Would A European Super League Make As Much Money As The NFL?

barcelona rarely sell out for a regular match, and that is with the best players in the world at there disposal. the same for real. you expect to suddenly start selling out in a league in which they will be losing much more frequently.

your opinion is a best case scenario, life doesnt work like that.

And that's the rub right there. This talk of a Euro Super League trumping the profits of the NFL is nonsense. What makes the potential teams in a Euro Super League "super" is that they are perennial title contenders in their own league. So a whole bunch of glory hunters around the world follow them. What happens in this new Super League when Arsenal is a bottom feeder? Or AC Milan is a bottom feeder? Or Bayern Munich is a bottom feeder? Well, those team cease to be "super" and eventually you are looking at pretty much the same issue as you have in a regular league, except now you have marginalized STORIED teams. The answer to the question posed is a resounding no. And it's not even a close call.

The big clubs don't want a Super League. They want more of a share in the leagues they are currently in. The Super League talk is a blunt instrument/threat that they pull out in order to bully the other side to the table. The previous poster says the teams know they will make tons of money in a Super League. I think they know that they WONT. They just use talk of it as a bargaining chip.

I don't mean to be rude but that is an absolute load of tripe.

The reason the teams that are popular now is not just to their success, it is more to do with the coverage they receive.

In detailed research by a series of market research companies in different areas of Asia it was shown that loyalty to clubs pretty much doesn't exist anyway. The loyalty of these fans (the ones you call glory hunters) as the rest are genuine fans, is actally towards individual players or superstars. Hence the popularity of Man United for a period when Beckham was there and then Ronaldo.

The market that you are talking about is the one from ten maybe fifteen years ago. With the internet and the sheer volume of information available online the real genuine football/soccer fans support the team they want to and it wouldn't matter whether they are fourth 14th or 24th in a European Super league. Again market research reports have shown that a fan in Asia is just as likely to search for news on their team every day as a fan in the country of the club is.

The asian markets have moved on immensely and to think that they are all just glory hunters like 10/15 years ago is extremely myopic.

(Barcelona average 78,000 for last season)
(Real Madrid 75,000 for last season)
Also the point is that they wouldn't be ordinary games they would be Barcelona v Man United, Real Madrid v Arsenal.
Every game would be big!

i think you must be living in the 90s.
Italian clubs have already agreed to move back to collective bargaining (precisely the opposite of what you are talking about) Spanish clubs are currently in discussion about moving to collective bargaining and the EPL has always been collective bargaining.

To think that man United wouldn't make more money by being in a European Super League compared to the EPL is really a strain on anybody's logical thought process.

Would an average soccer fan prefer to watch man United v Stoke or Man United v Real Madrid. If your answer is Stoke then you are right if it is Real Madrid then you are wrong. It really is that simple!!!

Just to remind everyone, according to Deloitte (i.e., real facts from accountants and not big soccer speculation) the total revenue of EPL, Serie A, La liga, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 is about equal or less than the NFL. From an attendance perspective that means that before the super league you would have 19 home games * 100 teams in these 5 leagues = 1900 games of revenue played during a year.

A euro super league would play 19 home games a year for 32 teams (more likely 20) meaning total home games would be only 380-608. That is a decrease in games by at least 68%.

Not too mention the loss of CL home games and Europa League home games and tv revenue + sponsorship.

Not too mention the loss of tv revenue (yes, there would be a loss of tv revenue) because there are 68% less games to show on tv. And these games don't even have commercials.

Even if got back to the level of having the revenue of all of Europe than you succeeded - it would make as much money as the NFL.

Here are some issues:

Salaries: Europe is already getting destroyed by idiot owners and no salary cap. If you create an even more "elite" league then player agents will demand higher salaries than they are already making - which according to Deloitte is about 90% of total revenue for the top teams. Arms races would become even bigger as the big clubs now compete with each other not just in the CL but in league play as well. Think Rooney's contract is big? a super league salary for Rooney would be maybe twice that because of the massive competition for his services.

Competition: for example: would the EPL diminish overnight - or Serie A? So large chunks of the tv market in Europe itself would be lost to other leagues.

Jobs: And if you decide to totally dismantle all the other leagues - What are you going to do about all jobs lost in each market. You are talking about probably half a million jobs lost - governments wouldn't let this happen.

How many super clubs are there in Europe anyway?

Barcelona, Real Madrid. AC Milan, Inter, (Juventus). Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man City with the sheikh (Tottenham). Bayern Munich. Are any of the other French or German teams super clubs. Not really.

So essentially you only have maybe 10 super clubs all over Europe.

Who gets to join? Clearly England should get the most teams because it is the largest market. But would La Liga only be able to submit 2?

Infrastructure: There are maybe a total of 2 - 4 stadiums in the entirety of Europe that can match the average NFL stadium in terms of revenue. So about 20-25 new stadiums would need to be built. That would cost over $100 billion - that is insane and there is no money for that. As an example that is why Tottenham can't spend to the level of Chelsea or Arsenal even though they are in London - and Stamford Bridge only holds 42,000 - 30,000 less than any NFL stadium.

All in all this idea would be a disaster for the European economy and to a reasonably minded person wouldn't even reach the NFL's level of revenue.

most of what you are saying is true but you miss the one most important factor out - by uniting all the best teams in one league, it becomes the only soccer people in the world want to see.

What happens when there is one product that is better than all the others? It becomes very expensive and the people in control of it become very rich.

What you have missed is just how much more money these clubs will make. I'm not sure what deloitte numbers you were looking at but at most clubs wages/revenue ratio is about 65/100. At some clubs like Man City yes the ratios are ridiculous but at more established better run clubs like Arsenal, Man United, Tottenham wages aren't that much higher.

The stadium point is completely irrelevant to this discussion as there is money to build stadiums - Russia are planning to build 13 new ones if they get the World Cup - about 10 new ones are planned for England. Tottenham have plans submitted already, Chelsea are investigating areas like Earls Court. Also gate receipts in a European Super league would barely be a third of each club's total revenue.

Why would they lose Champions League money?
Do you really think they wouldn't have a European cup competition as well as a league?

A European Super League would include Russian teams as well as French (heard of Lyon, Monaco, PSG?), Dutch (heard of Ajax?), teams like Zenit, Rubin Kazan, Dynamo Kiev (probably before your time) are all massive and have huge followings. Again there are big German teams.

The most important factor though is the media rights and just how much these would sell for. You now have internet, tv, highlights, and phone media rights sold in separate bundles for ridiculous amounts of money

You still haven't told me exactly who will be joining this league? There aren't more than 10 super clubs in the entire world and there is a massive political question about who gets to join - do you include teams like Aston Villa?

It's a concept and a theoretical argument that revolves around sponsorship and media rights so it really doesn't matter what teams would be included.

If you really need all the minor details to argue this case then you've missed the point completely

so why don't they form it already? what are they waiting for?
this has been talked about for 15 years at least and it never gets any closer to reality.

why? well, because it wouldn't work. mostly because there is not enough interest among european fans in playing clubs with which they don't share a common history, language and rivalry. european competition works only when every game has a high competitive significance.

even a six game group stage has problems with that. when they tried something more extensive, like the two group stages, it blow up in their faces and had to withdraw very quickly. a complete 38 game ( or longer) season would be a monstrous bore-a-thon which would be canceled after after 2 seasons at the most.

business practices of soccer clubs are irrelevant to the amount of revenue they can generate. some of them don't care about profits because they are either non-profit organizations or playthings of billionaires.

and how is this exactly going to collapse the sport? a few clubs, even quite large ones might go bankrupt, but they'll be back in a couple of years, just as in the case of fiorentina, probably the biggest club to go bust so far.

also, the gdp of spain is not very important for real and barcelona. they are global clubs.

the market for such a league wouldn't be just the eu, it would also be russia, turkey, and ukraine.

you're also presuming that business will be back to usual in america quite soon. i don't think so, i think this is a dramatic change we're going through and that americans will have to adjust to a lower amount of consumption.

You think that's why?
Really? Honestly?
It's nothing to do with FIFA, UEFA, national FAs and the legal implications?

The problem with the Champions league example is that it was and always has been and always should be a cup competition - bringing more leagues into a cup competition is indeed boring.

However, if that become a genuine cup competition and the big teams formed a European Super League withdrawing from their domestic leagues you would see something different.

I also hate to break it to you but football clubs, especially the people who make the decision don't really care about the fans, they care about sponsors and media rights - look how much actual fans bring in to a club and then compare it to tv rights and sponsorship.

As long as international markets would want to watch it - and they would as nobody would want to watch the EPL without United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or La Liga without Barca, Real, Valencia, Serie A without AC, Inter, Juve etc etc etc then it will make money and not be the bore-a-thon you call it.

Legal issues are the problem not the fans

why would they care about fifa and uefa if huge amounts of money are waiting for them?

they would either ignore them and form an independent league or bribe enough people to approve it. whichever works better.

and what would make the the euro league not boring? what would it have that the champions league doesn't have?

the match-day revenues make up around a third of the revenue at most big clubs. that is very significant. also, they influence sponsor and tv revenues.


a half empty old trafford in a mid table euro league game vs roma won't be a very desirable tv product. the stadium atmosphere and the rivalries of supporters are a significant part in football's global appeal.

I'm not very good at the multi quote thing so just bolded my answers above. I presume you know the length of the waiting list for season tickets at places like Old Trafford the Emirates etc... If you think that attendances would drop you are absolutely mad.

Don't forget that the media channels would have bought into this and will be pushing it as the bestest thing everest much like SKY do with the premier league. Sky proclaimed best league in the world.

The papers etc would build up the hype and people would forget the old days - people have already forgotten about the old division one and the EPL's promise to only have 18 teams...

that's the only card they have to play and it could also be beaten. the breakaway group could form their own national team competition or they could defeat these bans in the courts.

the reason it hasn't come to that is that the clubs are happy with the way things are.

why does it matter that the champions league was once started as a cup competition and is now a cup competition with a group stage?

what is fact is that the group stage of the cl is a lot less interesting than the cup stage. why would something that would essentially be an extended group stage suddenly become hugely interesting?

domestic leagues are interesting because you play your rivals, with a shared history, culture and language, and you still play for cl or european spots or to avoid relegation if you're not in the title chase.

in a euro league you would mostly play foreign teams you have no rivalry with and only the first place would matter. or would you still have relegation? how would you organize it?

old trafford was probably the wrong example as they have probably the biggest fan base, although i don't think even they would sell out competitively meaningless games against non rivals. maybe for the first few times, but not in the long run.

there certainly would be a lot of empty seats at most grounds. champions league gets all the hype you can imagine and there are still lots of empty seats in the group stage.

this would be a much bigger change than the re-branding of the first divison into the premier league.

no amount of hype could make it a success.

I'm a lot busier today than I normally am so I'm not going to bother to pick all the holes in your arguments but you keep referring back to the champions league group stage as being boring - that's because it is dull and predictable and involves lots of teams who aren't going to win. The other teams just want to get through to the serious business.

Your argument is essentially that leagues are more boring than cups.

Is one league more boring than another is the real question.

The league wouldn't be competitively meaningless as it would just be the competition. it would be the same as a league.

start their own national competition? really?

I don't know what planet your brain is on but it's certainly not this one.

and how would the euro league be different?

5-6 teams could win it and after 10 rounds 2-3 teams will be left playing for the title.

what would everyone else be playing for?

what's the point of this nonsense.

yeah, you really need to be from another planet to think only fifa can organize a football competition.

This is incredibly pointless if your arguments are going to be like this when the important parts you are ignoring. That's it for me for this thread unless somebody can say something that has actually been thought through.

in other leagues you play your rivals, you play clubs from your own country, not some foreigners you don't care about, you play for cl spots if you're no longer playing for the title, or you play to avoid relegation.

none of this would apply to an imaginary euro league.

and you talk about ignoring the important parts. oh boy.

fifa's ban could be defeated in the courts. or players would still take the much bigger money and forget about national teams . which would then lead to fifa's competition losing prestige and them having to change their policy.

it could play out in a number of ways, i don't know what would happen.

what is crazy is to think that fifa are unbeatable and they are the only thing standing between clubs and huge money they could make by this league. if that much money was to be made, they would agree a deal, the fifa bosses would get a nice sum to approve it and we would see that league happen.

Another thing about this whole European Super League is over who would be in it.

I know its already been mentioned but I dont know if anyones picked up on who the richest clubs are in the world, according to Wiki 7 out of 20 are English Clubs. The rest are in Spain, France, Germany and Italy. So youd have argument over who qualifies, Ajax arent in the top 20 financially but they are in a sense considered a big club. Yet Newcastle are one of the richest and yet probably wouldnt be allowed in if it worked out the way I think a ESL would. (ie- having the clubs spread out across Europe)

Also another point is that the appeal of the Champions League is that its these big guns randomly thrown together in huge knockout games, it wouldnt be half as fun on a daily basis. Its a bit like Christmas in that little kids think they would love it every day but really it would lose some of its appeal if it really happened.

if you don't mind me saying - but that is a very dumb comment. of course it matters what teams are included. For example if you only had 1 german team in the league and you still had the Bundesliga - most German people outside of Bayern Munich would watch Bundesliga on a Saturday or Sunday. It is for this same reason that German people watch Bundesliga over the Premiership even though the premiership is hands down the best and richest league in the world.

So what would have to happen to keep all markets would be the top 4 teams from England, Italy, Spain, Germany and France = 20 teams a super league. If you consider the premiership now it would be almost as good in terms of talent as the premiership is right now. There are still going to be teams like Tottenham, Liverpool, Everton, Aston Villa, Roma, Atletico Madrid etc.

This would be a good idea: the Super League could replace the Champions League and instead of the Champions league being a knockout tournament with a limited number of games it turns into a full-fledged season long single-table schedule of 38 games. The top teams qualify to enter the tournament through regular UEFA CL qualifying format and then the top 2 from 10 groups qualify to play the entire next season in "the super league". The bottom 3 get relegated back to their country leagues, so Man U could go down back to the EPL from the Super League etc. And the winner of the qualifying matches get placed: i.e, 1st place, 2nd place and 3rd place. The qualifying could be like a world cup tournament.

This would be the easiest way to do this as it wouldn't destroy European soccer and polarize viewers.

laughable. this entire post IS big soccer speculation because you've already decided the structure of the domestic leagues and super league when there's not even a hard proposal. Projections made from speculation is like multiplying by zero.

Ding ding ding. If you take away what makes a Spanish team Spanish (i.e. competing against other Spanish teams) then you lose something. The league basically becomes NFL Europe in terms of cultural significance.

and if in week 38 you have Ajax with 20 points playing Tottenham with 25 points - who cares?

An interesting setup I'd propose is to have the teams play in domestic cup competitions even while playing in the Super League and have some kind of formula (perhaps the same we use for the Champions League now) to derermine promotion to the Super League along with playoffs for the last 4 or 5 spots. This would allow teams like MSK Zilina to have a Cinderella-type opportunity once every blue moon. So this means the bottom 5 of the Super League all get relegated.

Every game would be televised worldwide and the start times all staggered to appease the worldwide audience. Chinese primetime. Arabian peninsula primetime. EET primetime. GMT primetime. And possibly (Spain only) a late afternoon US timeslot of 4pm ET. Both Saturday and Sunday with occasional Friday and Monday night games. No midweek games as those would be dedicated to domestic cup competition.

But the domestic leagues would become the minor leagues and I'm not sure the Premier League would be interested in that happening. Who would buy rights to the EPL or La Liga to see Getafe play Almeria or Stoke play Birmingham? I suppose the US would still buy rights just like we buy rights to the Championship, but they wouldn't be very attractive.

It's fun to dream isn't it?

ahh - someone already has my idea

i am just raising issues with the infrastructure required to do such a thing and bringing in real facts from Deloitte to consider the question properly. Too many jobs would be lost and there would be too many small metropolises that can't support teams and too many different tv deals instead of a unified tv deal.

I don't see where the jobs would be lost? All the clubs would still exist...
There is no unified tv deal at the moment anyway.
These small "metropolises" you speak of seem to support the clubs at the moment.
Claiming $100bn would be required for infrastructure is absolutely ridiculous. The most expensive stadiums in the world don't even touch $1bn let alone five or six.
You claim to use Deloitte figures for facts and then make up numbers to go with them.

The choice of clubs issue is pretty meaningless as you can guarantee that all major nations and areas in Europe would be represented. There would never be the case where only 1 team from Germany would be chosen for example.

How it works is very different from whether it would be more lucrative than the NFL and a pretty irrelevant question and tangent from the actual discussion.