JP Morgan is the money behind European Super League

[nanijoe]

Ok..lets see what happens after Qatar. The fans in Europe are not nearly as important to this plan as they think they are. I believe what matters most is that the product be the number 1 football/soccer event in the world, a distinction which at the moment belongs to the Champions League.

Dont underestimate the value of the TV watchers in far flung places..they tend to spend a heck of a lot more money than the supposed "real fans" whatever that means.

The fake El Clasico in Miami a few years ago, probably generated more money than most European leagues do in a whole year

The ESL is 100% going to happen..this was just an opening salvo. The supposed "real fans" are just pawns in a game between UEFA and the ESL people. These people are a lot savvier than UEFA ..UEFA's best bet is to try and negotiate, because as long as the Champions League is making money (and increasingly so), these guys are not going to rest until they wrest it from UEFA's hands.

You continue to misread the situation. This is dead in the water and in a worse situation than b/4 they announced it. Firstly, the financial backers now know how toxic it is. Rats are the first to leave a sinking ship. Why do you think only Perez came out to defend this? No sponsor wants to associate themselves with virulent negativity. It affects the bottomline. Nothing in my experience has united the entire political spectrum, players, coaches, fans, Fifa, Uefa, FAs, etc. The only people that think it is a good idea are some TV watchers in far-flung places. You can't sustain a business model with just those people, who are as fickle as they come.

[txj]

Ok..lets see what happens after Qatar. The fans in Europe are not nearly as important to this plan as they think they are. I believe what matters most is that the product be the number 1 football/soccer event in the world, a distinction which at the moment belongs to the Champions League.

Dont underestimate the value of the TV watchers in far flung places..they tend to spend a heck of a lot more money than the supposed "real fans" whatever that means.

The fake El Clasico in Miami a few years ago, probably generated more money than most European leagues do in a whole year

The ESL is 100% going to happen..this was just an opening salvo. The supposed "real fans" are just pawns in a game between UEFA and the ESL people. These people are a lot savvier than UEFA ..UEFA's best bet is to try and negotiate, because as long as the Champions League is making money (and increasingly so), these guys are not going to rest until they wrest it from UEFA's hands.

You continue to misread the situation. This is dead in the water and in a worse situation than b/4 they announced it. Firstly, the financial backers now know how toxic it is. Rats are the first to leave a sinking ship. Why do you think only Perez came out to defend this? No sponsor wants to associate themselves with virulent negativity. It affects the bottomline. Nothing in my experience has united the entire political spectrum, players, coaches, fans, Fifa, Uefa, FAs, etc. The only people that think it is a good idea are some TV watchers in far-flung places. You can't sustain a business model with just those people, who are as fickle as they come.

The irony is that the current system is being sustained by those so called TV watchers in far-flung places.

In a market driven, global economic system, the SL or whatever variant of it is going to happen...

[joao]

JP Morgan should just cut its losses and move on, as there are too many holes in their argument and proposal.
Football is all about competition and bragging rights, and a Super League is more an anointment begging to be recognized.
It's one thing trying to corner the club football market, but an elitist socialist formula makes the whole setup less interesting.

[cic old boy]

I kept telling people that football, at least in Europe, is not "normal" business.

JPMorgan Chase has scored a Super League own goal

The failed plan to reorganise Europe’s most popular sport spoke to the arrogance of anything-goes globalisation

Philip Stephens YESTERDAY
213
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Perhaps JPMorgan Chase is just too rich and powerful to care. It was certainly caught unawares. Presumably, executives in Europe failed to warn the bosses back in New York that a multi-billion-dollar plan to change the face of European football for the benefit of a dozen or so super-rich club owners risked igniting a political firestorm.

As the financial backer for the European Super League, the bank might now draw some comfort from the fact that the idea collapsed so quickly under the weight of protest. It is not often that Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, agree on anything, but the view from Downing Street and the Elysée was the same.

Here were a bunch of Wall Street globalists seeking to reorganise Europe’s most popular game without the slightest regard for the views or interests of its managers, players and supporters. At least JPMorgan Chase can now set about limiting the reputational damage.

But you have to wonder what the bank was thinking when it agreed to underwrite the new competition to the tune of €3.25bn, with each of the members promised an initial payment of between €200m and €300m. Twelve clubs had already signed up.

No one at JPMorgan Chase apparently had read the letter to shareholders written by its chair and chief executive Jamie Dimon in the bank’s latest annual report. Published only this month, the letter showcased Dimon’s well-publicised efforts to position the bank as a leader in the brave new world of socially responsible and sustainable capitalism.

He placed particular emphasis on the alignment of the bank’s values with those of the “communities” in which it operates across the globe: “As you know, we have long championed the essential role of banking in a community — its potential for bringing people together, for enabling companies and individuals to reach for their dreams.” 

Tell that to the players and supporters of such hallowed institutions as Manchester United and Liverpool, and to the communities in which these great teams grew up. The plan to supplant the present Champions League with a “closed” competition between Europe’s richest clubs promised to tear up the game’s traditions, destroy its competitive spirit and mock the towns and cities in which the teams are rooted.

Never mind “communities”. Here was an arrangement that illustrated perfectly everything that is wrong with anything-goes globalisation. The new league was designed with a single purpose: to extract for wealthy owners a still bigger share of the income from broadcasting rights and to ensure that their returns were stable by eliminating the risk of any club falling out of the competition. 

The flip side was that it would have extinguished the game’s competitive impulse. This is what makes football exciting — open tournaments that reward success on the pitch with a shot at reaching the top and, along the way, take down the mighty when their performances fade. In the new scheme of things local fans — those “communities” again — would be relegated to second place behind lucrative digital subscribers thousands of miles away. The “left-behinds” the fans might have been called. 

The pandemic, which has wrecked the finances of many sports, played its part. And four of the 12 clubs who had signed up have American owners. Perhaps they assumed that a closed system that seems to work for baseball and American football could be transplanted on the other side of the Atlantic. But then that is one of globalisation’s conceits. You should be able to sell the same thing everywhere.

I still hear people profess themselves perplexed by the rise of populism. There really is no mystery. The insurrections against elites have been rooted in a perception — often a fair one — that the system was rigged. The rich pocketed the gains of globalisation and of technological advance while those lower down the scale were obliged to take on the economic insecurities. Unfettered capitalism trampled on tradition and disregarded the interests of local communities.

The Super League club owners proposed to apply this formula to European football. In the description of Aleksander Ceferin, the president of the European game’s governing body, Uefa, the plan was to create “a closed shop run by a greedy, select few”. Just about everyone with a role or a passing interest in what is called the beautiful game agreed with him. Dimon may now like to ask himself just how JPMorgan Chase found itself on the wrong side of this argument.
https://www.ft.com/content/c725dc42-6fd ... 9XPLiHWdBE

[cic old boy]

JP Morgan ‘misjudged’ football fans over European Super League
US bank’s involvement in ESL funding prompted sustainability downgrade for ethical performance


Jasper Jolly
@jjpjolly
Fri 23 Apr 2021 11.16 BST
2
JP Morgan Chase has said it misjudged its decision to bankroll football clubs’ failed attempt to create a breakaway European Super League, after a huge backlash from fans and politicians.

The US bank had financed a €3.25bn (£2.8bn) funding package for the plan, which would have seen 15 European teams, including six of the biggest in England, given permanent places in an annual competition.

A JP Morgan spokesperson said: “We clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community and how it might affect them in the future. We will learn from this.”

The plan was announced on Sunday night, but had all but collapsed by Thursday after multiple clubs pulled out under a barrage of criticism. European heads of government had weighed in to say they would try to stop the plan, including Boris Johnson, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Mario Draghi.

The 15 clubs were Italy’s AC Milan, Internazionale Milan and Juventus, Spain’s Atlético de Madrid, Barcelona, and Real Madrid, as well as England’s Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.

The proponents of the ESL argued that it would have improved football by creating a more regular cycle of fixtures between big teams and with large payments that would trickle down to teams not involved. A person with knowledge of the league plans said the deal would have included financing for grassroots sport and community projects. JP Morgan did not have control of the league’s strategy.

However, the investment bank’s involvement prompted a sustainability rating agency to downgrade its assessment of JP Morgan’s ethical performance.

The scale of the backlash against the league took the bank by surprise. JP Morgan is – along with Citigroup and HSBC – considered by regulators as a bank of key importance to the global economy. At the end of 2020 it held assets worth $3.4tn (£2.5tn) on its balance sheet.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... per-league

[Ipe Grams]

JP Morgan should just cut its losses and move on, as there are too many holes in their argument and proposal.
Football is all about competition and bragging rights, and a Super League is more an anointment begging to be recognized.
It's one thing trying to corner the club football market, but an elitist socialist formula makes the whole setup less interesting.

Very amateurish how this was handled no consultation with Governments, football associations, domestic clubs, Managers/players, fans etc. I mean the UK had just left the EU and 6 English clubs jump straight into Europe to form a league without consulting their government for approval? The Germans knew it was unworkable and the French club PSG played a wait and see game before deciding and 3 Countries / 12 clubs in Europe thought they could form the ESL?

[Scipio Africanus]

This all reminds me of the US invasion of Iraq. Ignorance, hubris and too much undeserved wealth.

[ohsee]

I've never been a fan of an European Super League. I love the giant-killing of the EPL and Champions League where a team like Leicester and Porto can appear from nowhere and knock down all the Big Bois. A closed battle between selected giants is not as interesting.

This is not a new idea. It has been around for four decades. This seems to be the first effort at a practical implementation. I don't think it is going to be the last. Capital no dey surrender like dat.