FINANCIAL FAIR PLAY IN CRISIS

1. FINANCIAL FAIR PLAY IN CRISIS RESEARCH PORTFOLIO

2. FINANCIAL FAIR PLAY (FFP) What is FFP? It was brought in by UEFA to avoid spending beyond their means by clubs that qualify for their tournaments and get rid of what their president Michael Platini called “financial doping” in football. Platini says that some clubs’ large spending ruins the game and also feels that many people’s debts level in unsustainable What must clubs do to comply with FFP? UEFA ruled its first financial fair play in April based on the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons club accounts. Clubs can spend up to 3.9 million pounds more than they earn per assessment period, although during this monitoring period as long as clubs had owners who could cover these amounts. Losses for 2014-15 will continue to be limited to 35 million pounds, the monitoring period will cover the previous three seasons again for 2016-16, but the limit will drop to 25.5 million pounds. In 2016-17 and 2017-18, the limit will remain the same. In the following years after this, the limit will be lower, with the exact amount still to be determined. Clubs are also constantly obliged to fulfil their transfer and payment obligations for employees.

3. FINANCIAL FAIR PLAY (FFP) Jean-Luc Dehaene the first chairperson and chief investigator of CFCB said, "The atomic bomb is a ban from European competition”. The investigative chamber of the CFCB can offer clubs settlement agreements with potential punishments including warnings, fines, withholding prize money, transfer bans, point’s deductions, and a ban on new player registration and a restriction on the number of players that can be registered for UEFA competitions. What are the possible sanctions for clubs in breach of FFP? How does it affect big European teams? In the first evaluation period, 9 teams, most notably Manchester City and Paris St-Germain, were found to have breached the FFP regulations and a range of fines and sanctions were imposed. City were made to pay 49 million pounds, with 32 million suspended, spending restrictions included and only a 21 player Champions League squad could be made for 2014-15. For the first 2seasons assessed, they had posted combined losses of 149m-97m in 2012 and £51.6m in 2013 and the CFCB ruled that a new training area and investment in youth development could not be attributed enough of their costs. Paris St-Germain, owned by a Qatar businessperson, received a similar penalty to City. They were considered to have failed the test when the CFCB decided to have an unfair value on their backdated £ 167 m sponsorship contract with the Qatar Tourism Authority that wiped out their losses.

4. PODCASTS What is a podcast? A podcast is an audio file that is accessible on the internet, which allows people to download and listen to. These are typically made in series or news instalments, and allows the public to subscribe to them. BBC are a popular outlet for podcasts. What makes a good podcast? Consistency. Depending on how long your podcast runs for (weekly, daily), it is important to ensure that you do not miss any slots when releasing a podcast. An audience enjoys the anticipation for a new episode for their favourite podcasts, therefore it is important to not disappoint them, and otherwise your content may be forgotten about, leading to a loss of listeners and subscribers. Interest. A good podcast ensures that it includes a topic that lends itself to audio storytelling, as well as a subject that has a natural community. It does not matter if a podcast is predominantly narrative or in a talk show format, it is always vital that a podcast is assessed to whether it suits an audio piece, or if it is perhaps better communicated in writing or in a video. Ensure that it is a topic that includes a clear and strong, fandom or community.

5. PODCASTS Equipment. An audience does not want to listen to a piece of audio that has a low quality in their spare time, therefore, it is important to check your equipment to ensure your equipment is of a working and decent standard. You can also allow someone else to check the equipment if you are unknown on how to set it up. Building an audience. In order to build a good, loyal fan base, it is important to reach out to their interests. One significant way of doing this is by including mentions or guest appearances from other people who also produce podcasts. By doing this, you are reaching out to people who have a similar working brain to you in terms of making audio. Hopefully with success, your guests’ fans will now be happy and interested with your series of podcasts, allowing your listeners to increase. Hosts. The majority of popular podcasts have a number of different hosts in each episode of a podcast. This allows room for interesting discussions as opposed to have just one host. It makes it a lot easier to build an audience with two presenters, while it also helps to divide the work and content. Engagement. It is a good idea to reach out and engage with your audience, as well as allowing fans to engage with each other. This creates a sense of a community and warmth to a podcast.

6. GENRES Audioblogs What attracts most fresh podcasters is by far the most common podcast form, the audioblog. If you're looking for podcasts descriptions, most of them will involve "talk about anything in my mind" or "my ideas while I'm sitting on my hour-long commute”. Audioblogs represent the host's personality like written blogs, debating either her life or her opinion of current events. By default, most podcasts might fall under the audioblog nickname. If someone speaks about stuff they enjoy, you can claim that the show is a blog.

7. GENRES Comedy Cast Bibb and Yaz were the first to take complete advantage of the podcasting liberties when it comes to shock jocks. While the things Yaz says might make Bibb wince, they would definitely cause the program director to go into cardiac arrest at any radio station for fear of the FCC fines that would follow. But they don't make calls to their lawyers at the end of their show — they don't even have lawyers, they just post the show and get prepared for the next one. There has never been a more inviting platform for shock jocks than podcasting. Forget about Sirius or XM, because the board of directors still has to answer anybody there. While Howard Stern may believe he has unlimited liberty to do whatever he likes, we all understand that there are some strings connected to this $500 million check. However, would say that the world doesn't need displays like Bibb and Yaz or Distorted View Daily, where even George Carlin would be surprised, but it's missing the point to reject them completely. The endgame is that there are as many excellent podcasts as there are those that are R- or X-rated, which are highly funny and are G- or PG-rated. It's solely a matter of personal taste that you prefer to listen to or model your podcast after.

8. GENRES Couple Casts With more and more universities, colleges, high schools, and even elementary school courses producing podcasts, this region in podcasting is really beginning to take off. Instructional audio is nothing fresh ; it's just that this audio distribution was made a little easier and cheaper with podcasting. Educational podcasts don't just have to come from educators and educators ; they can also come from everyday individuals who use their podcast to inform their listeners on a particular topic or random facts.

9. GENRES Educational Although most of the couple casts could also be described as comedy casts, the one thing that makes them show a couple cast (other than being a couple of hosts) is that they feature the hosts ' personal lives. Themes could range from the sex life of the couple to the nightmarish tales of traveling around the globe. The hosts give a perspective of their everyday lives — the good and the bad — regardless of the subject.

10. GENRES Gaming This is a very well-represented category, with numerous podcasts covering computer gaming, console gaming, role gaming and board gaming. Gaming podcasts run the gamut, discuss gaming news, industry professional interviews, reviews, or gaming sessions reports. Podcasts for gaming also run from 15 minutes to 2 + hours. While many listeners prefer a shorter podcast to a longer one, the longer podcasts often have dedicated listeners who insist that it can't be too long as it's great, as the Gaming Uncensored podcast fans insist.

11. GENRES Godcasts Without talking about religious and spiritual podcasts, or "godcasts," as they were affectionately called, you can't speak about podcasts. This kind of podcasting is behind audioblogs, music, and technology the fourth most popular. One of the greatest locations to discover Christian podcasts is the GodCast Network (www.godcast.org), which was Craig Pratchett's first podcast network and launched. Not all Christian podcasts are Sunday sermon retransmissions (although more and more of them are popping up every week), and most of them are not even by priests or clergy. The majority are just everyday individuals talking about a topic they're very enthusiastic about, even though that implies doing it in the Klingon language.

12. GENRES Interview Cast You want to do a podcast, but try as much as you can ; you can't get anyone you understand to be your co-host. You could interview people you don't understand at all. Think of Jon Stewart, David Lettermen, Fresh Air and Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Inside the Actors Studio. If performed well, one of the most exciting podcasts out there may be the interview cast. It can be the worst if performed badly (more about that in Chapter 7, "The Art of Interview"). What follows is a tiny list of some who do it well.

13. GENRES Music If you enjoy music, either you grew up admiring your local DJ depending on your era or you grew up despising the director of the program who forced your DJ to constantly play the same ancient Top-40 shit. Here the dividing line appears to be born before 1970 and born after. You always wanted to be the individual who selected and played the coolest and hippest fresh songs, either way. You lastly have an opportunity to live that dream with podcasting. It's not just about playing music from someone else, though. If you're in a group, the one thing you want more than anything else — well, next to partying all night, females (or males) and late sleeping — is music exposure. You can develop your own "radio station" with podcasting that not only plays your music ; it only plays your music. It's no surprise that music podcasts are one of the most famous podcasts for all these purposes. Even on his podcast, Senator John Edwards performed some music.

14. GENRES News Hearing news is a difficult podcasting company. Considering that the very nature of podcasting enables you to download podcasts and bring them with you to listen to them at your leisure, it does not seem as if current events are going to translate well. However, many individuals get their news from podcasts, keep up with the shows, and put them at the top of their listening list. When NPR began podcasting many of its more popular shows, including its news shows, people subscribed. The major television networks followed closely with podcasts of Meet the Press (NBC), Nightline (ABC), and Face the Nation (CBS).

15. GENRES Politics Politics has always been the topic of either a) avoiding polite discussion or b) having incredibly powerful emotions about and extensively discussing it. Podcasting enables individuals in the category "b" to do this at their best. Political podcasts range throughout the spectrum, from the Left Wing Nut Job on one end to the Republican Shelley on the other, to the Free Talk Live (a Libertarian talk radio show that also receives podcasting). Several talk radio demonstrates now, from Air America to Rush Limbaugh, allowing individuals to listen at their leisure to miss their favorite shows at job. Most political podcasters are like everybody else beyond the talk shows — they just want to air their political opinions. That involves former U.S. presidential candidate and vice presidential candidate Senator John Edwards. Dramas on radio

16. GENRES Radio Dramas The astonishing thing about radio dramas is that they don't exist anymore. Seeing as podcasting is an apparent vehicle to take back the almost dead type of radio play, you'd think there'd be more, but there's only a couple of dramas. Maybe more individuals have not entered audio dramas because they are quite intensive in manufacturing, much more so than regular podcasts. You need more than just a microphone and a laptop ; you will need more than one microphone (Which also implies having a mixer), more than one voice, and a serial author. This level of manufacturing has very few podcasts, so radio dramas are still struggling as an art form.

17. TARGET AUDIENCE Despite me already knowing what my target audience is, it is important for to asses certain areas of a podcast to verify that the target audience I currently have is reasonable and works for my project. These are the things I will have to consider: Gender My audience's gender is an excellent first step in reducing a target audience. If I develop a campaign for a women's health product line, it only makes sense that targeting women would be the first step in my audience selection process. If I market a product that can appeal to both, it is nice to establish that as well so that I can generate advertisements with a gender-neutral voice tone. Age Another significant factor to consider is the average age of my audience. Is this an appealing product or service for college pupils or housewives, or both? Age-shortening demographics will assist me understand my audience's requirements as well as what issues I can fix for them.

18. TARGET AUDIENCE Platform I need to understand where to get to them once I have narrowed down whom I'm attempting to reach with my advertisement. If I am looking for professional or company attention, LinkedIn could be an excellent avenue to follow. They hang out on Snapchat and Instagram if I want to attract a younger generation. When reaching my target audience, the platform I decide to run my advertisement on is very crucial. Interests The category of "interests" includes a wide range of ways that I can target my audience. I can restrict my audience to categories like favourite sports teams when creating a social media ad, whether they drink alcohol, whether they like traveling, and the list goes on. I can really narrow down the "ideal" client for your company in this chapter. Geography I can also indicate my audience where they are situated when targeting a social media advertisement. For instance, if I were to market a laundry service that only serves a specific town or region, it would be most advantageous for my campaign to target this geographic place.

19. TARGET AUDIENCE Geography My audience's gender is an excellent first step in reducing a target audience. If I develop a campaign for a women's health product line, it only makes sense that targeting women would be the first step in my audience selection process. If I market a product that can appeal to both, it is nice to establish that as well so that I can generate advertisements with a gender-neutral voice tone. Interests Another significant factor to consider is the average age of my audience. Is this an appealing product or service for college pupils or housewives, or both? Age-shortening demographics will assist me understand my audience's requirements as well as what issues I can fix for them. Geography I can also indicate my audience where they are situated when targeting a social media advertisement. For instance, if I were to market a laundry service that only serves a specific town or region, it would be most advantageous for my campaign to target this geographic place.

20. TARGET AUDIENCE Device I can also indicate which device to run the ad on with certain advertisements. If the target audience is likely to use their mobile phone or tablet mainly for surfing their social media channels, then targeting those phones is best. Alternatively, if they are most likely to view my ad at job from a desktop, it is best to target them through a desktop ad. Time of Day It is time to determine when the best time to reach my crowd after choosing whom and where. If I've signed up for an Instagram business account, the Insights section is a good starting point to determine the time of day that my customers scroll through social media most frequently.

21. STASTISTICS These are the results when I asked 50 football fans questions about FFP 9 out of 50 knew how FFP works. - The remaining 41 were under 24 years old. 4 out of 50 knew the rules and regulations of FFP. 35 out of 50 admitted it should be abolished due to confusion. 26 out of 50 said their club has been affected by FFP 44 out of 50 said they would be interested in an FFP podcast. 97% admitted that FFP needs explaining,

22. EQUIPMENT Digital Recorder Many kinds of digital tape recorder are available using different (non-compatible) formats. They all use the sound digitization principles that are easily covered by digital audio, and they all face the same challenge: How to obtain a sufficiently high frequency reaction to record huge information audio requirements. There are two basic approaches — many tracks, or a very elevated velocity of tape. The devices that use multi-track systems are very costly, but they are very reliable (they need up to four songs per audio channel), and with some designs the tape can be edited with a razor blade. High-speed devices, like video recorders, receive velocity from a rotating head. The first of these was actually altered VTRs, and the new multitrack budget uses conventional video transports and tape of the consumer sort. The funny sample rate of 44.1 kHz is accounted for by this connection of digital recorders to video. There are 490 lines in a single video frame, each recorded across the tape as a diagonal stripe. It turns out that in one of these rows you can store three stereo samples. You receive 44,100 samples at 30 frames per second. These figures are, of course, based on black and white TV. Colour TV is running a bit slower, so if you use a colour VCR to record, the sample rate will increase to 44,056.

23. CASE STUDIES QPR Within English football, London team Queen’s Park Rangers were the one of the first teams found guilty of FFP. Although many arguments were made by club officials, sanctions were still given. In 2010, during Queen’s Park Rangers record breaking season which saw them promoted to the Premier League as champions for the first time in over fifteen years, they were deemed to have illegally breached the FA regulations when signing Argentinian midfielder Alejandro Faurlin. However, despite being found guilty on numerous charges, they were not given a fine or a point deduction.   FFP returned to haunt the club yet again in 2017, this time a case of going against their allowed transfer budget. Harry Redknapp, the manager at the time, went in a spending spree of 60 million pounds after given the green light by the owners to do so, however, this was deemed as unfair and began a 2-3 year investigation by the FA, eventually resulting in a £40 million fine, a current record at this time. Financial Fair Play has affected the club significantly. Once a premier league team full of international players, they are now at the bottom half of the championship after having to cut back in finances that they are not able to financially deal with. 

24. CASE STUDIES QPR EFL chief executive Shaun Harvey commented on the outcome of the case in an interview from Queens Park Rangers, here is what he said: “In agreeing to the settlement above, the Board was conscious that the financial burden placed on the Club had to be manageable, so as not to put its future in doubt when considering that after this season the Club will no longer benefit from the promotion that was the catalyst for the dispute in the first place. QPR remain a valued member of the EFL and a great community asset. We look forward to continuing our productive working relationship with them for many seasons to come and are delighted to bring this long-running dispute to a conclusion.” QPR Chief Executive, Lee Hoos also commented on the result of being sanctioned with a fine and said this to the Queens Park Rangers website, he said: “Whilst QPR felt it had a very strong case on appeal, we felt it was best to put this matter behind us to enable all parties to have certainty and allow us to continue focusing on running the Club in a sustainable manner going forward. We feel this is in the best interests of football as a whole.” It is unknown whether the wealthy owners of QPR will continue to invest in the club from west London, time will tell but at this moment in time, only dark times can be seen ahead for them.

25. CASE STUDIES MANCHESTER CITY Manchester City faces issues with UEFA, FIFA and the Premier League following a series of accusations of breaches of Financial Fair Play regulations, third-party ownership and the transfer of underage players. The entire squad strongly wrote off any misconduct, while Pep Guardiola, club manager, asked for a fast resolution to return to his side's amazing achievements after winning the treble this campaign. City have been the subject of a series of claims based on leaked documents and emails obtained by the whistle-blower Football Leaks. The club was hit by a sequence of papers released by the German journal Der Spiegel, which claimed that City had developed countless ways of disguising the vast amounts of investment from its owners in Abu Dhabi to prevent FFP sanctions. A£67m agreement with Etihad allegedly included £59m worth of investment from the Sheik Mansour-owned by Abu Dhabi United Group-is reported to also have exaggerated patronage unnaturally.

26. CASE STUDIES MANCHESTER CITY Other cases included an unknown project called 'Longbow,' which included selling off image rights to a company believed to be financed by the same group. In a potentially email, Manchester City chief financial officer Jorge Cahuilla’s is believed to have discussed the importance to make up the price of paying off former head coach Roberto Mancini. Der Spiegel discussed within the email said: "We will have a shortfall of £9.9m in order to comply with UEFA FFP this season," he has also known to have written. "The deficit is due to RM termination. I think that the only solution left would be an additional amount of AD sponsorship revenues that covers this gap." AD is believed to be a reference to Abu Dhabi. It has also been known that in recent weeks, City paid the footballing agent of English winger, Jadon Sancho £200,000 when the then 14-year-old signed from Watford. The club of Manchester City are depending on the offense and which footballing organisation is administering the sanctions .Manchester City were previously hit with a £49m fine, transfer ban for players and smaller playing squad in the Champions League when previously found in breach of FFP rules in 2014. In addition, the club were also fined £300,000 and were made refused from signing academy players from rival English clubs for at least two years in 2017, when they were found guilty of making inappropriate approaches. If they are found guilty of any of the latest cases, they could again face further fines, Champions League disqualification and transfer bans.

27. CASE STUDIES PSG After UEFA reopened an inquiry into whether the club had broken regulations intended to avoid over-spending, Paris Saint-Germain appealed to the highest tribunal of sport. The sport arbitration tribunal said it had appealed against UEFA judgment in September by PSG. In September 2017, UEFA opened its original investigation after PSG, owned by Qatar Sports Investments, purchased the Brazilian forward Neymar from Barcelona for € 222 million, more than double the prior largest price paid for a player. They also agreed to sign on loan from Monaco to teenager Kylian Mbappé until purchasing him completely in July in a reported € 180 m agreement. UEFA wanted to understand if PSG had breached its economic fair play rule that requires clubs to restrict their expenditure widely to their revenue generated. PSG rejected that any rules had been breached all along.

28. CASE STUDIES PSG The rules were implemented to attempt to prevent rich owners from purchasing success by investing big quantities in their clubs and distorting the market. The Club Financial Control Board of UEFA closed the inquiry in June, claiming that the club had been able to comply with the regulations for the financial years ending in 2015, 2016 and 2017. But the CFCB's head asked for the decision to be reviewed in the following month and started the inquiry in September. Clubs can be expelled from European competition to disregard the laws, but generally UEFA negotiates settlements with perpetrators.

29. BIBLIOGRAPHY Artsites.ucsc.edu. (2019). Digital Recorders. [online] Available at: http://artsites.ucsc.edu/EMS/music/equipment/digital_recorders/Digital_Recorders.html [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019]. BBC Sport. (2019). Financial fair play: All you need to know about how it works. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/29361839 [Accessed 23 May 2019]. Contributor, Q. (2019). Seven Elements You Need to Create a Successful Podcast. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/05/23/seven-elements-you-need-to-create-a-successful-podcast/#1900c2dc290a [Accessed 23 May 2019]. Informit.com. (2019). Podcast Genres | Audioblogs | InformIT. [online] Available at: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=486768 [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019]. Khleif, S. and Khleif, S. (2019). Determining Your Target Audience. [online] Imagine More Podcast. Available at: https://www.imaginemorepodcast.com/blog/2018/8/29/determining-your-target-audience [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019]. QPR. (2019). QPR settle FFP dispute with EFL. [online] Available at: https://www.qpr.co.uk/news/club-news/qpr-settle-ffp-dispute-with-efl/ [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019]. Robson, J. (2019). Man City FFP investigation: The allegations and potential punishments. [online] Evening Standard. Available at: https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/manchestercity/man-city-ffp-investigation-what-are-the-allegations-and-potential-punishments-a4087061.html [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019]. the Guardian. (2019). PSG appeal over Uefa’s decision to reopen FFP investigation. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/nov/05/psg-appeal-uefa-ffp-re-open-investigation [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019].