West Ham on hook for £5m despite Potter’s Swede pick-me-up
West Ham will not receive any financial benefit from Sweden’s surprise appointment of Graham Potter, who is still set to bank around £5m in compensation after being sacked by the struggling Hammers last month.
Most Premier League clubs only pay compensation – in the form of monthly salary payments – to sacked managers until they get another job, but Potter’s wages in Sweden, where he launched his coaching career, will be insufficient to override his existing entitlement.
The 50-year-old Englishman has been given a short-term deal by the Swedish FA covering next month’s World Cup qualifiers against Switzerland and Slovenia, but will be handed an automatic extension if he succeeds in securing World Cup qualification via the play-offs, which they could reach due to their strong Uefa Nations League record.
Potter’s predecessor, Jon Dahl Tomasson, was only paid around £500,000-a-year for doing the job on a full-time basis, however West Ham will still be liable to pay Potter in full.
Uefa eyes long Champions League rights deals
Uefa will look to sell long-term Champions League media rights deals for markets in Asia and the Americas but stick to four-year contracts in England, France, Spain, Italy and Germany.
The auction for the five biggest European markets, plus a one game-per-week global streaming deal, launched last week and is expected to conclude before Christmas, with Uefa seeking a total package worth £4.4bn per year.
A source involved in the discussions told Morning Wire that Uefa would have liked to offer longer deals in Europe but was wary of encountering difficulties with the European Commission, which prefers shorter contracts as a means of promoting regular competition and preventing monopolies.
The existing Champions League media rights deals in Europe are for three years so the new tender represents a 12-month increase.
Uefa currently has a six-year TV contract for the Champions League in the US with CBS, which is due to expire in 2030, and plans to offer longer deals elsewhere.
Broadcasters generally prefer longer contracts for sports rights as they offer more certainty, and the logistical and technological costs of making regular bids are considerable.
In US sports long contracts are standard practice, with the NFL having a series of 11-year agreements worth a combined $111bn with Amazon, Disney’s ESPN, NBC, Fox and Paramount.
The Premier League will be watching with interest, as it would like to offer longer rights deals in its next cycle from 2029 onwards.
Its current TV contracts in mainland Europe are for three years, with four years in the UK and Ireland, while it has some six-year contracts in Asia.
Uefa and Relevent keep it in the family
Another sign of the close links between Uefa and its new commercial partners Relevent can be found in the latter’s appointment of Andrea Marchetti as a legal advisor last week.
Marchetti is the son of Uefa’s deputy general secretary Giorgio Marchetti, one of European football’s most senior officials who has been with the governing body for more than 20 years and has developed a cult following for his public role in handling the Champions League draw.
Andrea Marchetti joined Relevent from CAA Eleven, an agency with the contract for selling commercial rights for Uefa national team competitions, including Euro 2028 in England.
His appointment was announced the week after Relevent launched Uefa’s European tender for Champions League rights from 2027 to 2031.
Trio seek women’s team stake sales
Sunderland, Sheffield United and Burnley are the latest clubs exploring a partial sale of their women’s teams in a bid to generate funds to make them more competitive without using resources they wish to devote to the men’s operation.
Chelsea and Aston Villa both sold stakes in their women’s teams last season, while multi-club group Mercury13 last month acquired a majority stake in Bristol City Women, with the Lansdown family staying on as minority shareholders.
Both the Chelsea and Villa sales involved related-party companies, but Sunderland, Sheffield United and Burnley are understood to have held talks with external investors.
Sunderland and United are both in WSL2, while Burnley have ambitions to join them and are currently second in the third-tier Women’s National League.
The club sought promotion via unusual means last summer after Blackburn withdrew from WSL2 on financial grounds, but the FA instead opted to give a reprieve to United, who should have been relegated.
Newcastle Red Bulls want Adidas deal
Newcastle Red Bulls are hoping to secure a lucrative kit deal with Adidas next season to replace their existing contract with VX3.
Red Bull has close links with the German sportswear manufacturer, which supplies kits for many of the football clubs in its portfolio – including RB Leipzig, New York Red Bulls and Leeds United – and would like to tempt Adidas into rugby. Adidas already works with Newcastle United FC.
A firm offer from Adidas would present a potential headache for Prem Rugby, which is involved in negotiations over a central kit deal for all 10 top-flight clubs, with Castore understood to be bidding for the contract.
Andy Murray-backed Castore already has kit deals with four of the Prem’s biggest clubs in Saracens, Leicester, Harlequins and Bath.