(04-21-2021 11:45 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  What surprised me about the rapid unwinding of the Super League proposal was the fierce public opposition from 1) individuals who would personally benefit from this change and 2) supposed neutral parties.

Supporters of Chelsea turned against the proposal, yet Chelsea was in the club and would be guaranteed relevance through bad performing seasons.

The key to the unraveling was when Chelsea and Man City bailed. When that happened, some said it was because they don't have American ownership.

But my take was that it was the fury of their fans, which even exceeded that of Liverpool and Man United.

And the reason for *that*, IMO, was these supporters were aghast that their club leadership would do something like this while the teams are about to play huge Champion's League semifinals. These supporters want CL glory *now*, and were dumbfounded that the club's leadership would allow a distraction like this to happen.

(04-22-2021 04:23 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-21-2021 11:45 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  What surprised me about the rapid unwinding of the Super League proposal was the fierce public opposition from 1) individuals who would personally benefit from this change and 2) supposed neutral parties.

Supporters of Chelsea turned against the proposal, yet Chelsea was in the club and would be guaranteed relevance through bad performing seasons.

The key to the unraveling was when Chelsea and Man City bailed. When that happened, some said it was because they don't have American ownership.

But my take was that it was the fury of their fans, which even exceeded that of Liverpool and Man United.

And the reason for *that*, IMO, was these supporters were aghast that their club leadership would do something like this while the teams are about to play huge Champion's League semifinals. These supporters want CL glory *now*, and were dumbfounded that the club's leadership would allow a distraction like this to happen.

Agree that Chelsea and/or Man City were the weak links in the SL proposal. Florentino Perez, president of Real Madrid, has conceded as much. Teams owned by multi-billionaires from Russia and Abu Dhabi who don’t manage their clubs as business ventures...the teams can lose hundreds of millions in an unfortunate year, but they are still fun toys and provide prestige to the owners.

Perez claims that there were only about 40 protesters at Stamford Bridge Stadium, encouraged by La Liga and Premier League administrators. Regardless, the bad publicity and vocal protesting seems to have worked on those owners.

(04-21-2021 01:54 PM)Gamecock Wrote:  This is one of those things that sounds like a big winner at first glance because of TV dollars, but once you realize that it means half of those schools are going to start going 2-10 or 4-8 every year then its easy to see how it might backfire.

An easier and more sensible way to generate TV dollars is simply to formalize some sort of non conference pool where the top 20-40 programs agree to schedule only each other one or two weeks out of the year

Another thing to factor in is that those who would play in such a league would only have five home games, possibly six, if they could play a non-member school. The lack of additional weekend of game revenue for the school and its community would anger many, regardless of the TV money generated.

For the soccer Super League, it sounds like they need to keep pro/rel to appease fans. BUT, if you could make relegation based off of performance over the last 5 years (weighted, perhaps, by recency) you could give some of these clubs substantially more assurance that they will stay in the Super League even if they have a black swan season.

20 teams, relegate 5. Top 4 Domestic Champs and the Champions League Champ all advance.

EDIT: Second thought, relegate only 4 And have the top English, Spanish, and Italian teams not yet in the Super League advance alongside the Champions League Champ. Limit it to teams that finished Top 3 domestically, and if you don’t have 4 teams take the Champion of the 4th league, if they are already in the Super League take the champion of the 5th league, and so on.