Look, look, up there in the sky. ... It’s a bird, no, it’s a plane, no, it’s Superleague, no it’s an utter flop.

What were they thinking ...

Exactly! Shame on them...

Man City is out and it looks like Chelsea will pull out as well...

Some guy from one of the Italian teams was saying this was all about “saving football”. According to him a large proportion of youngsters had lost interest in watching 22 players run back and forth for 90 minutes scoring only occasionally. Well perhaps he didn’t actually say that but implying that footballs days were numbered if ‘something’ wasn’t done.

Well, have they looked at what it costs for a family of four to actually experience a live game. Not just the ticket price but all of the costs?

But that would cut into their (obscene) profits.

Please check your facts:

Boss of one of the Spanish teams, actually: "Real Madrid president Florentino Perez thinks the proposed European Super League will “save football at this critical moment” "

Tom

The super league clubs are only thinking about their own interests, contrary to UEFA and FIFA executives, players, club executives and players' managers that only want the best for the sport

It was a Spanish guy https://barcauniversal.com/super-lea...for-a-new-era/

The part below is interesting. From a short-term perspective, it's great business to let smaller teams die and make business with the large ones. From a long-term perspective, will fans care about teams they have never seen live?

From the business point of view. Feel free to laugh at how good they are at business. They let FIFA run away with the video games licensing money.

Of course, it's easy to criticize in hindsight. But imagine making all the damned hard work to make football work and see how Electronic Arts have great profits year after year for developing and selling video games inspired in the real thing.

Man United CEO has resigned. I suppose they will be next to withdraw.

Athletico and Barcelona about to exit too apparently.

The most fascinating piece about this is the cultural misalignment between American owners and a European game. In fact watching man United against a minnow does have a very specific appeal in football but it’s something that would not translate well across the pond. I genuinely think they thought it would work but have not by a country mile understood the importance of tradition and history when it comes to the national game.

Serves them right.

They have no other revenue? So they're letting the fans in for free! And giving away all that merchandise they have! Wow!

To quote Graham Souness, "They have all been deceitful". Gary Nevilles also had a go/rant. No idea what they were thinking and how they ever thought this would go down/be accepted...

Andrea Agnelli resigns as president of Juventus - unconfirmed!

If that’s true, super league is finished.

Think the "Super League" is already finished

Just another UEFA or FIFA. Each is a profit-maximising mega-corporation. The only difference being that FIFA goes untaxed.

There's no way the top players are worth 20-50-100 Euromillions per year either.

It's all about the money, the sport has become irrelevant before the millenium. Use all those leagues as test specimens for the first flights to Mars (to be launched this year) and start anew.

Unmitigated greed at the heart of it, speculation US banks behind the idea

Money is already killing the game but ESL was poorly conceived, even if UEFA/FIFA are just as repugnant

UEFA, based in Nyon, isn’t taxed either.

If all the tax free sports organisations were taxed 1% of their revenue, we could do away with income taxes countrywide.

This was about EUFA and FIFA losing their cosy little monopoly - ironically something Boris said would happen if the ESL was created!! I hoped it would succeed purely as a way of shaking up the other two incumbents!

I think fans have been losing interest for years. It's a long term timescale.

The kids I talk to have very little interest in football. Quite different to what things were like when I was at school.

I don't think more goals or more expensive players are going to fix that.

Typical case of bubble thinking.

And no. Football is not going to go away. Doomsday scenarios are not helpful.

The NHL (National Hockey League) implemented a salary cap and revenue sharing agreement in 2005 and since then league wide revenues have more than doubled from $2.3 bn in 2005 to $5 bn in 2019 and average viewership of the Stanley Cup finals jumped from 3 m fans/game to 5 m fans/game in the same period. The salary cap has gone up each year (more money for players) and the games are more exciting as no one team can load up on all the star players and the playoffs are great as almost any team who qualifies has a chance of winning.

Contrast that to football where its PSG, Bayern, Juventus and Real/Barca who win their domestic leagues year in year out and even the EPL has become stale with Leicester being the only odd team to win it.

The game needs more parity to be exciting and you need cost and revenue certainty to achieve that.