Skip to main content

Momentum grows for playing league matches abroad

Globalisation may be coming to a halt as Trump's tariffs take effect (although even here the picture is more complex than it seems on the surface).  However, in football the geopolitical forces are, if anything, gathering strength.   Their focus may have changed, but they are affecting the game.

European football’s summer transfer laid bare the widening gulf between the English Premier League and everybody else. English clubs, boosted by new overseas TV deals, spent more than those in Spain, Italy, France and Germany combined.

Those leagues aren’t sitting on their hands — all of them are trying to come up with ways to get international football fans interested, in the hope that one day that feeds through to more TV and sponsorship money.

One idea is to ape the NFL’s international series by taking league matches overseas. Summer tours have been going on for years, and both the Italian and Spanish “super cups” are currently staged in Saudi Arabia. But playing a proper competitive domestic match outside Europe would break a long-standing taboo.

The plans are gathering steam. The December match between Barcelona and Villarreal is scheduled to take place in Miami, while AC Milan are slated to play local rivals Como in the Australian city of Perth next year. A nod from Uefa could come next week.   (When I first heard of this, I thought it was a joke. OK, Perth is a great city, and in Freo there are plenty of people of Italian descent, but it's remote even in Australia).

Yet the backlash has been strong. This week more than 400 fan groups signed an open letter warning that moving games abroad was a similar “existential threat” to the one posed by the European Super League.

“Clubs are neither entertainment companies nor travelling circuses”, the groups said. “It risks surrendering our clubs and our leagues to the will of entertainment companies, dictatorships, or vulture funds, whose interests in taking European football away from its home go against the very fabric of our sport.”  Yet do fans call the shots or billionaires and petro states?

Vocal critics of the proposals include Real Madrid and the European Commission, while Uefa says it is “not happy” but has limited powers to intervene.

English football’s financial dominance is not new, but it is getting more pronounced. That’s why Europe’s other leagues are pulling whatever levers they can find. The German league, for example, has just agreed to hand live broadcast rights in some markets to a handful of YouTubers, including grumpy Manchester United fan Mark Goldbridge and Gary Neville’s The Overlap.

But having been left behind in the global battle for eyeballs, Europe’s other big leagues are starting from a position of weakness. The Premier League’s international strength has been years in the making, and aided by long-term partnerships with the likes of NBC in helping to market the competition in the US.

Will any of this actually work? It’s impossible to know. But doing nothing is no longer seen as an option.

 


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s...
1 comment
Read more

A poor financial record, but new hope at Everton

I recently saw an amusing video online in which a group of Everton fans were rebuked in jest for being hopeful.  Football fans in general tend to swing between excessive optimism and excessive pessimism, but for many it seems that moaning is in their bloodstream (Spurs fans probably take the trophy).  However, Everton fans have had plenty to moan about on and off the pitch.   Let’s hope that a new era is about to begin for this grand old club. Everton’s 2023/24 financial results covered a fairly momentous season, when they ended up 15th in the Premier League, though they would finished three places higher if they had not received an 8-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR). It was a worrying time for Everton fans, as the club faced a “perfect storm” of issues, including large financial losses, an ever increasing debt burden, a challenging stadium build and the tortuous sale of the club. There were eve...
Post a Comment
Read more