s@int wrote:I spotted this article over on YNWA that someone posted, it's from a few years back.
http://www.playthegame.org/Knowled....on.aspx
There are other examples: a contract between Bank of America and Vasco da Gama was intended to cover twenty five years but lasted only two. Worst of all, perhaps, is the case of the Hicks group. This group is a hedge fund based in Texas and linked to President George W. Bush. Hicks took over two teams, Corinthians and Cruzeiro, through contracts that should have run until the year two thousand and ten.
These deals included promises of construction of new stadiums. Hicks also bought forty nine percent of the traffic television network and dreamed up its own ultimate soccer business: Hicks teams facing each other in matches broadcast, naturally, by Hicks. Hicks set up a cable channel in Latin America, PSN, acquired national basketball association rights, formula one races and soccer championships at overblown prices. Hicks invested about five hundred million dollars and in only two years filed for bankruptcy.
I e-mailed the guy to make sure it was "our" Hicks and he replied saying this:"Of course that the Group Hicks of Corinthians is the same. They also wanted to manage argentine clubs. I remember some years ago I wrote an article called Hicks vs Hicks by Hicks TV. Because they also founded a latinoamerican TV channell called PSN (Panamerican Sports Network). Many people believed it was a great excuse for money laundering. The payed 3or 4 times more the rights for Libertadores Cup, Formula One, NBA and so on, a lot of money. Friends from ESPN told me that it was imposible to make a good business with such a lot of money. Just one year and a half later PSN went on bankrupt. Cheers."
I posted this up on YNWA earlier and the lads have found a couple of articles about it:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BEK/is_12_8/ai_67881225
Carlos Roberto de Mello, Corinthians' vice president for finances, says Hicks, Muse waited too long to reinvest the profits from the trades. "That hurt Corinthians' performance and irritated fans used to a better playing team," he says. He warns that the strategy may cut into future team profits if Hicks, Muse doesn't get busy building the team up again.
But Hicks, Muse's Pan-American Sports Teams President Richard Law defends the decisions. "The reality of any sports franchise is that teams go through cycles as players mature," he says. "Our job is not to turn back the inevitable, but to build Corinthians and Cruzeiro up from the junior ranks," referring to the teams' 16- to 20-year-old players.
They were also supposed to build a 45,000 stadium for CorinthiansAs part of a separate deal, Hicks, Muse plans to build the club a new training center in early 2001 and a new 45,000-seat stadium in the next few years.
It never happened.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Corpora....724.cms
Meanwhile, the free flow of capital has resulted in foreigners investing in football clubs, often with disastrous consequences, such as when the American buyout firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst bought Corinthians, Sao Paulo’s leading club.
Corinthians won the World Cup championships in 2000, but the club’s performance subsequently slumped and a political row ensued as fans began to protest about everything from player trades to changes in the colour of jerseys. Hicks, Muse exited three years later, following a row with its local partner.
How the f*ck can a few random lads find out all this information after a 5 minute search of the internet yet the chairman and chief exec of our club can't? Moores and Parry sold us down the river the c*nts.
Also, how has this sh*t not come out in the papers? You'd think someone would have stumbled across this considering Corinthians is Mascherano's former club and it seemed he was at the centre of the row when it first happened.
ripped from RAWK
This post should be emailed to the powers that be @ Anfield and sent to Liverpoolfc.tv.
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