A claim by League Championship side Queens Park Rangers that the English Football League's '12 financial fair play rules "were unlawful has been dismissed by a panel." The London club was "fined for breaking spending limits" after its promotion to the Premier League in '14. An arbitration panel "also ruled the undisclosed fine," anticipated to be as much as £58M, was not disproportionate (BBC, 10/24).
More than 1 million football fans tried to purchase tickets for Wednesday's U17 World Cup semifinal between England and Brazil in Kolkata, "leading to the meltdown of FIFA's online ticketing system." A decision was made to switch the "highly-anticipated" semifinal to Kolkata after the two teams refused to play on the "heavily waterlogged pitch at the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium in Guwahati" (London DAILY MAIL, 10/24).
UEFA announced it fined Turkish side Beşiktaş for the failure of its floodlights in last month’s Champions League game against RB Leipzig. Beşiktaş was "slapped" with a €25,000 ($29,447) fine for "insufficient organisation" after the floodlight failure halted the game for 10 minutes (REUTERS, 10/24).
Real Madrid will reportedly not use its branded team bus to transport players for the trip to Catalonia to play Girona on Sunday "for security reasons." The club does not want the vehicle to "become a target due to political unrest in the region over Catalonia’s bid for independence" (REUTERS, 10/24).
