Tribune. The European sporting model is today hit by two major threats. The first is that of a gradual privatization of major continental sports competitions by private interests at work in many individual or collective disciplines, like the recent attempt to create a “Super League” in Europe, in the initiative of some of the richest football clubs.
The second threat is that of the grabbing of major competitions or international sporting events by large multinationals (Warner, Discovery, MGM, Amazon, Google) with considerable financial strike force, or sovereign investment funds in the hands of States with unlimited resources which do not hesitate to use sport to make it a political showcase or a “diplomatic weapon”.
These attempts to capture the “common good” of the organization of major sporting competitions and, more broadly, of financial predation of sport are very worrying because with them, through their inflationary tendency, there is a risk of the disappearance of universal values linked to the sport. European sports model based on solidarity, sustainability, inclusion and based on open and fair competition.
This deadly offensive must absolutely be stopped on a political level by the States of the European Union and by the bodies of the international sports movement, in particular to protect the specificity of our European model: pyramid system of ascents and descents of clubs in leagues. , reception, detection, training and protection of young players – trained locally, in contrast to the closed league model.
“Essential good”
The current health crisis has shown to what extent sport is an “essential good” for our societies. Its dramatic economic, financial and societal consequences that we have not finished measuring should have had the effect of an electric shock for the actors concerned: where have today passed the promises of a “more sober, more temperate sport? “?
Otherwise, the health crisis has been an accelerator and a revealer of a pre-existing trend for French professional football. The sustainability of its economic model is not guaranteed, due to the structural imbalance in the operation of the accounts, the inflation of the wage bill, the plethora of professional staff, the lack of attractiveness of Ligue 1 matches, the complexity of the subscription offer, its high price and the difficulty of access which pushes consumers to audiovisual piracy.
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