You won’t believe what Disney just did! Find out how they’re getting into gambling!

Football’s top stars return to the pitch this weekend in football’s most talked about competition. That’s right, the Saudi Pro League is back, kicking off on Friday night with Al-Ahli hosting Al-Hazm in a sweltering Jeddah.

Saudi Arabia’s swaggering arrival in the global transfer market has been the subject of discussion in world football all summer. Some are unfazed: Premier League chief executive Richard Masters has dismissed any suggestions that the new competition posed a threat to European football’s established power structures.

But the Saudi league has already scored one victory off the field. This week it struck broadcast deals on several continents with sports streamer DAZN, something Saudi-backed LIV Golf has struggled with since day one.

This week we will see how Newcastle United, another part of Saudi Arabia’s soccer experiment, has thrived while US-owned Chelsea has faltered. And we look at ESPN’s big bet on . . . betting.

And for Premier League scouts, you have the option to do so play fantasy football against your favorite FT journalists from our DD and Scoreboard newsletters again this year. Just use the alloy code: nro3va

Keep reading – Josh Noble, sports editor

ESPN enters the sports betting fray

The deal of the week is the shocking news that ESPN will enter the sports betting market for the first time, in partnership with US gambling company Penn Entertainment. As part of the deal, Penn is cutting ties with existing partner Barstool Sports after spending $550 million to acquire it, returning the keys to founder Dave Portnoy for effectively $0 and shitty insurance.

Portnoy seems to have scored a pretty sweet deal, even after that admit your behavior (ranging from allegations of reckless gambling to rough sex, according to reports from The New York Times and Insider) prevented Penn from getting betting licenses. But let’s put Barstool aside for now.

The bigger move — and ultimately the bigger question — is how Penn’s tie-up with ESPN will impact both sides. For Penn, aligning with ESPN is a matter of expanding its user base. ESPN reaches more than 370 million people through social media and more than 100 million unique digital views each month through its sites. All told, Barstool accounted for just 1.5 million signups in three years of co-branded sports betting with Penn, according to the latter’s chief executive officer, Jay Snowden.

This large potential customer base is a necessity for Penn, which lags well behind competitors in the nascent US sports betting market. Penn’s sportsbook with Barstool holds just 2% of the market share, according to Eilers & Krejcik Gaming. Penn is betting that a long-term partnership with ESPN will change that, committing $1.5 billion in cash over ten years plus another $500 million in stock warrants.

But what about ESPN? The future for the network (which once called itself “the world leader in sports”) is murky. by Bob Iger second reign at Disney it involves a more serious look at options for the television business, including ESPN.

By launching a bookmaker, ESPN could add an identity crisis to an existential crisis. He considers that in 2019, Iger viewed sports betting as anathema, telling investors that “we will deliver programming that, I imagine, will be designed to enlighten people who bet on sports. But that’s as far as we’d like to go. . . we simply do not intend to enter the gambling business”.

There are already ethical concerns about media companies sleeping with sports betting: Shams Charania, NBA reporter for the Athletic who is also paid to promote FanDuel, caused a little whirlwind in June after one of his reports, which ultimately turned out to be false, moved betting lines around the NBA draft.

To conclude: sports betting is at a standstill an extremely immature market in the United States, with access incomplete as more states weigh legalization and efforts to build a responsible gaming infrastructure remain patchy. This extends to best practices in media. Will the approximately $150 million in revenue the network receives from Penn annually replace the potential risks of extending the ESPN brand from sports coverage to sports betting? Only time will tell.

Newcastle vs Chelsea: A tale of two acquisitions

Chelsea FC have some problems. A disastrous season and a spending spree left the West London club and its new American owners with a lot to prove.

Private equity firm Clearlake Capital and financier Todd Boehly paid £2.5bn to buy Chelsea last year from sanctioned Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, still the record for a football club anywhere.

But the shopping didn’t stop there. Since summer 2022, Chelsea have spent more than €800m on players, although the club has recouped €320m in player sales. If a deal can be finalized for Brighton midfielder Moisés Caicedo, the total outlay from the takeover will exceed one billion euros. Yet Boehly told the FT feels good.

Compare the fortunes of Chelsea with those of Newcastle United. The £305m a Saudi-led consortium paid for the Tyne and Wear club in October 2021 looks cheaper the day after they qualify for the Champions League. There teams are competing for €2bn in cash distributions from governing body UEFA, but Chelsea will not be one of them.

Under Saudi ownership and with British financier Amanda Staveley at the helm, the Magpies have spent around €440m on players, recouping less than €60m in sales. Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham have all outspent Newcastle in that span, a sign of how competitive it is to stay at the top in England.

Only four teams are guaranteed a place in Europe’s top club competition, a squeeze for the so-called Big Six of Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur.

With next year’s Champions League, Newcastle have probably already become a Big Seven. Compared to Chelsea, they did it on the cheap, especially considering the team were in need of a makeover and were struggling at the bottom of the table. Investors may wonder if there is value in the best clubs and the best prices.

Having said that, making the Champions League doesn’t mean you made it.

Just look at Leicester City. Champions of England in 2015-16, Champions League quarter-finalists the following season, now playing in the English second league. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund certainly wouldn’t tolerate such a fall from grace.

Highlights

• Sarina Wiegman is a cool-headed coach with a record-breaking streak. As she tries to guide England to victory at the Women’s World Cup, let’s explore the secret of its success.

• The decision to host the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand was hotly debated in the run-up amid concerns that the time difference had deprived women’s football of a fantastic business opportunity. But the tournament captured hearts in Australia. Here you are our relationship from the ground.

• Barcelona is merging its media arm with Nasdaq-listed blank check vehicle Mountain & Co. I Acquisition Corp, highlighting the Catalan soccer team’s pursuit of digital revenue.

• Do the Commonwealth Games have a future? The answer, second this opinion piece in the FT, maybe it’s not.

• Crystal Palace recently became the first Premier League team to appoint an in-house creative director. Jo Ellison, Editor of HTSI, he says it’s a sign of the times.

The final whistle

Definitely worth watching, Ronan O’Gara giving the most Irish speech on the team while actually speaking French. #Rugby pic.twitter.com/TcVJ5i73FJ

— Joe Naughton (@JoeNaConnacht) August 7, 2023

It’s no Voltaire, but Ronan O’Gara knows how to make a point.

A video of the rugby union coach giving a team talk at French side La Rochelle it went viral this weekthanks to his combination of French and Cork-accented English swear words.

“L’opportunité est fucking énorme,” he tells the players.

The scoreboard will stick to English. . .