Two days after turning the European soccer world on its ear, the European Super League, a controversial group of top soccer teams from England, Spain and Italy, has officially unraveled.

Reports first surfaced early Tuesday that Chelsea and Manchester City were pulling out of the consortium, putting strains on the 12-team league that was officially created Sunday. Within hours, all of the English teams in the new league had backed out, with expectations that the remaining six clubs would hollow suit. According to reports, Italian clubs AC Milan and Juventus were on the verge of leaving the league, after Internazionale (InterMilan) called it quits. Spanish clubs Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Barcelona all were reportedly on the verge of withdrawing from the league. Accordinfg to the New York Times, a top Super League official confirmed that the project had been suspended. 

Also Read: CBS Sports Snags U.S. English-Language Rights to Concacaf Soccer

The turnabout was due to intense fan opposition to the new league, which would have instituted an American-influenced closed system of rankings, ensuring that the founding 15 members of the league would never lose their spot. In European soccer, a team can lose its spot in the standings if it has a bad year, a process called relegation.

English soccer fans took to the streets and to Twitter soon after plans for the Super League were unveiled, protesting at Chelsea stadium and others, voicing their displeasure with what some called the Americanization of their beloved sport. One fan, CBS Late Late Show with James Corden host James Corden, devoted part of his show Monday night to his opposition to the Super League. 

“I’m heartbroken because the owners of these teams have displayed the worst kind of greed I have ever seen in sports,” Corden said.  “Many football teams in Britain are over a hundred years old, and these teams were started by working class people, they were built by and for the community. They’re not franchises.”

Also Read: Live Sports Events Are Moving to Streaming

But over the past 10-15 years, as new, richer owners have snapped up teams, they’ve taken away the community aspect of the game, Corden continued. While fans have always been skeptical whether new ownership had the same sense of loyalty to the clubs, Corden added that the message the teams were sending by the creation of the Super League made their intentions loud and clear. 

“They don’t care,” Corden said. 

The English clubs -- Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur -- all bowed to the pressure, essentially sucking the air out of the new league. Arsenal offered an open letter to its fans, claiming it accepted the invitation to join the Super League so as not to be “left behind.” But once it realized how diametrically opposed to the new league its fans are, the club changed its mind. 

“As a result of listening to you and the wider football community over recent days, we are withdrawing from the proposed Super League,” Arsenal’s board of directors wrote in the letter. “We made a mistake, and we apologise for it.” 

Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy also apologized for the agita the new league caused fans.  

“We regret the anxiety and upset caused by the ESL proposal,” Levy said on the Hotspur website. “We felt it was important that our club participated in the development of a possible new structure that sought to better ensure financial fair play and financial sustainability whilst delivering significantly increased support for the wider football pyramid.

“We believe that we should never stand still and that the sport should constantly review competitions and governance to ensure the game we all love continues to evolve and excite fans around the world,” he continued. “We should like to thank all those supporters who presented their considered opinion.”

But fans weren’t the only ones to express their outrage. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatened legislative action to block the league’s formation and French President Emmanuel Macron called the group a threat to the “principle of solidarity of sporting merit,” according to reports. 

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, player reaction also played a role in Chelsea’s reversing its decision to join the new league. 

The paper said that Chelsea players revolted amid concerns they would not be allowed to play for their national teams in the World Cup, or in regional tournaments like the European Championship and the Copa America in South America. European soccer’s ruling body -- UEFA -- warned Sunday that it would ban players for Super League teams from those events. 

According to ESPN, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said that the breakaway teams would have to live with the consequences of their actions, and that no team could be “half-in or half-out.”

Also Read: Super League Could Attract Super Dollars From Broadcasters, Cable 

Fan and political reaction against the new league was swift and harsh. Fans throughout Britain and other companies protested against the break with tradition, calling the league the brainchild of greedy owners, particularly American ones. Politicians also expressed their disapproval, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatening legislative action to block the league’s formation and French President Emmanuel Macron calling the group a threat to the “principle of solidarity of sporting merit,” according to reports. 

The Super League may not yet be a stone cold reality, but the proposal to band together 20 of the top European soccer clubs could generate billions of dollars in rights fees for football clubs across the pond, potentially attracting several major cable networks and broadcasters to compete for TV rights to the games. 

The idea of a Super League has been around for several months and for some, it was merely a negotiating tool for the top clubs to squeeze more cash or concessions from European soccer’s governing body, the UEFA. But this time around, the league has actual participants -- about 12 clubs including six of England’s most powerful clubs (Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham) and three each from Spain (Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Barcelona) and Italy (Juventus, AC Milan and Internazionale). Super League expects to expand to at least 20 clubs, separated into two pools of 10 teams. 

Also Read: CBS Sports Snags U.S. English-Language Rights to Concacaf Soccer

While fans have come out against the creation of the league as serving greedy ownership thumbing their collective noses at tradition, the motivation behind the Super League seems pretty simple -- money and opportunity. The Champions League has 32 teams, all which qualify based on the previous season’s results. The Super League would have 15 permanent members -- three more teams are expected to sign on shortly -- with the remaining five qualifying on merit.

Super League clubs would play mid-week games and technically would be allowed to continue to play in their domestic leagues, but would leave the Champions League, which on Monday expanded its format to 36 teams, increasing the number of guaranteed games the clubs play as well as their TV exposure. 

European soccer’s governing bodies were swift to condemn the new league.

Also Read: Live Sports Events are Moving to Streaming 

In a joint statement, the UEFA, the English Football Association and the Premier League, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and LaLiga, and the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and Lega Serie A said they “will remain united in our efforts to stop this cynical project, a project that is founded on the self-interest of a few clubs at a time when society needs solidarity more than ever.”

The governing bodies continued that they would consider all legal and sporting measures available to them to stop the formation of the Super League, and warned that the clubs that join the upstart organization would be banned from playing in any other competition at a domestic, European or world level, and their players could be denied the opportunity to represent their national teams.

“We call on all lovers of football, supporters and politicians, to join us in fighting against such a project if it were to be announced,” the leagues said. “This persistent self-interest of a few has been going on for too long. Enough is enough.”

Also Read: Sports and OTT: Streaming Could Squeeze Last Vestige of Appointment TV 

But the UEFA et al, seem to be missing two key points: European soccer clubs are starving for money and an increasing number of them are owned by Americans, who don’t have the same sense of history that the leagues have.

Of the 12 original members of Super League, four teams are owned by Americans  -- Arsenal (Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke); Manchester United (Tampa Bay Buccaneers owners the Glazer family ); Liverpool (Boston Red Sox owner John Henry); and AC Milan (U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management). Those owners are used to the “closed system” prevalent in American sports where teams stay in their respective leagues technically forever. European soccer traditions like relegation, where a team can lose their spot if they have a bad year, are totally foreign concepts. And the creation of the Super League seems like an attempt to rectify that situation. 

Relegation usually means fewer fans and less money for all but the most popular teams. And coming off a pandemic year, many teams just can’t afford to lose more money. 

In a statement, Manchester City, one of the founding members of Super League, said the league’s formation “comes at a time when the global pandemic has accelerated the instability in the existing European football economic model.” 

According to a report in the Financial Times, the teams in the Super League (minus Liverpool, which did not report 2019/20 season results) lost a collective €800 million ($962 million) last year because of the pandemic.

U.S. investment bank J.P. Morgan Chase has ponied up about $4 billion to help Super League clubs close that financial gap -- each team would receive between €200 million and €400 million, according to reports. And then there is the TV money.

TV rights for the top European soccer leagues are currently about $3.3 billion per year, but rights for the Super League could be even higher. Broadcasters and cable operators have already shown their increasing appetite for European soccer. And though the creation of a new league, with marquee-name teams, would only sweeten the pot, many have come out against the new entity.

Some reports have said Super League officials have already started talks with potential broadcast partners, with the Financial Times reporting that early discussions with Amazon, Facebook, Disney and Comcast’s Sky plc. Later, Reuters said Amazon and Facebook denied they were in talks. 

Others, especially those with ties to the traditional leagues, have come out against the upstarts.

According to Variety, BT -- which holds UK broadcast rights to the Premier League, UEFA club football and National League football -- said the Super League “could have a damaging effect to the long term health of football in this country.” 

DAZN, the sports streaming service that ponied up about $3 billion for Italian soccer rights earlier this year, has denied to Deadline.com reports in the Italian press that it was willing to pay about $3.5 billion for TV rights to the Super League if it comes to be. 

But let’s face it, if this league becomes a reality, somebody is going to pay for it. Sports continues to be the one of the last bastions of appointment TV, and if the recent rights auction for NFL games is any indication (BTW, prices doubled) networks and increasingly streamers are willing to pay up for them. Sure, there will be some initial outrage, but networks are in the business of aggregating eyeballs. And eyeballs, and increasingly U.S. eyeballs, watch soccer.

That is evident by the surge in U.S. soccer rights deals over the past few years. In 2015, NBCUniversal paid about $1 billion for U.S. rights to the English Premier League, a deal which expires next year. ViacomCBS has the rights to all UEFA Champions League games and last month spent an estimated $200 million over three years for U.S. rights to Italy’s Serie A games. Earlier this month it snagged English-language rights to Concacaf soccer. 

ViacomCBS has been ultra-aggressive in obtaining soccer rights, fulfilling a pledge at its Feb. 24 Investors Day that it would double down on soccer.

“As we look to the future, we are making soccer a core pillar of sports exclusively available on Paramount Plus,” CBS Entertainment chief George Cheeks said at the Investor Day.

Sports consultant Lee Berke, president of LHB Media & Entertainment, said most broadcasters and cable sports channels should show an interest in Super League rights if they become available.

“I think CBS would want to get involved, NBC, ESPN Plus,” Berke said. “Soccer is a valuable commodity for streaming services in the U.S. That being said, they [Super League] just signed a piece of paper.”

And that is the key. There is still a lot that has to happen before the so-called Super League begins to actually play. And potential rights purchasers have to consider the backlash that just the mention of the Super League has caused throughout Europe already. 

Since the league was unveiled, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the government would do everything in its power to block the creation of the new league, threatening to drop a “legislative bombshell,” according to some reports. 

French President Emmanuel Macron said the creation of the Super League “threatens the principle of solidarity of sporting merit,” according to Reuters. 

That opposition could be a factor in whether distributors line up for rights to the new league -- angering leaders of some of the most powerful countries in Europe may not help other endeavors these companies have in those areas not connected to soccer. 

“Everybody is being a little cagey,” Berke said. “You don’t want to get on the wrong side of everybody.”

Even if  the Super League becomes reality, most don’t think it will actually start playing games until 2024, so there is ample time for twists and turns to occur, Berke added. 

“Within the U.K. and Europe, this is dynamite,” he said. “I think everybody wants to see how this plays out first.”

So, it may be that some distributors that have relationships with the established leagues back off from the Super League initially, which would only open the door for other players to move in. Sports, like nature, abhors a vacuum. 

It’s pretty rare when a team owner gets called out -- positively -- when a TV sports rights deal is announced by a league and a programmer, but that’s what happened in ViacomCBS’s three-year deal for exclusive U.S. rights to stream games from Italian soccer league Serie A. But then again, Rocco Commisso isn’t just any team owner.

ViacomCBS made good on its promise to double down on soccer rights on March 25, agreeing to a three-year deal to carry the league on its fledgling streaming service Paramount Plus as well as CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network. While the terms of the deal weren’t announced, reports have put the value at about $200 million over the three years.

In announcing the deal there were the usual niceties -- both sides praised each other’s foresight in agreeing to the transaction -- but further down in the release, Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo personally thanked the league’s American club owners, specifically pointing out Mediacom Communications chairman and CEO Rocco Commisso, who also owns the ACF Fiorentina team, for his help in landing the agreement. 

“Today it is not a point of arrival, but rather the beginning of a process of investments in human resources and editorial contents to support the continued growth of Serie A in the North America territory,” De Siervo said in the release. “This is the result of the work of the last 18 months and of the increasing number of American owners who have decided to invest in our teams. Finally, I would like to thank the President of Fiorentina Rocco Commisso for his important contribution to achieve this agreement.”

Rights Cost Went Up 30%

The deal that Paramount Plus signed was a 30% increase over the league’s last TV contract with ESPN Plus. ESPN was a late round bidder along with one other unnamed company,  but ultimately decided that the price was little too rich for its tastes.

ViacomCBS has been ultra-aggressive in snapping up soccer rights. In addition to the Serie A deal, the programmer has signed rights deals with the UEFA Champions League, Europa League, next season’s Europa Conference League, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), Brasileiro Série A and Liga Profesional de Fútbol (the top leagues in both Brazil and Argentina), and various Concacaf matches. 

At ViacomCBS’s Feb. 24 Investor Day, CBS Entertainment chief George Cheeks said the programmer was “doubling down” on soccer rights, adding the sport presented the best opportunity to grab young eyeballs for both the linear and streaming networks.

“As we look to the future, we are making soccer a core pillar of sports exclusively available on Paramount Plus,” Cheeks said at the Investor Day. 

According to reports, Paramount had initially bid around $142 million for the rights, but bumped up that offer considerably in later rounds. 

While those reports didn’t offer an explanation for the increased offer, probably just chalking it up to normal bidding dynamics, Commisso may have provided a subtle nudge.

As the head of the fifth largest cable operator in the U.S., Mediacom obviously has a long-time professional relationship with Paramount Plus parent ViacomCBS and its CEO Bob Bakish. But Commisso and Bakish’s connection goes a little bit deeper. Both are graduates of Columbia University, and both left that Ivy League institution with degrees in industrial engineering and MBAs.   

“Rocco and I have enjoyed a long and productive professional relationship,” Bakish said in an email message.  “We look forward to working with Serie A and enhancing our strong lineup of live soccer coverage on Paramount+.” 

Commisso, who was born in Calabria, Italy and came to the U.S. with his family when he was 12 years old, is a huge soccer fan: he was co-captain of his alma mater’s men’s soccer squad in 1970, helping lead the school to compete in its first NCAA men’s soccer tournament that year. The Mediacom founder has been a huge booster of Columbia University soccer, donating millions of dollars to the school for its stadium and soccer programs. In 2017, Commisso dipped his toe into club ownership, buying the North American Soccer League’s (NASL) New York Cosmos. In 2019 he purchased ACF Fiorentina. ACF Fiorentina currently is ranked 14th out of 20 teams in Serie A. The Cosmos have been on pause since the COVID-19 outbreak. 

In an interview, Commisso said he imparted some of his soccer knowledge to Bakish, who he said is “a great guy” and a savvy negotiator in his own right. Talks for the U.S. rights to Serie A lasted about 18 months and  involved several parties. 

“We had a discussion,” Commisso said, adding that the conversation was mainly around the state of Italian soccer. “I was rooting for him to win it. Did he come up with every single dollar that I thought was the right ask? No. Was he better than everybody else? Yes. It would be fair to say that through my involvement, one: he got the bid and two: he increased the bid.”

Commisso has been pretty generous with his knowledge of the soccer game. He counseled Parma owner Kyle Krause, CEO of Krause Group, when he was considering buying the Parma team. Krause Group is based in Des Moines, Iowa, also one of Mediacom’s largest markets, and owns Italian wineries and hospitality businesses, as well as real estate and more than 400 gas station/convenience stores in the Midwest. Krause bought the Parma team in 2020. 

“He picked my brain and I helped him make his mind up,” Commisso said. 

Serie A is considered one of the “Big Five'' leagues in European football: The English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1 are the others. So landing the U.S. rights is a bit of a coup for Paramount. It doesn’t hurt that one of the most recognizable stars in soccerdom, Cristiano Ronaldo, plays for Turin-based Juventus, the 2019-20 Serie A champion.  

Matches Due Mostly On Paramount Plus

ViacomCBS hasn’t said yet how it will parse the games between the streaming and linear services. But it’s probably a good bet that the Ronaldo connection will be played up when it starts airing Serie A games in August. There are a lot of games to watch, which should only raise the profile of the league in general. Paramount Plus, the enlarged former CBS All Access, has the rights to air 400 matches each year -- 388 Serie A games, 25 Coppa Italia matches and the Supercoppa Italiana match (where the winners of Serie A and Coppa Italia meet in a what is akin to the Italian soccer Super Bowl) -- with select matches to be televised on CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network. 

But whatever the ultimate lineup, Commisso said the exposure could only be good for Italian soccer. 

“In Italy, they give some of the bigger teams preferential treatment when there are multiple games during the day,” Commisso said. “Not always but for the most part, they’ll make the last game the Game of the Week. We have games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I’m sure they [Paramount] will utilize Ronaldo. If I were them I would do the same thing.”

Commisso said in Italian soccer, TV money isn’t split evenly among teams -- bigger teams get bigger shares -- but the additional cash will help the smaller clubs get better players and improve facilities. Adding to the coffers is the sale of Italian TV rights to the league, which went to streaming sports service DAZN for about €2.5 billion ($2.95 billion) over three years. DAZN bested Comcast-owned Sky, which had owned Serie A rights in Italy since 2003. Sky, according to reports, agreed to pay about €70 million ($82 million) for non-exclusive rights for a smaller package of games. 

Commisso also is encouraged by the growing number of American owners in Italian soccer. Today there are five clubs owned by Americans in the 20-team league: A.C. Milan, A.S. Roma, A.C.F. Fiorentina, Parma and Spezia Calcio. A sixth club, Bologna F.C., is owned by a Canadian.

That influx of American ownership has occurred only recently. In 2017, only one club, Roma, was U.S.-owned. Commisso said the new blood has been good for the league, bringing in a fresh perspective as well as money. Italian soccer, he added, has been held back by the condition of its stadiums, which are generally owned by the towns and cities the clubs play in and are leased back to the teams. But that means improvements have been few and far between. Commisso said the stadium where his club plays, Stadio Artemio Franchi, was first opened in 1931. And he believes as other Italian owners look to sell their clubs in the future, American businessmen should take advantage of the opportunity. Juventus's 10-year-old Allianz Stadium is one of the unusual club-owned arenas.

“I think there are going to be other sales taking place in the next 12 months,” Commisso said. “Is it going to be Americans? I can't say that for sure. But the fact that you have five American owners is changing things. We bring a new way of looking at things, some people don’t like it, and we have a big push to improve the infrastructure. We all want to get things done on the infrastructure side.”

Commisso himself is in the throes of building a new state-of-the-art sports complex near Stadio Artemio Franchi, to be called Viola Park, an €85 million ($99.6 million) project that would include training facilities and fields for men's and women's senior and youth soccer teams.  The project, which began construction earlier this year, has recently hit some regulatory snags.

Still, Commisso is confident that he will eventually get the project through.

“I’m a tough guy when it comes to most things,” Commisso said. “I’m not doing this to make money, I’m doing this to give back to soccer what soccer has done for me and to give back to my native Italy. It’s very hard for other people to understand that, but it is a fact.” 

DishLatino, Dish Network’s Spanish language programming tier, has expanded its sports coverage, adding soccer-focused sports network beIN Sports en Español.

In a statement, Dish said BeIN Sports en Español will be available across all DishLatino packages, and offers a wide variety of sports in addition to its extensive soccer coverage, including motorcross, cycling, rugby and boxing. The network is launching on channel 873 in standard definition, is also available in Dish's America's Top 250, Everything and Multi-Sport Packs.

The parent network – beIN Sports –  first came on the scene in 2012, backed by Al Jazeera Sports and other investors, and has gained steam in the wake of the FIFA 2014 World Cup this summer, when it aired several qualifying matches.

"DishLatino is building on this summer's fútbol fever with the launch of beIN Sports en Español," said DishLatino vice president Alfredo Rodriguez in a statement. "Our subscribers will find beIN Sports en Español is a unique addition to our sports lineup, especially in time for the channel's coverage of this fall's many upcoming international sports events."

While beIN Sports mainly focuses on soccer leagues in Europe, Africa and the Middle East – including La Liga in Spain (featuring top players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta), Italy’s Serie A (featuring matchups between powerhouses like Juventus, AC Milan, Roma and Inter Milan) and the French Ligue 1 (featuring free-flowing teams like Paris St. Germain, Olympique Marseille and Lyon) – it also has exclusive rights to the 2015 Copa America in Chile and the Copa del Rey tournament for Spanish League teams, and England’s  second division Football League Championship, where the top three teams win promotion to the lucrative Premier League.

"The DishLatino content team has just scored another coup for its customers by bringing our spanish language network to its customers," said deputy CEO of beIN Media Group Yousef Al-Obaidly in a statement. "DishLatino customers are passionate and knowledgeable fans, and beIN Sports en Español will offer them more soccer and top flight international competition than any other channel."