sport news IN THE MONEY: Liverpool fans' compensation claims for Champions League final to ... trends now
The number of Liverpool fans intending to sue UEFA for the chaos at last year’s Champions League final in Paris has risen to more than 4,000 — with compensation claims set to exceed £20 million.
Last week UEFA announced full refunds of all 19,618 tickets allocated to Liverpool supporters at the match, costing the governing body between £3m and £3.5m.
Four legal firms are collectively acting for the Reds fans, claiming from £1,000 in damages for being crushed and tear-gassed outside the stadium to £30,000 for suffering ‘serious psychological damage’.
An independent review found UEFA had ‘primary responsibility’ for failings that ‘almost led to a disaster’ at the Stade de France.
Daniel Taylor, 23, from Hertfordshire, went to the final with his 60-year-old father, who was also at the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy.
The number of Liverpool fans intending to sue UEFA for the chaos at last year’s Champions League final in Paris has risen to more than 4,000
Compensation claims from Liverpool supporters are set to exceed £20million
‘My dad used his Hillsborough experience to help calm fans around us,’ he said. ‘He told us that whatever happened, don’t hit the floor.
‘But even while we were being penned in and pepper-sprayed, local youths were still trying to rob our phones and wallets.
‘I even saw old people and women being attacked.’
As Greg Norman faces being sidelined, the true scale of LIV golf spending revealed
The LIV Golf tour faces challenging tests to its ambitious business model in the coming years, while its figurehead, Greg Norman, appears at risk of being sidelined.
Backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the LIV project has already paid out more than $2billion (£1.64bn) in nine months since its first event at the Centurion Club outside London last June.
LIV Golf figurehead Greg Norman appears at risk of being sidelined by the project
The LIV project has already paid out more than $2billion (£1.64bn) in nine months since its first event
That cash has been spent either on staging events last year ($784m, or £644m) or paying massive ‘signing-on’ fees to golfers to join LIV. Somewhere north of a billion dollars has already been committed to signing up Phil Mickelson ($200m), Dustin Johnson ($125m) and Cameron Smith ($100m), among others, before they hit a ball.
The mantra of LIV’s executives has been they want to ‘grow the game’, and shake up the commercial side and expand revenues. The reality so far is a few dozen golfers becoming massively enriched. Johnson’s LIV prize-money alone (aside from his sign-on fee) has been $36,675,767. He will add more today as the second LIV event of 2023 concludes in Tucson, Arizona.
To put that in context, from nine completed LIV events, Johnson has earned enough prize-money to lift him into the top 25 PGA Tour all-time winnings list. More context: Johnson has made $10m more in LIV prize cash than Ernie Els did in winnings on the European Tour . . . in 25 years.
LIV earned nothing from TV last year as the start-up had no broadcasting partners, made close to nothing from commercial partners, and was selling discounted tickets to fans. Court records disclosed in an ongoing legal battle in the USA between LIV and the PGA Tour quote LIV lawyers as saying LIV revenues were ‘virtually zero’.
Against this, 68-year-old legend Norman at least got LIV up and running, persuading big names to join, albeit igniting civil war in global golf in the process. But a source with knowledge of PIFs thinking has told the MoS that Norman’s sometimes ‘abrasive’ nature has been noted.
There is speculation that he
