EPL considering a few matches overseas.

They agreed to discuss the idea.

 

Why?

If I'm an owner those games would be in China, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia. And Thailand!

Do you really think Bolton-Middlesborough draws in the US? For the Far East is where clueless fans shell out a lot of money to follow their teams.

 

It would be a big deal if Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Liverpool played over here. When Barcelona played in NY a few years ago the stadium sold out with Americans cheering against NY because they were Barcelona fans.

 

would their be sell outs for Wigan/Blackburn?

 

The only way I can see this working is this.

The overseas games will be Week 1 of the EPL season; weeks 2-39 will be regular league fixtures.

In that Week 1, 10 games will be played around the world; my suggestions are:

Tokyo
Melbourne
Johannesburg
New Delhi
Sao Paolo
Mexico City
Toronto
Moscow
Houston
Beijing

You'd have to have last year's league-winner go against the winner of the four-team playoff for promotion, then 2 vs. 19, 3 vs. 18, etc. If you paired them off 1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4 like in pro bowling, you'd have a couple of awesome matches, then some duds when you have 17 vs. 18, and 19 vs. 20.

Of course, if the league schedulers had any brains, you'd make them ALL derby matches that first week: Everton vs. Liverpool, ManC vs. ManU, Chelsea vs. Arsenal, Fulham vs. Spurs, etc. But that's just me.

 

I think i should add that this idea is EXTREMELY unpopular with English fans, theres already well over 1,000 comments on the news story on the BBC website and the overwhelming majority of them are negative.

I express the same thoughts. This is our domestic competition, not the global gravy train corporate bandwagon plastic fan league. How exactly would this encourage Americans to take up watching your domestic competition the MLS? Surely if anything it would create more what you like to term 'eurosnobs' who refuse to watch anything if it isn't the Premiership, in which case you'll have thousands of new Manchester United and Chelsea fans but barely increased MLS crowds.

Your the richest country in the world, if you want some of the best teams in the world then do it off your own back, don't go damaging the integrity of our domestic competition. Actually that sounded harsh, i know its not YOUR fault, its the faul of greedy foreign mega rich buissinesmen who have come over to England buying clubs and treating them like play things, now they want to send the Premiership gravy train literally global to try and fill their back pockets with cash even more. They don't give a CRAP about the fans, the results of taking Premiership games on the road could be disasterous!

What happens if Serie A and La Liga decide they want in on this and also decide to play games around the world, then what happens if the Premierleague want to play even more games around the world so they can sell more merchandise. Before you know it you have a competition to see who can play the most games abroad and sell the most replica shirts to chinese people.

What happens when more foreign buissinessmen with no respect for the game want in on it? What happens when every Premiership club has been bought out by one of them, i don't think they'll be too keen to see their prize assets be relegated, which would mean bye bye relegation. Its a slippery slope and before you know it you'll have some jumped up idiot trying to move a premiership club permanently to new york. The results for all of soccer would be catastrophic.

I can guarantee you now that even attempting to play a few games a season abroad will be met with outcry and protests, we can not afford to allow it to happen for the fear that the things i mentioned above will start happening.

 

although i agree with most of your post, please don't pull the "lousy yank" card on this. it's a case of English owners being greedy and not just American demand, but worldwide demand. besides, these proposed international games won't be just taking place in the US.

like i said, i agree with the rest of your post. keep the Premiere League in England and the MLS in the USA.

 

I'd imagine.

Haha. Sorry, that train left the station looooong ago. How many Man U fans are on these boards and across the world that have never been to Manchester? How many "Scousers" have never been to Liverpool?

It won't. The people that stand to benefit from this don't care about MLS.

Yup.

We are not doing anything to your domestic competition. The owners of the twenty Premiership teams and the league itself is doing it.

And MLS will never reach the "best teams in the world" status cause the level of support, both in attendance and financials, will never reach "best teams in the world" status to make it financially viable unless the owner is just willing to lose money every year.

That's how business works. You can't say on one hand "Liverpool needs new owners in order to be competitive to win the league and compete in the Champions League. How else could we afford to keep a player the class of Gerrard?" and then say "I can't believe this team is thinking of playing a home game away from Anfield!"

You're just now realizing this?

Could be, could not.

Your domestic league will eventually die or have a significant fall-off in level of support as a transnational super league develops.

This has already happened. Do you honestly think Cleveland native Randy Lerner bought Aston Villa cause he was enthralled by the traditions of such a club? How about that former Premier of Thailand that might have used government money to buy Manchester City?

Yup. I can see relegation ending in 10 years or so, to be replaced with a franchise model where the 20 English teams are all the bigshots alongside teams assigned to fill geographic/demographic holes.

To be perfectly honest with you, this will happen anyway someday. The amount of money to be made is too large to be ignored for owners and investors.

I understand your feelings and your opinions, and I think you have good reason to be scared. But you cannot on one hand say you're proud England is the greatest soccer country and has the greatest soccer league in the world, and then not expect that the interest that comes from fans of your league abroad is not going to be capitalized on. You seem to want your country's league to be Romania's. The level of the English league today is beyond a success. You think businessmen are not going to use that?

 

How is this different from Brazil vs. Mexico in Boston, or Brazil vs. Sweden in London, or Brazil vs. Turkey in Dortmund, or Algeria vs. Argentina in Barcelona, or Brazil vs. Argentina in London?

 

I would love to see a couple of EPL matches in New York City!!

 

We already have club equivelents of those, all the preseason tours that go on - a bunch of friendlies in a convenient location. And guess what, nobody complains about them. This is about unbalancing the league, fixing the league in favour of the big teams, playing fixtures abroad and taking it out of the reach of the fans who are already struggling to pay the vast ticket costs.

 

the equivalent would be some world cup qualifying groups playing one extra round of matches, so Brazil could play an extra match in Tokyo, Italy in Toronto, England in Los Angeles etc etc... To hell with it meaning a country fails to make the world cup because they play an extra match v Italy while their rivals have an easy three points with an extra match v Malta, it brings in money and gives foreign fans a chance to see their heroes, and that's the main thing, right?

 

But, the fans seem to want it both ways. They both demand that their team compete at the highest echelons of the game, yet want none of the costs associated with it. Other leagues have become insular and very conservative in containing costs. The Bundesliga fits this model. However, notice that Bundesliga clubs are no longer competing for Champions League titles. Bundesliga clubs are also now selling clubs for the games biggest stars rather than buyers. That's the tradeoff. Fans either have to come to recognize that if they want their clubs to have the best players in the world then they need additional revenues to afford them or they need their favorite club to drop to division 1 and not complain about it.

 

thankfully, the sane thinking people in football are going to stop this.

Sepp Blatter (president of FIFA) has said that it would be ve damaging to Englands 2018 world cup bid (which he said look very favourable not so long ago)

it wont happen, well not in the near future anyway

 

We had to give up an NFL game to England, why the hell shouldn't they have to let us have a taste of their "culture"?

 

You didn't have to. The NFL just chose to. With the total failure of NFL Europe to get the game off the ground in any true sense here, they had to try something else, or admit defeat.

 

Excuse me bu the issue was not voted on by NFL fans, so we had no choice. And they didn't just choose to do it as if there wasn't anything else going on that Sunday. And the league is going to play there again this year so it certainly wasn't a one-year aberration.

 

I could well be wrong, but I would imagine the idea of the NFL playing a game overseas didn't get quite the bad press that "week 39" got over here.

Besides, what the NFL chooses to do is of no significance. Nobody here would regard it as a worthwhile trade-off.

 

You think people here are climbing over each other and barb-wire fences to buy tickets to a soccer match between two English teams? MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
Oh, the arrogance is unbelievable.

 

Your first contribution to this thread was to complain about English teams NOT playing here, moaning that it was unfair that we weren't going to play games there when the NFL had played in England.


I made no reference at all to how popular the games might or might not be. I just pointed out that the "benefit" of having an NFL match played here doesn't exactly sway the fans here into thinking that it'd be a worthwhile venture.


If that opinion is arrogance than hang, draw and quarter me and piss on my burning executed corpse, for I am guilty as charged.

 

I'm certainly NOT complaining about a LACK of English League games being played here. Where you got that from I'm not sure.
What I was complaining about was that the FANS of the NFL had to give up a game, which we simply took in stride, while EPL fans are ready to start a third world war over the loss of their contests.
They can play in the streets of Baghdad for all I care.

 

there's your problem right there.

Your games went overseas because you didn't care enough to try and stop it happening, and your media didn't think selling out was a bad thing.