Your commercial news round-up: Deloitte, Blade Runner, single-use vapes, Football Governance Bill

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In this week’s commercial news round-up, we take a look at Deloitte’s recent layoffs; Alton Entertainment’s lawsuit against Tesla, Elon Musk and Warner Bros Discovery; the new ban on the sale of single-use vapes; and the planned introduction of the Football Governance Bill and what it means for the Premier League.

• Deloitte has cut 250 employees in the UK as part of a “performance management process”. The layoffs, which are the third round in the past 13 months for the Big Four accountancy firm, follow last year’s announcement that it’d be making around 800 redundancies in the UK as demand for services slowed. Despite the firm reporting a slowdown in sales growth in the previous financial year, it was also revealed that its 749 UK equity partners took home more than £1 million on average for the fourth year running. However, as a result of a market slowdown, all of the Big Four accountancy firms have made job cuts in the past year.
   
• Alton Entertainment, the creators behind the movie Blade Runner 2049, has sued Tesla, Elon Musk and Warner Bros Discovery, arguing that imagery from the movie had been used at the launch event for Tesla’s robotaxi without permission from the production firm. Alton claims that the organisers of the event, including Tesla, used AI to create promo material that was based on the movie. It also accused them of falsely endorsing a connection between the production company and Tesla, with the lawsuit suggesting that any “prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicised, capricious and arbitrary behaviour, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account”. In the past, Musk has reportedly cited the original Blade Runner as a source of inspiration for Tesla’s Cybertruck.
   
• It’ll be illegal to sell disposable vapes in England and Wales from 1 June 2025 in a move that aims to prevent environmental damage and protect children’s health, the government has said. According to estimations from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), almost five million single-use vapes were either littered or thrown into general waste every week last year. Defra's Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh described disposable vapes as “extremely wasteful”. Talking of the ban, Creagh added: "This is the first step on the road to a circular economy, where we use resources for longer, reduce waste, accelerate the path to net-zero and create thousands of jobs across the country."

Meanwhile, concerns have been raised over the potential rise in illegal sales that could come about as a result of the ban. John Dunne, director general of the UK Vaping Industry Association, said: "We have a black market in vaping products already that the authorities can't really keep up [with], so now this is going to be dropped right on their lap as well.”

• The UK government plans to introduce “strengthened” legislation to establish an independent football regulator for the elite men’s game in England. The Football Governance Bill will see the regulator receive “new powers”, including over the Premier League’s parachute payments (ie, payments by the Premier League to clubs that are relegated to the Championship), which will be assessed by the regulator only if it “considers them to be of systemic risk to financial sustainability”. Clubs will also be required to “provide effective engagement” with fans on ticket price changes and ground relocation proposals. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: "This bill seeks to properly redress the balance, putting fans back at the heart of the game, taking on rogue owners and crucially helping to put clubs up and down the country on a sound financial footing."

However, despite acknowledging that “key elements of the bill can help make the English game stronger”, the Premier League said it’s still “concerned about the regulatory framework”, in particular the strict banking-style regulation and the regulator’s powers to intervene in the distribution of its revenues. It added that the measures “could have a negative impact on the league’s continued competitiveness, clubs’ investment in world-class talent and, above all, the aspiration that drives our global appeal and growth”. The bill was introduced in the House of Lords on Thursday 24 October.

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