’s football. So why, in the early throes of professionalism, is women’s football expected to be “financially sustainable” from the get go?

Andreea Koenig, vice-president of the French Women’s Professional Football League, said most people don’t put in the effort required for the women’s game to thrive.

“People who want financial stability today are the people who don’t believe women’s football will ever create enough revenues,” Koenig said. “We want financial sustainability . . . but it cannot happen without investing today.”

The underlying question is if women’s football clubs, which typically share owners with the corresponding men’s teams, are backed to chart their own path. Women’s Professional Leagues boss Nikki Doucet led the formation of the company as it took responsibility for the top two divisions of English football last year.

“Are you seeing it as a cost centre within your business, or are you seeing it as an undervalued asset that arguably has the biggest ROI [return on investment] for your club over the next few years?”

Doucet is thinking big. Her definition of success in five years? “Two and a half million fans coming to games at 85 per cent occupancy in stadiums.”

And maybe that takes a radically different vision to what we’re used to.

The struggle to keep up with football’s richest

The football arms race is that much harder when you compete in a smaller league. And that’s why clubs often have to part not just with playing talent, but key staff too. Feyenoord Rotterdam had to bid farewell last summer to Arne Slot. Now at Liverpool, he looks increasingly likely to win the Premier League at the first time of asking this season.

“The median income for our whole league in the Netherlands is approximately the same as for one club in the Premier League,” said Feyenoord Rotterdam boss Dennis te Kloese.

Of course it doesn’t help when your league is busy shooting itself in the foot. In Ligue 1, where clubs are projected to lose €1.2bn this season, Olympique Marseille chief Pablo Longoria lamented the state of play, and called for the game’s decision makers to come together to plot a way forward.

“How is a league so competitive, with so much spectacle, big stadiums, a huge pipeline of talent, so [badly] commercialised?” Longoria said.

And English clubs have their troubles too. Nottingham Forest, owned by Greek shipping tycoon Evangelos Marinakis, may have the big advantage of Premier League broadcast revenues, but chief executive Lina Souloukou cautioned that financial regulation could work against the club’s efforts to maintain this season’s remarkable showing. Forest are third in the table, competing for a spot in the lucrative Champions League.

“It’s really important to understand the purpose of regulation,” Souloukou said. “Are we really solving a problem or are we actually sometimes artificially creating a rule to block investment?”

German football still looking for funding

After three failed attempts to bring in private equity, the Bundesliga is looking for alternative financing options to drive growth. The league still wants fresh capital to help it build an international audience, but co-CEO Marc Lenz said that the original private equity route is now off the table.

“We are discussing various financing potentials. If we’re talking about a €800mn to €1bn investment over so many years, then risk capital at that size is nearly always private equity. We’re moving away from that”, he said. “We’re looking at a smaller model.”

Football M&A halves as investor interest cools

The number of European football club takeovers halved last year, as high valuations, legal disputes and a slowdown in the market for broadcast rights hit investor appetite. Just 23 clubs in Europe changed hands in 2024, according to figures from governing body Uefa, a steep drop from the 44 that were sold in 2023, and the 48 in 2022. Read more here.

What has gone wrong at Manchester United?

The FT’s chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch has been taking a closer look at the current travails of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Manchester United in his weekly data-driven column. Here’s an extract, but read the full piece here.

“On the surface and given his business record, Ratcliffe might have seemed a sensible choice. But his strategy so far suggests a fundamental misdiagnosis of the club’s problem. Rejuvenating ailing chemicals companies is about streamlining industrial processes and trimming fat. Rejuvenating a dysfunctional football team requires fundamental change.”

Away from football: the steroid Olympics?

In today’s FT Weekend Magazine, meet the man who helped Peter Thiel destroy Gawker and now has an even bolder project: the create a sporting event fuelled by performance enhancing drugs. And now his has the backing of the Trump family. Read the story here.

Final Whistle

If you were dismissed as a cowboy by one of your rivals, how would you respond? Eagle Football boss John Textor put on a hat.