Why The Super League Was Really Formed
By Ryan Rothon
In the late afternoon hours of the 18th of April 2021, Andrea Agnelli was happily chatting on the phone with UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin. Mr. Agnelli, the current president of Juventus, was assuring his long-time friend that the rumours of a new super league were nothing more than media speculation. Moments later Agnelli made his excuses and ended the call. Čeferin tried to get back in contact with his friend only to find that the phone line was dead.
Mere hours after putting down the phone, Agnelli and a group of Europe’s top clubs had agreed to form a breakaway league. This announcement threatens the future of the Champions League and jeopardises the integrity of the entire football pyramid.
Mr. Agnelli, who named Čeferin as his daughter’s godfather, had successfully thrown a hood over the UEFA Presidents’ head, spun him around a couple of times, and locked him in a dark room.
To say that Mr. Čeferin felt betrayed would be an understatement. His vitriolic reaction to the news was matched only by the apocalyptic fury of millions of fans across the world.
With the rising swell of hostility threatening to tear the very fabric of our beautiful game to pieces, it is now more important than ever to understand the main driving forces behind this radical decision.
It is far too simplistic to suggest that the founding clubs were purely motivated by an insatiable appetite for money. While greed might play a role, if we are to truly understand the events of the past 48 hours then we need to go a lot deeper.
This article will explain how the ‘Super League’ and the principles that it has come to define have been inevitable for many years. It will assess how European clubs have been working tirelessly to improve their brand image to the detriment of the very fans who built it.
So, what is this new Super League?
For the purposes of time and to help this writer resist any temptation to throw their laptop through an open window, it will be assumed that you are aware of how this new super league came to be.
For those still in the dark, essentially 12 of Europe’s largest football clubs have agreed to form their own league. They intend to operate as a separate entity from the Champions League and will take full commercial control of the competition.
While the clubs intend to continue competing in domestic competitions, they have no plans to play in the Champions League.
If you require any further information about the new league, then please consult this wonderful article from BBC Sport.
To truly comprehend why these clubs would want to break away, we first need to understand how they make their money.
Clubs generate most of their revenue from television agreements. This includes money from broadcasters for being involved in national or European competitions and prize money for any success achieved.
The second-largest income stream is commercial sponsorship. This covers a wide range of business deals including shirt sponsorship, merchandise sales, and even social media agreements.
The third area is matchday revenue, which is all of the money clubs earn through ticket sales and corporate hospitality.
With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing stadiums across the continent to shut, matchday revenue has completely evaporated. This has left Europe’s top clubs, who are historically bad with money, scrambling to cover their huge expenses.
The 12 clubs involved in the mutiny are reported to have lost close to 1,2 billion dollars over the first three months of COVID-19. The most alarming part is that these catastrophic losses do not account for the soon-to-be-completed 2020/21 season which was played almost entirely without a single fan in the stadiums.
Desperate for that next hit of cold hard cash, club presidents turned to their one unfailing source of income, television rights.
Here is where things get a little sticky. Most experts agree that club income from television rights reached a peak in 2018. It is likely that any future agreements for football coverage will either retain their current value or show a significant drop.
This realisation must have struck fear into the hearts of the ‘Super 12.’
The cost of football continues to rise, and their two main sources of income have either disappeared or are beginning to shrink.
What would you do? Most would probably realise that generating almost a billion dollars a year is good enough and gone home with a smile, but not the ‘Super 12.’
In a moment that will surely change the landscape of football forever, they decided to form their very own league.
So, why did the clubs break away?
The main reason for forming the ‘Super League’ was outlined by the newly appointed league President Florentino Perez.
In an interview with Spanish TV the current head of Real Madrid explained:
“Football is beginning to lose interest, audiences are going down and television rights too, something had to be done, and the pandemic accelerated this process. Without change, we are ruined. 16–24-year-old fans aren’t interested in football. 40% of young people aren’t interested in football, because there are too many games of low quality […] We have to change something to make this sport more attractive at a global level.”
Mr. Perez goes on to explain his group of billionaires had formed their ‘Super League’ because they are trying to save football…
Yes, he really said that.
With Europe’s most popular football teams and a steady supply of entertaining matches, the Super League has all of the ingredients necessary to become the most popular tournament on the planet.
The guaranteed increase in attention should encourage broadcasters and commercial partners to hand over large amounts of money to the league.
With the 12 founder clubs having greater control over the commercial aspects of this competition, they will see a much larger yearly payment.
This drive to boost each club’s widespread commercial appeal was perfectly summed up by a source speaking to BBC Sport:
‘Some of those involved in ESL call traditional supporters of clubs “legacy fans” while they are focused instead on the “fans of the future” who want superstar names.’
But what does this mean?
Essentially, clubs have come to realise that their traditional fans, the ones who buy the season tickets and have deep cultural links to the club, are no longer profitable. Instead, they want to capture the growing market of younger fans who care less about the team itself and more about individual star players or the entertainment value of the game.
These ‘fans of the future’ have no real links to the club, but are more consumption-orientated and willing to hand over money for merchandise or TV subscriptions.
The ESL members appear to not care much for the traditional fan. In their vision fans will simply become consumers who can be won over with big-name stars and entertaining matches.
This desire to cut fans from the picture is nothing new.
As Professor Richard Giulianotti explains in his 2002 research paper, this process began as far back as the early 1960s.
With the U.K. economy recovering from WW2, football clubs began to realise that the emerging middle class was looking for new experiences in the leisure and entertainment sectors. Desperate to get their hands on the country’s newfound wealth, clubs began to focus on providing entertaining matches and looked to distance themselves from their traditional working-class fans.
This has led to what Professor Giulianotti describes as ‘Hyper-Commodification.’
The increased involvement of multi-national corporations, the rapid rise of player wages, greater number of European competitions, sharp rises in ticket costs, reduction in stadium capacity in favour of VIP areas, the rise of the celebrity players, and tenuous links with business organisations have all been cited as ingredients of ‘hyper commoditisation.’
The result of all of these changes has been the creation of a sport that is geared towards one thing and one thing only… global consumption.
Football is now dominated by large multi-national corporations which have transformed local clubs into hugely powerful organisations. The likes of Juventus or Manchester United have unparalleled social, economic, and even political power. To maintain this power, they have been forced to operate like corporations, caring simply about the increase in profits.
To quote an ESL club board member:
“Our primary job is to maximise our revenues and profits, the wider good of the game is a secondary concern.”
Beyond this rather damning quote, there is a large amount of evidence to support the view that the ‘Super 12’ wish to move away from the model of the traditional fan.
It is important to note that the proposed league makes very little mention of ‘Europe.’ There have even been suggestions that the organisers could eventually invite South American or Chinese clubs to enter the competition. The inclusion of these massive football markets would open new revenue streams for the European clubs and allow them to charge more for the television rights.
There are further reports that Florentino Perez wishes to have some of the games played in stadiums in America or China. This is a tactic used often by the NFL and will help to boost the league’s appeal in those markets. Considering that most traditional fans are unable to afford a flight to the U.S. it is fair to assume that such plans are purely interested in capturing the ‘fans of the future.’
Clubs have been marginalising traditional fans for years. General admission tickets have risen up to £100 a match, with corporate areas slowly eating up regular seats. Stadium expansions usually prioritise the introduction of lucrative corporate seats and high-priced concession stands.
The traditional football fan no longer fits the description of the perfect consumer. With fans of clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool earning an average yearly wage of around £25,000, there is no way they can afford to consistently purchase tickets for games. By pricing their tickets in such ways these clubs want to focus on capturing a younger, more middle-class fan.
How clubs have positioned themselves as global brands shows that they see their future away from the traditional fan. They are constantly collaborating with brands that are looking to attract a richer, international audience. Emirates did not agree to sponsor Arsenal’s stadium because they thought everyone in north London is planning a long-haul flight to the Middle East. Manchester United even have an official noodle partner.
This is not to say that clubs have completely cut off the traditional fan, they simply see a higher profit margin in a richer, more international fanbase.
Football will always be a for-profit business. With that mindset ingrained into clubs, it is hard to see a world where fans do not eventually become mere consumers.
Critics were quick to suggest that the formation of the Super League was a sign of the unrelenting greed of modern football owners. In reality, the last 48 hours have been in the making since the early 1960s. European Football has been incredibly successful in creating a modern business that attracts huge amounts of wealth and power, it is only natural that those invested in it would be looking for more ways to maximise their money.
The actions of the ‘Super 12’ may well be the largest display of greed football has ever seen, but it is the symptom of a much wider disease that has plagued the sport for years.
When writing his paper in 2002, a few years before the likes of Mr. Abramovich entered the sport, Professor Giulianotti predicted the rise of the Super League:
The most powerful of these “super clubs” have formed an organization called (with some state-like irony) the “G14.” Following warnings of an impending breakaway from established football structures, UEFA agreed in 1999 to amend Europe’s top club tournament (the Champions League) to suit G14 demands for more lucrative fixtures. Reflecting the disorganized political structure within European football, continuing speculation has surrounded the future format of top club tournaments, as a range of institutional actors (old and new) jockey for positions that are most advantageous economically to their respective owners, shareholders, and officials.
