Leicester City’s "dash to an unlikely Premier League title is billed as football’s most romantic story in a generation" but the Football League is still investigating the club’s '13-14 promotion season amid "strong concerns from other clubs they may have cheated financial fair play rules," according to David Conn of the London GUARDIAN. The club’s owner, billionaire Thai businessman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, who owns his country’s duty-free company King Power, "bankrolled Leicester’s rise from the Championship" with more than £100M after he took over the club in '10. The investigation centers on a deal Leicester said that it did in Jan. '14 with a company called Trestellar Ltd., to market the club in the U.K. and southeast Asia. That deal immediately produced an apparent £11M increase in Leicester’s sponsorship and commercial income, reducing the club’s loss from £34M the previous year. The Thai owners "were already sponsoring the shirt and stadium before the Trestellar deal;" in '12-13 Leicester’s sponsorship and other commercial income was £5.2M. After the Trestellar deal, with King Power still holding the same main sponsorships, the income "immediately jumped" to £16M. That "substantially reduced Leicester’s loss, which was otherwise likely to have resulted in a large fine" under the Football League’s then new financial fair play rules by which all clubs agreed to cap losses at £8M. Losses under FFP rules "are not reduced by a club owner paying money to the club, or by doing so via sponsorship, if the amount paid is clearly inflated beyond market value." Leicester still says that Trestellar paid the club for the rights to market its brand, "then sold the sponsorships to the owners." The resulting smaller loss -- £21M in '13-14, including expenses clubs are allowed to offset -- meant Leicester argues it "complied with FFP rules and no sanction should be applied." The Football League has stated for more than a year that it has not cleared Leicester’s '13-14 finances and said that Leicester remains an "ongoing matter" (GUARDIAN, 4/11). YAHOO's Chris Deeley reported the son and daughter of former Premier League Chair Dave Richards "set up the company." Richards' son, Dave Jr., said when asked about the lack of contact details, "Why would we need one? We are very busy, we are relatively well known and in the networks in which we move, we are known to the people we wish to be known to." Damian Collins, an MP on the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee, said, "Leicester should answer the questions publicly, to explain this arrangement, which looks unusual to say the least, to reassure people it was not an attempt to evade the FFP rules" (YAHOO, 4/11).
