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Court It Is Then


Bobbyhouston
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1 hour ago, jaf said:

There's a difference between something 'partially happening' and something being treated as if it never happened.

So, although, you are technically correct, in law there could have been very different outcomes under the two different scenarios

 

 

 

Of course it depends on the contract. However, if the SPFL executive have signed a deal that means all the sponsor money is only paid on completion of the season then they haven’t done a very good job.

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2 minutes ago, Lenziejag said:

Of course it depends on the contract. However, if the SPFL executive have signed a deal that means all the sponsor money is only paid on completion of the season then they haven’t done a very good job.

Not necessarily.

Sponsors want to know that they'll be getting their money's worth: the exposure prestige and perks that they have paid for. They also want guarantees that the league won't degrade or change the product they're providing without good excuse. As a matter of corporate governance on the sponsors' part their negotiators will also want to know that, if sport is literally cancelled indefinitely, they aren't kept on the hook for expensive sponsorship contracts while their own revenues take a hammering.

It is possible (I would say probable) that if the structure of a sponsorship deal allowed the season to be null and voided at any time, the amount a sponsor would be willing to pay in any given season is considerably less. It is extremely rare for a season to be curtailed, so it's up to the SPFL to reach a considered judgment whether the extra revenue of having a sponsorship deal that is tied to the season outweighs the risk that it means it can't do null and void when it might otherwise have wanted to at some unknown point in the future.

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"Yes, but it would also have led to massive sponsorship claw-back under commercial contracts and would have left every club significantly worse off."

Do you know this for a fact WJ or are you just speculating? I accept that legally and contractually what you say is correct but did trhe SPFL speak to the Sponsers  and say " look we know you are entitled to reclaim some money if we null and void the season, but these are unpresedented circumstances ( a Global pandemic) would you be willing to waive this? "

I dont think Ladbrokes or whoever would have wanted the bad plubicity which would have gone with them asking for their money back. Maybe they would but what I am asking is was that question asked?

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13 minutes ago, Emsca said:

"Yes, but it would also have led to massive sponsorship claw-back under commercial contracts and would have left every club significantly worse off."

Do you know this for a fact WJ or are you just speculating? I accept that legally and contractually what you say is correct but did trhe SPFL speak to the Sponsers  and say " look we know you are entitled to reclaim some money if we null and void the season, but these are unpresedented circumstances ( a Global pandemic) would you be willing to waive this? "

I dont think Ladbrokes or whoever would have wanted the bad plubicity which would have gone with them asking for their money back. Maybe they would but what I am asking is was that question asked?

Have I seen the specific commercial contracts? No. Obviously they are confidential.

But you can readily infer from what the SPFL's guidance said about the implications of null and void that there were substantial commercial liabilities that would follow from it.

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13 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:

Have I seen the specific commercial contracts? No. Obviously they are confidential.

But you can readily infer from what the SPFL's guidance said about the implications of null and void that there were substantial commercial liabilities that would follow from it.

So we dont  know that the SPFL had that conversation with the Sponsers?

You would have thought they would have , but this is the SPFL we are talking about!

I get the distinct impression that this is an organisation that works on assumptions and hetresay. They thought the Leagues had to be called because the Clubs were deperate for the prize money  , in fact that was a red- herring .

 

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1 minute ago, Emsca said:

So we dont  know that the SPFL had that conversation with the Sponsers?

Any discussions would have been confidential, as a matter of contractual necessity.

1 minute ago, Emsca said:

You would have thought they would have , but this is the SPFL we are talking about!

This is how conspiracy theories start. Of course they spoke to Ladbrokes. Don't you remember the Ladbrokes' big whig slating Inverness' CEO on Twitter? Clearly the League's main sponsor (at a minimum) had absolutely no intention whatsoever of forgoing a contractual entitlement.

1 minute ago, Emsca said:

I get the distinct impression that this is an organisation that works on assumptions and hetresay. They thought the Leagues had to be called because the Clubs were deperate for the prize money  , in fact that was a red- herring .

It's only a red herring if you believe there was a mechanism that enough Clubs would vote for and which would not be a violation of the SPFL Board's fiduciary duties to make funds available in April by another means.

It isn't doubted that there were other mechanisms for making money available, but they would have come with the kind of attached strings that it must be doubted the Clubs would have voted for and which would have required considerable due diligence for the SPFL Board to maintain its fiduciary duties to the clubs as a whole.

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32 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:

Have I seen the specific commercial contracts? No. Obviously they are confidential.

But you can readily infer from what the SPFL's guidance said about the implications of null and void that there were substantial commercial liabilities that would follow from it.

There were substantial commercial liabilities from the TV contracts which they didn't disclose, so I think we can say that the SPFL were selective in  what they disclosed, in favour of the outcome that they wanted.

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23 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:

It isn't doubted that there were other mechanisms for making money available, but they would have come with the kind of attached strings that it must be doubted the Clubs would have voted for and which would have required considerable due diligence for the SPFL Board to maintain its fiduciary duties to the clubs as a whole.

Which even our own legal opinion acknowledged, eg security needing to be given

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  1 minute ago, Emsca said:

You would have thought they would have , but this is the SPFL we are talking about!

This is how conspiracy theories start. Of course they spoke to Ladbrokes. Don't you remember the Ladbrokes' big whig slating Inverness' CEO on Twitter? Clearly the League's main sponsor (at a minimum) had absolutely no intention whatsoever of forgoing a contractual entitlement.

49 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:

Any discussions would have been confidential, as a matter of contractual necessity.

This is how conspiracy theories start. Of course they spoke to Ladbrokes. Don't you remember the Ladbrokes' big whig slating Inverness' CEO on Twitter? Clearly the League's main sponsor (at a minimum) had absolutely no intention whatsoever of forgoing a contractual entitlement.

It's only a red herring if you believe there was a mechanism that enough Clubs would vote for and which would not be a violation of the SPFL Board's fiduciary duties to make funds available in April by another means.

It isn't doubted that there were other mechanisms for making money available, but they would have come with the kind of attached strings that it must be doubted the Clubs would have voted for and which would have required considerable due diligence for the SPFL Board to maintain its fiduciary duties to the clubs as a whole.

No I genuinely do not remember anything about a Ladbrokes big wig slating the Inverness CEO ,but then I do not do Twitter.

The prize money thing was a red herring. Most of the money had already been paid and the last tranches were , in most cases , so small as to be insignificant. By which I mean would not make the difference between Clubs surviving or not.

You like to quote this fiduciary duty stuff. Please explain who or which organisation would implement this, ie who would decide that the SPFL Board were in breach of their fiduciary duty?

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1 minute ago, Emsca said:
 

No I genuinely do not remember anything about a Ladbrokes big wig slating the Inverness CEO ,but then I do not do Twitter.

The prize money thing was a red herring. Most of the money had already been paid and the last tranches were , in most cases , so small as to be insignificant. By which I mean would not make the difference between Clubs surviving or not.

You like to quote this fiduciary duty stuff. Please explain who or which organisation would implement this, ie who would decide that the SPFL Board were in breach of their fiduciary duty?

The Ladbrokes CEO berated the ICT CEO for talking to Sportsound about the Dundee vote, then hastily deleted his Tweet shortly afterwards.

The prize-money thing wasn't a red herring. There were still hundreds of thousands of pounds still to be paid to certain Premiership clubs, and in the case of even those in League One and Two, some clubs were still due to receive substantial five-figure sums. Their concern was liquidity, not underlying solvency: it's that in the absence of gate receipts from mid-March to May before heading off for the summer break they would not be able to pay their bills as they fell due. That literally could have been the difference between some clubs surviving or not as the case may be.

If there is an allegation that the SPFL Board has breached its fiduciary duties to the shareholders, then the shareholders would take legal action against them, potentially through the courts. This is true of literally any limited company.

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2 hours ago, Woodstock Jag said:

Not necessarily.

Sponsors want to know that they'll be getting their money's worth: the exposure prestige and perks that they have paid for. They also want guarantees that the league won't degrade or change the product they're providing without good excuse. As a matter of corporate governance on the sponsors' part their negotiators will also want to know that, if sport is literally cancelled indefinitely, they aren't kept on the hook for expensive sponsorship contracts while their own revenues take a hammering.

It is possible (I would say probable) that if the structure of a sponsorship deal allowed the season to be null and voided at any time, the amount a sponsor would be willing to pay in any given season is considerably less. It is extremely rare for a season to be curtailed, so it's up to the SPFL to reach a considered judgment whether the extra revenue of having a sponsorship deal that is tied to the season outweighs the risk that it means it can't do null and void when it might otherwise have wanted to at some unknown point in the future.

It is obviously the sponsors responsibility to decide whether a season is degraded more by awards being handed out on a curtailed season or on one cancelled 3/4 through as a result of unprecedented circumstances. I didn’t say they should be in the hook indefinitely only that there should be no need to repay any sponsorship already received. I am making an assumption that the sponsorship is paid in instalments during the season. The contract is between 2 parties. It is up to both to arrive at reasonable agreements.

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2 hours ago, Woodstock Jag said:

Have I seen the specific commercial contracts? No. Obviously they are confidential.

But you can readily infer from what the SPFL's guidance said about the implications of null and void that there were substantial commercial liabilities that would follow from it.

Will take your word for that as I can’t say I recall any notice about the implications of null and void. There apparently was no guidance on the effect of the curtailment on tv money though.

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2 minutes ago, Whitelees jag said:

The big wig from ladbrokes is a massive celtic fan think that all came out after his tweet 

The end of season money was quoted by forfar and stranraer to be very small..if i remember forfar said 3k and starnraer 2.5k...not vast ammounts of money..

This is misleading.

The teams that finish bottom or second bottom of their league will have received almost all of the money they are due. This is because advances are already and routinely made to clubs over the course of a season. Stranraer and Forfar, for example, had already been paid almost all of what you'd be entitled to if you finished 9th or 10th in League One.

Where end-of-season payments makes a big difference is for teams in, say, positions 1 to 6 or 7 in their respective league (it also makes a big difference for all positions bar 12th in the Premiership). This is because what they are due is performance related, but the SPFL won't have paid-out to them a big chunk of the prize-money they would be entitled to.

The difficulty comes about if you pay on the basis of expected positions too early but the club in question then fails to complete the season or significantly underperforms that projection. In that situation, they might go bust or be in financial difficulties. That will mean the SPFL has made an overpayment, and then an underpayment to other clubs in the same division.

Unless the SPFL can recover that money (and it will almost never be a priority creditor in insolvency proceedings) then it is effectively taking a risk by lending the surplus to the club in question.

At which point you have to ask "whose money are they lending" the answer to which is "that of other clubs".

So unless the clubs being given advances beyond the bare minimum they could have offered security (e.g. a standard security over their ground, or a mortgage-backed personal guarantee from their owner or such-like) they would not in practice have been given that advance. To give such an advance would be a breach of fiduciary duties if the SPFL was not satisfied that the money would be repaid without difficulties.

But the point of paying out the prize-money was precisely to support certain clubs who were concerned about cashflow and solvency. They're not the ones that are about to be able to give security for advances.

So you're back to square one: advances only gives money to clubs who don't need it, at the risk of denying those who were due more.

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13 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:

This is misleading.

The teams that finish bottom or second bottom of their league will have received almost all of the money they are due. This is because advances are already and routinely made to clubs over the course of a season. Stranraer and Forfar, for example, had already been paid almost all of what you'd be entitled to if you finished 9th or 10th in League One.

Where end-of-season payments makes a big difference is for teams in, say, positions 1 to 6 or 7 in their respective league (it also makes a big difference for all positions bar 12th in the Premiership). This is because what they are due is performance related, but the SPFL won't have paid-out to them a big chunk of the prize-money they would be entitled to.

The difficulty comes about if you pay on the basis of expected positions too early but the club in question then fails to complete the season or significantly underperforms that projection. In that situation, they might go bust or be in financial difficulties. That will mean the SPFL has made an overpayment, and then an underpayment to other clubs in the same division.

Unless the SPFL can recover that money (and it will almost never be a priority creditor in insolvency proceedings) then it is effectively taking a risk by lending the surplus to the club in question.

At which point you have to ask "whose money are they lending" the answer to which is "that of other clubs".

So unless the clubs being given advances beyond the bare minimum they could have offered security (e.g. a standard security over their ground, or a mortgage-backed personal guarantee from their owner or such-like) they would not in practice have been given that advance. To give such an advance would be a breach of fiduciary duties if the SPFL was not satisfied that the money would be repaid without difficulties.

But the point of paying out the prize-money was precisely to support certain clubs who were concerned about cashflow and solvency. They're not the ones that are about to be able to give security for advances.

So you're back to square one: advances only gives money to clubs who don't need it, at the risk of denying those who were due more.

Can’t help thinking the SPFL in these extraordinary times were really going down a really narrow minded road trying to convince Clubs to back the resolution by claiming funds couldn’t be released unless they backed an incomplete season 

Re the advances against prize money, they weren’t loans and as you quite rightly say if they were then there would have been guarantees.

The monies were actually the Clubs anyway as prize money and for the sums involved at Premiership level if they were 1 or 2 places out it shouldn’t have been a big issue as it could have been sorted out over the next few seasons.

Neil Doncaster managed to side step the play offs and the pyramid system  to close the season. I’m  sure with the Clubs approval in these strange times something could and should have been sorted out , if that had happened it could have a catalyst for more options on the table and possibly we wouldn’t have ended up where we are just now .

Dreadful governance IMO 

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4 hours ago, Woodstock Jag said:

If the member clubs had wanted to separate promotion and relegation from the other matters, it was completely open to them to move an alternative resolution doing exactly that. They could literally have just added the following sentence to the SPFL's existing motion:

"Rules C.19 and C. 20 shall not apply to the SPFL season 2019-20. Accordingly no Club shall be promoted or relegated as a consequence of the final standings in any division."

No Club proposed this.

That's not the SPFL's fault.

I would suggest that it is. Did they not send out a 500 page dossier which clubs had 2 days to digest before the clubs were given a deadline for a vote which (if you read all 500 pages) was not really a deadline. Had the clubs known that they did have more time for a crucial vote then perhaps there might have been alternative solutions proposed.

Now I know you are going to take an SPFL apologist stance and say “it’s not the SPFL’s fault that the clubs didn’t know the rules”, but reading 500 pages of a good novel in 2 days is hard work and I would suggest (assumption) that this was a much tougher read than war and peace.

I think everyone was caught by surprise that the vote was open past the Friday, so the fiduciary duty is on a shoogly peg when it comes to misleading its members on this point.

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2 minutes ago, Auld Jag said:

Does anybody really believe if Rangers were 2 points behind Celtic with a game in hand, the season would have been finished they way it has ? If you think the answer to that is no, you have to ask, why then did it finish the way it has ?

Same reason it had to be called and not declared null and void!

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Just now, Auld Jag said:

Does anybody really believe if Rangers were 2 points behind Celtic with a game in hand, the season would have been finished they way it has ? If you think the answer to that is no, you have to ask, why then did it finish the way it has ?

Every single country which had a “ knee jerk “ reaction to close the season has had consequences Belgium and France ( illegal relegations ) Holland ( compensation for teams ) and Scotland ( possible court case )

The directive from UEFA was to try and complete the season , between Maxie and Doncaster they thought better .

 

 

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3 minutes ago, jlsarmy said:

Can’t help thinking the SPFL in these extraordinary times were really going down a really narrow minded road trying to convince Clubs to back the resolution by claiming funds couldn’t be released unless they backed an incomplete season 

Re the advances against prize money, they weren’t loans and as you quite rightly say if they were then there would have been guarantees.

You can't have an advance against something that isn't eventually due to the recipient. Any excess is a line of credit. That line of credit means you are (in this case) risking the money of other clubs. That means you need to carry out due diligence on the ability of the creditor to repay. That also means you might have to ask for guarantees. For those who most need the money, such guarantees are unlikely to be forthcoming.

3 minutes ago, jlsarmy said:

The monies were actually the Clubs anyway as prize money and for the sums involved at Premiership level if they were 1 or 2 places out it shouldn’t have been a big issue as it could have been sorted out over the next few seasons.

St Johnstone and Hibs occupied 6th and 7th place in the Premiership when the season was suspended. It remained mathematically possible for each of them to finish 11th and 12th. Had the season been resumed after advances made, this could have meant a combined overpayment of £687,500.

It was unlikely, but possible, that Rangers could finish 4th in the Premiership in the same scenario, but they were in 2nd place at the time the season was suspended. Had that happened they would have been overpaid £587,500.

Though unlikely, Ayr (4th) in the Championship, still mathematically could be automatically relegated when the season was suspended. Had that transpired, they would have been overpaid by £150k.

Airdrie (3rd) in League One, plausibly could still have finished 7th had the league been played to a conclusion. That would have led to an overpayment of £10k.

Cowdenbeath (4th) in League Two, plausibly could have finished 9th had the league been played to a conclusion. That would have led to an overpayment of £12.5k.

Are all of these outcomes likely? No. But they illustrate that all it would take is for two or three clubs drastically to underperform their season so far, especially if they're in the Premiership, and suddenly you could be talking about a seven figure sum of overpayments across the divisions. That is not a scenario that responsible directors would sanction, knowing that it would become a debt owed by the SPFL to the unrewarded clubs. That either has to be paid for by eating into existing reserves or by drawing down on future sponsorship money. Clubs that actually did earn the right to that money will resent being made to pay because of the collapse of another.

3 minutes ago, jlsarmy said:

Neil Doncaster managed to side step the play offs and the pyramid system  to close the season. I’m  sure with the Clubs approval in these strange times something could and should have been sorted out , if that had happened it could have a catalyst for more options on the table and possibly we wouldn’t have ended up where we are just now .

Dreadful governance IMO 

No one says Doncaster isn't a useless shite.

But advances were not a silver bullet.

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15 minutes ago, Dick Dastardly said:

I would suggest that it is. Did they not send out a 500 page dossier which clubs had 2 days to digest before the clubs were given a deadline for a vote which (if you read all 500 pages) was not really a deadline. Had the clubs known that they did have more time for a crucial vote then perhaps there might have been alternative solutions proposed.

Now I know you are going to take an SPFL apologist stance and say “it’s not the SPFL’s fault that the clubs didn’t know the rules”, but reading 500 pages of a good novel in 2 days is hard work and I would suggest (assumption) that this was a much tougher read than war and peace.

I think everyone was caught by surprise that the vote was open past the Friday, so the fiduciary duty is on a shoogly peg when it comes to misleading its members on this point.

Sorry but this is nonsense. Every Club has a Chairman or a Chief Executive who has responsibility for understanding the basic corporate governance and rules of a member's organisation of which they are a part.

The SPFL Rules and Regulations are a public document, readily accessible on the internet. It's not the SPFL's fault if not a single club opposed to this idea thought to read it and to understand why the SPFL had decided not to disapply automatic relegation and promotion.

These Club representatives are business-people. Directors of Limited Companies. This isn't your gran getting blindsided by a cold call from Microsoft offering to fix her Windows, or Jordan Belfort flogging her penny stocks.

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1 minute ago, Woodstock Jag said:

Sorry but this is nonsense. Every Club has a Chairman or a Chief Executive who has responsibility for understanding the basic corporate governance and rules of a member's organisation of which they are a part.

The SPFL Rules and Regulations are a public document, readily accessible on the internet. It's not the SPFL's fault if not a single club opposed to this idea thought to read it and to understand why the SPFL had decided not to disapply automatic relegation and promotion.

These Club representatives are business-people. Directors of Limited Companies. This isn't your gran getting blindsided by a cold call from Microsoft offering to fix her Windows, or Jordan Belfort flogging her penny stocks.

So how come not a single one understood that they had 4 weeks to vote. As you say these are directors of public companies used to reading this sort of thing, yet the rule was so obscure and the SPFL hype so high that not a single one knew about it.

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5 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:

These Club representatives are business-people. Directors of Limited Companies. This isn't your gran getting blindsided by a cold call from Microsoft offering to fix her Windows, or Jordan Belfort flogging her penny stocks.

What like Les Gray of Hamilton?

https://news.stv.tv/west-central/1407776-hamilton-accies-fraud-how-finances-were-wrecked-by-lie

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