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European Super League - Dead on arrival

Casual support is only temporary. Local support will outlast it and is passed down to younger generations.

Ive been hearing that a super league is inevitable for 25 years and it hasn’t happened yet. Within a week of its announcement it collapsed like a house of cards.

Why did the clubs feel the need to apologise to fans if they don’t care about them?

I can’t reconcile being so passionate about spurs and football in general and in the same breath being so ambivalent about a league that is the complete opposite of competition and to be more loyal to ownership than the actual club itself and being so dismissive of local support.

Be interested to see your reaction if the ESL comes for fruition and Leicester or Villa take our place and we have to make do with a watered down CL/EL.

Here's some math for you

- Best match day revenue in the PL ~£5M/game, lets say 25 home games in a season = £125M
- ESL year one revenue = £500M
- TV rights (domestic) £38M, (overseas) £47M

So ESL +TV rights would have been between 4X - 5X the best matchday revenue

TV rights is growing at greater than 70% per cycle (just a little short of doubling every three years), at that rate, within the next cycle or two TV rights by itself will 2X - 3X Matchday revenue. So a future ESL + TV rights model could be 7X - 10X matchday, you still think local support is a priority?

This isn't about being dismissive of local support, it's understanding the cards you hold when negotiating, and as local fans, we (yes we) don't have very much.

I will support Spurs when Kane, Levy, ENIC is gone, regardless of if we are in ESL/CL or championship mate, what I won't do is have a go at the owners for participating in something that was clearly in the best interest of the club and potentially a disaster for missing out on (it is not their mandate, nor fudging mine to protect some imaginary integrity of football that doesn't/hasn't existed for decades if ever).

Said it elsewhere, ESL would have actually made the top 15 clubs in Europe much closer to equal, and the fact that PSG, Bayern, City & Chelsea were the only doubters should tell you a whole lot more than is being discussed right now.
 
Here's some math for you

- Best match day revenue in the PL ~£5M/game, lets say 25 home games in a season = £125M
- ESL year one revenue = £500M
- TV rights (domestic) £38M, (overseas) £47M

So ESL +TV rights would have been between 4X - 5X the best matchday revenue

TV rights is growing at greater than 70% per cycle (just a little short of doubling every three years), at that rate, within the next cycle or two TV rights by itself will 2X - 3X Matchday revenue. So a future ESL + TV rights model could be 7X - 10X matchday, you still think local support is a priority?

This isn't about being dismissive of local support, it's understanding the cards you hold when negotiating, and as local fans, we (yes we) don't have very much.

I will support Spurs when Kane, Levy, ENIC is gone, regardless of if we are in ESL/CL or championship mate, what I won't do is have a go at the owners for participating in something that was clearly in the best interest of the club and potentially a disaster for missing out on (it is not their mandate, nor fudging mine to protect some imaginary integrity of football that doesn't/hasn't existed for decades if ever).

Said it elsewhere, ESL would have actually made the top 15 clubs in Europe much closer to equal, and the fact that PSG, Bayern, City & Chelsea were the only doubters should tell you a whole lot more than is being discussed right now.

Fair points regarding the financial penalties being a factor but if you genuinely believe fan opinion had no say whatsoever in their decision to pull out so soon then I’d disagree with that stance. Especially with fans protesting so vociferously.

I also think you’re underestimating fan power. Quite often it’s fan disapproval that leads to managers getting sacked. Fans stop going to games, merchandising goes down, image of the club is hurt etc.

I’ll say again, will be interesting to see the reaction if this ESL takes off properly in 5 years but Spurs are excluded. I’ll hazard a guess the responses will be somewhat different
 
Fair points regarding the financial penalties being a factor but if you genuinely believe fan opinion had no say whatsoever in their decision to pull out so soon then I’d disagree with that stance. Especially with fans protesting so vociferously.

I also think you’re underestimating fan power. Quite often it’s fan disapproval that leads to managers getting sacked. Fans stop going to games, merchandising goes down, image of the club is hurt etc.

I’ll say again, will be interesting to see the reaction if this ESL takes off properly in 5 years but Spurs are excluded. I’ll hazard a guess the responses will be somewhat different

Why would I support something my team isn't part of?

That said, if a set of clubs want to go form some other league (staying or not staying in the PL), as a private company that is their business (actually is)

I could make the same comments, all the folks who are so busy protecting the game, how come City & Chelsea are cool? how come no protest?
 
Here's some math for you

- Best match day revenue in the PL ~£5M/game, lets say 25 home games in a season = £125M
- ESL year one revenue = £500M
- TV rights (domestic) £38M, (overseas) £47M

So ESL +TV rights would have been between 4X - 5X the best matchday revenue

TV rights is growing at greater than 70% per cycle (just a little short of doubling every three years), at that rate, within the next cycle or two TV rights by itself will 2X - 3X Matchday revenue. So a future ESL + TV rights model could be 7X - 10X matchday, you still think local support is a priority?

This isn't about being dismissive of local support, it's understanding the cards you hold when negotiating, and as local fans, we (yes we) don't have very much.

I will support Spurs when Kane, Levy, ENIC is gone, regardless of if we are in ESL/CL or championship mate, what I won't do is have a go at the owners for participating in something that was clearly in the best interest of the club and potentially a disaster for missing out on (it is not their mandate, nor fudging mine to protect some imaginary integrity of football that doesn't/hasn't existed for decades if ever).

Said it elsewhere, ESL would have actually made the top 15 clubs in Europe much closer to equal, and the fact that PSG, Bayern, City & Chelsea were the only doubters should tell you a whole lot more than is being discussed right now.
ESL year one revenue is just year 1 revenue though. The initial lump sum of between £89 million and £310 per club was a one off payment.

The actual yearly prize fund was between £130 and £213 million per club, so absolutely nothing like the 4 to 5x matchday revenue.
 
ESL year one revenue is just year 1 revenue though. The initial lump sum of between £89 million and £310 per club was a one off payment.

The actual yearly prize fund was between £130 and £213 million per club, so absolutely nothing like the 4 to 5x matchday revenue.

£300M for entry, £200M per year for founding members (we would have been one) +money (I didn't add) for recent/future infrastructure projects (for us would have been significant)

Point stands, take ESL/CL out of the equation, in 3-5 years TV rights will be 2X - 3X the "best" matchday revenue in the PL, so likely 5X - 7X for some clubs, the point is about the leverage or value of the legacy fan to the club as a business.
 
£300M for entry, £200M per year for founding members (we would have been one) +money (I didn't add) for recent/future infrastructure projects (for us would have been significant)

Point stands, take ESL/CL out of the equation, in 3-5 years TV rights will be 2X - 3X the "best" matchday revenue in the PL, so likely 5X - 7X for some clubs, the point is about the leverage or value of the legacy fan to the club as a business.
Are you sure? I saw £130m to £213m per year. £130m (assuming we're at the bottom of the food chain as is likely considering the team's we'd be up against) isn't even close to 2x our matchday revenue.

The initial £89 to £310m we would've got to compete (and again, would we really have been towards the top end of that?) would've been great. But the figure from then on, while extremely large in comparison to the CL or (especially) Europa League, doesn't dwarf our gate revenue at all. It instead becomes an amount of equal importance to our sponsorship revenue, PL revenue and matchday revenue.

If your predictions do end up correct that the ever increasing TV revenues will render our match day revenue as insignificant in years to come then surely ENIC have made a monumental mistake spending £1.2b and loading us up with debt to build us our stadium?
 
If your predictions do end up correct that the ever increasing TV revenues will render our match day revenue as insignificant in years to come then surely ENIC have made a monumental mistake spending £1.2b and loading us up with debt to build us our stadium?

Mate, you are way too eager to point at them

The reason we spent £1B+ is
- Potential NFL revenue (perhaps even a franchise)
- Non football events
- Corporate facilities

If we didn't do that and it was a pure football play (which the numbers say will be less relevant), we could have probably delivered the stadium for significantly less.
 
Mate, you are way too eager to point at them

The reason we spent £1B+ is
- Potential NFL revenue (perhaps even a franchise)
- Non football events
- Corporate facilities

If we didn't do that and it was a pure football play (which the numbers say will be less relevant), we could have probably delivered the stadium for significantly less.
Non football events other than NFL can all take place without a sliding pitch. The sliding pitch was specifically for NFL to ensure the sightlines over the top of the 12,000 players standing around on the sidelines were decent. I remember seeing the figures a while back but can't remember whether it was £2m or £3m a game that we got for the NFL? I'm not much of a gambling man but if I was then I wouldn't really be betting too much on us getting a franchise.

By the way I didn't actually point at them.... I said 'if your predictions do end up correct'. I don't actually think your predictions are correct and that matchday revenue will continue to be one of the most important revenue streams for THFC, but it seems to me that you want it both ways. You want to say that match day revenue is inconsequential but then you also defend ENIC in regards to spending £1.2 billion on a new stadium.
 
Non football events other than NFL can all take place without a sliding pitch. The sliding pitch was specifically for NFL to ensure the sightlines over the top of the 12,000 players standing around on the sidelines were decent. I remember seeing the figures a while back but can't remember whether it was £2m or £3m a game that we got for the NFL? I'm not much of a gambling man but if I was then I wouldn't really be betting too much on us getting a franchise.

By the way I didn't actually point at them.... I said 'if your predictions do end up correct'. I don't actually think your predictions are correct and that matchday revenue will continue to be one of the most important revenue streams for THFC, but it seems to me that you want it both ways. You want to say that match day revenue is inconsequential but then you also defend ENIC in regards to spending £1.2 billion on a new stadium.

And it won't ever be considered a monumental error for ENIC because they will have boosted the profit on their investment by GHod knows how much, by building the stadium.

Very interesting question, might we have gotten ourselves to the Super League table by not building the stadium - or not spending so much on it - by investing more into the team and giving ourselves the best possible chance of trophies?

Hopefully all of the new stadium revenue, plus NFL partnerships etc does pay off and puts us on a financial footing to really compete. But when you look at Liverpool building a bigger stand and still having a seemingly bigger wage budget for us / being more willing to compete for the biggest signings, it does feel a little bit like the stadium has been to boost the asset value, with on pitch success almost being secondary. It will no doubt give us a more robust position in the top 6, but yes, interested in whether we could have got that top 6 position anyway by gearing our finances and exploiting our global fanbase in a different way. Because if the ESL was always inevitable and would be the great leveller, was there a way we still could have made it and had some more trophies in the last few years?
 
We're no longer under the jurisdiction of the european court of justice.

Yep, but it's another example of collusion between the local leagues & UEFA to protect UEFA's business.

And while UK clubs are no longer under jurisdiction, UEFA is and any European Competition (ESL) would be.
 
Got your magnifying glasses ready?

No offence parklane as you are a good poster and have clearly supported the club for a long time and have endured a lot of crap as have most of us, but I see posts like this and similar ones where I wonder what exactly levy and ENIC have done to inspire such unconditional support and love. Where almost any aspect of their tenure is questioned and it elicits such a passionate and emotional response from people. I can see why Chelsea fans feel as they do about Abramovich, they’re almost scared to push back on anything he does because they know where they would be without him. He’s literally bankrolled them to win every major trophy twice over in less than 20 years. ENIC whilst doing great work off the pitch, haven’t had anywhere near the same success on the pitch.
 
No offence parklane as you are a good poster and have clearly supported the club for a long time and have endured a lot of crap as have most of us, but I see posts like this and similar ones where I wonder what exactly levy and ENIC have done to inspire such unconditional support and love. Where almost any aspect of their tenure is questioned and it elicits such a passionate and emotional response from people. I can see why Chelsea fans feel as they do about Abramovich, they’re almost scared to push back on anything he does because they know where they would be without him. He’s non-figuratively bankrolled them to win every major trophy twice over in less than 20 years. ENIC whilst doing great work off the pitch, haven’t had anywhere near the same success on the pitch.

No offense taken mate, its all about op inions at the end of day and it would be a boring world if we all thought/ believed the same. I do support what Levy has done for us and remember on a couple of occasions when our GREAT club was on the brink of falling into the hands of the likes of Maxwell ( and who knows we may not have had a club once he was finished with us). There have been other times when we were close to the brink under Scholer (spelling is wrong i know).

Now i fully expect s ome ( not saying you) will jump on that and say that was a long time ago and there is s ome truth in that. However as you say i have supported our club for a long time and we have struggled both on and off the pitch but by the time the 90s came along we really were a run of the mill club and just making up the numbers most of the time for a good decade or so. There is no one ( i hope anyway) that can not see the BIG progress we have made since Levy arrived and we now have a club we can be really proud of with probably the best ground in football.

Now i am not blind to things that may not have gone to plan and you know i have criticised over the last decade or so our failure to take the cups as important as i believe we should have. I could go into a war and peace post ( but there are s ome who will get bored with it). Has levy made mistakes of course he has just like every singe one of us on here as, and like all of us he has made s ome poor decisions during that time.

But i am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt STILL because IMO i think he deserves it. Covid has been a awful thing for all of humanity and i am not trying to say anything else but it has impacted our great club on the finanacial side as our ground would have brought a LOT of money into our club this last 12 months and we would be in a far better position to improve our squad. ( now i know i will get a lot of folks arguing about that but will that always be the case for s ome). Having said all that IF at the end of next season ( assuming we can get the ground up and running with all the events that we can) and we still are not investing what we need money wise i may change my support of Levy. We shall see.
 
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