City & FFP | 2020/21 Accounts released | Revenues of £569.8m, £2.4m profit (p 2395)

[Chippy_boy]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Don't know anything about the inner workings of SAP but - based on Chippy's comments - maybe they are subcontracting some of the work whilst being the prime contractor and supplier of certain software?

SAP is a software company, nothing more.

The project management, change management, systems integration work and pretty much all the delivery will be done by one or more SI's, not by SAP. They just don't have any of those skills. They have expert consultants who can augment any project team, but they won't be leading it.

SAP will doubtless by providing their HANA software for real-time BI (I would hesitate to use the word Analytics since they don't have much of that either, although they may claim they have). Perhaps they are providing ERP software as well, and conceivable CRM. But they must have a partner involved. My guess would IBM, given earlier comments, but honestly it could be any of a number of players. One of the hardware vendors will need to provide the HANA hardware, IBM, HP, IBM, Dell, Fujitsu or Cisco.

Ahhh, SAP SIs the blood sucking leaches of the SAP universe.
City will make a lose on any deal involving SAP or a SAP SI - Unless SAP are paying for it as well as sponsoring us.

Yup, that's pretty much guaranteed.

 

[Maly]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Question for the legal beagles on here:
If Dupont wins the case and due to evidence supplied it implies that there is a cartel in football.....what happens then?

Would the courts go after the Clubs involved &/or the executives involved?

If so, would said clubs face potential heavy fines & directors/executives face fines or prison terms?

There's a lot of questions there.

Firstly, Dupont isn't arguing any collusion's taken place. He's merely arguing that the current FFP regulations are restrictive. For the moment, the suggestion is that they are restrictive purely as a result of being ill judged with regard to reaching the intended objective (stopping clubs getting into financial problems) and as an unintended consequence, they're unnecessarily restrictive, not good for the industry as a whole, and don't benefit the consumer.

Now, IF there was some smoking gun that detailed actual collusion, then this would be a far bigger story and would put the existence of UEFA at risk. But nobody's anywhere near that stage.

But let's suppose evidence ever did come to light... and that it clearly showed collusion between UEFA and some clubs to 'fix' aspects of the industry....

In that case, the courts would have to look at:

a) Who was involved (was it a handful of people who hid it from their own clubs, and UEFA)?
b) Was it intentional collusion, or merely an unintended consequence?
c) How much was the market affected by the collusion?
d) How much did other parties suffer as a result?
e) How much did the colluding parties gain from it?
and much more.

Could people go to prison for collusion? yes
Can businesses be fined? yes
Can victims be compensation? in theory, yes - but in practice this can be hard to put a figure on, and in some cases, the damage is irrevocable.

Whilst a lot of us fans laugh and joke about collusion, with more than a hint of actual suspicion underneath the humour, there's no concrete evidence it's happened. But sometimes, collusion / price fixing etc can happen without organisations realising they're doing it.

For instance - There are two pubs in a small village, and both agree to call a truce to price wars....
They then agree that one will sell only sell Stella Artois, and the other will only sell Carling.
They then agree that it might be nice to make a bit more money, so they both agree to put up their prices by the same amount.

1) Calling a truce to price wars could be interpreted as agreeing a minimum price.
2) Agreeing which products they will sell between them is fixing the market... even if they think they're doing out of common sense.
3) Agreeing to inflate their prices is cast iron example of price fixing.

In theory price fixing is as applicable to a corner shop / local pub as it is to a multinational company. Both are subject to the same laws. However, such small retailers go under the radar (generally, but not always).

There are also special rules for companies that have a particularly large market share (and that can still be a local pub). In those instances, extra measures are put in place to ensure they can't use their market share unfairly.

Superstar. Cheers for the detailed response. I'm not suggesting it will happen, but I'm sure the more layers of the onion are peeled off, the stronger the argument for collusion would be. Can't see anyone digging that deep unfortunately though & even if they did I'm sure it would be difficult to prove beyond doubt?

 

[lancs blue]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Meanwhile, at old trafford.....

[bigimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Sinclair_ZX_Spectrum.jpg[/bigimg]

Design classic.

Maybe nice to look at but it was a shitty keyboard to use.

 

[The Colonel]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Meanwhile, at old trafford.....

[bigimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Sinclair_ZX_Spectrum.jpg[/bigimg]

Design classic.

Maybe nice to look at but it was a shitty keyboard to use.

A step up from the ZX81 though

 

[cpa]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Design classic.

Maybe nice to look at but it was a shitty keyboard to use.

A step up from the ZX81 though

I found my old one in the attic the other day ,thought it might be worth something but looked on e-bay and there going for nowt
crap machine though lol

 

[fbloke]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Maybe nice to look at but it was a shitty keyboard to use.

A step up from the ZX81 though

I found my old one in the attic the other day ,thought it might be worth something but looked on e-bay and there going for nowt
crap machine though lol

NASA will buy it off you.

They like them because the processors run at very low temps which is very good for work in space.

They used to have an email contact for people who wanted to sell directly to them.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Question for the legal beagles on here:
If Dupont wins the case and due to evidence supplied it implies that there is a cartel in football.....what happens then?

Would the courts go after the Clubs involved &/or the executives involved?

If so, would said clubs face potential heavy fines & directors/executives face fines or prison terms?

There's a lot of questions there.

Firstly, Dupont isn't arguing any collusion's taken place. He's merely arguing that the current FFP regulations are restrictive. For the moment, the suggestion is that they are restrictive purely as a result of being ill judged with regard to reaching the intended objective (stopping clubs getting into financial problems) and as an unintended consequence, they're unnecessarily restrictive, not good for the industry as a whole, and don't benefit the consumer.

Now, IF there was some smoking gun that detailed actual collusion, then this would be a far bigger story and would put the existence of UEFA at risk. But nobody's anywhere near that stage.

But let's suppose evidence ever did come to light... and that it clearly showed collusion between UEFA and some clubs to 'fix' aspects of the industry....

In that case, the courts would have to look at:

a) Who was involved (was it a handful of people who hid it from their own clubs, and UEFA)?
b) Was it intentional collusion, or merely an unintended consequence?
c) How much was the market affected by the collusion?
d) How much did other parties suffer as a result?
e) How much did the colluding parties gain from it?
and much more.

Could people go to prison for collusion? yes
Can businesses be fined? yes
Can victims be compensation? in theory, yes - but in practice this can be hard to put a figure on, and in some cases, the damage is irrevocable.

Whilst a lot of us fans laugh and joke about collusion, with more than a hint of actual suspicion underneath the humour, there's no concrete evidence it's happened. But sometimes, collusion / price fixing etc can happen without organisations realising they're doing it.

For instance - There are two pubs in a small village, and both agree to call a truce to price wars....
They then agree that one will sell only sell Stella Artois, and the other will only sell Carling.
They then agree that it might be nice to make a bit more money, so they both agree to put up their prices by the same amount.

1) Calling a truce to price wars could be interpreted as agreeing a minimum price.
2) Agreeing which products they will sell between them is fixing the market... even if they think they're doing out of common sense.
3) Agreeing to inflate their prices is cast iron example of price fixing.

In theory price fixing is as applicable to a corner shop / local pub as it is to a multinational company. Both are subject to the same laws. However, such small retailers go under the radar (generally, but not always).

There are also special rules for companies that have a particularly large market share (and that can still be a local pub). In those instances, extra measures are put in place to ensure they can't use their market share unfairly.

Superstar. Cheers for the detailed response. I'm not suggesting it will happen, but I'm sure the more layers of the onion are peeled off, the stronger the argument for collusion would be. Can't see anyone digging that deep unfortunately though & even if they did I'm sure it would be difficult to prove beyond doubt?

Not directly UEFA related, but wasn't there a letter on Arsenal headed paper, signed by Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs— stating the existing FFP proposals did not go far enough and that greater limitations should be placed on owner investment? Why was this letter to the FA marked as Private and Confidential? Surely this debate should have been out in the open?

Isn't that documentary evidence of collusion to stop investment (and in so doing restrict pay and free competition and all the other contravensions of EU law)? How did these clubs agree on the content of the letter? What discussions did they have behind closed doors? Presumably some must have gone on because they all signed it.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

A step up from the ZX81 though

I found my old one in the attic the other day ,thought it might be worth something but looked on e-bay and there going for nowt
crap machine though lol

NASA will buy it off you.

They like them because the processors run at very low temps which is very good for work in space.

They used to have an email contact for people who wanted to sell directly to them.

Actually they were after 8086 chips for steering circuitry and it's a Z80A in a ZX spectrum - completely different. And its nowt to do with temperature, merely that space vehicles are designed over a 20 year period and during that time computer technology moves on a bit, so current space tech uses very old and now hard to come by computer tech.

Amusing nevertheless :-)

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Design classic.

Maybe nice to look at but it was a shitty keyboard to use.

A step up from the ZX81 though

My next door neighbour had a ZX80 which I thought was the most incredible thing.

10 PRINT "CITY ARE ACE "
20 GOTO 10

RUN

I think we might be veering a touch off topic here.

 

[oakiecokie]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Can you all just fook off with discussing old style computers and keyboards.If you want to discuss such crap go onto the thread "things you don`t see nowadays" !!! ;)