Reading owner Rob Couhig considers selling training ground to raise funds
Reading owner Rob Couhig is considering radical measures including downgrading the club’s Academy or selling the training ground to increase the funding he can make available to the first team.
The American, who paid around £25m to buy the League One club from Dai Yongge at the end of last season, has been an outspoken critic of the EFL’s limited financial regulations and has called for a hard salary cap underpinned by a luxury tax to be introduced to promote greater sustainability.
With little appetite for such dramatic changes in the rest of the EFL Couhig is exploring how Reading could be run on a more efficient basis, beginning with a review of its cost base.
Reading currently operate a Category One Academy despite their financial problems, which has produced the likes of Michael Olise, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Danny Namaso in recent years. A final decision is unlikely to be made until the end of the season.
Ashes to hit Aussie contracts
Every professional cricketer in Australia – male and female – will share the financial pain suffered by Cricket Australia as a result of two of the first four Ashes Test matches finishing in just two days, with the governing body set to lose around £10m in revenue due to missing gate receipts and hospitality income.
Under the terms of a new Memorandum of Understanding introduced this year all players with professional contracts are entitled to a share of 27.5 per cent of the Board’s revenue, with a further 2.5 per cent available depending on performances.
Ironically the Revenue Share Model clause was introduced at the behest of poacher-turned-gamekeeper Todd Greenberg, a much-respected administrator who was previously CEO of the Australia Cricketers’ Association before becoming chief executive of Cricket Australia.
EFL and Premier League get parity
The EFL have secured in increase in football’s increasingly lucrative data deal in a move maintains their financial parity with the Premier League.
The top-flight clubs had been seeking a greater share of revenue accrued from a joint deal with Football DataCo, but City PM has learned that under the terms of a new deal both the EFL and Premier League will receive £42m-a-year, with around £16m going to the Scottish Professional Football League.
The Premier League clubs’ argument was based on claiming that they are responsible for generating the majority of the associated betting revenue from data sales that funds the deal, but with the contract also involving analytics and fixture schedules the EFL have succeeded in maintaining parity.
Football DataCo’s payments to the clubs are funded by their own four-year contract with Genius Sports as their official data provider. Under the terms of that deal Genius capture and distribute live data – such as expected goals and shots on target – for more than 4,000 games a season, which is then sold to hundreds of betting companies and broadcasters all over the world.
Key tennis vote looms
For all the furore caused by Nick Kyrgios and Aryna Sabalenka’s Battle of the Sexes last weekend, the most significant moves towards bringing the two parts of the sport closer together are taking place off the court.
The Women’s Tennis Association Board is preparing to vote next year on whether to merge their commercial operations with the ATP Tour after the ATP Board gave their approval in principle last month.
Details regarding revenue splits, the composition of a new board and leadership team have yet to be agreed, with the WTA hoping that a new record sponsorship deal with Mercedes-Benz which begins on 1 January will strengthen their negotiating position.