Are you a fan of the band Velvet Revolver? Or perhaps Temple of the Dog? Maybe the Highwaymen? Don’t apologize if you aren’t, or if you’ve never heard of any of them, since none of these groups lasted very long. But they were all what we call Supergroups, a band of individual stars that joined together to form something larger than the sum of its parts. Cream and the Traveling Wilburys are likely the most well-known examples. They’re fairly rare because, well, why would anyone who’s already famous want to share the spotlight. And just because things are great individually doesn’t mean they’ll be even better together. I mean, the whole world isn’t a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
Perhaps, and I’m reaching here, this explains the remarkable demise of the European Super League, the new and now-defunct soccer league that was announced on Sunday and basically dismantled about 48 hours later. This proposed super league would bring 12 of the biggest and most well-endowed European soccer clubs together to create a new elite organization, where you’d see Manchester United play Real Madrid or Arsenal play Juventus in weekend league play, something that doesn’t happen in the current nation based infrastructure. This new supergroup would give global soccer fans what team owners thought they wanted – the best players in the world meeting every weekend with the kind of certainty and regularity you see in the NFL, an American sports league built for just this kind of monetization. The problem is, fans don’t actually want it, or least that’s what they say. Between polls and protests – and yes, people across England took to the streets – it became clear that European soccer fans like their sport just the way it is – confusing and often highly uncompetitive. Which meant that before we got as far as a league logo, the whole thing started to fall apart, when individual clubs took a step back towards public opinion. Finally, the XFL has something to laugh at.
Beyond the normal aversion to change, the general consensus of soccer fans was that this new super league would destroy the vast infrastructure of the sport, the scores of teams that play in top divisions in their respective countries. In England, that’s the Premier League, which includes super clubs like Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. It also includes Fulham and Sheffield United, both of whom will likely be sent down to the second tier English Football Championship League because they finish at the bottom of the standings. The argument is that once a new, global Super League sucks the oxygen and dollars out of soccer fandom, there’s not much left to keep the remaining national leagues alive, at least not in their current state. Which, to be fair, is probably true. It also would crush the illusion that some scrappy, underfunded, rag tag team could still win the Premier League or Serie A in Italy, something that’s about as likely as Guns ‘R Roses reunion album.
There is nothing particularly new about this Super League narrative – it’s spectacular failure aside. Sports organizations have long culled their herd to consolidate dollars and create fiscal certainty. The creation of divisions in college sports was largely a way to ensure top football schools could make real money and smaller ones got out of the way – something that’s likely to happen again pretty soon. Most American pro sports were built on this very model, which is why every professional NFL, MLB, and NBA franchise is worth a fortune. In other words, while I don’t like the idea of a European Super League, I do understand it.
Perhaps in the end, this has less to do with sports than we might imagine, even though sport is at the core of the grievance. While professional soccer is a vast, money making enterprise, it also shares at least the semblance of the collective, where shared opportunity and responsibility serve the whole. Which means that even though Man City might be the big show, their success is inherently related to sustenance of, say, Brighton. With the Super League, that pretense is gone, as would be civil soccer society as we know it. That sounds a lot like the ongoing battle between unbridled capitalism and socialism, or at least parts of it. Replace soccer with health care or education or wage standards, and the metaphor is pretty clear. Maybe that, as much as anything, is why the new Super League was met with such populist resistance. And why it turned into a really bad idea really fast.
That said, let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. I mean, who wouldn’t go for a Chickenfoot concert right about now.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.