Sky last night put out a statement, saying that they have not been involved, not to say they will.
Was listening to Simon Jordan on Talksport yesterday, he feels that this is a ploy for the bigger teams, to get a bigger slice of the TV revenue from the Champions League and guranteed revenue, by making it members only ie not have to qualify.
Also it will allow the clubs to stream the games, potentially generating more revenue.
Each club will receive 300 million guaranteed + streaming revenue, plus a share of the TV rights from their domestic tv rights.
Also JP Morgan wants a piece of the action, another Yank business.
So each of the Premier teams will be a least 300 million better off, than other Premier team not in the European Super league.
No team will be able to compete financially and what will be the point to win the Premiershit, with no chance of European football.
The Yanks will kill the game as we know it.
Most of these clubs are struggling financially, due to paying silly money to players and agents, until this is address, the problem will just get worse. The problem is we have allowed our clubs to be 100% owned by foreigner owners.
A power struggle is threatening to reshape European soccer, and the UEFA Champions League, the biggest club competition in the world, is poised to take a massive hit.
On Sunday, 12 of Europe’s top soccer clubs announced they were splitting away from the Champions League establishment to form a “Super League.” The new organization represents an existential threat to football associations across the continent and a direct attack on UEFA, which derived 51% of its revenue—$2.37 billion—from Champions League media rights in 2018-19. The rebel collective is being funded at the start by JPMorgan, which has reportedly made a commitment to the Super League of at least $4 billion.
Broadcast fees for the upstart could be enormous. UEFA pulls in nearly $4 billion annually from media rights across all of its competitions, triple the amount it collected in 2011-12, according to the association’s latest financial report. The Super League’s broadcast package itself could amount to hundreds of millions annually, and it has a massive opportunity to blend traditional linear television rights with streaming, subscription, gambling and social media in a globally unprecedented, fully integrated manner. The league can count on the popularity of its members and an increasingly favorable regulatory environment to boost its ceiling as well.
UEFA, the administrative body overseeing European soccer and one of six continental subsidiaries of FIFA, runs competitions among national teams like the quadrennial European Championship as well as the world-renowned Champions League. It manages prize money, controls media rights and sets regulations for its 55 member associations.
The Super League’s founding members are some of the world’s most valuable sports teams, collectively worth $37.2 billion: Spain’s Atlético de Madrid, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona; Italy’s AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus; and the U.K.’s Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. Losing those teams would deprive UEFA of the massive crowds that gather to watch superstars like Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo, Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah.
The move, while bold, is no surprise, says sports consultant Marc Ganis. Rumblings of a clandestine operation circled the global soccer landscape for years as player-transfer costs and salaries rose to what many in the soccer world gripe are “obscene levels,” according to Ganis. The explosion in media rights fees and new team owners flooding the sport with money have offered clubs some opportunity to seek even greater financial security. The economic uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns further exacerbated “an already-imbalanced situation.” The announcement of the Super League is a step further.
“There’s a lot at stake for FIFA, UEFA and the national federations,” Dr. Kenneth Cortsen, a sports economist at University College of Northern Denmark, says of the power struggle now playing out in the media. “They know that the big clubs have a lot of negotiating power and a lot of consumer appeal because they have the best players. What’s at stake here is soccer’s integrity, soccer’s identity and soccer’s soul, but also significant resources in terms of revenues that UEFA would like to protect.”
The absence of high-end, internationally recognized teams, and their star players, could significantly depress the value of UEFA’s broadcast offering. Clubs have to qualify for the Champions League every year and aren’t guaranteed a spot in the competition. And although broadcast deals tend to be enforceable as long as games are played, a tournament of this magnitude without some of Europe’s most popular clubs could compel broadcasters to rethink their deals in the region and around the world. ViacomCBS and Univision together spend a reported $150 million annually on the American rights to the Champions League, with CBS making the matches a key component of its Paramount+ streaming offering.
“Even if the broadcasters don’t have a legal right to terminate or renegotiate, they would very well look to a voluntary renegotiation of the existing deals,” Ganis says. “Change has been in the air for some time.”
Still, the breakaway will be tricky for the new league, which needs to cement its efforts in the face of pushback from existing soccer governing organizations. A statement from UEFA went as far as to threaten banning players from the domestic, European and world stages, which could bar global stars like Ronaldo and Messi from playing with their national teams.
“I believe with the things that we have seen so far that it will end with a compromise between FIFA, UEFA, national football associations and the leagues and these 12 clubs,” Cortsen says. He adds, “However, I think we could see FIFA, UEFA, national football associations and leagues claw with their fingernails to protect their current position in the global hierarchy of professional football.”
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