Ahead of the Game: A$AP Rocky’s Tranmere takeover hits a snag
A proposed takeover of Tranmere Rovers involving Donald Trump’s former lawyer Joe Tacopina and US rapper A$AP Rocky has been delayed following the withdrawal of one of the principal investors.
A consortium led by Tacopina has offered around £15m for the 80 per cent of Tranmere currently owned by Mark and Nicola Palios, with Indonesian investors Santini Group set to remain at Prenton Park.
City AM has learned that one of Tacopina’s key investors – not A$AP Rocky – who was providing around 30 per cent of the funding pulled out last week, however, due to frustrations with the English Football League’s approval process.
While the individual concerned did not fail the owners’ and directors’ test it is understood they were reluctant to provide the EFL with all of the information they were demanding.
Tacopina is in the process of looking for fresh investors in Tranmere, although there is no shortage of interest in a project he has billed as Merseyside’s answer to Welcome to Wrexham.
A documentary is planned, with Tacopina intending to use his celebrity friends and clients to create interest in Tranmere.
In addition to Trump and A$AP Rocky, Tacopina has also represented baseball legend Alex Rodriguez and Sopranos star Lillo Brancato.
As well as running a New York-based law firm, Tacopina has a long track record of investing in football clubs, particularly in Italy, as his parents are from Rome.
In 2011 he was part of an American group that bought Roma before selling up and moving on to Bologna in 2014.
He sold Bologna a year later to buy Venezia, before acquiring his fourth Italian team, SPAL, in 2021.
A$AP Rocky is believed to remain on board, raising the seemingly unlikely prospect of his pop star partner Rihanna, with whom he has two children, watching Tranmere if the takeover goes through.
TNT set to shun Six Nations rights
TNT Sports begins a two-year contract for live coverage of rugby union’s Autumn Internationals with the most glamourous fixture possible on Saturday, when New Zealand visit Twickenham to face England for only to fourth time in a decade, but they have no plans to bid for Six Nations rights when that tender process opens next year.
TNT picked up the Autumn Internationals for a modest price when previous rights-holders Amazon Prime decided against extending their contract earlier this year and appear to have picked up a bargain.
This year’s contract gives TNT 21 live matches over five weekends featuring all the European nations, as well as the touring All Blacks, South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Japan and Fiji.
Competition to secure the Six Nations from 2026 onwards is expected to be far tougher however, with BBC Sport and ITV planning to make competitive bids to keep their existing rights packages and TNT preferring to spend their big money on premium football content such as the Premier League and Champions League.
Cricket domes plan could be dented by Budget
England cricket executives will be keeping a close eye on Rachel Reeves’s first Budget this afternoon for clues as to whether Labour will deliver the £35m investment in improving cricket facilities for state school pupils promised by her Conservative predecessor, Jeremy Hunt.
A final decision on the government’s sporting priorities will be delayed until the conclusion of the Spending Review in April, but any significant cuts to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport budget outlined today will be interpreted as a bad sign for cricket.
The ECB was planning to use the money, initially pledged by former Prime Minister and keen cricketer Rishi Sunak, to fund 22 purpose-built “cricket domes”, providing all-weather practice and match facilities at subsidised prices in urban areas previously neglected by the sport.
Promotion robs Ipswich of analytics edge
Ipswich have cut ties with the data company that powered their remarkable rise from League One as the firm have an exclusive Premier League deal with Brighton.
Jamestown Analytics helped Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna put together the squad that won two successive promotions on a shoestring budget. The firm was involved in bringing key signings such as Leif Davis and Sam Morsy to Portman Road, but the links to Brighton mean it can no longer be used now Ipswich are in the Premier League.
Jamestown is an offshoot of Starlizard, the betting and data company set up by Brighton owner Tony Bloom. Starlizard’s data experts were brought into Brighton by Bloom and helped turn them into the kings of the transfer market, with the club making a record profit of £122m last year based largely on player sales.
Brighton’s success led to inquiries from their rivals so Jamestown was set up as a separate company to enable it to work for other clubs. Ipswich never announced that they were using Jamestown, but it is understood that the London-based company had been working for them for several years.
To avoid a potential conflict of interests, however, Jamestown can only work for one club in each division, so Ipswich were dropped following their promotion to the Premier League.
Hiring problems for football regulator
The UK Government is concerned about their ability to recruit top staff from within the sport to work for the new independent football regulator due to a lack of resources and the strict confines of civil service pay bands.
A shadow football regulator has already been set up, with 20 members of staff working under chief operating officer Martyn Henderson, but with the Football Governance Bill returning to parliament last week a more extensive recruitment drive is beginning in earnest.
Henderson is currently hiring numerous staff in senior roles, including head of legal, chief communications officer and several policy advisors, but the salaries on offer may struggle to attract applications from experienced figures within the industry.
The pay band for the chief communications officer job is between £49,000 and £55,000, which is unlikely to tempt anyone currently working at a leading club.
In another potentially troubling development, the government last week readvertised the position of chair of the regulator, a three-day-a-week role based in Manchester, which may indicate dissatisfaction with the candidates who applied when the vacancy was first listed earlier this year.