Celtic and Rangers could receive major benefits should they join a new-look European Super League, the chief executive of the project has claimed.
Company A22 - who also promoted the controversial Super League plans in 2021 - are planning an open-access continental competition.
Chief executive Bernd Reichart has claimed he has held talks with 50 European clubs and stakeholders in order to develop 10 principles that would be the foundation of the new tournament.
However, Reichart did not reveal whether Celtic and Rangers were among clubs spoken to over the plans - citing confidentiality agreements over the limited information on club correspondence.
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He told the PA news agency: “Analysing the situation of the Scottish top clubs, the situation they’re in is quite comparable to other European leagues where domestic revenues are not sufficient to grant competitiveness on the bigger European stage, although they have every condition to be one of the big European clubs – football tradition, modern stadia, passionate fan base, historic track record and trophies.
“What can change for big clubs in small leagues was one of the essential assessments we did over the course of the last six months.”
The developers are planning a 60 to 80-team multi-divisional set-up with at least 14 European matches per season for clubs involved.
Asked what the benefit of A22’s proposals might be to Scotland’s top clubs, Reichart said: “I see a big opportunity in a multi-divisional system which is granting access to 60 or 80 clubs to have a strong second column (of revenue) you can build your ambition on.
“Currently the recurrent, solid competition you’re building your project on is your domestic league.
“If those big clubs in smaller countries would have a chance of a stronger, more sustainable, more predictable European footprint, with a guaranteed amount of matches ahead of the season they qualified for, that could actually give them, step by step, an opportunity to have a more meaningful European path and build that project and their European ambition on something which is more predictable.
“It’s more stable than qualifying for the Champions League or trying to go through the previous rounds of qualification, because for a lot of clubs the Champions League and the other UEFA competitions are far from being wide open.”
A22 said last month that its proposed competition would be open to “at least” clubs from the 27 EU member states, but Reichart did not believe Brexit would be a barrier to Scottish clubs joining if they wanted to.
“It’s not an exclusive project, it’s an inclusive project,” Reichart said.
“We mentioned the 27 because our legal certainty on what we can build and innovate on will be binding for 27 EU member states after the ECJ ruling and from there we try to design an attractive, appealing project for the territories beyond the 27 as well.”
Rangers and Celtic have been approached for comment.
