Will the credit crisis flatten big-time sport?

True Tah To avoid confusion, Northern Rock is related to Newcastle Falcons, the rugby club. Keith Harris is advising the Toon or Newcastle United FC.

True Tah The lease back to Northern Rock came before the crunch and was a good move. It means Newcastle is more financially secure and if Northern Rock fail then they might pick up the freehold in a fire sale; the best of both worlds. The Nigerians are not one of the parties buying Newcastle; the serious parties keep quiet and only make a noise when they are successful, as in the recent purchase of Man City by the Abu Dhabians. If you are interested look up the BBC web site, www.bbc.co.uk Follow the link to Radio Five Live, open up the web page scroll down to downloads and open up Sportsweek, which has the interviews with Whelan and Madjeski. In addition open up the web site for The Monday Night club with the link to football and open up the link for the interview with Keith Harris who is the power broker behind most of the recent deals including Man City and is currently selling the interests at Newcastle and Everton. These podcasts normally remain on line for 7 days.

On a slightly more prosaic note, you could ask "Will the lousy British weather scupper the Magners (Celtic) League?" After a few years up and running without a major frontline sponsor, the Celtic League thought it had done well two years ago when it attracted backing from the publicly quoted drinks company Cantrell & Cochrane. This company was about to storm the British market with its Magners brand of cider and backed the Celtic League as part of its strategy to do so. Sadly, cider is seen as a refreshing summer drink and the last two summers in Britain and Ireland have come straight from the pages of Genesis, especially those that talk about "The Flood". Sales of cider in general, and Magners in particular, have "Failed to meet expectations" Chief Exec Maurice Pratt (isn't there a thread about appropriate names?) has, to his credit, fallen on his sword saying that as he bet the company on Magners and lost it's time to move on. So what will that mean when the new man (or woman) comes in to sweep clean? Will they just cut their losses and leave the sponsorship "opportunity" that is the Magners League to some other sucker, sorry investor? Nervous times.

Millster, Ireland it goes GAA, daylight, futbol, rugby, although the domestic Irish rugby teams are higher profile than the Irish domestic futbol comp. And PNG - rugby league is a religion up there...quite a few people have compared the Papuans and their obsession with rugby league with terrorists and their beliefs...not a good comparison for a violent society. Listen I agree in principal with what you are saying, but more to the point of having teams which are represented by products of that nations rugby league competition as opposed to ring-ins who are products of other nations. I would rather see the Lebanese there, who have actually made an effort to start up a fair dinkum competition, or the Yanks who have done likewise than the Scots and Irish, who seem to have selected any Aussie with a Mc or an O in front of their name.

Oikee - can you explain to me how the tournament coming up is even called a World Cup. I've just had a look at the site and see the following makeup: 6 of the 10 teams are from Oceania 3 of the remaining 4 teams are UK/Ireland centred (aka the good old poms) France is the only 'outlier' that does not belong to either the 'good old poms' or Union's left-overs in the Pacific. There is not one other country than Australia in the whole competition in which League is a top tier sport. Australia's sporting landscape is well known and League is a slipping #2. In the case of the 4 nothern hemisphere teams the order goes football, daylight, union, league. And in the Pacific nations Union rules the day. So how was this grab-bag of countries chosen? Was there a qualification process or is this all they could muster. Sorry to be so harsh but I never looked at it closely before. There should be rules around what one can call a Wolrd Cup in various sports. This little tournament would not qualify if I had a say in it. PS: yes to some extent I am stirring :-) But some of the points are real and a worry.

And the price of gold is rising TT dont gorget that gold is maybe the only safe havern for wealth, apparently the government has to protect cash at the moment.

I answwered your post millster and i think you are just jumping onto the band wagon and previous down-turns, i have given you my summary and will leave it at that, i look forward to a heathy nrl season 2009 and this world cup which will be a small building stone in a down-turned market, be interesting to see how the other codes do out of this, not afl M.C they are safe in their own back-yard at the momment. Millster we are still waiting for the england and europian fall-out to accure, this might be hasher than one might think.

Yes you are right TT but you also have to remember that one feeds off the other, so you have less iron to china, we make that up with grain once they are staving, (not being nasty) so woman are not buying diamonds, then we sell more sheep to cloth them, so like i said we are better placed to deal with economic times than before, and if asia dont want anymore coal we sell them uranium, (not sure if thats a good idea) but we can move in a direction that we need to take, the sheep now has company. And like you said we are not a manufacturing country, big deal, who would buy our products if we were, the worlds broke so food will probably be the next market.

I stand 100% alongside True Tah's last post. And yes I overinflated Australia's economy by a factor of 10 or so. We are the 12th largest economy in the world, but it is far less than 10% of the worlds total aggregate GNP. Fundamenatlly yes to the riposte to oikee. It's easy to list the supply side of the equation. But there has to be demand as well for any vaue to occur. Its one thing for us to be sitting on all these minerals but its not much good if world markets are contracting and infrastructure/growth/expenditure programs are being delayed. Australia's labour market uncompetitiveness has been a peeve of mine for a decade. And yes we are not strategic about our uranium resource. Political gutlessness, and the fear-factor driven by an extremist fringe, have ruled the day on this one. Getting it back to sport (coz in case you forgot this is a sporting site) if we capitalise on our uranium resources perhaps an Olympic Dam United is a possibility for the A-League circa 2030?? Oh, I disagree that we don;t have brains. We do. But we have a mediocre education system and also no way to keep the best onshore (linked to TT's observations on manufacturing and value adding, plus a range of other reasons)

Slippery Jim - depending when you got in on your CBA shares - then you couldn't really complain the long term trend......

Oikee, Im going to give you a quick lesson. All these massive amounts of minerals in the ground will not benefit Australia if no one else is able to buy them. A few Chinese steel mills are already scaling down their orders for Australian iron ore. If countries can't afford our commodity exports, it will not benefit Australia. This argument is even more pointed when you look at things like diamonds and gold - these are discretionary items, and I think people around the world would rather spend whats left of their savings than on a new diamond necklace. Australia has not developed a manufacturing sector big enough to ensure adequate domestic demand for these products. One could argue that this is due to Australian labour being uncompetitive relative to our neighbouring countries, and we would rather develop a large service industry which is supported by primary industry. Re: uranium, personally I hope we develop our our nuclear energy system and find a use for it all...I take my hat off to the French here, I think their approach to nuclear energy is far more progressive than our own.

And i also said that we are better positioned than we were before, like you said millster our growth depends on the rest of the world, but when it starts up we will benifit the most, unlike last recession in 87, thats why i said put your money back on the aussie shares when the market flattens, we will grow the fastest. In 87 the international grew the fastest but we are now suppying alot more countries than ever before.

Once again you underestimate the power of sheep TT I will give you a quick lesson, 20% of worlds alum, iron,uranium,mineral sands, and diamonds.40%of worlds bauxite (you might not know what this is used for) Gold, 3rd largest provider, over seas value around 4.7 billion,,,,,also we have copper zinc nickel and tin, we are the worlds largest provider of mineral sands. Largest provider of diamonds by volume. We have 40% of worlds uranium reserves found so far. We also have oil and natural gas, we provide china with gas also. Not to mention the wine or cotton along with the sheep, and grain. The only area we lack is brains, :) but even thats improving,,,, liked your post millster, there improving.

Millster, I think you added a 0 to Australia's % of the global economy!

I take a more cautious view, perhaps because of my position. The Australian economy is around 10% of the global one, but most of that is reliant on export of commodities (resources and agriculture) to other nations, and the domestic service industries that support that commodity business. Their demand for our resources is directly linked to their economic circumstances, and in this way we are only as robust as our 'clients' economies are. Fortunately we are located to address fast-growing markets in the broader Asian region so the fundamentals are ok. But we should not be smug. Our economy is not super-human. And remember that the infrastructure and services growth needed to underpin growth in commodity exports needs to be funded - from those very capital markets that are currently rocking. [Aside to True Tah] While in travels in Asia recently I saw increasing numbers of ads for Malaysian financial institutions positioning themselves as centres of excellence in Islamic finance. I found it very interesting and could be a new dynamic throughout our region, which of course will perhaps touch on sport. Imagine an Islamic Bank leveraging the Lebanese constituency of the Bulldogs and sponsoring that League team for example. No funtamental reason it shouldn't occur, but I imagine it would nott pass uncommented on...

:)

oikee I thought it was Kiwis who rode the sheeps back rather well!!

I tend to agree with you true tah, but i think the aussie economy punches well above its weight, and dont forget that maquarie is well and truely a world player so suffers along with the world on a even par, as do most banks. We ride the sheeps back, but we ride it rather well.

oikee you can't really compare the Australian and US banking systems, US is far bigger and far less regulated, whereas, the Australian banks were far more regulated and operated in something of a sheltered workshop, which has to date stopped mergers of the Big 4, but for how much longer? I guess the counter argument for this is that having such an approach will never allow an Australian bank to become a global giant to extent of say Citigroup/Wells Fargo. Ian Noble, in the light of all this, the Newcastle Falcons recently sold their home ground to Northern Rock and leased it back - do you believe this to be a prudent business move?

Oikee, my CBA shares would tend to disagree :(