The plan I’m seeing is that five spots will eventually be reserved for clubs who have been promoted from the European leagues (Henry Bushnell at Yahoo Sports has a pretty good plan for how this would work). I think that’s a good thing and why the Super League could be a competitive success as well as a commercial one. My issue is with the Big 15 having immunity from relegation solely because of their “brands.” Fuck that.
I’m mostly ignorant of the sport but I thought I had read this was not proposed as the clubs breaking away from their home leagues, but rather it would be a series of matchups played on Wednesdays and separate from the league games they normally play. So this wouldn’t envision the English teams breaking away from the Premiere League etc, but it would diminish the importance of the UEFA Champions League.
Right. I’d wager the vast majority of American Premier League fans root for one of the “Big 6”. Same goes with East Asian Prem fans. This is to capture the world economic market more completely. Those fans will likely get over this pretty quickly.
I’m pretty agnostic as I don’t necessarily care too much for European football, but I think the “death of football” stuff is quite a bit ridiculous. European football has been moving in this direction for decades. And even if this goes further and becomes a pan-Euro NFL/NBA style league of 20 teams with those clubs leaving their domestic leagues, football will still be fine. People will just view those domestic leagues as people currently view the Eredivisie.
If UEFA does indeed kick them out, one upside would be that with the cream-of-the-crop teams leaving La Liga and Premier League, the middling to bottoming teams can finally have a real shot at winning a title.
That Real Madrid-Barcelona duopoly got real tiresome a long time ago; same for the Big Six hogging nearly all the Premier League titles. Give the minnows a chance for once.
Screw UEFA and FIFA, I say!
UEFA, however, is making noises that they’d kick the teams AND the players out of normal league games and stuff like the World Cup: “you want to play in this new special league? Fine. That is the only place you’ll be able to play.”
Yeah, this proposal is basically trying to do what the NFL does in the US. Which is an insanely profitable approach. Calling this corruption is patently absurd and overlooks the fact that these teams are businesses. Now, if you don’t think they should be for-profit entities, that’s a debate you can have, but wanting to earn more money is not “corrupt”.
Relegation, while exciting for fans and great for the media, is a awful arrangement for the team owners and kinda crappy for the players. For this reason I suspect that this proposal will move forward, it will be a raging success and the fans will very quickly adjust their rooting interests. Compare it to the evolution of American College Football as it migrated away from a more regional conference oriented Bowl system to the current Playoff oriented system which has really emphasized the power of “national” programs that have fans coast to coast.
The obvious danger is that in the long term, the Super League is what people will end up watching because it’ll be perceived as the legitimate top tier league.
I don’t think it’ll end up working out, though.
I don’t think the government should get involved in this.
I’m not sure I see the comparison to the big 4 North American leagues. The NBA and NFL rely on colleges for player development. The next closest levels of professional competition in basketball and football would probably be the Canadian football league and maybe some European basketball league (Croatia or Serbia maybe, that seems to be where the best foreign players in the NBA come from). Neither would stand a chance. With MLB and the NHL, the minor leagues aren’t really separate franchises, they’re a farm system for the top league. The top Japanese baseball teams would possibly decent in MLB, but that’s the closest I can think of as far as any teams from any other leagues competing with the big 4.
The closest comparison I can think of in US sports would be college football. With the way the college football playoffs have gone, I think a top division of men’s football might work. I’m thinking a division that had 12 teams, maybe Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Florida, LSU, and 4 others might work. Yeah, the teams from the next tier down would suffer, but if we’re talking about chasing the almighty dollar, then those top 12 teams, or 16 or 20 or whatever the final number is, probably wouldn’t care.
You’re right that the lower tier developmental systems wouldn’t have much in common, but I think that’s besides the point. The comparison I’m making is that the owners of these teams are looking to create a closed system that ensures consistent regular revenues, likely shared, and a really strong negotiating position against their TV partners. Predictability is very, very advantageous.
Fans are far more fickle than people like to admit. They will develop allegiances to the ESL teams quickly making the gambit a success. It’s not an accident that several of the founding teams have owners that currently or previously owned American sports franchises.
I hope it dies a death.
When Barcelona and Man utd. play now it is always an event, a rare situation with huge stakes and something to savour.
What is the point of a regular meeting with nothing in it for either team? That’s a glorified friendly and it dilutes the importance of such clashes.
This offers absolutely nothing for the existing fans that the existing competitions do not already offer.
I have to say I’ve never heard such a unanimously hostile reaction to a sporting competition proposal. It seems the only people in favour are those interested in making money out of it.
I hope the various governments and sporting orgnaisations do everything in their legislative powers to put barriers in the way. I like the thought of kicking the teams involved out of the Champions league semi-finals right now and local councils removing the right of, say Liverpool to use the name of the city in their branding.
This is part of the joke of it, though - as you probably know, Tottenham (one of the so-called ‘big-six’, largely because in recent years they have consistently finished in the top six in the league) have never won the Premier League, indeed they haven’t won the league title since 1961. Whereas Leicester City, who won the title less than 5 years ago (more recently than Man United) and are doing significantly better than 4 of the ‘big six’ this season are not included. Arsenal last won the Premier League in (goes to look it up) 2004, in recent years have struggled to qualify for the Champions League, and this year are currently 9th in the league table, 7 points behind the top six with only six games to go. It’s a farce.
Over the last decades we have seen a huge level of corruption in the existing footballing hierarchy and yet no government or the European Union have stepped in to deal with it - such as having oversight or auditable standards along with legal sanctions, except for those that exist for any other business involved in tax evasion or other forms of financial law-breaking.
There has been plenty of opportunity to deal with such issues and plenty of voter support for such measures - why hasn’t it been done - one has to suspect that corruption through political lobby has a lot to do with it.
With all that said, I find it a bit rich that politicians are making vague threats over an issue that is purely a matter of legitimate and lawful business. It does not matter how distasteful this may seem what is being proposed is perfectly legal.
So now we have bewildered fans who all have a vote and we have vested and heavily corrupt interests generating outrage.
In the current model, playing in the Champions League does involve lots of income, but only if the team qualifies for the competition, and the finances are such that they need to invest very heavily in order to provide the infrastructure and especially the players their immense wage bills.
The problem then is that failure to qualify for the Champions League once that investment has been made is a disaster - and the finances of the major clubs are dodgy - especially in Spain.
That uncertainty about future revenue is the key to all this - I’d envisage those top teams being able to plan far better, owners would have a much more predictable investment which in turn would encourage more investors.
I recall all the same arguments when the English Premier League was created and distances itself from the Football Association. The fact is that the doomsayers were partly right and partly wrong, English football didn’t collapse and much more money came in, however it has significantly weakened the position of the remainder of the English Leagues - one side effect of that is actually promotion, yes, really because the financial benefits of attaining EPL status are so great that teams will outspend their income in the lower English leagues that we have seen quite a number of them go bust when they did not achieve their aims - and there are plenty of teams whose finances are precarious - including those in danger of relegation who outspend their resources in a vain attempt to stave off relegation and maintain their EPL status.
So what measures could Footballs sporting bodies have taken to protect income and improve the viability of clubs - well one thing that comes to mind is a player wage bill cap, other pro sports have done exactly that - Rugby Union and Rugby League.
UEFA itself has had ‘fair play’ rules which as widely usurped and corrupted and rarely enforced but these were intended to set a limit on player wages as determined by club income - the problem being that the major clubs hate the idea and have found many ways to work around it - whilst UEFA has chosen to be much less than vigorous about enforcement - so its only the smaller clubs that fall foul - whilst the big clubs are the ones whose finances are constantly on the edge. It is only because billionaires seem prepared to effectively donate their money that keeps those clubs in business - no doubt the billionaires can access certain tax advantages out of a business that consistently lose money.
To paraphrase an American commentator tonight, “You know it’s fucked up when the UEFA and FIFA are the ‘moral high ground’.”
3.5 billion USD each per club as a joining fee. Hundreds of millions of guaranteed income a year. Pus probably equals that amount in additional earnings. Annually.
The owners of the clubs will happily pledge allegiance to ISIS over this.
All the yelps by politicians won’t help, unless someone can offer a better deal.
From what I’ve read, there doesn’t seem to be too much info coming from current players of these clubs, so what have their reactions been? Are they all on board, or are they contractually obligated to play no mater what? Were the players involved in the decision making process at all, because I would assume the clubs wouldn’t move forward without the backing of the players. But then again I’m a North American who can only just barely follow why this is such a big deal so I’m out of my depth.
Most important question, however, is how will this affect the second season of Ted Lasso?
I believe that at least a few of the players are aware that a salary cap is looming on the horizon. I have no idea how that plays in Europe. But this whole idea of turning a Super League into another American-type sport structure turns my stomach. It’s just a way for owners to lock in profits and never have to worry about success on the field.
It shores up their finances in the short term, but as I see it, the medium- to long-term isn’t so clear cut. I mean, even if all the best players do stay with the clubs involved for the time being, justifying whatever the cost is of the broadcast rights (and hence what TV companies can charge fans), it’s quite possible the next generation of players will stick to the ‘old’ clubs/structure for whatever reason. The bottom line is that if and when the ESL cannot claim to be offering the best standard of football on the planet, it could die pretty quickly.
American style sports organization make the big bucks. Teams are businesses. Their ultimate success is irrelevant. Or maybe a nice to have but not strictly necessary*.
Cricket franchise have followed this. Soccer will too.
*I saw an ESPN special a few years ago on some NFL team (I think they were the New Orleans team, not an American so don’t follow NFL much, so I could be getting a lot of this wrong) who paid money to their Quarterback and no one else. Guy tried his best but was getting killed on the field, to the level that his opponents felt sorry for him.
But the team owner was making money so he had no problem.
Interestingly the Quarterback in question later had kids who went into the NFL and he made sure they went to teams who cares about winning, even getting them to renege on a contract.
I admit to being mystified as to why government should do a damned thing about it.