A battle for the soul of European football

Never has football seen a clash like this. The proposed European Super League pits a US model of a tournament played among members of a largely closed group against the more open style of footballing competitions in the “old continent”.

Cynics might call it a brass-knuckle attempt by a powerful new quasi-cartel to supplant a rather older one, in the shape of Uefa, its Champions League and national associations. Who wins will have a profound impact on the future of the European game.

The struggle poses questions about football’s nature: is it a business like any other, or something more? With billions of euros of television rights and sponsorship money at stake and many clubs owned by investors demanding a return, top-level football clearly is big business. Today’s clash reflects its evolution from community-based sport into an arm of the global entertainment industry. Yet TV revenues generated by the big clubs help to support an extensive ecosystem of more minor teams.

As a business, football also relies for its audience on passion, suspense and unpredictability. True, a handful of clubs are now dominant in most countries. But the “pyramid” structure of the game in Europe allows even the smallest teams to break through to the top ranks — including European competitions — or win trophies through giant-killing exploits. Outside the top few, other clubs rise and fall with time.

While the Super League is proposed to have five rotating places, it will have 15 permanent members. That will make it look more like US leagues where there is no relegation or promotion and, as a result, revenues are far more predictable — leading to higher valuations. It is no coincidence that four founding clubs — Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, plus Italy’s AC Milan — have American owners, and a US bank is providing the financing. The league may also have US-style cost-control elements such as salary caps and spending limits.

Its backers insist there is no shortage of excitement in American sport. The potential to pull in larger global TV audiences and tap new markets, they add, including through partnerships with the likes of Amazon and Facebook, would create a more financially stable tip of the European pyramid and increase fund flows to the base.

Yet having only five places up for grabs each year would limit the intrigues over who will “qualify for Europe”. Even if national divisions, such as the Premier League, relent on their threat to bar ESL participants, there is a real likelihood they will become less competitive as the top teams focus on midweek European fixtures. That would erode the attraction for the hundreds of thousands of fans who turn out to weekend games each week, but could never afford to travel repeatedly to European matches.

A better solution would be to rejig the Champions League in a way the big clubs can live with, without caving in to all their demands. There is no reason Uefa itself could not market a revamped product to new audiences via Big Tech. Some elements of the ESL’s plans, such as tighter caps on spending and pay — which could reduce the ability of super-wealthy owners to buy their way to success — may be worth copying.

Yet even if football is more than pure business, it is not an area in which governments should intervene, despite the spluttering of leaders from Boris Johnson of the UK to France’s Emmanuel Macron. The battle may be brutal, and poses a threat to this year’s European Championship for national teams. But the future of top-flight football should be decided not by politicians but by players, clubs, managers, if necessary the courts, and above all the fans.