European Super League

[InsectPoison]

The European super league has just been announced. A new closed up european competitions with the best teams in Europe. https://thesuperleague.com/

Whats everyones opinion of this? I think its a huge disgrace to football.

[Cometk]

i know nothing about this news or the esl, what about it makes it a disgrace?

[InsectPoison]

i know nothing about this news or the esl, what about it makes it a disgrace?

The ESL will have no relegation or promotion. 15 founding teams will always play no matter what with 5 other teams having a chance to qualify. European football has had promotion and relegation since its inception, this is something which goes against the ethos of European football. These clubs set up a closed shop league because they dont want to have to bother with competing with other teams. FIFA, UEFA, Governments, and most importantly the fans are all against this. This is just another step in the process of turning football into something like the NFL.

[princeofcarthage]

Normal leagues are still going to happen and with 20 teams there is enough competition as is. From looks of it, this isn't something similar to say EPL or La Liga. Its highly likely that the top 15 members will almost always qualify to be in top 20. Besides if 15 teams come together and say "hey we are going to host a tournament amongst ourselves every year" I don't see what objection anyone could've or could do anything about it.

[InsectPoison]

Normal leagues are still going to happen and with 20 teams there is enough competition as is. From looks of it, this isn't something similar to say EPL or La Liga. Its highly likely that the top 15 members will almost always qualify to be in top 20. Besides if 15 teams come together and say "hey we are going to host a tournament amongst ourselves every year" I don't see what objection anyone could've or could do anything about it.

Not trying to be rude or anything but this sort of thing is being catered to foreign fans like you, you wouldn't understand why this is such a big deal.

[Riotcoke]

It'll fall through, remember that german leagues leagally can't join because they need to be 51 percent fan owned. Also any players that are on these teams aren't able to play for their countries in the world cup etc.

[knusch]

hopefully national leagues, uefa and fifa throw them out of all competitions if this turns out not be the biggest bluff in history.

fuck that franchise pseudo competition

[gibson]

i know nothing about this news or the esl, what about it makes it a disgrace?

The ESL will have no relegation or promotion. 15 founding teams will always play no matter what with 5 other teams having a chance to qualify. European football has had promotion and relegation since its inception, this is something which goes against the ethos of European football. These clubs set up a closed shop league because they dont want to have to bother with competing with other teams. FIFA, UEFA, Governments, and most importantly the fans are all against this. This is just another step in the process of turning football into something like the NFL.

Its not like the NFL at all

[duckzilla]

A new closed up european competitions with the best teams in Europe.

Given that the team winning the last Champions League was a German one, this might be a difficult claim. What I don't understand is the claim to have 15 founding members, but only 12 teams did announce to be part of this yet. Six teams from UK, three from Spain, and another three from Italy.

It doesn't look like a sound idea. The mechanism with founding members having a guaranteed position forever sounds like a complete lack of sportsmanship, since they would extremely benefit financially even without performing well.

[princeofcarthage]

@duckzilla 3 are yet to join

[princeofcarthage]

@duckzilla why is that a lack of sportsmanship. If those clubs are funding themselves to have a tournament amongst themselves, even if its closed what's so wrong with it?

[duckzilla]

@duckzilla why is that a lack of sportsmanship. If those clubs are funding themselves to have a tournament amongst themselves, even if its closed what's so wrong with it?

What do you mean by "funding themselves"? None of these clubs funds the tournaments. They simply realize that they can profit much more from selling television rights etc. in a tournament that is entirely under their control and where they will participate for eternity compared to tournaments (e.g. Champions League) where their participation depends on qualifying anew on a yearly basis and profits are lower even when you win it. They can further reduce global competition for the best talents to effectively 15 teams, because it will be obvious that they can consistently pay the highest salaries and offer participation in the most prestigious tournament: the super league itself.

It is estimated that successful participation at the Super League will net at least three times as much revenue for the winner than the Champions League does. Teams are estimated to net >100m just for participation, which is what the Champions League winners usually get over the entire course of the tournament!

It might be less important for international fans, but obviously the Super League destroys any coherence that is left in the national leagues. If it becomes reality, we will see small clubs with a budget of ~10m fighting giants with >1bn budgets in the same league. Even if a small club does the impossible and wins the national league, it is clear that everything will revert back to normal soon due to the extreme differences in budgets. That's bad sportsmanship. It's a cartel.

[princeofcarthage]

@duckzilla why is that a lack of sportsmanship. If those clubs are funding themselves to have a tournament amongst themselves, even if its closed what's so wrong with it?

What do you mean by "funding themselves"? None of these clubs funds the tournaments. They simply realize that they can profit much more from selling television rights etc. in a tournament that is entirely under their control and where they will participate for eternity compared to tournaments (e.g. Champions League) where their participation depends on qualifying anew on a yearly basis and profits are lower even when you win it. They can further reduce global competition for the best talents to effectively 15 teams, because it will be obvious that they can consistently pay the highest salaries and offer participation in the most prestigious tournament: the super league itself.

It is estimated that successful participation at the Super League will net at least three times as much revenue for the winner than the Champions League does. Teams are estimated to net >100m just for participation, which is what the Champions League winners usually get over the entire course of the tournament!

It might be less important for international fans, but obviously the Super League destroys any coherence that is left in the national leagues. If it becomes reality, we will see small clubs with a budget of ~10m fighting giants with >1bn budgets in the same league. Even if a small club does the impossible and wins the national league, it is clear that everything will revert back to normal soon due to the extreme differences in budgets. That's bad sportsmanship. It's a cartel.

Well there is going to be certain initial funding required to get the tournament going. Global competition is already reduced to few specific clubs. They anyways can pay consistently better pay than other clubs. We already see small clubs with budgets of 10 million fighting clubs with budgets of 1 billion. Its like saying Apple should slow itself down so that htc can catch up with it. If you play better, you win more, you get more fans, you get more funding.

[I_HaRRiiSoN_I]

Respect for Jose Mourinho for refusing to take training this morning over this ESL news and taking the sack for it. Hoping that Klopp will do the same for the liverpool fans who deserve better than having their league football between liverpool and manchester clubs being played in singapore/New York or mexico for example. ESL benefits the global fans but not the local fans

[InsectPoison]

Football clubs these no longer care about local fans and would rather cater to fans in places like India and China. I fully expect the next El Classico to be played in America instead of Spain. The increased commercialization of the sport is going to destroy it. Expect things like "And now a quick message from our throw-in sponsor" to become more and more common. Any way to make more money.

[RefluxSemantic]

Its hard to explain this to people that arent from Europe. Its important to understand that football leagues are more than just a tournament. Its a cultural phenomenon and a lot of it comes from local fans supporting their local clubs.

We currently have the following structure: nations have their own leagues. There the local clubs get to participate and its quite the cultural phenomenon that should be preserved in my opinion. The teams that do well in their domestic leagues get to play in the Europa League and the very prestigious Champions league. Tickets to these leagues are distributed based on competition strength, with many of the tickets going to the big competitions. But it gives other football teams a chance to participate too. This is part of the system and gives all football cultures a reasonable opportunity at succes (even if financially things are really unfair right now). I feel like this is a good system, it promotes the local culture while also having a big stakes very prestigious tournament.

This new suggestion undermines that. At first you might say, whats the big deal? Clubs can just host their own tournament without interrupting anything. But the problem with that is actually that you can realistically only play 1 match every 3 days (more just leads to tons of injuries), and the calendar is basically completely full already. So instead of having the champions league, which allows teams from all regions to participate and get some money, these top clubs are trying to get everything for themselves at the cost of these tournaments.

This ESL is basically those top clubs going: nah, we dont want smaller teams (with tons of domestic fans) to get any money and we dont want to occasionally miss out on our money so fuck them lets just exclude them from our new tournament thats otherwise exactly the same as the tournament we already have.

[knusch]

[InsectPoison]

Huge news

[Mr_Bramboy]

That might be a bit over the top but it works.

[princeofcarthage]

Do they have legal basis for that? Same thing happened in India during launch of cricket league. Ultimately the board lost in court. UEFA banning players from super league is basically abusing their monopolistic powers. It might defuse the super league for now but ultimately if club decides to go to court I don't think UEFA has any legal standing to impose that.

[RefluxSemantic]

Why not though? Why are you not allowed to set your own criteria that make people eligible to be in your tournament?

[gibson]

Imagine banning some of the best players from your country from playing on your national team cause they play in a league you don’t want them to play in.

[gibson]

Also, super league is a great idea and I’m not sure why it’s taken so long for something like this to happen.

[RefluxSemantic]

Also, super league is a great idea and I’m not sure why it’s taken so long for something like this to happen.

It already exists.. but in a form where you actually get to qualify for it rather than just giving 15 priviledged teams tickets. Thats why it took so long for this to happen, because a better implementation already exists.

[gibson]

Also, super league is a great idea and I’m not sure why it’s taken so long for something like this to happen.

It already exists.. but in a form where you actually get to qualify for it rather than just giving 15 priviledged teams tickets. Thats why it took so long for this to happen, because a better implementation already exists.

The difference is now if you have some small market team who’s usually pretty shitty, but happens to actually build a good team, instead of being able to move up, a super league team will now just poach their best players. So players will move up instead of teams, which is better overall unless you happen to live in a tiny town with a shit team that starts to get good.