Wednesday 17 February 2021

The football landscape is changing

I've been dipping in and out of the Financial Times Football Business summit today.  I would like to have listened to more, but one industry that is doing well at the moment is publishing so I am rather busy!

Clearly a lot of what is being said is not relevant to Charlton as we are hardly one of 'Europe's fifty top sports franchises' to quote a comment by a recent speaker from the US.

A lot of discussion has been about the European Super League (the revamped Champions League is just a watered down version of this).   Large amounts of serious American money is arriving in European football, and even the Bundesliga are in discussions with them about a stake.   What they don't want is European ideas like promotion and relegation threatening their asset values.

One clear take home message is that the Premier League is going to have to be reduced in size because there are going to be a lot more European matches.   Probably only to 18 clubs in the first instance, but even that will have a knock on effect on the Championship which is already a de facto Premier League 2.

The relevance for Charlton is that I think any return to the Premier League is looking less likely, even if we can get out of League One (which won't be until next year at the earliest).

I should add that the Super League is by no means a done deal, but there are some powerful forces behind it: https://footballeconomyv2.blogspot.com/2021/02/new-style-champions-league-raises-many.html

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