Manchester City and Premier League are engaged in a legal battle with the division’s champions defending themselves over 115 charges but regardless of the outcome, lawyers will find success
It emerged on Monday that Sir Bobby Charlton left an estate worth £652,000 to his wife of 62 years, Lady Norma.
That figure was reduced to £631,000 after personal debts and funeral costs were paid. It is a lot of money. But on the same day, the initial findings of a tribunal that heard Manchester City’s case against the Premier League for its Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules were published.
Both parties claimed some sort of win but, let’s face it, the real winners are the lawyers.
Lord Pannick had been on duty for City and is also representing the Premier League club as they contest the 115 Premier League charges of financial irregularity. That case is in its third week and is expected to last around three months.
A conservative estimate of Pannick’s pay is £5,000-an-hour. Even allowing for inflation, Pannick will make more out of a football club in a few weeks than Charlton did in a lifetime. Nice work if you can get it.
Yes, in reality, the two jobs are incomparable – they don’t belong in the same conversation. But it is still the starkest of contrasts.
The legal costs in these cases are already mind-boggling and will become even more so. Nick De Marco KC, the lawyer celebrated by Leicester City for getting them off a Profit and Sustainability rap recently, said this on social media in the immediate wake of the verdict on City’s APT challenge.
“All that I can say is we are living in the most exciting time for sports law.”
Exciting? For who? Only for the likes of De Marco and Pannick, who are making untold millions from it.
But they will be paid millions because there are hundreds of millions – if not a lot more – at stake for the clubs. From TV money, from commercial deals, etc, etc. And for City, there’s a reputation to protect.
But already, the average football fan heaves a sigh of exasperation, knowing that the legal tussles are probably only just starting, never mind reaching a point where meaningful conclusions are in sight. The average football fan concerns himself or herself with what happens on the pitch.
But, the administrators will say, there needs to be rules to try and make sure the pitch is, from a financial point of view, a level playing field. Well, as close to level as it is possible to get.
Call me a financial simpleton, but isn’t the best way to do that to have a simple catch-all spending cap? No matter how you get your money, each and every Premier League club can only spend the same maximum amount on transfer fees and wages? Isn’t that simple?
In the NFL, the total player cost per club is capped at $329.4million. Presumably, there are not too many legal challenges to that. It’s fairly black and white.
One thing is for sure, though. Unless the Premier League does actually come up with a far better regulatory system than the one it has got now, the biggest winners will be Pannick and co.
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