The owners, investors, chief executives and a few more besides from Europe’s biggest clubs were in Berlin this week to carve up the wealth of Uefa’s competitions from 2024 onwards, and to listen to some sermons on building their other revenue.
What they learned will delight some and chill the bones of others. The news from the United States is that the growth is in multi-use arenas for live events that exploit the big assets of a club – its stadium – placed often at the heart of a city and easily accessed. Covid lockdowns, they were told, has created an insatiable appetite for live events. Taylor Swift’s latest tour has earned $1 billion in ticket sales alone. Premium hospitality packages at the F1 race in Las Vegas were selling for $50,000. Sweat the asset and the people will come.
The news was delivered by Tim Leiweke, best known as the US sports exec who brought David Beckham to Major League Soccer in 2007 and jolted the league into life. His latest company develops or manages more than 300 venues across the US and also in Europe and beyond. The next is currently being built adjacent to the Etihad Stadium, in partnership with the City Football Group (CFG), and will be the biggest indoor arena in the country.
The £365 million project will in the long-term, CFG hopes, contribute significantly to the group’s value. It is understood that the CFG earnings from ticket sales, merchandising and everything else will not benefit directly Manchester City’s first team budget. Even so when you have as much money as CFG do, and rules limiting spending on player fees and wages – as they know only too well - such infrastructure investment is a good alternative.
The 23,500-seater arena next to their stadium, which is itself being expanded, opens next year. It feels like the latest part of CFG’s plans for world domination. First the multi-club group, now the multi-arena experience. Harry Styles is an investor and will be among the first to play what will be known as “Co-op Live” – the naming rights having been sold to the aforementioned in a 15-year, £100 million deal. Leiweke said ticket sales had been strong.
He certainly had the room’s attention. There was praise for Daniel Levy, whom Leiweke said had built the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium for much less than it would cost now, just four years after it opened. There was a strong sense that whatever was being built in the US currently is on a size and scale that Europe struggles to imagine – but even so it is rushing to catch up.
Real Madrid have invested €900 million so far in a Santiago Bernabéu Stadium refit that gives it the same multi-use features as Spurs. AC Milan are pondering a new stadium on the outskirts of the city with similar capabilities. Inter Milan will have to move. Leiweke was pushing the buttons of his audience. Heritage sites. Venues that could not be replicated in terms of location or the associated tradition. All that was needed was investment in the hundreds of millions, or billions.
Todd Boehly was in attendance, and the question of the future of Stamford Bridge is now – as ever – a central issue for the new Chelsea ownership. Fenway Sports Group have just about rebuilt Anfield as a fine football stadium, if not a multi-use venue, notwithstanding recent issues with their contractor. Everton plough ahead with their new stadium despite their transfer austerity.
The stand-out on that list was Manchester United. Unlike all the others they have the same advantage as City – an extensive site that could perhaps accommodate a second venue. Yet they are nowhere. Locked in the never-ending cycle of the takeover that never happens, life is passing them by. It was, even by United’s standards, a disastrous week. After Mason Greenwood’s exit came Jadon Sancho in revolt. Then allegations piling up against Antony. Add to that accusations that the club had honoured a former coach of their affiliate women’s team who was a convicted sex abuser.
On weeks like this a new stadium, let alone a separate new arena, and all the attendant questions of finance and logistics, must feel like the last thing on the list for United. But the game moves fast. Ferran Soriano, the CFG chief executive, was working the room for the two days of the event in question, the European Club Association (ECA) general assembly, and it paid off. He was elected to the main board of the ECA, the organisation that effectively runs Uefa club competitions alongside Uefa.
At times like these it seems everyone in the room has forgotten that City defeated a Uefa conviction of significant financial wrongdoing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2020 and now face 115 more charges from the Premier League. Where that ends, no-one is prepared to hazard a guess. These are the most serious charges the Premier League has ever levelled against a member. Yet in the face of it, Abu Dhabi are relentless. Another new CFG club, this time in Brazil. A new arena. A seat at the top table.
There were a lot of Premier League chairs and chief execs in attendance at the ECA. Boehly, Levy, Vinai Venkatesham, Darren Eales, and Billy Hogan. From Celtic, Peter Lawwell who was also elected to the ECA board. United’s chief executive Richard Arnold did not attend. He will have his reasons but there was a time when, in the early years of what became the ECA, Peter Kenyon was the United chief executive at the heart of it, and his successor David Gill was the same.
As a man who builds and manages stadiums and arenas, one might expect Lieweke to say that they are the key to success. Either way, it was an arresting vision of the future. The US private equity fund Silver Lake, which owns 18 per cent of CFG, has also invested in Lieweke’s venue company Oak View Group. Those who can afford to do so, like City, appear to be rushing to embrace the multi-use venue era. Others are doing the best with the space and scope they have. Then there are some who appear to be doing nothing at all.
