The Premiership is going global. Come the 2010/11 season, the world’s most popular league will have an extra round of games played across the world. The Chairmen of the Premiership voted unanimously however the wider football community have received the initiative with less enthusiasm. The sanctity of the game is under threat they say, tradition is being eroded in favour of ever greater revenue. This is all true of course however such traditionalist undesirables are unavoidable landmarks on the road the world’s greatest sport took when it embarked on the professional era.
In professional sport – in the true nature of any capital venture – if you fail to take advantage, someone else will. The time is perfect for the birthplace of the world’s greatest sport to make a play to become its global home. As unpalatable as it may seem to traditionalists and the much neglected (local) supporters the latest evolution and radical departure from innocence has begun.
Right now there are three great football leagues in the world; the Spanish Primera Liga, Italian Serie A and the English Premier League (EPL).
This move by the EPL is a play to become the only great football league in the world.
“Money is the only motivation” the fans cry. Well of course it is! But the increasing influence of money on the evolution of the game is not a trend that is ever likely to be reversed. Future generations will look back on our time as fondly as we do on those that preceded us but change happens regardless and regardless of its stimulus.
Playing competitive matches around the world will bring an already popular product face to face with the emerging, fertile markets that the forward-thinking Premiership teams have already endeavoured to plough. Permanent fans bases will be sown, consumers of less value but far greater numbers will emerge and inexorably, the English Premiership will be the most visible, supported, rich and relevant league in the world. Indeed much of the work has already been done; the league is already the most watched in the world and its existing popularity is what has created the momentum behind this initiative.
As it stands, the World of Football is in reality defined by the three great European leagues. They make the most money, have the most success and crucially are the stage for the world’s best players and coaches. While the nature of the game ensures that it will always be played and loved the world over, one way or another the financial potential of sport – and football is sport in its most potent form – will eventually be leveraged. That means that every league in every sport will evolve to maximise its income and exposure. That in turn pits every league and every sport against each other.
This year, the first competitive American Football game played outside of the United States came to London. It was quite a spectacle if not exactly the riveting gladiatorial contest the sport is normally billed as. Nonetheless, the success of the American encroachment will have served to clarify in the minds of the Premiership management and EPL teams the value of product export and it will have undoubtedly played a big part in bringing the initiative to the fore. The NFL threat may be overstated but has certainly served to crystallise the value of geographical expansion.
The Premiership no longer sees other leagues as their sole competitors but other sports too. While many of us would contend that the very intrinsic nature and beauty of the game is such as to assure its standing as the world’s greatest sport, it is not enough to guarantee its standing as the greatest financially or even continual growth.
American sports are colonising from a strong base – the two major sports to have ventured to new shores, Baseball and American Football have unquestionable homes in America. The World of Baseball is the United States just like the World of American Football is; all the world’s best players migrate to the Major Leagues or NFL to maximise their potential simultaneous enhancing the NFL and weakening any potential competitor.
European football is ripe for consolidation; for a single entity to lay claim to being the World of Football where the world’s greatest talents congregate and the rest aspire to but as it stands the base for this centralisation does not exist. There is the money and will but not the structure while there are three leagues spread across Europe which currently represents that World.
Ask yourself the following question; is it more likely that all the best leagues in Europe Italy, Spain, England, France, Germany etc. will, in the spirit of cooperation form a true European League or that a single league with existing financial and product dominance make a lone play to become the pre-eminent league on the continent (and by extension the world)?
If one league can do it, they will. While we may debate the relative merits of each league, across the world already there is only one world league of importance. In every aspect bar one, the Premiership product beats all competitors hands down.
What makes the EPL so attractive internationally then? It is not just the availability of games which the business arm of the TV rights holders have to be praised for but the great draw of the EPL is the product itself. The mixture of quality, passion and excitement is unmatched by any other league in any other sport. The Primera Liga has the better players and certainly provides a more aesthetic, technical experience but lacks atmosphere, excitement and passion. Serie A is the home of tactics – its beauty is perhaps more akin to the regimented tactical chess match that is American Football but it lacks everything that Spain does and cannot offer its flair either.
The EPL however is the jack-of-all-trades and a master of some. Technically it is the poor relation of the big three but that is not to say there is no technical quality just that such skills are not innate to the English league; at least half a dozen of its teams are on a technical par with the best European sides. With the financial growth of the league and its increasing appetite for technical players, this number continues to rise. Tactically, England exceeds the Spanish but not the Italians, however passion and quality often sees them overcome Serie A opposition in Europe. But no other league does passion like England does. No other has the capacity to produce such compelling spectacles of passion and excitement and it is reflected in the attendances in each league.
Last season the total and average attendances in England were 13,094,307 and 34,359 respectively. In Spain they were 10,958,440 and 28,838 and Italy 7,019,740, 18.473.
This season, 12 English clubs have achieved an average percentage capacity of over 90%. All bar one (the terminally unexciting Bolton) are over 74%. In Spain, the highest is Real Zaragoza with 82%, one of only four clubs over 80%. Over half of all Spanish teams fill less than 70% of their seats. Real Madrid are at 77.2% and Barcelona 69.5% compared to 99.3% for Arsenal, 99.1% for Manchester United, 98.9% for Chelsea and 98.8% at Tottenham Hotspur who comprise the top four (unsurprisingly featuring the three most attacking teams in the league).
As if to emphasise the importance of the product’s excitement on viewing figures, the tactical and turgid Serie A is truly the poor relation of European football. No Italian team can boast a percentage above Fiorentina’s 69.2% (the same as Bolton) and with an average attendance of only 32,759. The majority are below 50% with the likes of Roma at 48.1% and Lazio an astonishing 19.9%.
Meanwhile the always popular Premiership product is more appealing than it has ever been. Even players and managers coming to the league are surprised by it. After his team’s 5-1 annihilation of arch-rivals Arsenal, Spaniard Juande Ramos spoke of the atmosphere inside White Hart Lane, “I have sublime memories of nights like this but I have to admit that the atmosphere today in this stadium is unique to English football and was really spectacular.” “I remained totally absorbed in the match, I have to admit it was difficult not to be affected by the euphoria.” “Now I know why football was born in this country. It’s all so different, a different concept… …just simply unique.”
There is no experience like English football, a story told the world over.
This experience and balance of attributes is perfectly attuned to appeal to the world masses. It is tactical enough to achieve success but not too tactical to induce coma. It is technical enough to provide the knowledgeable fan with aesthetic enjoyment and it is passionate and exciting enough so that even those who are unaware of football’s nuances can be as captivated by the spectacle as the rest of us. The EPL appeals to the casual fan, the connoisseur and the fervent, tribal fan in equal measure; in short it is nearly the perfect football product.
The world’s greatest players will finally follow when the Premiership becomes a global event in the same way that they currently flock to the Champions League.
There is no question that the time is right for this move. The EPL is unquestionably the most widely watched league in the world already and even if Spain and Italy were to have the same sort of exposure England has, their products are unlikely to garner anywhere near the same level of interest. England has the superior product and first mover advantage. Not to attempt a play for the global audience would be to willingly accept stagnation and turn down possibly the greatest business opportunity in the history of sport.
Finance is of course why this is happening; in business, to stand still is to go backwards. The game nationally is approaching stagnation and in order to keep growing and maintain or increase its financial advantage over both its horizontal and vertical rivals (other leagues and sports respectively), expansion into areas with high growth potential and low local football penetration is logical. The logical result of that however is the ultimate expansion into areas with proven potential and high existing penetration – i.e. the homes of existing leagues.
So the necessity is clear and the time is right however the stimuli which have led to the initiative are not going to be the ones directly impacted by it. American Football and other sports will still have their audiences. What this is aiming to do is to deal a critical blow to the growth of Spanish and Italian football before they have time to commercially maturate and properly compete.
FIFA hold a veto over league matches that are played outside of the country a league is based in so they could scupper this whole initiative. It is conceivable to see a future where an impasse is reached between the Premiership and Europe which could go one of two ways; first the formation of a genuine European League which, like Formula one or the European Golf Tour makes stops all over the world or even more extreme, one where an all-mighty Premiership breaks away from Europe all together.
So here is a road that could conceivably lead to either the assimilation of Europe’s largest brands and diminution of their leagues; Milan, Barcelona and their ilk join the Premiership, or their marginalisation; the Premiership becomes so powerful that it truly becomes the World of Football and the world’s best players and coaches join to perpetuate it while simultaneously poisoning its rivals.
Michel Platini derides the Premiership’s idea as “nonsense” and the basis of much of the opposition is the erosion of tradition (read, resistance to change) however the real opposition should be coming from Italy, Spain, Germany and France. From Milan, Madrid, Barcelona and Munich. It is those teams and those leagues that stand to lose the most.
There is a genuine question as to whether the Premier League – should they ultimately vote in favour – be able to do this. With Platini firmly against it and Sepp Blatter sure to weigh in with his own peculiar brand of disconnected lunacy, the EPL will face serious opposition. Veto aside, the Premiership will be going it alone and hoping to isolate the issue to one of a pair of associations having the freedom to arrange between themselves what they like (i.e. the Premiership and Chinese FA) while hoping to marginalise the far more pertinent issues of precedent and what is in effect, empire building.
They may manage to do this too. When Associations disagree, lawyers get involved and the Premiership’s, backed by the EPL clubs are as talented and well-financed as any. Many a murky issue has been illuminated in an inappropriately bright light while on the legal stage.
Premiership football has been available to the emerging markets for a considerable period of time already. Make no mistake, should the EPL be successful in taking their product to the distant masses it will enhance an already mighty presence. The likes of the Milans, Roma, Real, Barcelona and Bayern Munich may be huge clubs with glorious histories but to the emerging markets they are nobodies. The Premiership and its teams are what they have grown up with and with every season that the EPL maintains its almost-exclusive presence in these markets, those great institutions of Spain, Germany and Italy become less relevant and their bargaining positions ever weaker.
Finally, the effect on the global growth of the game could perhaps be quite unsavoury. Ask yourself what effect a globally mighty single league would have on the development of the local leagues in Thailand, China, India etc. The growth of the Premiership, like the growth of any monopoly stifles the growth of its competitors in the same way; talent-drain. Even worse is that these fervent, football starved people will be given the finest Pauillac before they have learned to appreciate a moderate Bordeaux. What hope the local produce ever attaining maturation? Is that not what is already happening to English players here?
Ultimately it is hard to definitively say whether this is a good or bad initiative. Knee-jerk, traditionalist reactions aside, the pros and cons are as hard to quantify as they are to characterise. Good or bad, it will be what it will be.
Global standardisation or centralisation will happen to football. So the only real question of importance is this; if we the English league have the chance, why should we not try to be the World of Football?
