One cap fits all

The FIA today announced its plans to introduce an F1 GP budget cap. From 2010, all teams will be encouraged to operate within the £40 million cap, although this limit will exclude driver salaries, engine costs, fines, marketing and hospitality. For teams that comply with the cap, they will be given greater technical freedom and be entitled to unlimited out-of-season testing. It seems though that teams will nevertheless be entitled to ignore the cap and carry on as normal. Does the cap therefore constitute a great leap forward? Or is it, at best, simply a compromise; at worst, a 'fudge'? And how will teams seek to benefit from the advantages that cap compliance will bring, while actually using by-pass strategies to minimise its effects? For instance, might a team be able to run a modest car but pay huge sums of money for the best drivers and the best engine? There are also other issues: to what extent is the cap a reflection of the various global pressures and constraints the FIA faces? Would any other approach to capping have attracted the attention of the EU whenever the F1 series arrived in Europe? Is the cap going to change the balance of competition or simply intensify it, moving competition off into different directions? And how will teams like Ferrari respond when the team is currently spending hundreds of millions of pounds? Will such teams reduce spending or simply spend the same amount of money (or more) in different ways?

Super models?

Early season estimates indicated that teams reaching the semi-finals of this season's UEFA Champions League could generate upwards of Euros 60 million from the achievement (winning the Final could be worth as much as Euros 110 million). In one sense therefore, Arsenal, Barcelona, Chelsea and Manchester United will be pleased to have reached this stage of the competition. However, one has to ask whether getting to the semi-finals is desirable or a necessity for the clubs, especially as each of them is carrying a significant amount of debt? In other words, to what extent are the business models of the four clubs still involved in the competition premised on the need to at least secure a semi-final place? If they had reached the quarter-finals, if they had failed to progress from the group phase, just how significantly might this have affected their business models? And if such clubs actually failed to qualify for the Champions League, especially in consecutive seasons, would their business models thus become unsustainable?

Football's World Cup 'shock'

South Africa has reached agreement with twelve members of the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) to provide the country with additional electricity in order to prevent demand outstripping supply (thereby inducing power cuts) during next year's FIFA World Cup in the country. Is this natural and sensible contingency planning or an indication that South African infrastructure is unable to cope with hosting a major sporting event such as the football World Cup? And, given FIFA's intent at staging the World Cup in Africa, should or shouldn't the organisation assist in helping with any costs that such an arrangement might inflict on any of the SAPP members?

When ambushers attack

When Holland played the Czech Republic in Leipzig during the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the match was characterised more by the confiscation from fans of orange lederhosen handed out by the Bavaria Beer company (the official event sponsor was Budweiser). In Britain's 2006 Olympic and Paralympic Games Act, provision is made to control such ambush marketing tactics, and also Olympic trademark infringements. While some people are aware of this particular legislative provision, most are not, including many businesses. As we head towards 2012 therefore, how many people and organisations are likely to be 'dealt with' under the provisions of the 2006 Act? What proceedings will be taken against them? And what defences might people/organisations have? Will members of the general public and unknowing domestic businesses get caught in the crossfire of the major international ambushing battles that always take place around sporting mega-events? What will be the marketing, commercial and legal ramifications of this for all concerned? Might there also be some issues around civil liberties too, as the movement of people around venues is regulated as the authorities attempt to address the threat of ambushing? At which point will Britain actually start to realise what ambushing is and how the authorities intend to handle the problem, and how will the public react once its members know what is happening?

What not to wear

The agents of Great Britain's leading Olympic athletes have recently been meeting with officials from UK Sport to discuss the sponsorship arrangements that will be in place for Team GB at the 2012 London Games. It is anticipated these meetings will lead to athletes and UK Sport formulating an agreement that all will be expected to sign. Reaching an agreement and then enforcing it is likely to be a potential minefield, fraught with difficulty, and characterised by a myriad of image rights and personal endorsement considerations. There are too many issues for one blog posting to consider, but here are some questions that highlight the territory UK Sport and the athletes are operating in: once an athlete signs the agreement, just how likely is it that we will witness any British athletes in 2012 having an 'Usain Bolt moment', waving their heavily branded personally endorsed footwear in front of an official scoreboard before the world's media? During the victory parade that will inevitably take place for Team GB in Trafalgar Square some time towards the end of 2012, what will each of the athletes be wearing, and which company will it be produced by? On what products and in which media will we see British athlete images appearing? Will this be under the auspices/jurisdiction of Team GB? Under the terms of their own personal deals? And where will the boundary between personal and team-related deals actually lie?

Draft response

With the National Football League's (NFL) player draft set to take place, and with the outcome of the Indian Premier League's draft now on show in South Africa, centralist models of sport are clearly designed to ensure the maintenance of competitive balance. In the European Union, while we are still struggling to get to grips with freedom of movement in sport, one way to address issues in competitive balance might be to consider a draft in sports such as football. Could this ever work? With no real system of college sport, where would players for the draft come from? Would teams, clubs, governing bodies or a central agency such as the Union control and manage such a player allocation mechanism? How difficult would it be to secure the agreement of clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid to consent to a democratising and balancing allocation of players across European football? How would any such draft work? Would it be the 'first pick' system or one of the other draft systems currently employed elsewhere in the sporting world? What possible outcomes might there be for European football if a widespread agreement could be reached that a draft is the best way forward for the sport? Or is the whole idea of a European football player draft completely nonsensical? And wouldn't it be set for failure once more until such time that the EU agrees upon the specificity of sport? But then, if F1, cricket et al. can change the way they have always done things, then why can't European football?

What about whereabouts?

Having considered WADA's 'whereabouts rule', the European Union has decided that it breaches the right to privacy of athletes and is thus in conflict with the EU's fundamental principles. Interesting, but potentially challenging for the Union. If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, thereby leading to the establishment of the specificity of sport, the EU may well have the opportunity to support the 'whereabouts' code as sport would be exempt from laws and regulations applied in other industrial sectors. Is the choice this stark? Is it a case of privacy versus 'whereabouts'? Or would specificity provide a way out of the current contradiction? Is the EU's desire to uphold the principle of privacy so strong that it won't even use the Lisbon Treaty and/or specificity as one way of addressing drugs problems? In which case, does the EU have other plans in mind for controlling drug taking in sport? And what does the rejection of a global sport organisation's regulations by an international governmental organisation tell us about the way forward in drug control, and indeed sport generally?