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Reform of the Champions League: Why football follows big money. And what leaked “Super League” plans have to do with it. An approach.
In the past few weeks, the top international leagues – the Champions League, the European League and the UEFA Conference League – started the 2024/2025 season in European men’s football. For the first time, under the aegis of a reformed style of play and system, which was implemented even before it began met with strong criticism and sometimes open resistance.
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Fan umbrella associations and ultra-groups rebelled, top players like Mats Hummels, İlkay Gündoğan or coaches like Jürgen Klopp and various club bosses appeared in front of the media with unusual openness and vented their anger, and UEFA – the European Football Association as host and organizer – dug into its own in a tried and tested marketing manner Arguments for reform.
But first things first – what is it ultimately about? Instead of the group phase that fans, players and clubs are used to, in which four teams play six games against each other in home and away games (once on home soil and once on opposing territory), the who’s who of European ball kicking will now meet in eight games on eight different opponents.
The well-known game format “everyone against everyone” is thus given the highest international honor. However, this means that home and away games against the same opponent as well as competition within a four-club group are outdated. The qualified teams are divided into four draw pots, which are equal to seeding lists – after the final performance, coefficients are created according to which the eleven friends are divided into draw pots one to four, which are distributed according to value.
Settlement is settled after the first eight match days in the form of a table with 36 places. Places one to eight (logically with the most games won or points) are directly in the round of 16, places eight to 16 are seeded in an intermediate round, places 16 to 24 are in an intermediate round as unseeded participants and the teams Places 24 to 36 are eliminated without a hitch.
In particular, the “popular” relegation from the Champions League to the lower Europa League, which was guaranteed by reaching third place in the previous group phase, was abolished.
International leagues as “gated communities”?
When goalkeeper legend Gian-Luigi Buffon and world footballer Cristiano Ronaldo implemented the reformed group game planning at the push of a new-fashioned button instead of the ancient lottery ball, the hearts of investors in the five largest European top leagues, known as the “Big Five”, and their stock corporations (clubs) were likely to beat faster.
As a reminder: of the 18 teams in the German Bundesliga alone, 13 are spun off corporations that are separate from the club. Especially in the motherland of “King Football”, England, the situation regarding “financial equality” and fairness is even more disastrous.
Newcastle United is owned by the Saudi heir to the throne Mohammed Bin Salman, Arsenal FC is majority owned by Stan Kroenke – American construction mogul and supermarket chain billionaire, to give just a few examples. In doing so, UEFA fulfilled a central promise to the financially strong capital markets and their owners – play and excitement are guaranteed by drawing top games from the zero hour of the competition.
A football giant like FC Bayern Munich can no longer march through a group that is supposedly too easy thanks to the new style of play – and it’s raining euros and pounds. Nevertheless, sports analysts assume that the circle of quarter-finalists will remain limited to the top teams due to the gigantic financial inequalities.
“Market-compliant football” in the 21st century
As the former sports editor of n-tv – Christian Bartlau – pointed out in his authoritative work on capitalizing on the Germans’ favorite sport, the balance of power in international football is extremely concentrated. In the last 20 (!) seasons, “almost 90 percent” of the teams that made it to the last eight came from the “Big Five” leagues mentioned.
Of 160 possible quarter-final appearances, 78 were made by just seven clubs (Barça, Real, Bayern, United, Chelsea, Juve and Liverpool). Tension – UEFA’s favorite argument – looked before and looks different now. At its core, it was about a different aspect than excitement, fan interests or audience well-being.
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With its reform, UEFA responded to the threatened boycott of the major ball game monopolies. In April 2021, secret documents made it public that – as Deutschlandfunk reported – “twelve major European clubs, excluding the two top German teams FC Bayern and Dortmund, wanted to break away from UEFA and found a self-marketed, European top league.”
The envisaged “Super League” disappeared into the dust, the pressure for increasing marketing opportunities and the bargaining chip of the threat of an exit remained. By increasing the number of participants (by four), increasing the number of games by 50 percent and guaranteeing top duels right from the start, the ruble is rolling. Ultimately, UEFA gave in to the pressure of “big money”.
Consolidation into a Super League through the back door?
The core of the criticism from the fan associations and the active fan scenes is crystallized in the following sentences: “The significantly increased income that is intended to be generated by the reforms also has the potential to destroy national competitions and pave the way for an impending European Super League to pave the way,” wrote dozens of fans in one joint statement.
At the same time, reference is made to an even more massive devaluation of the much more important and larger national leagues. The statement addresses the central problem: for shareholders and stakeholders, football offers not only the expectation of profit but also an immense investment risk.
In the capitalist pecking order, this leads to even more ruthless enforcement of individual (large club) interests or to the convergence of the interests of the large football monopolies.
The reform does not counteract this trend – on the contrary, there is a further concentration of power, profit and victory bonuses on the horizon.
By the way, stress and physical abuse are increasing among the well-paid nutball players – smaller, international leagues are falling by the wayside and even internationally (at FIFA level) irreversible shifts in financial structure, funding or national teams are conceivable.
The question remains exciting as to how the core of the hundreds of thousands of football crazy people will react to the reforms – using the example of Borussia Dortmund GmbH and Co. Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien (the business name of the football club from the Ruhr area) and their latest sponsor – the weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall you can imagine what power lies dormant in the curves of this republic.
Nevertheless, the reform represents the current climax of the market-compliant capitalization of the “little man’s” sport. While at the same time popular sports and club life are stagnating, investments are lacking and the top performance is thin, it must be assumed that the reform efforts of the capital magnates in FIFA, UEFA and DFL have not yet reached the end of the line.
The “Reclaim the Game” campaign launched in the stadiums speaks to the hearts of many stadium pilgrims.
