While the soccer community celebrated the failed launch of the European Super League last week, the motivating factors behind the proposal haven’t gone away.
Now known as the “dirty dozen,” 12 powerful European soccer clubs tried to form their own enclosed league, which was scuppered just days afterward due to pressure from fans, authorities and governments.
These teams, particularly in Spain, are still nursing pandemic-induced debt, while revenues at many clubs around the world have been hit after virus restrictions forced games to be played behind closed doors — evaporating matchday incomes.
What comes next?
Florentino Perez, the president of Real Madrid which was one of the clubs involved, has told Spanish media that the project, or one very similar, will still move on.
His Barcelona counterpart Joan Laporta has stressed that the ESL clubs are open to dialogue with UEFA, Europe’s governing body, in a bid to revive the project.
Simon Chadwick, a director of Eurasian sport at the Emlyon Business School, believes suggestions that the Super League has fallen apart are naive, telling CNBC that Europe will get a “super league by a different name,” adding that it is “a case of when, not if.”
Chadwick argues that the coming years will bring further polarization and industrial concentration, with the big clubs set to accumulate further power, and the gap between them and the smaller clubs growing further.
American inspiration
This, he says, will be seen through how major clubs look to develop new revenue streams, with over-the-top broadcasting set to feature prominently.
He compares the NFL’s recent TV rights deal, worth around $110 billion over 11 years, to the English Premier League’s current domestic broadcast deal worth £4.7 billion ($6.6 billion), secured in 2018 and due to run out this year.
While the NFL has grown in popularity outside of the U.S. in recent years, it is still dwarfed globally by England’s Premier League, with the UEFA Champions League also having an avid worldwide audience.
Tech companies have joined the bidding wars for the Premier League’s broadcast rights in recent auctions, easing the logistical obstacles to global distribution.
