Europe’s finest football teams want to have their own parties. That would help them keep most of the money they make for European football. Yes, If  Real Madrid FC plays with FC Porto, most people are watching because of Real Madrid. However, at the end, Real Madrid may not capture huge value when the revenue is shared. But that spirit of allowing the weak to join that party has kept the game going for ages. Unfortunately, some bankers in New York have figured out a way: have a totally different party that is super-invitation-only and ensure that only the BIG boys could attend!

JP Morgan Chase bankers have American blood: there are no Silver or Bronze medals in most of their competitions. Either you are #1 (gold) or you go home empty handed. NBA, NFL, Hockey league, etc do not recognize runners-up with any public medal. Simply, America does not believe in coming second.

If you export that to the European football, you will get what the bank is saying: why get Rangers of Scotland  to join the Champions League when it has no chance of winning. Yes, it is better to allow the few teams which have won 80% of the last 20 trophies to compete if the ultimate goal is to win the trophy.

In the past, it was the weak teams they were making a case that they would pull out of the unity league. Many of them had complained that limited resources would never help them compete and win anything. In other words, three players in Real Madrid could buy a whole whole team within the qualifying rounds of some Champion League games. But here, the big boys are the ones pulling out, losing patience for sharing their goodies with the underperformers.

But no matter what – European football needs a draft system to improve competition in the game, and reduce the impacts of dominant teams. In the US, with a draft system, talent becomes distributed, making the game more competitive. If you check the NFL, the American football, you can see that most teams have won the trophies. That is possible because the NFL has drafts which inject the best talent to low performing teams to help calibrate out the outperformers. With that, a bad team can over time become better. That contrasts to what we have in Europe where you do not need any permutation to know the league contenders.

The best-known type of draft is the entry draft, which is used to allocate players who have recently become eligible to play in a league. Depending on the sport, the players may come from college, high school or junior teams, or teams in other countries. An entry draft is intended to prevent expensive bidding wars for young talent and to ensure that no one team can sign contracts with all of the best young players and make the league uncompetitive. To encourage parity, teams that do poorly in the previous season usually get to choose first in the postseason draft, sometimes with a “lottery” factor to discourage teams from deliberately losing.

People, this is the real SuperExit which may cause more pains for many in Europe than Brexit.

The Guardian has uncovered an unpublished European Super League document in the hidden code of its new website which seeks to justify the controversial breakaway by saying it will give fans “what they want”.

In comments that will raise eyebrows, it also claims the breakaway will offer “a sustainable and competitive environment for the whole football pyramid” – by providing more than three times the level of solidarity payments to smaller clubs than currently exist.

[…]

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has strongly condemned “disgraceful” proposals for a new European Super League as a “spit in the face of all football lovers”.

“We are all united against this nonsense of a project … The players that will play in the closed league will be banned from playing in the World Cup and Euros,” says UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin.

Ceferin: “Players who play in the closed league will be banned from participating in the World Cup and the European Championship. They won’t be able to play for their national team.”

Harvard Business Review has approved the work on the Igbo Apprenticeship System (IAS). In short, my editor was impressed. She wrote, partly, “Thanks so much for your work here. I like how you’re setting up the idea of stakeholder capitalism at the start while introducing the Igbo IAS…” The online version should be out by next month. The core construct is to present the  Igbo Apprenticeship System  as a thesis for the world as the conversation continues on stakeholder capitalism, not just shareholder capitalism.

Learn more about IAS.

At Tekedia Capital, this short video explains how we evaluate startups and their leaders.  We do not even require you to have earned any revenue. But we require clarity on the friction which is being solved. We also look at your capabilities and examine if there are potential leverageable factors which can compound and accelerate over time. Our founders must be hungry with capacity to see the big picture. Let’s build the NEXT Africa together.

Tekedia Capital, we fund NEXT Africa.

Co-invest to build the NEXT Africa; learn more here.

A few months ago, Nigeria banned cryptocurrency exchanges in its financial systems. But over the last few weeks, it is becoming evident that Nigeria is marching on the path to regulate cryptocurrency trading, investment and use as a form of currency in the nation. Here are some indicators:

• The clear statement by the Vice President of Nigeria for the regulators to regulate and not ban

“There is a role for regulation here. And it is in the place of both our monetary authorities and SEC to provide a robust regulatory regime that addresses these serious concerns without killing the goose that might lay the golden eggs. So it should be thoughtful and knowledge-based regulation not prohibition.”

• Statement from the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI)

“The [Securities & Exchange Commission] should propose a plan of action for phased usage of the technological currency within the Nigerian financial system. We suggest that members of the commission should be drawn from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigerian Stock Exchange, banking /financial Institutions, bitcoin community, digital currency experts and relevant MDAs and organised private sector….

“The policy lacuna impresses on the administration to consider possible options to prepare the nation to cope with the positive and negative fallouts of this new financial technology”

• Disclosure from the Director-General of SEC, Lamido Yuguda

“We are in discussion with CBN for both understanding and better regulating of this market. We will be able to come back to you later to inform you of the outcome of these engagements.

But because of the lack of access to commercial bank accounts, we had to suspend our own guidelines of September 2020. The implementation of that circular is suspended until these operators are able to have access to Nigerian bank accounts.

Remember that nobody operates in the Nigerian capital market if that person does not have access to a Nigerian bank account,” he said.

More so, Nigeria could surprise everyone by unveiling a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) roadmap and begin a push for e-naira, following the footsteps of China and other nations: “A central bank digital currency (CBDC) uses an electronic record or digital token to represent the virtual form of a fiat currency of a particular nation (or region). A CBDC is centralized; it is issued and regulated by the competent monetary authority of the country.”

I expect the air to clear by Q4 2021 and by then the regulators would put a framework for cryptocurrency in the nation. With Coinbase publicly baptized in the markets, most concerns will begin to wane across the world.

Nigeria’s Central Bank Bans Cryptocurrency Trading in the Country