The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has offered us a good topic of discussion in these days of family and friend meetings. At Christmas, we will be able to discuss the Super League again, its benefits, its threats, and the future it carries for us. This Thursday’s decision is not a historic day by any means – neither good nor bad, but It opens the door to governance changes that fans may not realize but can have a very significant impact on the product.. And above all, it brought with it different statements that showed how alive football is as an entertainment platform.
The first good news is that the decision may help solve a problem that Ferran Soriano has been criticizing since 2009: there’s no point in this Fifa and UEFA also acts as a regulator of sports and marketer of competitions.. Both organizations will now need to justify very well any attempt to block new initiatives, whether it is the Super League or a dispute over league matches in other countries; LaLiga was once prohibited from doing this.
The Court’s requirement of transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate processes changes the balance of power between federations, clubs, leagues and any organisers. Especially if you add that you need to justify very well any economic or sporting sanctions you want to impose on clubs and players. They finally see that the threat of not being eligible for election will no longer exist.
And that’s the big change. This does not mean that the Super League can be played if other teams join Barça and Madrid. The practical translation of the sentence is: UEFA and FIFA will have to explain very well why they are blocking the competitionand whether there is actually an impact on solidarity and economic balance in the ecosystem that would justify the ban. And that’s good news: we already know that good ideas can be implemented with support.
More good news. A22 says it’s a group partners Those who guarantee the 15,000 million required for the first three years because they say that the clubs are guaranteed a minimum income and solidarity with the ecosystem (400 million annually, 8% of the total). at that time. Which means, in the face of disastrous talk about the death of sports as a spectacle compared to other forms of entertainment, the truth is that if there are good ideas, the money is there.
There’s more. With the creation of Unify, Super League’s supporters believe they can reverse the current model of audiovisual exploitation and even create more jobs. from free broadcasts funded solely by advertising and merchandise sales or premium content subscriptions. If they can achieve this, it will be a true milestone that not even the NBA, NFL or Premier League have aimed to achieve; Furthermore, working with payment platforms and channels is currently the only way to preserve the value of competitions.
And the last one. There is no better news than to see the unity of clubs, competitions and fans around the red lines of any model change.