Barcelona’s record new shirt sponsorship deal

BBC Sport reports that Barcelona has signed a new sponsorship deal for their shirts with the Qatar Foundation just days after Qatar was chosen as the host for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.  The new deal is worth £125 million over five years, or a cool £25 million per season till 2016.  The deal is not that much larger than the deals in place for other top clubs such as Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Liverpool, and Real Madrid who all bring between £20 to £23 million each year for their shirt sponsorship deals.

However, the timing of this deal seems like there was something in the works between Qatar, Barcelona, and Barca’s coach Pep Guardiola.  Pep was one of the ambassadors chosen by the 2022 Qatar World Cup bid and some are saying that there is some shenanigans in the whole process.  In previous posts here and here on the IJSF blog by James Reade he discussed the potential dirty dealings of FIFA, including officials taking bribes to vote certain ways, and the fact that two voting members for the World Cup bids were removed because of this.  This new shirt deal for Barcelona seems to be adding more fuel to the fire that there are backroom deals going on which have helped with the selection of Russia and Qatar as World Cup hosts.  The FIFA ethics committee did investigate the potential of some sort of deal for vote swapping between the Spain-Portugal bid and Qatar bid, but found nothing.

However, with such a big sponsorship deal landing in Barcelona’s lap, a team which has never sold their shirt sponsorship rights before, I’m sure there are many like myself who are thinking that there was some kind of deal in place.  It may not have helped the Spain-Portugal bid (thought it could be one reason why the England bid was eliminated in the first round of voting), but it has helped a Barcelona team which is feeling stronger financial difficulties in recent years.

On a small side note, UEFA head Platini has already called for the World Cup in 2022 to be played in the winter because of the extreme heat and danger to players in the summer.  I’m sure that will go down well with ALL of the club teams across the world who will have to ship off their best players for a month-long tournament, plus several weeks of training camp in the middle of the season.

World Cup Decision: Anger and Frustration

Let the recriminations begin.  Yesterday, Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup, with England’s bid being eliminated at the first stage.  Vladimir Putin has described the vote and decision as “fair”, and I’m sure it is in his eyes.  Just not in the rest of the world’s eyes.

In somewhat similar conditions, the US also lost out for the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.  In both situations it seems clear: The best bid did not win.  It seems also clear that large quantities of money were involved.  Clearly, Qatar could throw a huge amount of money at their bid and did, as could Russia.  In both cases, another host would have provided a more lucrative profitable World Cup for FIFA.

As can be inferred thus far from this post, the outcome has left a huge amount of questions unanswered – as Declan Hill is pointing at.  How is it that the most profitable, commercially successful bid crashed out at the first stage for 2018?  Most of the England entourage have pointed at something: The total lack of integrity of FIFA members voting.  They’ll say yes to your face, but when voting it’s a different story.  Moreover, it is coincidence that the country from which two exposes of FIFA’s corrupt nature originated got just two votes from 22?

I’m personally not all that disappointed England didn’t get the World Cup.  I’m not sure how much I really wanted it.  But it’s fair to say it would have been, along with the other European bidders, the World Cup leaving the least White Elephants (Qatar, incredibly enough, plans on exporting its stadia to better uses after the tournament – and air condition when while in the desert – it is nice to see how much FIFA is concerned about the environment), since all stadia would have been the homes of English football clubs.  And therein lies a huge issue yet again unanswered for by FIFA’s unaccountable committees.  Stadia still lie barely used in Japan and South Korea after 2002, and I wonder what the legacy is for the stadia in South Africa now the world has left.  Yet FIFA commits itself to a load more such stadia in Russia, and wherever the Qatari stadia end up.

Then: The positive spin of course is that new places get to see the World Cup.  Wasn’t it nice to have it in Africa in the summer?  And won’t it be lovely to have it in mafia land in 2018, and in the desert (where alcohol is banned amongst other things natural to the football fan).  Sarcasm aside, it is nice to spread the tournament around, but this leaves, along with the legacy issue, another big and frustrating issue.  Why didn’t FIFA make this abundantly clear before the bidding began?  Why did it let old, established nations (which I think the US has to belong to in football terms these days) waste so much money on bidding if it was all in vain?  As this Guardian piece makes clear, David Cameron could have instead been back in the UK making important decisions, and perhaps not closing quite so many school sports programmes as part of the austerity his party is foistering onto the UK.

It’s been mooted for years (as the first page of Declan Hill’s ‘The Fix’ makes clear) that FIFA is unaccountable and corrupt and the biggest upshot of all this has to be that the institution needs reforming.  As it stands it continues to drive football fans to despair the world over yet has no incentive to actually take their views into account – instead taking bribes and saying one thing to one person and another to another and making corrupt decisions affecting billions worldwide.  How long must we endure this?

I Told You So…

The Edmonton Oilers have been seeking a new publicly funded arena to replace aging Rexall Place for years.  As an expert on stadium funding, and Edmontonian, I have given a lot of talks and interviews over the past few years on the topic.  Among the themes I have focused on consistently is that (1) a new publicly funded arena would be built in Edmonton; and (2) the Oilers would likely threaten to leave before all was said and done.  I said as much as recently as Tuesday afternoon in my sports economics class.

A number of news outlets are reporting today that the Oilers have been meeting with some nice folks in Quebec City who have a new arena deal under way.  And by the way, that new arena in Quebec City does not have a hockey team to play in it – yet.  Now what in the world could they be talking about?  The Mayor of Edmonton thinks they are exchanging addresses for their Christmas card lists…

“Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel is not at all worried that Oilers officials are in Quebec City Wednesday holding meetings. Mandel says he doesn’t take this as any kind of a threat that the team may leave the city.  He also doesn’t see the meeting as a tactic to pressure the city on a new downtown arena.”

The Toronto Sun has a different take on the situation

“Top Edmonton Oilers executives, including President of Hockey Operations Kevin Lowe, are to meet Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume Wednesday to discuss possible relocation.”

Of course the Oilers are denying any talk of moving.  Let me be clear.  The Oilers don’t have to overtly threaten to move, they just need to suggest that they are thinking about it. That’s how the game is played.