European Super League collapsing as all six English clubs withdraw
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
But you really have to wonder what goes on in the heads of club owners in Spain, Italy and the UK that they thought they could get away with it.
EDIT: And whoever is surprised that politicians of the calibre of B. Johnson and E. Macron are getting involved has badly misjudged how important the INSTITUTION of football/soccer is to Europeans. As a sport, a social activity, an actual competition however crooked, not TV entertainment.
Before the politicians and the leagues could even articulate their threats the thing was finished.
Honestly, springing this out of the blue on the fans and players both speaks of astonishing arrogance.
Clearly this was not handled well, but Wikipedia does have a page of failed attempts going back to 1998.
My guess would be that they thought pandemic financial losses would allow them to force this through.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_European_Sup...
Even a third rate politician would sense an opportunity to score some points. It seems pretty obvious to me, but apparently not to J.P. Morgan.
Football is a very popular sport (and yes, entertainment) but equally most people are not fans and don't feel that strongly.
I feel that there is also a social class divide on this, especially in the UK (perhaps in other countries as well), and that Johnson's reaction was simply a cynical political calculation, not least taking into account the recent Conservative push in Northern working class areas. Politicians 'care' about football because it's a vote-winner within a certain demographics.
"The whole ESL move shows how out-of-touch these owners are. They have completely misjudged the strength of feeling from fans, players and the whole country. Football is for the fans. Our fan-led review will still happen and I remain convinced of the need for reform. We must make sure this never happens again."
A lot of fans are hoping that we will see something like the 50+1 rule [1] being adopted in the UK. Not sure they will/can go that far though.
As it is right now, you could open your own football club with your buddies, and advance some 10-20 times and be in the top league.
> The fundamental difference between the old Football League and the breakaway league (what became the Premier League) is that the money in the breakaway league would only be divided between the clubs active in that division whilst in the previous arrangement it was shared between all Football League clubs across all divisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_of_the_Premier_Leag...
Not watching is one option, directly pressuring your club not to join is another. Government regulations are yet another. Thankfully we don't yet live in a world where corporations can do whatever they like and your only recourse is not to watch
News articles keep citing 'greed', but nobody offers numbers or estimates of numbers. How much do clubs earn today, and how much extra were they promised to join the ESL?
Guaranteed placement in the league, no risk of demotion.
I can see it from the clubs point of view, but the risk of demotion adds excitement. Imagine the NFL if the two worst teams got demoted.
Player: Coach, do they not have relegation in America?
Ted: Oh, no, no, no.
Player: So what happens to all the shit teams at the end of the season?
Ted: They play out the rest of the schedule, going through the motions in meaningless games contested in lifeless, half-empty stadiums, and everyone's pretty much fine with that.
1. I swear, this is the most relatable non-current-events-driven show anyone has done in years.
[0] Not that I'm particularly a fan of soccer - the English-style long-ball (aka hit and hope) game with possession carelessly given away all the time drives me up the wall to watch (admittedly much less in evidence under Gareth Southgate at the 2018 World Cup). There's also too much diving and associated on pitch drama/gamesmanship that has nothing to do with playing, and disrupts the flow of matches, for me to find it particularly enjoyable.
In the UK only the top 4 in the Premier League qualify for the Champions League. So at least 2 of the 6 clubs that signed up for the ESL lose out every single year, which means very unpredictable income and matches.
So I perfectly understand why they want a bit more certainty and a guarantee to bring top games to fans every year.
I'm not into football so I understand much less why fans were so opposed to this. And I am also shocked that the PM wanted to intervene within 24 hours of the announcement on an issue that seems completely private and irrelevant compared to all the issues the country is facing.
I'm not a UK citizen but I follow UK politics, and to me Johnson's actions here are perfectly on brand.
I remember a conversation I had about the UK economy years ago, before Brexit.
London doesn't seem to be much of a financial hub anymore, so football and English royalty are the two main exports the UK has to offer the world these days.
Boris Johnson is opposed because the conservatives gained a lot of northern working class seats in the last election and they want to keep them. Happy as I am to criticize him and his party, I'm not sure why they shouldn't deal with this as well as the other issues
And this is very important for the future of the sport. Without a portion of the money being funneled like this to the smaller teams there is no space for future talent to grow.
In Europe we effectively do not have collage sports so we have to actually pay our athletes in the lower levels so they can keep on improving until they are good enough to join the top level (or just keep on playing at that level if they already peaked as a good opponents for new talent to train against)
Edit: Just looked up another report that says that every club would get 100 million Euros, just for competing, while in the Champions League (which you have to qualify for) your base line is 15 million Euros.
I think I won't mind this scheme collapsing.
There's a reason the UEFA was so outraged at the proposal.
In comparison: in current leagues, each team plays each other team twice per year. If you have only 2-3 internationally known top clubs (like in the German Bundesliga), that adds up to 2 to 8 "top games" in a season.
Also, these top clubs in the ESL would distribute all that additional money among themselves instead of sharing it with the smaller ones.
I'm glad the ESL idea has fallen through as it seemed to be poorly thought out, but I hope this doesn't stop all attempts at innovation in European football. I think there are far too many uncompetitive games (both in the CL and EPL), and I'm quite fed up of the top teams buying up all the best talent, even just to sit on the bench.
https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/news/0268-12157d69c...
So, all in all, not that bad to have 2 extra clubs that were successful recently. It could be Arsenal, it could be Sevilla or Ajax or Atalanta.
I think the biggest selling point was the lack of relegation which removes the huge risk and 32.5% guaranteed share of the tv and advertising for the founding 15 plus additional 32.5% for the 20.
[1] https://www.marca.com/en/football/international-football/202...
[2] https://www.givemesport.com/1677624-european-super-league-ev...
Compare that with the English rugby premiership where they want to ring fence the league so that none of the teams can be relegated, and it very much is driven by the financial implications of being relegated. (Of course they will wait until one of the biggest clubs gets promoted again, after being relegated due to fragrantly breaching spending rules)
Right now Premier league clubs get around €100M from broadcasting rights [3: this source is from a few years ago but gives a good breakdown of the clubs' income]. Broadcasting income is a lot lower in Spain and Italy, hence those clubs needing the ESL more. The ESL clubs planned to continue in their own domestic leagues too.
Here is a breakdown of the Champion's league money (which the ESL proposed to replace): [4]. Each decent team which reached the knockouts (so most of the teams involved in the ESL) would earn around €40M, with the winner earning around €80M. So winning the Champion's league would be worth less than simply competing in the ESL.
This all doesn't include sponsorship money.
Edit: I also want to note that of the 6 English teams, only 4 can qualify for the Champion's league every year. The others usually go to the less lucrative Europa league, for which the payout for winning is less than for simply participating in the Champion's league. This year those clubs were Tottenham and Arsenal - so even more benefit for those two clubs.
1: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/20/business/money-european-s...
2: https://www.givemesport.com/1678145-european-super-league-ho...
3: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/22/premier-lea...
4: https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/how-much-money-champions-lea...
The ESL is simple a closed system, similar to what NBA in US in that there is not relegation/promotion from other lower division leagues, and that means they only play against themselves. Poorly performed team do not need to worry about getting relegated, hence there's really no competition there. And that kills the sporting spirit and the fundamental value behind sports.
Do we believe in UEFA/FIFA? Hell no, but we do believe in football pyramid system and ESL just don't have it. ESL is not the solution to the current problem in European football. It also creates a barrier to not let smaller teams to be part of the competition.
And also, how would a league with guarantueed 10-12 teams solve the problem of "weak" matches? That would get boring after a while for me. One of the excitement of current setup is that the underdogs do have a chance of winning, remember Porto and CL? And that because of the mix of different teams, strengths and tactics it never gets boring.
Also, how would this 10-12 "best" teams evolve if you have a guaranteed place in a league. You can optimise for profit and not for best football, skill, tactics and play. So I would wager that after a few years they would play some weird football optimized for number of goals or excitement.
I don't think the ESL was really about addressing the problem of low quality matches, but I really hope this doesn't stop all innovation in football. I think compared to other sports (Rugby, Cricket and NFL come to mind), football is too conservative about making changes that actually improve fans enjoyment of the game. I've certainly found myself watching switching over to other sports over the last 10 or so years.
The ESL proposal sounds like something that an American guy like Joel Glazer, a guy who admitted to not understanding the offside rule, might come up with. I don't want to make it about Americans and how they don't understand football, because they're making good progress over there and a lot of them do get it. How they got Agnelli, a guy who as the heir to Fiat and Juventus on board, is a mystery to me. If you grow up in that family you have no excuse.
The thing with American sports is the leagues are closed shops. Even baseball, with its extensive farm system, doesn't have promotion and relegation between weaker and stronger leagues. Rich guys buy a franchise, and the business pays some pros to swing a bat or throw an oval ball, etc. That's the "club".
In Europe, there are a couple of thing to note. In principle, you can find 20 mates and found a club at the bottom of the pyramid. If you somehow stay fit and play better than the other teams in your league, you can in principle be playing in the Premier league (in like 12 years or something crazy), and from there qualify for Europe and even the Club World Cup (which isn't nearly as big at the World Cup). That's a principle: however lopsided your financial advantages are, you still have to beat enough opponents to stay in the league that you're in. And if you're a Leeds fan you will know what risk is: they had an amazing team 20 years ago but it all unraveled, they had to sell players, got dropped down the pyramid, and lots of pain. They just got back and they hate the ESL idea.
There's also the fact that clubs aren't just the professionals. For instance there are a load of youth teams at various age groups, there's women's teams, and there's even teams for old people. All playing in the same uniform. There are actual grass roots, who get paid next to nothing, yet they go and put out cones for the kids, they stand outside the stadium selling matchday leaflets, they clean stuff. I'm watching from the other side of the pond, but the closest I could get to this was the Green Bay fans clearing snow every winter at Lambeau.
Of course it makes sense to the bean counters. You make a closed league to limit risk. You get JPM to front you some money so all the clubs can buy the best players. You sell the TV rights. With some luck, the chumps will pay for it.
What's missing is that people really, really care about how football works in this world. It isn't just about getting the 22 best guys on the pitch. Whatever you think about billionaires using the clubs as their playground, most fans see the billionaire era as another chapter in the story of their club. Each club is a story, and amazingly, winning is not all that matters. Most clubs have never won diddly squat. But people get on a bus to sing songs because they want to watch a story. My best stories about following my team are never about winning. It's about being part of a community.
In its current incarnation it is a knockout tournament where the best positioned clubs in all the different national leagues come together to compete. So the basic idea is that you have to reach a certain position in your domestic league to compete in the tournament next year. Otherwise you don't get to compete, or you can compete in a lower rated Europa League.
The big clubs didn't like this, the idea that they might miss out on the CL and the big TV bucks, and on the other hand they don't like the idea that small, not attractive clubs can get in the CL and basically lower the TV appeal of matches since less fans follow them.
So, they decided to ignore the CL, and create their own competition which would pretty much look exactly like the American NBA,NHL,etc. model. The clubs would be fixed always the same, regardless of how they play in their national leagues. But they did expect to continue playing in the national leagues, simply abstaining from the UEFA competitions.
Basically the idea of an unchanging big club Super Legaue goes against what a lot of people consider to be the biggest appeal of Europe wide football: free competition, lots of clubs from all around, a chance for everyone to win, a strict requirement to play good in your national league.
In the European Super League, a group of European top clubs wanted to establish a new league format, presumably leaving the UEFA tournaments and national competitions (although details have been vague). This would basically mean that UEFA itself would have competition by a new parallel organization.
The distress has its context in the ongoing struggle between commercialization of football and its "traditional" roots in which (local) sport clubs often form part of the identity of its supporters. This identity threatens to lose its basis when the commercialization makes the clubs more and more for-profit entertainment businesses.
One can argue about how far football already is down the line. But clearly, that supporter identification even with the largest clubs still persists.