Ian Ayre, Liverpool FC's Managing Director, is not a figure who will have crossed your radar before this week.But his declaration that his club are interested in negotiating their own overseas Broadcasting deal thus putting them outside the Premier League's current collectivist agreement will probably have brought him to your attention.
The Premiership currently enjoys a deal that nets them £1.4 billion for their overseas Broadcasting rights to 2013. Collectively. That means all together,
However, Ayre's words were...."With the greatest of respect to our colleagues in the Premier League, but if you’re a Bolton fan in Bolton, then you subscribe to Sky because you want to watch Bolton. Everyone gets that. Likewise, if you’re a Liverpool fan from Liverpool, you subscribe. But if you’re in Kuala Lumpur there isn’t anyone subscribing to Astro, or ESPN to watch Bolton, or if they are it’s a very small number. Whereas the large majority are subscribing because they want to watch Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal.”
When I read this astonishing example of Chutzpah , in it's purest dictionary definition, I was dumbstruck. Coming, as it does, in the very week that Parliament is about to debate the lingering shame that endures from our society's failure to provide closure for many thousands of people still, embarrassingly , hurt and affected by the genuine tragedy of the Hillsborough disaster, it seemed to me unfeeling, at the very least.
Many others, with more grace and knowledge than I, have detailed the appalling failures of that day, and you will forgive me, I hope, in hinting at the juxtaposition of pairing 1989 and 2011.
David Conn, amongst others, has detailed in the Guardian on many occasions the share out of the Premier League pie. To quote his article of today, "Tearing up the pooled TV deal is a recipe for the rich to get richer" ,...."Ayre says Liverpool want more. The Premier League was born from an impulse of individual greed against the collective – unlike US sports – and that appetite has only grown, not lessened, in the 20th year of the English game's new era, with the last vestiges of sharing under renewed attack."
This includes John W Henry, Liverpool's prinicpal owner admitting : "Liverpool and English football were a mystery to me"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/oct/12/liverpool-john-henry-fenway?CMP=twt_gu
That's it in a nutshell, and I'll leave people to argue the morality at their leisure. What I want to do now is to briefly consider the practicalities.
Let's speculate on the long term outcome if we may, and perhaps have a little fun along the way.
Let's assume, that the clubs in the EPL (copyright John W Henry) are stupid enough to vote with sufficient majority - 14 minimum out of 20 - to allow individual overseas TV deals. This begs the question of what happens to the other Prem goodies on offer; namely, the home seasonal TV deal, the prize-for-position money, and the "guess what, we're on TV this week" payment. Do they still get these - or can the rest of the League say "Do one, amigo!”
Well, for Liverpool last year that amounted to £37.3 of their £55.2 (million that is ) League income. Still, I'm sure the Kuala Lumpur chapter of Anfield will help out.
Seriously. let's get away from the finance, because it's as interesting to speculate on other possible outcomes.
I come to this argument as a Swansea City fan, newly promoted and in their first season in the top flight for many a year. I know we're not likely to win the League. I know we're not likely to finish in the top half dozen. There are considerably more, and some would say better, clubs than mine with that as a realistic goal. However, my club's chances of staying in the division are no worse than another 8/10 teams to me. Especially, blessed as we are, by the the Prem's increased funding which gets better by the year should you manage to stay up, and the practical management of Brendan Rodgers with a steadily improving on-field performance that's pleasing on the eye.
I've never had an ache to be a fan of a "Big club". As Ronnie Barker, John Cleese, and Ronnie Corbett suggested years ago- "I know my place".
This is an argument that never ceases to continually amuse me. As I listen to Talk Radio/ You're on Sky Sports type programmes hearing an incessant stream of callers (dolts?) arguing about the "bigness" of their allegiance, sometimes moving from "big club" to "massive club" in the same conversation, I chuckle. Heartily. I assume it is their Clubs they’re talking about.It must be, musn't it?
If the "top four", a phrase dependent on a UEFA co-efficient, are "big clubs", how big are the "big clubs" who don't make the "top 4" ? Are they really big - a sort of Blue Whale in football terms? Or are they just really an Elephant? And does it matter when they're 5th ? - do they then become just a Rhino, say, whilst the Hippo who was 5th last year and is now 4th has grown into something bigger, a Tyrranosaurus Rex maybe ?. You see what I mean.
The outcome of all this nonsense is though, I would like to suggest, a little more serious. How long before Man Utd., Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and their equivalents in other Leagues across the continent, come to feel that their Home League is not really "big" enough for them? You will notice that the 4 English teams I've highlighted are the popularly perceived "big 4" only over the last few years, thus satisfying the UEFA co-efficient. But that doesn't account for Tottenham's incursion recently. I can hear their fans ask now, plaintively, "HOW BIG ARE WE THEN" ?
And there's the rub. UEFA's coefficients, which allow the EPL 4 Champions League places, are flexible, and dependent on that country's clubs performance in said CL over the last 3 years. So whilst it's a "big 4 " nowadays, it could be a 3 or 2 even in years to come. Italy, and Scotland recently, have felt this.
Ah, the Champions League. Notice it's not called the Champions Cup, which, when only Champions entered it, it was. This is where we get the first and strongest indication of what Ian Ayre, and fellow moneymen mean when they pull the Oliver Twist and ask for MORE. This is where the REAL money is made, and "brands" enhanced.
It's no secret amongst football fans that the leading clubs of each nation seem to have a sense of entitlement when it comes to success. Most fans of non-top 4 sides will tell you so. They view themselves as an elite. So it's no surprise really if their executives take this one step further and imagine themselves as a European powerhouse. Thus let's imagine what this European elite might comprise. Do we go with the co-efficient ? What else, what do we have? Well, we have 4 from England,4 from Spain, 4 from Germany, 3 from Italy, France and Portugal, 2 from Russia, Ukraine, Netherlands, Turkey, Greece, Denmark, Belgium, Romania and Scotland and a whole tranche of no-mark 1's including Czechs, Swiss and too many to enumerate.
If you were dreaming of a European Super League, which Football Execs do, who would be in it? Well goodness me there's a whole lot of problems there! For example, if it's 18 teams in a division we have a problem. 4+4+4+3+3+3=18.Whoops, sorry, that's 21 silly! So which 3 drops out to make it 18? YOU DECIDE. I think not - some deal will be cobbled together to satisfy the loudest and strongest and to hell with the weaker brethren. Enough, you would say. That's Division 1 then. So the surplus 3 puts the knock on 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2=18 for Division 2 then. Guess it'll just have to be 21 in the second tier, unless some cut-throat, ruthless negotiation is carried out in some Nyon back room. Don't rule it out - this is Platini's fiefdom after all and the once great footballer seems to have picked the Blatter model in his Administrative capacity. But what about the no-mark 1's I hear you ask? Where would they go, and why? Who says that team 4 in England is better than team 1 in Russia for instance? Or team 3 in Portugal over team 1 in Czechoslovakia? Let's not go there, because UEFA, or any other newly constituted group (remember how the Prem was born?) couldn't possibly. Could they??
By the way, What then happens to the Clubs excluded from this elite/ist competition? Do they just pass it through on the nod and satisfy themselves in a lesser domestic league but one that affords them a greater (demonstrably) chance of success. And what about Promotion and Relegation? Don't go there shriek the Accountants. In US Sports it's anathema. But to the British fan it can be the oxygen that makes or breaks a season.
I'm a Season Ticket holder at my club, Swansea City. There is no way we would ever be involved in a European Super League. Thank God. That doesn't mean I can't travel away to see my boys too. I have, and do. I'll continue to do so. In Britain, that is. I don’t think I could afford, or even want, to do more than this.
Whilst an Arsenal fan may travel to Marseille for the Champions League, would he or she be able to do it every other week if it were Sevilla rather than Stoke? Maybe. But I suspect it won't always be so. Rather a wet, windy, wintry weekend in the Potteries than Podgorica, even with it's historic and cultural delights, regularly. They tell me the Balti pies are legend in the Midlands.
So, to get back to the original question......Super League - to be, or not to be.
Not to be, for now. Not for me anyway. Have a think whether it’s for you.
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