If the American NFL, which has 300 million fans in the world, bills the double of the Champions League football on television, which is followed by at least 3 billion fans, there is something wrong with the enhancement of the most prestigious international football tournament. And above all there is an unspoken value that must be recovered. How? By increasing the number of matches between the most prestigious teams, owners of a global brand recognized on all continents and attacking the markets with a new product. In a short time, it will be possible to go from 3.2 billion European Champions and Europa League revenues to 5/6 billion in the short term and up to 10 billion in the medium term.
The reasons behind the acceleration
This is the reasoning that the managers and owners of the top European clubs have been doing for months. And this is the philosophy that led them at midnight on Sunday 18 April to formalize the birth of the Super League with a flurry of press releases. With a tactical and strategic acceleration. Tactics since Uefa should have presented the new one to the press Super Champions to be launched after 2024, Monday 19 April at 2.30pm. It is strategic because the Covid pandemic has eroded the turnover of European football after more than a year by volatilizing revenues and producing a shortfall between 6 and 8 billion euros. In short, there was no more time to waste. In any case, the choice of English clubs was fundamental. In fact, the Premier League with its global dimension and a seasonal turnover that alone is worth 3.6 billion a year from TV rights is the national championship that had the most to lose. Instead, among the 12 founders there are 6 clubs across the Channel: Liverpool FC, Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal FC, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea. To these are added AC Milan, Atlético de Madrid, FC Barcelona, FC Internazionale, Juventus FC,, Real Madrid CF, with a leading role of Florentino Perez (president of the new company that will manage the competition), Andrea Agnelli and the owners Glazer. of United.
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The global entertainment competition
All these 12 clubs (to which another 3 are likely to be added soon, including Bayern Munich and Red Bull’s Lispia among the Germans) have in common the fact that they are now independent media companies. That is, producers of media content. And on this level, that of entertainment–business, the war between the great playes will take place in the coming years. Who are not just football and are not just sports. In fact, the real competitors of the top European clubs, especially for the generation Z audience increasingly bored and inattentive to traditional football, are the Nba of basketball, the NFL, the sports, Fortnite, video games, the whole variegated world of social networks. In short, the competition in the attention economy is global and transversal and to keep up with the times, increasingly original and captivating products will be needed. This is why the new format and the emotional and legal tear of the Super League represent only the first steps of an industrial project as ambitious as it is inevitable.
Uefa and Fifa and territorial football
The highest football authorities have in turn declared war on Super Laegue, but they will be able to little, as they could against the basketball Euroleague. Even the European political world immediately thundered against the “privatization” of football. However, the ongoing revolution appears impossible to stop. Football already before Covid he was traveling more and more at double if not triple speed. It is enough to superimpose the rankings of the turnover and the sporting ones of the last decade to understand how they are now changing almost specularly. The circle of the richest clubs in an increasingly elitist and self-referential vision already existed. It will therefore be necessary to rethink the development and subsistence models of “traditional” football, the one linked to the top national championships and beyond, so that the territorial bond of the clubs is strengthened and the social function of the clubs is strengthened. In this sense, the desertification of grassroots football does not suit anyone.
Subsidiarity and sustainability
It will therefore be essential that resources from the Super League flow to the “mimori” clubs in solidarity. In the statute of the new entity, reference is made to the fact that “the solidarity payments will be higher than those currently generated by the European competition system and should exceed € 10 billion in the club commitment period”. The new tournament to be launched as soon as possible in the intention of the founders (20 total clubs, 5 invited for sporting merits) will be built with financial sustainability criteria, since all the founding clubs are committed to adopting a spending framework. In exchange for their commitment, the founding clubs will collectively receive a one-time payment of € 3.5 billion dedicated solely to building infrastructure investment plans and offsetting the impact of the Covid pandemic.