A new-look European Super League (ESL) proposal has today been unveiled. The competition – which attempted to launch in 2021 with just 12 founding clubs – would now include 60 to 80 teams, have no permanent members, and would guarantee at least 14 matches per season for those involved.
Bernd Reichart, chief executive of A22, the Madrid-based sister company of the ESL, has told the German newspaper Die Welt that the "foundations of European football are in danger of collapsing" and revealed more than 50 clubs have been consulted since October about the creation of a new competition.
Qualification to a new European Super League would be achieved via performance in each club's domestic competition. Reichart also outlined plans for cost control measures that would not allow clubs competing in an ESL to spend more than a fixed percentage of their annual football-related revenue on player salaries and net transfers.
READ MORE: New European Super League format pitched with major effect on Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham
Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus have continued to push for a European Super League since the original attempt to launch a breakaway competition failed. And the new proposal comes off the back of a January transfer window in which more than a record £815million was splashed out by Premier League clubs.
Chelsea alone spent more (£323million) than the other top four leagues (La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga) combined in the winter transfer window. That financial disparity is something that was highlighted by La Liga president Javier Tebas – who is against a Super League being formed – last week.
He said: "The British market is a doped market. You can see it clearly in this winter market, where Chelsea have made almost half of the signings in the Premier League. It is quite dangerous that the markets are doped, inflated, as has been happening in recent years in Europe because that can jeopardise the sustainability of European football."
Chelsea supporters were crucial in bringing down the initial European Super League launch; a protest of around 2,000 fans took place outside of Stamford Bridge ahead of a Premier League clash with Brighton in April 2021. That forced the club, then owned by Roman Abramovich, to communicate their decision to pull out of the planned competition.
Man City, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool soon followed and European Super League – in its original format, which did not include participation on sporting merit – quickly collapsed. However, hope of launching a competition outside of UEFA's scope has remained.
Any future decision as to whether Chelsea sign up for a European Super League is now in the hands of Todd Boehly, Behdad Eghbali, and Jose E. Feliciano. They are now the club's co-controlling owners having completed a £2.5billion takeover from Abramovich last May.
It's understood Boehly and Eghbali expect the earning potential of the Premier League to continue to grow in years to come. Meanwhile, the evolution of the Champions League – which will use the "Swiss model" from the 2024/25 season – guarantees at least 10 matches for those involved.
"I never say hard nos, I like to keep options alive, but it [joining a European Super League] is not something that we are talking about at all," Boehly said at the SALT Conference in September.
"I think the Champions League has a big component of that already. You have the best clubs playing each other every season. There's already a lot of that. If you win the Champions League, you win over €100million (£88.5million). You win the Masters and make a couple of million bucks.
"I think you can do that in the summer [play Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich] more often, and there are other ways to do that. I think that the passion the fans have for the sport as it is, is so strong then I can't envisage that changing."
Chelsea co-owner and Clearlake Capital co-founder Eghbali echoed that sentiment at the Sportico Invest in Sports conference in New York in October. He told football.london: "I think the sport needs more premium high-quality matches and content but it doesn't have to be a Super League.
"Todd [Boehly] went there on an All-Star Game, the baseball talent competition or draft generates £200million to £300million of revenue on a Monday or Tuesday each year, none of that exists in the EPL. Could there be an EPL versus Serie A game? Could you see pre-season matches producing more premium content on the pitch? You could.
"But structurally, given how botched that [ESL] episode was does anybody have any appetite for something like that? A couple of teams in Spain do and they are vocal about it, but everyone else doesn't want to go there anymore."
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