The Super League Conundrum PART II: It’s Not Over Yet
Welcome to Part II of our series on the European Super League, where we talk about though failure of the12 clubs, and why it likely isn't the end for them, just a setback.
Do not presume plans for the European Super League are gone for good. Die-hard European soccer fans like myself certainly hope that the quick turn of events last April means that the European Super League proposal is dead on arrival. But I’m not getting my hopes up. 12 teams made the choice to form the Super League for a reason. They all need money. Badly.
Barcelona were, and are in financial ruin, as evidenced by losing Lionel Messi to PSG last summer. Juventus, Inter Milan, and AC Milan from Italy aren’t in much better shape. Arsenal and Manchester United have seen their standing in English soccer fall drastically over the last decade, while Liverpool’s American owners have seen what their recent success has brought them financially and would certainly want more of that. Florentino Perez from Real Madrid is as money hungry and egotistical as anyone in sports and has pushed for a European Super League since the 1990’s. Atletico Madrid and Manchester City are newer money clubs who desperately want to be seen as part of Europe’s elite class following varying degrees of domestic and continental success. And then there’s Tottenham, who were just there and confusing and nobody really knew or knows how they managed to get a spot on this list of misfits.
Part of the reason the Super League almost came to fruition can be pointed to one exact moment in time and one specific team. Leicester City in 2015/2016. The famous 5000-1 underdogs who defied the odds to win the English Premier League. Everyone loved them, they were the team you just couldn’t help but root for. Unless you were one of the other 6 English teams who initially joined the Super League. Leicester City scared those teams. They had not only won the Premier League, but also qualified for the prestigious Champions League the following season to pkay with Europe's elite (where they woukd have an impressive showing, making it to the final 8).
They showed (and continue to show by the way) that you don’t need to necessarily outspend your rivals to compete. And it made the Manchester United’s and Liverpool’s of the world realize that their spots were under threat. They could no longer guarantee being in the Champions League every season. They couldn’t guarantee that UEFA money anymore. The status quo was broken ever so slightly, and the alarm bells sounded for Europe’s elite. That a totally unknown team could go from zero to hero in one year and be competing with the continents very best didn’t sit well with them. Those teams could no longer guarantee their place among the elite, and the Super League was their way to give them that guarantee.
It should also be noted that the aggressive approach by an investment bank to try to upend soccer tradition should not be surprising to anyone. People who were surprised by such a bold approach by an investment bank to upend such a longstanding sport tradition in the efforts to maximize revenue are probably naïve. This isn’t the first time that bankers have come up with a scheme to greatly reform sport tradition with the goal of maximizing owner profits. Soccer is far and away the most popular, and profitable sport in the world. It’s It should come a s no shock that major banks and corporations would want a piece of the pie. And that sentiment likely hasn’t changed since the collapse of the Super League.
Both J.P. Morgan and the 12 planned initial team owners likely invested real time and effort into their Super League proposal. They could not be surprised by fan protests, although they might have been caught off-guard by the magnitude of the protests and just how angry fans would get. Don’t expect them to quit so easily though. If I was a betting man, I would guess that a slightly altered iteration of this proposal will re-emerge with perhaps with a more carefully planned marketing rollout.
The desire to control global broadcast revenues was likely the major key to the proposed new league. At the end of the day, the plan the 12 clubs, in conjunction with investment bank J.P. Morgan, to break away and form a new closed professional sports league was likely about maximizing revenues among the teams with the world’s most powerful soccer brands. A lot of this revenue would likely emerge from global (or near-global) broadcast contracts. Whether this involve traditional network television, or over-the-top (OTT) broadcasting/streaming deals is unknown. In any event, both local fan protests and the threats of UEFA retaliation could have reasonably spooked not only potential Super League team owners but also their business partners.
But don’t think that just because they’ve been spooked and their plans have been thwarted, that this is the end of this discussion. We know that the three remaining members of the Super League in Barcelona, Juventus, and Real Madrid are still actively working to make their plan work. They’ll come back with another plan someday. It might be a few years, but make no mistakes about it, there is a very good chance they try this again.
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