The Connection Between Orban and Football.

(Disclaimer: I spent a few days in Budapest last month: a lovely city).

There has long been a connection between football and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. It has long been known that Orban loves the sport. According to an article on a website called Breaking The Lines, the Prime Minister would reportedly watch up to six matches a day(when does he find the time to run the country) and often attends the finals of the World Cup and UEFA Champions League (the biggest club competition in Europe). Orban was even included in the 2006 version of Football Manager (a well-known Football Management Simulator). Orban’s first connection to football came through his local village, Felscuit, where he supported his local club, Videoton FC.

In the 2010s, a massive stadium-building boom began in Hungary. In particular, a 4,000-seat stadium was built in 2014 in Felscuit (a village of 1,000 people) at the cost of 10 million Euros for Puskas Academy, the club that Orban founded in 2007. According to a report in the BBC, 2 billion pounds of government income were directed toward Hungarian football clubs for building stadiums and operating costs. Orban has actively encouraged Hungarian oligarchs to invest in football clubs as a form of tax relief and a way to be in his good books. Hungary has a curious practice whereby vast amounts of EU development funds meant for schools and hospitals get siphoned off to oligarchs or used for infrastructure projects that don’t seem strictly necessary (the motorways, for instance, are pristine). While all of this sounds admirable, Hungary is a country that is struggling economically, and spending 2 billion pounds of government income on building a new football stadium and not schools and hospitals doesn’t seem to be beneficial to the Hungarian people.

Adidas Embroiled in Chinese Corruption Allegations.

Today, Adidas is embroiled in a bribery scandal in China. According to a report in Aljazeera, a whistleblower claims senior staff received millions of Euros in kickbacks from outside suppliers. According to an anonymous report in Reuters, these senior staff members also received non-financial perks like real estate. There are also reports that a senior staffer with access to the marketing budget may have used those funds for personal use. Executives at Adidas will be worried by the 4% drop in its share price when the stock market opens this morning.

Major Match Fixing Scandal Plagues Snooker.

Match-fixing scandals are not a new occurrence in sports; football, Tennis, and many other sports have had to deal with match-fixing scandals in recent years. Even snooker, a sport much like Billiards popular in the UK and China, has fallen victim to corruption. According to an article on the BBC, ten Chinese players based in Sheffield, England, the city hosting the Snooker World Championships, were in financial difficulties last year. As a result, they resorted to manipulating the outcome of matches they played in return for money. The scandal was blown wide open by snooker’s governing body, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), being alerted to suspicious betting patterns and whistleblowers from inside the game. This incident shows that no matter how big or small the sport is, match-fixing is always a threat to the integrity of the game.

777 Partners, Everton and the Murky World of Multi-Club Ownership in Football.

In recent weeks, Everton Football Club, based in Liverpool, England, is being taken over by an American investment firm called 777 Partners. 777 has a murky history and was at the center of a Washington Post article detailing its exploitative business practices that are not dissimilar to payday loans with extremely high-interest rates. 777 also has been buying up football clubs from around the world rapidly. The head of 777, Josh Wander, also has a colorful history; according to the Post article, in his student days, he was charged with drug trafficking after allegedly opening a package containing cocaine that the federal government was tracking. He pleaded no contest and avoided prison time but was sentenced to 14 years on probation, but surely that will be a black mark against the Premier League’s recently beefed up Owners and Directors Test has any teeth to it. One has to feel for longtime Everton supporters who have had to deal with their club struggling both on and off the pitch and could be taken over by a charlatan.

The backdrop to 777 & Everton is the growth of multi-club ownership in football, where one person, or usually an investment group, buys into several clubs worldwide. There are numerous examples, the most famous of which is the City Football Group (CFG), who owns Manchester City and clubs in Australia, the U.S., and elsewhere. According to an article in ESPN, one of the main benefits of owning several clubs is that if one club gets relegated, the financial impact won’t be as profound if the others in the network are performing strongly. Another reason that multi-club ownership is widespread is because it allows big clubs to loan out young players to smaller clubs within their network. However, there are also numerous downsides, and chief among them is a loss of identity and a corporatization of the football ecosystem, particularly in Europe. In my view, the multi-club models are bad for the future of sport because they whittle clubs down to investments and not what clubs should represent; they should represent civic pride and, most importantly, the values of their supporters.

Paris 2024 Olympic Committee in Corruption Scandal.

Today, French financial police raided the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympic Committee. According to Reuters, officers were looking into allegations of favoritism and embezzlement of public funds. A report in Politico states that the office of the French financial prosecutor (PNF) is also looking into allegations of misconduct at Solideo, an organization related to Olympic construction projects. Corruption and the Olympics have a rich history; in recent years, the Olympics in Rio and Tokyo have been dogged by corruption scandals. Despite the Olympic Committee partnering with Transparency International, Paris 2024 may be in the running for a gold medal in malfeasance.