The disparity between the Premier League teams and the other leagues is huge already. ESL was meant to shorten that gap.
The reasons the later rounds in the champions league are so great is because the teams so rarely play each other, and also there's the outside chance that a team like Ajax will surprise you and beat one of the giants.
I agree that the ESL has only been postponed, but when it arrives I don't think it will be here to stay.
As to the likelihoods of this happening, the premature and hamfisted attempt to roll it out, together with the severe backlash, will make it very difficult to try again any time in the next decade or two at least.
They want to see an underdog BEAT a global power. Which means that the average game is a bitter disappointment. Gone long enough, the ESL would have presented a gigantic competitive advantage for its own teams when vying for star talent. And they're still likely to do it in the future anyway. They just needed a longer runway.
If the Premier League can't have its "tradition" without Man U and Man City, then it isn't tradition that they care about in the first place.
And it is hard to appreciate how good a team is without seeing them play against worse teams. Similarly from the bad teams side it is fun seeing them just make a single goal against a good team, you don't have to win.
They absolutely do. It keeps the big teams honest, and it keeps the dream alive for the tiny clubs. A game between two top teams can be great, but it's not everything.
Besides which, the genesis of ESL has nothing to do with which teams play each other. It's because the bigger teams have dug themselves deep financial holes - to be fair to them partially due to the lack of things like a salary cap - that they want to get out of.
As others have said you're completely wrong in saying that "people don't want to watch a tiny team from nowhere vs a giant in UCL". I'm not saying that nobody does, but they're a very different kind of fan than the people who buy season tickets.
Some American sports teams clash every year and the buildup each year is still huge. We're talking powers in their respective sports that have played each other for almost 100 consecutive seasons, even at the collegiate level. Texas vs. Oklahoma, Auburn vs. Alabama, Ohio State vs. Michigan... even when the teams are doing less than stellar, there's still a gigantic buildup and anticipation for these games because of the rivalries involved. Being on the same level and having that familiarity makes the games more fun to watch and it makes the teams more competitive with each other.
I heard many fans praising soccer because "anything can happen" and "even a small team can beat a big one". While I don't know whether this is true, I think any move away from this core idea will not sit well with the fans. And good luck getting the casual viewers to pay enough to offset the difference.
In the last 25 years, only 5 were won by EPL teams. La Liga has 11. Serie A and the Bundesliga have 4 each.
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/mw8jqp/tv_money_dis...
Maybe not every day, but that is exactly the motivation for the Cups (FA Cup, DFB-Pokal etc.): you have small clubs you rarely hear about play against the giants.
And sometimes (surprisingly often actually), the small clubs win. Not the whole cup. But they win once. Or twice, and it's great drama and a lot of fun.
The hegemony of big money in football needs to be broken.
It wasn’t the case earlier. Between 2008 and 2012, English clubs did extremely well. That time can come again. Even right now, 2 of the 4 European semi-finalists are English teams, one of whom isn’t even doing that well in the domestic league. That does not strike me as a struggling league.
The real advantage that Barcelona, Real Madrid and others have is the lopsided way they allocate domestic broadcasting revenue. The English league splits it equally, for most part. This leads to an extremely competitive domestic league. In Spain, the big 3 clubs gobble the lions share of the TV revenue, leading to boring, easy games for them and more money to spend on players compared to the English. In the long run, the English strategy is superior - it leads to a more interesting League that draws more viewers.
The ESL encourages what you say people don't want. As founders can't be relegated they play every year even if they currently have a bad squad. The current UCL ensures the top teams in Europe the previous season compete.