The Ref Stop

Good news (Super League irony)

The Ref Stop
Anything that stops a monopoly is good for the consumers. It's a shame that it has to come to this. But don't ever think that the new guys care about football any more than FIFA or UEFA.
 
i'm coming round to the idea
It's a difficult thing to put into words, but it's always satisfying to watch something rot from the core
That said, none of us are Lawyers and I recall the UK Gov. was drafting Law to prevent EPL Clubs from going their own way. There's something disgusting about the game which gives me the sense of inevitability that the status quo won't last
 
I am starting to think this could be a good thing for lower level domestic football, as fans of clubs that would join any such ESL type system are likely to become (even more) disenchanted and perhaps leading them to go see truely local teams, boosting their revenue and so on.

"Elite" football is starting to lose its shine anyway with all the force feeding of games down consumer throats. The only thing that keep fans of the Elite clubs involved is the tribal nature of football. But, sooner or later, you can fall somewhat out of love with that tribe and look for a new one, and that maybe where these proposals might actually help see more fans join in lower down the pyramid(s). Might even see double figures for spectators on a Sunday morning!
 
UEFAs response to the threat of a Super League was to make a complely unnecessary and quite frankly awful revamp of the Champions League format and make it even more of a closed shop than it is already.

Would be interesting to see what the new proposals involve.

UEFA/FIFA have shown time and time again they are only interested in generating money. What's right for fans, teams and the game in general are irrelevant.
 
Football is seeded to the extent that it's extremely top heavy with lots of measures in place to ensure the top clubs are protected
This has backfired because the EPL itself has left the rest of Europe in its wake. Unrestricted greed is never gonna end well
Always ends up with a tiny minority holding all the power and wealth with self-interest eclipsing the good of all
 
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It isn't going to work while ever English clubs refuse to get involved, and that won't happen unless they get the lion's share of the money generated from it. TV revenue, both domestic and worldwide, dwarfs that of all other countries, as an example France can't even get anyone to bid for the rights for their top league.

And the elephant in the room, they have said all games will be free to air. Where's the money coming from then to pay players tens of millions a year each, as that currently almost all comes from the TV revenue? Sounds to me like a lot of hot air that hasn't been thought through at all.
 
The free to air statement was bizarre. Are “A22” the same numpties that managed the press releases last time?

“Games will be available to watch for free on a new streaming platform called Unify.”

What? As Rusty highlights. Never gonna happen. The US owners in particular are all about the TV money. Totally fishy.
 
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The free to air statement was bizarre. Are “A22” the same numpties that managed the press releases last time?

“Games will be available to watch for free on a new streaming platform called Unify.”

What? As Rusty highlights. Never gonna happen. The US owners in particular are all about the TV money. Totally fishy.
My assumption is that they plan to start off free to air but will sneak behind a paywall once its popularity grows. After all, the Premier League used to be on free to view tv...
 
My assumption is that they plan to start off free to air but will sneak behind a paywall once its popularity grows. After all, the Premier League used to be on free to view tv...

This. The free-to-air thing is a carrot. The whole thing tanked last time because of the fan backlash, and that was mostly because of the closed shop. They've dropped that, which removes the main fan objection, but they need fans on board. Free TV was a totally predictable move, just as is the fact that it will last 5 years at most.

However, even without subscriber revenue you still get ad revenue. Live sport is just about the only thing left that people watch as it's broadcast so it commands a premium.
 
However, even without subscriber revenue you still get ad revenue. Live sport is just about the only thing left that people watch as it's broadcast so it commands a premium.
Soccer is also a harder sport than mostfor ad revenue due to the lack of time outs or other real breaks during game play. Ads between plays are much more attractive than pre-game or half time ads, and the in game ads over the game can’t be super effective (ergo not as lucrative). In the US years back it was common to either just take a commercial break with the game going on or have commercials that took up most of the screen with the game image without sound ongoing on a part of the screen. (I have wondered if we were going to see leagues mandate that a VAR review has to take 30 seconds so they can squeeze a TV commercial in …)
 
It does all feel very Americanised. If something like this ever happened with a free-to-view model, we’d have adverts all over the place, as others have mentioned. Adverts during VAR reviews, adverts during an injury break, adverts during water breaks, adverts at any time the ball is out of play.

From a referee point of view, it would also be interesting to see which types of referees would be accepting appointments in such a league. Surely they’d want the best in the world, but how much would they be willing to pay?
 
My assumption is that they plan to start off free to air but will sneak behind a paywall once its popularity grows. After all, the Premier League used to be on free to view tv...
Did it? Sky had it from day 1, with BBC getting the highlights package, and I don't recall Sky ever being free to air. Sky's money was the whole point of it, the clubs collectively went from receiving £11 million a year to over £60 million overnight.
 
This. The free-to-air thing is a carrot. The whole thing tanked last time because of the fan backlash, and that was mostly because of the closed shop. They've dropped that, which removes the main fan objection, but they need fans on board. Free TV was a totally predictable move, just as is the fact that it will last 5 years at most.

However, even without subscriber revenue you still get ad revenue. Live sport is just about the only thing left that people watch as it's broadcast so it commands a premium.
The clubs wouldn't last 5 months, let alone 5 years without the TV revenue. The current TV deal is £6.7 billion for domestic coverage alone, near £1.7 billion a year, take that away and clubs would become insolvent almost instantly.

And therein lies the other problem, the newly signed TV deal runs until 2029. If there's even a sniff that the top clubs will be leaving the EPL and leaving Sky and TNT showing the likes of Luton vs Burnley they would be screaming law suit immediately.
 
Did it? Sky had it from day 1, with BBC getting the highlights package, and I don't recall Sky ever being free to air. Sky's money was the whole point of it, the clubs collectively went from receiving £11 million a year to over £60 million overnight.
Correct, the PL was always about the money.

The free streaming will most likely become unwatchable due to the quality of the free stream they'll provide. But for a fee you will be able to get HD or for a higher fee UHD. By some miracle all thr adverts will stream perfectly.
 
Unless the world starts spinning the other way, there is no way a football Super League launches that is free to watch. Rusty has given plenty of reasons.

In-ground ads, shirt sponsorship and any other “branding in TV view” is dependent in the ecosystem of TV, social media and other traditional media publishing. The English clubs, EPL, UEFA, and their media partners, commercial partners and socials have created a wildly successful ecosystem - with pay TV a hugely successful part of it.

This is really about the unique circumstances of the Spanish super clubs that don’t have such a wildly successful ecosystem because they (RM, FCB) don’t get as much pay TV money as they could.

(True story: I used to work in sports sponsorship and part of my work was to research the development of ad hoarding messages and technologies, and I worked with architects and designers on commercializing major events. Footy has always been a strange beast in that sense. Probably true to say that football events and the clubs’ competencies lag behind other sports events in terms of at-event commercialization - due to the delicate local communities. Obviously this is great for football as the fan experience is still amazingly organic and uninterrupted. See also Wrexham and how to push the envelope. But football is such a great and popular product that it is light years ahead of most sports (and many other other media properties) when it comes to broadcast monetization. And that’s why A22 sound daft (again!).
 
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