Good article that mentions Bayern Munich (whom it seems will be OK) and Chelsea (whom may not be okay). The lower leagues, not surprisingly, have taken the biggest financial hit and are the most ripe for bankruptcy.
Again, I’m of the belief that Chelsea will be okay. The club owes money to Roman Abramovich, not banks. Big difference.
Courtesy euFootball.biz.
I’ve been planning to grab a book called The Soccer Business which dissects the invasion of big business into footbal in recent years. When I’m done reading it, I hope it helps me make sense of this post.
Barcelona uber-forward and all-around good guy Lionel Messi is hot sh*t right now, so hot that where he be auctioned off today, he would fetch approximately 254 million euros (around USD $330 million).
There’s a lot in this story that I don’t get. Why is it practically a law that he’ll cost this much? Why must Messi have to fork over some of his personal cash if the deal goes through?
I gotta get this book.
…because said President, Lord Triesman, is suggesting that the Premier League should “share the wealth” and contribute more of their earnings to the annual kick they give to the FA.
Here’s the deal as I understand it: the FA (or Football Association) in England overseas all of the various footie leagues in Britain. There are indeed many, many leagues with the top four being the Premier League, the Championship League, League 1, and League 2. All leagues have to pay some sort of annual due to the FA, with the Premier League paying the most. Triesman claims that this sharing of wealth will eventually result in more equality across the league in terms of player and staff recruiting.
This is actually a good article…very eye-opening as far as the inner workings of the footbal business. Seems “fair and balanced”. Give it a read.
First and foremost…ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS MUST GET OUT AND VOTE TODAY!!!!!
Funny article on footie in the LA Times today. Takes a few digs at Roman Abramovich.
REALLY GOOD ARTICLE from Soccer Lens on spending in the Premiership (love this site). Again, Platani’s talking about Premier League teams debt. Michel, MYOB!!!!!!!
I’m a big fan of goalkeepers so I have to hype up the Keeper Skool site that I just found.
After calling the Dish Network and actually watching it appears that Dish Network is indeed no longer carrying GolTV. My previous post stated that I still had it, but when I tuned in, some tele-commercials for some Viagra-type product were running. I assumed that this was just temporary until at the top of the hour, a Fox Sports Espanol banner flashed across my screen, so it seems that they have taken the Gol’s channel space on Dish.
Then I called Dish for some more info. I got a nice customer service rep who stated that GolTV is off the network due to a contract dispute. According to him, GolTV wants Dish to pony up more cash for the rights to carry them and a pretty heated thread at EPL Talk seems to confirm this.
GolTV may be acting a little greedy but they do have a point. From the little that I know about the footie biz, the teams (particularly in Europe) own the TV rights to their games unlike here the States where the leagues like the NFL and NBA own them, meaning networks like GolTV have to pay fees to each indivudal team in order to broadcast the matches. And since GolTV broadcasts games from La Liga, Bundesliga, and all over South America, it costs them a pretty penny to keep the lights on.
Now because this is has to do with money, I have hope that this will be resolved eventually. Contract disputes over TV rights happen all the time and all at levels. Last year, GolTV had to renegotiate their agreement with a lot of La Liga teams, including FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. They and couldn’t do it time for the opening day and the end result was GolTV didn’t broadcast an FCB or RM games for about the first three weeks. And GolTV will lose some serious ad dollars if they don’t broadcast on Dish. There are very few footie fans in the U.S. in comparison to other sports and denying them access to one of the most accessible soccer channels will be sacrilege. I think they know this.
Still, I’m preparing for a potential exit from the Dish Network. While on the phone with them, I asked them what the penalty fee would be for canceling and it was affordable. I’m leaning towards Direct which would get me GolTV along with Setanta, the Fox Soccer Channel and extreme sport network Fuel TV which would be a nice bonus. I may or may not switch if Dish gets rid of GolTV but I think whether or not Cristiano Ronaldo goes to Real Madrid will be the deciding factor for me.
GolTV has a list of distributors here if you decide to make the switch.