IMUSA News Feed

Football club ownership issues now firmly on the Parliamentary agenda

20100909080354

IMUSA has been calling for government protection for football since even before it was known that the Glazers were going to be allowed to take over United using the club's own money and that they would be given tens of millions of pounds of government tax-relief on those loans to help them achieve this.

Many groups, including Parliamentarians are now beginning to see how very serious governance and ownership issues have become for football.

There have also been demands from many quarters, including IMUSA, for tighter controls and a greater involvement for the fans.

The Premier League's Richard Scudamore, nonetheless, continues Cnut-like to press the case for before-the-crash bank-style, self-'regulation' despite of the horrendous financial situation the Premier League is in and the organisational disarray that led to it not even knowing who the owners of all its member clubs were at some stages of last season.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Full Westminster Hall debate linked on Parliament TV here

Transcript here
_____________________________________________________________________________

Football clubs 'plundered by corporate raiders'

Steve Rotheram MP - 8th September 2010

We call it the 'beautiful game' but there's nothing particularly beautiful or edifying about the direction professional football has taken in recent decades, says Steve Rotheram MP.

At the top end of the sport, football has become an 'industry'; the game, a 'commodity'. One of the most iniquitous consequences of this corporatisation of the game is the marginalisation of the very masses who sustain it � the fans.

Ironically, most of the UK's big name clubs began their days as small cooperatives, so the concept of supporter involvement in the governance of football clubs is neither new nor particularly controversial. And today, in fact, many thousands of fans do enjoy a degree of representation, control and even outright ownership at lower league and non-professional clubs, thanks to the efforts of scores of supporters' trusts up and down the country.

But the 'giants' of the industry remain untouchable and seemingly impervious to the new age of accountability and transparency. Iconic clubs like Manchester United and, in my own constituency Liverpool FC, are happy to relieve ticket-holders of their hard-earned cash and to ride upon reputations built by generations of supporters.

They're far less willing to address the under-representation of fans or to acknowledge their right, as crucial stakeholders, to be involved in club governance. Such clubs can pile up debt with impunity, make wildly unpopular, controversial ownership and management decisions and run exploitative marketing and merchandising regimes. Fans - mere 'consumers' - have long been expected to put up or shut up.

The worm is slowly turning, though. Many Premier League supporters have had their loyalty and patience tested to the limit and are no longer prepared to stand by and see their clubs taken over, plundered and destroyed by corporate raiders. Increasingly, fans are getting organised - in their tens of thousands - with a view to asserting their rights and 'reclaiming' their clubs.

That's why the time is ripe for a Westminster Hall Debate. The previous Labour government made considerable headway on this - it established Supporters Direct in 1999, for example - and was committed to ensuring the automatic right of fan collectives to a meaningful stake in their clubs. In calling for MPs to discuss the issue, I hope to encourage a serious exploration of the practical possibilities and to bring pressure to bear on those parties � namely, the new government and the industry's governing bodies - best placed to move things forward.

The government has no excuse to procrastinate on this. Not only does governance reform of this kind accord with the alleged social and community aspirations of David Cameron's 'Big Society' agenda; the government made an explicit commitment in its coalition agreement to "encourage the reform of football governance rules to support the cooperative ownership of football clubs by supporters."

It will not be enough merely to "encourage" reform. Ministers must create the incentives and conditions for reform and proactively coax, cajole and � if necessary � compel football's governing authorities to initiate change.

Steve Rotheram is the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton.

Gill forced to admit season ticket target not met

20100901144523

Manchester United failed to reach their target of season ticket sales this summer, the club's chief executive David Gill has confirmed.

UK Press Association
1st September 2010

But Gill insisted the figure is still "pretty good" in the current economic climate and that the club is in good financial shape. He added the number of season tickets sold was 51,800 compared to the target of 54,000, and that executive seat sales were "on track".

"Last year our target was 54,000 season tickets, we've sold 51,800, which is pretty good in the current climate," Gill said. "We've sold more season tickets than the capacity of most Premier League grounds. Our executive seat sales are on track as compared with last year in a different market."

He continued: "I think the bare facts are that the club is in good financial shape. The ticket sales have held up. We sold out for Newcastle and West Ham but we are not complacent and we've got to keep working to make sure that we fill the ground for every game and we'll do that by playing great football, attractive football, exciting football that brings fans in."

United's season ticket sales have been conducted against a backdrop of a campaign by fans' group the Manchester United Supporters' Trust (MUST) urging a boycott in the hope of persuading the American owners, the Glazer family, to sell the club (NB: for 'MUST' read IMUSA in this instance. See this story and this statement made in February 2010)

The protest against United's owners surrounds the debts they took on to buy the club. These now stand at more than �700million - including a �500million bond scheme, and �202million in payment in kind (PIK) loans.

BBC's Panorama claimed earlier this summer the Glazers' shopping mall empire in America was facing problems but Gill would not be drawn on that, stating instead the club was very successful financially and were comfortable with the position.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Last year the club managed to make a profit of just �48.2 million and only after the �80 million gained from the sale of Ronaldo was taken into account.

United have not been a major purchaser in the transfer market since the Glazer takeover (having spent only �6 million net over the entire 5 year period) and predictably have not made any serious attempts to replace Ronaldo with a player of similar standing in world football.

The Glazers have also defaulted on a number of mortgages in their other businesses.

David Gill nonetheless continues to put his reputation on the line with his insistence that the club is in good financial shape and that the 'Ronaldo money' was available for the purchase of players, rather than having been spent on servicing the Glazer's growing debts.

In June 2010 Manchester United issued a statement in response to leaked figures showing shortfalls in season ticket sales, saying that

"Anybody who is trying to say there has been a poor uptake is lying"

This shortfall in season ticket sales also confirms the long suspected lack of any sort of waiting list, credible, or otherwise
_____________________________________________________________________________

Glazers to pay Sir Alex's fines for not speaking to BBC says 'The Sun'

20100824210044

MANCHESTER UNITED will pay �60,000 in fines for Alex Ferguson as he carries on his ban of speaking to the BBC.

Neil Custis,
The Sun,
24th August 2010

New Premier League rules say all bosses must talk to the Beeb after games or will be fined, with the scale of punishments increasing for repeat offenders.

The first fine is �1,000 but this rises each time with the cost hitting around �60,000 for the full season.

Fergie has not spoken to the BBC since a 2004 documentary about his son Jason's work as an agent.

Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer said: "I don't think he will speak to us again."

"Alex is a man of his word and a man of principle."
_____________________________________________________________________________

For those that didn't see 'Fergie and Son' when it was broadcast on BBC3 at 21.30 on 27th May 2004, the documentary has been available on YouTube since May 2008

Part 1 is embedded below and linked here. Part 2 can be found here and Part 3 here

The programme touched on several of the issues raised by John Magnier and JP McManus in their '99 Questions' to the Board of the plc, with the club announcing that they had severed all links with Jason Ferguson's Elite agency just prior to it being broadcast.
_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

Competing with mortgage and car payments

20100819175047

Bucs' blackout all about the bucks

John Romano, St Petersburg Times
Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Earlier this year, the Bucs announced the cost of buying tickets had gone down.

All these months later, they have revealed the cost of not buying those tickets has gone way up.

The Buccaneers announced Tuesday that Saturday's preseason game against the Kansas City Chiefs at Raymond James Stadium has not sold out and, as a consequence, will be blacked out on local television. It will be the first time in nearly 13 years a Bucs game will not air live in Tampa Bay.

That means if you are beginning your freshman year of college this month, you were entering kindergarten the last time a Bucs game was blacked out. The Devil Rays had not yet hired Larry Rothschild as their first manager, and Raymond James Stadium was not yet built.

That means a streak of 261 consecutive games � preseason, regular season and postseason � live on local television is about to end.

And it means the price of loyalty has, once again, become an issue for a sports fan in Tampa Bay.

Regrettably, this is the reality of major-league sports. It is why seven Jaguars games were blacked out in Jacksonville, the NFL team's home, last year. It is why hundreds of millions of dollars in public money is being spent in South Florida to build a new baseball stadium for the Marlins. And it is why NBA fans in Seattle no longer have a team to call their own.

You see, games are limited strictly to the field of play. Everywhere else, sports is a business. And that is essentially the divide between how we perceive our teams and how the teams perceive us. You consider yourself a fan. They consider you a customer.

It is not pleasant, and it is not endearing. But it is, ultimately, the way of the world.

So shout, if you must. Throw out your jerseys, and scrape off your bumper stickers. Just understand that the Bucs' owners, the Glazers, are in this for a profit, and that means they can't afford to let revenues sit in a pile in the ticket window.

Truth be told, the Buccaneers had already postponed this inevitability. Several regular-season games should have been blacked out last season, but the Glazers instead announced them as sellouts. This must have cost them money when it came to splitting gate receipts with visiting teams, and it probably cost them goodwill with the league for skirting blackout rules.

But you can't go on hiding 15,000 empty seats forever.

"Last season, this and other clubs helped prevent blackouts by purchasing remaining tickets," team spokesman Jonathan Grella wrote in an e-mail Tuesday afternoon. "But realistically, it's not a sustainable practice, here or elsewhere."

Turns out, Tampa Bay is not alone in this televised wasteland. Blackouts more than doubled in the NFL last season, and as much as one-third of the league's teams either fell short of sellouts or required special circumstances to avoid blackouts. A blackout is required for a 75-mile radius around a stadium if the game does not sell out 72 hours before kickoff.

In 2008 the league blacked out nine regular season games or 3.5 percent of the total. Last season that number jumped to 22, or 8.6 percent, and that doesn't include 20 percent of preseason games being blacked out.

So, yes, the Bucs have known this day was probably coming. Joel Glazer pretty much announced it in March when he revealed that the team's season ticket base was in the 40,000 range. The combination of too many disappointing seasons and the harshness of the economy in Florida practically made blackouts a foregone conclusion even as the team lowered ticket prices.

Once, the NFL was competing with other sports and activities for your entertainment dollars. Now, the league is competing with mortgage and car payments.

Of course, you could argue that the Bucs had this coming. That the team did not spend enough money on payroll in recent seasons. And you could complain that far more money is generated by the league's TV deal than ticket sales.

But that doesn't change the reality that the NFL has used the threat of blackouts to sell tickets since 1973. And as recently as the 1990s, the league had blackouts for 31 percent of its games.

"It's critical to bear in mind that the NFL has maintained a strict blackout policy for decades," Grella wrote. "Its policy is unique amongst professional sports leagues, and it is designed to encourage attendance. We understand that families are struggling these days, so we have tried to create affordable ticketing options.

"Whether they can make it out to the games or not, we know they are still Bucs fans, and we love them for it."

The truth is, after all these years, the Bucs needed Saturday's preseason game to be blacked out. They needed fans to understand the possible cost of unpurchased tickets as the regular season grows near.

They may appreciate your devotion, but they still want your dollars.

Peterloo commemorated

20100816095534

Up to 18 people were killed and over 600 injured when cavalrymen were sent in to break up a civil rights protest on St Peter's Fields on August 16, 1819.
_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

Honouring historic fight for democracy on 191st anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre

Deborah Linton, Manchester Evening News , August 15, 2010

The Lord Mayor of Manchester was today leading events to mark the 191st anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre.

Up to 18 people were killed � some estimate 15 � and over 600 injured when cavalrymen were sent in to break up a civil rights protest on St Peter's Fields on August 16, 1819.

Hunger was rife and fewer than two per cent of people had the vote at the time. Pro-democracy protesters had gathered at the city centre site � now the Radisson Edwardian Hotel and St Peter's Square � to rally for political and economic change but the cavalry surge turned it into one of the bloodiest events in the city's history.

The anniversary will be marked at the blue plaque which commemorates the event on the side of the Radisson hotel � formerly the Free Trade Hall � on Southmill Street, at 10.45am.

Lord Mayor of Manchester, Coun Mark Hackett, said: "August 16 marks Manchester's proud history of fighting for democracy, freedom and justice and we should remember all those Mancunians who gave their lives for this cause.

"We must preserve this history in order that future generations can learn about the city's radical past and I am very much looking forward to following this historical tour around the city to commemorate such an important date in our history."

A permanent monument to victims will be created as part of plans to transform St Peter's Square and the Town Hall Complex.

Scudamore continues to plead for self-regulation

20100816120601

IMUSA has been calling for government protection for football since even before the Glazers were allowed to take over our club despite the enormous debt they announced they were going to inflict on us, and a lack of connection with the local community so complete that Malcolm Glazer had never (and still has never) even been to Manchester, England.
_____________________________________________________________________________

On last Saturday�s (14th August 2010) R4 Today programme the Football League�s, Brian Mawhinney spoke eloquently about the problems in football.

"This summer we have seen one club spend �130 million buying players. That is not sustainable business in any reasonable interpretation. Other clubs are spending �40m paying interest on debt. That is not sustainable in the long-term. In the Football League, the debts are less but they are significant and income is much less.�

"You have to ask whether the FA, the game's governing body, is capable of imposing or working with the leagues to impose a framework that gets to grips with the problem. My considered view is that it is not. In that case, you have to ask where the solution might lie, and that is with a body that is bigger and stronger than the FA. You at least have to explore the possibility of a regulatory framework.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Premier League Chief Executive Richard Scudamore spoke about an hour later and so was able to respond to Lord Mawhinney�s main point about the need for an independent regulatory body.

�...who would appoint it? Is that some sort of thing that the government would suddenly be running football would they?�

�Is that how it would all work? It just doesn�t seem plausible�

�We have this Summer, yet again, gone through a whole series of rule changes in terms of governance and financial rules because the clubs themselves want to do it, and that�s the most powerful form of regulation�

�The idea that an ex-Conservative minister, you know, with all those views that he�s held, is suddenly out there advocating an independent regulator is quite frankly, well, [interviewer: �steady�] nonsensical�

Scudamore said in an earlier part of the interview that �The best people to regulate football are the people who are closest to the clubs.�
_____________________________________________________________________________

The last group that pleaded a special case for self-regulation were the banks.

There is no such thing as the unacceptable face of capitalism for football and there are no bail-outs.

More than 50 football clubs have gone into administration since FA Rule 34 was abandoned in preparation for the Premier League breakaway in 1992.

It remains to be seen if the Premier League�s new �Means and Abilities Test� does more to protect the game than the previous �Fit and Proper Person�s Test� it replaces,

but like everything the Premier League does, this test is more concerned with financial issues than it is with protecting the cultural heritage which has been enshrined in our football clubs for, in some cases, more than 150 years.

The Premier League does not see that protecting our culture is part of its role.

The FA sees the problem but with four Premier League members on its Board no longer has the independence nor power to act.

This is why government must now intervene, to help football get back to its core values that are now in real danger of being lost, less than 20 years after the FA was persuaded to abandon its mandate to protect the game from greed.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Sir Alex concerned about effects of Green & Gold protests on the team

20100814195300

Sir Alex was quoted today by The Daily Mail as saying in his next match programme notes that;

"One situation clouds the new season and that is the continued opposition to the Glazer family,"

"I have no problem with the green and gold campaign. Fans are entitled to protest as they see fit. But not to the detriment of the team."

"The fact is that the Glazer family own Manchester United and until such time as they decide they want to sell, they will stay as owners regardless of the opposition."

"So it comes down to the extent of the protest. What I don't want to see is Manchester United mired in so much controversy that it deflects our purpose of winning matches."

"Whenever we have had success it has been a collective effort with everyone united - management, players and fans. How many times have I commented in the past about the need to pull together?"
_____________________________________________________________________________

We unequivocally welcome this call for a 'collective effort'.

Last season tens of thousands, the large majority of fans in the ground, were wearing Green and Gold and chanting anti-Glazer songs

and that collective voice would have been so much louder and more effective, if one man, just one man, had added his voice to ours.
_____________________________________________________________________________

For the benefit of those who didn't see these figures when IMUSA first published them in May 2010

The current round of protests against the Glazers was launched on January 16th at our home match against Burnley.

A comparison of the results for home games before and after this date (see below) show that the team scored on average an extra 1.2 goals per game and let in 0.3 goals per game less,

meaning that whilst the Green and Gold campaign was at its height we were a net 1.5 goals per game better off.

The suggestion is that, if only the Glazers had released the bond brochure that sparked the protests off a couple of weeks earlier, we might even have got that record fourth title in a row.

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

Every picture tells a story

20100722233939

The two pictures below show season ticket availability inside Old Trafford as of 22nd July 2010 and tell two very different stories.

The first, taken directly from the club website shows, in keeping with the claim to have sold over 50,000 season tickets, great swathes of red indicating the areas of the ground where all the seats have been sold.

The second is the same picture but with all the areas where ordinary fans are not able to buy season tickets (Directors box, Press box, Disabled supporters area, Executive seats, Family stand, Away section, Areas reserved for match by match sales only) marked in grey.

There are unsold seats (the green and gold blocks) in all of the sections available to ordinary fans in the upper tiers (with nearly 70% of these areas having 'good availability' [green]) and spaces still free in thirty percent of the areas available to ordinary fans in the lower tiers.

�Experimental� phone calls to the Ticket Office have revealed that there are tickets available even in the areas marked as being �sold out� and that there are blocks of unsold seats in the other areas, rather than scatterings of single seats.

The season ticket renewal deadline was June 13th 2010.
_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

Club confirm big drop in season ticket sales

20100721101831

The Glazers, famous for creating capacity crowds in Tampa by selling 000�s of tickets to themselves have announced that United season ticket sales have only reached the 50K mark.

The club have also been careful not to say whether this figure includes the sales of executive season tickets, as these are normally counted separately.

Two years ago the Glazers sold approx 64K season tickets, of which 8k were executive seats. Last season this was approx 56K standard class season tickets plus 7.5K execs.

Hence, it is unclear from the club's statement whether sales are down 6k from the 56k standard class tickets sold last year (i.e. approx 10%) or 13.5k down from the 63.5k total (which would be a more than 20% drop).

Either way there have clearly been a siginficant number of United fans who have decided not to renew their tickets this year.

We won�t know for sure about the extent of this shortfall until the first games of the season, when any gaps in the crowd will be there to be seen. The next set of quarterly accounts (required under the terms of the bond issue) are due out in August. These will be similarly revealing (or if not these, then the next set of accounts).

We are aware that Executive season ticket sales have also been badly hit and that around 1,000 of these premium seats have been downgraded to standard class.

The club�s website Manutd.com still claims on the �benefits of membership� page that there is waiting list and that our season tickets are �the most sought after season tickets in Europe�.

The season ticket renewal deadline was on June 13th and the intense sales effort since then has included offering season tickets to people that haven�t been on the membership list since before the Glazer takeover in 2005.