On the latest episode of the Tifo Football Podcast for The Athletic, Matt Slater has been discussing the latest news surrounding the ongoing takeover of Newcastle United.
One topic of conversation on the recent episode, which was titled ‘Saudi Arabia, BeIN Sports and Newcastle United‘, was how long Slater expects it to take until the Premier League make a decision regarding the ongoing takeover. The deal has now been with the Premier League for some time, but they are yet to make an official decision about whether or not to approve it.
The deal was potentially placed into jeopardy after Saudi Arabia barred BeIN Sports – the MENA region’s sole broadcaster of Premier League football – from being broadcast in the country.
Here’s what Slater had to say about the takeover on the podcast as he explored the possibility that Saudi Arabia could be looking to battle for the Premier League’s TV rights with BeIN and break up the regional rights package currently in operation for the English top flight:
“If Saudi Arabia wants a national deal, what’s to stop Bahrain, Egypt, UAE? Suddenly the Premier League are going to have 15 different deals when they used to have one really good one. So I think there are two problems with that theory. In the last two or three days, there frankly has been no news on what this means.
Is this one end the Saudi government not knowing what the other is doing? “Is this a fit of pique on behalf of the Saudi government? Because they’re looking and listening to the negotiations around Newcastle and they’re thinking, well, this isn’t going our way. Or is it this, right, let’s try and manoeuvre the Premier League into a position where they have to deal with us and if this is going to happen, they need to give us a national deal. Presumably, whatever money we give the Premier League will be then paid to BeIN as compensation, but that’s not going to happen soon, is it? For Newcastle United fans, none of those sound that great in terms of getting this done quickly.”
TIF Thoughts…
As Slater suggests, the timescale for Newcastle United fans and the potential takeover doesn’t look to be a particularly short one. Considering Mike Ashley agreed to sell the club all the way back in April, perhaps the Toon should just try and move on from this deal now, as it has been three months and it seems as if we aren’t much closer to a decision being made by the Premier League.
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With the transfer window set to open shortly, the club will surely want to know who’s ownership they are under ahead of next season so that they can properly prepare and make signings ahead of the 2020/21 campaign.