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FootBiz newsletter #32: is the Unify League even supposed to work?
The rebranded and reworked Super League still has more questions than answers
Ed Malyon & Matt Hughes
December 19, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 18 minutes
It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid.
At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade.
And with that in mind, nearly everyone in English football implores the Premier League and Manchester City to stop warring, the halt the endless battles and put down their highly-paid legal weapons in 2025.
As we await the result of the 130 charges hearing that recently concluded, and the no-doubt seismic effect it could have on the biggest football league on Earth, there is an increasing feeling that the constant legal to-and-fro between the Premier League and its constituent members can’t go on.
Chief among those, once all this nasty business is over, can we find a way for Man City and the Premier League to not always be at loggerheads?
Well, Rob Draper thinks he has a mechanism to do so. Premium subscribers got that in their inbox yesterday but you can click this link to read. If you aren’t premium yet, you can address that below.
Beyond that, well there is a fairly big story we need to hit today in the form of the zombie Super League, rebranded and walking towards us with one ear hanging off and an arm dangling behind it.
Then there are some bits and bobs from the M&A world, some TV stuff and a Newcastle story to get on with.
Festive schedule: we’ll have a Christmas eve newsletter for you, some special festive bits but then taking Boxing Day off before normal service resumes.
Table of Contents
The time has come to… Unify?
The Super League is no more. Long live The Unify League.
Or is it just Unify League? As with much of the plan, we aren’t really sure of the details - or how they’d work in practice. Some suspect it isn’t even supposed to, but more on that later.
A22, the body that has been fighting to push on with the project after its 2021 collapse, wrote to UEFA general secretary Theodore Theodoridis (great name) this week outlining their proposed 96-team competition.
You can read it below, if you’re bored.
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You may remember that A22 won a legal battle last year that defended and enshrined their - or anyone else’s - right to set up rival sporting competitions to UEFA without European football’s governing body shutting them down.
Crucially though, the ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) also set out some requirements that any competition would have to meet that the zombie Super League project didn’t, like making sure teams could qualify via performances in their domestic leagues, and not having a ‘closed shop’ system.
So the headline change of this new proposal is that the closed shop system is gone.
The original idea of getting 20 massive clubs, with 15 ‘founding members’ guaranteed of their place and running the league, with 5 other lucky teams that qualified, is replaced by a 96-team, four-league format with clubs flowing from 55 domestic competitions.
A22 CEO Bernd Reichart has claimed that they are speaking to enough clubs to fill those 96 places.
They will need many more, though. The qualification for the bottom-tier Union League alone would, according to their document, feature more than 100 teams, so A22 will need to have at least 150-200 clubs involved from the beginning of qualification to fill 96 berths. And we can’t assume - surely? - that every club will leap at the opportunity.
Would clubs forego entry to one of the UEFA competitions for a chance of qualifying for a new competition with uncertain financials? We will have to see, but the more you dig in, the more difficult it is to understand how they’re planning to get this off the ground.
What the Union League (bottom tier) would look like, who would take part and who would watch it is a huge mystery. But perhaps in a search for reason we are focusing too much on the bottom end of this? After all, it is a project that has more support from the elite clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona than Molde or Slovan Liberec.
The below chart is from the document, showing ‘direct access spots’ which teams would gain from domestic performance. Country Ranking in this instance would be A22’s own version of the UEFA coefficient, which you could expect to have similar ratings.
So in this scenario, the Star League would have three teams from England, three from Italy, two from Spain, two from Germany, one from France and one from the Netherlands.
The Star League based on current league standings would feature: Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Atalanta, Inter, Napoli, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Bayern, Bayer Leverkusen, Paris Saint-Germain and PSV Eindhoven and then qualifiers to fill out the 16-team division.
That is your Super League, assuming those teams actually wanted to join.
With a free-to-air streaming model and no broadcaster attached yet, it remains unclear how A22 would raise the necessary funding to lure the elite clubs across, let alone the smaller clubs. Let’s hope their ad sales team is shit hot (not my experience of most ad sales teams).
For context, teams from outside the top 7 leagues would struggle to even get one club in the Star League and have no chance of getting one in the Gold League.
In A22’s Worst Case scenario for each country, there would be just one team from leagues ranked 13th-55th among the 96 teams in the four-tiered competition.
When you consider what Crvena Zvezda (€27m), Sparta Prague (€27m), Sturm Graz (€24m) and Slovan Bratislava (€21m) have made from being in the Champions League so far this season, you wonder how they could be convinced to switch allegiance to a system where they would never be able to rise above the third tier.
In the ECJ ruling, it dictates that UEFA (and FIFA) must judge whether to authorise any new competitions based on four amended criteria:
Administrative and Financial
Sporting and Technical
Ethical
Sporting Merit
Presumably this plan was designed with those in mind, but questions over the business model itself outweigh concerns over authorisation.
Liverpool have already made €80m this season from their Champions League campaign. Bayern, Dortmund, Manchester City, Real Madrid and Barcelona are all around the €70m mark and we haven’t even reached the knockout phase yet.
You would need more than €1bn just to lure the top division of clubs over, and this doesn’t include Manchester United, AC Milan, Olympique Marseille or some of Europe’s biggest brands, which you’d imagine would be essential to growing this nascent tournament.
Are those clubs going to turn their back on their guaranteed existing prize money, particularly with the way UEFA structures its payments to reward performance in their own competitions, for the uncertainty of this new project?
As one observer noted: “UEFA should authorise them and let them try and launch it. It has no chance.”
Some think that could be by design.
What if this is not really an attempt to launch a competition but another lobbying body, to gain more leverage and power for the richest clubs?
An ECA on steroids, where they have a notional competition to escape to.
It’s at least plausible. In some ways it makes more sense than the Unify League.
Reaction to the Unify League
La Liga’s statement was fairly plain.
"Once again, A22 has presented yet another model of the failed European Super League, now called UNIFY League.
“A project that threatens the governance of European football by seeking to follow a handful of big clubs for their own benefit, promoting a broadcast rights commercialization model that would benefit only a few elitist clubs and destroy the economy of national leagues.
“The project continues to lack support from clubs, federations, players, fans, national governments and European institutions."
The Premier League, Ligue 1 and Serie A all chose not to comment on record. UEFA were the same. Perhaps a strategy of denying it the oxygen of publicity.
Alex Muzio, the president of the Union of European Clubs (a rival body to the European Clubs Association) was a little more damning when talking to Belgian media.
“I can’t believe how bad it is, again.
“How poorly constructed, how poorly conceived the subject is. So many flaws.
“It seems like a 10-year-old’s summer homework project that Mum and Dad didn’t have a look at. I was giggling while reading it. I can’t believe anyone would sign up to it, personally.”
Another European club owner simply said “without financial details, this is just a pdf and a dream.”
One commercial executive noted “they believe their plan to broadcast it globally for free will be the root of its success but brands and clubs will need to see that succeed before they are willing to jump on board.
“It’s a chicken and egg thing, and they don’t seem to have the up-front cash to do what LIV Golf did.”
Barca search for another lever
Why do Barcelona have interest in a Super League?
Because they’ve been financially mismanaged.
What is a good example of their financial mismanagement?
Well, they keep spending loads of money to sign players even though they have one of the best academies in the world and have no money. Case in point, Dani Olmo.
Brilliant player, no doubt, but they spent €60m to sign the Spanish international and put him on big wages last summer in full knowledge that they didn’t have space in their masa salarial to register him in their squad. They were ‘lucky’ when Andreas Christensen got injured and were allowed to slot Olmo in as a replacement but that temporary license expires on Dec 31 and Olmo will not be able to play in La Liga until Barcelona find an estimated €55m.
Where are they looking for it? Well, once again they’re looking to borrow from future revenues but this time it’s VIP hospitality seating they want to sell off. Another option is taking it to court (who knows what the grounds are for that) and even a Barca director putting up the money themselves in the form of a bank guarantee.
The original plan for the Nike signing bonus to cover this shortfall appears to have fallen flat, with the rules stating it must be spread over the life of the contract.
Barcelona-based sports newspaper Mundo Deportivo reported last week that Olmo can leave the club for free if he isn’t registered in January, a pretty significant development that explains the desperation at the club.
It remains a situation they got themselves into unnecessarily.
(If I was a top-six Premier League club I’d be ready and waiting with a big contract to sign him on a free)
M&A Murmurs
We have covered Reading’s on-off-on-off takeover saga since the first FootBiz newsletter, and while things are still currently off there has been some news in the form of Rob Couhig’s legal claim against Dai Yongge.
The paperwork itself is Redwood (Couhig’s vehicle) vs Renhe (Dai’s vehicle) and one of the principal claims is that Renhe offered Reading for sale to (and entered into negotiations with) other parties while Redwood were under a period of legal exclusivity.
In what may prove a costly mistake, Renhe’s own sales materials (which you’d have to assume Redwood have got their hands on) describe the opportunity to “acquire the club for a fraction of its worth”.
Implicit in that line is the acknowledgement that Reading is worth far more, and with Redwood claiming their likelihood of acquiring the club was 50% (or higher) they are suing Renhe for damages in the region of £24m, which they calculate as 50% of potential financial returns according to their model.
Perhaps if this goes badly for Dai it may aid the sales process, but this process has become one that is impossible to second-guess. We will follow the legal action.
Everton’s long-awaited, several-times-aborted takeover is now, finally, on the cusp of being signed and announced.
Indeed, according to the never-wrong David Ornstein, Everton will announce today (Thursday) that The Friedkin Group are the new owners of the Toffees.
Dan Friedkin and his associates are in the UK and could be presented as the new ownership on the pitch at Goodison Park this weekend, when Everton host Chelsea.
After kissing some frogs in the shape of 777 Partners and John Textor, Everton may have found their prince. Speaking of which…
John Textor’s ~45% stake in Crystal Palace appears to be going to SportsBank, but nobody is clear on whether that will be part of them investing into Eagle Football, as first reported by Bloomberg, or whether that deal will end up being separate.
Keith Harris’ group, which is understood to be funded by money from America and the Middle East, has been in talks over both possible deals. The Daily Mail reported on Wednesday that SportsBank offered £230m for Textor’s Palace stake, despite its lack of voting power.
The Mail report also alludes to a possible investment in Textor’s larger vehicle, Eagle, but that decisions are still to be made on that front.
American-based potential investors visited Watford this week but the club’s asking price remains astronomical for a Championship club.
Newc investment
Saudi Arabia appear set to increase their investment in Newcastle, the city, after opening talks to buy a stake in the city's airport. JP Morgan are handling the sale of the 49 per cent of the airport currently owned by Infrabridge, with the city council to remain as majority owners.
Saudi's Public Investment Fund are regarded locally as favourites to secure the stake given their existing commitments in the region after they bought 15 per cent of Heathrow Airport's parent company last week.
PIF have invested heavily since buying Newcastle three years, with their events company Sela paying £25m-a-year for the club's shirt sponsorship and airline Saudia becoming Newcastle's official flight partner.
Wanted: part-time football regulator
The UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport have at last managed to assemble a shortlist for the position of Chair of the new Independent Football Regulator, which will be introduced as part of the Football Governance Bill that is currently being debated in Parliament.
With the role based in the north-west and the salary of £130,000 for a three-day week considered by many in football to be rather modest, there have been concerns expressed about attracting enough suitable candidates, to the extent that DCMS reposted the job advert last month.
DCMS sources are adamant that they are happy with the shortlist however, and initial interviews took place last week.
The IFR will definitely be introduced despite the opposition of the Premier League and many in the Conservative Party, whose peers in the House of Lords, including West Ham's executive chair Baroness Brady, have tabled 390 amendments over the last few weeks.
Speaking of the House of Lords, a farcical display first reported by The Times brings the infamously insufficient owners and directors test into focus as partisan lawmakers attempt to shape the Football Governance Bill.
Baroness Twycross, a minister in the department of digital, culture, media and sport who has been overseeing the passage of the Football Governance Bill, told her fellow peer Lord Moynihan that anyone exercising a high degree of influence over an English football club would be subject to the independent football regulator’s test — and that would include Mohammed Bin Salman.
While the Premier League said it had received “legally binding assurances” that Bin Salman was not the ultimate beneficial owner of Newcastle, despite much evidence to the contrary, this apparent overstep by Baroness Twycross may have caused embarrassment to the government, to whom Saudi Arabia is an important trade partner.
“It is understood Twycross then left the chamber and later passed a handwritten note to Moynihan saying she may have to clarify that position,” reports The Times.
Probably the strongest argument for an independent regulator without government and foreign policy considerations, all things told!
Scottish TV woes
Scottish Championship clubs are unhappy that a new TV deal agreed with BBC Scotland will cost them money. The second-tier currently have a five-year contract with the BBC to show 20 games-a-season on Friday nights, but the Daily Mail reported this week that they have agreed to increase the number of live matches to 30 each year.
A number of clubs have expressed concerns that the increase in Friday night fixtures could leave them worse off, with the BBC's modest rights fee not offsetting an anticipated reduction in gate receipts and hospitality revenue. The unhappiness has been compounded by the fact that the BBC money will be shared equally amongst the 42 clubs in the Scottish Football League rather than given to those appearing on TV.
Following animated discussions, the Championship clubs voted to accept the BBC's proposal in the belief they are adding value to the game and putting the greater good ahead of their own financial self-interest.