Live data from Hacker News

US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

eu.usatoday.com

71–80 of 234 posts

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#71
post #51

Having UEFA people talk about how unethical, greedy and acting against football fans the new league is was almost as cringy as the YouTube CEO awarding herself a free speech price.

God, this comment has given me relief after 3 days of waiting someone to say this. HN delivers. I can't believe the hypocrisy of FIFA and UEFA and how everyone is making some moral case for being against the super league, when we know how insanely corrupt fifa and uefa are. It's an absolute joke how everyone is taking the moral high ground here.

I'd like to adjust that a bit:

The super league idea was so far out that for a wee while FIFA and UEFA actually had a moral high ground to someone at least.

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#73
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, this comment has given me relief after 3 days of waiting someone to say this. HN delivers. I can't believe the hypocrisy of FIFA and UEFA and how everyone is making some moral case for being against the super league, when we know how insanely corrupt fifa and uefa are. It's an absolute joke how everyone is taking the moral high ground here.

I'd like to adjust that a bit: The super league idea was so far out that for a wee while FIFA and UEFA actually had a moral high ground to someone at least.

Agreed

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I'm a defender of either system but US teams don't promote or relegate as a whole. Rather, the players move up or down between minor and major league teams.

Not saying that I want it, but I do think it would be interesting to see what would play out if the American sports leagues adopted relegation and removed salary caps/luxury taxes at the same time.

It would get worse.

There would be a set of 10 or so teams that would churn through promotion/relegation, a set of 5 or 6 teams that would win every year, then 16-ish teams that would basically serve as farm teams for the 5 or 6 big teams.

The money available overall to each team is vastly different.

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#75
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The league below the Premier League is even more competitive, there are 24 closely matched sides trying to gain promotion.

The promotion and relegation system goes all the way down to amateur level. This chart is outdated but captures the complexity: http://thepyramid.info/asp/pyramid3.asp A big part of the appeal of local football is the knowledge that your team could theoretically get promoted all the way to the top. A closed league goes against this sense of fairness.

But the only way that could realistically happen is if a large corporation or a wealthy individual bought the local club and replaced all of it’s players with significantly more expensive ones and I don’t see what’s particularly appealing about that.

The closed American leagues are actually much fairer at least to the teams that are in them, TV money is split more evenly, there are caps on how much money can be spent on players and the teams at the bottom of the league table get more chances to acquire the more talented players due to the draft systems. Whereas in European football the pretty much the only thing that matters is how much money a club has to spend.

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I'm a defender of either system but US teams don't promote or relegate as a whole. Rather, the players move up or down between minor and major league teams.

> Rather, the players move up or down between minor and major league teams. Uhm, so what? Players move between clubs all the time in football. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever to an avid, European, football fan like me at least

> .. Players move between clubs all the time in football.

> That doesn't make any sense whatsoever to an avid, European, football fan like me at least

Can you explain how ownership of a player's rights works in European football? As a non-football fan from North America, I have always found it confusing when I hear about the huge fees it costs move a player, before his salary is even discussed, as I'm more familiar with the simpler trade/free-agency model used by American sports leagues.

What about player loans, how are those even a thing?

I've tried googling/wikipedia-ing it more than once, but these concepts are often not dumbed down enough for me.

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#77

Having UEFA people talk about how unethical, greedy and acting against football fans the new league is was almost as cringy as the YouTube CEO awarding herself a free speech price.

100% this. As a supporter of Manchester United 35 years, I get the upset toward this Super League plan. But I, on the other hand, couldn't look away at the fact that UEFA is trying to expand Champions League participant list in 2023-2024 in ways that are questionable. This is not to mention that football (soccer) has become very mercenary in the three decades that I've been supporting. Just look at the players' trans…

> Where are all these money coming from to pay for such inflated expenses?

It's money laundering. Only a few talk about that. It's from the regional league local construction tycoon football club president laundering his money from black construction work all the way up to the top.

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the NFL distributes all TV money equally to all teams as well even though no one in Malaysia wants to watch Tampa Bay. Further most of that money goes to the players not the club owners. How do you square that with your thesis?

The CBA gives owners 52% of football related money and players 48%. So, no, the majority of the money does not go to players. And the way football related is defined is fairly narrow, so some obvious revenue sources (suite upgrades, parking, etc) do not fall under football related and therefore goes to the owners. Further, the vast majority of wealth the owners make is through the rapidly increasing value of their te…

How much of that value appreciation is derived from income, vs the status symbol nature of owning a team?

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#79
post #51

Having UEFA people talk about how unethical, greedy and acting against football fans the new league is was almost as cringy as the YouTube CEO awarding herself a free speech price.

God, this comment has given me relief after 3 days of waiting someone to say this. HN delivers. I can't believe the hypocrisy of FIFA and UEFA and how everyone is making some moral case for being against the super league, when we know how insanely corrupt fifa and uefa are. It's an absolute joke how everyone is taking the moral high ground here.

If you're making UEFA bosses feel altruistic you should realize that you're in deep shit.

Re: US owners find greed doesn't play well in European soccer

#80

Having UEFA people talk about how unethical, greedy and acting against football fans the new league is was almost as cringy as the YouTube CEO awarding herself a free speech price.

They have the moral high ground here, so why not?

Under the system of UEFA competitions and coefficient rankings, teams from outside the strongest divisions have a chance to participate in big money tournaments and attract viewers. They also make the tournament more interesting and unpredictable. Last year Atalanta (Italy) made the semifinals of UCL. This year Slavia Prague and Dinamo Zagreb knocked out Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur in UEL.

This cannot happen in a system where the 12 biggest teams in Europe form a cartel and sign TV deals that leave nothing for the development of the sport at grassroots levels.

Post reply on HN