The total jobs from the industry would of course go down because you are condensing revenue into less markets. This is a single thing. Here are the major Euro metropolises that can compare to NFL metropolises: London, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Munich. This is where a majority of the teams have to be placed. That's pretty much it. Then you have metropolises like Liverpool, Rome or Turin, Marseille, etc. Can Madrid, for example, support more than 1 team? Atletico already are not well supported there. But maybe. Can Barcelona support more than 1 team - that is unknown. Paris and the French will encounter the same problem. 3 teams would need to be placed in Paris and the other in Marseille. Can Paris support 3 teams like London does? Germany - Munich, Berlin, maybe another city. The idea would work well for Germany and they are already the most profitable Euro football league and are run very well. England - 3 in London and 1 in Manchester. Or two in London, 1 in Manchester and 1 in Liverpool. Works well in England as well. Italy - 2 in Milan, one in Turin, 1 in Rome. Turin and Rome are question marks: can they support a team attendance wise at the same level that a team in Milan or a London can? extremely unlikely and not really feasible. It's like asking Green Bay to support their team like a New York team. 20 teams right there. About 10 new stadiums need to be built. Okay, I was exaggerating about 100 billion - but it will probably cost around 10-15 billion - especially for 3 new stadiums or renovation in London (the stadiums there are not big enough as it is now for EPL). Major problem with this and difference from NFL: The NFL is spread out over the entire population base through bigger metropolises. Aside from New York a city like Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Washington (which are the same size or bigger than Milan or Madrid or Barcelona or Manchester) has only one football team which is supported by the entire city. And they do not compete for sponsorship money in the same sport - only with other sports. And there is no issue in fans minds that only part of the country is represented because NFL pretty much spans the entire map of the country.
Great post. But I think a Euro Super League could easily match the NFL. Not initally and not because of the sum of its parts, but because I think revenues would grow much faster in a closed, NFL cartel/collusion-like environment. Think about how fast the EPL grew from inception, how much foreign money poured in, and how much English football became a radically different beast. If Euro SuperClubs were able to create a cartel that provided top talent and could better manage TV reveneues and player salaries, it would explode globally. The NFL is still relatively constrained to the US...this league could happily extract revenue everywhere.
Nonsense. If we ignore how stupid the entire super league premise is: there are more than enough "markets" in Europe. Dortmund and Schalke both have a bigger metro area than Berlin, and as long as they are in the same league will always have a bigger fan base and higher attendances than Hertha. The NFL plays in Cleveland, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Buffalo, Charlotte, Green Bay etc. All way smaller metro areas than most of Germany's major metro areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_regions_in_Germany And there is no way that there would ever be three teams in Paris, no way. On the other hand teams like Juventus or Liverpool would be locks. The main revenue source for the league would be TV income anyway. It wouldn't make any sense at all to exclude teams with a huge fan base for teams with none at all. 3 teams in Paris... come on.
If you read my post you will realize that I said the idea would work well in Germany - they are the most profitable soccer league in the world. And Juventus is about the same size as Green Bay, the smallest team, - so is Rome, Liverpool, Turin, Marseille etc. And the Green Bay Packers have attendance per game as high as freaking Manchester United and more than 95% of European teams. And GDP per capita (i.e, total personal income to spend on tickets, merchandise, etc.) is much higher in the U.S over England, Germany, France - and especially Italy and Spain. Search the forums and you will see studies on TPI being a factor in supporting a team.
Given that the vast, vast majority of people in England support a team other than Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool then I think the rights would sell for quite a large amount. If you were from here you'd understand that.
What you have to realise is that much of Europe is more densely populated than USA. Most of Netherlands is allmost a single metropolitan area. List of european metroplitan areas. And yes Green bay has high average attandance but they play so few games. Manchester united has allmost double the revenue. NFL franchises compared to european clubs allso has a small international market. The one thing helping the NFL is city/state funded stadiums because of cities scrambling to just get a team. One of your links showed that professional soccer in Europe has a combined revenue of about $20 billion, that is allmost the number of NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL combined. A European closed "superleague" would only help line the pockets of a few rich owners. The industry would loose not giving all clubs a chance to compete in a CL based on quality of play and not based on the size of the market.
But your post shows little familiarity with European soccer. It just looks as if you randomly picked major cities. E.g. Berlin - by no means one of the top two markets for soccer in Germany, not even close. Again, the idea that a European super league would need 3 teams in Paris is one of the strangest I ever read in these discussions. A "market" like Rome (with a metro area of 3-4 million people) is obviously big enough to get attendances as high as any NFL team. The reasons why they don't right now have nothing to do with population. Comparsions with the current state of NFL teams and European clubs don't lead to much. Football teams play fewer matches by far, compared to the 30 or so home games a European top clubs plays every season, and the situation when it comes to TV income is also different. All European countries have a much smaller population than the US, so obviously the national TV deals don't pay nearly as much. However, the question would be what a super league TV contract would pay world wide. And GDP per capita in the US is higher, but so is the inequality in distribution. If Juventus was part of a 20-30 teams league with a near monopoly on soccer (like the NFL has for football), with a world wide TV deal, they'd likely get slightly more income than they get right now.
yep even borussia monchengladbach would be a better option for a 'european super league' club than berlin (hertha) I wouldnt like a 20 team-no relegation-league in europe but i would love if europe had a football pyramid as a continent First Div 20 teams---3 go down/winner fifa club world cup second div 24 teams---2 go up/next four playoffs for promotion/5 go down 3div west, 3div central, 3div south, 3 div east---winner of every 'conference' is promoted with the second places going to the playoffs for the last promotion spot and continue with the regional leagues for the fourth and lower divisions
I'd also like to add that it's simply not true that there are nearly no stadia in Europe that could live up to NFL standards. It's true that no stadia used by club teams can match the biggest and best NFL stadia like Cowboys stadium or New Meadowlands, but those aren't average NFL grounds either. Heinz Field, Gillette stadium or the Georgia Dome don't have anything on the top European stadiums - not to speak of the Oakland coliseum. Manchester, Arsenal, Munich, Dortmund, Barcelona, Madrid, Moscow (Spartak), Lisbon (Benfica) and arguably Milan all already have stadia that can match at least the lower end NFL stadia, St.Petersburg, Lyon, Marseille are currently constructing them (Valencia, too, but they're out of money). Additionally, there's a dozen or 2 modern stadia in the 50-60k range that are good enough not to miss out on too much revenue - the really important part to raise revenue are the corporate facilities anyway, not so much the size.
Not that I hope this ever happens (I neither hope nor believe in anything like this), but just for fun: an American-style European Super League with 4 divisions, eg for a 40 md league with a match against every opponent and 2 within the division. Then a knock-out stage with the top 3 of each division and 4 wild cards, makes 16 clubs, 3 home-and-away rounds + final. Every club is in a metropolitan area of at least 1 mio (5 mio for multiple teams). stadia (data as of 2011, so Torinos, Stuttgarts and St. Petersburgs new stadia are done and ready): dark green: up to NFL standards light green: A bit on the small side compared to NFL grounds, but modern enough to be a major source of revenue blue: planned/under construction orance: needs a workover and/or has an athletic track red: new stadium needed NB: capacity for Germn stadiums is in seating configuration, except for Stuttgart North Sea division 75k Manchester 45k Liverpool 60k London 1 (arsenal) 40k London 2 (chelsea) 55k London 3 (Tottenham) 60k Glasgow (Celtic) 50k Lille 55k Amsterdam Atlantic division 95k Barcelona 80k Madrid 1 (Real) 70k Madrid 2 (Atlético) 80k Valencia 55k Seville (Real Betis' stadium) 65k Lisbon (Benfica) 65k Marseille 50k Paris Mediterranean division 80k Milan 1 (Inter) 80k Milan 2 (AC) 40k Torino 80k Rome 60k Naples 55k Istanbul (Fenerbahce) 70k Athens (Panathinaikos) 60k Lyon Baltic division 50k Hamburg 55k Gelsenkirchen 65k Dortmund 60k? Stuttgart 65k Munich 60k St. Petersburg 80k Moscow 70k Kiev Liverpool and Naples would basically have to construct new stadia, Rome and Milan would at least need some renovations, otherwise, what is in place or underway is enough to put together a league that could rival the NFL. And there's still a number of alternatives (Donetsk, Porto, Vienna, Frankfurt, Cologne, Rotterdam, 2nd Istanbul, 2nd Lisbon which also have clubs with 50k+ stadia built in the last 15 years, or use the running track stadium in Berlin, or put a club into the national stadium of 75k+ in Paris, London, Istanbul or 50k+ in Bucarest, Warszawa, also all built in the last 15 years...). Obviously this could not compete with the NFL in terms of average attendance, but as has been mentioned several times, there are way more home matches (20 in my proposed format instead of 8 in the NFL regular season), and average attendance doesn't necessarily translate to revenue anyway (just compare Chelsea and Dortmund - Chelsea makes double the money with half the attendance). PS: In case someone wonders: I put Marseille and Paris together because of their rivalry. And yes, the composition is arbitrary, Portugal and Holland should have more clubs based on history, it would have been nice to keep derbies in Glasgow, Athens, Istanbul, but since we go under American principles here, I decided that the market sizes are too small compared with more clubs in the big 5 and a 2nd Russian club
Average attendances per your divisions are: 55 , 70 , 65.625, 63 thousand. Average NFL stadium is about 76k. Average NFL ticket prices for the smallest teams are more expensive than even Man U tickets (although, yes, Man U's revenue equals the Cowboys). Also NFL has an approximate 90-95% of capacity attendance. I do not think that those 32 Euro teams have that. Revenue of top 20 teams in both Europe and in NFL (all in USD) http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/34/soccer-10_Soccer-Team-Valuations_Revenue.html http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/30/football-valuations-10_NFL-Team-Valuations_Revenue.html The top 20 teams from each league = 5.537 billion for European soccer vs 5.304 billion. Now we are forgetting the next 12 teams. NFL = 2.64 billion while the next 21st most valuable team in Europe is under 142 million so max would be 12 * 142 = 1.704 billion. All in all the NFL teams made $700 million more dollars than the top 32 European soccer teams. And these European teams play more than 40 games a year when you consider Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup, Carling Cup etc. the NFL may soon be moving to an 18 game schedule. That will not be good news for this thread. What can be emphasized is that the top teams, especially the top-tier teams blow out the NFL in terms of revenue. However, the strength of the NFL is in the collective revenue power of the NFL. Take the Green Bay Packers, the smallest metro market in the NFL, has revenue equal to AC and Inter Milan. This doesn't even mention sustainability and competition. Will the numbers stay the same? not likely as local domestic leagues will challenge the Euro super league for revenue and tv viewership in local markets. Sustainability: there is no salary cap (refer to above links mentioned in the thread about massive debts for top-tier teams) which allows for sound economic investment and growth through all teams. The current system causes revenue to float to the top 5 teams, while in the NFL efforts are maid to strengthen the individual and the whole at the same time. Hence, Green Bay vs. Milan - which is why the NFL is so strong. On that note, the European league does have more potential revenue. If such a league were created and salary caps were introduced then you would see individual markets becoming strengthened. Eventually all of the money in Europe would then go to these leagues in a sustainable way crushing all the competition. Again, we can refer to the NFL merging with AFL to avoid competition and control the market. As a side note, GDP can be looked at as a rough indicator of max economic ability (although global appeal messes up the numbers slightly) GDP in $Trillions European Union 14.772 - United States 14.119. GDP per Capita European Union app. 30,000 - United States 45,938. Corporate sponsorship - mentioned previously. Language barrier as there are many different languages spoken across Europe. Not an issue in U.S. Language is a massive economic barrier.
Average attendance in the NFL is ~68k. And no, those 32 neither have the average attendance nor the combined revenue to top the NFL now. The whole point of it would be to strip revenue off of the multitude of smaller soccer clubs and focus it on these 32 teams, to raise revenue, not keep it on the level that it currently has. If that succeeds, this league would quickly overtake the NFL in revenue, and with a couple of exceptions, it wouldn't need the amount of investments into stadiums that you suggest to do that. Would it succeed? I don't know. I'd like to think that English, German or Italian football fans wouldn't be too fond of the idea to seperate their biggest teams from the rest and rather stay with their domestic leagues... but I might well be mistaken. I am quite sure, though, that we are much more likely to get something with 20-24 teams and promotion-relegation than an NFL-style closed league with divisions.
I think IPL in india might match NFL may be in 10 years http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/iplarticleshow/5736736.cms
Haven't been on this thread for a while but I see it is the same argument based on current club revenues and once again ignoring that money in soccer comes from tv rights... Also what is the revenue from an individual NFL game? $5m maybe? So moving to an 18 game season would boost revenue by $10m per team - doesn't exactly change the thread. Man U still have some of the cheapest seats in the Premier League - try comparing to Arsenal - about to have the first £100 General Admission tickets next season $157... General Admission this is not hospitality or special seats, just plain old normal seats. Comparing GDP's is frankly ridiculous as a huge amount of revenue for the European Super league would come from outside the European Union - countries like China, Hong Kong, Japan, even the USA. Combine the world's GDP and that is the effective market... Ultimately the NFL will always be limited by its lack of success in other markets - big markets like Asia, Middle East, India, Europe (you know, the rest of the world) The IPL is definitely one to watch and is a very interesting business but it will miss out on markets like Asia, USA and most of Europe...
It's quite a bit more than that, to be fair. The average ticket price is $75 @ average capacity in the "normal areas" using this avg price at roughly 65,000. That's $4.9 million. Throw in food and parking, which is frequently controlled by the franchise, and that's another $1.5 million. Another kicker is the private VIP suite experience. A conservative average price per season for these is $200,000, or $25,000 per regular season game (exhibitions are basically freebies) at a conservative estimate of 100 suites per stadium. That's another $2.5 million. Don't forget food and beverage service is extra at probably $70-$80 per head which comes to another quarter mil. So you're looking at $10 million generated in stadium per game. A longer season means more TV money too. $4 billion for playoffs + 16 regular season games per team probably jumps another 10%, or $12.5 million per team on average. You're probably looking at $20-$25 million per team in total for one extra home and away apperance per year. Someone might bring up the fact that they'll need to cut the exhibition season by one home date to accomodate the schedule, but the reality is, fans are stuck wth those tickets and they're figured in to the season ticket price (8 home dates + two exhibition games). Season ticket holders usually give those tickets to their poorer friends anyway. One less exhibition game = higher ticket prices to offset. Maybe the food and beverage comes down from a 1.5 mil boost to half that, but still in the range of $20 to $25 million per team.
I think in start the comparison is unfair. Why compare 32 NFL teams with 32 top Euro teams as the systems are so different. Rather compare American pro football clubs/leagues (which translates only to NFL) to European pro football clubs/leagues, which are one big pyramidical system. I don't know the numbers of revenue of ALL European football clubs, but it must vastly surpass the revenue of ALL American (gridiron) football clubs. Next step would be: what would happen with this big sum of revenue, if the NFL-like superleague would be formed. Here I just guess, but I guess the overall sum would be lower (even though naturally the 32 Superleague clubs would increase their revenue). Even if the Superleague would earn more than NFL, the victory would be Pyrrhical, overall European football would be at loss. At loss in financial sense, I am not even talking about other aspects.
Why? Nobody's making a value judgment here. The number 8 isn't better than the number 6 just because 8 is bigger.
That's what you get in internet when everyone, even those which lack adequate English language skills, can post their poorly composed thoughts. Is this better then: I think in start the comparison is faulty.
Well then you'd have to also include the US pyramidal equivalent, $$$ NCAA football which supplies the NFL teams. For example, Forbes estimated the Notre Dame football program to be worth almost $100 million. It makes $20 million in profit alone. Many of these teams routinely draw 90,000-110,000 to each game. http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/22/college-football-ncaa-business_cz_jg_1222collegefootball.html
I don't want to nitpick (too much), but that's no pyramidal equivalent. There are no barriers between levels in Europe, and all clubs are connected in the pyramid. Icelandic club in the lowest Icelandic division, which plays in front of 50 parents and relatives can in theory become Icelandic champion (through pro/rel) and later on continental (European) champion. To be fair (I hope that someone don't get offended by the use of this word), when comparing both systems (about how much revenue they generate), the revenue of college and highschool football should be taken into the account, so here I do agree. On the other hand one should add all those village/small towns clubs in Europe too, which may not even have a senior selection (and work only with youth) or exist on the lowest levels of the senior pyramid. Their revenue is really small (consists of small local sponsorships, parents' fees for training their children, plus the subsidy of local community (as there are no organized "school" sports programmes, and clubs perform those programms for children, local community (municipality) pay clubs money for the service provided), but there are thousands of them. Still, I believe noone is able to google out the true numbers of both systems, so it's all guesssing, which revenue is higher at the end. About the profit part, if I understand correctly the players are not paid in college, and if you add all that attendance and TV ratings, no wonder how profitable it is. I always wondered though how come Americans find it acceptable, that there is so much money involved in college sports, hundreds of millions, but the ones who really make it happen (the players) don't get a cent out of it.
This isn't completely true. In the college sports that do make serious money the players are not paid a salary, but they do get a free education that's worth $20 to $40,000 a year or more. In may cases this is an education that they might not have had access to without their abilities to play a sport. Whether they make good use of the educational opportunity is another question, but one can argue that each athlete on an athletic scholarship takes away an opportunity for an otherwise qualified individual to attend an institution.