UEFA Euro 2016

As FIFA Reels, UEFA’s Euro 2016 Will Make More Money Than Ever

Every game expected to draw more TV viewers than Super Bowl

UEFA expects about 43 percent revenue growth over 2012

One year into a sweeping corruption scandal at the highest levels of global soccer, FIFA’s reputation and finances are still under a cloud. Some 150 miles away, though, the forecast is very different for UEFA, the most important regional soccer body under the FIFA umbrella.
When Euro 2016 begins today in France, it will be the biggest in the tournament’s history, with more teams, more games and more host cities. For UEFA, all that adds up to more money. The organization expects to make 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) in revenue, up from the 1.4 billion euro it made four years ago when Poland and Ukraine were host to 16 teams.
The European Championship has long been second only to the World Cup in popularity and revenue. Now with teams from 24 countries participating, there are more tickets to sell, and television rights for the tournament fetched about 1.05 billion euros, a 25 percent increase over 2012. Sponsorships are up 40 percent, to about 450 million euros, according to Guy-Laurent Epstein, UEFA’s marketing director for the soccer body. Ticket sales make up the rest.
As an economic engine, the European Championship dwarfs soccer’s other regional championships. The media rights to this year’s Copa America Centenario – a 16-nation event featuring teams from across the Americas – were sold for $112.5 million. Asian soccer sold a decade of soccer rights, including two editions of its tournament, for $1 billion, a contract that ends in 2020.
Behind the billion-euro broadcasting revenue is a TV audience of 130 million for the early games, Epstein said in an interview hours before the Champions League final, UEFA’s other big ticket event. The audience will grow to 300 million by the June 10 final at the Stade de France in Paris. In contrast, Super Bowl 50 in February drew about 110 million viewers. “We will deliver 51 Super Bowls in the next month,” said Epstein.
About three-quarters of the television income comes from the Euro zone, though some countries, including Italy and Spain, balked at the high price. Epstein blamed the sluggish economy and said strong gains were made in the U.S., Brazil and the Middle East.
Sales of 2.5 million tickets, a million more than were available in 2012, will make up the rest of Euro 2016 income. Epstein said UEFA expects a sellout, though it has released to the public some of the tickets set aside for companies entertaining clients.
Epstein said he thought tightening regulations on corporate gift-giving and gift-accepting had put a chill on spending for events like these. “It’s more difficult for companies to invite guests because of compliance issues,” he said, adding that the specter of terrorism and planned strikes don’t help either.
Bringing the tournament to one of Europe’s biggest economies for the first time since 1996 has bolstered sponsorships, up 40 percent since 2012. The roster includes usual soccer sponsors like Adidas AG, The Coca-Cola Co. and Carlsberg A/S. The Danish brewer in particular has made the Euro a centerpiece of its summer marketing, spending as much as 80 million euros on the tournament.
For France as a whole, the tournament is a drop in the bucket. Academics at the Centre for the Law and Economics of Sport in Limoges, France, estimate that it will generate an economic impact of 1.3 billion euros, mostly from fan spending. Another 1.7 billion euros has been spent on the stadiums being used for the event.
“Evidence from other countries suggests the lift is likely to be small and short-lived," Bloomberg Intelligence economists Maxime Sabaihi and Jamie Murray wrote in a note published May 25. “Hopefully the country will enjoy some much-needed weeks of partying, but it will take much more than games to improve France’s economic output.”

source:bloomberg

FIFA reformer Scala quits over loss of independence

FIFA reformer Scala quits over loss of independence.

FIFA Audit Chairman Scala

Domenico Scala, a Swiss businessman who led reforms to clean up scandal-plagued FIFA, quit his post at the global soccer body on Saturday, saying its independent watchdog committees had lost their independence.
Scala, head of the audit and compliance committee, said the reform of FIFA, which is attempting to recover from the worst graft scandal in its history, had been undermined following a resolution by the FIFA Congress on Friday.
The resolution, passed by 186 votes to one, gave the FIFA Council power to appoint or "dismiss any office holders" of its independent bodies such as the ethics committee and the audit and compliance committee.
This effectively gives the Council, which has replaced the former executive committee and is headed by FIFA president Gianni Infantino, the right to fire ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, ethics investigator Cornel Borbely and Scala himself. The ethics committee, which was reformed in 2012, has investigated and banned more than a dozen top officials for ethics violations. These have included former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and ex-secretary general Jerome Valcke as well as former executive committee members. Scala said the new rule "undermines a central pillar of the good governance of FIFA and it destroys a substantial achievement of the reforms." "It will henceforth be possible for the Council to impede investigations against single members at any time, by dismissing the responsible Committee members or by keeping them acquiescent through the threat of a dismissal," added Scala. "The bodies are factually deprived of their independence and are in danger of becoming auxiliary agents of those whom they should actually supervise." Eckert and Borbely could not immediately be reached for comment. FIFA responded on Saturday, saying that Scala "misinterpreted" a the ruling which will allow the FIFA Council to appoint and dismiss members of watchdog committees.
"FIFA regrets that Mr. Scala has misinterpreted the purpose of the decision taken by the FIFA Congress," FIFA said in a statement. "Mr. Scala has made unfounded claims which are baseless." Previously, committee members could only be sacked by the Congress, which is held annually and where each of FIFA's 211 member associations hold one vote. FIFA Council meetings can be called at short notice. During a speech to the Congress earlier on Friday, Scala admitted that he had "made enemies".
The vote, on an apparently simple administrative issue, was taken late in Friday's meeting, the first since Gianni Infantino was elected as president in February. FIFA passed a raft of reforms aimed at avoiding a repeat of the corruption scandal that has seen 42 football officials and entities indicted in the United States.
"We are following a democratic process," Infantino told reporters after the vote on Friday. "If we don't act we are criticised and if we do act we are criticised, but we should also be criticised if we act in the wrong way. Do we wait one year for Congress to dismiss committee members who should be changed?
"We need to be flexible to accomplish all the changes."

source: www.cbc.ca