According to Football Insider’s Kieran Maguire, Liverpool missed out on the chance to sell their Super League TV rights for three games which could have generated £750million.
He claims: “What was driving Liverpool in this deal was the opportunity to sell their own broadcast rights.
“The terms allowed them to do that for three home matches, effectively on a pay-per-view basis. If you sell the broadcast to 50m people around the world and charge them £5 each, you’ve got £250m per football match.
“You’ve got the rights to do that three times so it could go up to £750m. On top of that, you’ve got all the Premier League TV money and the money from all the other franchise league matches.”
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND – MARCH 11: A general view of the Shankly Gates as the sun goes down ahead of the UEFA Champions League round of 16 second leg match between Liverpool FC and Atletico Madrid at Anfield on March 11, 2020 in Liverpool, United Kingdom. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
Liverpool might have missed out on close to a billion pounds in revenue due to the ESL being scrapped, but it’s for the greater good of football. While I’m no economist, that amount of money being injected into football would only lead to even greater inflation in the game.
We saw what happened to transfer fees when the Premier League was created and then years later when clubs started being paid £100million a season for their TV rights. The same would happen if all of a sudden clubs across Europe were generating just under a billion quid each.
Smaller clubs would start demanding huge fees for their players, release clauses would start at £80million and not £30million. All in all, the Super League was a toxic concept that would only have benefitted a very select few.
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND – Thursday, October 22, 2015: Liverpool’s co-owner and NESV Chairman Tom Werner, Director Michael Gordon and owner John W. Henry before the UEFA Europa League Group Stage Group B match against Rubin Kazan at Anfield. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Having said that, it may not be all over after Real Madrid president Florentino Perez said on Saturday that the 12 clubs that agreed to join the Super League ‘cannot leave.’
He told Spanish newspaper AS: “I don’t need to explain what a binding contract is, but effectively the clubs cannot leave.
“Some of them, due to pressure, have said they’re leaving. But this project, or one very similar, will move forward and I hope very soon.”
This is very concerning but given the money involved in the ESL, it seems naive to assume that it would go away altogether. There will, in all likelihood, be a European Super League in the future but it doesn’t seem likely that it will be as soon as next season.
VALENCIA, SPAIN – FEBRUARY 22: Florentino Perez, president of Real Madrid prior the Liga match between Levante UD and Real Madrid CF at Ciutat de Valencia on February 22, 2020 in Valencia, Spain. (Photo by Eric Alonso/Getty Images)
Liverpool, as a club and a city, should not and cannot stand for a tournament like the ESL when it goes against everything that they represent. A working-class people should not stand alongside the oligarchs and oil tycoons that have propped the Super League up on their dodgy dealings.
Unless there are enormous changes made to the fundamental structure of the competition, it will never get past the supporters of not just Liverpool but Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester United.
