You may have read about the aborted attempts of some of Europe’s leading football (soccer) teams to create a European Super League in direct competition to the long-standing European Champions’ League. The plan was to have a select number of teams pursue a European round robin championship plus play-offs, without ever getting demoted regardless of how they do in their national leagues. This is a totally foreign culture to the history of world football, albeit very much in line with general professional team sport business in North America. Rightfully so (and luckily), the proposal was shelved 48hrs after it was announced, thanks to fans and various government and social opposition. That is good, but a closer look at some of the details makes for some amusing observations.
The other day I was thinking that it was funny that of the 12 teams that signed the original declaration, 6 were from England (plus 3 from Spain and 3 from Italy). So, the drivers were UK based who were probably looking to increase their revenues and ensure they will have a steady stream of revenues (England has only 4 slots for the European Champions’ League rounds). Another point is the arrival of JP Morgan bank with over €4bio to finance the launch of the league, presumably with positive expected returns over time.
Now putting these 2 points together is very symbolic: UK organizations and businesses, very ingrained in the European arena, combining with a premier American investment bank to break a European institution in search of profits (greed?). Many people in the EU dread the potential for an alliance between UK organizations and American investment institutions to attack and harness profits in the EU, not just in football.
“This is a fair game in capitalism” you may say, and frankly, why not? Well, through this system, there was an attempt to monopolize the league and create barriers to entry and thus a steady revenue stream, which most of those teams must have calculated to be more than what they are getting, especially since some of those teams could not be sure to participate in the Champions’ League every year.
It is quite amusing to see that the capitalists who claim that legal barriers such as taxi tokens in NYC or Paris limiting taxi availability (thus high value for the tokens), or cartels such as OPEC fixing oil prices and production volumes are against free competition, were eager to create a football monopoly, with significant rewards to the monopoly owners. So, I guess when it concerns the taxi drivers, Uber looking to break the monopolies (see the link below from 2014) is good, but when it comes to football, a handful of teams with the support of a big bank looking to create a monopoly to reap regular profits is good business.
A brief point on Uber's monopoly breaking ambitions in 2014
https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-destroying-value-of-taxi-monopolies-cartels-2014-11
Paris, April 26, 2021,
Zeejay