Liverpool FC Forum

by **metalhead** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 1:03 pm

and by the way, Ayre is talking about international TV rights not local ones that smaller teams actually depend on, so there is a MASSIVE DIFFERENCE! do you really think that countries in Asia, etc... have majority of fans who support Wigan? Wolves? Its ridiculous that we are making the same amount of money in intl TV right with the likes of Wigan, Aston Villa, etc... (No disrespect) when we have unbelievable potential to exploit the market world wide and get the best out of our commercial revenues.

"I am certain that if you are a Liverpool fan living in Liverpool, you subscribe to Sky because you support Liverpool, and if you are a Blackburn fan you subscribe to watch Blackburn.

"So it's probably right and proper that the money in this country is shared the way that it is.

"But if you go further afield then it is a myth that the Premier League is huge.

"It is popular but the clubs that are really popular are the cubs like Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal.

by **SupitsJonF** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:20 pm

metalhead wrote:and by the way, Ayre is talking about international TV rights not local ones that smaller teams actually depend on, so there is a MASSIVE DIFFERENCE!

I thought all international revenue was shared between all the teams?

by **worcester_red** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:54 pm

SupitsJonF wrote:
metalhead wrote:and by the way, Ayre is talking about international TV rights not local ones that smaller teams actually depend on, so there is a MASSIVE DIFFERENCE!

I thought all international revenue was shared between all the teams?

Yes and that is what is unfair, I mean why should Wigan get money for intrnational TV rights when no one outside of the Uk has the faintest idea who they are, they are riding on Liverpool, Gooners and manure's popularity.

by **parchpea** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 4:43 pm

Always on the cards really as NESV didnt buy in just for our benefit. The playing field is not level anyway and if teams are pursuing oil rich owners Liverpool have to fight back and this our way of doing exactly that. Reports are Chelsea and United dont support the move and you wouldnt expect them too given it will increase our revenues. With a ground to build and meeting expectations the club needs to maximise its earning potential but the question is whether it will kill the competition. Personally I would suggest its already dead and has been for quite some time.

by **Igor Zidane** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 5:03 pm

Some goo articals in the echo today .

LIVERPOOL FC managing director Ian Ayre today called for the LFC to be given a much greater share of the Premier League’s overseas TV broadcasting rights revenue.

The current deal for 2010 to 2013 is worth around £1.4billion and is split equally between all 20 Premier League clubs.

However, Anfield supremo Ayre insists Liverpool’s global appeal means they should get more cash than many of their rivals when the next contract is negotiated prior to the 2013/14 season.

“If you are a Bolton Wanderers fan in Bolton you subscribe to Sky because you want to watch Bolton – everyone gets that,” he said.

“But if you are in Kuala Lumpur, there isn’t really anyone subscribing to Astro or ESPN to watch Bolton.

“The large majority are subscribing because they want to watch Liverpool, Man United, Chelsea and Arsenal.

“Is it right that the international rights are shared equally between all 20 clubs?

“Some people will say, ‘You’ve got to all be in it to make it happen’, but isn’t it really about where the revenue is coming from, which is the broadcaster, and isn’t it really about who people want to watch on that channel?

“We know it is us and others.

“At some point we definitely feel there has to be some rebalance of that because what we are actually doing is disadvantaging ourselves against other big European clubs.”

Real Madrid and Barcelona currently negotiate their own TV deals in Spain and Ayre believes that gives them an unfair advantage which threatens not only Liverpool but the future of the Premier League.

Ayre added: “If Real Madrid or Barcelona or other big clubs across Europe have the opportunity to truly realise their international media value potential, where does that leave Liverpool and Manchester United?

We’ll just share ours and we’ll all be nice to each other.

“The whole phenomenon of the Premier League could be threatened.

“If they just get bigger and bigger and they generate more and more, all the players will start drifting that way. Will the Premier League bubble get burst because we are all sticking to this equal-sharing model? It’s a real debate that has to happen.”

Liverpool FC takeover: How LFC came back from the brink - part one

A year ago this Saturday, New England Sports Ventures completed their dramatic £300million takeover of Liverpool. It brought to an end the nightmare reign of owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett. In a special four-part series, the Echo's Liverpool FC writer JAMES PEARCE assesses how the Reds ended up in such a mess, revisits the dramatic takeover, analyses the impact of FSG and looks at the challenges facing them in the future

CHAOS reigned at Anfield. Liverpool Football Club was a laughing stock. On the pitch they were slumped in the relegation zone after an embarrassing home defeat to Blackpool. The opening seven games had yielded just six points – the club’s worst start to a season for 57 years.

And off it Liverpool was on the brink of financial meltdown amid talk of going into administration and landing a nine-point penalty.

The banner on the Kop summed it up perfectly: ‘Built by Shanks, Broke by Yanks’.

Click here to see our special section on the takeover, with our original articles, picture galleries, videos and more.

By early October 2010 the wretched three and a half year reign of Tom Hicks and George Gillett had brought Liverpool to its knees.

Their days at Anfield were numbered but the greedy duo were refusing to go quietly as the deadline to repay Royal Bank of Scotland’s £237million loan edged closer. For supporters tired of seeing the club’s name dragged through the gutter, it was a living nightmare.

How had it come to this? How did the most successful British football club in history fall so far and so fast?

For 16 years lifelong fan David Moores had been Liverpool chairman and majority shareholder. His love for the club wasn’t ever in question but he didn’t have the deep pockets required to restore the Reds to their former glory.

The arrival of billionaire Roman Abramovich at Chelsea in 2003 had changed the landscape of English football. In comparison Moores was a pauper and Liverpool were in danger of being cast adrift from their big-spending rivals.

Moores was convinced that in order to compete the club needed a new ground and being unable to fund it himself in 2004 he decided to sell up.

Chief executive Rick Parry and Moores embarked on a painstaking process which finally appeared to be reaching a conclusion in December 2006 when the club announced an exclusivity agreement had been struck with Dubai International Capital (DIC). In Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum it looked like Liverpool had found the perfect sugar daddy.

But the investment company dragged its heels and when reports emerged that DIC were planning to sell the club again in seven years and would borrow heavily to finance the purchase, Moores had second thoughts.

Enter George Gillett. His initial hopes of buying Liverpool had been dashed by a lack of cash but the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey owner returned to the bargaining table with a business partner – Tom Hicks.

Their offer was £5,000 per share – £500 per share more than DIC. The board voted in favour of Gillett and Hicks’ proposal and Moores decided to hand the keys to the Americans.

They paid £174million for the shares, vowed to pay off £45m of club debt and put £215m towards the new stadium.

“I am handing this club on into safe hands,” said Moores, who walked away with £88million – £8million more than the deal with DIC would have netted him. “This is not someone coming over just to make a quick buck. I have definitely made the right decision.”

They were words that would return to haunt a man who insisted he never sold to the Americans for extra profit – and who stressed later he only ever wanted what was best for the club he had supported all his life from the Kop before becoming Chairman.

On February 6, 2007 Gillett and Hicks walked into Anfield and said all the right things. They promised to respect the club’s tradition, build the new stadium in time for the 2009/10 season and invest in the playing squad.

“We’re not here to milk the fans,” Gillett insisted, who vowed a shovel would be in the ground in Stanley Park inside 60 days. “Give us a little time and we are going to have some fun together.”

Hicks added: “This is not a takeover like the Glazer deal at Manchester United. There is no debt involved. We believe that as custodians of this wonderful, storied club we have a duty of care to the tradition and legacies of Liverpool.”

It was all lies. Hicks in particular had a controversial past. They were leveraged buyout specialists – buying on the cheap with borrowed money and then selling high at a massive profit.

Liverpool had been under performing commercially and with the club’s global fan base they saw the chance to make a quick buck.

Moores may have got personal assurances that there would no debt loaded on the club but there was no legal guarantee.

“We had looked into Gillett’s affairs in detail and he came up to scratch,” Moores said. “To a great extent we took Tom Hicks on trust, on George’s say so.”

Within months of their arrival the club was riddled with debt, disunity and back-stabbing. Gillett and Hicks swiftly fell out with each other and left a trail of broken promises in their wake.

“It soon became clear that they had very different philosophies on how the club should be run,” Parry said. “One was hands off, the other hands on; one courted publicity, the other didn’t.”

By 2008 Gillett wanted out but was helpless as Hicks had power of veto over his 50% share. When Sheikh Mansour reignited his interest in buying the club and offered £500m, Hicks dismissed it as derisory. It would be a costly mistake.

Initially money was invested in the squad as Rafa Benitez signed the likes of Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano, politely turning down Gillett’s offer to get him “Snoogy Doogy” as well as “whoever we get in the draft”.

But it was the banks’ money and as the world recession wrecked any hopes of borrowing more to build a new stadium and £30million per year went on paying interest on the debts, the cash dried up and Benitez’s calls across the Atlantic went unanswered.

Washing the club’s dirty linen in public became a regular occurrence with nothing more sickening than Hicks’ PR stunt at home in Dallas with a Sky TV crew.

Clutching his Liverpool mug, watching the side in action on a big screen with his kids around him in club merchandise, he demanded the resignation of chief executive Rick Parry.

With Gillett refusing to agree to Hicks’ request, Parry battled on before deciding to walk away in February 2009. “My position became untenable,” he said. “The structure we had was dysfunctional and something had to give.”

Royal Bank of Scotland played a key role in the subsequent appointment of Christian Purslow as managing director and his brief was to raise £100million of investment to pay down the loans.

However, Benitez and Purslow were soon at war, with the manager complaining of being undermined.

In May 2009, Liverpool finished second in the Premier League. Twelve months later they were seventh and Benitez was on his way out of Anfield.

Just how far the club had fallen was underlined by the fact they swopped a Champions League and La Liga winning manager for Roy Hodgson, whose last honour had been the Danish title a decade earlier.

Finally, RBS’ patience with Hicks and Gillett began to run out. In April 2010 the owners had rejected a £118million offer from the New York-based private equity firm Rhone Group for 40% of the club.

In response, the bank agreed to one final six-month extension of the loan but in return the owners had to agree to the appointment of an independent chairman to sell the club. British Airways chairman Martin Broughton was installed – and crucially, he had the casting vote on the board.

Liverpool was now officially for sale and stories emerged about interest from Hong Kong-based investment banker Kenny Huang but no firm offer followed.

As the October deadline to repay RBS edged ever closer, Hicks was desperately trying to raise the cash needed to clear the debt and remain in control.

Uncertainty and negativity reigned at Anfield with hope in short supply.

by **stmichael** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 5:11 pm

i don't see a problem with what he said. afterall he's just doing his job. at the end of the day we don't have a billionaire pumping money into the club like chelsea or man city and we don't have a 60,000+ stadium like united and arsenal.

by **tubby** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 5:42 pm

Exactly. If City can twist the rules and pump their own money into the club via the stadium sponsor then why shouldn't we take advantage of the clearly superior fanbase we have in other countries? Fair game imo. But the problem will be getting the other less well off clubs to agree.

by **neil** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 7:14 pm

Wigan chairman Dave Whelan, meanwhile, has reacted with outrage to Ayre's comments. Whelan told goal.com: "I have just read his [Ayre's] comments and I find them diabolical - I just can't believe what he has been saying.

"They are thinking 'how can we get more money?' You won't get more money by killing the heart and soul of the Premier League and killing the heart and soul of football in England.

"We invented the game and we have still got the finest league in the whole world and some of the finest supporters in the whole world and they want to rip the whole thing up.''

Lol, what a surprise. There are probably about 10 teams currently in tje prem that should form part of the 14 required, therefore the 8 against could be replaced by large clubs that would be happy to oblige, Leeds, Forest, west ham, derby, birmingham etc.

by **parchpea** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 7:33 pm

You cant win really, they bring in fair play rules where by you can only spend money you generate but when you try and do exactly that you get pelters. Better our way than the arab route surely. Either way its teams pulling away from the pack and it will be the same teams doing that anyways only we may just have a chance to get in the mix again thats all.

by **aCe'** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:06 pm

The big clubs already make much more than the smaller clubs through merchandise sales, match day revenue, sponsorship deals..etc etc The only reason some of the smaller sides in the league are able to remain competitive is TV (both local and int'l) money that is pumped by the F.A to all the clubs involved. As far as I can tell, theres very little support for the idea even from the very top (Ferguson commented saying he doesnt think its a good idea despite the fact that ManUtd would probably benefit from such a move much more than any other club).

If you compare the commercial revenue for the top European clubs, Bayern are doing very well (top) despite the German league having a similar TV revenue scheme to that in England. Spain on the other hand do it differently and Barca and Madrid get more than 50% of the TV money which means that the other clubs will always struggle to compete. I dont buy into the whole 'the English league has more quality sides so it will never happen here argument'. The Italian league changed their system last year (or at least they decided on it) to one similar to the EPL and the Spanish sides are pushing for a similar change.

For me, we really need to focus on the stadium thing because that where we really lag behind. Both Arsenal and ManUtd make more than double what we get for matchday revenue and thats largely due to their stadium capacity. I just hope we decide on the way forward and get to it as soon as possible.

by **7_Kewell** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:24 pm

while i understand the sentiments behind what the club's saying, i can't agree with it. Giving the big clubs all the money (like they do in Spain and Italy) kills it for the smaller teams and you end up with a two level league, with the smalller clubs unable to get anywhere near the top 6.

by **neil** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:25 pm

big money is in the champs league though and Real & Barca are buying up the other big teams talent, Alonso fabregas ronaldo etc etc

by **stmichael** » Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:41 pm

neil wrote:Wigan chairman Dave Whelan, meanwhile, has reacted with outrage to Ayre's comments. Whelan told goal.com: "I have just read his [Ayre's] comments and I find them diabolical - I just can't believe what he has been saying. "They are thinking 'how can we get more money?' You won't get more money by killing the heart and soul of the Premier League and killing the heart and soul of football in England. "We invented the game and we have still got the finest league in the whole world and some of the finest supporters in the whole world and they want to rip the whole thing up.'' Lol, what a surprise. There are probably about 10 teams currently in tje prem that should form part of the 14 required, therefore the 8 against could be replaced by large clubs that would be happy to oblige, Leeds, Forest, west ham, derby, birmingham etc.

the bloke's living in the dark ages.

his club cant even sell out 50% of its ground for premiership matches ffs.

by **Kharhaz** » Thu Oct 13, 2011 12:58 am

God bless that landlady. By standing up for herself she has opened a whole lot of new avenues.

In which Ayre has also cottoned on to. He is not saying we should rob the lower teams, but what he is saying is that all the teams should be able to negotiate the rights to the matches their club play in around europe.

And why not? Take the LFC.TV channel. They can only show the reactions of the crowd during match days, meanwhile elsewhere in europe they can show the entire match ! People in europe laugh at us because they get to watch the match for free on their local channel while we have to fork up a small fortune to watch.

Imagine if the clubs are able to negotiate themself deals in europe. The LFC. TV channel will shoot up in members as their matches will be much cheaper than what sky are charging, and there is no off chance that LFC will be involved, it would be a guarantee that you would be able to see all Liverpool matches if you cannot get to Anfield.

God bless that landlady.

by **tubby** » Thu Oct 13, 2011 9:06 am

If they want to force FFP then surely they should let the clubs do all they can to bring in money correct? This 'we all want an equal slice of the pie' is bull.shi.t. Ayres is right, who gives a fk about Wigan or Bolton in SE Asia - no one.

But you have to wonder why did Ayres even come out with it when he knows he won't get a majority backing. Can the Premier League collectivly ask for more then next time the rights negotiations come around?

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