Indian summer....and autumn, winter and spring

This from Reuters India: "An Indian consortium has applied to buy BMW-Sauber, which is seeking new backers after German carmaker BMW said it was pulling out of Formula One at the end of the season, domestic media reported on Saturday. Indian investors have made an application to purchase the BMW-Sauber team," the Times of India quoted unnamed sources as saying. The paper said the deal was based around a 50 million euro investment and involved Swiss driver Neel Jani, who currently features in the A1 GP series and whose father is Indian. An Indian already owns an F1 team with liquor and airline billionaire Vijay Mallya's Force India. However, there is no Indian driver on the grid. Last month, team principal Mario Theissen said BMW-Sauber had several rescue proposals and had applied to keep their place in Formula One next year. Theissen told reporters ahead of the European Grand Prix in Valencia that he and founder Peter Sauber, who has a 20 percent stake in the team, were evaluating proposals from interested parties."

Is this yet further evidence to support a previous blog posting made here earlier on this year?

http://dailysportthought.blogspot.com/2009/05/decline-of-20th-century-empire.html

If the 19th century was dominated by the rise of European thinking about sport, and the 20th century was dominated by the rise of American thinking about sport, is it becoming the reality that 21st century is rapidly becoming the era in which Asian thinking about sport begins to predominate? If so, is there anything that America and Europe can do? If so, what? If not, what are going to be the ramifications for sport in these two continents? Do sports, governments and other stakeholders need to change their view of sport and start thinking about sport in a new and different way e.g. in the way in which the Qatari government has made sport a fundamental and central part of national governmental industrial strategy? Is it really the case that America and Europe very quickly need to 'wise-up' or 'lose-out'? Or is this an unnecessarily pessimistic scenraio?

Franchising the (sponsorship) deal

There has been an interesting new development in North American sponsorship, that was brought to my attention via a Tweet from sponsorpitch. In NASCAR, it appears that there has been a major trend towards large stores sponsoring teams. In turn, stores are engaging their vendors in the deals, giving these organisations exposure in return for a contribution to the expense of the sponsorship deal:

http://www.examiner.com/x-1617-Detroit-NASCAR-Examiner~y2009m9d5-The-new-trend-in-NASCAR-sponsorship

Is this development likely to spread, both in the US and elsewhere? In the immediate post-recession era, is this a cost-effective way for some companies to engage in sponsorship deals? In what other ways might such deals be important for both the retailer (in other words, the senior partner) and the vendor (the junior partner)? Is the development to be celebrated as it potentially introduces new sponsors to sport? What might be some of the management challenges facing both parties? Is it a form of strategic collaboration? If so, how should the marriage be managed to ensure that both parties benefit? In the future, should we expect to see Debenhams sponsored sports, with Ben Sherman, Jasper Conran and Jeff Banks as vendor sponsors? Interesting collection of names - but just how easy would it be to engage them, manage them and keep them all happy?

Posturing and positioning: Clash of the Titans 2

As the saga of Chelsea's transfer embargo gets into full swing, speculation grows about what will happen next. One theory is that Chelsea will delay an appeal to the Court for Arbitration in Sport. The reason for this is that, if the timing is correct, CAS will suspend the ban pending a judgement, thus ensuring that Chelsea would be able to sign players in the January 2010 transfer window. What will Chelsea do, and if they do delay should we expect the club to engage in a whirlwind of transfer activity in their anticipation of a summer ban being reimposed following CAS's ultimate ruling? And what of FIFA's threat to increase the penalty if Chelsea appeal to CAS and fail? Reasonable action, justifiable threat or bellicose reaction? Otherwise, are Manchester United next in the line of fire with FIFA for their signing of Paul Pogba from Le Havre? Plus, where do Arsenal fit it, currently tipping-toeing quietly around in the background of the furore? Perhaps, after years of watching the Premier League slowly begin to dominate European (and world?) football, is this finally the chance that FIFA has been waiting for to strike back? But still, where and how does the EU fit into all of this?

In a second case of posturing positioning, prospective FIA President, Ari Vatanen, has spoken out against the slow drift of Formula 1 away from traditional venues such as Silverstone. While people such as Bernie Ecclestone have supported, indeed promoted, the shift of F1 races to new venues and new countries, Vatanen is keen to preserve the heritage of motorsport, believing that traditional fans and customers are being alienated from the sport. Are we heading for a showdown in F1 that will run alongside or possibly replace current conflicts? Will Vatanen's stance effectively mean the governing body is at odds with Ecclestone? And where would the teams fit in: do they support Ecclestone the monopolist (with whom they seem to have issues) or Vatanen the traditionalist (which could well deny teams the lucrative commercial opportunities that new and emerging motor-sport markets appear to offer)? Could it be therefore that we are actually heading for an even more fractious period in F1 than we have been experiencing recently?

Two-brand tennis

Much has been made in recent weeks of the fact that men's tennis is effectively a two-brand commercial race: Nadal and Federer. Indeed, in Nadal's recent absence, it could well be said that men's tennis has been a one-brand sport. An interesting initial question: how long does an athlete have to be away from a sport (through injury or otherwise) before the value of their brand begins to diminish? Does it happen straight away, or does it happen over time? And what kind of rate of decline might one witness? There does however appear to be a couple of challengers on the horizon: Murray and Roddick. The commercial potential of Murray has previously been examined on this blog, although it is worthwhile asking: how will 19 Entertainment manage and generate value from the Murray brand? Those in tennis have suggested that Murray is a charming, friendly guy, which is it odds with many people's public perception of him - in what ways might an agent, manager or other intermediary be able to reconcile these two aspects of the Murray persona/brand? And what of Roddick? Unfulfilled potential - in playing and commercial terms. Is it too late for Roddick to make the big money that Federer and Nadal have, and Murray is threatening to do? Will another good showing at the US Open, after Wimbledon, be sufficient to re-establish his brand and catapult him forward into Nadal/Federer territory? Or, commercially at least, has his time passed? Perhaps his current portfolio of sponsors is evidence that he lacks the appeal of some of his rivals? Moreover, is Roddick the opposite of Murray - amiable on-court but disliked off it - which may the source of problems he and his representatives have had in building the A-Rod brand? Perhaps the relative failure of his brand is simply due no more than to his weak playing record over the years?

Clash of the titans

I am not a lawyer, nor a Chelsea fan, nor for that matter do I advocate poaching. However, FIFA's decision to impose severe sanctions follows the Premier League club's signing of Gaël Kakuta from Lens is an intriguing one. Further details of the ban can be found via

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/sep/03/chelsea-fifa-transfer-ban-gael-kakuta
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/8236187.stm

A statement from FIFA appearing in The Guardian provides an indication of the sanctions that Chelsea and Kakuta face:

"A restriction of four months on his eligibility to play in official matches is imposed on the player Gaël Kakuta while the club FC Chelsea is banned from registering any new players, either nationally or internationally, for the two next entire and consecutive registration periods following the notification of the present decision," the DRC statement said. "Furthermore, the club, FC Chelsea, has to pay to RC Lens training compensation in the amount of €130,000."

Given Sepp Blatter's recent comments about player slavery in football, the nature of controls, and indeed the sanctions, imposed in this case bring one back to the debate about slavery, only from a different angle. Given the principles upon which the European Union is founded, and the state of the law in the Union, whatever the age of a player and whatever the investment a previous club may have made in the player, can the player's movements be controlled (in this case penalised) and his trade be restarined in such a way? Doesn't the player have a democratic right to do as he pleases? Afterall, surely all of us routinely switch jobs, even though an employer may have invested heavily in our development, while some of us may even have been actively 'tapped-up' by rival prospective employers? Are footballers any different to other employees? Is there actually anything in European law yet that defines the specifity of sport, which would thus make Chelsea, Lens and Kakuta exempt from normal EU laws? Is Kakuta therefore a slave? Or are Chelsea's (and, for that matter, Kakuta's) actions flippant, arrogant, selfish and dismissive? If all clubs were to behave in such a way, surely football would start to polarise even more than it has done already, with larger clubs benefitting? Surely poaching in sport - where the labour market is different to other labour markets - has to be treated in a different way? And what of the macro-political context to this penalty: FIFA attempting to control the actions of EU citizens and organisations in a way that is inconsistent with EU feedom of movement/restraint of trade principles (and therefore possibly illegal in itself)? And if the EU were to intervene in FIFA's ruling, wouldn't FIFA object to this? Based on precedent, could one extreme scenario be that FIFA suspends all EU nations from international football competitions until such time that the EU withdrew any threatened action that undermined FIFA's Chelsea ruling? Are the EU and FIFA on a collision course? And what about Chelsea? Not just 'any' club, but one owned by a Russian with strong links to the Russian FA and to the Russian government - FIFA v Russia? Could this be one hell of a legal/political clash of the titans?

Undercover agents

Matt Snow reports in today's Guardian newspaper that the UK tax authorities have now been given permission in the British courts that will enable them to secure access to the offshore accounts of sports agents. At the same time, stories circulating around the football player transfer market over the summer suggest that a small number of unscrupulous agents have been demanding money from players and clubs that they had no right to, and that other rogue traders routinely engaged in railroading rivals in sometimes unethical ways. Consider also that we are little more than a month away from the publication of the European Union's study into the sports agents industry, possibly the first step in moves to introduce guidance, regulations or legislation aimed at prompting a more centralist and interventionist approach to agents across Europe. Is time therefore running out for the agency industry as we know it? Are legal guidelines about to be laid down in Europe that will challenge the whole notion of what an agent is, what they do and how they operate? If the EU's Lisbon Treaty is finally ratified, will regulation become a certainty? In which case, how will the industry be regulated and who will police it? Or will such a development have only a limited impact on the industry, especially as a majority of agents operate according to good governance principles? And as for the unscrupulous agents, are they already operating so much beyond the law that they will continue to operate undetected or in a way that enables the few to continue operating in an unsatisfactory way?

Cheat, cheat, never beat?

After a summer away from this blog, much has happened to that one might write about. However, one significant and recurring theme has been the issue of cheating (or at least alleged cheating) in sport. James Lawton in The Independent has been trying to get to grips with the vexed question of cheating:

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/news-comment/james-lawton-only-when-bloodgates-shamed-have-all-been-punished-can-rugby-move-on-1778897.html

In British rugby, the sport has been shocked to its core by an injury faking scandal in which a member of the Harlequins team feigned injury by breaking a blood capsule in his mouth to facilitate a tactical injury. The case has resulted in several high level resignations and bans (on both players and officials).

Before the women's 800 metres race at the World Athletics Championship in Berlin, gold medalist Caster Semenya recorded testosterone results that were three times higher than the normal expected level for a female, leading to a debate about whether 'she' is technically a woman or a man.

Last year's F1 Grand Prix in Singapore is now under scrutiny, with accusations having been made that a team may have instructed a driver to deliberately crash his car, thereby enabling the same team's lead driver to benefit from a saftey car intervention, thus boosting the lead driver's race position.

In there own ways, each is shocking for very different reasons, although they do raise one single question: why do athletes and sports teams cheat? Is it simply because money has helped corrupt sport, especially in the modern-era? Are the financial benefits of winning so great? Great enough to mitigate the potential costs of getting caught? Or is this a lazy and/or convenient way of explaining a phenomena that has deeper and more historic roots? Is the desire to win at all costs, covering oneself and one's team in glory, much more important than money? Or is it, and has it alway been the case, that cheating has taken place in sport, it's just that we are now more accutely aware of it and feel the need to address the issue: a) because of the commercial interests in sport; and/or b) because good governance seems to be on top of the agenda in a number of countries? And how should we deal with cheats and cheating? Through legal and regulatory means? By taking a laissez faire approach? And what might sport learn from agencies across the world that are involved in tackling crime, issues of malpractice and so on?