Big U.S. bank was bankrolling the proposed Super League.
Money is the driving force behind most professional sports, and so it was with the aborted Super League.
U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase had agreed to underwrite an initial 3.5 billion euro investment to help the 12 football clubs set up the proposed Super League, according to Bloomberg News.
The Super League would have effectively replaced the Champions League, Europe’s current club championship, which generates around three billion euros of revenue each year. That may sound like a lot of money, but it pales in comparison with the estimated $12 billion of income that, according to magazine Sports Illustrated, the U.S. National Football League produced last year.
Organizers of the Super League were hoping its competition would bring in more revenue — including billions through televison rights — than the Champions League, which brings together the leading teams from Europe’s domestic leagues in an annual tournament watched by millions.
Teams in the Super League were also hoping that they would continue to pocket income from their domestic leagues.
Some critics of the Super League said the U.S. investment bank had failed to appreciate fans’ attachment to the longstanding system in European leagues that offers hope, however faint, to clubs from small cities and towns that someday they can play in the big league.
Owners of those clubs may not boast the hefty bankrolls of their exalted peers in the big urban centres, padded by massive TV payouts, that allows them to attract the world’s best and most expensive players. But fans around the world love an underdog, and there seemed little room for longshots in the proposed Super League.
‘Another attempt is unrealistic.’
Still, JPMorgan, which has operations around the world, is no newcomer to European football.
According to Bloomberg, the investment bank’s links to big deals in the sport go back almost two decades. It has advised Manchester United as well as the buyers of both Fiorentina and Roma in Italy, and helped Inter Milan, Roma and Real Madrid raise money, the news service said.
News reports have noted that the owners of three of the English teams that signed up for the Super League — Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool — are Americans who backed another aborted super league project floated in 2009 that would have been bankrolled by another U.S. investment bank, Morgan Stanley.
Whether it was due to sheer greed, misjudgment or a combination of the two on the part of the club owners, the plan quickly collapsed amid outrage vented by fans, politicians and football’s governing bodies.
“The incredible thing to come out of this was the unity of the fans,” Collett said. “It did not matter if you supported Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea or whoever, the fans were united in a way I had never seen before in 50-plus years’ involvement in football.”
Collett continued: “The overwhelming opposition to the idea makes it unrealistic to believe any owner in the future will attempt this again. I believe the game is safe from such an unpopular move. This was a total miscalculation by the owners. They totally and utterly failed to understand the fury of the fans.”