Football Partnerships

By Alex Kotler

Staying at the table

Despite postponement and building tension, the Major League Soccer Players Union and the league, Major League Soccer, continue negotiations.

Jimmy Conrad, MLSPU executive board member and Kansas City Wizards defender, intimated that a work stoppage is possible: “We feel like we’ve made a huge effort to be reasonable, to propose things that are within the confines of the single-entity structure. At this point they’re not even humoring us with something tangible.”

The president of MLS, Mark Abbott, released a statement Saturday, saying: “To characterize the league as not taking the players’ concerns seriously is just factually incorrect. What we have not made a proposal on and what the league is not prepared to do is to have free agency within the league. The league created its structure after really studying other efforts to launch professional soccer leagues in the United States, which unfortunately failed.”

Is the conflict rooted more in money or control? Or something else?

Have your say and read more in David Falk’s compilation in the Examiner

That’ll fix you!

Two Chinese football teams, Guangzhou GPC and Chengdu Blades, have been relegated to the second division from the top flight after club officials were found guilty of match-fixing and gambling.

Readers will recall CCTV 5’s recent blackout of the East Asia Cup match between China and Japan, said to be in part due to this scandal. Over 20 officials have been either arrested or detained, including the Chinese FA’s former chief, Nan Yong.

As noted by SportBusiness, Chengdu is owned by English Championship side Sheffield United.

Read slightly more about it in SportBusiness

Lowering ticket prices to raise attendances

According to Australia’s Herald Sun, FIFA is slashing World Cup ticket prices for South Africans as a means of ensuring full stadia during matches.

Up to 900,000 tickets, priced at approximately US$100, were reduced to less than US$20 and made available for purchase by local residents. Sources say that FIFA is concerned, particularly on the heels of the episode with the Togolese team at the African Cup of Nations, that attendences will be low.

What do you think? Should FIFA be concerned? Does the price reduction impact foreign ticket sales?

Read the original report (in Australian)

Seeking a Silva lining

MP & Silva, rights holders of the Italian Serie A and Serie B leagues, have retained IMG Media to cover rights distribution in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Turkey, Russia and the countries that were part of former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.

The agreement will last through the 2012 season.

Who controls the rights where you live? How does this affect you?

Read about it in euFootball.BIZ

“__________” Stamford Bridge

Soccerex Business Daily reports that English Premier League side Chelsea FC has offered naming rights to Stamford Bridge stadium to Petrobras, Brazil’s public oil company.

It is understood that the firm has previously been approached by Manchester United and flirted with Real Madrid, however - as in the case of Chelsea - it has declined the offer.

How it may have all been different if the Robinho deal had gone through…