Analysis: What a European Super League could mean

The company behind the aborted 2021 European Super League plan, A22, has launched another proposal this week, following a European Court of Justic ruling in its favour.

The organisation has called for men’s and women’s “Super Leagues”, taking over the matchdays currently used for the Champions League, Europa League, and Europa Conference League. It has also proposed creating a digital streaming service with free and paid tiers for viewers to watch the action. You can read more about it here.

Global Data head of sport analysis Conrad Wiacek has given his view on the developments: “The European Court of Justice’s ruling that UEFA and FIFA have restricted competition by effectively banning the European Super League (ESL) will embolden the likes of [Real Madrid president] Florentino Perez and [Barcelona president] Joan Laporta to push on with the Super League plan, despite opposition from fans. While going against the spirit of the sport itself, the likes of Perez dreamt up the ESL as a means of neutering the power of the English Premier League. Unwilling to sacrifice their own dominant market positions domestically to create a more competitive product which in turn would drive higher media rights fees, the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona will see the ECJ ruling as an opportunity to enrich themselves and further imbalance the soccer ecosystem and create new commercial reality for the sport.

“This is the third significant intervention the ECJ have made in soccer over the past few decades, starting with the Bosman case and following this with the ruling that media rights must be sold in separate packages to promote competition. While the Bosman ruling impacted players, both the media rights ruling and the ESL judgement will be seen to only be to the detriment of soccer fans. In the case of media rights, fans have been the ultimate losers, being forced to pay more to watch the sport while the ESL ruling has the potential to fundamentally change and realign the sport.”

On the potential for a free streaming platform to show the competition

“There will not be a ‘free’ streaming platform. All the value is tied up in the media rights, so they simply will not give away their biggest asset for free. Champions League rights are worth over £1 billion in the UK alone, so no chance it’s given away. It’ll be some sort of D2C fiasco with a subscription and it simply won’t work.”

Conrad Wiaceck is head of sport analysis at Global Data.