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LCFC FINED £880K....

By FOXSE, in Leicester City Forum

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jammie82uk

jammie82uk

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, honeybradger said:

It's basically an agreement with JD sports to not undercut the official LCFC clothing store on kit prices.

I’m not defending the club as obviously been found guilty of this but don’t that happen anyway, last season on the Adidas site the shirts was £80 and £63 in the club shop and not just ours but any teams football shirts are almost always excluded from any promotional discounts on sites like Adidas/Nike/Sports Direct

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AKCJ

AKCJ

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, honeybradger said:

It's basically an agreement with JD sports to not undercut the official LCFC clothing store on kit prices.

 

6 minutes ago, StriderHiryu said:

Deliberately made it impossible to charge less for our shirts so that people would go through the official site where they keep more of the profit. 

 

8 minutes ago, UniFox21 said:

Stopping JD undercutting our prices basically so people shop at the club store not JD

I get that, but why does that result in a fine?

 

Obviously a scummy tactic from the club to rip fans off but why have we been fined?

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Finnegan

Finnegan

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10 minutes ago, AKCJ said:

Can anyone explain this in terms a simpleton like myself could understand?

 

Billionaire owners who made their money in retail monopoly trying to monopolise the sale of their own football merch. 

 

A massive shock. 

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urban.spaceman

urban.spaceman

Posted
Posted

 

 

Leicester City Football Club has today received a Statement of Objections from the Competition and Markets Authority, relative to its investigation into the sale of LCFC-branded products and merchandise, commenced in September 2021.

LCFC has cooperated fully with the CMA’s investigation, which related to the supply of limited volumes of replica kit and other branded clothing to JD Sports for resale over the course of two and a half seasons (2018/19, 2019/20 and the first half of the 2020/21 season).

No current Club directors or senior management were involved in the arrangements with JD Sports.

These arrangements related to a limited number of bulk orders by JD Sports, which were accepted by the Club’s retail sales team over the relevant period. There was no intention on the part of the Club to unlawfully restrict the resale of the goods supplied and no material financial advantage to be gained from doing so, given the limited amount of kit supplied to JD Sports.

However, the Club accepts the CMA’s findings and has taken steps to strengthen its training and compliance measures to ensure the Club’s retail operations fully comply with competition law.

The Club also wishes to clarify, and the CMA has acknowledged, that LCFC’s owners King Power and V&A Holding had no knowledge of or involvement in these sales arrangements.

 

https://www.lcfc.com/news/3570497/cma-public-statement

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Guest Mee-9

Guest Mee-9

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More embarrassment. Clearly treating the fans awfully yet again.

 

From ID checks at away turnstiles and denying kids with their parents match tickets as they don’t have a form of ID, to flagrantly ripping off those who are the club. 
 

Leicester City you are a disgrace. Another day not to be a proud supporter of this club. 

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RoboFox

RoboFox

Posted
Posted (edited)

Profit-obsessed football club in questionable business practice shocker. 

 

They charge £63 for a replica shirt FFS. They don't care. 

 

Whether the Commercial Director was personally involved or not, if my department was responsible for my company being fined the best part of a million quid for essentially breaking the law, I'd be out of the door with my P45 before I had a chance to say "it wasn't my fault"

 

Not at good old family club Leicester City though, where failure is not only tolerated, but rewarded. 

 

Edited by RoboFox
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goose2010

goose2010

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Posted
2 minutes ago, urban.spaceman said:

No current Club directors or senior management were involved in the arrangements with JD Sports.

Who was then? As far as i am aware (could be wrong) but no one has left in the past year or two? 

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Bert

Bert

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Posted
3 minutes ago, AKCJ said:

 

 

I get that, but why does that result in a fine?

 

Obviously a scummy tactic from the club to rip fans off but why have we been fined?

They’ve broken a law. 
 

“Competition law protects consumers and businesses from unfair, abusive and anti-competitive practices by providing access to competitive markets resulting in businesses having equal rights in, and access to, the market and consumers being provided with increased choice at fair cost”

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urban.spaceman

urban.spaceman

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Considering writing to the Competition and Markets Authority and asking why as a UK consumer my access to Premier League content is restricted while consumers around the rest of the world have full access at a third of the price.

 

If they're fining us £900K over a shirt deal just imagine how much they could fine the Premier League, Sky, BT and Amazon for doing the same thing.

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Captain...

Captain...

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Posted
27 minutes ago, Simoken said:

get rid of these owners and overheads, turning the club into a joke. Have the brass to call out Everton with talk of fining them 100m and yet these stories come out.. being true. bunch of twats the lot of them.

Do you really think Top was overseeing the contract negotiations with JD Sport? It's a minor infringement and we've been fined for it. It is not even remotely the same as Everton's very questionable FFP adherence.

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AjcW

AjcW

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Posted

LCFC’s owners King Power and V&A Holding

Has the club ever referred to V&A before? First time i've seen it mentioned, obviously refers to the holding company owned by Vichai's wife Aimon.

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urban.spaceman

urban.spaceman

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11 minutes ago, Bert said:

They’ve broken a law. 
 

“Competition law protects consumers and businesses from unfair, abusive and anti-competitive practices by providing access to competitive markets resulting in businesses having equal rights in, and access to, the market and consumers being provided with increased choice at fair cost”

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING WITH THE PREMIER LEAGUE AND UK BROADCASTERS.

 

As I explained the other week:

 

On 24/06/2023 at 00:17, urban.spaceman said:

I don't want anyone to take this personally but I feel that not enough people quite understand the ways in which we've been held back since we won the league. It's not just about Everton and Man City's antics - to add to the unlevel playing field analogy we've also quite literally had our arms tied behind our back by a system that treats the "big" with deference and everyone else with nothing but contempt, including us fans as consumers.

 

The TV deal for UK consumers is quite literally the worst in the world for non-"top 6" clubs and consumers. It's what sustains the "big" clubs and prevents smaller clubs from ever developing and breaking into the top 7 places on a long term basis.

 

If you are a British consumer and you want to access every single Premier League match, then you have absolutely no legal right or means to do so.

 

In most other countries you can.

 

In the UK you are expected to subscribe to Sky, BT and Amazon and yet you only get access to 52% of the matches. A rough estimate on my part is that this will cost you £775 per annum, although I can only find a minimum 18 month contract with Sky and 24 month contract with BT.

 

I've said this before, but for the last 6 months of our title winning season I was living in Cape Town then spent 2-3 months living in Botswana and travelling around the region. I could either pay for DSTV/Supersport at £360pa and get access to every single Premier League match, or walk in to any pub to get access to it.

 

My dad lives 8 miles away from the King Power and had absolutely absolutely no legal right or means to watch us play on tv.

 

A few weeks ago there was a gang of Brits jailed for decades for providing access to "illegal" streams for UK consumers.

 

Or to put it another way, the Premier League managed to prosecute people for making their product actually accessible to people who wanted to access it. 

 

-------

 

But here's why it's bad for clubs like us.

 

Football has had a Saturday 3pm broadcast blackout since the 60s, which is why UK based consumers can't watch the games. So matches are selected by broadcasters and moved away from the Saturday 3pm slot to get around that rule. Clubs are given "facility fees" - £1.2m per game as it stands - for every match selected for UK broadcast. They have viewers to attract, so the broadcasters pick the clubs they feel will bring in more viewers, which is what tips the eventual earnings in favour of the biggest clubs.

 

To give you an example, in 2014/15, we were selected for broadcast only 8 times.

 

In 2015/16, we were selected for broadcast 15 times (just 12 in 2016/17). Newcastle 16. Everton 18. Spurs 21. Chelsea 22. Liverpool 23. Man Utd 25. Man City 26. Arsenal 27.

 

In total prize money, we were the 5th highest earners with £93m. Spurs £95m, Man Utd £96.3m, Man City £96.8m and Arsenal £100.8m.

 

That right there is evidence of football not being a meritocracy.

 

And that's before you even get to the extra exposure for sponsors which sends their 'earnings' skyrocketing - Man City have certainly been using it as an excuse to inflate their deals, hence the constant investigations.

 

And that's just part of the issue. One of the FFP measures they brought in in 2013 was called Short Term Cost Control (STCC). It was basically, they said, designed to keep clubs spending within their means {directly controlled, see above} and not have wage bills spiralling out of control.

 

Clubs were restricted from increasing wage bills by more than 7% each season.

 

That in itself is designed to protect the bigger clubs IMO.

 

We won the league with a squad that had been promoted 2 seasons earlier and had finished 14th the previous season. So despite being the actual Champions, we were restricted from spending money {that had already been stifled} on players to compete at the top where we found ourselves.

 

We were the reigning Champions but effectively only had the spending power of 14th place club.

 

(Side note - STCC ended in 2019 which is why Newcastle were able to spend £300m in the last year despite circa £30m the previous)

 

-------

 

In summary, you've basically got a company (the Premier League) colluding with participants (the "big" clubs) and restricting access (via broadcasters) in order to restrain competition (the "other 14") and prices for consumers (us).

 

That, my friends, is the dictionary definition of a cartel:

 

cartel

noun

a group of similar independent companies who join together to control prices and limit competition

 

-------

 

Miguel Delaney did a fantastic article in The Independent in early 2020, about a month before lockdown. It begins:

 

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

These were the words spoken by a senior figure from the Premier League’s ‘big six’ clubs, in the kind of high-end London hotel you can easily imagine.

“Football history suggests fans like big teams winning,” the official continued, to the group of business people and media figures present. “A certain amount of unpredictability is good, but a more democratic league would be bad for business.”

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/champions-league-superclubs-liverpool-man-utd-barcelona-real-madrid-a9330431.html

 

That was about 9 months before Man United and Liverpool tried to bring in Project Big Picture, which involved reducing the teams to 18, giving the 9 clubs with the longest time in the league (but in reality allowing 'any six clubs' and we all know who they are) more voting power on competition issues, and especially distribution of broadcast revenues. citation

 

That was 14 months before they announced the European Super League which as we all know would have bankrupted everyone but themselves.

 

-------

 

We absolutely should not have been allowed to win the Premier League. It shouldn't have happened. They let their guard down expecting that one of the six (well, four; Liverpool hadn't won a title in 25 years and Tottenham are, well, Tottenham). They had controlled the finances and fortunes (in every sense of the word) of the competition for so long that a club ACTUALLY WINNING IT ON MERIT was utterly unthinkable.

 

As far as I'm concerned, with our relegation, they got exactly what they wanted. This is our punishment for humiliating them without buying in.

 

Clubs like Manchester City and Newcastle are so wealthy that they are unaccountable. Man City's CEO is literally on record saying he'd rather spend £50m on lawyers suing UEFA than pay a £30m fine. They refused to cooperate with UEFA for years, were allowed to appoint 2 of the 3 CAS judges who - lo and behold - declared that their rule breaks were "time barred". The Premier League spent 2 years investigating Man City before they were even allowed to report on it. Just look at the trophies they've won in just the 4 years they were being investigated.

 

Football is broken to such a level that only government action will fix it. The problem we have with that is that we don't have a functioning government, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is a vocal Man City fan who expressed disappointment after the UEFA ban.

 

Football in this country is beyond broken.

 

And it won't get 'fixed'. Because it already is.

 

-------

 

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

The whole thing is a criminal enterprise and needs bringing down.

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Babylon

Babylon

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, jammie82uk said:

I’m not defending the club as obviously been found guilty of this but don’t that happen anyway, last season on the Adidas site the shirts was £80 and £63 in the club shop and not just ours but any teams football shirts are almost always excluded from any promotional discounts on sites like Adidas/Nike/Sports Direct

I'm assuming the issue here is that we had an agreement with JD to sell the shirt that was signed previously, we've then tried to alter said deal in an underhanded way. Because, as you say the club are well within their rights normally to restrict sale price and even who sells them.

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