The European Super League Collapse - What Happened?

On Sunday, April 18th, 12 of the top clubs in European soccer announced that they would be starting their own “Super League”. The 12 teams include Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan. Since the announcement, the Super League has already completely collapsed.  

Liverpool Majority Owner John Henry has since apologized, but the damage is done to his reputation as an owner. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

Of the 12 teams who announced they would be joining, only three to four remain. All English teams have dropped out, Atletico Madrid has dropped out and Inter Milan has opted out. Though president of Real Madrid, Florentino Perez, has stated that the teams cannot leave due to contracts signed.

What happened?

For that to be answered you have to look at the foundations of soccer in Europe. Many of these big clubs were founded in the late 1800s, founded by working-class people who couldn’t afford the modern luxuries of the time. It allowed people to find communities within their own cities and towns where they may have not been one before. It became an escape for many blue-collar workers who didn’t have the financial ability to escape their everyday lives. This led to a foundation being laid with many of these teams that were truly within their community. The teams meant more to people and their community whether it was a big club like Liverpool or a “small” team such as Sheffield Wednesday.  

So why do the big teams disconnecting lead to such outcry?

In recent years there has been a trend in European soccer among the big clubs where American billionaires come in and buy these historic clubs in hopes of a nice revenue stream and a nice toy for themselves. This purchasing of clubs has led to a disconnect in understanding of the foundations of these clubs. The owners who wanted this move desired to have a revenue deal similar to that of how American sports are run. But the problem with that is that American sports aren’t as connected to their communities, they don’t have the history within the community of truly being a symbol of gathering for local communities. 

The idea of being run like a business rather than a club is sickening for European soccer fans. This lies in the fact that when profits are prioritized and not the results of the club or connecting to the community. While those things may happen because of profits, these billionaires will never understand that the connection to the community is truly what makes soccer special and make those results mean more.  

Fans successfully took to the streets to protest the Super League forming. (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

This desire to chase profits led to these biggest teams wanting to form this new style of club soccer. The idea of playing the biggest teams in Europe every week is nice on the surface, but when you look further, the results turn sour.

The current format of TV revenue in club soccer within Europe has all clubs within the league receiving money from TV deals depending on where they finish in their league table, along with a minimum amount received for being in the league.

If you were to take the biggest clubs out of the league, the money would dry up immediately since they draw the most attention and thus in a way subsidize the smaller clubs. This would lead to not only clubs failing, but entire leagues failing due to financial shortcomings. 

While the big clubs certainly lead the way for revenue and feel they are shortchanged because of their subsidizing of smaller and less popular clubs, it is morally onerous to try and weaponize their popularity and financial power to leave the smaller clubs and their history in the dust in order to maximize profits. This leads back to the disconnect between the billionaire owners who lord over these historic clubs and the rest of the soccer community in Europe.

Thankfully due to outcry from soccer fans at large, the league has failed at this point in its short lifespan and there aren’t public plans to continue the league in the format that was initially proposed. But this has uncovered the corruption at the top of these major clubs and shows the disconnect that is truly present from the top to bottom. One would hope these financial giants won’t attempt another coup d’etat in the future in the name of profits, but with people who lack such understanding, it is hard to say that it won’t happen again.