June 21 – Both RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg have been given the go ahead to participate in the UEFA Champions League, having restructured their relationships with the Austrian Red Bull energy drinks company to overcome the regulatory prohibition on common ownership of clubs.
June 20 – Sunderland’s relegation from the Premier League also saw the resignation of manager David Moyes over lack of transfer funds, and has accelerated the desire of American owner Ellis Short to sell the club. The club announced it is prioritising its sale over the search for a new manager.
June 20 – The merger of daily fantasy sports DraftKings and FanDuel has been temporarily shelved after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stepped in to block the deal.
June 18 – Liverpool’s bid to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games utilises both its Premier League club stadiums as venues, with Everton’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock being the proposed centrepiece for the Games.
June 15 – Premier League clubs are expected to break the £1 billion spend mark on transfers this summer, but is this money well spent? New research suggests that last summer the savviest clubs were Middlesbrough and Stoke City, while the most profligate were Leicester City, and Manchester United and City on a cost-per-minute-played basis.
By Mark Baber
June 14 – Long-standing concerns over Ronaldo’s tax affairs have come to a head as a complaint by Madrid’s public prosecutor on Tuesday accused the player of “voluntarily” and “consciously” violating his tax duties whilst the player’s representatives strenuously denied any systematic tax evasion.
By Paul Nicholson
June 13 – Chinese construction firm Lander Sports Development now looks the most likely new owner of Premier League Southampton after the company announced to the Shenzen stock exchange that owner Gao Jisheng had received verbal approval from the Premier League for the acquisition.
June 12 – Neymar has the highest transfer value in the world at €210.7 million, according to latest data. Tottenham’s Dele Alli is second placed, €55 million less than Neymar at €155.1 million, but worth €1.5 million than third placed teammate Harry Kane. Both are ahead of Lionel Messi who is valued at €151.7 million. Messi topped the list in 2016 with a €211.1 million transfer valuation.
By Paul Nicholson
June 12 – If there was a World Cup for mergers and acquisitions in football, China would win it. Over the last three years Chinese investors have spent €2.1 billion acquiring non-Chinese football assets outside the country. Second placed USA spent just €313 million over the same period.
June 9 – Four years after starting proceedings, a consortium headed by David Beckham has cleared a crucial hurdle in bringing a Major League Soccer franchise back to Miami.
June 9 – Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo is the highest paid athlete on earth with earnings of $93 million, according Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of sportstars’ salaries. In a top 100 list dominated by 63 US athletes (29 of them from the NBA), Ronaldo came top of the earnings pile for a second year running.
June 7 – Business magazine Forbes has released its 14th annual list of the world’s most valuable ‘soccer’ teams with Manchester United returning to head the ranking with a value of $2.6 billion on turnover of $765 million, an 11% gain on its previous year’s numbers.
June 1 – Nottingham Forest’s new chairman, Nicholas Randall QC, has written an open letter to the club’s fans outlining the management plans for club and shedding more light on the new owners and in particular Evangelos Marinakis, also the owner of Greek champions Olympiacos.
June 1 – Premier League Tottenham Hotspur have agreed a £400 million five-year bank loan to support the construction of the club’s new 61,500 seat new stadium. The facility is being provided by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and HSBC Bank.
By Paul Nicholson
May 31 – The latest KPMG Football Benchmark report on the Enterprise Value of clubs is ultimately a homage to Manchester United and the Premier League’s bumper television rights deal.