Something potentially big happened on the fringes of the World Cup this week. European Football Clubs, the (unhelpfully) renamed entity previously called the European Club Association, agreed to set up a joint venture with Fifa to run the Club World Cup. EFC has a similar arrangement in place with Uefa to market media rights for the three pan-European club competitions, a partnership that has already yielded significant increases in TV revenue.
The deal is likely to accelerate plans to expand the tournament from 32 teams to 48, perhaps as soon as 2029. Europe already sent 12 teams to last year’s Club World Cup, but with a cap of two teams per country. Assuming the increase is split on a pro-rata basis, Europeans would take up 18 spots in a bigger competition, and the per-country cap will surely be raised.
Last year’s CWC suffered from not having several of the biggest clubs in the world involved — Barcelona, AC Milan, Manchester United and Liverpool. Raising the number of European participants will quickly solve that issue and help drum up more interest from broadcasters and sponsors.
We could soon end up in a situation where the 12 original
European Super League participants, plus holdouts Bayern Munich, Borussia
Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain are — in effect — guaranteed a slot. That
could leave a few spaces still open for qualification; Uefa’s current rankings
would point to the likes of Bayer Leverkusen, Aston Villa or AS Roma perhaps
sneaking in.
The financial rewards on offer at last year’s CWC were
significant, at least for winners Chelsea, who took home more than £80mn in
prize money. European clubs also received higher fees for playing than their
counterparts from other continents. The split between participation fees and
prize money could easily be rejigged to make sure everyone takes home a decent
chunk, regardless of how well they perform.
It’s not hard to imagine a future where the biggest 15 or so
clubs are all but guaranteed regular income from a new and growing pot of
money. The EFC’s involvement leads to much higher income, and soon those same
clubs ask for the competition to be held every two years instead of four.
That the EFC already has a deal with Uefa reduces the risk
that it tramples on the Champions League. And of course PSG president Nasser
Al-Khelaifi, a vocal opponent of the Super League, is the head of the EFC and a
member of Uefa’s executive committee.
But what it all adds up to is not a million miles away from
the original vision of the European Super League — an elite group of top clubs
with reliable, repeating income they don’t have to share with smaller domestic
rivals.
The original Super League failed in large part because it
was an attempted sharp, sudden shock to the system. Boiling the frog appears to
be a much more effective tactic.
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