Chelsea’s new co-owner Todd Boehly was a few minutes into a question-and-answer session at a business conference in New York on Tuesday when he was asked about the economics of an English football model that comes with the jeopardy of relegation.
He was talking about how precarious that model is — how, beyond the top flight, broadcast revenue “falls off a cliff” and how “ultimately. I wish the Premier League takes a little bit of a lesson from American sports and really starts to figure out…”
Which direction would he take? Would he decry the madness of English football’s financial model and call for a fairer distribution of wealth? Or, would he advocate for a closed-shop league like the NFL, NBA, MLBAnd NHL are? Perhaps a super league.
Todd, come on! Let’s hear it.
“… why wouldn’t we do a tournament with the bottom four teams (to decide relegation, presumably)? Why isn’t there an All-Star game? People want more money for the pyramid. When MLB did their All-Star game in LA this year, we made $200million (£173m) from a Monday and a Tuesday. I think you could do a north vs south All-Star game for the Premier League and fund whatever the pyramid needed very easily.”
Oh. It wasn’t what we expected, but it was fine. As practical as it is. Jurgen Klopp made clearLater on Tuesday, with reference to a fixture program that is already overloaded beyond any sense, but completely inoffensive as such things go.
#ChelseaFC Chairman Todd Boehly offered a candid and thoughtful look into the life of sports & business, today at #𝗦𝗔𝗟𝗧𝗡𝗬.
View the full interview https://t.co/g6wzCBsfXG
— SALT 🇺🇦 (@SALTConference) September 13, 2022
For all the excitement and debate it caused, there was nothing original about Boehly’s suggestion.
For decades, the idea of an All-Star Game has been in discussion. In the mid-1980s Shoot magazine was discussing the idea of an All-Star match between the north (Neville Southall Bryan Robson, Chris Waddle and Ian Rush) and south (Peter Shilton Terry Butcher Glenn Hoddle, Frank McAvennie).
(Answer: The north surely. Same as now.
It’s a mildly interesting and harmless debate. Even Klopp, having been quick to dismiss the idea out of hand, briefly found himself hypothesising about “Manchester United players, Liverpool players, Everton players all together in one team”.
But we shouldn’t waste too much time on the idea.
It was almost like that Boehly made a casual observation rather than a thoughtful comment.. He will be brought to the dock sooner than expected if his Premier League owners really believe he would set up a money spinner like that to subsist the rest of the English football pyramid.
To cut Boehly some slack, it’s encouraging that he has recognised the craziness of the financial precipice between the Premier League and the EFL. It was encouraging, also, to see that, despite his apparent concern about financial ruin, he recognized the value of tradition as well as the benefits of a system built around promotion, relegation, and not an NFL-style closed shop.
It was gratifying to just hear Premier League club owners talk at a basic level. So many of them these days refuse to engage with any audience — supporters, media, or even an event as gentle as this week’s conference in New York appeared to be.
These things are better discussed publicly than engaging in plotting as we witnessed from the Liverpool owners. Manchester UnitedTheir self-serving “Project Big Picture”In alliance with 10 clubs from Europe, we have again partnered with them. the launch of a “European Super League” project in the spring of 2021That was met with widespread disgust.
Boehly’s words are perfectly harmless by comparison, but they come from the same dangerous place: another businessman concluding he is ready, after the briefest exposure to European football, to play a part in mapping out its future.
Boehly (right) has not wasted any time making his presence felt in English football (Photo by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images).
It has been repeated many times in the last decade.
The mind is always back to Garry CookA sports executive of English descent, who was born in England, pitched at Manchester CityIn 2008, and advocating a breakaway Premier League with just 14 clubs without promotion or relegation.
Or the Premier League’s “Game 39” proposals about taking league matches overseas, or the endless tweaks of redistribution models to ensure more money goes to the clubs who need it least. And then “Project Big Picture” and the European Super League (dreamt up by people who were not satisfied that the Champions Leaguea design that has been completely redesigned.
Some people find it almost automatic to spit out these ideas as soon as they are heard.
That isn’t conducive to positive debate but so many of these proposals (not necessarily Boehly’s) come from the wrong place, proposed by people who view football through a prism of self-interest and have no regard whatsoever for the wider game.
Boehly’s comments had hints of this. Not about the All-Star game, which he said was an idea to help football’s poorer relations — no doubt, fellow Premier League club owners Joel, John, Stan and the guys will show him the error of his ways — but certainly the part later on when he was talking about his plans for player development at Chelsea.
Boehly spoke enthusiastically about building a “multi-club model” like the Red Bull sporting empire or the City Football GroupEstablishing a network of clubs across other countries to permitAccess to more players around the world and to pool resources, reduce costs, and plan career paths accordingly.
Fine — plenty of people like that model — but it sounded so crass. “I think our goal is to make sure we can show pathways for our young superstars to get onto the Chelsea pitch while getting them real game time,” Boehly said. “And for me, the way to do that is through another club, somewhere in a really competitive league in Europe.
“And because of Brexit (…) we need GBEs are points you earn for participating in different leagues.You get more points the more you play. The more national teams you play, it’s easier to immigrate. So (…) what we need is a place to put our 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds to develop them, somewhere in Portugal or Belgium or somewhere like that. Get them the points they need and also get them out of South America — Portugal is a perfect place, for example, we think — and then to get them on the pitch in Chelsea.”
Boehly clearly has a better understanding of the industry than many owners in four months. You will learn a lot by being appointed interim sports director in a busy summer transfer window.
But to talk so airily about (essentially) colonising other clubs in Portugal or Belgium “or somewhere like that” is unedifying.
Manchester City, with its 11 clubs across 11 countries, is presented as the best among equals by City Football Group. However, reality may not be so simple. The way Boehly talks about it, a club in Portugal — let’s hypothetically say Rio Ave, Portimonense or Pacos de Ferreira — will be bought for the sole purpose of helping Chelsea find a way around post-Brexit immigration laws.
Is the multi-club football model good for us? Our Matt Slater has explored this question in great detail this yearThis is despite the fact that Red Bull and City Football Group have had great success, as well as the turmoil experienced by Pacific Media Group which is trying to manage six clubs in different European countries and various other groups.
Like the proliferation of takeovers by investors with no connection to (and in many cases, little interest in) the club in question, it is a phenomenon that has dawned slowly but spread quickly without the game’s authorities being able to reach any kind of consensus on whether it is a good thing or something to be clamped down on.
Is it right for clubs — often clubs with a proud history, rooted in their community — to be reduced to mere subsidiaries to others in another league, or indeed as subsidiaries to an energy drink or as pawns in a geopolitical game? Many of us will answer no. Some will argue it is worth the price of success. The reality is that multi-club ownership groups are more likely to fail than others. Many owners have failed to manage a club, let alone an entire team.
As Boehly mentioned at Tuesday’s conference, though, there is so little regulation in football. He spoke about the inconsistencies of the transfer market — “markets in South America, all throughout Europe, all throughout Asia, in Australia, and it’s not regulated at all” — as well as about the difficulties of dealing with powerful agents and the “freestyling” involved in the game’s business practices.
It was reminiscent of Ivan Gazidis’s arrival at Arsenal as chief executive in 2009, after years as deputy commissioner of Major League Soccer, and likening European football to the “Wild West” — “unscrupulous operators and third parties taking money out of the game” and “practices that would not be permissible in American sports leagues”.
Isn’t this where European football should be “taking a bit of a lesson from American sports”, as Boehly put it?
Not All-Star games, closed-shop competitions or anything like that, but better regulation, a clearer licensing system and, while we are at it, a fairer distribution of the game’s wealth to restore some degree of competitive balance.
On stage in New York, Boehly stated that every Premier League club “gets north of £200million or so” in broadcast revenue.
The reality is very different — Chelsea’s broadcast revenue, boosted by Champions League income, dwarfs that of the clubs who finish lower down the Premier League — but it was interesting that he sounded like he accepted the principle of what he was saying. Coming from a baseball background, he might be shocked to discover just how vast the Premier League’s financial divide really is.
But, investors who come from America don’t dwell on the inequalities for too long. Investors arriving from America don’t dwell on that inequality, at least not if they live on the right side.
Fenway Sports Group had only owned Liverpool a matter of months before they started pushing for the bigger clubs to get a greater share of the Premier League’s broadcast revenue. Like the Glazers at Manchester United and Kroenke Sports & Entertainment at Arsenal, they have barely stopped pushing since.
Chelsea, after years of success under Roman Abramovich’s ownership, are one of those clubs near the top of the food chain, which is why Boehly already sounds entirely comfortable talking about buying clubs in Belgium and Portugal and, as if they serve no purpose, using them as a halfway house for promising South American players.
This is more annoying than the snarky line about an All-Star team.
Boehly seemed alarmed at the lack of regulation in international football, and was looking for ways to subsidise other parts of the English football pyramid. The next he was talking about loopholes, about getting players “out of South America” and finding “a place to put our 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds to develop them, somewhere in Portugal or Belgium or somewhere like that”.
Nobody should expect Boehly or any other businessman or investor, new to football, to have all the answers to the game’s many regulatory issues, but it is here that his early impressions, contrasting with his experience in American sport, would be worth listening to and taking seriously.
Football isn’t a blank canvas. It’s a rich and complicated tapestry. It isn’t perfect by any means, but most of its issues — financial inequality and instability, a lack of competitive balance in many leagues, the “Wild West” of the transfer market — could be improved by better regulation.
Instead of talking about All-Star games and closed-shop leagues, European football should learn from American sport. It doesn’t seem to be interested in taking on American investors, despite having so many.
(Top image: Getty images; design Eamonn Dallton
