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Masters plays his cards close to his chest

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters was much more cautious and guarded in his comments to the FT Football Business Summit this morning that his Bundesliga counterpart Christian Seifert yesterday. However, Seifert is retiring next year whilst Masters is relatively new in the job.   Some of the questions he was asked were commercially sensitive and it is understandable that he gave no substantive reply.

On the European Super League, FT sports editor Murad Ahmed did tease out from him three key principles from a Premier League perspective: protecting weekends; qualification/access; and volume.

The UEFA proposal has already accepted that matches would take place in midweek.  However, Masters commented that none of the proposals he had seen provided for qualification via a domestic league or, if they did, only at the bottom end of the pyramid.

He also noted that there was not much support for more matches [something of an understatement].  The more matches you had the more you had to cope with.

Murad Ahmed then noted if you had fewer teams you could open up the calendar.  Was there too much football anyway?   Masters said that everything should be discussed but the 20 club model was favoured across Europe except in the Bundesliga which had a long winter break.  For the foreseeable future the Premier League would remain a 20 club competition, but it was 'something you come to along this journey.'

Masters refused to accept that domestic rights had plateaued, but he would say that anyway ahead of a negotiation.   He argued that deals in Europe were not relevant to the case of the Premier League, implying that it was at another level.   There was no rush to go to the market and 'we will choose our time.'                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I                                                      

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