The threat of an enhanced top tier of English football has been mooted in and off for years. The talk was always rather sketchy and there was never any real substance to the suggestion that the big boys would somehow breakaway in some form.
Now we have a global pandemic on our hands and unless I’ve missed something in all the endless updates from 10 Downing Street, there is no immediate solution on the horizon. Premier League football has, like the rest of us mortals, suffered catastrophic losses. At Spurs, the absence of a conventional match day is costing ENIC an estimated £3million per unattended game.
According to Dave Fraser for The Sun, by trimming the top flight down to 18 sides and re-jigging the money pyramid, life for the big boys will become cushier than ever, and one of the spin-offs for Tottenham will be a £125M rebate towards the stadium build costs.
In broader moves, the League Cup would be binned, and way tickets knocked down to £20 across the board.
After last week’s announcement confirming that we are now entering an age of Pay Per View games, feigning surprise or distaste to these steps isn’t going to achieve anything.
All I ask as the ladder gets pulled up, and the cry of “I’m alright, Jack!” is heard, that we finally can put to bed this fraudulent bunkum of a ‘Football Family’ and acknowledge that nobody cares about anyone else. I can cope with unchecked greed, just not it being poorly disguised.
I like everything the way it is. 20 team PL, no-playoff relegation, small cups are fun. Now they are trying to mess it all up, bastards.
I’d bet our Daniel is very good at Monopoly. His main frustration would be the limited space on each property to build hotels.
Not unless Steve Hitchen eats it first!
The primary goal of most businesses in a capitalist system is monopoly.
Football will at some point eat itself.
One of the things about all this that is flying under most peoples radar is the loss of parachute payments. If you get relegated you will loose all your top earners in a fire sale. Top teams not currently in the premier league will struggle to justify buying good players to get promoted as we know they will struggle to stay up. So you will end up with a fairly fixed 16 teams in the Premier and maybe 3 yoyo’s.
So a couple of points if i may. Surely a key step to a European super league is reducing the size of the pl so they can run in tandem. There is no assurance spurs will be invited into a European super league and to be clear it is the brain child of a rich Italian who hates to see all the money flowing to the pl and wants to get in on the action. I am far from convinced that the such a league wd be able to replicate the tv revenue around the world that the pl has generated.
Second, and most important, this is just a shoddy way to take advantage of the plight of the lower league clubs when they are on their knees, not illegal but it rather leaves one feeling like a shower is needed. Remember when we screwed Southampton over Bale. Bought for 8 mill and they were to get 25% of anything above that on a resale. Levy spotted when the saints were in dire financial trouble and might have collapsed and went in with the offer “ here is two million in cash if you cancel the sell on”. They had no real choice and that saved spurs 17 mill (86 minus 8 equals 78 mill profit. 25% of that is 19 mill, minus the 2 mill pay off). Sound business but i need a shower. This just seems to be the same.
While i am ranting, why are so many objecting to paying to see spurs v Brighton? Here is how i see it. The tv companies are continuing to include all the games they included before in the packet you pay for. These days no one is paying exorbitant amounts to attend the game in person. So the person who wd have gone to the game is saving money and the guy who was never going is just being given a chance to watch an extra game, if willing to pay. I have friends who are thrilled that they can pay ten quid a game to see their team live, their team bing in league 1. Maybe i am missing something, i am sure i often do.
Ps, i understand the points about American money behind Utd and Liverpool but let us not forget that many on here were keen on the idea of levy selling to that other US private equity outfit we were linked with a while ago. As i noted then, they have an obligation to their investors to maximise profits and so wd have already aligned themselves with Utd and Liverpool. With ENIC, well maybe they will eventually do so but at the moment they can still hang back and see how it plays out. At the end of the day money will decide everything, perhaps we just have to accept it and allow ourselves a rueful shake of the head. When a Saudi outfit wanted to buy Newcastle why were they stopped from doing so? Saudi had been stealing a PL signal to show games that Doha was paying a lot of money to have exclusively. Strangely no mention of a regime that chops up it citizens into small pieces and smuggles the body out of an embassy, but steal a tv signal, well the PL will not tolerate that.
As soon as I saw the American owners of Man u and Liverpool were prime movers in this proposal, I was reminded of the franchise system in American football. No relegation, protected income, the major clubs in Europe want this as well.
Thanks for dropping this blog in, Harry. It’s good to hear what others think about these things.
Covid and its effect on smaller clubs that are currently struggling to stay afloat is a very real concern. Please understand that this proposal is not an act of benevolence on the part of Liverpool and Man Utd. Football is being asked to sell its soul for short term gain in return for survival and a brave new world that they [smaller clubs] will never be able to enter. If Covid does take out a few clubs all that means is more money to go around and that is likely to go the likes of Liverpool and United. If you scrap the Charity Shield, the charities lose out. Instead clubs will add in an extra pre-season game instead and take all the money. There is no real concern here for player welfare by dropping what are viewed in this model as unnecessary matches, more protecting their playing investments from fatigue and down time through injury.
Well if football is taken down by covid Liverpool and Man U won’t be able to exercise their “richness” will they? Anyway I’d term the 2 Manchester clubs the richest by far. We’re also what the 8th richest in Europe yet we have a very tiny net spend. It’s not necessarily impactful the amount a club earns and the amount they spend on players.
The Charity Shield monies never went to the clubs but charities of course. Replace it with the F A Cup final.
I think you’ve missed the point of this exercise – unless Liverpool and Man Utd are now classed as charities.
Why not give charities a percentage of the F A cup final instead? Everybody watches that around the world and takes it seriously.
The bottom line of all this is this – Liverpool and Man Utd’s American investors are not in the EPL to win glory and trophies but to maximise the returns on their investments, which are being eroded under the current model due to increasing player transfer fees, salaries/ bonuses and the parachute payments made to relegated teams.
The proposal has good and bad points. Personally I think reducing the number of teams in the EPL to 18 is not a bad thing, as is the proposed promotion/ relegation model. The bad part is essentially the two richest English clubs, economically, outside of the oliagarchs, stand to gain the most out of this proposal and is effectively anti-competition in action. Under this model the rich will only get richer with an ever-widening gulf between the ‘poorer’ clubs.
For me, there is no appeal in watching any form of European Super League of the elite teams as it will just be like the SPL on steroids – teams potentially playing one another 3 or 4 times each season. I think the novelty would wear off pretty quickly and it would be open to match rigging for entertainment purposes. The only way it could get off the ground is if the broadcasters are prepared to pay stupid amounts of money for the broadcast rights or to facilitate a closed PPV system. I wonder if this is the spectre that will be brought out to push this Big Picture proposal through.
Thanks to Covid, smaller clubs are on the brink of extinction and the temptation to give up the current model for this new one must be great. Although I think I read that the initial loan would be repayable out of future TV rights money, probably leaving the clubs not much better off financially but afloat, clinging on to the lifebelt. In truth I would be happy for the so called ‘big’ clubs to leave the EPL, provided Levy isn’t dim enough to be suckered in by this get-rich-quick scheme to take Spurs out as well. Leave the EPL to real football fans who enjoy football for what it is and not as consumers needing to be entertained.
U done know. 🌚 against us managers be shouting “don’t push up don’t push up
I hope so mate! Quite frankly for the first time in ages I’m not wishing we had got someone else in. Very excited to see what this bunch can do this season. We always knew Mourinho could make us tough to beat, but now he also has the best forward line imaginable too.
I think we are now perfectly set up to destroy the trendy high line. Liverpool, City, Arsenal et all will get a shock when they face us.
And those that benefit from the community shi£ld money?
I think it’s a good idea if it means saving the league. The league cup and community kick about should be binned. I think we’re the only nation to have 2 cups? No wonder our lads are so tired before every international tournament. Unnecessary distraction favouring the big clubs with strong squads.
Some of the football you see from the basement level of the PL is C-ship stuff anyway, so let them play it there.
Tough times call for tough measures. As long as there is an agreed code of conduct for the 18 remaining PL clubs and financial fair play is enforced of course. With equal moneys from TV rights etc. it might go some way to levelling the playing field to some extent, unlike the EU’s level playing field which is a 1 in 4 gradient covered in ice!
That’ll be in the next window🌚
You’re dead right James. This is worrying stuff.
Is there not a premiere league fans Union? Fans united (F U) in numbers would have the power to say “no! we’re not accepting that. Picket lines at grounds
Community Shield binned too, how dare they.
This has come from. John Henry at Liverpool and one of the Glazer sons at United.
They want to import American sporting ideas, not to improve football but to make themselves richer and to nobble any future competitors. The big six could veto new owners. So a new Man City or Saudi backed Newcastle who could threaten the cosy cartel could be blocked.
They will also want a wage cap for players but not for themselves. The big six will be not be able to be relegated either so no chance of the gravy train ending.
They will then join a European League and maybe a World League and abandon the Premier League or maybe play a B team in the Premier.
They will abandon the Sky /BT TV deal and stream their own games and that very generous 25per cent of future TV revenues they are now offering the EFL will be exposed as worthless and a Trojan Horse which will destroy the Pyramid who they are pretending to care about.
The one good thing about American sports the draft system will definitely not be imported as that would help their competitors.
Blinking’ll! My eyes are off it for one day and the league gets smaller. We get £125mil, away games are a scor£ and there’s one less cup to win.
Damn I thought we were signing another superstar! 😂