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Calacus Monthly Hit & Miss – Sell Before We Dai & Red Bull Racing

Every month we look at the best and worst communicators in the sports world from the last few weeks.

HIT - SELL BEFORE WE DAI

Languishing towards the bottom of the Sky Bet League One table, Reading FC are a club in turmoil.

Having been in the Premier League as recently as 2012, it is the Royals’ problems off the pitch are causing greater concern.

Owner Dai Yongge, whose takeover was announced on the night of Reading’s triumphant Championship play-off semi-final in May 2017, has been told by the English Football League (EFL) that he must “fund the club adequately” or “make immediate arrangements to sell.”

During his reign, the club has been relegated to the third tier of English football for the first time in 22 years; staff have not been paid; they have been deducted a total of 18 points; and given a five- year transfer embargo due to financial issues. Yongge’s tenure has also seen extreme cost-cutting, including redundancies and the CEO selling their most valuable player assets behind the back of their manager.

Yongge had previously failed in his bid to take over Hull City in September 2017 after reportedly not meeting the Football Association's fit and proper persons test. The Premier League were also said to be concerned about the takeover at the time.

At first he did make significant investment into the club, twice breaking the club’s transfer record. He also turned down large sums of money for their star players and tied them down to new contracts, funding the club through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite this, the result was only one top-half Championship finish and the EFL’s Profit and Sustainability regulations charged the club in 2021/22 with breaches due to the increased salary spending, leading to a six-point deduction.

Towards the end of 2022, further scandal followed when staff were not paid on time for November and December. With the club failing to stick to the business plan imposed by the EFL that stipulated maximum loses, they were deducted a further six-points in April of that year and would ultimately be relegated from the second tier.

Another tumultuous summer ensued and July saw the club hit with a winding-up order by HMRC for non-payment of tax. Pre-season preparation was hardly ideal given the club was without a manager or enough players to field a team, late into the summer.

The club have been deducted a total of six points so far this season, with another two point-deduction (with a further two points suspended) handed out in February after the club failed to meet HMRC payment obligations, in accordance with EFL Regulations.

By late 2021, the club’s annual £32mn wage bill was more than double total revenue and Reading have been barred from buying new players almost ever since with £220mn net debt being the biggest in English football outside the Premier League.

During this turbulent period, Yongge undertook little to no media interviews or fans’ forums where he could explain his strategy or plans to raise new funding or sell the club.

It defies belief that Yongge is financially struggling given that The Daily Mail recently revealed that he has purchased a multi-million pound mansion by Buckingham Palace.

This silence gives the impression that he has lost interest in the club and appears content to see it collapse, ignoring the importance of the Royals to its community of fans and stakeholders.

One of the oldest clubs in the Football League and rich with history, the fans have not taken the problems lightly.

Their continued campaigning against the regime, keeping the issue in the public eye, while increasing the pressure on the EFL and Yongge, has provoked widespread sympathy and support from clubs and fans from far and wide.

They have mobilised and ensured consistent communication and messaging through the Sell Before We Dai group. Since they were set up in June 2023 they have gained a significant social media following, secured vital regular media coverage and organised various high-profile protests in a dignified and progressive manner.

They describe themselves as ‘a fan-led pressure group pushing to encourage Reading FC owner Dai Yongge to sell up to a new owner before more damage is done to the club we know and love’ with a clear objective to ‘secure a sustainable future for Reading FC.’

The group has received support from a coalition of MPs, including former Prime Minister, Theresa May, and James Sutherland, who recently said: “As a fan what’s happening here is devastating. It’s clear that we need to better protect football from rogue owners — and if you want the perfect test case this it, right here.”

They also were instrumental in the council’s decision to list the stadium as an asset of community value, symbolising its importance. That means the local community will be informed if the venue is listed for sale within the five year listing period. The community can then enact the Community Right to Bid, which gives them a moratorium period of six months to determine if they can raise the finance to purchase the asset.

Tennis-ball disruption in the 16th minute of home games (marking the number of points deducted under Dai’s ownership) started at the Bolton Wanderers game and has largely continued since.

The most dramatic protest saw Reading’s League One match against Port Vale in January abandoned, when tennis balls were again thrown, before around 1,000 home fans invaded the pitch to protest against the ownership.

Sell Before We Dai urged no more invasions and said in a statement: “We should always be prepared to be bold with our actions. That was made clear on 13th January. Fed up of being lied to and seeing their club slowly die, fans felt they were left with no other option than to run on to the pitch and force the game to be abandoned.

“That action was a desperate attempt to bring attention of our plight to the nation, and to pressure Dai Yongge to do the right thing and stop delaying the sale of the club.

“We also need to come together as a football community and consider our next actions very carefully.

“We do not want to throw away all we’ve achieved over the past week. We received overwhelming backing from across the football community and media for our actions. We may lose that support if there is another pitch invasion in the short term.

“We also do not want to give anyone at Reading FC an excuse to put the blame on us for what is ultimately the fault of one man and his associates who have left us with a shell of a club.

“As we say, no action is off the table, at least in the long term. Fans have shown that they will do whatever it takes to force this regime out of our club. But right now is not the time to get the match abandoned again.”

Sell Before We Dai have not only met with the EFL, local politicians, fan-led review chair Tracy Crouch as well as elusive Royals CEO Dayong Pang.

They helped fund a truck bearing Yongge’s face to drive outside the House of Commons leading calls for the independent football regulator and another ahead of England’s match against Belgium in late March.

That same month, a club statement confirmed that Yongge was in talks with Wycombe Wanderers Football Club regarding the sale of Bearwood Park — Reading’s state-of-the-art training facility that only opened in 2019, sparking further outrage.

Sell Before We Dai organised a protest outside Wycombe's Adams Park stadium on Friday evening and said: "Selling one of the club's key assets makes the club even less attractive to a new owner".

Wycombe quickly made a statement confirming that the plans were on hold: "Wycombe Wanderers Football Club are putting on hold provision for funding to Reading Football Club and the acquisition of the Bearwood Park training facility from its owners.

"Importantly, it was agreed that while the details were being finalised and due diligence carried out, Feliciana would provide sufficient financing to Reading to allow it to pay its tax obligations and operating expenses, including payroll for the staff and players.

"It was Wycombe and Feliciana’s belief that they were helping Reading and professional football with the offer to assist its neighbour in a manner that had historically been used in the past by many football clubs. Indeed, Wycombe’s own training ground had been sold over a decade ago to reduce operating expenses and fund the club when the club had its own financial issues.”

Speaking to BBC Radio Berkshire, former chairman, Sir John Madejski, said: “I’m always an optimistic person and I think things will ratify in the near future and the club will be sold.

“If, as I think there are some very wealthy owners lining up, about three of them as I understand it, they’ve got incredibly deep pockets and if they can keep the training ground that would be wonderful because it’s state of the art.

“If there are any business people out there listening , I think reading could be a tremendous opportunity for somebody out there with deep pockets, I really do.”

Hopefully, Sir John is correct and The Royal’s supporters will soon have reason for optimism. They have shown what can be achieved by holding power to account, and refusing to let injustice slide.

It says so much for the club’s troubled finances that a fundraiser was set up by fans to support Reading staff who have not been paid while the Tilehurst End blog assessed what has gone wrong for the Royals and wrote: “This is now a club fighting to stay in League One, let alone get back into the Championship, following a chaotic pre-season and yet more points deductions.

“This is now a club with an owner who struggles to pay his own staff and the tax man, is in constant trouble with the authorities, and has been the subject of open revolt from fans who’ve had enough and are desperate to force him out. This is now a club that sent redundancy letters to 17-20 staff members right before Christmas.

“It all goes back to one man: Dai Yongge. He’s been the agent of destruction in Reading’s 2023, through both callousness and incompetence, leaving everyone else to suffer the consequences of his actions. Managers, staff members, players and fans - he’s mistreated, angered, undermined and disrespected them all. 2023 is the year Reading Football Club paid the price.”

In late March, there were positive developments when the club announced that they had “committed to a letter of intent with a potential purchaser of Reading Football Club. The parties will now enter a period of exclusive negotiation.”

According to the Telegraph, “It has now emerged that the mystery consortium from North America are the preferred bidders, appearing to have secured a deal ahead of hedge fund company Genevra Associates.

The party are understood to have advanced funds ahead of approval by the Football League to enable Reading to pay their liabilities and avoid another points deduction.”

Understandably, Sell Before We Dai were not getting carried away, especially without the identity of the bidder being made public and said: ““We implore the potential buyer to reach out to STAR and the wider fanbase as soon as possible to provide some reassurances.

“We also need to stress that ‘exclusivity’ does not mean ‘done deal’ and as outlined in the statement, there is still some way to go before we can truly celebrate the end of the Dai regime.

“This may be the beginning of the end, but it is still just the beginning. However, though we are preaching caution, there is clear reason to be optimistic.”

What happens next remains to be seen, but the dignified and determined actions of the fans at least give some hope that Yongge will sell and the club will rise once again.

MISS – RED BULL RACING

The controversial first title win for Max Verstappen at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was a watershed moment for Formula One.

With Lewis Hamilton seemingly on his way to a record eighth Drivers’ Championship, the safety car was deployed after Nicholas Latifi crashed five laps from the end.

Amid a muddling of the official rules, that gave Max Verstappen the opportunity to overtake Hamilton on the final lap and earn his first world title, signalling a change in dominance from Hamilton’s Mercedes AMG team to Verstappen’s Red Bull Racing.

Formula One competition has been rather dull since then, with Mercedes struggling to adapt to new regulations and Red Bull Racing dominating.

After winning the Bahrain Grand Prix at the start of the current season, Verstappen’s fourth Drivers’ Championship appears to be a procession, with little of the jeopardy such a high-profile sporting competition deserves.

By the time he triumphed at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix a few weeks later, Verstappen had won nine races in a row, and his 29th out of the past 34 races since mid-2022.

Literally and figuratively, Red Bull is a well-oiled machine, with the company thriving on the track and tightly controlling what information is released into the public domain.

That approach has been threatened since early February, when news broke that Red Bull was undertaking an internal investigation into allegations of ‘inappropriate, controlling behaviour’ by Team Principal Christian Horner.

"After being made aware of certain recent allegations, the company launched an independent investigation," Red Bull said in a statement.

"This process, which is already under way, is being carried out by an external specialist barrister. The company takes these matters extremely seriously and the investigation will be completed as soon as practically possible. It would not be appropriate to comment further at this time."

Horner is something of a pantomime villain in Formula One, unafraid to push technical boundaries and happy to clash with his rivals in search of success.

While acknowledging that an investigation was going on, Red Bull failed to follow a basic rule of crisis communications – do not leave a big information void that can lead to speculation and make the situation worse.

It took two weeks for Formula One and governing body the FIA to make statements, which said little other than that they would be monitoring developments, while Ford, who will become Red Bull’s engine partner in 2026, were more assertive in their demands for a prompt resolution.

In a letter to the Red Bull team, CEO Jim Farley expressed his displeasure with “the unresolved allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Red Bull Racing leadership.”

He said: “As we have indicated previously, without satisfactory response, Ford’s values are non-negotiable. It is imperative that our racing partners share and demonstrate a genuine commitment to those same values. My team and I are available at any time to discuss this matter. We remain insistent on, and hopeful, for a resolution we can all stand behind.”

On the eve of the new F1 season, Red Bull's investigation dismissed the case against Horner and said in a statement: “The independent investigation into the allegations made against Mr Horner is complete, and Red Bull can confirm that the grievance has been dismissed.

“The complainant has a right of appeal. Red Bull is confident that the investigation has been fair, rigorous and impartial. The investigation report is confidential and contains the private information of the parties and third parties who assisted in the investigation, and therefore we will not be commenting further out of respect for all concerned. Red Bull will continue striving to meet the highest workplace standards."

Strangely, no details of the inquiry were made public. While it was to be expected that the complainant and incident specifics remained anonymous, no information about the process, the legal team who undertook the investigation, nor Horner’s defence and the investigation’s conclusions were forthcoming.

Not even the identity of the lawyer who undertook the investigation was made public, let alone the scope of the undertaking or whether it made any recommendations.

For such a high-profile case to lack transparency inevitably gave rise to accusations of a whitewash aimed at moving on as swiftly as possible, when all the pithy statements did were raise more questions than were answered.

If Red Bull thought that the new Formula One season would see the investigation forgotten about as fans and media moved on, they were very much mistaken.

After the investigation, an anonymous whistleblower leaked a file of unverified emails, images and messages, purported to be from Horner to a female third party, to a wide range of media, Formula One, the FIA, and the sport’s nine other team leaders.

Horner, having previously refused to comment beyond protesting his innocence and confidence that the investigation would confirm as much, went on the offensive.

He said: “The only reason this has gained so much attention is because of the leakage and the attention that there has been drawn in the media. What has happened then after that is that others have looked to take advantage of it. F1 is a competitive business and elements have looked to benefit from it and that is perhaps the not so pretty side of out industry.”

Could Horner expect his rivals to remain silent, when he as previously been so forthright about other issues that have arisen? And do other team principals such as Mercedes’ Toto Wolff and the McLaren CEO Zak Brown not have a right to comment, particularly given that the tawdry episode has dragged their sport into the gutter?

No wonder that they have urged more transparency, while Formula One and the FIA have requested to see the findings of the investigation.

What the crisis also exposed was the fractious divisions within Red Bull which threaten to hinder its dominance just when it looked as if an era of supremacy was inevitable.

Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, who died last year, left his 49% share to his family, while Thai pharmacist Chaleo Yoovidhya owns a controlling 51%, with Horner’s future very much a point of conflict between them.

Yoovidhya, who some suggested has been trying to extend his powerbase by removing those he does not consider his allies, backs Horner, no doubt convinced by the Englishman’s track record of building a dominant race team that he has led since 2005, while Mateschitz’s family are said to want him out.

Matters took another turn when Red Bull’s long-term special adviser Helmut Marko, known for his indiscretion towards media and other Formula One stakeholders, came under the spotlight with initial reports suggesting he may be suspended.

That triggered emphatic vocal support from ally Max Verstappen, who warned that his future was closely linked with that of Marko.

After qualifying, Verstappen was asked what he thought about the threats to Marko and responded: "My loyalty to [Marko] is very big. It's very important that he stays within the team. If such an important pillar falls away, that's not good for my situation as well. So, for me, Helmut has to stay, for sure.”

Not only was that a clear threat to the Red Bull senior leadership, it was also in stark contrast to Verstappen's carefully worded answer when asked about Horner’s position.

Whether he was speaking as a proxy for his son or not, Jos Verstappen then made it clear that he saw Horner’s position as untenable.

Verstappen Snr made it clear that Horner has to go, that the Horner controversy was "driving people apart" and that the team would "explode" if their principal remained.

“I sympathise with the woman, with all that she went through, but we will see what happens.

“In the press conference Horner gave the other day it was all about him and his problems when we should be talking about Max, the car, his performance and the race. I've already said I think it is causing problems if he stays.

"There is tension here while he remains in position. The team is in danger of being torn apart. It can't go on the way it is. It will explode. He is playing the victim, when he is the one causing the problems.

"I think it's too late for Christian to say 'leave me alone' but he has the support of the Thai owner so I think he will stay for the rest of the season. I said it would bad if he stayed, it really isn't good for the team, this whole situation.

“But the most important thing for me is that Max is happy. That's what counts for me. I just want him to be happy.”

It can’t have helped Red Bull fans that Verstappen was linked with a move to Mercedes amid the in-fighting within the team, with Horner admitting that they could not force an unhappy driver to remain regardless of a long contract.

To make matters worse for Red Bull, they chose International Women’s Day to suspend the woman at the centre of the controversy, with the team again offering no detail for the grounds of her suspension.

Could there be a more effective way to remind women in motor sport that they need to stay in their lane?

Unsurprisingly, the accuser then lodged an official complaint about Horner’s behaviour with the FIA’s ethics committee, which the BBC reported was not the first complaint made to the governing body amid concerns that Red Bull might try to cover the story up.

It was left to Hamilton, who has urged more diversity and better governance within the sport, to underline the problems the Horner crisis has caused.

He said: “As someone who loves the sport it's definitely disappointing to see what's going on right now. I think transparency is really key and I'm really, really hoping to see some progress moving forwards.

“We always have to do more to try to make the sport and the environment people work in feel safe and inclusive. It will be really interesting to see how it’s dealt with in terms of the effect it may or may not have on the sport moving forwards. It’s a really important moment for the sport to make sure that we stand true to our values.”

Ahead of the Australian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen tried to play down the controversy, backing Red Bull’s investigation process, while lamenting the lack of focus on the team’s on-track success and focus.

The information vacuum, coupled with a lack of leadership from the sport’s governance serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of reputation in top-level sport and Red Bull’s apparent lack of preparation for an internal issue when it has previously been readied for external issues combat.

The lack of transparency and suspension of the complainant reflect badly on the values Red Bull want to transmit.

The somewhat tone-deaf investigation and communications strategy has raised questions about the team's integrity and damaged Red Bull's reputation with its partners and fans which extends way beyond motorsport.

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