By Samindra Kunti
November 20 – Arsenal major shareholder Alisher Usmanov has expressed an interest in acquiring Belgian champions Anderlecht but will be up against Belgian entrepreneurs Paul Gheysens and Wouter Vandenhaute in any bid to take control of the club. The current takeover price is at €80 million for 75% of the club’s shares.
By Paul Nicholson
November 17 – Manchester United are immediately showing the importance of their return to Champions League football announcing a 17% revenue rise to £141 million for the first financial quarter of 2018 ended September 30.
By Samindra Kunti
November 16 – Japanese online company DMM is the new owner of Belgian topflight club Sint-Truiden. Charlton owner Roland Duchatelet (pictured) has sold his shares, ending his ties to Belgian football.
November 13 – Lander Sports, the Chinese holding company whose principal Jisheng Gao (pictured) holds 80% ownership of Premier League Southampton, has signed a deal with Zhihui Real Estate to speed up the construction of its sports projects.
By Paul Nicholson
November 11 – Chelsea’s development of Stamford Bridge into a new-build 60,000 capacity stadium has been pushed back by at least three years.
By David Owen
November 9 – Manchester City, the Abu Dhabi-owned club whose multi-talented squad under Pep Guardiola already look like waltzing off with this season’s Premier League title, have reported a minuscule pre-tax profit of just £104,000 for 2016-17.
November 7 – Manchester City and Spurs have the most valuable squads in Europe, according to research by the CIES Football Observatory. Barca come third in the ranking with Chelsea in fourth spot. All of their squads are valued at over €1 billion.
November 6 – Already in trouble on the pitch despite a come-from-behind victory on Sunday, English Premier League club Everton, who spent around £150 million in the summer to try and break into the top places, are now the subject of a television investigative documentary into who owns them.
October 31 – Professional football clubs are under a growing threat from organised crime. Only 25% of clubs in top leagues worldwide produce publically-available financial reports. And only 40% of national associations are financially viable without the help of FIFA, an organisation whose top officials are being chased down by the US Justice Department under their RICO laws that are used to investigate mafia-style crime rings.
October 25 – Proposals to give a greater share of overseas television revenue to the Premier League’s so-called big six from 2019 has been ditched after no progress was made over the controversial plan.
October 24 – German champions Bayern Munich have reported a record revenue for the 2016/17 season of €640.5 million. This was despite the club failing at the Champions League quarter final stage and failing to reach the German Cup final – together amounting to an estimated €25 million of lost revenue potential.
October 20 – Manchester United pocketed €44.5 million of the more than €423.1 million in payments from UEFA for winning the 2016/17 Europa League. 56 clubs shared in the payments that were increased from the €411.1 million distributed in 2015/16.
October 19 – One of the MLS’s founding clubs, Columbus Crew, looks set to leave its Columbus, Ohio, home and relocate to Austin, Texas, and a new purpose-built stadium.
By Paul Nicholson
October 19 – Perform Group has bought sports technology company Scout7 adding a deeper level of sports data to its media and professional services businesses. Scout 7 will work closely with Perform’s OtpaPro, developing new “product set” of performance data and scouting solutions.
October 18 – Real Madrid star Marcelo is the latest player to be accused by Spanish authorities of tax fraud, this time totalling €490,000.