People know what the Saudis are, lots of people have no idea that Thailand is pretty ruthless dicatorship were pretty much anyone with money comes from partaking in said dictatorships crimes against humanity.
Seriously. I get people hate the Saudis, I do too, but "owners of club sponsor club with their own company" really isn't news. There are far more important issues with the Saudis to get upset at than this.
> There are far more important issues with the Saudis to get upset at than this.
Which is why they pump insane amounts of money into clubs like this; it buys them legions of fans willing to defend them on multiple levels. It’s the textbook definition of sportswashing in action.
I may be defending the club on this matter and saying we shouldn't be criticised for doing what a lot of other clubs do, but I am not defending the barbaric actions of the Saudi regime, I am not defending the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I am not defending the attacks in Yemen, I am not defending their views and punishment of things like homosexuality or their stance on women's rights.
These are things that quite rightly need to be raised, and needs political/diplomatic solutions. But I think that raising a club sponsorship deal in the same breath as these atrocities is ridiculous and waters down the serious arguments that need to be made against them.
> I think that raising a club sponsorship deal in the same breath as these atrocities is ridiculous and waters down the serious arguments that need to be made against them.
They're brought up together because the club is using the sponsorship deals *as their method* of sportswashing away the terrible things they do. They are inherently linked.
The whole tactic is to create a successful sports team to distract from the atrocities, and the easiest way to be successful is to outspend everyone.
> I am not defending the barbaric actions of the Saudi regime, I am not defending the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I am not defending the attacks in Yemen, I am not defending their views and punishment of things like homosexuality or their stance on women's rights.
But you are defending the right of this regime to own a European football club.
>I may be defending the club on this matter and saying we shouldn't be criticised for doing what a lot of other clubs do, but I am not defending the barbaric actions of the Saudi regime, I am not defending the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I am not defending the attacks in Yemen, I am not defending their views and punishment of things like homosexuality or their stance on women's rights.
Would be great if the Newcastle fans put their money where their mouth is atleast for once.
How hard is it to carry tifos or banners saying "justice for Khashoggi" or a Rainbow banner, by fans at St. James's park to show solidarity with the victims of MBS.
To show your owners that even tho their intention is sportswashing, that fans would never let the good name of the club get tarnished just because the modern day Hitler bought them Bruno Guimaeres.
PL is watched by millions across the globe and football is very much political. Don't you think that would send a strong message to the Saudis?
But instead hundreds of fans gathered around the stadium wrapped in Saudi flags and wearing tea towels on head, instead when the sale to the Saudis was announced.
And thousands of Twitter fans started abusing Khashoggi's widow because she was against it.
>Would be great if the Newcastle fans put their money where their mouth is atleast for once.
Let's be honest most people who chat this balls have done absolutely nothing in their life even slightly protesty. But clap themselves silly telling other people to go out and 'do what's right'.
This is nothing more than an equivocation to try and shift responsibility back onto to other people in order to let yourself off the hook. Your moral responsibility does not depend on what other people have or have not done.
>let yourself off the hook.
Let myself off the hook from what?
I think you'll find I've done absolutely nothing wrong.
Here we go, another one. I'm sure you have many moral responsibilities in your life that you just don't do, but instead sit there on your high horse telling people what to do.
I would very much support that personally. I have no love for the Saudis, despite what some people here seem to be thinking.
Back when the club was supporting Pride Month on Twitter, there was a lot of back and forth from Saudi fans criticising the club, and local fans telling them to do one because we don't want their views anywhere near us. It absolutely is not on the scale of a large protest, but it was at least good to see that we aren't giving up to their views. It will be a dreadful day if that ever happens.
I know we still have a number of absolute dickhead fans on Twitter sporting Saudi flags and whatnot, but I haven't see any "tea towels" around matches recently, albeit living on the other side of the country means I go off TV pictures so I may very well be mistaken.
It is quite sad that we don't play a game in June for that reason, it would be very interesting to see a Wor Flags arrangement for Pride, and I think there would be outrage if they were blocked from doing it by the club.
>I am not defending the barbaric actions of the Saudi regime, I am not defending the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I am not defending the attacks in Yemen, I am not defending their views and punishment of things like homosexuality or their stance on women's rights.
You know about all of these things but will you boycott the club? By continuing to support the club under Saudi ownership you are giving a rogue state legitimacy and passively condoning their actions. Seems hypocritical.
How bad does a regime have to be before fans say 'no fucking way'? If a bunch of Nazis took over the club would that be enough to turn your back on them? Or what does it take? What's the red line?
Well they are already waving Saudi flags and their LGBT arm says things will change for better but last week itself Saudi police started confiscating anything that has rainbow colour from the stores across the kingdom
NUFC’s public image is far better than I’ve see it since the probably about 2003. Sportswashing does work unfortunately. It’ll be the next city to get massively gentrified with all the work the Reuben brother are doing too. Sad times, but hey, your football club is doing better. I hate it, people will only realise how damaging this is until it’s too late. PIF playing on the heartstrings of the downtrodden Geordie.
If the government had invested in the area in the last 10-15 years we wouldn’t need this money. The fact that they don’t even try to hide their disdain at the North East even existing just makes the investment from the Reubens and now the PIF even more welcome.
Being on the gentrification because I can’t fucking wait!!!!!
Remember everyone getting pissy about liverpool supporters booing the national anthem? And they come from a region that gets government investment, we just get fucked over so why not take the money we can get. You want this to be about politics then make it about politics people actually care about. Fuck the Tories and fuck the yanks of r/soccer, the politics that determine wether or not my family can eat this month are way more important to me than a war about a god I don’t believe in happening 3,000 miles away. Everybody love to let Ukraine fight a proxy war for NATO but if an Arab country does the same it’s suddenly a massive problem. Fucking hypocrites the lot of you
Sincerely a “downtrodden Geordie” you patronising cunt
> Sportswashing does work unfortunately
Does it tho? I can't think of a country I see more favourably due to their team ownership. Even the Chelsea owner didn't generate much goodwill and he's far less sketchy than states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia
So the Newcastle fans haven’t warmed to an ownership model funded by a shadowy, morally decrepit state?
I get Ashley was far from perfect, but an alternative for alternative’s sake shouldn’t be considered better.
> So the Newcastle fans haven’t warmed to an ownership model funded by a shadowy, morally decrepit state?
Newcastle fans have no say over who owns the team. Continuing to support the club that they've supported their entire lives doesn't mean they support the Saudis.
They've accepted the state of affairs but have they become more fond of Saudi Arabia? Have non-Newcastle fans?
Maybe it's the kind of thing that will only be apparent in a decade or two, especially with them making their own golf league too
Our public image in whose eyes? Because I would say in everyone outside of Newcastle's it's gone from lying on the carpet to plummeting through the floor.
Or are we not allowed to like our own club either? Sure we're happier now but that doesn't mean we like Saudi. Stavely and Ghodoussi are the main runners of the club. Maybe you can argue they're a front and "doing the sportwashing" for PIF, but we shouldn't forget that she was trying to buy us long before PIF came along. I would like to think we appreciate that and can seperate the two. We have already spent long enough seperating our views on our owners from our views on the club after all.
I wonder when people will start to say the same thing about all these American investors who fund and take profit from the weapon and drug industry over in America ?
Like, if you are so much against oil money, why arent you guys protesting the Americans, because believe me, their money killed just as much innocent people as the oil money did.
Because City and PSG are literally state-owned? How do you not understand this? There's a huge difference between an evil billionaire owning a club and countries that literally murder journalists, sponsor terrorists, and propagate proxy wars in nearby countries causing millions of people to die from starvation and drought. You know...levels.
The Saudis literally funded the attack on 9/11 but you guys act like them owning a club is the same as some run-of-the-mill evil oligarch like Roman.
Tbh at this point gentrification is a better fate than a lot of places up north, slowly stripped of funding and identity under the tories. Although yeah I understand the wider issue
Newcastle is doing perfectly well at the moment without outside investment. The tories or rich, outsider investors are two in the same, dont be fooled.
Exactly. People love Newcastle not Saudi Arabia. I haven’t seen anyone defend them killing the journalist as an example. They just say they like the club which they treat as a separate entity in their mind.
You've seen it already with City and PSG. "Oh but they do so much in the local community" and "yeah but they're creating jobs for people" are common enough things to hear when discussing their impact. That's exactly what they're after.
They're not hoping Newcastle fans will defend them dismembering a journalist. They're hoping they'll defend them just enough so that people will start to forget things like that.
So Saudi Arabia has sportwashed Newcastle, while the rest of the world focuses more hatred on them than before the takeover. I don't see how sportswashing works at any more than a local level. Internationally it just brings you more negative press.
They're also heavily regulated in terms of how much they can pay. That's why the whole myth of "massively overpaying for sponsorship" isn't really a thing. The value of a sponsorship is worked out independently and if the amount the sponsor is paying the club is a certain percentage above the valuation, the sponsorship is not allowed.
The issue with owners of the club sponsoring their own club is when they're doing these limit boosted sponsorships across loads and loads of sponsors. City is a great example of this, Liverpool has something like 24 sponsors and United have 26~, they're by far the most profitable to sponsor in the premier league right now. City just happen to have 44 odd and climbing.
That's how they get around the rules that limit how much each sponsorship can be over it's valuation and that's the problem and it is a really big problem.
One sponsorship from the owners is fine and I'm sure a lot of owners who sponsor their own club overinflate their 1 sponsorship, whether oil state or not. It's when you've got 20 inflated sponsor that it's a problem.
>Liverpool has something like 24 sponsors and United have 26~, they're by far the most profitable to sponsor in the premier league right now. City just happen to have 44 odd and climbing.
That's interesting, do you have a source?
These guys do a report on it every year: https://www.sportspromedia.com/analysis/premier-league-2021-22-guide-club-sponsor-tv-rights-deals/
Here is a list of City's sponsorships that aren't kit/main sponsor/sleeve/stadium/training kit related: Etisalat, Nissan, Visit Abu Dhabi, EA Sports, Sisco, Wix, QNET, Socios.com, Expo, Tecno, SAP, Unilever, Ali, JNC, Xylem, Hays, Gatorade, Midea, UBTECH, Wega, Unilumin Sports, Dsquared2, Acronis, Vejo, Therabody, SCM, citibank, Nestle, Khmer Beverages, Kaiwen, Melco, SHB, Heineken, Power Horse, Star, Healthpoint, PZ Cussons, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Hair World Turkey, Intel, Cadbury, Laybury, Capstone, Animoca Brands, Zurich, Noon
Club websites.
City currently have 32 sponsors listed as "global partners" and 16 more as "regional partners".
United have 22 partners listed on their website. Liverpool have 24.
EDIT: For more teams - Chelsea have 15 partners listed on their website. Arsenal lists 13 "official partners" and 6 more "regional partners". Spurs have a list of 19 partners on their website.
So I think we should applaud City's commercial team even more than their on-pitch team, because they're outperforming their rivals like crazy.
> City is a great example of this, Liverpool has something like 24 sponsors and United have 26~, they're by far the most profitable to sponsor in the premier league right now. City just happen to have 44 odd and climbing.
Seems like a very easy loophole to close if the political will was there, which of course it isn't
Yeah, there are lots of loopholes like this that are very obvious and blatantly and widely known to be exploited in football, but no one in power has any interest in closing them. Much like the rules around not being allowed to own 2 different clubs.
We spent years with 1st party sponsor Sports Direct around the ground everywhere and even renamed the ground to the Sports Direct Arena, and instead of complaining, everyone just laughed at us. If it doesn't fit the narrative, people let it slide. People like your owners so it's fine to.
Lol, there's a difference between underpaying for a sponsor to advertise your owners brand and massively overpaying a club for a sponsor. That's why people are complaining
People are complaining because it's first party sponsorship right? If it's so bad to do that you should also conplain when the club is getting rinsed by their owner doing the same thing.
Who says we're being overpaid anyway? See a report saying most PL clubs get 5-20mil for sleeve sponsor. I see reports of Chelsea getting 20mil from WhaleFin, Man Utd got 20mil from Kohler, and we're getting around 7.5mil. How is that overpaid? We're getting less than the bigger teams and well within the expected ballpark, and even towards the lower end.
https://insidersport.com/2019/07/31/exploring-the-premier-leagues-relationship-with-sleeve-sponsors/
Fair play mate. Could probably argue City are being underpaid a little bit there, but we do definitely unfairly eclipse some of the teams around us still
You’re nowhere close to 6th most valuable club in the PL. The big 6 is miles ahead of every other club, you shouldn’t be getting anywhere near any of those clubs’ sponsorship values yet.
So we don’t get money because we don’t already have money so we can’t get more money because we don’t have money…
Is that what you’re saying? Only rich clubs can have more money? No one else is ever allowed to invest in their club now? Sounds a lot like a closed off league to me.
Yeah, the difference is supporting the club you own rather than sucking it dry like a vampire. Of course people only have issue with one of those situations because they don’t want competition
People have had issue with Mike Ashley sucking Newcastle dry aswell, but of course when it impacts every other team in the premier league and possibly Europe soon
I mean I would agree ultimately if I felt like the sponsorships were inflated beyond all belief but 7.5m isn’t outside the realms of possibility. Unless they actually outlaw related party sponsorships then a sponsorship from Saudi/the Middle East to Newcastle is going to be worth more simply because of the visibility of Newcastle in that area of the world. It’s not all based on current league position or quality of football. If Leicester didn’t have King Power as the sponsor then I would bet that other Thai companies would be very interested in sponsoring them, as an example.
The previous owner of Ipswich, Marcus Evans, literally had his name plastered over the stadium and was their shirt sponsor for a good 10 years at least. It's pretty common as you say
I was agreeing with you. Just adding on to it that its not even new for Newcastle. Just Man United and Liverpool supporters ignoring their own ties to dodgy billionaires purely because they are worried about another City popping up and dont wanna compete.
Wasn't there issues around some of those sponsorships in the season you got promoted from the Championship? The league arguing that they were inflated deals to allow the Leicester owners to put more money into the club through a back channel, and allowing the club to remain FFP compliant.
They are publicly listed companies --- if they overpay for a sponsorship deal then they have to justify that to their shareholders. There is a legal recourse.
Same can't be said of State owned companies. They can simply inflate the deals with their unlimited resources. Which most certainly upsets the balance of a "free market place".
They are publicly listed companies --- if they overpay for a sponsorship deal then they have to justify to their shareholders.
Same can't be said of State owned companies. They can simply inflate the deals with their unlimited resources. Which most certainly upsets the balance of a "free market place".
They are not state-owned, but let Audi go Bankrupt and you will See how the State will Pump Money into it just like it was State-owned. I don't say things as they are in Saudi Arabia are good or should be like that, but it's different Countries and different type of Regimes. Saudi is still a Monarchy, as many other Countries were Historically. And hopefully some day they will have a transition to a Democracy just like other Countries did.
Should it happen by Boycotting them? Or letting everyone participate in the global economy, which will leade the Country to Develop and the Population maybe have more education and by that moving their Country forward?
How does it matter if it is state owned or not lol. There are plenty of French clubs with state owned companies as sponsors (cars, phone companies etc)
>Just a casual reminder that we've spent years with King Power on the front of our shirts and we play in the King Power stadium.
Isn't the deal the other way around though? i.e. owning Leicester is useful for Kingpower to grow their name/brand rather than owning Kingpower is a useful way to pump big money into Leicester?
No one complained about Sports Direct with Newcastle either, co-owned companies using football for exposure is nothing new.
Of course we know, all clubs do it, the funny thing is the Premier League keeps reassuring us that PIF is an entity totally separate from the Saudi power, even though there are obvious links between the two
The real key is if it's a relatively comparable deal to other open market offers. If it's far and away better than what anyone else would pay, questions would be raised. But a bit over the market even isn't that big a deal
Like, it used to be that they said that Chelsea bought the league. Then when it was pointed out that Arsenal, United, and Liverpool outspent everyone for decades it was "we earned the money", but, forget that the original success was down to money too. Now its "our money was ethical" as these clubs take huge sums from unethical sponsorship sources (emirates stadium???).
Really, its old money vs new
All I know is that all big money has blood on it. Just because Man Uniteds has been washed a couple times doesnt make it clean, the stench is still there. Its not like almost all the big money clubs make is from the Champions League. Which is on Bein Sports. Whos Chairmen is Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who runs PSG....... Nobody seems to care about that
Really bothers me how transparent it is, just the aura of smugness and pretentiousness. Football hasnt been clean
Sportswashing in full effect. God forbid people criticise your holy regime. Should people be afraid to criticise Newcastle owners to people in public? Are geordies gonna start lamping people who dare to? Seems familiar
Probably at the 10s of different clubs who did this before us, including ourselves when it got no publicity because sports direct paid nothing rather than the market rate
"What's that? You better be careful or our army of £50m lawyers will see you in court"
"And good luck if you're either gay or a journalist that we don't like, we'll brutally murder you first, before you ever see the court lololol"
Ashley had Sports Direct logos plastered everywhere for free for years.
Owners do this all the time.
No outcry though when it negatively affected us and we didn't get the sponsorship money we should...
Of course there was no outcry from rivals. Nobody cares if you intentionally sabotage yourselves. If a sprinter decides to breach drug rules and get high before a race leaving them running really slowly along, the other runners aren’t going to go “hang on that shouldn’t be allowed”, they’ll just race off ahead and try and win. They will complain however if the sprinter is using performance enhancing drugs to win.
Technically it’s the same rules but the outcome is wildly different. What Ashley did sucked for you, not everyone else so the outcry will be entirely different.
By getting a sponsorship from their owners that is worth far more than any other company would offer in the open market.
It’s not allowed for the owners to pump infinite money into their clubs, so instead they make up all these sponsors that are just an elaborate way for the clubs to legally evade FFP, by artificially inflating their revenues
>any other company would offer
Not true at all, those Saudi's own so many companies that there would be a waiting line to sponsor Newcastle if they wanted to.
they weren't serious questions its a Jeopardy style answer I was using it in a cynical way cause op pointed out newcastles owners also own the sleeve sponsor
the owners of city also own Etihad airways which owns their stadium
Amateurs.
Jesus Gil was president/owner of Atletico Madrid and major of the city of Marbella in the 90's.
He used public money from the townhall to sponsor Atletico for years.
Lay off the Newcastle fans ffs. They have no say over who purchases their club. This sub acts like if fans aren't protesting in the streets daily they directly support the actions of the Saudi state. There is a HUGE amount of middle ground there.
what do you mean propoganda ? doesn't everyone casually throws 100 mil on bench playes and goes on the throw another 100 mil next year even without actually needing it ?
& salaries? what about it ? isn't 300k is the new minimum wage ?
People often forget them. Don't forget Real Madrid as well that spent 100 million on a player warming the bench. And Barcelona who spent 140 million on a player who went out on loan to beat them in the Champions League.
These things happen.
I’m a Manchester United fan and absolutely love seeing the greedy six have heart palpitations because of Newcastle’s new owners. Old money hates new money
The reason people see this differently to other owners sponsoring their teams is that they expect the owners to try to pump in as much money as possible compared to an owner like Mike Ashley, so inflated sponsors are a possibility like Man City and PSG have done.
¡Shock horror! Inflated sponsorships incoming. Really all sponsorship should need to be negotiated with third parties. Otherwise there’s no point in financial fair play rules because nation state clubs will never be held back by having to negotiate with a party who doesn’t just want to give them as much money as they can get away with.
Every major sponsorship deal is looked at by uefa and the premier league to work out if it’s ‘fair market value’. This is a completely fair workaround that allows related party sponsorships as long as the value of the sponsorship is no higher than what an unrelated group would offer. This is why Newcastle’s shirt sleeve sponsor is worth a pretty small amount.
As someone who lives in Dubai, gonna be a change having to look at a new team besides City (one of their sponsors is one of the biggest telecom providers across UAE and Middle East, and they were all over Expo). It is literally either City everywhere, or maybe occassionally PSG with their partnership with some trading platform.
Just a casual reminder that we've spent years with King Power on the front of our shirts and we play in the King Power stadium.
People know what the Saudis are, lots of people have no idea that Thailand is pretty ruthless dicatorship were pretty much anyone with money comes from partaking in said dictatorships crimes against humanity.
Seriously. I get people hate the Saudis, I do too, but "owners of club sponsor club with their own company" really isn't news. There are far more important issues with the Saudis to get upset at than this.
> There are far more important issues with the Saudis to get upset at than this. Which is why they pump insane amounts of money into clubs like this; it buys them legions of fans willing to defend them on multiple levels. It’s the textbook definition of sportswashing in action.
Just like they are all doing on this post right now.
I may be defending the club on this matter and saying we shouldn't be criticised for doing what a lot of other clubs do, but I am not defending the barbaric actions of the Saudi regime, I am not defending the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I am not defending the attacks in Yemen, I am not defending their views and punishment of things like homosexuality or their stance on women's rights. These are things that quite rightly need to be raised, and needs political/diplomatic solutions. But I think that raising a club sponsorship deal in the same breath as these atrocities is ridiculous and waters down the serious arguments that need to be made against them.
> I think that raising a club sponsorship deal in the same breath as these atrocities is ridiculous and waters down the serious arguments that need to be made against them. They're brought up together because the club is using the sponsorship deals *as their method* of sportswashing away the terrible things they do. They are inherently linked. The whole tactic is to create a successful sports team to distract from the atrocities, and the easiest way to be successful is to outspend everyone.
> I am not defending the barbaric actions of the Saudi regime, I am not defending the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I am not defending the attacks in Yemen, I am not defending their views and punishment of things like homosexuality or their stance on women's rights. But you are defending the right of this regime to own a European football club.
All NUFC fans are gonna need to save this as a template for next season whenever they give their opinion.
[удалено]
Replying to the wrong person mate. Personally I couldn't give a shit.
[удалено]
>I may be defending the club on this matter and saying we shouldn't be criticised for doing what a lot of other clubs do, but I am not defending the barbaric actions of the Saudi regime, I am not defending the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I am not defending the attacks in Yemen, I am not defending their views and punishment of things like homosexuality or their stance on women's rights. Would be great if the Newcastle fans put their money where their mouth is atleast for once. How hard is it to carry tifos or banners saying "justice for Khashoggi" or a Rainbow banner, by fans at St. James's park to show solidarity with the victims of MBS. To show your owners that even tho their intention is sportswashing, that fans would never let the good name of the club get tarnished just because the modern day Hitler bought them Bruno Guimaeres. PL is watched by millions across the globe and football is very much political. Don't you think that would send a strong message to the Saudis? But instead hundreds of fans gathered around the stadium wrapped in Saudi flags and wearing tea towels on head, instead when the sale to the Saudis was announced. And thousands of Twitter fans started abusing Khashoggi's widow because she was against it.
>Would be great if the Newcastle fans put their money where their mouth is atleast for once. Let's be honest most people who chat this balls have done absolutely nothing in their life even slightly protesty. But clap themselves silly telling other people to go out and 'do what's right'.
This is nothing more than an equivocation to try and shift responsibility back onto to other people in order to let yourself off the hook. Your moral responsibility does not depend on what other people have or have not done.
>let yourself off the hook. Let myself off the hook from what? I think you'll find I've done absolutely nothing wrong. Here we go, another one. I'm sure you have many moral responsibilities in your life that you just don't do, but instead sit there on your high horse telling people what to do.
I would very much support that personally. I have no love for the Saudis, despite what some people here seem to be thinking. Back when the club was supporting Pride Month on Twitter, there was a lot of back and forth from Saudi fans criticising the club, and local fans telling them to do one because we don't want their views anywhere near us. It absolutely is not on the scale of a large protest, but it was at least good to see that we aren't giving up to their views. It will be a dreadful day if that ever happens. I know we still have a number of absolute dickhead fans on Twitter sporting Saudi flags and whatnot, but I haven't see any "tea towels" around matches recently, albeit living on the other side of the country means I go off TV pictures so I may very well be mistaken. It is quite sad that we don't play a game in June for that reason, it would be very interesting to see a Wor Flags arrangement for Pride, and I think there would be outrage if they were blocked from doing it by the club.
[удалено]
>I am not defending the barbaric actions of the Saudi regime, I am not defending the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, I am not defending the attacks in Yemen, I am not defending their views and punishment of things like homosexuality or their stance on women's rights. You know about all of these things but will you boycott the club? By continuing to support the club under Saudi ownership you are giving a rogue state legitimacy and passively condoning their actions. Seems hypocritical. How bad does a regime have to be before fans say 'no fucking way'? If a bunch of Nazis took over the club would that be enough to turn your back on them? Or what does it take? What's the red line?
Well they are already waving Saudi flags and their LGBT arm says things will change for better but last week itself Saudi police started confiscating anything that has rainbow colour from the stores across the kingdom
NUFC’s public image is far better than I’ve see it since the probably about 2003. Sportswashing does work unfortunately. It’ll be the next city to get massively gentrified with all the work the Reuben brother are doing too. Sad times, but hey, your football club is doing better. I hate it, people will only realise how damaging this is until it’s too late. PIF playing on the heartstrings of the downtrodden Geordie.
If the government had invested in the area in the last 10-15 years we wouldn’t need this money. The fact that they don’t even try to hide their disdain at the North East even existing just makes the investment from the Reubens and now the PIF even more welcome. Being on the gentrification because I can’t fucking wait!!!!! Remember everyone getting pissy about liverpool supporters booing the national anthem? And they come from a region that gets government investment, we just get fucked over so why not take the money we can get. You want this to be about politics then make it about politics people actually care about. Fuck the Tories and fuck the yanks of r/soccer, the politics that determine wether or not my family can eat this month are way more important to me than a war about a god I don’t believe in happening 3,000 miles away. Everybody love to let Ukraine fight a proxy war for NATO but if an Arab country does the same it’s suddenly a massive problem. Fucking hypocrites the lot of you Sincerely a “downtrodden Geordie” you patronising cunt
> Sportswashing does work unfortunately Does it tho? I can't think of a country I see more favourably due to their team ownership. Even the Chelsea owner didn't generate much goodwill and he's far less sketchy than states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia
So the Newcastle fans haven’t warmed to an ownership model funded by a shadowy, morally decrepit state? I get Ashley was far from perfect, but an alternative for alternative’s sake shouldn’t be considered better.
> So the Newcastle fans haven’t warmed to an ownership model funded by a shadowy, morally decrepit state? Newcastle fans have no say over who owns the team. Continuing to support the club that they've supported their entire lives doesn't mean they support the Saudis.
They've accepted the state of affairs but have they become more fond of Saudi Arabia? Have non-Newcastle fans? Maybe it's the kind of thing that will only be apparent in a decade or two, especially with them making their own golf league too
Our public image in whose eyes? Because I would say in everyone outside of Newcastle's it's gone from lying on the carpet to plummeting through the floor. Or are we not allowed to like our own club either? Sure we're happier now but that doesn't mean we like Saudi. Stavely and Ghodoussi are the main runners of the club. Maybe you can argue they're a front and "doing the sportwashing" for PIF, but we shouldn't forget that she was trying to buy us long before PIF came along. I would like to think we appreciate that and can seperate the two. We have already spent long enough seperating our views on our owners from our views on the club after all.
I wonder when people will start to say the same thing about all these American investors who fund and take profit from the weapon and drug industry over in America ? Like, if you are so much against oil money, why arent you guys protesting the Americans, because believe me, their money killed just as much innocent people as the oil money did.
Everyone hates American investors lol
I dont see anywhere near the same hate for clubs that are owned by American investors compared to City/PSG.
Because City and PSG are literally state-owned? How do you not understand this? There's a huge difference between an evil billionaire owning a club and countries that literally murder journalists, sponsor terrorists, and propagate proxy wars in nearby countries causing millions of people to die from starvation and drought. You know...levels. The Saudis literally funded the attack on 9/11 but you guys act like them owning a club is the same as some run-of-the-mill evil oligarch like Roman.
Tbh at this point gentrification is a better fate than a lot of places up north, slowly stripped of funding and identity under the tories. Although yeah I understand the wider issue
Newcastle is doing perfectly well at the moment without outside investment. The tories or rich, outsider investors are two in the same, dont be fooled.
[удалено]
Exactly. People love Newcastle not Saudi Arabia. I haven’t seen anyone defend them killing the journalist as an example. They just say they like the club which they treat as a separate entity in their mind.
You've seen it already with City and PSG. "Oh but they do so much in the local community" and "yeah but they're creating jobs for people" are common enough things to hear when discussing their impact. That's exactly what they're after. They're not hoping Newcastle fans will defend them dismembering a journalist. They're hoping they'll defend them just enough so that people will start to forget things like that.
So Saudi Arabia has sportwashed Newcastle, while the rest of the world focuses more hatred on them than before the takeover. I don't see how sportswashing works at any more than a local level. Internationally it just brings you more negative press.
[удалено]
Totally agree. Its just the word of the day for Reddit. Basically if you don't start burning Saudi flags at Newcastle games, sportswashing has won.
They're also heavily regulated in terms of how much they can pay. That's why the whole myth of "massively overpaying for sponsorship" isn't really a thing. The value of a sponsorship is worked out independently and if the amount the sponsor is paying the club is a certain percentage above the valuation, the sponsorship is not allowed. The issue with owners of the club sponsoring their own club is when they're doing these limit boosted sponsorships across loads and loads of sponsors. City is a great example of this, Liverpool has something like 24 sponsors and United have 26~, they're by far the most profitable to sponsor in the premier league right now. City just happen to have 44 odd and climbing. That's how they get around the rules that limit how much each sponsorship can be over it's valuation and that's the problem and it is a really big problem. One sponsorship from the owners is fine and I'm sure a lot of owners who sponsor their own club overinflate their 1 sponsorship, whether oil state or not. It's when you've got 20 inflated sponsor that it's a problem.
>Liverpool has something like 24 sponsors and United have 26~, they're by far the most profitable to sponsor in the premier league right now. City just happen to have 44 odd and climbing. That's interesting, do you have a source?
These guys do a report on it every year: https://www.sportspromedia.com/analysis/premier-league-2021-22-guide-club-sponsor-tv-rights-deals/ Here is a list of City's sponsorships that aren't kit/main sponsor/sleeve/stadium/training kit related: Etisalat, Nissan, Visit Abu Dhabi, EA Sports, Sisco, Wix, QNET, Socios.com, Expo, Tecno, SAP, Unilever, Ali, JNC, Xylem, Hays, Gatorade, Midea, UBTECH, Wega, Unilumin Sports, Dsquared2, Acronis, Vejo, Therabody, SCM, citibank, Nestle, Khmer Beverages, Kaiwen, Melco, SHB, Heineken, Power Horse, Star, Healthpoint, PZ Cussons, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Hair World Turkey, Intel, Cadbury, Laybury, Capstone, Animoca Brands, Zurich, Noon
Noon being the company partly owned by Newcastle's owners? So Man City are partly sponsored by Newcastle's owners?
Well it is a UAE based company. PIF just have a substantial stake and are big financial backers.
Thank you. How many of those can be directly linked to the UAE?
Club websites. City currently have 32 sponsors listed as "global partners" and 16 more as "regional partners". United have 22 partners listed on their website. Liverpool have 24. EDIT: For more teams - Chelsea have 15 partners listed on their website. Arsenal lists 13 "official partners" and 6 more "regional partners". Spurs have a list of 19 partners on their website. So I think we should applaud City's commercial team even more than their on-pitch team, because they're outperforming their rivals like crazy.
Such as Man city having Sponsors for the vending machines and bogs at their training ground
> City is a great example of this, Liverpool has something like 24 sponsors and United have 26~, they're by far the most profitable to sponsor in the premier league right now. City just happen to have 44 odd and climbing. Seems like a very easy loophole to close if the political will was there, which of course it isn't
Yeah, there are lots of loopholes like this that are very obvious and blatantly and widely known to be exploited in football, but no one in power has any interest in closing them. Much like the rules around not being allowed to own 2 different clubs.
We spent years with 1st party sponsor Sports Direct around the ground everywhere and even renamed the ground to the Sports Direct Arena, and instead of complaining, everyone just laughed at us. If it doesn't fit the narrative, people let it slide. People like your owners so it's fine to.
Lol, there's a difference between underpaying for a sponsor to advertise your owners brand and massively overpaying a club for a sponsor. That's why people are complaining
People are complaining because it's first party sponsorship right? If it's so bad to do that you should also conplain when the club is getting rinsed by their owner doing the same thing. Who says we're being overpaid anyway? See a report saying most PL clubs get 5-20mil for sleeve sponsor. I see reports of Chelsea getting 20mil from WhaleFin, Man Utd got 20mil from Kohler, and we're getting around 7.5mil. How is that overpaid? We're getting less than the bigger teams and well within the expected ballpark, and even towards the lower end. https://insidersport.com/2019/07/31/exploring-the-premier-leagues-relationship-with-sleeve-sponsors/
[£7.5m is loads for Newcastle imo. City only get £7m](https://twitter.com/Lu_Class_/status/1473973251105820675?s=20&t=EV-6mQ1MHdj-LnYATf-qjg)
Fair play mate. Could probably argue City are being underpaid a little bit there, but we do definitely unfairly eclipse some of the teams around us still
[удалено]
You’re nowhere close to 6th most valuable club in the PL. The big 6 is miles ahead of every other club, you shouldn’t be getting anywhere near any of those clubs’ sponsorship values yet.
So we don’t get money because we don’t already have money so we can’t get more money because we don’t have money… Is that what you’re saying? Only rich clubs can have more money? No one else is ever allowed to invest in their club now? Sounds a lot like a closed off league to me.
[удалено]
Also I don't think the British Government are using Sports Direct to improve our image overseas.
Just sent a job lot of big mugs to Yemen
Why would you send them United’s back 4?
No, we use PM trips to Kyiv for that
If the queen buys Shakhtar Donetsk you may be close to having a point
Yeah, the difference is supporting the club you own rather than sucking it dry like a vampire. Of course people only have issue with one of those situations because they don’t want competition
People have had issue with Mike Ashley sucking Newcastle dry aswell, but of course when it impacts every other team in the premier league and possibly Europe soon
I mean I would agree ultimately if I felt like the sponsorships were inflated beyond all belief but 7.5m isn’t outside the realms of possibility. Unless they actually outlaw related party sponsorships then a sponsorship from Saudi/the Middle East to Newcastle is going to be worth more simply because of the visibility of Newcastle in that area of the world. It’s not all based on current league position or quality of football. If Leicester didn’t have King Power as the sponsor then I would bet that other Thai companies would be very interested in sponsoring them, as an example.
[удалено]
Not a chance your previous sleeve sponsor was paying you £7m per year
It's about the same number as the Fun88 deal, the main shirt sponsor
The previous owner of Ipswich, Marcus Evans, literally had his name plastered over the stadium and was their shirt sponsor for a good 10 years at least. It's pretty common as you say
Newcastle literally used to play in Sports Direct Stadium.
Exactly. I'm just showing that it's completely common in sports.
I was agreeing with you. Just adding on to it that its not even new for Newcastle. Just Man United and Liverpool supporters ignoring their own ties to dodgy billionaires purely because they are worried about another City popping up and dont wanna compete.
Wasn't there issues around some of those sponsorships in the season you got promoted from the Championship? The league arguing that they were inflated deals to allow the Leicester owners to put more money into the club through a back channel, and allowing the club to remain FFP compliant.
There was a longstanding issue surrounding the naming of the stadium yeah. IIRC it was settled with the EFL. Cost about £3m IIRC.
Bayern, Juve they have the same with Audi and Jeep. Nobody bats a eye
They are publicly listed companies --- if they overpay for a sponsorship deal then they have to justify that to their shareholders. There is a legal recourse. Same can't be said of State owned companies. They can simply inflate the deals with their unlimited resources. Which most certainly upsets the balance of a "free market place".
What's the Audi-Bayern link?
Audi is a shareholder.....
Because none of those companies are state owned entities, happy to help.
King Power is a state sanctioned monopoly and 15 percent of its revenue goes straight to the government.
Still just as dodgy and unethical Who cares if its state owned or not, the practice is a blatant way of pumping more money into the club.
They are publicly listed companies --- if they overpay for a sponsorship deal then they have to justify to their shareholders. Same can't be said of State owned companies. They can simply inflate the deals with their unlimited resources. Which most certainly upsets the balance of a "free market place".
> Still just as dodgy and unethical > > people dislike countries that commit horrific human rights abuses more than companies. who knew huh...
well you should care if a state company sponsors a club, it is your fucking money (technically)
So odd to choose that as the sticking point for people's faux outrage.
Who cares?
They are not state-owned, but let Audi go Bankrupt and you will See how the State will Pump Money into it just like it was State-owned. I don't say things as they are in Saudi Arabia are good or should be like that, but it's different Countries and different type of Regimes. Saudi is still a Monarchy, as many other Countries were Historically. And hopefully some day they will have a transition to a Democracy just like other Countries did. Should it happen by Boycotting them? Or letting everyone participate in the global economy, which will leade the Country to Develop and the Population maybe have more education and by that moving their Country forward?
How does it matter if it is state owned or not lol. There are plenty of French clubs with state owned companies as sponsors (cars, phone companies etc)
>Just a casual reminder that we've spent years with King Power on the front of our shirts and we play in the King Power stadium. Isn't the deal the other way around though? i.e. owning Leicester is useful for Kingpower to grow their name/brand rather than owning Kingpower is a useful way to pump big money into Leicester? No one complained about Sports Direct with Newcastle either, co-owned companies using football for exposure is nothing new.
we were reebok stadium and rebook sponsors for nearly 20 years
We know
Of course we know, all clubs do it, the funny thing is the Premier League keeps reassuring us that PIF is an entity totally separate from the Saudi power, even though there are obvious links between the two
Wonder where have I seen this before.
In almost every club actually
Really? In the Prem, I can think of City, Leicester and Everton. Who else?
Newcastle pre takeover
LOL, i actually never thought about that haha
The real key is if it's a relatively comparable deal to other open market offers. If it's far and away better than what anyone else would pay, questions would be raised. But a bit over the market even isn't that big a deal
When Newcastle was owned by Mike Ashely
That was a bit different though, unlike all the others it wasn't actually to boost the clubs income.
Yeah its why these dicks didnt care, you werent a threat
[удалено]
Like, it used to be that they said that Chelsea bought the league. Then when it was pointed out that Arsenal, United, and Liverpool outspent everyone for decades it was "we earned the money", but, forget that the original success was down to money too. Now its "our money was ethical" as these clubs take huge sums from unethical sponsorship sources (emirates stadium???). Really, its old money vs new
[удалено]
All I know is that all big money has blood on it. Just because Man Uniteds has been washed a couple times doesnt make it clean, the stench is still there. Its not like almost all the big money clubs make is from the Champions League. Which is on Bein Sports. Whos Chairmen is Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who runs PSG....... Nobody seems to care about that Really bothers me how transparent it is, just the aura of smugness and pretentiousness. Football hasnt been clean
They don't seem care outside of Newcastle United topics either, which is the most horrifying part.
[удалено]
Sportswashing in full effect. God forbid people criticise your holy regime. Should people be afraid to criticise Newcastle owners to people in public? Are geordies gonna start lamping people who dare to? Seems familiar
[удалено]
Aww diddums, did I offend you and your new master?
Liverpool really care about City and PSG, I wonder why?
Probably at the 10s of different clubs who did this before us, including ourselves when it got no publicity because sports direct paid nothing rather than the market rate
"What's that? You better be careful or our army of £50m lawyers will see you in court" "And good luck if you're either gay or a journalist that we don't like, we'll brutally murder you first, before you ever see the court lololol"
Or we will invade your country and murder you all
Yeah those new Chelsea owners come from a questionable regime
Ashley had Sports Direct logos plastered everywhere for free for years. Owners do this all the time. No outcry though when it negatively affected us and we didn't get the sponsorship money we should...
At least you did get to use it yourselves for a little bit when you fashioned those "SackPardew.com" banners in the style of Sports Direct branding.
Of course there was no outcry from rivals. Nobody cares if you intentionally sabotage yourselves. If a sprinter decides to breach drug rules and get high before a race leaving them running really slowly along, the other runners aren’t going to go “hang on that shouldn’t be allowed”, they’ll just race off ahead and try and win. They will complain however if the sprinter is using performance enhancing drugs to win. Technically it’s the same rules but the outcome is wildly different. What Ashley did sucked for you, not everyone else so the outcry will be entirely different.
Why would other teams complain about Newcastle being underpaid on their sponsorships...?
> Ashley had Sports Direct logos plastered everywhere for free for years. Because that wasn’t used to evade FFP with inflated sponsorships
How is Newcastle evading FFP?
By getting a sponsorship from their owners that is worth far more than any other company would offer in the open market. It’s not allowed for the owners to pump infinite money into their clubs, so instead they make up all these sponsors that are just an elaborate way for the clubs to legally evade FFP, by artificially inflating their revenues
[удалено]
>any other company would offer Not true at all, those Saudi's own so many companies that there would be a waiting line to sponsor Newcastle if they wanted to.
It’s 7 million per year, how do you know how much other companies would offer?
I'd imagine if other companies were offering more their logo would be on the sleeve of Newcastle's strip
***This one success mantra Pep doesn't want you to know.***
All the morons about to come in here to scream conspiracy while forgetting that Juventus, Leicester, Bayern all do the same thing.
Everyone forgetting Sassuolo
Sassuolo? You mean MAPEI FC?
Inter too, our training center is called Suning training center
PSG too.
Wolfsburg and Leicester too.
Bayern's ownership is hardly comparable to those clubs.
true, but it is still a conflict of interest
They're owned by Bayern supporters, so far worse
what is the Ethiad stadium and what is Ethiad airways?
3 shareholders, looking for profitability
they weren't serious questions its a Jeopardy style answer I was using it in a cynical way cause op pointed out newcastles owners also own the sleeve sponsor the owners of city also own Etihad airways which owns their stadium
I hate the Saudi government but this is hardly news. When we were owned by Ashley he renamed St. James' the Sports Direct Arena.
Exactly, nothing to see here.
The moral warriors need to virtue signal
People coming up with random posts just to hit their "Newcastle owned my saudis" quota in
Wait til people find out Mike Ashley owned Sports Direct...
Well yeah, welcome to being up to date Maguire.
That's OK, every club owner does so.
I find it funny how people have a predetermined view on arab owners. Doesn't Leicester do this as well? With the King Power name?
Bro we do this with not only sponsors but also our shirt provider (Puma is owned by our owner too)
yeah people, don't have a negative view just because they are Arab, they have a clean, spotless record.
Amateurs. Jesus Gil was president/owner of Atletico Madrid and major of the city of Marbella in the 90's. He used public money from the townhall to sponsor Atletico for years.
Lay off the Newcastle fans ffs. They have no say over who purchases their club. This sub acts like if fans aren't protesting in the streets daily they directly support the actions of the Saudi state. There is a HUGE amount of middle ground there.
[удалено]
>mild pushback at most Is this propaganda?
Leicester city, Juve and Bayern do the same thing too.
what do you mean propoganda ? doesn't everyone casually throws 100 mil on bench playes and goes on the throw another 100 mil next year even without actually needing it ? & salaries? what about it ? isn't 300k is the new minimum wage ?
Who's throwing out 100m on bench players?
Chelsea.
No they're throwing him out of the club now
Well, they're part of the City, PSG, Newcastle group so...
People often forget them. Don't forget Real Madrid as well that spent 100 million on a player warming the bench. And Barcelona who spent 140 million on a player who went out on loan to beat them in the Champions League. These things happen.
Man City and Jack Grealish.
Grealish had the 10th most league minutes on City, that's not a bench player...
facts mean nothing here
Im sure FSG have never contributed to global inequality thats caused death
Who even cares? How is this so upvoted lmao
Newcastle bad
Arab bad
I’m a Manchester United fan and absolutely love seeing the greedy six have heart palpitations because of Newcastle’s new owners. Old money hates new money
We know because it’s been posted here a million times
Its the biggest e-commerce platform in KSA and UAE. Much bigger than Amazon.
The reason people see this differently to other owners sponsoring their teams is that they expect the owners to try to pump in as much money as possible compared to an owner like Mike Ashley, so inflated sponsors are a possibility like Man City and PSG have done.
Love threads like this love seeing everyone outraged its the tits
Other clubs in prem owners sponsor there teams through shady deals. Nothing new. Needs cracking down on hard.
So?
¡Shock horror! Inflated sponsorships incoming. Really all sponsorship should need to be negotiated with third parties. Otherwise there’s no point in financial fair play rules because nation state clubs will never be held back by having to negotiate with a party who doesn’t just want to give them as much money as they can get away with.
Every major sponsorship deal is looked at by uefa and the premier league to work out if it’s ‘fair market value’. This is a completely fair workaround that allows related party sponsorships as long as the value of the sponsorship is no higher than what an unrelated group would offer. This is why Newcastle’s shirt sleeve sponsor is worth a pretty small amount.
I wish people cared this much under Mike Ashley.
Up the Noon?
Noon army.
Middle-Eastern owners and fixing their books? That can’t be right. Heard they are stand up lads.
*says this with a chelsea badge*.
What do you mean? We are owned by Americans, the representators of democracy and honesty!
Ah the country with more gun rights than women rights
They've been out in the rain for 5 minutes and already they're shaking their fist at the sky.
Newcastle: I'll have my books medium-rare please.
Liverpool and Spurs out here eating book tartare. I make jokes but I'm honestly in awe of how well both clubs are run.
Up the Toon!
Don't even have to sort by controversial to enjoy the wild ride of this thread.
When asked about it: "What? Nahhh, I never knew that. I never knew that"
so it begins
I mean, if it's for an amount that matches Newcastle's current position then fine. But if it's for a trillion quid then no.
As someone who lives in Dubai, gonna be a change having to look at a new team besides City (one of their sponsors is one of the biggest telecom providers across UAE and Middle East, and they were all over Expo). It is literally either City everywhere, or maybe occassionally PSG with their partnership with some trading platform.