By Paul Nicholson at the FITS Forum in Geneva
September 4 – There is an urgent need for regulation to make football clubs identify who their owners are, including beneficial owners – the real owners hiding behind shell companies or nominees, said Nicola Bonucci, director legal of the OECD.
By Paul Nicholson in Geneva
September 4 – Has sport, and football in particular, lost its self-proclaimed special status right of self-governance, free from government influence and prevailing national laws? Three political grandees speaking at the FITS Forum in Geneva were of the consensus that autonomy for sport was a principal that needs to respected. But within their accepted perameters.
By Tom Parsons
September 3 – Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich are to set up a camp for refugees coming into Germany and will donate €1 million towards refugee projects in the country.
“The money coming into the game [football] is incredible. But it is just the prune-juice effect — it comes in and goes out straight away. Agents run the game.” Lord Sugar
Lord Sugar (then just plain Alan) became chairman of Tottenham Hotspur in 1991 and stayed at the helm there for 10 years. He was even manufacturer of the set-top decoder boxes that took content from dominant UK pay-TV channel,
By Andrew Warshaw
September 3 – In a dramatic early twist in the race to succeed Sepp Blatter, South Korean FIFA presidential candidate Chung Mong-joon has lambasted his own confederation by accusing them of breaking electoral and ethical rules and calling for an official inquiry.
By Paul Nicholson
September 3 – Football Benchmark, the sports research arm of accountancy and consultancy firm KPMG, has produced a new report looking at the relationship between total staff costs incurred by clubs from the ‘big five’ leagues playing in the Champions League (CL) and the cash received from UEFA’s CL distribution system in the 2011/12-2013/14 period.
By Ben Nicholson
September 3 – The North American Soccer League (NASL) is challenging the legality of the United States Soccer Federation’s (USSF) criteria change to Division 1 sanctioning. The new requirements allegedly serve as a “bait and switch” that gives preferential treatment to Major League Soccer (MLS) in violation of antitrust laws, which are laws that regulate the conduct and organisation of business corporations that seek to promote fair competition.
By David Owen
September 2 – As television and the globalised market for players fuel the increasing internationalisation of the fan bases of leading football clubs, digital technology is of growing importance for clubs seeking to communicate with, and generate revenue from, these supporters.
By Mark Baber
September 2 – With the Football Federation Australia (FFA) and Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) having failed to come to a new Collective Bargaining Arrangement (CBA) after the expiry of the previous agreement on June 30 and the FFA’s decision to terminate the Memorandum of Understanding between the FFA and PFA on August 14, 2015, the Socceroos have decided to show solidarity with their comrades by declining all commercial appearances on behalf of the FFA.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 2 – The summer transfer window may have slammed shut with the English market forking out a record £870 million as it again dominated the spending landscape but it was the moves which didn’t go through that raised eyebrows – with clubs and players alike indulging in an unsavoury blame game.
September 2 – The second edition of IFA’s Berlin breakout conference – Football’s Digital Transformation – that will be held September 10 is reporting that registrations are almost full and will close this Friday. The organisers have also released the schedule for the event.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 2 – FIFA’s much-touted Reform Task Force convenes for the first time today and tomorrow amid considerable doubt over whether it will finally be able to bring about desperately needed concrete change in the wake of the unprecedented corruption crisis that has engulfed the organisation.
September 2 – Prospective FIFA presidential candidate Zico has written to all his potential rivals asking them to engage in an early debate about the future of the organisation.
By Paul Nicholson
September 2 – Timing is everything but a gathering of the world’s federal prosecutors for a conference in Zurich, where FIFA is headquartered, has a certain tragi-comical resonance.
By David Owen
September 2 – Transfer spending by Premier League clubs was more than double any of the other ‘Big Five’ West European leagues in the summer transfer window, as gross expenditure by the English elite reached £1 billion in a single calendar year for the first time.