Category: In The Press

Article by Charles Gould, CEO of Retexo

If one asks around European clubs what their main focus is, the majority will talk about television revenues, commercial partnerships, ticket sales, merchandise sales and digital monetization. Clubs will also discuss the opportunity to develop new commercial assets and commercializing this inventory to create ancillary revenue streams.

By any reckoning the football landscape has changed and although its commercial potential has never been greater, growing club brands and commercial revenues are concepts mainly the preserve of the big clubs. Aside from the forthcoming television revenues available on participation in a major European league, a small club that gains promotion to a major European league is less likely to be able to commercialize itself at the rate of larger, storied clubs.

By Matt Slater

Derby County fans may or may not believe this, but the original hook for this piece was a press release issued by Walsall on Monday morning. After 12 months of talks, it said, the League Two side have been bought by a new group of American sports investors called Trivela.

No maverick tycoon doing keepy-uppies on the pitch, no Twitter spaces to tell the world we’re all going to make it, no bait thrown to the papers, no auctions, no last-minute haggling or late swoops: just a note to tell us it had happened.

Hosted by Andy Goldstein, Andy Brassell and Mark Langdon

Mark Chapman & The Athletic’s Matt Slater host a roundtable on the reasons and ramifications of La Liga filing a complaint to UEFA, the French administrative courts and the European Union over Kylian Mbappe’s decision to renew his contract at Paris Saint-Germain despite Real’s attempts to sign him.