The European Super League: The Martyr to the Struggle for Change in Football

The Businessman’s Vision

From the beginning of his first term as the president of Real Madrid, the world’s most prominent football club, Florentino Pérez had transformed the economic landscape of football: his “Galácticos” policy—signing world class sporting superstars like David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Zinedine Zidane to enhance the team’s commercial value—had turned Real Madrid from a mere trophy winner into a giant in the commercial world. In the 2023/24 season, to cap off this process, Real Madrid became the only football club in the world to generate more than €1 billion in revenue in the season.

This is a historic new height for Real Madrid under Pérez's presidency. But for Pérez, who will soon be in his 80s, all of these breakthroughs seem minor. His vision for the European Super League was his priority, had it not been dismantled three years ago.

On April 18th, 2021, 12 leading European football clubs, under the leadership of Florentino Perez as the first Chairman, declared their proposal of the European Super League (ESL). With its proposal, the ESL aims to replace the existing European Champions League (UCL) as the most competitive football competition with two main changes. First, rather than having 32 clubs (under the new UCL format, starting effective 2024, it is 36) qualifying for the competition, the ESL would restrict the number to 20. More importantly, unlike UCL, where all of the clubs’ qualifications are based on their performance in the domestic league, qualifications to ESL are almost exclusive: 15 spots are given to the 15 founding clubs, and the remaining 5 seats are divided among other clubs based on their annual performance in the domestic league.

For everyone, from fans to players to managers, this was an abrupt announcement. After the initial shock, resistance began to spread. Supporters of Chelsea, one of the founding clubs, were angered. They felt football’s connection with local communities had been destroyed by commercial activities. Supporters demanded the club’s immediate withdrawal from the ESL, chanting: "You greedy bastards, you're ruining our club.” Jordan Henderson, the captain of Liverpool, another founding club, also criticized the ESL, calling it a “dismal idea.” Criticism was also heard from prominent political figures. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron both strongly opposed the ESL.

Under the pressure, the ESL quickly fell apart. On April 20th, just two days later, Manchester City FC became the first club to announce its departure from the ESL. Within just a few days, all clubs other than Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Juventus withdrew. The European Super League was essentially dead, just 48 hours after it was founded.

Or, is it really dead? Or is it a phantom that still haunts the spectrum of European football? That is, are the demands made by the ESL still affecting the current European football landscape? To answer this question, we must first trace the story further, to a deeper discussion about the before and after of the short-lived ESL.

Greed or Justified Demand? The Elite Clubs’ Dissatisfaction with Existing Income Distribution

The big clubs’ dissatisfaction with the current Champions League is not a new thing, and the source of their dissatisfaction is rooted in its income distribution, generated mostly through sponsorships and selling broadcasting rights. For example, the distribution for the total €2.002 billion pool in the 2023/24 season is as follows:

1. €500.5 million divided equally by all clubs
2. €600.6 million distributed based on the team’s performance in the season
3. €600.6 million distributed based on the clubs’ participation during the past decade
4. €300.3 million distributed proportionally to the UEFA member associations according to the value of their respective TV market .

As a result, about half (€11 million) of the total income pool was distributed only according to athletic performance. This could be viewed by many as a fair division—after all, the fame of the UCL owes equally to its current participating clubs and its historical legacy. In fact, someone can even argue that this 2023/24 distribution plan is already favoring the big clubs, as almost half of the income was distributed based on clubs’ commercial values and historical performance, which means that large clubs will gain a larger share.

The big clubs, however, hold a different point of view. They believe that the reason why the UCL was able to generate a huge revenue for the UEFA is the participation of these “big names”: it’s Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Barcelona that made the UCL profitable, not vice versa. Thus, they should receive a larger, if not almost all, portion of the revenue from the UCL.

Furthermore, UCL’s qualifications are based on the team’s performance in the domestic league. This means that, especially in the more competitive leagues like the English Premier League (EPL), it is highly likely for a big club to not be able to qualify for the competition, as only the top four of the EPL can qualify for the UCL, and the competition is intense every season. For example, Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool are often regarded as the teams that are traditionally strong in English football. However, for the past ten seasons, Arsenal has only qualified for the UCL four times, Manchester United has only qualified five times, and Liverpool has qualified eight times.

Compromises and Changes: the Dead ESL and the New UCL

As explained above, there were primarily two concerns the big clubs held with the existing UCL system: first, the income distribution does not favor them enough; second, there is a possibility for them to not qualify for the UCL. Now, with the ESL proposal, everything is easily solved. As the membership to ESL becomes almost exclusive (fifteen permanent + five annually selected teams), the distribution of income will almost exclusively go to the big clubs. Also, due to this permanent membership system, the big clubs will no longer worry about not being able to qualify for the ESL—a seat will always be reserved for them at the new ESL.

This is the ultimate vision of Mr. Perez, but it stays, at least until now, a vision. However, in spite of the short-lived ESL, the seed of change was planted through the voice of dissatisfaction, roared by the participants of the ESL.

Even though the official proposal of ESL has come to an end, the presidents of big football clubs, especially Florentino Perez, never stopped using ESL as a threat to force changes in the UEFA and UCL. In November 2023, Mr. Perez reaffirmed his position that the ESL will be “a new era for the good of football.”

Mr. Perez is not alone. In fact, after the dismantling of the ESL, the UEFA is constantly negotiating with elite clubs in reforming the current European competitions that will satisfy the big clubs’ financial demands. Even until now, UEFA is still negotiating with A22, the company entrusted to organize the ESL, in reforming the Champions League. Moreover, changes had been made.

Starting with the 2024/25 season, the UCL was reformatted. As a result of increasing revenue from broadcasting sales and sponsorships, the total pool of income had risen to €2.437 billion, an increase of almost 25%. While the proportion of “performance-based” and “history/brand-based” income distribution has largely remained the same, some key changes within the tournament have favored the big clubs by offering more opportunities in qualification and revenue earnings.

With the replacement of the group stage phase by the league stage phase. That is, unlike the previous format in which clubs will be distributed to different groups and compete independently within the group, all clubs will now play 8 different opponents in the league phase within a single standing. By increasing the match in the group/league stage from six to eight, UEFA allows greater fault tolerance for larger clubs, and to fully utilize their advantages of a deeper squad. Furthermore, the abandonment of the group stage also eliminated the possibility of creating some “groups of death” in which certain big clubs, due to their bad luck in drawing, might fail to qualify for the next level. For example, in the 2023/24 season, Newcastle and Milan were knocked out in the group stage as their group rivals are PSG and Dortmund: the former made it to the semifinals, the latter made it to the final.

Furthermore, under the new UCL format, there are two extra seats awarded annually to the top two football associations with the best European competition performance. As the major leagues’ clubs perform better on average, this change brings another opportunity for the big clubs to qualify for the UCL. In the 2024-25 EPL, for example, Newcastle benefited from this extra spot as they ultimately ranked 5th in the EPL (EPL originally only had four seats for UCL).

Reflection: The Importance of Moderation

The European Super League, though it effectively died shortly after its birth, did not wane in its influence. In contrast, much of its demand had been reflected through the reforms of the Champions League: the proposal for permanent seats was compensated by extra seats assigned to major football leagues; the demand for increasing income was addressed by increasing the prize pool and reformatting fixtures, which allows big clubs to extract a greater proportion of competition revenues than before.

Thus, through various means, the UEFA, heavily impacted by the threat posed by the ESL, has allotted a bigger piece of the cake for the big clubs. This reform, however, is still largely not welcomed by both the fans and the clubs. The fans complained about the uncompetitiveness of the new league phase, as it gives the bigger clubs such a high fault tolerance rate, while Florentino Perez also criticized the new format, as it increases the workload of players.

However, changes always require time. Furthermore, in most situations, changes have to be made gradually. When the English league was transformed to the Premier League 33 years ago, there was opposition that warned of this action as a “breakaway” from European football traditions. Now, everyone accepts and enjoys the Premier League, but this enjoyment is the result of adaptation. Likewise, Mr. Perez, envisioning his commercial empire, might criticize the slowness of reforms, but the reforms of the UEFA have to be considered and carried out in a much more careful format than his Galácticos policies.

Some people walk, some people run, and the task of the UEFA is to create a runway that’s suitable for both of them, even though both of them might feel unfair at the beginning.