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In April 2021, when the Premier League clubs pulled out of the proposed deal to form the European Super League, the move was welcomed by one and all. After all, everyone wanted the game to remain competitive, and the Super League’s agenda was to separate the game’s elite from the rest of Europe.
But for those who wonder if we're out of the woods as far as the Super League is concerned, they’ve got another thing coming; the dominance of the Premier League.
In the recently concluded January transfer window, Premier League clubs shelled out a record-breaking £815m. In fact, Chelsea alone were able to outspend all the clubs from La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1 combined.
Even if we exclude Chelsea’s recruitment overdrive, the Premier League clubs are still miles ahead of their counterparts from the rest of the Top Five Leagues.
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What is the European Super League?
The European Super League is a proposed, seasonal club football competition that was initially supposed to be contested by 20 of the biggest European clubs. The clubs were mostly from Europe's Top Five Leagues, namely the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, and Ligue 1.
In a nutshell, the proposed league was a breakaway attempt by some of Europe's biggest clubs to form a separate league. The clubs would play each other every season in a round-robin format, followed by a knock-out round among the league leaders to decide the winner of the season. The league did not have the concept of relegation and promotion.
After a formal announcement to declare the league's inception in April 2021, the league was suspended following widespread fan protests and public outrage. However, Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Juventus have taken the idea to the European Court of Justice and are still awaiting a final verdict over the issue, which is bound to arrive at some point in 2023.
What makes the Premier League stand out amongst the the Top Five Leagues?
Thirty years after its inaugural season in 1992, the Premier League is the most popular football league in the world. Some of the factors responsible are heritage (the game was invented in England, after all), a willingness to embrace expertise from abroad, a strong ecosystem that facilitates foreign investment, strong leadership, language (English is the most commonly spoken language across the world) and a strong domestic market.
Certain factors often get overlooked whenever discussions surrounding the rise of the Premier League come to the fore. The league's social media presence speaks volumes about its reach, with it boasting around 64.7M followers on Instagram as opposed to La Liga's 45.6M.
It also helps that the presence of big-six clubs makes the Premier League stand out among the rest of the leagues. While other prominent leagues such as La Liga and Serie A have only two or three genuine mainstays in the race for Champions League places, the ’big-six' of the Premier League makes for an intriguing battle for the top-four race.
What is the reason behind the Premier League’s economic might?
The breakaway of the Football League First Division from the Football League was a pivotal moment in the history of the sport in England. The idea behind creating the Premier League was to take advantage of lucrative broadcasting deals from Sky and BT group (which reached £3.1 billion a year in 2020).
TV rights, particularly international TV rights, play a huge role in keeping the Premier League far ahead of the competition. The €422 million per season deal (as seen in GOAL, an increase of 26 percent for the 2022-23 to 2024-25 cycle when compared to the 2019-20 to 2021-22 cycle) has resulted in Premier League clubs earning more than double from any of the other "Big Five" leagues.
Things got worse for the other Top Five Leagues once the pandemic struck the world. While the other leagues suffered huge losses due to their reliance on matchday revenues and domestic broadcasting rights, Premier League clubs benefitted from a strong TV rights deal and used the money to buy new players and enhance their sporting infrastructure.
It’s not like Premier League clubs were unaffected by the pandemic. They lost around £1bn in revenue due to the pandemic. It’s just that PL clubs were better placed to recover post the pandemic due to their broadcast and streaming rights deal.
However, La Liga behemoths Real Madrid and Barcelona are the victims of their own greed. They sell their TV rights individually and earn income out of it. However, the rest of the league failed to attract any viewership. Consequently, the international market was concerned about the demand for La Liga outside Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Also, Financial Fair Play regulations in other leagues are quite strict as compared to the Premier League. While most clubs in Spain and Germany (in particular) run on a fan-owned model, the Premier League facilitates foreign investment with limited budgetary constraints.
For instance, in the Bundesliga, clubs employ the 50+1 ownership rule. This means members of the club need to hold 50 percent, plus one more vote to have the ultimate say in the decision-making of the club. This rule disallows outside investors (Todd Boehly, for example) to own a majority stake in any Bundesliga club.
In La Liga, clubs are given a specific limit to register their gross salary and any potential amortization quota for the entire squad over the course of a season, depending on the budget stated by the club. The amount is calculated by deducting the club's expenses and debt from its revenue.
For example, if a player is signed for €50M over a five-year contract, then €10M of amortization quota will account for the next five seasons in the club's wage bill. If the clubs misrepresent their wage bill or tinker with La Liga's FFP rules, they can be relegated to a lower division, or hit with economic penalties.
Why the Premier League is equivalent to the Super League?
Despite some obvious differences, no one can deny that the Premier League is akin to the Super League in many ways. While the concept of promotion/ relegation is there in the Premier League along with the absence of a playoff-style knockout tournament, there are some obvious similarities.
In essence, the idea behind the Super League was to generate revenue via high-profile matchups between Europe's biggest clubs, which only occur in the UEFA Champions League (and that too, less frequently).
However, the Premier League has no dearth of such high-profile matchups because of the presence of big-six clubs. Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, and Chelsea have been mainstays in the English top-flight title and top-four races for the last 15 years.
The 'big-six' of the Premier League are some of the most popular football clubs across the world. Hence, it's no surprise that the league has benefitted from their presence in the international markets as well.
Also, had the Super League become a reality, it would have been able to attract a huge TV rights deal, akin to the Premier League. This can be corroborated by the fact that as per Deloitte's recent ranking of clubs by revenue, 15 of the top 20 clubs were those who regularly featured in their respective league's top-four positions.
What is even more remarkable is that the five clubs that have not been a dominating force (Newcastle United, Everton, Leeds United, Leicester City, and West Ham United) from a sporting perspective are all from the Premier League!
Since Premier League clubs are already enjoying their fair share of huge TV and streaming money, there is no incentive for Premier League clubs to form a breakaway league because whatever Super League has on offer, they already have it in abundance.
It's no wonder that Premier League clubs were the first to pull out of the proposed Super League amid public protests in April 2021.
What’s next for Europe’s Top Five Leagues?
For all the negativity spread by the Super League’s proponents (Andrea Agnelli and Florentino Perez, in particular) regarding the game's decline, one thing is clear: Football can still capture the entire world’s attention.
The 2022 World Cup final is the biggest testament to Football’s ability to attract and enthrall simultaneously. So, the idea that the Super League will usher in a bright future for football is not a solid narrative on which big clubs outside of England can rely.
The likes of La Liga and Serie A are in danger of getting completely overshadowed by the financial might of the Premier League. The fact that clubs such as Nottingham Forest, who have just got promoted to the English top flight this season, can sign 29 players in a single transfer window is a sign of things to come for the rest of Europe.
While it’s good that the dominance of the Premier League is unlikely to cause a Super League breakaway, the threat posed by the league to the rest of Europe is real.
In hindsight, the Super League would have been a great way to deal with the financial pull of the PL. But since that’s out of the picture (as of now), it is clear that the Premier League is the de facto Super League of European Football. It is likely to continue its dominance for a considerable future.
Stats courtesy of Deloitte, ESPN, & GOAL
