Real Madrid players, left, duel with Getafe players during the Spanish La Liga soccer match at the Alfonso Perez stadium in Getafe, Spain, on Sunday. Manu Fernandez / AP Hide caption
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Manu Fernandez / AP
Real Madrid players, left, duel with Getafe players during the Spanish La Liga soccer match at the Alfonso Perez stadium in Getafe, Spain, on Sunday.
Manu Fernandez / AP
A battle is looming between the best football clubs in Europe and their governing bodies – a battle that could cost billions in television rights Payments alone.
Twelve of the richest and most powerful football teams in Europe from Spain, Italy and England announced Sunday they would give up the existing Champions League and create a rival Super League.
The 12 founding clubs of the Super League include Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Real Madrid. The organization announced that three more clubs will be invited ahead of a possible opening season.
The new competition is seen as a necessary change after the global pandemic, which the group said in a statement “has accelerated the instability of the current economic model of European football”.
The Super League statement said, “The pandemic has demonstrated the need for a strategic vision and commercial approach to increase the value and support for the benefit of the football pyramid as a whole.”
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) as well as the English, Spanish and Italian football associations immediately attacked the breakaway Sunday. vocation the efforts behind the Super League “a cynical project”.
Both French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson popped the splinter. Johnson tweeted Sunday: “Plans for a European Super League would be very detrimental to football and we are helping the football authorities to take action. They would hit the heart of the national game and affect fans across the country.”
Billions on the line.
UEFA said that all teams participating in the Super League will be banned from participating in other competitions at national, European or global level. Players could also be denied the opportunity to represent national teams.
“We will examine all the measures available to us at all levels, both in the judiciary and in sport, to prevent this from happening. Football is based on open competition and sporting merit; it cannot be otherwise.”
The Wall Street Journal Reports Tensions over the division of the world’s television and commercial rights, now valued at more than $ 3.3 billion annually, have been mounting for years.
Super League organizers found that alternative teams that provide revenue receive a share of a one-time payment of 3.5 billion euros (or $ 4.18 billion) to join, the statement said.
