> I’ve benefitted from football hugely, I’ve made money out of football, I invest money to a football club. I’m not against money in football, but the principles and ethos of fair competition are part of the game so if Leicester win the league they go into the Champions League.
> Manchester United aren’t even in the Champions League. Arsenal aren’t in the Champions League, you watched them earlier today and they were a shambles of a football club at the moment.
> Tottenham aren’t in the Champions League and they want a god-given right to be in there? It’s an absolute joke and the time has come now for an independent regulator to stop these clubs having a power base. Enough is enough.
Oh come on, the audacity, amazing. You can replace this with the pointing spiderman meme.
I think it is brilliant to introduce more competition into the mix, but i also fear this will have the outcome to create 2 parallel tournaments and thus, take money out of the merit based system... into the franchise system.
I fear the goal of this initiative is to derisk sport ownership by private funds. This is a serious play at business oriented takeover of sports
While I don’t have hope that UEFA or FIFA will successfully kill off the Super League, I have optimism that the players will. By the looks of it, it’s going to be up to them to unionize and prevent this from happening.
The NFL is only 1 example. The MLS, and MLB operate on a cartel basis.
In baseball, american football, soccer, basketball, one can never start a neighborhood team and make it to the pros, no matter how good the team it s.
Only the franchises are allowed in, and once in , you are in as long as you pay your dues.
In the rest of the world, soccer is strictly merit based. You only stay pro as long as you can cut it.
Especially jarring coming from Liverpool.
Regards
KingLennon, Liverpool, UK
As others have said - non-tech news regularly appears on HN and people come here for the intellectual commenting.
There's a lot of broadly applicable questions here about the extent to which governments should interfere in the free market for the common good.
Maybe okay to discuss the Super Bowl or World Cup final or some similar major sports event. Maybe.
But instead, this particular submission appears to simply highlight cynical maneuvering and posturing by billionaires and corrupt special interests. On all sides.
Edit: someone flagged it. Good. I didn't, but I'm glad to see that others also feel strongly against this submission.
People in this country love football and this proposal raises an important question - to what degree should governments intervene when the free market is working against the preferences of the electorate.
Genuinely curious on how it is breaking rules.
I'll get my popcorn.
Its a weird situation.
People want the UEFA / FIFA monopoly broken... but competition coming from....USA cartel holders?
This is what makes it so interesting, too
NOTE: its important to note that the "proposal" is led by clubs that are directly held by american sports ownership. ManU is owned by Glazer, who also owns an NFL franchise.
That's why there is a reference to the NFL.
Glazer & co are effectively trying to de-risk the business by proposing a league where results don't impact the bottom line
What really piqued my interest was your phrase "I think it is brilliant to introduce more competition into the mix" and I wondered if you could expand on that.
Of course, this majority is not secured by good policy, instead it is secured by corruption, payouts to micronations.
I think another league -with different ownership and stakeholders- could make things quite interesting because it would take money out of the system.
However, i'd like for fans or players to own the alternative system, not clubs owned by PE firms and their buddies.