Skip to main content

Barca supremo says European super league is on its way

A European super league and global matches are on their way as Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu hails the relentless march of the globalisation of football. He was talking to Oliver Kay of The Times.

He suggested that as it stood many matches in the domestic leagues and even in the Champions League were boring for fans [or at least for global television audiences who are now the watchers that matter]. 'So why not one day have a new format of the Champions League which could also be a new super league within Europe?'

He admitted that that La Liga didn't want to reduce matches, 'but it's something that will come in time because, in the end, there will be a demand of the fans.' Perhaps those of the top Spanish clubs, but the others?

In my view one of the key markers of the progress of globalisation in football will be whether league matches (not friendlies or special tournaments) are played abroad. La Liga is trying to stage Girona's home fixture against Barca in Miami in January. Bartomeu says, 'La Liga want to promote their brand. The US is a fast-growing football market and La Liga's objective is to have better contracts for TV rights and sponsors.'

However, Oliver Kay asks whether this would be the thin end of the wedge. Does anyone want a future in which every league becomes a roadshow?

Barcelona was once known for having Unicef on its shirts. It remains an association of 145,000 members. But the structural realities and accompanying ideologies that surround it are such that it is now as rampantly commercial as any other club, perhaps even more so.

Barcelona are coming close to their target of €1 billion of revenues: Record revenue

However, this sits alongside an ambition to represent Catalonia and Catalan identity? The upsurge of that (regional identities) has been a clear political response to globalisation.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reports about Charlton sale exaggerated

Reports have appeared in The Guardian and elsewhere that Charlton has been put up for sale. Richard Cawley is an authoritative local journalist who runs a South London Sport substack site.  He reached out to the club yesterday evening to ask for comment on The Guardian’s article. Early indications from the club have been that nothing has changed since the story about them seeking investment, except that it is now a different company doing it. Charlton have since managed to consolidate their place in the Championship, avoiding an instant return to League One, with their women’s side promoted to the WSL, returning to the top flight for the first time since 2007, although staying there is likely to be costly. It would be counter-intuitive for owners Global Football Partners not to progress the club when looking for investment, that the focus remains on driving it forward, that their spend this summer is in line with long-term planning and will see an increase in wages spent on players...
Post a Comment
Read more

Levy's anomalous status at Spurs

It is now nearly a year since Daniel Levy was dismissed as Tottenham Hotspur chairman by the Lewis family.  It has been 12 months of dramatic twists and turns, with Spurs avoiding relegation on the final day of the Premier League season, and then spending unprecedented sums this summer to try to make sure such a scare never happens again. But while most fans focus on the football — and a dubbing by Brentford   — another set of issues have been bubbling away separately. These relate to Levy’s continued position as a minority shareholder in the club. This has been in the news for much of this summer, even as we approach the first anniversary of Levy’s dismissal, and specifically this month, after he missed the opportunity last week to participate in the Lewis family’s latest equity injection into the club. On Thursday morning the club confirmed that his shareholding has been diluted, down by roughly two per cent, after the creation of new ENIC shares. Levy’s dism...
Post a Comment
Read more