Ian Mallon: Why is Uefa undermining Euros bid and at what cost?
HOPES: Aviva Stadium looks set be part of the Euro 2028 hosting stadia. Pic: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
IT SHOULDN’T be overlooked how extreme UEFA’s attempts to extract more money from Ireland and the UK - to host Euro 2028 – are, and how they are damaging an increasingly fractious situation.
The move from Nyon before Christmas was designed to undermine and discredit the bid, and came exactly one month after the Irish Government announced - last November - a €135m draft support package, to cover the hosting of the tournament in this country.
This followed an initial €55m-€85m misforecast by the Department of Sport last March, and while the current figure is up to 63% greater than first estimated, the new number still requires formal Cabinet sign-off by April.
What will not be approved are a string of additional payments for a series of fresh demands from Uefa, on the back of what is believed to be a highly valuable set of incentives from Turkey - the only other rival bid at next September’s Uefa vote.
The Irish Examiner revealed before Christmas that a bid source said “Uefa (now) want a better deal, basically more free things across the whole range, including hotels, stadia, (increased) commercial rights”.
With the Irish Government already committed to supporting the tournament at an agreed price, it will be hard to gather financial and political momentum for any additional expense, particularly in times of austerity.
Uefa’s new demands will not go down well with the Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition, not to mention rival parties watching from the left. Micheál Martin was at pains to say that the current €135m offer would only be formally ratified following ongoing assessment.
Seven weeks ago the then Taoiseach said that “officials will continue their examination of the costs and benefits of hosting the tournament through the next phase of the process and prior to any decision in relation supporting a final bid in April 2023”.
That “next phase” has now been turned on its head by Uefa’s demands and requires significant adjustment to the Cost Benefit Analysis, the Government’s financial white paper for hosting major events.
While no cost analysis is ever conducted with absolute certainty, the rules are that the agreed public purse investment must not increase to a greater number than formally declared – even if that has already happened.
The Department of Sport, which ultimately has oversight of the project on behalf of Cabinet, now faces – under the watch of the new Minister for Sport, Thomas Byrne – an urgent need to reassess.
Any proposed increase in spend by April’s formal submission deadline cannot include a third hike in costs since March 2022, after the Department of Sport then went out with an initial €50m best-case scenario.
If that trend continues upward, and surpasses €150m – or worse still, moves towards €200m – politically and financially the cost would prove too much, particularly in the midst of a health, housing and inflation crisis.
What once seemed like a home run, when Ireland and its UK partners – England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland – were promised that they would be awarded the tournament for their obedience in dropping ambitions to host FIFA World Cup 2030, is already mired in uncertainty.
A key issue to consider also is Uefa’s aggressive tactics in trying to achieve its demands, by deliberately leaking stories to the media which scoff at the perceived incompetence of the Irish and UK process - described as ‘frustrating and slow to offer guarantees’.
At the time of the leaks, the FAI told The Pitch that “we are collectively working through the next phase of the process” while Uefa said: “Matters concerning the UK/Republic of Ireland bid for UEFA EURO 2028 are being addressed with them”.
Under the current forecasts announced by Government the “projected cost including all contingencies and inflation out to 2028 would be up to €135 million” resulting in a “projected economic benefit (of) €361 million”
‘All contingencies’ will certainly not have forecasted increased cash demands from Uefa, on top of those already declared.
The Minister for Sport Thomas Byrne was unavailable for comment.
FOLLOWING the extraordinary €18m financial and sporting success of the World Darts Championship over the holidays, the PDC will focus on getting Ireland back on the tournament roster after a near four-year gap.
However, the issue is not an easy one to resolve, with no suitable venue available to host a multi-day World Darts Grand Prix tournament, with Citywest – the most viable venue - still unavailable.
In an interview with The Pitch, CEO of the PDC, Matthew Porter, said that the Irish market continues to be important for the sport, despite the emerging powerhouses of Holland, Belgium, Germany and the USA.
“It’s a shame because we’ve been at Citywest for a long time, then we lost it because of Covid and now it’s obviously performing a different function by housing Ukrainian refugees - which is absolutely fair enough and the right thing to do,” he explained.
“It means we’re kind of limited (on where to stage an event).
“We do the Premier League of darts at the Three Arena for one night which is a fantastic venue, but it’s a one-night venue with 10k capacity - we wouldn’t do that for a week.
“We’ve looked at the RDS, it wasn’t available, and that means we’re limited by our television schedule – our events have to be on at a certain time.
“Unfortunately there’s a lack of mid-sized indoor arenas in Ireland so we haven’t really got any alternatives at the moment.”
The longer Ireland goes without a significant tournament, is it then in danger of missing out permanently due to the clamour of so many other countries and venues looking to be placed on the roster?
“We’d like to come back to Ireland, I can see us going back there for a multi-day event in the not-too-distant future, it’s just when and where,” added Porter.
“It’s something we’d have to look at but there’s no other reason in not going to Ireland, we see it as a strong market for us.”
IT WAS certainly an interesting strategy for Peter Jackson to go out with views on gambling regulation so close to Christmas.
As head of the Paddy Power, Betfair and Sky Bet sports betting brands, Jackson’s comments are always something to pay attention to, but his latest opinions seemed to get lost coming as they did in the week of merriment and low engagement.
Not that he had that much to say, anyway.
More’s the pity that the chief executive didn’t expand on an area considered by the new gambling regulator, Anne Marie Caulfield – evidence-based regulation.
Jackson introduced and presented the subject in one sentence, before swiftly abandoning it in favour of encouragement of a well-funded office of regulation, before finally disappearing down a rabbit hole of cliché and ‘we all must do better’.
Here was a real opportunity for the chief executive to give a comprehensive overview on what “evidence-based gambling regulation” looks like, how legislation can accurately affect actuality and what a sophisticated fact-based model looks like.
Jackson however let the opportunity slip and maybe there was a reason for that – we don’t know.
Another issue which Big Gambling never addresses is the treatment of those who are not problem gamblers, but who are a problem for betting firms based on their winning ratio.
Disappointingly, in his op-ed Jackson failed to address the critical issue of the blacklisting of professional or serious stakers who find themselves banned by betting firms for the ‘crime’ of being rather good at winning.
If big betting firms want sympathy, then their leaders must offer a far more concise message than ‘operators (must) adhere to high standards (and) significantly up their game to the benefit of consumers’.
