I really can't see the likes of Manchester City and PSG being okay with a parity measure like a salary cap or even luxury tax. Clubs like Real Madrid, Manchester United, Barcelona, Bayern Munich won't go for that either. Then there are clubs like Arsenal, Borussia Dortmund, Atletico Madrid, Tottenham who would go from being top 4 in their respective leagues to being "lower table" sides in a Super League... so you need parity measures... but then [see first paragraph].
The difference between a SL and the CL is that in th CL it's a KO competition after the group stage. So there's always a chance for clubs like BVB/Arsenal etc. to ko a superclub. In the SL the superclubs will dominate. You can beat occasionally 1, maybe 2, but not all as a sub superclub level team. So you move from being a contender in both CL and your own league to a midtabel club in a SL. Sounds appealing.
Exactly! With all that, I just can't see a Super League being easy at all to form. Might be harder to form that than it was MLS.
It's surprising to me this argument applies to CL but not to European domestic leagues? No one is tired of the same few teams dominating each national league?
Fans of the top clubs are more likely to like the top clubs having more money to spend and not parity like MLS. However, it doesn't matter to the Premier League if fans of the top clubs are happy with many leagues having a few dominant clubs, wish other leagues had parity, or don't care either way. If Man United is in a Super League, the amount of money Barcelona can spend matters more to Man United than in the CL where you don't know what top clubs will play each other.
Obviously that's not their first choice, and it may be the reason the SL doesn't happen. All I'm saying is that There are not enough elite teams to form a super league. 2nd tier teams aren't going to leave their domestic leagues to be a permanent super league minnow. A super league might bring enough revenue in for all participants such that the elites will be willing to make parity concessions because they would still make more money than they are today. Simple example: let's say Bayern makes $30B today, while Dortmund makes $20B. You come to Bayern with a opportunity to make $50B instead of $30B. The only catch is they HAVE to bring Dortmund and Dortmund will also make $50B. Will they say no to that? Maybe, but can you also see them saying yes?
Probably because leagues have a national soccer history in which clubs grew in the context of their local possibilities. So nobody expects clubs from regions less populated and less wealthy to be a match for the bigger clubs, apart from the occasional upset. The start for those clubs when founded was just to be part of the soccer community. Some grew into dominating powers, others into local prides. Together they constitute a league. Leagues werenot set up for level playing fields, they were formed to organise the game by facilitating the competition for the clubs. Nobody in those days had any thoughts about level playing fields, because nobody knew which clubs were going to be top dogs. Feyenoord started decades after other clubs, so had other clubs with an advantage in their environment. Why nobody knows, but in a few decades Feyenoord from a bunch of people using a pub at the Afrikaanderplein as their dressing room grew into a club that overtook their competitors in Rotterdam and in 1937, just 29 years after their founding, built a stadium for 63000 fans. It wasnot bought that domination, it grew that way and fast. The whole meaning of the league was nothing more than facilitate playing soccer, hence the acceptance of a multilayered strength capacity as a result of decades developments. People havenot got that kind of feelings for the CL. The CL clubs most of the times are clubs which neutral soccer fans have no personal connection with like they have with their league favourite. So when the excitement disappears as it's the same year after year, because of that lack of personal connection, interest has gone down.
The big catch is that in the current situation Bayern can win 3, and in certain circumstances 4 trophies, the German cup, the German title, the CL/EL and the Supercup. In a SL you can't do that. You can go without any silverware, but without silverware you hardly can keep calling yourself a superclub. You're one because of the silverware winning.
It is said that the investors for the SL already have secured the funding for these amounts. I doubt it. As the article I posted tells is that sponsors arenot happy with the CL behind a paywall as it drastically reduces their eyeball count. It also is one of the reasons why the CL loses interest as many people that would watch it on the open net arenot prepared to pay for watching it. One of the pillars for the projected revenues is the placing of the SL matches behind a paywall. Good luck with that, given what the CL experiences. Non European fans could be the rescue, but alas these live in time zones that make matches watching live impossible. Plus you have to compete with matches of the leagues themselves. Local club fans arenot going to stay away from their stadium to watch SL matches on pay tv, especially not if these are matches between foreign clubs that mean nothing to you. Suppose you have SL of 16 clubs. That implies you have 8 live matches. How do you schedule that to give each match the chance to get viewers? Plus schedule in a way to avoid viewers having to chose between their own club and the SL match(es). In the USA the nfl hasnot got to worry about likewise matches as they are the only league.
In the mean time Chinese bought a Belgian pigeon, nick named the Eddy Merckx among pigeons, for a whopping 1.255 million€€.
If the super league forms, I think the idea of a super club fades away. NFL teams aren't referred to in that way. It doesn't diminish them.
The NFL has high school and college football to contend with. When all three are in season, generally high school goes Friday night, college goes Saturday, and the NFL goes Sunday.
NFL teams have no other clubs that can challenge them for interest. Whether or not nfl clubs are viewed that way doesnot matter as they're the only flavour Yanks can get. That's the big difference with soccer. The SL can make themselves a closed league, but soccer itself isnot and the challenge to them will be from day one. It's not for nothing the driving forces behind this socalled SL are Yanks and a couple of Asians. The only Europeans "involved" afaik are the leaked clubs. Europe has plenty of billionaires themselves that can start this up. The fact they're not doing so might point to them being aware of something the foreigners can't get.
I take it you are not from America, feyenoord. In certain regions of the country, College Football rivals NFL in popularity.
However does it rival nfl country wide and rival all the nfl clubs like wise and consistently? I take your word for it that College football has a high degree of popularity. I've seen college football matches with 80000 fans in the stadium. It was iirc some Alabama college team in orange against one in blue. But would that compare to the EPL, LaLiga, Serie A and BuLi competition that will have you as the SL as a target? I donot think College football has the aim or the possibility to go for the nfl's throat.
In response to the question about scheduling conflicts, yes. That's how those three levels of American football traditionally handle it. A hypothetical super league will likely have whatever day of the week it wants. The domestic league would probably play on a different day.
Why would the leagues give way to the SL, that isnot part of them in the first place? The best time slots is what the leagues want for themselves. No way any of the European leagues are in concert going to give the SL a benefit that will make them money big time, while not giving it will cost the SL money. The SL willnot have any power to force whatever to all or even any of the European leagues. They will have a hard time to even be able to stay in the leagues at all.
They don't have to. The USL plays on Saturday same as MLS. It works. The point is that it doesn't matter what the domestic leagues do. The SL would be the big dog and it would play on whatever day it preferred.
Well that's exactly not the case, being the big dog. We see it with matches that would be ones played in the SL, like Barcelona-Real Madrid or Liverpool-ManCity. These donot get fans of even Dutch league teams to switch watching their team like Feyenoord, PSV or Ajax to these star teams at all at this moment, while getting these matches from EPL or LaLiga via cable is very easy with your special remote button. You can watch those matches now for a few €€ charge. Fox Sport makes sure the matches of Feyenoord, PSV and Ajax are being played at different times during the day, so fans can watch them all. The matches between those superteams played at the same time donot attract much interest. Putting the label superleague instead of EPL or Laliga on it doesnot make it different. Even the CL confrontations between these clubs at evenings without domestic league competition on tues/wednesday are declining in interest. So how on earth is there going to be an increase in viewers to be expected? As I wrote the SL has no clout to make domestic league clubs accept/being forced to give up the most profitable timeslots and given the current situation that fans of clubs already prefer the matches of their own clubs while being offered the same SL club matches now is telling.
Of course they can play on whatever day they want as an independent league. But it will either be on timeslots not profitable because of inconveniant times or in direct competition with matches of all European leagues. It will always be a situation that cuts profits dow. More so as the whole operation is to have the SL matches behind a paywall. For brands that look for eyeballs this is a nono in terms of maximum exposure. Especially while the other matches are on the open channels. Sponsors arenot going to pay more for less. Another dent in the supposed extra billions income the SL investors projected. In fact the UK is the one country in Europe that stands out as a country where fans en masse watch sport on channels behind paywalls. That's why the epl is so rich compared to other leagues in Europe. Even there fans of Newcastle United and Sunderland arenot going to watch Real-Barcelona when these teams play each other. That's something those Yank/Asian SL investors donot get, probably because such rivalries donot exist there.
I mean absolutely no disrespect to the Dutch league when I say this, but the whole point of a super league would be international appeal. The Eredivisie does not have that. What would likely happen is the super league would play when it wanted to play, and the Eredivisie would decide that it's worthwhile to go head to head, or that it can't compete and needs to switch times. In the US, MLS and USL play on the same day. It seems to work fine for both levels. In American football, the NFL and college play on different days. That also works well for both levels. The bottom line is this: the domestic league schedule is irrelevant to whether or not a super league forms.
Indeed, perhaps Dutch fans won't follow it. Maybe you could say the same for Portuguese, Belgian and Swiss fans too. However, once you go into Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, it gets different. Scandinavian countries always followed English football heavily. What's more outside of a few leagues, not only in Europe but worldwide, Champions League powerhouse gain lots of attention. What will sway the big clubs isnt what they will watch in Porto, Brussels or the Hague. It's what they will watch in New York, Beijing and Qatar. That's what's driving all this.
Yup, but losing the eyeballs of the EPL/BuLi/LaLiga/SerieA/ Ligue1 is something different. You cannot have a viable SL without dominating the domestic markets of the clubs involved. And the simple truth is that the clubs involved only are two of the clubs from one league (going from the revealed paperwork) and that's simply too little to grab the whole market from the leagues in question. As I posted the already taking place likewise matches of the superclubs donot attract fans not from the league. So what makes people think it will be the case with a label SL on it? Iirc the EPL makes about 70% from it's earnings from the UK market. The rest comes for the most from the USA and Asia. That means SL battles like ManCity-ManUnited in it's EPL-label only for around 10% (if we assume 10/10/10% distribution over the rest of the markets) is in Europe. To get the returns the SL investors are projecting that isnot enough, worse it's deadly.
There are college stadia with 100,000 fans in the seats, There are high school football stadia with 30,000 (not many, but in parts of Texas at least) I think you are correct, as things are at this moment, that a SL is a long shot. The counter argument is really only that everything must change, and right now, it's footies turn. We know that TV revenue will not continue to increase, and will decrease. We know that streaming will take the place of broadcast. I know you think Dutch law will stop that from happening in the Netherlands, and maybe it will, but Germana believed seeing the Bund was a national human right, until Sky and the two contractors before that whose names escape me, bought the rights. today in Germany, you can only watch the B3 without sky or Dazn (eurosport on fridays), and none of these are part of the basic free TV broadcast.