Manchester United named as the most valuable club in the world

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Manchester United named as the most valuable club in the world The chief operating officer of Manchester United, Michael Bolingbroke, has said that football clubs should not just be after quick money on offer from overseas sponsors’ interested in the Premier League. He said that clubs need to focus most of their marketing on the core fans or they run the risk of damaging the brand.

Bolingbroke was speaking at the annual Global Leadership Summit at the London Business School. Manchester United has 333million fans across the world and 139 million of these are core fans. These figures come from research carried out by TNS Sport in 2007. Brand Finance has labelled it the most valuable sports club in the world.

United say that their core fans are more important than any sponsors or broadcasters to the club’s marketing strategy. Bolingbroke backed this up by saying that getting the insight from these core fans had been critical in recent years to the club’s commercial success.

He said that although core fans are not a key revenue driver, they drive growth with the atmosphere they provide at the club and their invaluable insight. The club maintain interaction with their global fans by interacting with the core fans and Bolingbroke says this is more important to the future of the club than sponsors or broadcasters. He said that other clubs should be wary of alienating their core fans by going after quick money.

Manchester United make their strategy work by asking how core fans like to be treated as opposed to, say corporate fans. There are differences and United use these to make all their fans happy especially on match days. Manchester United have, however, also been one of the busiest clubs when it comes to overseas sponsorship, signing deals recently with telecommunication companies, Globul and Du.

Repeated incident of misconduct could see players being sacked

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Footballers risk having their contracts terminated if they are guilty of serious or persistent misconduct. This is according to the behaviour clause in a footballer’s employment contract which ties players to their clubs. The problem is that this is open to wide interpretation and the football authorities and the players’ union are looking at ways of clarifying it.

The PFA chief executive, Gordon Taylor, was speaking yesterday to the culture, media and sport select committee enquiry, ‘Racism in Football’. He said that the contract is too generalised with regards to behaviour and that it should state specifically what an offence of gross misconduct is, for example racist abuse. There was support for this from David Bernstein, the FA Chairman who said it was an ‘interesting area’.

He said that players are very well protected by their contracts and, in his opinion, sometimes over-protected. He said that clubs and players need to clarify what constitutes a breach of contract and spoke of one incident pending where they were waiting to see what the club does. It was generally agreed that it was not a good situation if a club were afraid of million pound lawsuits if they terminated a players’ contract.

John Terry, the former England captain, is currently facing racism charges for allegedly racially abusing Anton Ferdinand of Queens Park Rangers. The committee was told that his trial date had been put back until after the European Championships this summer. David Bernstein made it clear that he thought the decision to strip Terry of the captaincy was absolutely right.

It was a very controversial decision and led to the resignation of the England manager at the time, Fabio Capello. Both the PFA and the FA are in agreement that changes in the way a contract is worded must be made and it is just a question of what form those changes will take.

 

Rangers lose their appeal at the SFA tribunal

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Glasgow Rangers lost their appeal at the Scottish Football Association’s appeals tribunal when their claim that they were being unduly punished for Craig Whyte’s financial misdemeanours was rejected. Whyte withheld £13 million of tax and VAT which should have gone to the taxman. The club was also fined £160,000 for gross misconduct and bringing the game into disrepute.

The tribunal, which was headed by Lord Carloway, said in their summing up that it was right for the original disciplinary tribunal to ban the registration of new players over the age of 18 for 12 months. They also said that it was right that offence was attributable to the club as a member of the Scottish Football Association and that the tribunal was right to raise the maximum fine of £100,000 to £160,000 in this case as it was so serious.

It actually could have been much worse for Rangers. They could have been expelled from the Scottish game or had their membership of the SFA suspended either of which would have had dire consequences for the club. Rangers complained about the effects of the restriction on transfers but the tribunal ruled that this was correct as the club had brought the game into disrepute. The club can still extend contracts for existing players.

The ruling will throw doubts on the future of the consortium who are trying to get a creditors’ agreement next month allowing the club to come out of administration, hopefully in time for the start of next season. The consortium is headed by Charles Green, the former chief executive of Sheffield United and apparently consists of a further 20 investors who remain unidentified.

Fergie announces that he will only allow Ryan Giggs to play in the Olympics

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It was thought that several over age players were going to be chosen from Manchester United to play football in the Olympic Games that are occurring this summer. However, Sir Alex Ferguson has just made the announcement that the only overage player from the team that can be selected to play in the Olympic Games is Ryan Giggs.

The coach, Stuart Pearce, was potentially going to pick Jonny Evans or Paul Scholes, but this has been made an impossibility because of Sir Alex’s decision. A court ruling in 2008 also made selection of football players for the Olympics rather challenging. This court decision stated that football clubs have no obligation to release their players to play in the Olympic Games and it is a decision that they will have to make by themselves.

Ryan Giggs is not officially been chosen for the tournament, this decision just decides whether you will be allowed to play in the Olympic Games. However, Mr Giggs has stated that if you were asked to play on the Olympic squad, he would accept the invitation.

Each squad in the Olympic Games are allowed to select three players who are over the normal age limit and Mr Giggs falls into this category. The question was whether the Football Association would allow Mr Giggs to play because of his age.

A spokesperson from the Football Association has refused to comment on whether they have received any communications from Manchester United about the issue. It seems as if this means that a legal battle about the issue is not going to take place, especially considering the typically accepting position of Manchester United that young players don’t get involved in Euro 2012. The original court decision was about whether to release players for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Shrewsbury Town donate shirts to African charity

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If you are in Shrewsbury town that it is not going to be uncommon to see people wearing the football kit with blue and amber. However, this football kit is now going to see a new international reach as people in Nairobi are going to be getting the football shirts from the club.

The shirts are being taken to Africa by the charity, Taking Football to Africa and Beyond. The football club of Shrewsbury town have donated over 5000 football kits in order to give to communities, orphanages, and schools in Africa.

The charity is run by Neil Hope, who was formerly involved with the RAF and he has commented, “I’ve always enjoyed doing work for charity and in a conversation with a friend one time we thought that it would be great if old football kits would be able to be sent to Africa to encourage the people there to get involved with the sport.

I think football is something that can have a universal appeal across the world and by sending kids to Africa it allows people to get involved with the sport.”

In many African countries football is a sport that is enjoyed, but there is often not enough kids to go around. This initiative is going to see a great deal more clothes sent to the country so more children than ever can get involved with playing the sport. It is also a great way to help people who are more needy and is a fantastic charitable cause.

Not only football kits are being sent from this football club, but the charity of also brought in over £15,000 worth of kit from other people. Other football clubs have been very generous in providing their equipment that is now out of date but it is all going to make a big difference.