Football News: Complications with a European Super Champions League

A European Super Champions League has been talked about for some time. However, it seems the idea has few supporters. Despite the globalisation of the sport, the revenue stream is still built upon the domestic league base, where domestic TV rights make up a significant portion of the income, as do the gates, and probably even the commercial revenue which relies on those logos being seen week in, week out.

If the top teams left their domestic leagues it would not only change their revenue streams, quite possibly for the worse, but it would radically alter the revenue of the rest of the Premier League because the top teams and global stars are what makes the league attractive to a worldwide audience.

The current Champions League system is about as much football as can be added to the schedule of the major clubs, each of which has a packed domestic season participating in 3 domestic competitions, which takes up virtually 10 months of the year.

The question then becomes whether teams from the weaker leagues warrant spots in a new type of Champions League. If so, it would be hard to see how the admittedly attractive concept proposed, would work in practice. Right now the Champions League adds a minimum of 6 games and a maximum of 13 for the finalists.

A genuine league would add more games than that, even if one could reduce the number of participants to say 12 rather than 32 clubs. And what of the other 20 clubs that believe they have earned the right to participate?

I agree very much with the premise; it would be great to see the top money teams in a league where they played each other every year. We would all look forward to the annual international clashes between PSG, Juventus, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Barcelona, Real, Bayern Munich etc. - particularly those who only get to watch on TV because we don't or no longer live in Europe.

I agree that all too often games between the top teams and the others in their domestic leagues are tactically predictable. Excessive superiority makes for a less enjoyable spectacle for all but the better team, notwithstanding the pleasure of the occasional upset.

The difficulty is that the institutions we have already would have to undergo possibly cataclysmic changes to accommodate them. Maybe the League Cups would have to go, or the FA Cup, at least for the top teams. How would those competitions fair without the top teams?

Written by shawthing February 11 2018 13:42:22