In other-football news

[Brad Beam]

While the idea of top-tier football teams in leagues across Europe forming a "Super League" is being continentally denounced, British Jimmy begs Americans to care.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1384333967113932800

 

(When reached for comment, the New  York Yankees reminded everyone that the Red Sox are behind this - Fenway Sports Group also owns Liverpool FC - while the NCAA's Power 5 football conferences responded tersely: "Yes. And?")

 

_   _

|_>|_>  Brad Beam- Belle WV

|_>|_>  http://www.facebook.com/74bmw

[Kevin M.]

I could only care less if it was cricket 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/000001d73596%24ce4fecf0%246aefc6d0%24%40suddenlink.net.

--

Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Brad Beam]

Update: Of the six Premier League candidates announced yesterday, today only Chelsea FC is left kicking collie bollocks.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKgmY4Db7XSfgbMXyUnW8GwFrpsWg%2BsGFJBnXgRCPt2GNm_OfA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Adam Bowie]

This may all be of limited interest to this group, but I'd note that like most sports, this now-dead league (48 hours alive!) was created with TV front of mind. Selling the rights to some broadcaster for even more money than current deals deliver.

All six English league clubs pulled out yesterday, including my club Arsenal. At least one Spanish and  two Italian clubs had pulled out at time of writing. A league of three teams won't be much fun. 

The proposed league had managed that rare thing of getting football fans, players, coaches, football authorities, TV pundits, politicians of every hue, and most of the wider population, all in general agreement that was terrible and should be fought. That's quite a remarkable feat to achieve! Sports fans rarely agree on anything!

I imagine there will be books written about this. 

Meanwhile, I think a few mostly American owners (Hello to the Glaziers, Kroenkes and Fenway Sports Group) have had their fingers burnt, and are likely to face legislative action that prevents a similar move happening in the future. It's an easy win for any government to enable. In Germany, for example, clubs have to be 51% owned by fans. That was the reason that no German clubs were in this league. 

This is perhaps a reminder that while sport is theoretically similar across the world, the closed shop league structure familiar to most major US sports fans, and very profitable for teams'* billionaire owners, is not much loved elsewhere. Simply put, the backlash here was about the right to lose, and there to be consequences for that loss.

You need to understand that this was not just sports news in the UK - this lead headlines and dominated the conversation for the last 48 hours. Even today, most newspapers either lead with the collapse of the league or at least gave it second billing to the George Floyd trial result.

Adam

* I say "teams" but of course in US parlance, "franchise" is more accurate. And I think those two words explain how the US owners failed to understand the toxicity this move was likely to cause them. They will never recover. Fans will hate them until they divest themselves of these clubs.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/00dc01d73635%24e18ade20%24a4a09a60%24%40suddenlink.net.

[David Bruggeman]

Yeah, while I could see this was a bad idea, the level of vitriol that emerged against it surprised me.

It seems there remains some belief that non-American football has a level of 'love of the game' that has, IMO, long ago been squeezed out of most major league American sports.  When some people described the super league as just a money grab, my cynical self said - of course it is.

David

[Adam Bowie]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 3:04 PM 'David Bruggeman' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Yeah, while I could see this was a bad idea, the level of vitriol that emerged against it surprised me.

To be honest, that was probably their biggest failure. To fail to recognise the animosity that this would create. Indeed you'd have thought that any new business plan that involved billions of dollars of investment would have carried out significant market research to test the waters and understand what the public perception would be. They seem to have utterly failed to do this. Or if they did, they completely ignored it.

Despite hiring a big PR firm (who should have done that work for them), they didn't come out on the front foot at all over this. Putting out a press release late on a Sunday night and then not having *anyone* to be a spokesperson to sell the concept was an enormous miss. I'm not saying it'd have worked, but was inept not to have done that. You'd surely hold a big launch event and have a glossy video ready to roll? You'd have lots of answers to the inevitable questions. You'd sell the benefits on why the league would be so good, and explain why you weren't shafting every other club not invited. You wouldn't vaguely say that another five clubs would get to play each season without giving at least some hint about how that might happen. Instead, they hadn't even told players or coaches about it, and left them fending off the press before and after matches.

This will probably become a case study in the annals of bad marketing along with that time Coca Cola decided to change their recipe. 

Slightly more on track with this group, I think that global TV providers have dodged a massive bullet. I don't know if there was anyone lined up (Disney was rumoured), but the European backlash towards anyone or any brand getting on board with this could have been extremely costly. "Cancel" culture indeed, when you can cancel your TV subscription very easily...

 Adam