It was from the European Club Association (ECA), a football body, and it concerned distribution of €150 million (£127 million/$158 million) of the revenues generated by last year’s Euro 2016 European Football Championship to clubs across the continent for "their significant contribution to the success of Euro 2016 and national team football in general". 

Over 600 clubs benefited in all, but of course the biggest payments went to employers of the players whose countries fared best in the competition: Juventus, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and Bayern Munich were the top five recipients, each getting payments of around the €3 million (£2.5 million/$3.1 million) mark.

Bayern received a further $1.7 million (£1.3 million/€1.6 million) as its share of a $70 million (£56 million/€66 million) pot earmarked by world football governing body FIFA for clubs whose players took part in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

FIFA has a separate scheme to compensate clubs when their players are injured on World Cup, or other international, duty.

You can see where I am going with this, can’t you? If it is right for the employers of professional athletes in one sport - football - to receive payments for contributions by their employees to the success of international competitions that have nothing to do with them, the employers, and which may put the players in harm's way, why should such payments not be deemed appropriate in other sports, in this case ice hockey?

The question is topical because of uncertainty over the participation of NHL players in next year’s Winter Olympic ice hockey tournament in South Korea.

Negotiations over their presence are reported to have been proving particularly fractious because of the IOC's decision to stop covering the cost of insurance, transportation and accommodation fees as they previously had. (Lausanne has never contributed to the cost of the players’ actual salaries during their absence from their franchises on Olympic duty.)

 When I asked them about the current and historical situation with regard to ice hockey, the IOC responded:

"In the past, the IOC has reimbursed the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) for the expenses they had with regard to insurance, travel and accommodation of NHL players participating in the Olympic Games.

"This contribution amounted to about $14 million ($11 million/€13 million) for the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014.

"The IOC never made any direct or indirect payments with regard to salaries or premiums to NHL players.

"This system was changed after Sochi 2014 as a direct result of Olympic Agenda 2020, as the revenue generated by the Olympic Games is redistributed on the basis of solidarity to the development of sports.

"The redistribution takes place through Olympic Solidarity, the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and International Sports Federations (IFs).

"Any payment to one specific league or sport would be diminishing the investment in the development of the other sports.

"It is now in the hands of IIHF to discuss the participation of NHL players directly with NHL and the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA).

"This change of the system does not change the wish and the appreciation of the IOC for having the best players of the world, including NHL players, participating in the Olympic Games.

"To express this appreciation and to facilitate the discussions, the IOC President visited the NHL offices last week in New York.

"We are very happy that the majority of more than 90 per cent of the NHL players and a similar level from fans want NHL players to be able to participate in Pyeongchang according to a recent IIHF survey."

There are a number of issues wrapped up in here: What costs, if any, should be covered? Should it be down to the IF or the event owner to pay? Is it ethically defensible for money that might otherwise go to ostensibly needier, more deserving recipients instead to be channelled to relatively well-off professional sports organisations?

There is also the unspoken question of whether a financial settlement agreed for one Olympic sport, should act as a template for others which similarly make use of the paid employees of professional sports organisations - basketball, say, or perhaps baseball in 2020 - or, yes, football.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for the implication that this is a zero-sum game and that if you give up more to comparative fat cats, it will be at the expense of the grass roots; a certain amount.

It still seems to me though that the nub of the question was best expressed by an official at a leading European football club nearly 20 years ago, before the principle of payments in that richest of sports was established.

Commenting during the France 1998 World Cup, this official summed up the situation as follows: "There cannot be many organisations that are willing to give up assets worth millions of pounds without getting anything back and with a chance they may come back damaged."

Is there any particular in which that statement does not encapsulate the potential predicament faced by NHL franchise owners today?

What is more, as I understand it, contributing their employees to Pyeongchang would also require them to disrupt the NHL season by shutting down the league for two weeks while the Olympic tournament was taking place across the Pacific.

Perhaps for next year the IIHF will agree to foot part or all of the bill previously reimbursed by the IOC, and a deal clearing the way for NHL stars to grace the Korean ice will be reached.

In the longer run though, I would be amazed if the Olympic Movement does not find itself obliged to follow football’s example by making significant payments to employers of the professional team-athletes whose exploits help to light up the Olympic Games.

We are talking, after all, about one of the top money-spinners in world sport, a Movement that will have generated, by my estimation, somewhere between $7.5 billion (£6 billion/€7.1 billion) and $8 billion (£6.4 billion/€7.5 billion) in income from broadcasting, sponsorship and other sources in the 2013-16 Olympic cycle.

If football cracked first, it is I think more because of the greater leverage the employers can exert in single-sports events than any other factor: top football clubs in one sense have FIFA and UEFA over a barrel because you cannot imagine a top football tournament without the best football players.

You can imagine a Winter Olympics without the NHL players who have graced the Games since 1998.

Even so, I think it is only a matter of time before journalists like me start getting media releases like the one that began this column - only substituting the Boston Bruins, say, for Bayern Munich and the Olympics for Euro 2016.