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- [00:01]
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Paige DeSorbo
Sometimes 25.
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Hannah Berner
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- [01:52]
Acast Representative
Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
- [01:59]
Paige DeSorbo
Hey guys. Welcome to Giggly Squad. A place where we make fun of everything, but most importantly ourselves. I'm Paige desorbo. I'm Hannah Berner. Welcome to the squad. Giggly Squad started on Summer House when we were giggling during an inappropriate time. But of course, we can't be managed. So we decided to start this podcast. To continue giggling, we will make fun of pop culture news. We're watching fashion trends pep talks where we give advice, mental health moments and and games and guests. Listen to Giggly Squad on Acast or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:31]
Acast Representative
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
- [02:43]
Ayo Akimolere
The Athletic FC Podcast Network.
- [02:50]
Paige DeSorbo
Hello.
- [02:51]
Matt Slater
And welcome to the Athletic FC Podcast with me, Ayo Akimolere. The verdict has been announced in Manchester City's legal case against the Premier League over the rules on commercial deals involving clubs owners. So can either side claim to be winners or losers from the case? And what ramifications could it all have for the 115 charges hanging over City? Right, I'm joined by the Athletics, Matt Slater and Jacob Whitehead as well. Let's get stuck into this gents. Jacob, you've written a really good explainer on the Athletics summarizing this very complex subject. We'll get into how this all impacts Manchester City's 115 charges a little later on, but first of all, can you just explain City's case against the Premier League with regards to associated party transactions? And I know it's complex, but if you can make it as clear as possible, that'd be amazing.
- [03:48]
Jacob Whitehead
Do my best. I really feel like I should have sort of had some sort of official legal training for this, but I'm only a journalist, I'll do what I can.
- [03:54]
Matt Slater
Yeah, sure.
- [03:55]
Jacob Whitehead
So an associated party transaction is any deal done with a company which has some sort of relationship with your own ownership. So it could be the directly owned, it could be sort of some sort of common business relationship. And we most commonly see this in the course of sponsorship. So Manchester City, for example, lots of sponsorships are done with companies either with links to to Manchester City's own directorship board which are owned by Sheikh Manasseur, ultimately with UAE based companies. And the Premier League are kind of wary of that because they feel we've got all these tight financial restrictions in place. There might be a way in which you could inflate money coming into the club by striking sponsorship deals which are worth way above market value. So there have been rules in place for quite a while which have sort of capped fees, saying these have got to be fair market value. But after Newcastle's takeover three years ago, roads were tightened. City weren't happy at that being tightened and so they've gone to arbitration. There's some very fiery language in the original legal filing where they said this amounts to tyranny of the majority. They said it was unfair and so they've gone to basically try. They had a few aims from it. One I suppose was more generally Fighting against the concepts of fair market value and apt rules more generally. And the other ones, they had more specific targets to sort of try and show that they're unlaw in certain procedural ways and also in the ways that some of cities own sponsorships had been dealt with. Then there's another side which says this is all some sort of precursor to 115 charges. So stakes are quite high.
- [05:27]
Matt Slater
I'm listening to all this and you know, there's 175 page report and I'm just thinking, how on earth does a journalist like yourself and Jacob go about digesting such complex information? Because look, some of the language in there really isn't for the layman at all.
- [05:42]
Paige DeSorbo
Yeah, it's shocking, isn't it? It's terribly written. No, no, I'm only kidding. It's hard. You know, most of us got into this to write about football. Amazing players, beautiful games. We talk about this a lot, don't we? IO this is the way, the way things have gone, you know, the, the sport. As more and more money's come in, the stakes have raised and there are going to be rouse, there's rouse in amateur sport, you know, ringers and cancellations at the last minute and where's that referee from? So just ramp it all up, you know, throw in multi million pound deals and qualifications for tournaments and you know, the stakes are raised. And, and this is, this is why, you know, this has been happening kind of gradually, I think over sort of 30, 40 years, but has really ramped up in the last 10 years. Just sports law as a thing. You know, once upon a time it was something that maybe you'd have in your, you know, your team that maybe had an interest in law and would do some contractual stuff. Anti doping case. It's an entire industry now because these rows are almost constant. I mean, I think that's the other thing is, you know, you've got what's going on on the pitch and then you've got this kind of lawfare rattling along. You know, in terms of reading these reports, I think the first thing I would say is you've got to read them. So there was an awful rush to judgment. That's fine. That's journalism. And look, you know, this is confrontational. This is the first thing to say about this. This was unusual. A club, a shareholder effectively sued. You know, it's through arbitration, so it's not through the courts took on the league. That's already significant. Both sides, you know, well within their rights to jump up and down and claim victory. We see that in presidential debates. You know, that's spin room stuff. Fine. You know, playground fights. I won. No, you didn't. You know, so there's a lot of that going on to sort of try and get through that. You got to read it and that takes a bit of time. And then you've got to talk to people. Lawyers again, I'm afraid. You know, it's their game, it's their rules, it's their language. You try and find ones that don't have a dog in the fight and would maybe sort of take. Take a sort of kind of view, you know, put foot on the ball and go, yeah, they want some good arguments there. They want some arguments on that, on that front. And there isn't. You know, I've spent. I've read it kind of twice now and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. I still think it's a draw now. People argue about draws. Right. Can you win a draw? Yeah, maybe. I think we haven't finished yet. This isn't over. And I think the other thing to say is, and there's still this confusion over this, what were Man City trying to achieve? So that's. That's. I think that. That I think is a really interesting sort of way into who won, because there isn't. There isn't consensus on what Man City were trying to achieve. And I've spoken to people at Man City and I've heard slightly different things, and it comes across in the. In the verdict. Not on just page 164. You have to. If you read. If you read sort of pages 30 to sort of 150, you get a sort of different view of what really happened. Anyway, we'll get in some of that.
- [08:46]
Matt Slater
Matt says a draw. Jacob, obviously there are two sides to this. And what points did the Premier League actually win on, in your opinion? And what has their reaction to this verdict been?
- [08:56]
Jacob Whitehead
Well, if you read the Premier League's briefing, they won pretty much everything.
- [08:59]
Paige DeSorbo
Right?
- [08:59]
Matt Slater
Right.
- [09:00]
Jacob Whitehead
There are certainly kind of broad swathes which. On. And then I'd suppose there are some individual bits which City won on, which will be very useful to them. But in terms of the Premier League, one City sort of went in and they may argue that this was a tactical thing, but they did make some pretty sweeping arguments against the very notion of apt. So, for example, they claimed the rules were inherently incapable of capturing specific features of some of their agreements, basically saying that the current mechanism for working out what free market value is didn't actually reflect what the market was. They called it price fixing, which is quite a major sort of accusation to be thrown around in competition law. But that was given pretty short shrift by the panel. They just said, I mean, this is pretty blunt language, sort of within legal terms. They said it's difficult to see how it can be effective without such a mechanism. I like that. I can understand that sort of language.
- [09:48]
Matt Slater
Yeah, that's not bad.
- [09:49]
Jacob Whitehead
Generally, look, they said it was clearly defined, transparent and non discriminatory for general fair market regulation. So that's beneficial to the Premier League. It means we'll probably come onto this later in terms of talking about the impact for 115, but probably limits then the impact which this will have on 115. City also complained, and this is unsurprising when you see the quite aggressive way which they deal with the media. They claim that they were subject of bias. They sort of asked whether the Premier League's regulatory team could be asked to properly sort of take into account their deals, to properly examine them. Spoiler. The panel said they could. And they said that they thought that they were unfairly targeted towards clubs from the Gulf region. They pointed to a few emails which were sent out from other clubs after Newcastle's takeover which sort of said we need to hold a meeting because of potential sponsorships from golf companies and the Premier League. Sort of understood the context within that. And City would have had a far stronger case both for damages and also in 115 if those had gone against the league. And one of the big points we'll come on to is shareholder loans. And that is something sort of, in a way, it's difficult to put that down as a loss in a way for the Premier League. It's probably more something which actually affects City's rivals more. It's more of a nuanced point than to say that's yes, it's a win for City, but it's not necessarily a big loss for the Premier League.
- [11:09]
Matt Slater
Well, let's hear Manchester City's perspective now. What points did City actually win on? Well, let's listen to what our City correspondent Sam Lee has to say.
- [11:20]
Sam Lee
In their statement on Monday, City basically outlined five key areas where they said they'd got huge victories over the Premier League. It said the club has succeeded with its claim, the Associated Party transaction rules have been found to be unlawful and the Premier League's decision on two City sponsorship transactions have been set aside. They also said that the tribunal found that the original APT rules and the current amended version were in violation of UK Competition, law and all things like this, like the Premier League had abused its dominant position. Not just that they had a dominant position which most leagues and bodies don't want to be in, they actually abused it. And that the tribunal decided that the rules were structurally unfair and the Premier League was unfair in how it applied those rules to City. Obviously, we know what the Premier League have said. They said that, you know, most of City's challenges didn't succeed. But then City, in a letter sent to the Premier league and the 19 other clubs on Monday said, hold on a minute, Premier League, you can't say that you were wrong, you were beaten, and this is why. And they basically go over again the things that they put in their statement on Monday, and they said the idea that the Premier League would want to reword the rules in the areas where they were beaten within the next 10 days because there's a Premier League meeting next Thursday. City were like, well, don't do that. One of the reasons we took the Premier League to court in the first place was because they were rushing stuff through. Don't rush it through again. Which seems like they might have a point on that one. So, yeah, clearly City feel like they won. Not only did they put out the statement saying they won, but. But they've written to the clubs and the league and obviously that letter has found its way to the press, and in that letter, they're reinforcing the fact that they won.
- [12:57]
Matt Slater
That was Sam Lee on the City perspective there. And I'll be honest, when I saw on socials, Matt, I thought City had one. But now we go into it, it sounds like a draw, but, you know, one undisputedly big win for City relates to the finding over shareholder loans, which Jacob sort of alluded to earlier. Can you give us a little bit more detail on that, please?
- [13:17]
Paige DeSorbo
Yeah, I mean, I'll just go back a tiny bit. So I've seen a little bit on social media about almost sort of pushing back on the original City spin and this idea that they only won two arguments out of 25. I think that's sort of, again, a partial reading of the ruling. So it is perfectly legitimate. And I've seen this so many times, almost in every EFL case, the FIFA cases, the CASS cases, particularly around competition law. You come at it with everything. You throw everything at it. It's a shotgun approach. You throw the lot. Okay. And as Simon Cliff pointed out in his email, you only have to win one argument, and if you win one argument, it all falls down. And because if you can knock down. If you can make one of your arguments stick, then X, Y and Z is true as well. And that's why you get this very, very kind of seemingly dogmatic black and white language, unlawful, abusive, dominant market position, because you've only had to prove one of your many arguments to be able to say that. So that is why in the sort of battle to kind of like win the public opinion, both sides are kind of right. So I was at one point trying to sort of tally up actually how many arguments Siti made. And there's a sort of quite helpful bit in the ruling where they talk about, in the sort of skeleton arguments, which are the written arguments that both parties brought into the arbitration room, man, City side, to kind of itemize them, you know, that we're going to talk about 20 issues. And if you sort of go through the issues, they lose most of them. But even within the issues, there are sort of like five or six sub arguments and they lose most of those as well. So I was sort of kind of going, city win, PL win, City win. And, you know, and it was, it was, it was, you know, it was PL win after PL win after pair win. And then every now and then, oh, that's a City win. But as Cliff points out, we only needed a few. So when you get to like the last page, and Sam's right, they did sort of go on like the five issues. I actually had had it as they won seven things. And that's exactly what the panel said. You've won seven things. Three of them were why, I would say significant. The first is the most important, that basically your associated price transaction rules are unlawful. That's bad. And there's no glossing over that for the Premier League. And it's bad because you didn't count shareholder loans, you didn't treat them in the same way as you treated associated party transactions. And now Jake has already explained what an associated party transaction is. I think everyone gets that there's this risk of a hidden subsidy. If you get a friendly company or another company that you own to inflate a sponsorship deal, yeah, there is a risk of subsidy. And if you are trying to regulate football, how much money teams spend for sustainability reasons and competitive balance reasons, you know, financial fair play reasons, that is a problem. You have to have a mechanism, you have to have an approach to deal with that. That premise is supported about half a dozen times in so many, in almost different languages, but they do it about half a dozen times, maybe even more in the ruling. So again, that's something that I thought was a little bit rich in Simon Clef's point email the other day, where he says the premise of the rules weren't corroborated at all, weren't supported at all. That's almost sort of gaslighting, because anyone that's actually read it, any rational, reasonable person would read it, would go, well, they do. They do it there and they do it there and they do it there and they do it there. So I thought that was a bit odd. But to go back to shareholder loans, this was a problem for the Premier League. It's been a problem for the Premier League for a long time and they've ignored it, frankly. And I actually take. I think it is more serious. I sort of see it a little slightly differently to Jacob. It is a problem by implication and by where we go with this for clubs and this is a significant, I think, win for City because it does potentially weaken some of their rivals. But it is a problem for the Premier League because they were aware, they'd had conversations, they'd taken external advice that this could be a problem. If we're going to have a look at sponsorship deals, associated party deals, should we not also look at these soft loans, often low interest or no interest loans, because isn't that an associated party transaction? If we care about sustainability, if we care about hidden subsidy, should we not care about people getting below market rate loans as well? I would say you should. And I think the Premier League at times have acknowledged that maybe we should think about it. But they've gone to the clubs and the clubs have gone. No, including, by the way, Man City. Man City voted to keep them out. 19, you know, so that's interesting. But anyway, doesn't matter, doesn't matter because they got the win at the moment, they needed it. UEFA treat them as associated party transactions. They have a mechanism within their own financial fair play rules for applying a interest rate to them in their assessments. So this has been out there for a while. That, I think was a mistake, frankly, on the Premier League's part over a period of time. And it was a by object, which means intentional breach of competition law, that, that is significant. Now the other ones, I think are easier to fix. They are more related to sort of changes in language. When they did, when they amended the rules, the associated party transaction rules, this is in February of this year, they changed some of the language again. Language matters. It reminds me of the Leicester case. They tried to make it a little bit harder, a little bit tighter, that is bring down Fair market value assessments. There was is quite an interesting term actually. It's used a few times in the ruling, a buffer. I think the buffer is interesting because it goes to the best. I think one of the basic principles of the City argument, who are you or who's that expert over there or who are any of us to say how much Company X should sponsor us? Because we don't know what sponsor, what Company X are trying to do. Do you know what they're trying to achieve? They might really, really love us. They might have a particular reason to do with their geography, to be associated with us. They might pay more for perfectly good, sensible reasons than a company that looks a bit like them and does similar things to them. At the end of the day, who sets the price? It's set by the market. Now that would be a very kind of capitalist laissez faire, just let them all spend whatever they want approach, which again is almost impossible if you're trying to apply some kind of financial fair play to this. So there's tension, there's a tension. You're constantly trying to balance and find a sort of way through this. What they did have was this buffer, this idea that with the language they could be a little bit more loose, you know, a range of values. By the way, they always gave Man City the top of the range, by the way. So again, you know, it's sort of an interesting, you know, how oppressed were they so that they got a win on that in the February transactions. They made it a bit too tight. And then some of the other stuff is, I think, quite fixable. It was about just not having enough resource, the delays, how long it took for some of these rulings, these assessments to be made. The Premier League almost held their hand up on that one. It's hard. We need to hire more people. We will. So that, that's where, that's, that's what's happened. Those are the rulings. I just think the shareholder one is really big because the Premier League should have dealt with that. And I completely agree with City's point that if you're going to go after, you know, us for potentially inflating our sponsorships, you need to sort of look at all these clubs that are getting very soft, friendly, interest free loans as well. So I'm sorry, there's a lot in that answer because it's a complicated topic. But that is the key bit of the shareholder loan thing. And I think it is going to have big knock on effects, not only for all the clubs that have Taken big shareholder loans and we can maybe talk about that in a bit, but also how the Premier League fix this, because theoretically it is right. I think that they can fix most of the tribunal's complaints criticisms, but can they realistically do it if they also have to bring in shareholder loans? Because you have to get two thirds of the votes, right? They have to basically get 14 clubs. So anyway, loads in that. Pick the bits you like.
- [21:25]
Jacob Whitehead
I was just going to add to that in terms of helping City with their spin as to how they've won, one thing which really helps is just a very structure of the judgment itself. The fact that because it's an arbitration and the judging panel effectively have to give a verdict on what needs to change. You get that very dramatic page at the end which goes back to the seven points which Matt talks about were in big bold letters and it's where everyone will skip to because it's right at the end, it says unlawful seven times. It doesn't have the other sort of 20 more minor things. Which of the 20 other things which. Which the Premier League one which are dotted throughout the judgment. So it's very easy for the. For Manchester City to point to that and say, look in X, Y and Z. It's this big benefit and optically it's brilliant for them to have that page and it means it is quite hard work to really properly judge what it is.
- [22:10]
Paige DeSorbo
No, absolutely. And look, you know, if I wanted to play a fun game and I did it for a little bit, I, you know, I could do a sort of control f. Find for the number of times it said failed, as in your argument failed. Right? It. It was a big number. I stopped doing it. However, however, however. Again, I don't want to make this sound like we're team Premier League here, because the Premier League is the rule maker. They are held to a higher standard. They are trying to apply rules on their members and their members, I think, have the right to expect these rules. To be fair, man, City have. They spent a lot of money on it and as I said, they threw a lot of the wall, but they made it. They made some of it stick. And the Premier League do have a problem now. They've got to fix their rules. They were found to be unlawful in the shareholder ones. The big one, they were found unlawful in sort of two other regards as well. One is to do with. At what point in a process, in a associated party transaction process, do you share with the club who's brought a sponsorship deal to the table? Do you share the Comparable transaction data. Now, the Premier League got some advice at some point and said share it. At the end, if they appeal, that again was just wrong. And that's fine, you know, because lawyers disagree. And we've just been to have been through a two week hearing where some other very, very senior lawyers looked at it all, spent 175 pages of their own reasoning and decided no, you should actually have shared that earlier. That is, I think is in the, is in the category of easily fixed stuff, but at the moment is unlawful. So. So like there are sort of bits that are unlawful that I think are problematic and the Premier League could and should have done more about it earlier and there's stuff that was a bit of a toss up in, you know, we took some advice, the advice said this, it turns out we were wrong. We can fix that. It's okay. As I say, the delay stuff too is I think all fixable. It's a resource issue. However, one of the overarching things that came to me is how hard this is, how hard the Premier League have made their own lives. They almost need a team of people working on Man City cases. There's a sort of a 40 page chunk in the middle where the tribunal is clearly sympathetic to the Premier League. They don't say that, but they're not kind of writing it like journalists. But they clearly like the Premier League's two key witnesses from the regulatory team. They clearly have sympathy with the back and forth in paperwork, the request for info. This is difficult. The Etihad case in particular, everyone agreed this was a massive, massive sponsorship deal. There's an amazing line in there saying the amount of rights that Man City were effectively selling to Etihad was bigger than the sponsorship deals of almost a large part of the rest of the league. No one had seen a deal this big. We know it's shirt, we know it's naming rights for the stadium and it's every territory, right? This is a massive deal. All these assessments dragged on for nearly a year. You're listening to the Athletic FC podcast with IO Akinwaleere.
- [25:25]
Ayo Akimolere
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- [26:27]
Acast Representative
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- [26:55]
Paige DeSorbo
JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC.
- [26:57]
Jacob Whitehead
Subject to credit approval.
- [26:58]
Hannah Berner
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- [27:56]
Matt Slater
Jacob Matt spoke about it earlier, but you know there are other stakeholders in this keeping their eyes on what's going on. And that's the rest of the Premier League. What has the verdict been from any of the other Premier League clubs? Because a case like this could also affect how they go around doing their business as well.
- [28:11]
Jacob Whitehead
There's an extent to which I guess they're keeping their council and consulting their own council. It's like it takes them a while to understand it too and particularly work out the implications for them. And I suppose in a way they aren't in as much of a rush as oppressed if they don't need to publicly pronounce stuff. However, there is going to be a meeting next week and they will need to have both their positions sorted by them. And to an extent, we know at the moment, it's a very fluid Premier League voting system. There's an extent to which before you, you chat and you work out what your voting blocks are going to be and you think about long term implications. So I'd say there's quite a lot of disagreement from speaking to various people around football, some people who think it is very much business as usual. There'll be a pretty routine meeting next week and we'll carry on. And there's others who are wary of the potential implications it could have on them and are sort of trying to pretty quickly operate ahead of next week's meeting.
- [29:01]
Paige DeSorbo
Yeah, just on the meeting, I think again, there's, there's maybe a bit of misrepresentation that's gone on there. There was never going to be a vote. I mean, for the simple reason that the Premier League has to give clubs three weeks notice for a vote. Right. So this idea that Man City have posited that the Premier League were rushing to a vote next week is just not true. It is though. Again, it's sort of like there are layers. Right. It's quite clever that what City are doing. It's absolutely true that the Premier League are trying to fix this quickly. They, they genuinely want to sort of portray we. It is business as usual, don't panic. The rules are not done and dusted. It's not open season. It's not that we can remedy most of this fairly quickly. And they and Man City have clearly had this report for two weeks. We know that. So the Premier League have been thinking about it. It was published and shared with the clubs on Monday. So the Premier League bridge masters has phoned everybody up between now and Thursday, which is their first opportunity to talk about it as a group or 20 of them. There will be a meeting of their financial conduct advisory group, which is sort of basically some fcos from about seven or eight clubs, I think eight of them. And there will be a legal advisory group meeting as well, which is, you know, the lawyers of a sample of the clubs. So there'll be a couple of key meetings where they can, you know, really sort of get into the key points here. And then once they've had this chat, I think they will try to move quite quickly towards a vote at a later date. Once Notice is given and lots of documents will be shared. The Premier League are, I think, very keen to sort this out quickly. We are a little bit in limbo though at the moment. The December 2021 associated policy transaction Rules have been declared unlawful. The amendments have been declared unlawful February. So where are we at? We appear to be back in the 2013 profitability and sustainability regime. That is, you know, we've been talking a lot about that. We know about the PSR rules, right, from Everton and what have you. The, the APT section of that isn't very robust and that is why post Newcastle takeover, and it really was post Newcastle takeover, the rest of the league went, right, we need to do something a bit more proactive about apts. So that's where we're at, where this goes next. And Jacob's absolutely right, the club's digesting it, taking their own legal advice, which makes it even harder when me and Jacob call up lawyers and say, oh, you appear not to have a dog in this fight. And it's like, I don't know, maybe not yet, I don't. So getting people to go on the record is quite hard. You know, we know because we can see who supported each side, right. You know, people at certain clubs appeared for Manchester City, you know, Newcastle, Everton and Chelsea made representations and a lot of the other clubs made representations for the Premier League. So we can sort of, we can sort of see the sides there. We know from our own reporting, you know, how we reported on the December 2021 vote. But crucially, the more the really tight, which I think again should have been a massive red flag for the Premier League February 20, 2024amendments where they made everything a bit tighter. That was 12, six. That, that is the tightest possible majority you can get. Two teams abstained. So it was a 12, 6 vote. Do they still have 12? Do they have 14? Maybe. But I think the shareholder loan issue is going to be kind of pivotal there.
- [32:17]
Jacob Whitehead
Some teams just in quite interesting positions, like if you take Chelsea for example, who as Matt mentioned spoke or made representations on behalf of City, also in an interesting position as one of the clubs who have more shareholder loans within them and so kind of ultimately what wins out, that's conversations.
- [32:33]
Matt Slater
They're going to have a multi club model as well.
- [32:36]
Jacob Whitehead
They're fairly close to the PSR limits. I think that's not a secret. Clubs are all at different stages in terms of just where it stands in their balance, but for several, it kind of, it might be a toss up at the moment and they have to really work out what side they're going to fall on.
- [33:00]
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- [33:13]
Paige DeSorbo
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- [33:14]
Jacob Whitehead
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- [33:15]
Hannah Berner
This podcast is brought to you by Aura. Imagine waking up to find your bank account drained, bills for loans you never took out, a warrant for your arrest. All because someone stole your identity. Hackers aren't waiting. Why are you? That's why we're thrilled to partner with Aura. Your personal data is a goldmine for hackers, and Aura helps lock it down. Aura monitors the dark web, blocks data brokers from selling your information. Includes a VPN for private browsing and a password manager to to secure your accounts before criminals break in. For a limited time, Aura is offering our listeners a 14 day free trial plus a dark web scan to check if your personal information has been leaked. All for free@aura.com safety that's aura.com safety to sign up and start protecting yourself and your loved ones. That's aura.com safety terms apply. Check the site for details.
- [34:12]
Paige DeSorbo
This is the Athletic FC podcast with I.O. acamolera.
- [34:19]
Matt Slater
The big one, really. And I know there's a lot of football fans listening to this who aren't. Manchester City fans are going to be asking how does this affect the impending case of the 115 charges to Manchester City? Matt, where are we in relation to this case in particular and that 115 charges?
- [34:37]
Paige DeSorbo
The way I would answer this is to almost go back to my first question about what Man City were trying to achieve with this APT case. If they were trying to get their big Etihad deal through and tie them Premier League up, score some wins along the way. You know the shareholder loan thing. Yeah. We can weaken rivals. If that's what they were trying to do, they should be really pleased. They've got. They've got plenty out of this. If they were trying to strike a really significant blow in the 115 case, they failed because their big arguments about bias, that the entire APT regime is unlawful, it's anti competitive, it's unnecessary. The Premier League processes are just completely wrong. No, they failed in those arguments, in fact. And then the Premier League can almost take not just comfort, but I think a bit of a spring in the step. Okay, look, we've made some mistakes and we've rightly been slapped here on Some of our processes on that shareholder loan thing I keep coming back to, I think was a big mistake. But looking ahead to the bigger fight, we've done all right here. In fact, we've taken from this APT case exactly what we wanted. Three very, very senior jurists saying our fundamentals are okay. So I think that this case, whilst incredibly exciting for this week, we'll move on. We'll start talking about football again soon, I promise. And this isn't over, by the way, because there's stuff to do with injunctive relief, which means, you know, I'm entity. Can I really sue for those delayed deals and how much and how the Premier League fix the rule book. There's. There's more to come on this one. But for the really big one, the one that really matters, I don't think this case has done much at all.
- [36:24]
Sam Lee
I really.
- [36:25]
Paige DeSorbo
I really don't think it has.
- [36:26]
Matt Slater
Could this be seen as a slight stalling process? Because that is a big case in general. Are both cases working in tandem right now, Jacob?
- [36:34]
Jacob Whitehead
Yeah, I mean, the city, the 115 charges is ongoing right now, about five minutes away from where we're sitting. I'll show you this after recording, if you fancy taking a stroll.
- [36:43]
Matt Slater
Does this make it difficult for City moving into the 115 charges? It's a much bigger case, as Matt has alluded to.
- [36:49]
Jacob Whitehead
I don't think it makes it any more difficult than it was already in the sense. I think if they had managed to get this through, it would have been a bonus, which would have been a massive help, but I don't think it necessarily weakens them now. I'd be shocked just sort of knowing to an extent how these work. If it wasn't brought up by City in the arguments, but I think it'd be speculative. Matt used shotgun analogy early and I think that's good. I'd be very surprised if it was significant in any way. Will it give. Will it give the Premier League legal team confidence? I mean, I don't think it really works in the same way as football in terms of, like, you have momentum, you're going in. It's a different panel. I'm not sure if Adam Lewis KC is going to be walking in like a big dog with any more than he would already. So I think there's an extent to which they, yes, they're going at the same time. They could have come together, but they're going to remain pretty separate.
- [37:35]
Matt Slater
Matt, let's finish on this. Really having reports that the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandi will hold talks with a group of Premier League clubs, I think, on Wednesday about the government's plans for a football watchdog. Look, whenever cases like this happen with the Premier League, there's always a talk of independent regulators rearing their head once again. I mean, there is, case in point, really, someone externally overlooking what goes on with the Premier League.
- [38:02]
Paige DeSorbo
Well, absolutely. I think this is another one of those examples of coincidences or things happening concurrently. Yeah, this again is a very long debate. We've been talking about the, the imminent or apparently arrival of independent regulation for football for two or three years, ever since, you know, Tracy Crouch started our fan lab review. So, you know, it is coming. We probably already have it if it wasn't for Rishi Sunak calling a snap election and that because the process is already going through Parliament. So the bill, the governance, football governance bill was halted. It didn't sneak in just before the doors came down. So the new government are going to restart it. They backed it in opposition. We are kind of waiting for it to really kind of start motoring through House of Commons and House of Lords. There is, though, inevitably, because it's a new government, it was a chance again for both sides, if you like, or there's more than one side, if you know, more than two sides in this, but if you like, everyone interested to start lobbying again and sort of say, well, you know, that Conservative bill was pretty good, but, you know, could it be even better here? I, you know, there's some things that it left out and then the other side, if you like, the Premier League side saying, yeah, you know, I think maybe we could soften it still. And, you know, have you thought about this? So we've had another, you know, outbreak of lobbying and that was all part of the ticketing issues that the Keir Starmer and some of his ministers have had. What I take from this ruling and the Leicester ruling and so many other rulings I've read before is the Premier League is not very good at regulating. It's not. English Football League isn't much better. It is a bit better. It's had a little bit more practice, it's had to get better, but they still make mistakes. The FA have abdicated responsibility for the club game years ago and are not very good at it. Even the bits that they are still responsible for non league football are really bad at it. I'm sorry, football keeps talking about, leave us alone, we're great, we're successful, we can sort this. And then a month doesn't go by where there isn't a new. Oh my God. Your rulebook's not very good. You're just not very good at this. So, you know, if there's another winner would be advocates of independent regulation. Now, do independent regulators solve all our problems? No, they don't. Will they be better? Yes, I think they will be.
- [40:21]
Matt Slater
This probably won't be the last case that might challenge the Premier League.
- [40:25]
Jacob Whitehead
No, I mean like this is really, I'd say if you had to draw it out in a graph, we're probably about not even halfway. I mean, like we're probably at the bottom of a really, really steep spike. I mean, we see it even more with these cases are going to come up more and more with multi club models. It's going to come up more with player calendar. It's going to come with potential return of European super league safeguarding issues which lots of law has been talking about recently. It really is. Name a topic and you can come up with it. There's no end to this. This is ultimately the reality of the game. Sort of. You can't put the toothpaste back in the box. And as I'm sure you'll know from effectively being our independent regulator, it's not an easy job to do all the time.
- [41:03]
Matt Slater
Trust me, man. Honestly, this is the least I think I've spoken. Podcast, I hope. Anyway, you guys listening to this? We've made or given some clarity as to what has been going on with this case as Manchester City took on the Premier League. Gents, thank you so much for your time. Jacob and Matt, really appreciate you joining us on the pod. We'll be back tomorrow for another episode.
- [41:24]
Ayo Akimolere
The Athletic FC Podcast Network.
- [41:32]
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- [41:59]
Paige DeSorbo
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- [42:02]
Hannah Berner
This podcast is brought to you by Aura. Imagine waking up to find your bank account drained, bills for loans you never took out, a warrant for your arrest, all because someone stole your identity. Hackers aren't waiting. Why are you? That's why we're thrilled to partner with Aura. Your Personal data is a goldmine for hackers, and Aura helps lock it down. Aura monitors the Dark Web, blocks data brokers from selling your information. Includes a VPN for private browsing and a password manager to secure your accounts before criminals break in. For a limited time, Aura is offering our listeners a 14 day free trial plus a dark web scan to check if your personal information has been leaked. All for free@aura.com safety that's aura.com safety to sign up and start protecting yourself and your loved ones. That's a u r a.com safety terms apply. Check the site for details.
- [42:56]
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- [43:04]
Paige DeSorbo
Hey folks, it's Marc Maron from WTF. It's been more than 15 years now, and I'm still talking to all kinds of people in my garage every week. Sometimes it's Bill Burr, sometimes it's Ariana Grande. She just looks at me because she's always going like, dad, it's not that big a deal. Yeah. I go, sorry, I lost my temper. I go, I still love you. You know, Daddy has issues.
- [43:26]
Hannah Berner
Are you afraid of it?
- [43:27]
Paige DeSorbo
Of death? Well, I don't know. I think about it all the time. How are we here already? Listen to WTF with Marc Maron twice a week on your favorite podcast app. Or get more WTF with a WTF subscription. Just go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF plus.
- [43:46]
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