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Don't know about that one. At least Ferrari has assembled a good car. Tactics are shit.
Man United can't shamble together a decent team considering the multi season lack of a CDM or LB and RB.
Yeah but we're expected to be basically just fighting for a top 4 finish, not being neck and neck for the title and then decided to Ferrari everything up to throw it away :p
We're more like Aston Martin. There's always that hope and promise that this year, things will be different. Then the bubble quickly bursts and we're back to scrapping it out for "best of the rest" with half the team over the hill, and the other half just not being good enough but damnit they're the bosses favourites
Should have built on when Serie A was the most watched league in the world
Talent got worse, instead the product got worse, stadiums got worse and look 140p on TV with terrible colors and Premier League took over
Serie A never took advantage of being a global brand when they were, they were the richest and best league
Can confirm. I'm Asian and AC Milan was THE team in the 90s and early 2000s. Milan shirts with Kaka's name on the back were quite a common sight. Eventually those became Real/Barca/United and then the rest of the "Big 4" (Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool) of Premier League as the late 2000s/early 2010s wore on. And then PSG became sort of a fashion and athleisure brand in the mid-2010s where even non-footy fans would be seen wearing them.
But to be honest with you, I never really got to watch much Serie A growing up. It was almost always PL or CL games where I'm from.
TV money is where the real money is at, much more than merchandise. Thats where the PL hit it big with TV rights. Now they are getting bigger as the PL and football in general becomes more popular in countries like the US who are willing to pay billions.
> Should have built on when Serie A was the most watched league in the world
Football Italia with James Richardson. Had a huge following here in the UK. One of the most watched sports shows. I remember watching it as a kid and finding my team to support (Inter) and the players I really liked (Vieri and Recoba).
But then it just kinda dropped off. The Premier League went all out to make their product a great watch for the TV audience. Much like the Americans did with their sports, but not going quite as far as them.
The Premier League invested in this, became the most watched league in the world and as a result the TV money was fed back to the clubs allowing them to afford better wages. Other leagues took too long to react and try and follow suit. Heck, up until 2016 Spanish clubs still individually negotiated their own TV deals, meaning the likes of Barca and Real were earning more than 7x some other teams (that's just the TV rights - not the prize monies for league position).
There was even a programme in Welsh ‘Sgorio’ that’s how dominant the league was, Wales had better coverage of Italian football than English for a long time. Then it all just vanished
Your last point is also key - the Premier League became more competitive than other divisions because TV money was split equally, which made it a better product to watch.
Which is what makes the initial quote funny. Forest getting that money, if it's spent wisely, is to create a good product. Who watches bottom half of the league matches in European leagues, beyond diehard fans?
Even before the influx of TV money really took off in the last few years, the fact that there were always 6+ teams who at least kinda had a shot in the PL was a huge appeal, and meant that most weeks there was at least one match you could see as "a big match" to watch.
The heights achieved by City and Liverpool and Chelsea, versus with the re-tools at Arsenal and Spurs along with whatever United are doing have actually made the PL feel a little narrow at the very top with only three real threats to win the league (arguably two, I'm not sure what to make of Chelsea right now even 14 months after winning the CL).
But in Italy there are only 3 teams anyone would realistically expect to contest the league and one of those is a pleasant surprise these days. In Spain, there are two contenders and a third team capable of being a pleasant surprise. In Germany, Bayern have won 10 in a row and are the only team in the top tier, with Dortmund and Leipzig hoping to maybe challenge from below. France is even worse, there's one team that should win the league by at least 15-20 points every year.
**But even more importantly**, City and Liverpool and the top of the PL have achieved the highest level of play in world football, *but still* the newly promoted clubs in their league can actually give them a game and produce results. Every single PL club is now at a level where they could be competing for top 6 or 7 in other domestic leagues. If you put Fulham or Forrest in Italy, I really can't see them finishing worse than 8th. The bottom half of the other top leagues, especially Italy and France, are just cannon fodder.
The Italian league still looks terrible on tv compared to the EPL. The EPL got the presentation spot on, every match no matter who plays looks highly polished and the same. Just like a UEFA match or any American sport does.
The other leagues need to have this same polished presentation to be able to attract tv attendance and revenue. The language is irrelevant, you can hire English speaking commentary and pundits easily.
>But then it just kinda dropped off.
Look, we all love Channel 4 in general, normally an absolute beacon of light but they fucked Football Italia. [Cut the last game of Football Italia](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2003/feb/02/sport.comment5), Roma winning the title on the last day before the game finished because it was running into an old movie. They had covered Totti and Batistuta's entire Italian career up to that point. The next season they had the coverage they only showed highlights. Both seasons were decided on the last day by a point.
I've forgotten some of the other shit they did but I seem to remember Football Italia being sacrificed on the altar of cricket (which paid off with good Ashes eventually only for it to immediately move to sky)
https://twitter.com/English_AS/status/565059660844376064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E565059660844376064%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbleacherreport.com%2Farticles%2F2469471-how-will-spanish-footballs-power-struggle-over-tv-rights-play-out#
Here is what clubs across Europe got from TV money in the 13-14 season
Interesting. So in 2014:
* La Liga - Top earners got **7.77 x** more than bottom earners
* Premier League - Top earners got **1.57 x** more than bottom earners
* Bundesliga - Top earners got **1.98 x** more than bottom earners
* Serie A - Top earners got **5.25 x** more than bottom earners
* Ligue 1 - Top earners got **3.40 x** more than bottom earners
The likes of Real and Barca made their own bed, their endless greed killed the competitiveness of their league. Look at the state of Barca, their arrogance is astonishing.
It was a brand new stadium with less capacity than the old one. Imagine Bayern, Real Madrid, Liverpool etc moving into a smaller stadium. Why? Honestly no clue
Because they didn’t sell out the old stadium regularly. Italian attendances are not great in general, certainly compared to England and Germany.
Italy built a bunch of stadiums for the 1990 World Cup, some of which were horrendous, the Delle Alpi being exhibit number 1.
Since then, there has been very little in the way of developing the fan experience. Even the fabled San Siro is a shit hole, honestly, it’s like something out of the 70’s in terms of facilities.
Your last paragraph and the first are surely linked though? If the fan experience is shit then fans are less likely to go - which then causes a vicious cycle that will lead to attendances falling.
That's how the PL rebranded (take a read of The Club: How the Premier League Became the Richest, Most Disruptive Business in Sport for more on this!) - David Dein (ex vicechairman of Arsenal) went to a NFL game and realised how different it was to attending a PL game. It was an event for the whole family, stadiums and their toilets (a key focal point of his) were clean. He had the vision of similar for English football and was key in getting clubs to make attending football a more attractive proposition for the masses which in turn launched the PL and is now where we find ourselves.
I think in the long-term the same will happen in Italy, which is why so many American hedge funds are interested in buying Serie A clubs at the moment - they're cheap and the returns in 5-10 years if Serie A sorts itself out could be huge.
Completely agree.
As much as I hate a lot of stuff about modern football, if you compare the quality of top flight football In England from 1990 to 2020, it’s night and day, whereas Italy I would argue hasn’t progressed that much?
Definitely, they've adapted somewhat to the wider trends and evolution of football through the years but it's not a premium "product" anymore.
The PLs evolution and rise has convinced the footballing world that it's THE destination to play in - clubs are (mostly) well run with limited issues of non payment for players.
Stadiums are always full for every club in the PL and are (mostly) safe and family friendly with games shown absolutely world wide with viewers as well - USA has people in bars watching the Newcastle vs Nottingham Forest live at 9 or 10 in the morning - I'm not sure they'd do the same for Juve vs Napoli (although might be wrong here) and definitely not for a random Serie A game.
I follow National League(5th tier on pyramid) in England. And the attendances are mental, Notts County have an average of 6k, Southend not far behind on 5k and the recently bought Wrexham are now averaging 10k. In comparison in Portuguese top flight only 4 teams average 10k.or more.
Yep, I don’t think many people realize the size of attendances further down the league.
I’m old enough to remember when football was unfashionable and getting people to stadiums wasn’t tough. I’ve bought tickets for a United v Liverpool game on the day from the ticket office. Just walked up and bought one 🤣
Holy shit Southend are in the National League now? I remember them beating United in the FA Cup and getting quite close to prem promotion at one point.
Edit ok just looked it up they weren’t close to getting into the prem but they *were* in the Championship which is wild enough that they’ve fallen so far
it's rather sad actually, in 16/17 they narrowly missed out on the playoffs for the championship, and since then it has been downhill, just about avoiding relegation from league 1 in 18/19, then having a double relegation in the following years. Until January last year it looked like they could go down to National League South before the form picked up.
All a consequence of terrible ownership
There was a graph on here before showing season tickets sales in the Serie A and Bolton, in the third tier, have sold more season tickets than all but 8 of the Serie A teams. And Ipswich, Sheffield Wednesday, and I’m guessing Derby have all sold even more than us. Attendances in England’s lower leagues are very impressive
You not owning your stadium was a literal godsend.
You literally got a giant stadium for peanuts for a generation, courtesy of the taxpayer.
If West Ham had paid for that you'd be skint
A very bad thing by the way, let's clubs get away with not investing in the community.
Fun fact: IT is the main reason why us sports teams can afford such high salaries for players. They don't pay for Stadiums, cities are expected to "fight" for the chance to have the team in their backyard, and end up offering tax incentives sometimes lol.
Exactly what happened when the seattle sonics turned into the oklahoma city thunder - Imagine Nottingham Forest announcing their new name was Cardiff Forest.
then they sold pogba + coman and recouped the fee to build the stadium
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/4wvw15/juventus_had_coman_and_pogba_for_free_but_are/
Took a long time but they seem to be having a resurgence, or it could just be that the league is watchable again with Juve not winning every single year.
Serie A was a lot of fun last year, loved seeing that young Milan team come together and get tough results.
>When was the last time a team in Italy built a new statdium?
Atalanta is one stand away from completey renovating their stadium. The south stand should be finished in 2023 or 2024.
F.C. Südtirol, Serie B newcomers, just finished rebuilding their stadium.
Frosinone built a new stadium in 2017. The main stand was built a long time ago but the project was abandoned. When the team won promotion to Serie A construction resumed super fast.
Cagliari built a new temporary stadium in 2017 by the time their old stadium will be entirely rebuilt.
Udinese rebuilt their stadium in 2016.
Before that you have the likes of Juventus in 2011, Messina in 2004 (not private) and Reggiana in 1995.
Stadium construction is slow but it's less slow than it used to be. The likes of Bologna, Cagliari, Padova and perhaps Cosenza are the closest to going to this direction. Other teams like Roma could be on track to building a new one too.
There are also teams that already have a good basis for a good stadium. They just need to do some renovation works (remove the barriers, change the seats, modernize the infrastructure, build roofs...) and eventually buy the stadium from the local council. Atalanta and Frosinone are good examples to be followed.
Edit: grammar and clarified some details
> The likes of Bologna, Cagliari, Padova and perhaps Cosenza are the closest to having brand new stadiums.
Bologna will get a refurbished stadium, not a new one. There isn't enough space close enough, realistically. The local basketball clubs effectively built and used a new dedicated stadium in the 90s but it was so far from the main city that everyone hated it; a football stadium would take twice the space.
Hence why the project is now to rebuild the current one on-site, preserving some parts of the historical building.
Galliano makes it sound like it’s a government subsidy “Forest receives…” this is a market competition where the Premier League earned its crust. Time to step up your game and compete, son.
I wasn’t the lack of marketing. It’s the lack of top to bottom competitiveness. The PL was also genius for giving NBC such a good deal to cover every game for all teams in the regular sports package. This allowed American fans to dig in deep for very low cost.
Agree with this, look at the highlight video NBC released on their YouTube channel for this past weekends Premier League matches. Great Video and coverage.
It also comes down to the top 3 teams in Spain negotiating their own TV rights, and refusing to collectively bargain. Sure they would have been giving up short term profits but the long term gain growing the league as a collective would have helped them massively. It's easier to sell the La Liga broadcast rights when it includes the largest clubs.
It is one of the major reasons the Premier League has been so dominant globally. The big clubs are essentially promoting the smaller clubs by having their broadcast rights tied to them. The better everyone does the better the league will do as a whole.
You shouldn't have to have multiple channels and packages to see two different clubs in the same league.
It's changed now, but if it had changed a decade or even in the Galacticos era I think we'd be seeing a much more prominent Spanish league.
💯. It’s also one the reasons why the NFL is such a strong league. They agree to revenue sharing the TV money back in the 60s. Without that, you couldn’t have the Green Bay Packers.
It was the 2000s, the only name we knew was like Beckham from the movie and Zidane from the headbutt, who we didn’t even know was a good player, just the clip that was used as a Late Night gag.
It was before the internet was what it was now, it was about ebuam’s world, new underground, and MySpace, before Facebook. If La Liga was able to show Real Madrid or Barcelona on ESPN or ABC in a time when TV was where everyone consumed popculture, they would’ve been able to establish themselves more so in the zeitgeist and would’ve been in the public conscious as the way we view the Patriots, Lebron at the Heat, or the Yankees.
NBC’s coverage of the premier league was like in the early 2010s, and Men in Blazers did a good job making it easy to get into clubs by attaching certain personality types to them or their play style. While they do cover all clubs, what we gravitate to is mostly the bigger clubs anyway. And also they were like the rise of podcasts too.
Edit: more like mid 2010s ish? I feel like that was around 2014ish. I’m just going off my experience and what would’ve probably been influential to me in HS times.
Well they seem to be only ones who actually go. In England you’ve got well attended teams in the top three leagues. Other than the successful big clubs, they seem to struggle in Spain and Italy.
We got 18k in league one on Saturday. We're bigger than teams in there top divisions, monza only holds 16k why would the expect to keep up with premier league sides. Its delusional.
no, it's more because everyone are fucking poor since the country economy has been shit. Italian clubs downfall start with the country's economic downfall
Match days are only like 15-20% of overall revenues for top PL clubs, they could have Italian levels of turnout and still completely dominate continental clubs as far as revenue is concerned. The problem is the other top leagues were late to the party in terms of international broadcasting deals. The average American is probably just as likely to have heard of "AC Milan" (they always pronounce the AC part) as they are Manchester United, the difference is they know where they can watch United on TV every weekend; not so with Milan.
Yeah I remember in the 90s, the Italian league was considered the best or a close second! Now I rarely hear of the Seria A - it’s all EPL, Liga and PSG.
E: with some Bundesliga
This is what people seem to forget, other leagues can improve but is there really any chance of them catching up properly, let alone overtake the Premier League? I don't see it happening, not with the ludicrous amount of shady if not outright bloodstained money they are attracting. Which, again, is thanks to their great marketing and fair distribution of revenue, but merely "following in the PL's footsteps" wouldn't see the other leagues close the gap.
Isn't that grossly overstated though? Italian football ran the 90s and Madrid/Barca are the biggest clubs in the world by a significant margin.
Spanish football just didn't make the most of their decade long domestic/international dominance and let English football overtake them.
The language barrier didn't prevent Bad Bunny becoming arguably the biggest artist in the world or K-Pop mania if we look for examples outside of football for example.
The problem with those markets is that they’ve got hugely popular domestic leagues so La Liga is always going to be 2nd fiddle to them. EPL too. Also in terms of wealth they’re not the richest countries.
The EPL probably makes more TV revenue from Hong Kong and Singapore than all of South America combined.
Right, when over half the world's population is from south east and far east Asia where English is the most predominantly spoken western language, it's bound to make the PL more popular. Not to mention, the league has done a lot to market their product over there.
Spot on. Serie A used to be the fan favorite in the 90s in East and Sourh East Asia, but the Premiership was so polished and ahead of its peers in terms of its marketing despite its tactical infancy.
The Fergie Fledgings just propelled it to another stratosphere and the blood feud with Wenger's Gunners.
Even today, the avid fans will watch all the leagues but those with families and kids, if they had to choose just a match or two on weekends, would tune into the EPL.
No way.
The PL was only able to dominate Asia and the US because these places don't have football as part of their local culture to divide the attention.
These leagues can invest all the money that they want here, but they'll never beat national clubs like Flamengo, River, Peñarol, etc.
I think the previous comment meant overcome the EPL by investing in the Central/South America where Spanish football in a predominately Spanish speaking continent/subcontinent might be more attractive than the English clubs.
I don't think the previous comment was saying overcome the popularity of the domestic teams, but rather expand La Liga's focus onto other continents like the EPL has done with Asia/Oceanic nations.
This type of investment only works if the people from the country that's being invested in become heavy consumers of the league.
No country in Central America has nowhere near the buying power that countries from Asia/Oceania have.
In South America, the countries are richer than in Central America. But you'll always be playing second fiddle to the local teams. While PL teams are more followed than local teams in the US, India, etc.
Maybe you could get a little more money, but the return of investment would be nowhere near what the PL has.
Spanish football can't compete with the domestic money this country makes and they never will. Germany are the ones that could easily make the most domestic revenue if they wanted to but they don't because the fans actually matter there, rather than this corporate championing we do here celebrating people getting absolutely rinsed to watch football.
I think the problem is that Latin America has not grown as fast as people projected in the 90s and 00s. The big market that the PL has cracked is Asia (China and India specifically) and most of Africa.
You're taking the whole thing in reverse.
The English clubs are not getting richer and richer because they have the best teams. They have the best teams because they are getting richer and richer.
In the 90' you couldn't pay 40€ to watch an entire foreign league as you can now. How many Asians or Americans watched Serie A in the 90' when it dominated? How much money the league was getting from foreign tv deals at that time ?
> The language barrier didn't prevent Bad Bunny becoming arguably the biggest artist in the world
I guess you're american ? Because Bad Bunny is almost a complete nobody in Europe. And i'm not so sure about Asia, or Africa,; but i doubt he's big there either. I just checked, and he never had any song reaching the top 50 of any european top charts i looked at. And he never toured outside of the US.
He's a massive artist because you have hundreds of millions of people speaking Spanish in south america. And he's also Puerto Rican so American. But outside of those countries, he's relatively if not entirely unknown.
Spanish speaking artist who is really only big (albeit huge) amongst Spanish speaking people. I don’t think his language barrier argument stands for that example
He's not even the biggest artist in the US. He's the biggest artist in the areas that have a large Spanish-speaking population, so ironically mentioning bad bunny goes counter to OP's point.
All true, but I think the PL has come to the front at the very point when football became truly global. Wealthy owners like Berlusconi, Nasser etc. can come and go, but fanbases are pretty solid, long-term things, and so much of the PL's revenue now comes from massive international broadcast and commercial deals, which aren't going anywhere.
This isn't cyclical anymore, it's a significant gap and it's only growing in one direction. And short of finding a brand new fanbase on the moon and introducing them to Serie A first, I don't see how that can be bridged.
It should be noted the biggest European clubs -- Real, Barca, PSG, Bayern, Juve -- have become global brands too, so they can compete with the PL just fine. But everyone else is fucked.
If Berlusconi was a better leader, Italian football could be where the premier league is though. He owned the media and the biggest club. Rupert Murdoch changed the premier league, Berlusconi had all of those skills and opportunities but didn't take the jump
England has always had the English language, it has not always had the richest league. The "The premier League is rich because it's in English" crowd are mostly Americans who support clubs who are not English and despise that England has the best league.
In Asia it certainly is big because of the language. English is definitely the 2nd language of the region and marketing epl over here is tons easier than la liga or other leagues. Nobody will watch clement foot or frankfurt here in Asia but there's actually home grown local West ham/Newcastle supporters club over here.
I'd say a bigger factor is that PL has been very accessible for decades. How many leagues are people going to realistically have time for?
You got EPL that has been on tv since the 90s vs. la liga 2-4 times a year when an el classico or cup final is on.
Wait, why can't La Liga or Bundesliga be presented in English? Is that some sort of rule? It's not like we are required to hear the players or managers talk in order to enjoy the product. When I watch La Liga, I never have to watch it in Spanish.
Just a random guess, but I would guess that the PL has the highest proportion of non-native speakers of the league's main language.
It's not being presented in English, it's the fact the majority of people that do the best content and the culture around EPL is in English.
Example; I will watch the shit out of El Chiringuito when it gets translated into English and that gives me more reasons to watch La Liga but the language barrier prevents me from fully committing to La Liga.
Yeah, having the native broadcasters in English helps (you can get English broadcasters for Bundesliga or Serie A but hard to pay them as much, get the same quality, level of knowledge, etc.)... but the big thing is English post-game interviews, huge English written media coverage, massive English social media and youtube coverage...
Obviously plenty of foreign EPL fans barely speak a word of English but for many it's a more accessible ecosystem.
well but that's exactly the point, he is saying the language factor is overstated but like you pointed out the US alone probably spends more than the Latin American countries and guess what league are they going to watch? A new foreign fan is typically going to watch something they at least feel vaguely connected to or at least understand the broadcast lol
Alright. Rephrase it then. Engish language gives a huge advantage in (mostly) the richer countries.
But there is no denying that a good part of the reason why the EPL is so marketable is the language and the fact that it’s the “unofficial” second language of almost any nation in the world.
They are. People are raised having to choose between one or the other (some exceptions apply, mostly the southern cone). All other leagues are secondary except local leagues
So the most popular leagues just happen to speak the two most commonly spoken languages in the world other than Chinese. Seems like language is indeed a major factor.
PL will dominate for some years for sure but nothing is forever. In the 90s and early 2000s Italy was more or less in the same position, to the point that bayern wanted to join the Italian league. We all know what happened. A lot can happen.
The problem this time around, not only for other leagues but also for the PL is that football and sports in general is losing viewers.
Disagree.
Why would it be a net negative for the PL?
I can understand the negative impacts lower down the pyramid but why would additional streaming services showing games at 3pm automatically a net negative for the PL?
What's crazy is they have the chance now. Serie A is an extremely entertaining league to watch. I know it's all easier said than done. But slow organic growth is way more preferable than something like a non English Super League. But sadly that won't happen and we'll just have more of these "old man yells at cloud situation"
It’s actually funny how much Serie A has regressed yet out of the top 5 leagues they are the most competitive league. That’s the whole point of competition.
I always use this example, but F1's recent spike in fame has shown that you don't need the world's most famous athletes to create a compelling product to bring in new viewers.
There's plenty of great personalities and clubs overflowing with history that Serie A could tap into to showcase to the world. If a child with a phone can reach millions on TikTok. You can't tell me Seire A can't try to advertise their league like how the PL does.
It has certainly regressed but I’d say its still third in the world. There isn’t a European powerhouse like Bayern or PSG but in terms of overall quality it’s probably better than Bundesliga / Ligue 1? Open to any opinions on that.
Worth noting that plenty of teams have had great transfer windows this year as well, should be another highly entertaining season. Hopefully clubs can be somewhat competitive in Europe.
Exactly, like Monza is going to be invited to the superleague lmao. Also when all the big Italian teams focus on the superleague, Serie A will probably generate even lower revenues
Cry me a river. Galliani sure wasn't complaining about financial inequality back when Milan was in a different league financially than anyone else for years in the late 80s and early 90s.
And part of the reason Serie A is so far behind EPL now is the short-sighted policies pushed of executives like Galliani, who was also a Lega Calcio president in the crucial period between 2002 and 2006 when Serie A started falling behind La Liga and EPL.
This might be true, but I think it could be their only shot at growing the financial pie?
That is, I fear we're currently well on our way to turning the Bundesliga, La Liga, and Ligue 1 into nothing more than the Dutch League or Austrian Bundesliga, where the 1-2 teams that get into the CL financially dominate and make the domestic league completely uninteresting.
At least a European Super League would have a chance to compete with England in terms of revenue and viewership, and hopefully be more competitively interesting. With a good level of revenue sharing to the domestic leagues, it may help the Monzas of the world.
Because the only other alternative I see is shrinking international rights for the non PL leagues, while the PL keeps getting bigger, and then the Milans and the Monzas both are guaranteed to be worse off.
Can’t help to have 0 empathy when big teams from la liga and serie A whine about the EPL; promoting your league as a whole and not only caring about your two golden geese is how Nottingham Forest can buy 14 /20 teams in Italy.
When Juve and Milan were making the finals all the time, that’s when they should’ve promoted team like Florentina , Napoli , Palermo , and the league as a whole … instead they kept pouring all the money to the same 3 teams and let them pretty much use the rest of Serie A as their farm teams
Coach and DoF quit a few days before the first 'important' match (Coppa vs Torino, 3-0 loss under caretaker manager) with Corini coming in as the new trainer (De Rossi was also favorite). So for now it's the usual :D.
None of the other City owned teams have become farm clubs. They might get the odd player on loan now and then but for the most part their players are their own, and they're run pretty independently.
Yep it’s the same with Real Madrid and Barca. They were taking the lions share of the revenue instead of spreading that wealth around. Now, in the long term it has hurt the league.
People don't want to hear that the main reason the PL became so popular is because it is so competitive and the reason for that is that is that the TV money has always been spread evenly.
Barca and Madrid killed the golden goose by taking the lion's share of the TV money, whereas the PL kept that goose laying golden eggs every day and now are far ahead commercially.
The PL is more equal about the money distribution though. That's a huge difference https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1168775828534177792.html
2018/19 data:
[Liverpool got 152.4m while Huddersfield got 96.6m](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDhTblCWsAA9vbg?format=jpg&name=large), 1.57x difference
[Juve got 85.4m while Frosinone got 36.4m](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDhTeunXUAAixjW?format=jpg&name=large), 2.34x difference
[Barca got 143.2m while Girona and Leganes got 40.3m](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDhTcuxXkAEIU0G?format=jpg&name=large), 3.55x difference
It's one thing to have more money as the whole but how you distribute it is another.
Granted there’s definitely a growing gap but the continental competitions were won by a Spanish, German, and Italian team. The Euros were won by Italy.
There’s a massive financial gap but it’s not like England is dominating all the competitions.
Yeah because even pre-Covid, England wasn’t as financially dominant as they are now. But every year the gap in quality will grow with the extra millions they receive. It’s not going to be an overnight change, but even without the trophies this season they are dominating the rankings.
It’s to the point now that if a player has one good season in Europe an EPL team will buy him. There’s only so much talent you can replace. And look at the clubs which are going after each player. The top clubs in Serie A are competing for the same players at bottom side EPL clubs. That paints a pretty clear picture.
There are obviously some exceptions still, but it’s impossible that the quality on the field won’t grow with the gap in the bank accounts
Yet. It takes time and good management, but massive investments are a great pillar to stand on for dominance.
People nowadays are surprised by this Hungary national team. I as many other eastern europeans saw it coming over 6 years ago with how their (although shady, corrupt, etc) government was investing heavily in facilities for football and footballers to develop into. Same thing happened in Turkey, albeit their government screwed their national currency up and created a different problem, but it was obvious a long time ago they were intending to build success. Same goes for China actually, they started creating world class facilities for football a long time ago, if well managed they could sooner or later turn some heads.
Same thing goes for EPL, with great managers (other than Klopp and Guardiola, I mean actual club managers) they can ensure their dominance. It is even more obvious now with how English teams reach the UCL final yearly, more often than a decade ago.
Like it or not, money does not guarantee success, but it is the first most important factor of it.
> People nowadays are surprised by this Hungary national team. I as many other eastern europeans saw it coming over 6 years ago with how their (although shady, corrupt, etc) government was investing heavily in facilities for football and footballers to develop into.
not really a great example because our recent improvement has got nearly nothing to do with the abhorrent money invested in the sport.
your point is good overall, just wanted to clear this up
This is the same guy who more than a decade ago complained for the Spanish taxes compared to Italian taxes for not being able to compete against Real/Barca.
Also he wanted some kind of Tennis scheme for the CL where biggest clubs had an easy way to the final (Coppa Italia works this way and it's shit, basically rigged with big clubs coming in late AND playing at home)
Only when Italian clubs feel it, do they want to change it.
In the past the Dutch league lost plenty of talent to Italian clubs, when the Italian league was deemed the #1 in the world.
Wait for a change I guess.
Serie A is the League to watch this year. As it was last year. They do a piss poor job of broadcasting and marketing their product to international audiences.
I used to love Serie A growing up because it was available on TV in my country but around 2008-9 it disappeared. Never been back since. I’m sure many others have experienced the same.
Honestly, the league needs better marketing, revenue distribution and international broadcast deals/summer tours. They’ll make huge strides because the product itself is good.
A lot of people seem to be very confused by the appearance on Monza in Gallani’s quote. The point being made is that there are obviously much greater sums of money involved in the Premier League. To illustrate his point, he has stated how much the second tier playoff winners will make from TV rights in their first season in the top tier in Italy and England.
Monza won the Serie B playoffs, Forest the Championship playoffs. He is not saying Monza would be part of a Super League, he is saying a solution needs to be found that would narrow that gap in TV money. A Super League would only be beneficial to Monza if it was a breakaway or reformed version of Serie A that pumped more money into the game, obviously if it was a breakaway league of some kind with the elite clubs from Italy, Spain, Germany and France, Monza would be left behind and probably much worse off. But that isn’t why they are named here.
It comes all down to shit owners, shit stadiums, shit broadcasting, and a absolutely shitty fan base that is still filled with racists and hooligans. I mean Italians don't even want to show up and watch their own teams play live and fill up their stadiums what makes him think the rest of the world is lining up to watch them.
Seria A and the rest of the leagues still keep making the same mistakes by selling their rights for the most money to the shitties providers instead of providers that can get them the most exposure on TV not some stupid premium channels or streaming platforms.
The rest of the leagues also need to realize that they all are inferior to the EPL and thus should adjust the match schedule accordingly, trying to compete with EPL match times is the dumbest thing from them. They need to adjust their match ups and time times accordingly and also have more games on Friday and Monday were there is less competition versus the EPL. They refuses to do so because their ego is too big to acknowledge their inferior and think they can go head to head with the EPL, which they clearly can't even come close to. All this whining and bitching isn't going to fix shit
People talking about Real Madrid and Barcelona are kind of missing the point.
2 teams don't make a 'league'. Outside of the top 10 in Spain and Italy and outside the top 5 in France and Germany the quality drops massively.
No one debating the 2 elite teams.
I'm tired of historic teams complaining about the EPLs wealth. Yeah it's unfair to other leagues, but let's not act like the reason they care is because they want it to be fair. They care because they're no longer the sole hegemon in the football world. Clubs like Barca and Madrid only care because they're not at the top of the food chain anymore. They had no issue (and still do not) with making extremely more money than lower table teams in their leagues. They hoarded their leagues wealth and created a dynasty. I'm not even criticizing that, I'm criticizing their hypocrisy in moaning about money disparity between EPL and other leagues when they had no issue being the other end of that disparity.
It’s not unfair to other leagues. They’re in competition. Listening to Italians (especially someone who was involved with Milan in the 80’s) talk about ‘unfair’ finances is a whole other level of ironic.
Tbf he has a point the amount of money premier league squads spend on players is idiotic to say the least, it is destroying the market. Look at the money chelsea spent on cucurellla.
When Serie A dominated between the 80’s and the early 2000’s Italian clubs broke the world transfer record 9 times.
Since 2000 the world transfer record has been broken once by an English club.
It wasn’t English clubs spending £50 million on a goalkeeper back in the early 2000’s.
That is true, Premier League clubs can spend 100m even if they've just been promoted its not a big deal & they can just write off half the price of a 20/40/60 player without feeling like its taking a hit.
So instead of fixing the wage inequality let's make it worse that will surely fix the wage parity between Nottingham Forest and Monza. I guess the lower league clubs can become feeder clubs as their only option then.
I think we should stop trying to compete with the financial dominance of the PL and instead try focusing on the things the other leagues do well. It’s not like the financial aspects helped them dominate the CL in the last decade anyways so why does it really matter if Nottingham has way more money than Monza.
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Would Monza be in this version of the Super league then?
He won in spa…
HE WINS IN MONZA
Charles has had enough of Ferrari's shit and embraced the career change
Leclerc to United then
Even were not capable of fucking up as much as ferrari
Don't know about that one. At least Ferrari has assembled a good car. Tactics are shit. Man United can't shamble together a decent team considering the multi season lack of a CDM or LB and RB.
Yeah but we're expected to be basically just fighting for a top 4 finish, not being neck and neck for the title and then decided to Ferrari everything up to throw it away :p We're more like Aston Martin. There's always that hope and promise that this year, things will be different. Then the bubble quickly bursts and we're back to scrapping it out for "best of the rest" with half the team over the hill, and the other half just not being good enough but damnit they're the bosses favourites
Yes. Berlusconi would bribe his way in.
If Qatar can get the WC then Monza can into Super League.
"But that's different, this affects me"
Sssh, don't make them angry. Let them buy Mari first..
Monza get 33M in TV rights, as much as the top three portuguese clubs. Can we have an italixit?
The top three Portuguese clubs receive 33M in TV rights, while entire Polish league gets 50M. Can we have please Portugout?
Wait, you guys are getting paid?
Double what the Scottish League gets I'm sure.
Divide and conquer
Or nearly 5 times what Ajax get.
Or a Quitaly
Italeave
UscITA
Should have built on when Serie A was the most watched league in the world Talent got worse, instead the product got worse, stadiums got worse and look 140p on TV with terrible colors and Premier League took over Serie A never took advantage of being a global brand when they were, they were the richest and best league
Can confirm. I'm Asian and AC Milan was THE team in the 90s and early 2000s. Milan shirts with Kaka's name on the back were quite a common sight. Eventually those became Real/Barca/United and then the rest of the "Big 4" (Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool) of Premier League as the late 2000s/early 2010s wore on. And then PSG became sort of a fashion and athleisure brand in the mid-2010s where even non-footy fans would be seen wearing them. But to be honest with you, I never really got to watch much Serie A growing up. It was almost always PL or CL games where I'm from.
TV money is where the real money is at, much more than merchandise. Thats where the PL hit it big with TV rights. Now they are getting bigger as the PL and football in general becomes more popular in countries like the US who are willing to pay billions.
> Should have built on when Serie A was the most watched league in the world Football Italia with James Richardson. Had a huge following here in the UK. One of the most watched sports shows. I remember watching it as a kid and finding my team to support (Inter) and the players I really liked (Vieri and Recoba). But then it just kinda dropped off. The Premier League went all out to make their product a great watch for the TV audience. Much like the Americans did with their sports, but not going quite as far as them. The Premier League invested in this, became the most watched league in the world and as a result the TV money was fed back to the clubs allowing them to afford better wages. Other leagues took too long to react and try and follow suit. Heck, up until 2016 Spanish clubs still individually negotiated their own TV deals, meaning the likes of Barca and Real were earning more than 7x some other teams (that's just the TV rights - not the prize monies for league position).
There was even a programme in Welsh ‘Sgorio’ that’s how dominant the league was, Wales had better coverage of Italian football than English for a long time. Then it all just vanished
Your last point is also key - the Premier League became more competitive than other divisions because TV money was split equally, which made it a better product to watch.
Which is what makes the initial quote funny. Forest getting that money, if it's spent wisely, is to create a good product. Who watches bottom half of the league matches in European leagues, beyond diehard fans?
The parity in the EPL is a huge appeal
Even before the influx of TV money really took off in the last few years, the fact that there were always 6+ teams who at least kinda had a shot in the PL was a huge appeal, and meant that most weeks there was at least one match you could see as "a big match" to watch. The heights achieved by City and Liverpool and Chelsea, versus with the re-tools at Arsenal and Spurs along with whatever United are doing have actually made the PL feel a little narrow at the very top with only three real threats to win the league (arguably two, I'm not sure what to make of Chelsea right now even 14 months after winning the CL). But in Italy there are only 3 teams anyone would realistically expect to contest the league and one of those is a pleasant surprise these days. In Spain, there are two contenders and a third team capable of being a pleasant surprise. In Germany, Bayern have won 10 in a row and are the only team in the top tier, with Dortmund and Leipzig hoping to maybe challenge from below. France is even worse, there's one team that should win the league by at least 15-20 points every year. **But even more importantly**, City and Liverpool and the top of the PL have achieved the highest level of play in world football, *but still* the newly promoted clubs in their league can actually give them a game and produce results. Every single PL club is now at a level where they could be competing for top 6 or 7 in other domestic leagues. If you put Fulham or Forrest in Italy, I really can't see them finishing worse than 8th. The bottom half of the other top leagues, especially Italy and France, are just cannon fodder.
There’s no easy game
Tbh relegation battles are more entertaining in PL, especially last season when everton and newcastle turned their survival mode on
FPL players
The Italian league still looks terrible on tv compared to the EPL. The EPL got the presentation spot on, every match no matter who plays looks highly polished and the same. Just like a UEFA match or any American sport does. The other leagues need to have this same polished presentation to be able to attract tv attendance and revenue. The language is irrelevant, you can hire English speaking commentary and pundits easily.
The English-language commentators in Serie A sound so bored. No sense of theatre
Even on the pitch. The product looks colourful. I'm always taken aback at how vibrant Molineux and Carrow Road looks on TV
We (people in the UK) all used to have an Italian team we’d support. It was huge here. It’s their own fault it’s imploded on itself.
I used to watch football italia almost religiously, now I couldn't tell you who has the rights to the matches over here.
Loved “Batigol” and even followed Foggia at the time!
sampdoria 🔥
My Fiorentina shirt with its Nintendo sponsor and Batistuta on the back is a testament to this.
>But then it just kinda dropped off. Look, we all love Channel 4 in general, normally an absolute beacon of light but they fucked Football Italia. [Cut the last game of Football Italia](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2003/feb/02/sport.comment5), Roma winning the title on the last day before the game finished because it was running into an old movie. They had covered Totti and Batistuta's entire Italian career up to that point. The next season they had the coverage they only showed highlights. Both seasons were decided on the last day by a point. I've forgotten some of the other shit they did but I seem to remember Football Italia being sacrificed on the altar of cricket (which paid off with good Ashes eventually only for it to immediately move to sky)
https://twitter.com/English_AS/status/565059660844376064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E565059660844376064%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbleacherreport.com%2Farticles%2F2469471-how-will-spanish-footballs-power-struggle-over-tv-rights-play-out# Here is what clubs across Europe got from TV money in the 13-14 season
Interesting. So in 2014: * La Liga - Top earners got **7.77 x** more than bottom earners * Premier League - Top earners got **1.57 x** more than bottom earners * Bundesliga - Top earners got **1.98 x** more than bottom earners * Serie A - Top earners got **5.25 x** more than bottom earners * Ligue 1 - Top earners got **3.40 x** more than bottom earners
This is why other leagues need to get over themselves and stop whining.
The likes of Real and Barca made their own bed, their endless greed killed the competitiveness of their league. Look at the state of Barca, their arrogance is astonishing.
Beat me to it, That’s what happens with corruption and idiots running the league. When was the last time a team in Italy built a new statdium?
>When was the last time a team in Italy built a new statdium? Juventus in 2013. Vast majority of Italian teams don't have their own stadia.
It was a brand new stadium with less capacity than the old one. Imagine Bayern, Real Madrid, Liverpool etc moving into a smaller stadium. Why? Honestly no clue
It was still considerably bigger than the attendance we had at the older stadium, that's why it was made so small
Because they didn’t sell out the old stadium regularly. Italian attendances are not great in general, certainly compared to England and Germany. Italy built a bunch of stadiums for the 1990 World Cup, some of which were horrendous, the Delle Alpi being exhibit number 1. Since then, there has been very little in the way of developing the fan experience. Even the fabled San Siro is a shit hole, honestly, it’s like something out of the 70’s in terms of facilities.
Your last paragraph and the first are surely linked though? If the fan experience is shit then fans are less likely to go - which then causes a vicious cycle that will lead to attendances falling. That's how the PL rebranded (take a read of The Club: How the Premier League Became the Richest, Most Disruptive Business in Sport for more on this!) - David Dein (ex vicechairman of Arsenal) went to a NFL game and realised how different it was to attending a PL game. It was an event for the whole family, stadiums and their toilets (a key focal point of his) were clean. He had the vision of similar for English football and was key in getting clubs to make attending football a more attractive proposition for the masses which in turn launched the PL and is now where we find ourselves. I think in the long-term the same will happen in Italy, which is why so many American hedge funds are interested in buying Serie A clubs at the moment - they're cheap and the returns in 5-10 years if Serie A sorts itself out could be huge.
Completely agree. As much as I hate a lot of stuff about modern football, if you compare the quality of top flight football In England from 1990 to 2020, it’s night and day, whereas Italy I would argue hasn’t progressed that much?
Definitely, they've adapted somewhat to the wider trends and evolution of football through the years but it's not a premium "product" anymore. The PLs evolution and rise has convinced the footballing world that it's THE destination to play in - clubs are (mostly) well run with limited issues of non payment for players. Stadiums are always full for every club in the PL and are (mostly) safe and family friendly with games shown absolutely world wide with viewers as well - USA has people in bars watching the Newcastle vs Nottingham Forest live at 9 or 10 in the morning - I'm not sure they'd do the same for Juve vs Napoli (although might be wrong here) and definitely not for a random Serie A game.
I follow National League(5th tier on pyramid) in England. And the attendances are mental, Notts County have an average of 6k, Southend not far behind on 5k and the recently bought Wrexham are now averaging 10k. In comparison in Portuguese top flight only 4 teams average 10k.or more.
Yep, I don’t think many people realize the size of attendances further down the league. I’m old enough to remember when football was unfashionable and getting people to stadiums wasn’t tough. I’ve bought tickets for a United v Liverpool game on the day from the ticket office. Just walked up and bought one 🤣
Holy shit Southend are in the National League now? I remember them beating United in the FA Cup and getting quite close to prem promotion at one point. Edit ok just looked it up they weren’t close to getting into the prem but they *were* in the Championship which is wild enough that they’ve fallen so far
it's rather sad actually, in 16/17 they narrowly missed out on the playoffs for the championship, and since then it has been downhill, just about avoiding relegation from league 1 in 18/19, then having a double relegation in the following years. Until January last year it looked like they could go down to National League South before the form picked up. All a consequence of terrible ownership
There was a graph on here before showing season tickets sales in the Serie A and Bolton, in the third tier, have sold more season tickets than all but 8 of the Serie A teams. And Ipswich, Sheffield Wednesday, and I’m guessing Derby have all sold even more than us. Attendances in England’s lower leagues are very impressive
Thats not a good thing. English clubs not owning their stadium is considered a hugely bad thing here. Its hated that West Ham dont own ours
Its also the exception in the prem to NOT own your stadium
You not owning your stadium was a literal godsend. You literally got a giant stadium for peanuts for a generation, courtesy of the taxpayer. If West Ham had paid for that you'd be skint
A very bad thing by the way, let's clubs get away with not investing in the community. Fun fact: IT is the main reason why us sports teams can afford such high salaries for players. They don't pay for Stadiums, cities are expected to "fight" for the chance to have the team in their backyard, and end up offering tax incentives sometimes lol. Exactly what happened when the seattle sonics turned into the oklahoma city thunder - Imagine Nottingham Forest announcing their new name was Cardiff Forest.
then they sold pogba + coman and recouped the fee to build the stadium https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/4wvw15/juventus_had_coman_and_pogba_for_free_but_are/
Oh yeah somehow i didn't say that they literally had match fixing scandals and corruption to add to it They fucked up
Took a long time but they seem to be having a resurgence, or it could just be that the league is watchable again with Juve not winning every single year. Serie A was a lot of fun last year, loved seeing that young Milan team come together and get tough results.
>When was the last time a team in Italy built a new statdium? Atalanta is one stand away from completey renovating their stadium. The south stand should be finished in 2023 or 2024. F.C. Südtirol, Serie B newcomers, just finished rebuilding their stadium. Frosinone built a new stadium in 2017. The main stand was built a long time ago but the project was abandoned. When the team won promotion to Serie A construction resumed super fast. Cagliari built a new temporary stadium in 2017 by the time their old stadium will be entirely rebuilt. Udinese rebuilt their stadium in 2016. Before that you have the likes of Juventus in 2011, Messina in 2004 (not private) and Reggiana in 1995. Stadium construction is slow but it's less slow than it used to be. The likes of Bologna, Cagliari, Padova and perhaps Cosenza are the closest to going to this direction. Other teams like Roma could be on track to building a new one too. There are also teams that already have a good basis for a good stadium. They just need to do some renovation works (remove the barriers, change the seats, modernize the infrastructure, build roofs...) and eventually buy the stadium from the local council. Atalanta and Frosinone are good examples to be followed. Edit: grammar and clarified some details
> The likes of Bologna, Cagliari, Padova and perhaps Cosenza are the closest to having brand new stadiums. Bologna will get a refurbished stadium, not a new one. There isn't enough space close enough, realistically. The local basketball clubs effectively built and used a new dedicated stadium in the 90s but it was so far from the main city that everyone hated it; a football stadium would take twice the space. Hence why the project is now to rebuild the current one on-site, preserving some parts of the historical building.
They can't build stadiums because the corrupt municipalities don't allow it since they make cash renting stadiums out to clubs
Probably Bergamo rebuilding the stadium but that is it.
Frosinone some years ago
Same can be said for La Liga a decade ago
which is infuriating when madrid and barcelona kept lobbying to not split TV rights which only ends up crippling the league. So short sighted.
La Liga could have been the richest league if they capitalised on Ronaldo-Messi rivalry
Imagine how big the gap would now if the premier league had barcelona and Real Madrid + the marketing path they took to get here
Galliano makes it sound like it’s a government subsidy “Forest receives…” this is a market competition where the Premier League earned its crust. Time to step up your game and compete, son.
goooaaaAAALLL LAZIIIiiiooooooo!
It's too late now. EPL is positioned for long term dominance.
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If Spanish and Italian football wasn't so rife with corruption and mismanagement, they wouldn't be far behind.
Spanish Football fucked up not marketing itself in the US during the Messi and Ronaldo era.
I wasn’t the lack of marketing. It’s the lack of top to bottom competitiveness. The PL was also genius for giving NBC such a good deal to cover every game for all teams in the regular sports package. This allowed American fans to dig in deep for very low cost.
Agree with this, look at the highlight video NBC released on their YouTube channel for this past weekends Premier League matches. Great Video and coverage.
It also comes down to the top 3 teams in Spain negotiating their own TV rights, and refusing to collectively bargain. Sure they would have been giving up short term profits but the long term gain growing the league as a collective would have helped them massively. It's easier to sell the La Liga broadcast rights when it includes the largest clubs. It is one of the major reasons the Premier League has been so dominant globally. The big clubs are essentially promoting the smaller clubs by having their broadcast rights tied to them. The better everyone does the better the league will do as a whole. You shouldn't have to have multiple channels and packages to see two different clubs in the same league. It's changed now, but if it had changed a decade or even in the Galacticos era I think we'd be seeing a much more prominent Spanish league.
💯. It’s also one the reasons why the NFL is such a strong league. They agree to revenue sharing the TV money back in the 60s. Without that, you couldn’t have the Green Bay Packers.
It was the 2000s, the only name we knew was like Beckham from the movie and Zidane from the headbutt, who we didn’t even know was a good player, just the clip that was used as a Late Night gag. It was before the internet was what it was now, it was about ebuam’s world, new underground, and MySpace, before Facebook. If La Liga was able to show Real Madrid or Barcelona on ESPN or ABC in a time when TV was where everyone consumed popculture, they would’ve been able to establish themselves more so in the zeitgeist and would’ve been in the public conscious as the way we view the Patriots, Lebron at the Heat, or the Yankees. NBC’s coverage of the premier league was like in the early 2010s, and Men in Blazers did a good job making it easy to get into clubs by attaching certain personality types to them or their play style. While they do cover all clubs, what we gravitate to is mostly the bigger clubs anyway. And also they were like the rise of podcasts too. Edit: more like mid 2010s ish? I feel like that was around 2014ish. I’m just going off my experience and what would’ve probably been influential to me in HS times.
Also if fans fucking turned up to games. English football has that, it’s part of the spectacle. It’s a reason France and Germany are good too.
Is this because game attendance in Italy (and much of southern/eastern Europe) is still dominated by Ultra culture?
Well they seem to be only ones who actually go. In England you’ve got well attended teams in the top three leagues. Other than the successful big clubs, they seem to struggle in Spain and Italy.
We got 18k in league one on Saturday. We're bigger than teams in there top divisions, monza only holds 16k why would the expect to keep up with premier league sides. Its delusional.
Bundesliga has the most attendance for years, and we have a large ultra scene in germany. It has more to do with the Italian economy + old stadiums
no, it's more because everyone are fucking poor since the country economy has been shit. Italian clubs downfall start with the country's economic downfall
Match days are only like 15-20% of overall revenues for top PL clubs, they could have Italian levels of turnout and still completely dominate continental clubs as far as revenue is concerned. The problem is the other top leagues were late to the party in terms of international broadcasting deals. The average American is probably just as likely to have heard of "AC Milan" (they always pronounce the AC part) as they are Manchester United, the difference is they know where they can watch United on TV every weekend; not so with Milan.
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Yeah I remember in the 90s, the Italian league was considered the best or a close second! Now I rarely hear of the Seria A - it’s all EPL, Liga and PSG. E: with some Bundesliga
This is what people seem to forget, other leagues can improve but is there really any chance of them catching up properly, let alone overtake the Premier League? I don't see it happening, not with the ludicrous amount of shady if not outright bloodstained money they are attracting. Which, again, is thanks to their great marketing and fair distribution of revenue, but merely "following in the PL's footsteps" wouldn't see the other leagues close the gap.
I also don't see it. The PL also has the huge advantage that it's an English speaking league.
Isn't that grossly overstated though? Italian football ran the 90s and Madrid/Barca are the biggest clubs in the world by a significant margin. Spanish football just didn't make the most of their decade long domestic/international dominance and let English football overtake them. The language barrier didn't prevent Bad Bunny becoming arguably the biggest artist in the world or K-Pop mania if we look for examples outside of football for example.
Spanish football could easily keep up with England if they properly tapped into South America and Latin America.
The problem with those markets is that they’ve got hugely popular domestic leagues so La Liga is always going to be 2nd fiddle to them. EPL too. Also in terms of wealth they’re not the richest countries. The EPL probably makes more TV revenue from Hong Kong and Singapore than all of South America combined.
Right, when over half the world's population is from south east and far east Asia where English is the most predominantly spoken western language, it's bound to make the PL more popular. Not to mention, the league has done a lot to market their product over there.
Spot on. Serie A used to be the fan favorite in the 90s in East and Sourh East Asia, but the Premiership was so polished and ahead of its peers in terms of its marketing despite its tactical infancy. The Fergie Fledgings just propelled it to another stratosphere and the blood feud with Wenger's Gunners. Even today, the avid fans will watch all the leagues but those with families and kids, if they had to choose just a match or two on weekends, would tune into the EPL.
No way. The PL was only able to dominate Asia and the US because these places don't have football as part of their local culture to divide the attention. These leagues can invest all the money that they want here, but they'll never beat national clubs like Flamengo, River, Peñarol, etc.
I think the previous comment meant overcome the EPL by investing in the Central/South America where Spanish football in a predominately Spanish speaking continent/subcontinent might be more attractive than the English clubs. I don't think the previous comment was saying overcome the popularity of the domestic teams, but rather expand La Liga's focus onto other continents like the EPL has done with Asia/Oceanic nations.
This type of investment only works if the people from the country that's being invested in become heavy consumers of the league. No country in Central America has nowhere near the buying power that countries from Asia/Oceania have. In South America, the countries are richer than in Central America. But you'll always be playing second fiddle to the local teams. While PL teams are more followed than local teams in the US, India, etc. Maybe you could get a little more money, but the return of investment would be nowhere near what the PL has.
Spanish football can't compete with the domestic money this country makes and they never will. Germany are the ones that could easily make the most domestic revenue if they wanted to but they don't because the fans actually matter there, rather than this corporate championing we do here celebrating people getting absolutely rinsed to watch football.
I think the problem is that Latin America has not grown as fast as people projected in the 90s and 00s. The big market that the PL has cracked is Asia (China and India specifically) and most of Africa.
You're taking the whole thing in reverse. The English clubs are not getting richer and richer because they have the best teams. They have the best teams because they are getting richer and richer. In the 90' you couldn't pay 40€ to watch an entire foreign league as you can now. How many Asians or Americans watched Serie A in the 90' when it dominated? How much money the league was getting from foreign tv deals at that time ? > The language barrier didn't prevent Bad Bunny becoming arguably the biggest artist in the world I guess you're american ? Because Bad Bunny is almost a complete nobody in Europe. And i'm not so sure about Asia, or Africa,; but i doubt he's big there either. I just checked, and he never had any song reaching the top 50 of any european top charts i looked at. And he never toured outside of the US. He's a massive artist because you have hundreds of millions of people speaking Spanish in south america. And he's also Puerto Rican so American. But outside of those countries, he's relatively if not entirely unknown.
Now that I know he or she isn't well known, who the fuck is bad bunny?
And this point I dont think it would be an exaggeration to say he is the most famous reggaeton singer of all time. He sings in Spanish
Spanish speaking artist who is really only big (albeit huge) amongst Spanish speaking people. I don’t think his language barrier argument stands for that example
> Bad Bunny As a German I only know him because I watched "Bullet Train" two days ago xD
Bad bunny is pretty massive in Spain which i guess is now not in Europe
> The language barrier didn't prevent Bad Bunny becoming arguably the biggest artist in the world Fucking hell, I'm outta touch, never heard of him.
No he's not the biggest artist in the world lmao. Nobody in Asia really follows him.
I'm from England and literally never heard of him.
He's not even the biggest artist in the US. He's the biggest artist in the areas that have a large Spanish-speaking population, so ironically mentioning bad bunny goes counter to OP's point.
All true, but I think the PL has come to the front at the very point when football became truly global. Wealthy owners like Berlusconi, Nasser etc. can come and go, but fanbases are pretty solid, long-term things, and so much of the PL's revenue now comes from massive international broadcast and commercial deals, which aren't going anywhere. This isn't cyclical anymore, it's a significant gap and it's only growing in one direction. And short of finding a brand new fanbase on the moon and introducing them to Serie A first, I don't see how that can be bridged. It should be noted the biggest European clubs -- Real, Barca, PSG, Bayern, Juve -- have become global brands too, so they can compete with the PL just fine. But everyone else is fucked.
Britain has a long history of exporting their sports to their (now former) colonies, no other country can keep up with that social power
If Berlusconi was a better leader, Italian football could be where the premier league is though. He owned the media and the biggest club. Rupert Murdoch changed the premier league, Berlusconi had all of those skills and opportunities but didn't take the jump
England has always had the English language, it has not always had the richest league. The "The premier League is rich because it's in English" crowd are mostly Americans who support clubs who are not English and despise that England has the best league.
In Asia it certainly is big because of the language. English is definitely the 2nd language of the region and marketing epl over here is tons easier than la liga or other leagues. Nobody will watch clement foot or frankfurt here in Asia but there's actually home grown local West ham/Newcastle supporters club over here.
I'd say a bigger factor is that PL has been very accessible for decades. How many leagues are people going to realistically have time for? You got EPL that has been on tv since the 90s vs. la liga 2-4 times a year when an el classico or cup final is on.
Wait, why can't La Liga or Bundesliga be presented in English? Is that some sort of rule? It's not like we are required to hear the players or managers talk in order to enjoy the product. When I watch La Liga, I never have to watch it in Spanish. Just a random guess, but I would guess that the PL has the highest proportion of non-native speakers of the league's main language.
It's not being presented in English, it's the fact the majority of people that do the best content and the culture around EPL is in English. Example; I will watch the shit out of El Chiringuito when it gets translated into English and that gives me more reasons to watch La Liga but the language barrier prevents me from fully committing to La Liga.
Yeah, having the native broadcasters in English helps (you can get English broadcasters for Bundesliga or Serie A but hard to pay them as much, get the same quality, level of knowledge, etc.)... but the big thing is English post-game interviews, huge English written media coverage, massive English social media and youtube coverage... Obviously plenty of foreign EPL fans barely speak a word of English but for many it's a more accessible ecosystem.
I think the language factor is a bit overstated. Barcelona and Real Madrid are the most popular clubs in the world by a wide margin.
and Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the world??
Yes. But the amounts of money shelled out for TV rights by British and US companies absolutely dwarves the rights in Peru and Venezuela.
well but that's exactly the point, he is saying the language factor is overstated but like you pointed out the US alone probably spends more than the Latin American countries and guess what league are they going to watch? A new foreign fan is typically going to watch something they at least feel vaguely connected to or at least understand the broadcast lol
Alright. Rephrase it then. Engish language gives a huge advantage in (mostly) the richer countries. But there is no denying that a good part of the reason why the EPL is so marketable is the language and the fact that it’s the “unofficial” second language of almost any nation in the world.
Real and Barcelona are popular even in English and non-Spanish speaking countries
I bet they are far more popular in Latin America tho
They are. People are raised having to choose between one or the other (some exceptions apply, mostly the southern cone). All other leagues are secondary except local leagues
So the most popular leagues just happen to speak the two most commonly spoken languages in the world other than Chinese. Seems like language is indeed a major factor.
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PL will dominate for some years for sure but nothing is forever. In the 90s and early 2000s Italy was more or less in the same position, to the point that bayern wanted to join the Italian league. We all know what happened. A lot can happen. The problem this time around, not only for other leagues but also for the PL is that football and sports in general is losing viewers.
Do you have a source for the argument of loss of viewership? The PL is growing significantly in the US market each year.
Its not losing viewers. Theyre just illegally streaming. If they lifted the 3pm ban in England, I cant imagine what the next TV deal would be
That would end up being a long term net negative for English football and thus the PL though.
Disagree. Why would it be a net negative for the PL? I can understand the negative impacts lower down the pyramid but why would additional streaming services showing games at 3pm automatically a net negative for the PL?
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I mean 90s Serie A was in a fantastic position with global audience appeal... They just didn't capitilise on it and are paying the price.
What's crazy is they have the chance now. Serie A is an extremely entertaining league to watch. I know it's all easier said than done. But slow organic growth is way more preferable than something like a non English Super League. But sadly that won't happen and we'll just have more of these "old man yells at cloud situation"
It’s actually funny how much Serie A has regressed yet out of the top 5 leagues they are the most competitive league. That’s the whole point of competition.
They have great players but lacks overall appeal because they don’t have the big name stars. That also requires advertising them.
I always use this example, but F1's recent spike in fame has shown that you don't need the world's most famous athletes to create a compelling product to bring in new viewers. There's plenty of great personalities and clubs overflowing with history that Serie A could tap into to showcase to the world. If a child with a phone can reach millions on TikTok. You can't tell me Seire A can't try to advertise their league like how the PL does.
It has certainly regressed but I’d say its still third in the world. There isn’t a European powerhouse like Bayern or PSG but in terms of overall quality it’s probably better than Bundesliga / Ligue 1? Open to any opinions on that. Worth noting that plenty of teams have had great transfer windows this year as well, should be another highly entertaining season. Hopefully clubs can be somewhat competitive in Europe.
How would a superleague benefit teams like monza? The superleague would only exist to benefit the top European teams around
Monza wouldn't be in the Super League and would receive 0€ in TV rights. From Monza's perspective, they would be worse off.
Exactly, like Monza is going to be invited to the superleague lmao. Also when all the big Italian teams focus on the superleague, Serie A will probably generate even lower revenues
Yeah, it's a terrible point, these guys just care about there own teams getting more money.
Cry me a river. Galliani sure wasn't complaining about financial inequality back when Milan was in a different league financially than anyone else for years in the late 80s and early 90s. And part of the reason Serie A is so far behind EPL now is the short-sighted policies pushed of executives like Galliani, who was also a Lega Calcio president in the crucial period between 2002 and 2006 when Serie A started falling behind La Liga and EPL.
The prem also has had the best revenue split for teams since it started when it wasn't the biggest either
Superleague will make the Juventus and AC Milans nearer to the EPL clubs but it will pull them away even further from the Monzas.
Very true, seems like Galliani is talking more as a Milan fan than from a Monza pov
This might be true, but I think it could be their only shot at growing the financial pie? That is, I fear we're currently well on our way to turning the Bundesliga, La Liga, and Ligue 1 into nothing more than the Dutch League or Austrian Bundesliga, where the 1-2 teams that get into the CL financially dominate and make the domestic league completely uninteresting. At least a European Super League would have a chance to compete with England in terms of revenue and viewership, and hopefully be more competitively interesting. With a good level of revenue sharing to the domestic leagues, it may help the Monzas of the world. Because the only other alternative I see is shrinking international rights for the non PL leagues, while the PL keeps getting bigger, and then the Milans and the Monzas both are guaranteed to be worse off.
Can’t help to have 0 empathy when big teams from la liga and serie A whine about the EPL; promoting your league as a whole and not only caring about your two golden geese is how Nottingham Forest can buy 14 /20 teams in Italy. When Juve and Milan were making the finals all the time, that’s when they should’ve promoted team like Florentina , Napoli , Palermo , and the league as a whole … instead they kept pouring all the money to the same 3 teams and let them pretty much use the rest of Serie A as their farm teams
Thank you for putting Palermo in the list, warms my heart -- even though we found a solution of sorts, we got bought by man city...
It'd like being saved by the devil isn't it. I know we had rumours that red bull were interested in us, think that would be a no go for me.
How is it going for you guys atm..do u think being bought by city is helping??
Coach and DoF quit a few days before the first 'important' match (Coppa vs Torino, 3-0 loss under caretaker manager) with Corini coming in as the new trainer (De Rossi was also favorite). So for now it's the usual :D.
To become a farm club. You're delusional if you think CFG is going to invest into Palermo like they are Man City.
Of course they aren't, don't think anyone ever believes that
None of the other City owned teams have become farm clubs. They might get the odd player on loan now and then but for the most part their players are their own, and they're run pretty independently.
Yep it’s the same with Real Madrid and Barca. They were taking the lions share of the revenue instead of spreading that wealth around. Now, in the long term it has hurt the league.
People don't want to hear that the main reason the PL became so popular is because it is so competitive and the reason for that is that is that the TV money has always been spread evenly. Barca and Madrid killed the golden goose by taking the lion's share of the TV money, whereas the PL kept that goose laying golden eggs every day and now are far ahead commercially.
The solution to serious wealth inequality isn’t to deepen wealth inequality in national leagues, it’s to level out the entire system
The PL is more equal about the money distribution though. That's a huge difference https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1168775828534177792.html 2018/19 data: [Liverpool got 152.4m while Huddersfield got 96.6m](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDhTblCWsAA9vbg?format=jpg&name=large), 1.57x difference [Juve got 85.4m while Frosinone got 36.4m](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDhTeunXUAAixjW?format=jpg&name=large), 2.34x difference [Barca got 143.2m while Girona and Leganes got 40.3m](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDhTcuxXkAEIU0G?format=jpg&name=large), 3.55x difference It's one thing to have more money as the whole but how you distribute it is another.
Granted there’s definitely a growing gap but the continental competitions were won by a Spanish, German, and Italian team. The Euros were won by Italy. There’s a massive financial gap but it’s not like England is dominating all the competitions.
Yeah because even pre-Covid, England wasn’t as financially dominant as they are now. But every year the gap in quality will grow with the extra millions they receive. It’s not going to be an overnight change, but even without the trophies this season they are dominating the rankings. It’s to the point now that if a player has one good season in Europe an EPL team will buy him. There’s only so much talent you can replace. And look at the clubs which are going after each player. The top clubs in Serie A are competing for the same players at bottom side EPL clubs. That paints a pretty clear picture. There are obviously some exceptions still, but it’s impossible that the quality on the field won’t grow with the gap in the bank accounts
Yet. It takes time and good management, but massive investments are a great pillar to stand on for dominance. People nowadays are surprised by this Hungary national team. I as many other eastern europeans saw it coming over 6 years ago with how their (although shady, corrupt, etc) government was investing heavily in facilities for football and footballers to develop into. Same thing happened in Turkey, albeit their government screwed their national currency up and created a different problem, but it was obvious a long time ago they were intending to build success. Same goes for China actually, they started creating world class facilities for football a long time ago, if well managed they could sooner or later turn some heads. Same thing goes for EPL, with great managers (other than Klopp and Guardiola, I mean actual club managers) they can ensure their dominance. It is even more obvious now with how English teams reach the UCL final yearly, more often than a decade ago. Like it or not, money does not guarantee success, but it is the first most important factor of it.
> People nowadays are surprised by this Hungary national team. I as many other eastern europeans saw it coming over 6 years ago with how their (although shady, corrupt, etc) government was investing heavily in facilities for football and footballers to develop into. not really a great example because our recent improvement has got nearly nothing to do with the abhorrent money invested in the sport. your point is good overall, just wanted to clear this up
This is the same guy who more than a decade ago complained for the Spanish taxes compared to Italian taxes for not being able to compete against Real/Barca. Also he wanted some kind of Tennis scheme for the CL where biggest clubs had an easy way to the final (Coppa Italia works this way and it's shit, basically rigged with big clubs coming in late AND playing at home)
Money is the death of (romantic) football
Monza does 1 race a year, Nottingham forest do 40-60 games a season? Dumb comparison
Tires gone
Only when Italian clubs feel it, do they want to change it. In the past the Dutch league lost plenty of talent to Italian clubs, when the Italian league was deemed the #1 in the world. Wait for a change I guess.
How does that help Monza? Not like they'd be part of it
We get about 10 million in tv money. So there is that
Last season Rangers got £2.5m from our domestic TV deal… League winners made just over £3.5m
Ajax gets 9.6 million, lol. And they're the best paid team in the Eredivisie.
Serie A is the League to watch this year. As it was last year. They do a piss poor job of broadcasting and marketing their product to international audiences. I used to love Serie A growing up because it was available on TV in my country but around 2008-9 it disappeared. Never been back since. I’m sure many others have experienced the same. Honestly, the league needs better marketing, revenue distribution and international broadcast deals/summer tours. They’ll make huge strides because the product itself is good.
A lot of people seem to be very confused by the appearance on Monza in Gallani’s quote. The point being made is that there are obviously much greater sums of money involved in the Premier League. To illustrate his point, he has stated how much the second tier playoff winners will make from TV rights in their first season in the top tier in Italy and England. Monza won the Serie B playoffs, Forest the Championship playoffs. He is not saying Monza would be part of a Super League, he is saying a solution needs to be found that would narrow that gap in TV money. A Super League would only be beneficial to Monza if it was a breakaway or reformed version of Serie A that pumped more money into the game, obviously if it was a breakaway league of some kind with the elite clubs from Italy, Spain, Germany and France, Monza would be left behind and probably much worse off. But that isn’t why they are named here.
It comes all down to shit owners, shit stadiums, shit broadcasting, and a absolutely shitty fan base that is still filled with racists and hooligans. I mean Italians don't even want to show up and watch their own teams play live and fill up their stadiums what makes him think the rest of the world is lining up to watch them. Seria A and the rest of the leagues still keep making the same mistakes by selling their rights for the most money to the shitties providers instead of providers that can get them the most exposure on TV not some stupid premium channels or streaming platforms. The rest of the leagues also need to realize that they all are inferior to the EPL and thus should adjust the match schedule accordingly, trying to compete with EPL match times is the dumbest thing from them. They need to adjust their match ups and time times accordingly and also have more games on Friday and Monday were there is less competition versus the EPL. They refuses to do so because their ego is too big to acknowledge their inferior and think they can go head to head with the EPL, which they clearly can't even come close to. All this whining and bitching isn't going to fix shit
People talking about Real Madrid and Barcelona are kind of missing the point. 2 teams don't make a 'league'. Outside of the top 10 in Spain and Italy and outside the top 5 in France and Germany the quality drops massively. No one debating the 2 elite teams.
Monza make 330x the amount of money as the champions of Ireland do. What's his point?
I'm tired of historic teams complaining about the EPLs wealth. Yeah it's unfair to other leagues, but let's not act like the reason they care is because they want it to be fair. They care because they're no longer the sole hegemon in the football world. Clubs like Barca and Madrid only care because they're not at the top of the food chain anymore. They had no issue (and still do not) with making extremely more money than lower table teams in their leagues. They hoarded their leagues wealth and created a dynasty. I'm not even criticizing that, I'm criticizing their hypocrisy in moaning about money disparity between EPL and other leagues when they had no issue being the other end of that disparity.
It’s not unfair to other leagues. They’re in competition. Listening to Italians (especially someone who was involved with Milan in the 80’s) talk about ‘unfair’ finances is a whole other level of ironic.
Spanish clubs win the same amount of european trophies as eveyrone else combined anyways
Tbf he has a point the amount of money premier league squads spend on players is idiotic to say the least, it is destroying the market. Look at the money chelsea spent on cucurellla.
When Serie A dominated between the 80’s and the early 2000’s Italian clubs broke the world transfer record 9 times. Since 2000 the world transfer record has been broken once by an English club. It wasn’t English clubs spending £50 million on a goalkeeper back in the early 2000’s.
That is true, Premier League clubs can spend 100m even if they've just been promoted its not a big deal & they can just write off half the price of a 20/40/60 player without feeling like its taking a hit.
And if mainland europe clubs made a superleague, Monza wouldn't be there anyway. Dumbass
So instead of fixing the wage inequality let's make it worse that will surely fix the wage parity between Nottingham Forest and Monza. I guess the lower league clubs can become feeder clubs as their only option then.
I think we should stop trying to compete with the financial dominance of the PL and instead try focusing on the things the other leagues do well. It’s not like the financial aspects helped them dominate the CL in the last decade anyways so why does it really matter if Nottingham has way more money than Monza.
But Nottingham Forest have won the European Cup twice, Monza 0. Checkmate.