Politics of the European Super League (Part 1)
This multipart essay is based on a longer research article published recently in the journal Soccer & Society, which can be accessed freely here.
In North America, franchise sport [1] is worn comfortably like old leather, but on the other side of the Atlantic things are quite different. In England, the notion is treated as a threat at least as grave as the Spanish Armada and the Maastricht Treaty combined. Professional football (soccer) is perennially threatened with the spectre of the franchise model, even though that model is profoundly unpopular among the general public. The franchise movement seems always to be there as an intimidating presence. It’s a recurrent bogeyman that lurks in the shadows only to reveal itself in moments of anxiety and vulnerability. But its latest incarnation has proved to be the most serious attempt yet to turn the movement into a reality. This is the European Super League (ESL), and it is something of great significance.
Although it involved a number of football clubs from across Europe, the ESL saga was most controversial in England, where the six richest and most influential football club owners attempted to establish a new ‘super league’ by unilateral decision in 2021. After a highly secretive period of plotting, the ESL project was announced on the 18th of April in the middle of the COVID lockdowns, but by the end of a heady 48 hour period it was dead and buried. Or was it?
The short timeframe of this drama ought not to distract us from the gravity of what happened, and the seriousness of what took place should not be underestimated. After two years, the events of April 2021 might seem like ancient history, but those two days should not be forgotten. The threat of an ESL project is not going away, because the forces that brought it into being are greater than the personal greed of a few oligarchs. To get this threat, we have to look behind the surface of the ESL project, and we have to understand it in the marrow, if we want to meet it head on when it inevitably rears its ugly head again.
In fact, the matter is more important than football itself. The ESL project should be of interest not just to football/soccer fans, but to anyone who has concerns about monopoly power, oligarchy, and the fibre of our democratic societies. It is an issue through which we can learn a great deal about the political economy of advanced capitalism and its relationship to society in the North Atlantic. It is a cautionary tale that should pique the curiosity of all who are concerned about the encroachments of transnational power elites.
So what exactly is the ESL project, and what actually happened on and after April 18th 2021?
In a nutshell, 12 European football clubs collectively issued a letter of intent on that day to form a new European so-called ‘Super League’. They would be the founding members of the new league.[2] Three founder clubs were Italian (Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan), three were Spanish (Barcelona, Athletico Madrid, Real Madrid), and six were English (Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur). They would make up the permanent core of the new league with 5–8 spaces left free for other clubs to join or leave the league every year based upon their performance in national leagues and competitions. The plan was that the ESL clubs would play each other in the course of the regular European football season (September to June), but parallel to the existing European and domestic league competitions.
The first thing to note about this proposal is that these dozen football clubs present us with a majority of the wealthiest and most influential capital entities in world football, and together with a few other clubs conspicuous by their absence (i.e. Paris Saint-German, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund), they gather up the bulk of European football’s annual revenue.
The second thing to take note of is that the ESL as proposed would be formed in such a way as to preclude the relegation of any of these founding football club from the Super League… ever! This contrasts sharply with the existing system of the UEFA Champions League, in which clubs that excel in their domestic leagues (i.e. La Liga, Premier League, Eredivisie, etc.) earn the right to participate each year in the prestigious and lucrative Champions League competition through the next European footballing season. The victor in this competition is acclaimed European Champion, and although European Champions almost always emerge from these 12 clubs (+Bayern), entry into the Champions League each year is in no way a lockdown (as Liverpool, Arsenal, and Manchester United have found out over the last several years, to their great displeasure).
Bringing these two features of the ESL together, we can start to see what it is that draws the founding clubs to the ESL project. They wish to establish a guaranteed monopoly over access to television money that hitherto has come from Champions League participation, as well as the other connected revenues revolving around sponsorship deals and merchandise selling that flow from the high visibility bestowed upon participants. An ESL would guarantee that revenue every year in a way that the existing UEFA competitions currently do not (i.e., the Champions League, and the somewhat less prestigious Europa League).
The ESL project must then be understood as an attempted coup to establish a monopoly by a majority of the richest and most powerful football clubs in the world.
Reaction among the English public was overwhelming and unanimous. From the governing bodies of European and English football (UEFA, FA), the Conservative government, members of the royal family, and from pundits, managers, coaches, players, and the football-loving man-on-the-street, the response was widespread condemnation of the proposal. Disquiet rapidly gave way to unequivocal disgust at the actual coup attempt. The prevailing interpretation of the coup, which crystallized over the following two days, focused on the greed, cynicism, and opportunism displayed by the oligarchs. UEFA’s president even spoke of ‘liars’ and ‘snakes’ behind the coup attempt.[3]
In this video, former footballer and pundit Gary Neville blasts the actions of the ‘Big Six’. His tirade gives a fairly representative sample of what was a very common reaction to the ESL coup back in April ‘21.
The broad and immediate reaction coalesced around a number of more specific themes, but tended to focus on the individual moral responsibility of the club owners themselves.
The first objection focused on the individual greed of the oligarchs, who are widely believed to be indifferent to the fate of social football. After the greed of the oligarchs, a more specific objection zeroed in on the threat to sporting competition entailed in the ESL’s drive toward monopoly. This feature is taken as a serious transgression of the acceptable norms of association football, an existential challenge to the longstanding spirit of English football in particular, and a threat to the historic ‘pyramid’ structure of the English league system that is deemed so vital for the long-term survival of the national game.
Third in importance was the clandestine and highhanded way that the project announcement had been planned and executed ‘under the cover of darkness’, and then delivered to the public as a fait accompli. This was considered arrogant and undemocratic. The timing of the attempted coup, in the middle of a global pandemic, was also singled out for special criticism. Reaction drew attention to the misanthropic cynicism on the part of the oligarchs, who seemed to show little awareness of the psychological and emotional comfort that social football had provided for millions of fans throughout the traumatic and difficult period of the COVID lockdowns.
Finally, mention was made of the apparent incompetence and cluelessness of the oligarchs, their advisors, and their public relations ‘weasels’. The oligarchs never seemed to have understood how loathed the project was going to be, which many saw as evidence of an elitist and willful disconnection from the football fan base.
See another video here of pundit reactions to the ESL Announcement.
All these criticisms are on the mark. But intent focus on the malign agency of individuals in high places leaves us with no analysis of the systemic and structural forces at work in the emergence of the ESL agenda. It does not help us to understand the political economy behind professional football. This is what we need to inject into the discourse on the ESL project and the coup attempt of April 18th. When we say that “it all boils down to the greed from the top clubs that doesn’t [sic] allow the money to filter through properly”, we miss the point somewhat.[4] We need an approach to the ESL coup that coordinates all of the reactions outlined above, but which digs into a deeper social and economic seam of understanding.
The ESL project is supposed to be about greed. The greed of oligarchs for power and material gain. But that greed can only be understood if we put it in a broader context. While it is right to condemn the malfeasance in the ESL coup, the ‘greed-thesis’ mustn’t allow a more durable strategic response to be side-lined and neutralized by well-timed apologies, tactical misdirection, feigned contrition, and quick footwork on the part of corporate PR departments, which were always going to be the inevitable sequel to the coup’s failure.
By integrating the greed-thesis into a bigger picture, we can argue more effectively that a deeper social response to the attempted coup of April 18th is necessary, and how regulation of the political economy of football has become both more imperative and more popular. By placing the unethical personal agency of the oligarchs within the framework of political economy that surrounds their decision-making, we can begin to comprehend their actions more effectively. Once we do this, we can then understand why any apologies or reassurances that they give us are woefully insufficient, and how formal and substantive regulation of corporate football is now a necessity.
Oligarchs can be greedy and destructive, but there would be no greedy oligarchs without oligarchy. Social structure and moral agency are connected, and we must understand the one to understand the other.
In this four-part article, I will examine the reaction to the attempted coup, and show how a fundamental contradiction has arisen in the way corporate football is approached by its critics. This contradiction in football is actually the manifestation of a much larger one in modern capitalism between market economy and society, and it is the reason that the prospect of franchise football will not go away.
In order to analyze this contradiction, I shall be drawing on the work of the Hungarian political economist Karl Polanyi, and his concept of Market Society. Polanyi’s insights into modern liberal capitalism provide a strong base from which to make the argument for the regulation of corporate football, so as at the very least to save it from itself.
The first task will be to look at the relationship between competition, monopoly, and capital accumulation in corporate football, and to show how the reaction of critics has fallen into a contradiction that has limited their ability to articulate an effective case for the regulation of the football industry. This will be the topic of Part 2.
The article continues in Part 2, which can be found here.
Endnotes
1 In contrast to “association” football, where competitions and leagues are formed and sustained by agreement reached between autonomous entities (clubs), “franchise” sport is a model whereby the right to participate is granted to clubs by a unified entity separate and superior to those clubs. The implication for how football is government according to either model is obvious.
2 Super League. ‘Leading European Football Clubs Announce New Super League Competition’. The Super League (Press Release), April 18th, 2021.
3 The Athletic. ‘Woodward and Agnelli are “Snakes” and “Liars”’ — UEFA President Ceferin’. The Athletic, April 19th, 2021.
4 West Ham Fan TV. ‘Friday Night Pint: David Moyes Agrees New Three-Year Deal’. West Ham Fan TV, June 11th, 2021.
