I feel like we are going to draw either Barca or Juve, and those are the two I want to miss - if we are going to play a powerhouse I would like it to be one we haven't come up against recently
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Let's be absolutely clear here. TV income rules European football, period. TV money, sponsorship income, and matchday income are the three pillars of revenue for these clubs, and sponsorship income is heavily, heavily correlated with TV money.
The kinds of clubs we're talking about here, the Benficas, the Basel's, the Ajax's are some of the very best run clubs in the world who excel at talent development and always wisely reinvest their funds from sales. But there is no way for a domestic league in a country of 10 million people to generate the same kind of revenue as La Liga or the PL in much larger countries in languages and cultures that are globally familiar, adding even more available market to sell. Those clubs in smaller countries are in the financial position the market has dictated for them.
UEFA, through its wildly popular continental competitions COULD act as a countervailing force, structuring the competitions to make them difficult to be dominated by a handful of clubs and countries and disbursing its enormous revenues with an eye toward supporting the game everywhere.
They do the exact opposite, centralizing all the focus into the CL, ensuring safe passage to all the big brands into those big dollar games, and even having the gall to structure their prize money with a large chunk of it being dictated by the local TV market of the competitors. They emphasize and reinforce the disparity.
Corruption, greed, cowardice, there are many reasons they do it, but it's a terrible detriment to the game. The global audience is fed a steady and ever increasing dose of their glittering Juve vs. Barca type matchups and that revenue just feeds back into creating more of the same, while the heart and soul of the sport, the local interest, the match-going supporters, the community bonds, wither on the vine. It's a mistake.
PSG it is then.I feel like we are going to draw either Barca or Juve, and those are the two I want to miss - if we are going to play a powerhouse I would like it to be one we haven't come up against recently
So the UK's record attendances are a sign of the heart and soul of the sport, the local interest, the match-going supporters, the community bonds, withering on the vine.
Can you explain that obvious dichotomy?
The UK distributes its revenue more equitably than other countries for exactly this reason!
There are so many different interests involved between teams in a league, between leagues in a pyramid, between national federations in continental associations and between the continental associations themselves. It's a complex web.
What's clear is that the structure in the UEFA competitions pushes yet more money toward the small handful of teams in the small handful of leagues that are already dominating the sport financially.
There is an argument the UEFA should give the cash to the participating clubs parent league to distribute amongst it's members, but again a good theory that's totally unworkable in practice - Liverpool win the CL and 20 EPL clubs get an equal share of the rewards? In a business environment that's simply never going to happen.
I accept your point but think on this ....
UEFA were to push 70/80/100m to Ajax, Celtic, Brugge, Zagreb, Slavia Prague etc. In each of those countries the domestic league is now screwed with one club having five times the resources of all the other clubs. It happens already with teams just receiving qualifying payments.
If UEFA were to become the "financial supply line" for a top team in the lesser countries that would damage domestic football, the reality is it already has in many places. By pushing the majority of the money to the top leagues at least UEFA are not destroying the heart and soul of the sport, the local interest, the match-going supporters, and the community bonds elsewhere.
Sure the big 16 clubs will have an advantage but it's not like the EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 are all one team walkovers, they do at least have some level of competitiveness.
Whilst I take your point that "fair" distribution to all those taking part is the eutopian dream, in reality giving massive sums of money to just one club in a lesser league risks destroying that league.
There is an argument the UEFA should give the cash to the participating clubs parent league to distribute amongst it's members, but again a good theory that's totally unworkable in practice - Liverpool win the CL and 20 EPL clubs get an equal share of the rewards? In a business environment that's simply never going to happen.
Of course we could nationalise all 92 professional clubs and pay all the players an equal salary regardless of ability. Socialist football, didn't Woolwich try that?
Says who? That's exactly what they ought to do.
If the local FA's want to distribute all the money to the club that earned it, so be it, but in most cases they wouldn't.
And this leaves aside the question of how to structure and divvy the money up between competitions. UEFA could go back to one club per nation playing for the European Cup tomorrow. Bring back the Cup Winner's Cup to add value to the national competitions that are open to everyone, and then let the Europa League be the sprawling competition full of teams from all over the place. And divide the money in thirds, equal to each competition.
The votes of UEFA members would be there to make this happen if the political will of the leadership were there to understand it as their interest and their mandate.
Self sufficiency is key, not waiting on or hoping for handouts and I'd love to see it happening but it starts at home.
A perfectly logical argument were it not for the unfortunate incontrovertible reality that it is the top leagues that are structurally rewarded handouts by the existing UEFA setup.
UEFA takes the world it has, dominated by a handful of clubs in less than a handful of leagues, and deliberately and consciously exacerbates that financial gulf.
If leagues tapped into their local supporting potential more it would take the global strength away from the Barcelonas, Real Madrid's and Man Uniteds of this world and thus the UEFA money wouldn't be structured to do so.
What part of "Germany has inherently more local supporting potential than Portugal" don't you understand, exactly?
Yeah, group winners have the honour of playing the second leg at home...Are we defo playing the 2nd leg away do we know?
I accept your point but think on this ....
UEFA were to push 70/80/100m to Ajax, Celtic, Brugge, Zagreb, Slavia Prague etc. In each of those countries the domestic league is now screwed with one club having five times the resources of all the other clubs. It happens already with teams just receiving qualifying payments.
If UEFA were to become the "financial supply line" for a top team in the lesser countries that would damage domestic football, the reality is it already has in many places. By pushing the majority of the money to the top leagues at least UEFA are not destroying the heart and soul of the sport, the local interest, the match-going supporters, and the community bonds elsewhere.
Sure the big 16 clubs will have an advantage but it's not like the EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 are all one team walkovers, they do at least have some level of competitiveness.
Whilst I take your point that "fair" distribution to all those taking part is the eutopian dream, in reality giving massive sums of money to just one club in a lesser league risks destroying that league.
There is an argument the UEFA should give the cash to the participating clubs parent league to distribute amongst it's members, but again a good theory that's totally unworkable in practice - Liverpool win the CL and 20 EPL clubs get an equal share of the rewards? In a business environment that's simply never going to happen.
Of course we could nationalise all 92 professional clubs, give then each an equal share of revenue, and pay all the players an equal salary regardless of ability. Socialist football, didn't Woolwich try that?
I'm talking about the chasm between clubs.
Manchester United have 73m followers on Facebook, Bayern Munich have 49m yet greater Manchester only has a population of 2.8m and Bavaria 13m with Munich accounting for 1.4m of that number. What I'm saying is that clubs need to tap into their local markets instead of letting the oligopoly of fanbases occur. If they are waiting for handouts from UEFA they'll be waiting a long time because ultimately UEFA cares about coin and it makes more sense to them to give that coin to the big dogs winning over the punters and getting viewing figures up. It's a natural effect of the beast we all love sadly.
Berlin & Hamburg have bigger populations than Munich.... why aren't they growing their local support and going toe to toe if having more inherently local support is such a crucial factor? The sooner countries and communities find a way of bringing their fanbases back to local clubs, the sooner we will find that competitiveness in Europe and across European leagues we seek and hope for and if that isn't possible, they should try and pinch a few glory hunter numbers for themselves by making their League a spectacle people from overseas want to watch and follow.
Take La Liga for example (its Wiki I know don't shoot me)
Football in Spain - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Data of this survey confirmed the widespread impression that most of Spain’s people are supporters of Real Madrid (32.4%) or FC Barcelona (24.7%), and the other teams have fewer supporters nationwide, as Atlético de Madrid (16.1%), Valencia CF (3.5%), Athletic Bilbao (3.3%) or Sevilla FC (3.2%).
According to a survey, just under 75% of Spain's population either supports Real Madrid, Barcelona or Atletico Madrid. I'm pretty sure that 3 in every 4 Spaniards don't live in just those two cities and with numbers like that, can we really blame UEFA for pumping money into them to make them more watchable by the masses and for the masses? It's tough but it's the nature of the beast. It gets more competitive the more teams start rivaling them and their ways and that starts at a community level, just how I see it mate.
Not necessarily? He could have meant "Man City will get there, usual easy draw?"
TV income is the driver but TV income is driven by viewers and supporters ... so to claim that Countries and their teams with the most supporters are not earning their position? That's just the usual politics of envy that pervades society today.
The biggest countries with the most fans have the best clubs? Why should 1.9m paying Scottish fans have the same expectation as 13.9m paying English fans? ... it's not big bad UEFA it's economics. UEFA massively over reward the smaller leagues, if it was done on pure numbers the small clubs would get vastly less than they do now.
Nothing to stop a team from a smaller league making the grade, but to say they are 'entitled' is to have no understanding of the real world.
Why just TV? In terms of revenue it's not 6 times but 3 times - Bournemouth 135m v Spurs 412m - should we give 277m back to to the EPL to share with all the other EPL clubs?On that observation Spurs should be getting 6x more TV revenue than Bournemouth?