Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Super crap with the Super League
The fan just doesn’t give a shit!
A guest commentary by Christoph Wynands
The founders of the Super League are enthusiastic: They are creating a new competition that washes insane sums of money into professional football and that is very close to the wishes of the fans. At least the second assumption is insane.
What does all of this have to do with football and its fans? This question was probably not only asked by me when 12 “super rich” clubs announced the start of the Super League on Monday night and justified this idea by stating that it was also a decision for the fans. My answer is: nothing. Neither with football as a sport for the general public, nor with the fan as such, who follows his team either with beer and bratwurst on his seat or as a pure football enthusiast in the curve.
It is a decision to remove the soccer ball from its roots, tear the tree out of the forest and plant it in a greenhouse so that it will always have leaves if possible. The decision to found it is therefore only the final escalation of where European football has developed for years. It’s about the marketing of a product – regardless of whether it is in the Super League, the international cup competitions or the national leagues. The fans fall by the wayside. The “bosses” may not notice this, as more football means more to the fans for them.
However, this is not the case. Let’s take kick-off times and stay in the Bundesliga. The unspeakable Monday games or the games beyond Saturday afternoon. Borussia Dortmund fans do not care whether the derby takes place in parallel with Bayern’s game against Leipzig. The DFL and the buyers of the marketing rights do not. Here it is important to be able to present both games to as wide an audience as possible at 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Or Sunday, which is now frayed in up to three starting times. Incidentally, this is a maximum of cheek for amateur sports, because they cannot win the competition on Sunday afternoon.
Consideration? Yes, but only for commerce!
Back to the kick-off times: This is how the game plan for the Super League will be frayed. Here, too, the consumer does not sit in the stadium, but on the stream, in front of the TV or anywhere else. The fan who supports his team in the stadium will hardly be able to follow every game live on site, and then during the week. But the current corona pandemic has impressively shown that it can also be done without fans in the stadium. It didn’t even have to be their own stadium, as the relocation of the German clubs to Budapest for their European Cup “home games” has shown. Consideration? Yes, but only for commerce!
So I would not be surprised if the Super League games are not played in the homesteads of the founding members, but instead take place where there are wealthy consumers, be it in Asia or the Arabian Peninsula. Like the Spanish Supercup, which was last held in Saudi Arabia. Crazy!
From my point of view, we are facing Americanization in international football. In the NFL, the “clubs” are franchises that have their home where the most money can be made. Fix the name changed after the comma and go on. The fan fell by the wayside here for a long time. It’s all about audience ratings and, as a result, as much profit as possible.
The fact that UEFA opposes these plans and is now taking appropriate steps is very commendable and necessary. But here, too, I would like to point out that this is not in the interests of the fan and that Aleksander Ceferin appears as a kind Samaritan. It is also about market rights and the loss of financial capital. The Super League wants to play during the week and in the national leagues at the weekend. The Champions League is thus superfluous and, due to the lack of draft horses from England, Italy and Spain, also unattractive for international consumers. He looks at the Clásico in the Super League and not St. Petersburg against Donetsk in the Champions League.
If football wants to take its fans with it, it would do well to take what it said at the beginning of the corona pandemic last year to heart. A little more humility. For me that means: Again fewer teams in the Champions League and these reserved for the champions of the respective league. To raise the status of the Europa League back to the status of the UEFA Cup and bring back the Cup Winners’ Cup.
Unfortunately, this will remain a dream, since the focus here would be on the fan with his club, money in the sums of the Super League could not be generated with it and consumers in Asia and elsewhere in the world would not be interested in this either.
Christoph Wynands has been a season ticket holder at Rot-Weiss Essen for 20 years and has been a stadium hopper in the amateur leagues in North Rhine-Westphalia
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