The Athletic’s Matt Slater has been discussing the Newcastle United takeover on a recent episode of Pod On The Tyne.
During the show, Slater sat down with George Caulkin to assess the current situation with regards to the Saudi-backed takeover and shared his thoughts on what may be required for the deal to be given the green light. It has been 85 days since the Premier League began their owners’ and directors’ test process yet there has still been no official communication regarding their findings or their subsequent decision.
Slater raised the question around whether or not the Saudis have dealt with the Premier League in good faith, which he claims is one of the requirements and went on to discuss what he believes to be the impact of them perhaps not doing so.
Speaking on the podcast, here is what he said: “Has Saudi Arabia dealt with the Premier League in good faith? Possibly not. These are the things that have held this up [piracy in Saudi Arabia]. Can Saudi [Arabia] fix this? Of course, they can fix this. Post-WTO report, there were some immediate concessions made, there was the announcement of 200 new anti-piracy rules.”
Having spoken about the piracy issue at length, the journalist discussed some of the possible actions the Saudis could take in order to show the Premier League they are serious about resolving it.
He then went on to make the point: “That would require though, them kind of admitting that they had been wrong in their dealings with this Qatari company [BeIN Sports] and that I think is something the Saudis are going to have to square themselves and get over. Those are the sort of concrete measures that we haven’t seen yet. They just need to change their attitude to BeIN and follow international IP rules.”
TIF Thoughts…
It’s clear from his comments that Slater does believe those hoping to take over Newcastle United can persuade the authorities to sign off on the deal; however, it appears he may not be entirely convinced they are willing to admit any previous wrongdoing to get things moving and that could potentially lead to either the deal falling through or further lengthy delays.