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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

These are the largest clubs in UK and Europe. They is no risk of demotion but rather a risk of not qualifying to the Champions League, which in practice is both a planning and financial problem and a disappointment to fans.

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.

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Because that ESL would pull most of the money from other leagues. At the moment also smaller teams have chance to compete in Champions League and even smaller sucess in first qualification rounds brings enough money to small team to try very hard to get into it next year. This, on the other hand, fuels and improves quality of teams in smaller european countries. All the money is distributed across more teams. This is not something big teams look for, of course.

> All the money is distributed across more teams.

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)

> 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.

Fans are opposed because it's the final straw of their clubs being turned in to money making corporations rather than about football.

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 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 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.

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