'It's Not Fair' - Why PSG are Upset with Barcelona 😤
Plus Roy Kent is everywhere, Canada is unhappy with Nike and a Lion almost ate a Footballer.
Welcome to Athletic Interest.
As of this week, it is no longer permitted to make any jokes about Barcelona’s financial situation!
That makes writing this newsletter incredibly difficult because we have spent the last six months just putting Barcelona memes into an AI generator and sending you the results.
Yes, Barcelona have just announced a quite surprising €100 million profit.
Before you get too excited Barcelona fans, these positive results may be hiding some deeper problems.
In fact, PSG are so annoyed with Barcelona’s recent financial results that they are threatening to have the club investigated for breaching financial regulations.
Barcelona seem to be doing great at the moment. Big names like Lewandowski and Raphinha have joined, results are improving and the club’s finances are back in the green.
The club just reported a whopping €1 billion in revenue last year, with €100 million in profit.
What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that the club has recovered from losing €400 million last year.
The future is also looking promising, with Barcelona claiming that profits this season will hit €271 million.
So, that’s it, right? Barcelona are back from the abyss…
Well not really, let’s talk about that impressive figure of €1 billion in revenue.
€200 million (20%) of this figure was generated when the club sold 10% of their domestic TV rights to a U.S. investment company.
Furthermore, Barcelona’s €500 million sale of further TV rights and production assets will only be accounted for in the next financial year, hence the huge profit predicted for next year.
Essentially, Barcelona are only recording positive financial results because they auctioned off some of their family silverware.
This is not inherently bad, but questions remain over how Barcelona can hope to replicate these results without selling more key assets.
Javier Tebas, the La Liga President, remains unconvinced.
"Without the [sale of assets], it may not be so high next season,” he explained to the media.
“They may have to reduce their wage bill, sell players or even [sell more] assets [...] it will be difficult for them to maintain next season."
Tebas is not the only one with some concerns.
Talking to Politico, PSG chief Nasser al-Khelaifi actually questioned whether Barcelona’s sale of assets was legal under current regulations and called on the powers that be to investigate.
“Is this fair? No, it’s not fair … Is it legal? I’m not sure,” he explained. “If they allow them, others will do the same.”
These remarks are the latest in an ongoing feud between PSG and Spanish football. Barcelona have been upset with the French club ever since they stole Neymar in 2017 - a wound that went deeper when Messi made the same move last year. In response, La-Liga is threatening to complain to the EU about PSG’s Qatari ownership and the incredible amount of money that runs through their organisation.
While al-Khelaifi may not agree with Barcelona’s ‘family silver fire sale’ strategy, he does have his own ideas for how football can generate more money.
“We have the best and the biggest and most popular sport in the world and we need to think outside the box,” explained al-Khelaifi to Politico. One such idea would be to host the most prestigious matches across multiple days in one host city to create a ‘holiday destination’ complete with music and conferences. The host city would need to pay for the honour of hosting, similar to how F1 makes money from race hosting fees.
At least no one suggested an All-Star game!
Oh F*ck…
🍎 Sports Business Bites
🏈 Apparently, the NFL has just signed a deal to play two halves of football on either side of a Rihanna concert.
We are kidding, of course, it’s called American Football.
Yes, the Super Bowl is back soon and Rihanna has been announced as the headline act for the half-time show.
That’s not the only big news, Apple Music has agreed to sponsor the 15-minute concert, replacing the iconic Pepsi branding that has been ever-present for around a decade.
Apple has signed a multi-year deal - speculated to be five years - for around $50 million per year. While this may seem expensive for a 15-minute concert, the previous half-time show was watched by 103 million people.
🇺🇸 There is a rumor that Roy Kent is here, there, and every f*cking where and we can now confirm that is in fact true.
Roy Kent, and the rest of the Richmond team made famous by the Ted Lasso TV show, are set to appear in FIFA 23.
Titular character Ted Lasso will also make appearances on the touchline, although it’s not entirely clear if the CGI Ted has quite figured out the offside rule yet.
🇨🇦 In March, The Athletic revealed that Canada would be the only country going to the Qatar World Cup without a bespoke kit designed by their sponsor (in this case Nike.)
This was initially met with disappointment in Canada but as the other nations proudly displayed their new kits to the world, the players on the Canadian national team (still in their kit from last year) got a little upset.
To the point that Jonathan David decided to cover up the Nike logo on his chest after scoring as a protest. Although David is personally sponsored by Adidas so…
As Nike confirmed in a statement, the lack of a new design is due to a clause in their contract with the Canada national team. More specifically the Canada kit is simply on a ‘different development cycle’ to those of other nations.
Translation = their kit was not scheduled for changes before the World Cup.
But why wouldn’t Nike make an exception for a nation that is celebrating reaching its first World Cup since 1986?
Well, this appears to be the fault of bad timing.
It takes Nike about 18 months to develop a new kit from scratch, which means that they would have needed to start developing a bespoke World Cup kit in March 2021. At that time, there were no indications that Canada was anywhere close to World Cup qualification and no plans were set in motion.
That being said, Nike is reportedly making new shorts for the men's team to wear in Qatar.
🎥 To end this week’s newsletter, here are two posts we found. One is fun, the other is thought-provoking.
You would think that whenever a club invests money in a new player they would make sure that said player was not mauled by a wild beast during the unveiling video…
First Wolves unveil Diego Costa in a video with real Wolves - a stunt that managed to frighten Costa - and now UAE side Sharjah decided to announce the signing of Greek defender Kostas Manalos next to an actual lion.
You can probably imagine what is about to happen.
We finish this week’s newsletter on a more serious note. Kit manufacturer Hummel has just released images of Denmark’s kit for the Qatar World Cup and it carries a powerful message.
Hummels logo, alongside that of the Danish national team - will be made less visible on the shirt as a protest against the human rights record of Qatar.
‘While we support the Danish national team all the way’ explained Hummel on social media.
‘This shouldn’t be confused with support for a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives.’
This statement has been met with a mixed reaction online, with some praising the ‘powerful’ stance while others appear to feel that Hummel is simply trying to gain extra attention through advocacy.
The story is giving us a taste of the challenge that many brands will face for this year’s world cup: how to activate a million-dollar sponsorship without being associated with a controversial (and in large parts of the world unpopular) event?