Curious to get your take on the Super League, since that model resembled the NFL model a lot more in terms of finances but was deemed as anti-competition.
There's no doubt that the Super League was modeled after American-style "closed" sports leagues. And because soccer is composed entirely of "open" leagues, with typical market dynamics driving highly asymmetric returns to just a small number of clubs, this won't be the last time we see larger clubs try and take control of their own destiny. That's literally how the EPL itself was formed!
Putting aside the completely predictable yet still hilarious misforecasting of the global scale fan condemnation, I'm skeptical that the structure, as they presented it, would work. 16 teams is simply not enough to be sustainable (I'll be expanding on this point in the next newsletter), and because these clubs win all the time anyways, it's actually not meaningfully different than what we see in the Champions League itself. Another piece they're missing, and that I commented on in the "Trophies for Sale" piece, is that drama emerges (in part) from unpredictability, and if it's literally the same clubs playing over and over, without some level of variance, the end product suffers.
I have more to say on this but that's longer than a comment should be haha. Over drinks :)
Curious to get your take on the Super League, since that model resembled the NFL model a lot more in terms of finances but was deemed as anti-competition.
There's no doubt that the Super League was modeled after American-style "closed" sports leagues. And because soccer is composed entirely of "open" leagues, with typical market dynamics driving highly asymmetric returns to just a small number of clubs, this won't be the last time we see larger clubs try and take control of their own destiny. That's literally how the EPL itself was formed!
Putting aside the completely predictable yet still hilarious misforecasting of the global scale fan condemnation, I'm skeptical that the structure, as they presented it, would work. 16 teams is simply not enough to be sustainable (I'll be expanding on this point in the next newsletter), and because these clubs win all the time anyways, it's actually not meaningfully different than what we see in the Champions League itself. Another piece they're missing, and that I commented on in the "Trophies for Sale" piece, is that drama emerges (in part) from unpredictability, and if it's literally the same clubs playing over and over, without some level of variance, the end product suffers.
I have more to say on this but that's longer than a comment should be haha. Over drinks :)