Super League ‘gave with one hand and took with five’, says Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin
Report has ridiculed ESL clubs’ claims that their competition would better protect the football pyramid
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Claims by the European Super League’s founder clubs that their competition would better protect the football pyramid have been ridiculed in a new Uefa report.
Twelve of Europe’s top clubs announced themselves as founder members of the new league on 18 April, promising more than $10billion in solidarity payments to clubs outside the competition over the initial commitment period, which was reported to be 23 years.
The league collapsed within 72 hours amid fan protests and pressure from Uefa, Fifa, governments and national associations, and Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said the league “gave with one hand and took with five”.
In a wide-ranging new benchmarking report called ‘The European Club Football Landscape’, Uefa points out that it gave €558million a year in solidarity payments from the Champions League in the 2018-21 cycle, a sum “set to increase significantly” between 2021-24.
“Reports of 10 billion dollars over 23 years and wildly misleading claims of tripling of solidarity need to be put into proper context, even if they never come to pass,” the report stated.
“Without going into detailed calculations, a modest growth rate of five per cent a year (well below historic and current rates) would be expected to generate more than 28 billion dollars in (Uefa) solidarity over 23 years. Needless to say, 10 billion dollars is not three times 28 billion dollars.”
The report said the €558m in solidarity is divided into €108m for clubs who do not progress beyond the Champions League qualifying rounds, €32m for the clubs knocked out in the play-offs, €130m in youth development funding for clubs across Europe who have not qualified for any Uefa competition, €269m for assumed costs and subsidies for the Europa League and €21m for Uefa that is fed back to national associations.
The report forecast that Europe’s professional clubs would miss out on at least €8.7bn in revenue over the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons due to the coronavirus pandemic.
That figure included an estimate of €7.2bn lost to top-tier clubs, but the maximum damage that could be inflicted to those clubs was put much higher, at €8.1bn.
That higher figure comprised €4bn in lost gate receipts, €2.7bn in lost sponsorship and €1.4bn lost broadcast revenue, the report said. It found clubs were losing €85m a week in matchday revenue.
In the foreword to the report, Ceferin wrote: “This report outlines how broadcast penalties, empty stadiums, reduced commercial revenues, and the collapse in transfer profits have led to a projected 8.7 billion-euro shortfall in professional club revenues, with pain shared equally among top and lower tier clubs, only partly compensated by cost savings.
“Competition structures that destroy value, offering to give with one hand while taking away with five hands, are certainly not the answer.
“The whole football ecosystem, at professional, amateur and youth levels, has been heavily disrupted by the pandemic. This requires concerted efforts and a co-ordinated response throughout the football pyramid. Solidarity, not self-interest, must prevail and will win the day.”
The report said the ESL would also have inflicted “severe commercial damage” on domestic leagues. It stated that the broadcast deals for the Premier League in England, Serie A in Italy and LaLiga in Spain are worth $8.5bn a year and that “the effects of cannibalising that commercial value for any length of time would quickly add up to the many tens of billions”.
The report found that Uefa’s decision to postpone Euro 2020 until this summer and to delay the final stages of the 2019/20 continental club competitions until August last year meant €2bn of revenue was saved by domestic leagues that would otherwise have been lost in broadcaster penalties and rebates.
From the start of 2020 to the report’s publication, 52 clubs from 24 different countries suffered a “serious financial event” – either withdrawal or exclusion from their league on financial grounds and/or some type of insolvency proceeding.
In the calendar year 2020 alone, 42 clubs experienced such an event, far exceeding the previous record of 34 from 2011 at the height of club overspending before the introduction of Financial Fair Play (FFP).
The report stated the importance of FFP and said it was “sobering” to think what would have happened if the Covid crisis had struck in the early part of the last decade.
It said future rules would “need a much stronger focus on the present and the future” rather than the past and that wages and transfer fees “must be reduced to acceptable levels”.
“It is time to act. Severe situations require strong and swift responses,” the report said.
PA
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments