⚽️ The Dire Situations in Sheffield and in France

I have 100,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Insane.

This year this platform has ballooned in popularity I cannot believe the speed of growth.

If you’re new to the newsletter, welcome! 274 of you have joined this week. If you’ve been here for some time thank you for riding with me, it truly means the world.

Today we have two topics. A dire situation in Sheffield and a dire situation in France. Lets get right into it…

Has anyone seen whats going on at Sheffield Wednesday?

Six of their players have handed in their notice this week as their wages have not been paid for several months.

I have never seen anything like this before.

This all started a decade ago when Thai entrepreneur, Dejphon Chansiri bought the club in 2015. Since buying Wednesday for £37.5 million from Milan Mandarić he has invested heavily, reportedly injecting over £130m into the club. Despite this, losses have totalled £151.4 million and borrowings at one point stood at approximately £68 million!

The crazy thing is, as a result of their owner failing to meet financial obligations Wednesday have suffered several transfer bans, registration freezes and points deductions.

I was going to write them all out, but there were so many I had to build a table:

A registration embargo means you’re effectively stuck with your current squad. You cannot register new signings or register returning loan players. During these times they have had to promote youth talent or build from their existing foundations.

Chansiri has been close to selling the club but recently rejected an offer from an American consortium much to the dismay of fans. Apparently, the amount offered wasn’t enough for him.

He is the only shareholder at the club and is the only person on the board! An article from The Athletic detailed that only a few Wednesday staff members are in contact with him and to do so they must reach him on Line, a messaging app similar to Telegram.

Some football clubs are still awaiting transfer fees from transactions that took place in 2022. Some players haven’t received wages since April. Danny Röhl, the manager who has kept Wednesday in the Championship (somehow) is reportedly close to agreeing a severance too. Six weeks before the start of the new season and the situation is reaching an untenable state.

It’s boring to many but I write and speak about sustainability in football alot.

For every glowing success story like Wrexham there is an equally strong force in the opposite direction like Wednesday.

I really hope this situation gets resolved soon.

Now over to France, where things are not much better…

French Football is f*cked.

I’ve written and spoken about the dire state of the broadcast deals in Ligue 1 previously.

Well as a recap:

1. DAZN walked away from their contract to be the domestic broadcaster of the rights to Ligue 1 in France after just one season! They paid €240m to exit the deal

2. The league then decided to create its own streaming service and go direct-to-consumer ahead of the new season instead of finding a new partner

Well…

Canal+ has pulled out of negotiations to distribute Ligue 1’s new direct-to-consumer streaming platform.

The French league was targeting €200 million per year in rights fees, but Canal+ offered only €100 million. They walked away, stating the conditions were not right.

This leaves Ligue 1 without a domestic broadcast partner just weeks before the new season starts on August 17, 2025.

If Ligue 1 manages to launch this in-house platform, it would become the first major European football league to operate its own full-scale streaming channel. It’s a bold move and quite innovative in nature. Only problem being, it’s a very rushed operation.

In the meantime, the league has issued a tender to find a production and distribution partner. That deadline passed in mid-June with no official update. Amazon Prime Video, Orange, and DAZN are understood to be among the parties still in discussions. Yes, Orange is still around!

I am surprised there isn’t more coverage about this in mainstream media. I do not recall a situation like this ever happening before, it’s truly insane what has transpired in such a rich footballing country.

In one of my most requested videos ever I will soon be making a video on the long-rumoured Premier League Streaming service.

So a question to you all. How much would you pay for it if it were available?

Fascinated by your answers.

See you next week.