The initiators of the international Super League have been proven right before the European Court of Justice. The football association Uefa is accused of abusing its position of power. Nevertheless, the billion-dollar Champions League business is hardly vulnerable, says lawyer Vitus Derungs.
By 2024, UEFA will increase the revenue from club competitions to over 4.5 billion euros annually.
Denis Balibouse / Reuters
Vitus Derungs, UEFA generates around 4 billion euros per year from club competitions, mainly thanks to the Champions League and thanks to the sale of media rights. Can the successful product actually be in danger after the ruling of the European Court of Justice?
No. The ruling simply states that the establishment of another competition is fundamentally not ruled out. Competition with the Champions League is therefore possible, at least theoretically. But creating another competition is a completely different story. An alternative would have to be an incredibly good throw to be dangerous for the Champions League. With the best will in the world, I don’t see that in the draft of the European Super League.
The Champions League has the next development step and expansion ahead of it in 2024. UEFA expects annual revenue from club competitions to reach over 4.5 billion euros from 2024. Can anything be more profitable?
If we exclude the USA and only talk about the king sport of football, the answer is clearly no. The Champions League is 30 years old and has gradually become larger, and UEFA brings together a lot of know-how. The European Cup has been around for a long time; UEFA introduced the group phase in 1992. This was new at the time and gave the clubs a certain level of planning security with guaranteed games. Up to that point they had only played knockout games. Under certain circumstances that meant: two games – and that was it. In 2023, YB had guaranteed at least six games in the Champions League. The Bernese team also continues in the Europa League.
The Champions League is largely financed through media rights and takes place live exclusively on pay television in many countries. The Super League’s competition relies on streaming and free TV. So more breadth and more sponsorship income. Is this realistic?
I don’t know how one can compensate for the enormous and still increasing revenue from media rights. I put question marks there. This is about 3 to 4 billion euros annually.
Investors would have to turn the big wheel. The Champions League is not a product in crisis.
Yes, nothing works without liquidity on a large scale. It would probably have to come from the USA. Or from Saudi Arabia, although I don’t believe in that.
Does the European Court of Justice’s ruling primarily have a propaganda effect?
The legal significance of the ruling is that major sports associations in Europe will be placed under competition law restrictions. But that’s the theory. And not the practice. When I look at the model of the possible Super League, I see no chance that this league will find a significant number of clubs that support its format. Seen in this way, winning the Super League is a Pyrrhic victory.
British clubs could fight over EU law after Brexit. But even on the island there is no longer any support for anything new.
Without the English, little works. If the Super League wants a maximum of 16 clubs in its format, it needs English people. And Italians. She needs a lot. Paris Saint Germain. Bayern Munich. No support comes from there.
After all, UEFA will no longer be able to potentially punish defectors in the future, for example by expelling them from the country’s respective league. That was the threat in the 2021 uprising.
That’s the core, this threat no longer applies.
UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said at a media conference that he didn’t know whether to be amused or shocked. What is more important?
UEFA has done its homework and is meeting needs. With the format from 2024 and the abolition of the actual group games, it suits the clubs. There are more places, more games, more rewards – more of everything. So a total of 12 clubs, from 96 to 108, plus 4 each in the Champions League, the Europa League and the Conference League. This is a concession from UEFA. The theoretical Super League, on the other hand, shrank from 96 to 64 teams between 2021 and 2023. With such indicators it is actually already done.
In UEFA, every expansion paid off. When the Conference League was introduced in 2021, many were skeptical. Wrongly.
That also works, the Conference League is the level for the smaller clubs. Playing European is important for clubs, regardless of level. The players want to go into the shop window. FC Basel showed what is possible with the Conference League semi-finals in 2023.
UEFA has a strongly entrenched product that it appears to be protecting. In tennis there are debates about alternatives to the ATP tour. Golf is being blown up. The doors next to the associations are more open than before, right?
Saudi Arabia is entering the market in the Gulf. There’s no Champions League wall. If a golf star is to be excluded from an organization, he can get over it because the competition will shower him with money. But now two people are joining forces: the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia.
Maybe we’re thinking too short-term and in five years everything will be different in the Champions League because Saudi Arabia is buying the whole world.
This is reading coffee grounds. But the Champions League won’t have to throw itself into anyone’s arms. The 2024 reform will quickly become established.
If you were to side with the Super League: what did they do well?
She broke a lot of glass in 2021 and left behind shards. Communication was poor. Maybe it accelerated certain things at UEFA. But not even that has been proven. She hasn’t achieved much. It has been rehabilitated in a certain sense on a legal level after the collapse in 2021. I don’t see anything else there.
