Football does need to adapt – but the European Super League is the wrong way

Strip away all the emotion and the plan to create a European Super League is the most simple of stories: a attempt to bring American business practice to a European service industry.

Whether it succeeds or not will tell us a huge amount about the extent to which a US model can be transferred – the extent to which people in Britain and Europe are similar in their tastes to Americans. And what makes this fascinating is that we really do not know the answer – though I am pretty clear in my own mind where this one is likely to end.

There are many other elements to the story, of course. My colleague James Moore argues that this is one more case where the market economy must be regulated – that billionaires bent on extracting more profits from football must be curbed. All sectors of the economy do need constant scrutiny, and this is certainly one.

There is the business argument that all service industries need to look at new sources of revenue to help recover from the losses they have incurred as a result of the pandemic. Sport and the performing arts have faced extreme difficulties, like a number of sectors.

There is a powerful case to be made that while there are many things to be learnt from the US sports model, which does give more stable revenue streams, this particular plan has some of the worst elements of transatlantic practice without its benefits. For example, as Chris Stevenson writes, in the US “ there is always the chance that a lesser-fancied team makes a run for glory, thanks to a broader distribution of resources. With the European Super League there is not even the chance of that.”

If you just have the same teams playing each other year after year, without a clear path for innovative and disruptive clubs getting into the action, the proposed league will become a bit of a bore – not really super for very long. Yes, it will probably bring more money into the game in the short term, but at a cost of damaging it in the long run.

But beyond all this is the difference between the US sports and entertainment industries – the two blend into each other – and the British and European ones. What works in one market sometimes works in the other, but sometimes strikes an odd chord. There was a vivid, if troubling, example of the divergence of the two markets in the response to the Oprah Winfrey interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The reaction of some Britons was one of horror, as expressed by Jonathan Dimbleby. But for many Americans – and younger people in Britain – the view of Gayle King that it is better to open up difficult conversations struck a more comfortable note.

Now a similar gap is evident over this plan. I suspect that the promoters of the European Super League will have been utterly unaware that what looks like a way of bringing bright American ideas to the European football scene should meet push-back on the scale it has done. They can hardly have been prepared for the attack by the president of the Football Association, who happens to be the Duke of Cambridge.

Prince William, who I feel has a pitch-perfect understanding of what works in the UK, has come out with a warning that this plan might undermine the game: “Now, more than ever, we must protect the entire football community – from the top level to the grassroots – and the values of competition and fairness at its core. I share the concerns of fans about the proposed Super League and the damage it risks causing to the game we love.”

That is big. I may be wrong, but I think that kills it. Having the prime minister say that he will do everything he can to scupper the plan is one thing. But on this issue Prince William has even more firepower than Boris.

But to finish, a word of caution. A survey of football fans for BBC Sport at the end of last year, when the idea was being mooted, found that there was indeed a majority against it, with 40 per cent unhappy and 30 per cent happy. But this was driven by older fans, particularly those over 55 years old. Those aged 18 to 34 supported it, with 48 per cent happy with the idea, and 18 per cent unhappy.

My take on this is European football does need to adapt. We can learn from America. Just not in this way.