Chapter 971： Be a man

Some people say that the qualifications of English football are very serious.

This is true!

If a few years earlier, when Terry, Lampard and other players were still young, when they first entered the first team, they had to help their teammates wash socks and polish shoes, and treat the team boss with respect.

For example, Roy Keane of Manchester United taught Cristiano Ronaldo in this way.

This is true in the team, and the same is true at the club level.

The tradition of meeting the owners of England's top leagues has been around for a long time, and it almost catches up with the tradition of the home coach inviting the visiting coach to drink after the game.

But unlike the latter being gradually forgotten and even abandoned early, the boss summit of the top league has been passed down.

The establishment of the Premier League was negotiated at the boss summit.

The layoffs of the Premier League were also settled in this meeting.

Even how to further explore commercial resources, how to develop overseas markets, how to attract more stars, these are all discussed at the boss summit.

The Premier League is just the facade of the boss summit. CEO Richard Skudmore is more like a butler and spokesperson hired by 20 Premier League bosses with an annual salary of nearly one million pounds. That's it. .

But even in the Premier League boss summit, there is also a seniority ranking.

For example, the three teams that are newly promoted to the Premier League each year basically have no say.

God knows if they will fall back to the Champions League after a season?

Therefore, the newly promoted boss has to play the role of a good baby to be able to integrate into it.

As for people like Southampton, who have just been promoted to the Premier League and called out to quit the Premier League, looking at the history of the Premier League presidential summit, they are the only one!

In the past, the voice of the Premier League presidential summit was fully in the hands of the five teams, all of which are England's most traditional five strong, that is Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Leeds United.

But then Leeds United declined and Newcastle gradually replaced it.

But it is a pity that the magpie itself was not up to the point, and soon fell.

In the past decade or so, teams such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have changed hands one after another, and the management has also changed over and over again. The right to speak at the presidential summit is no longer as important as it used to be.

Today's Chairman's Summit is not the same as in the past.

But relatively speaking, the strong teams still have the greatest influence, and once controlled the rules of the Premier League game.

With the gradual rise of Manchester City, its influence in the Premier League presidential summit has also continued to increase.

In the past two or three years, the Saints have gone from being promoted to the upstarts of the Premier League, and now they have become the standard-bearers of the Premier League in Europe and the world. In addition, the two CEOs of the Saints Peter · Kenyon and Ron Gurley are both veterans of the Premier League presidential summit. Therefore, the saints have more and more power in the presidential summit.

More importantly, the saints will be human.

For example, John Stones.

Originally, the Saints had already signed in the teenager, but as soon as they heard that Everton needed it, they directly loaned Stones to Everton.

During Stones’s stay in Everton, the Saints did not charge even a penny of rental fees. Even when Stones was recalled, the Saints paid Everton a six-figure training fee. Two young teenagers on loan to Everton for free.

Not only Everton, but also other Premier League and Champions League teams, who want to rent the Saints youth training players, although the requirements will be higher, and even some conditions will be set, but the supporting services provided by the Saints are also quite good.

This season's Premier League promotion Watford was able to successfully upgrade from the British Championship because of the loan of three young Saints. After being promoted to the Premier League this season, Watford proposed a buyout, and the Saints did not pay the transfer fee. After setting up barriers, just adding the repurchase clauses, it was immediately released.

It is precisely because the saints can be human, so the prestige in English football is also increasing day by day.

Today, at the Premier League presidential summit, the chief executives of Manchester United and Arsenal are all newcomers, and Southampton has naturally become the team that has the greatest say.

Together with Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Liverpool, they formed the Premier League First Army.

This time the Premier League reform was initiated by Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur, supported by teams such as Southampton, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, and finally got the Premier League presidents summit to discuss and vote.

According to the rules of the Premier League summit, as long as two-thirds of the members agree, the reform proposal is passed.

Because of the importance of this meeting, the FA Chairman David Bernstein, the CEO of the FA, as well as several other sponsor representatives and key players in the English football industry were invited to attend.

However, they only have the right to listen, not the right to speak, let alone the right to vote.

At the beginning of the meeting, the Premier League CEO Richard Schudmore took the lead to speak.

He first introduced the operation of the Premier League in the past season and his outlook for the next season.

Among them, the one that attracts the attention of everyone is that the Premier League will cooperate with Miracle Media to actively carry out the Premier League pre-season overseas challenge. The main goal is the middle and lower reaches of the Premier League.

But this obviously made Abramovich feel depressed.

You know, the current Premier League and Miracle Media are very close.

The Saints, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City and Liverpool have all participated in the International Champions Cup. Everton and Swansea have participated in the invitational tournament organized by Miracle Media.

Everyone knows that these are the most profitable events.

But as a veteran team in the Premier League, Chelsea are excluded. This has a lot to do with Chelsea's wrong bet. Who would let them run to support Marvel Media's rival rs company?

The teams that participated in the North American Invitational held by rs company, Chelsea and Milan, failed to cooperate with Miracle Media. They could only watch the competitors earn a lot of money again and again, and they salivated. Anxious.

Today, the Premier League wants to launch pre-season games, although there are appearance fees, but very few, more to promote the Premier League.

Although Chelsea has the title of the First Army, they have to be forced to participate in this kind of mid-lower team competition. Abramovich is indeed depressing enough.

But something is better than nothing, right?

Granovschia once calculated that he missed the International Champions Cup and Chelsea lost at least 15 million euros in direct income every season. If you include sponsorship and other potential income, the loss is even more serious. .

Therefore, at this moment, Abramovich also had to secretly figure out in his heart, would he continue to fight Yang Huan?

After introducing the pre-season, Skudmore focused on the various budgets for this season. These are not too controversial, so they are basically swept away.

The real focus is later, Skudmore proposed a reform plan for the Premier League.

This made everyone in the audience concerned.

After all, this is closely related to the interests of every team.

The entire reform plan is divided into three parts, one is the so-called European War reward system.

Skudmore reminded everyone present that the promotion of the European War to the Premier League is quite obvious.

The European war is not strong, and the hat of the world's first league worn on the head of the Premier League is not honorable.

Therefore, he proposed that the Premier League allocates a part of its annual budget as a reward for the European war, which will be distributed according to the performance of each team in the European war.

This one did not receive much resistance.

The promotion of the European War on the league is indeed very obvious, and everyone has a consensus on this.

If the Premier League’s European war points are not enough, the number of participating places will be reduced, which will damage the value of the Premier League’s brand. Therefore, it is understandable to appropriately stimulate the European war teams to participate*.

What's more, the rewards given by Scudmore are concentrated in the hands of some teams. It is indeed a lot, but it can be divided among twenty teams, so it is not much.

With the cake getting bigger and bigger, this little bit of money is scattered, and everyone is not too concerned.

It’s like earning 50 million in the previous season. Now the cake is bigger and it can earn 80 million. But the Premier League said that if you score a little less, it’s 78 million. The rest will serve as a reward for the European war and provide a strong incentive. Teams use more points in the European competition, and the league broadcast fee will be higher in the future.

Ever since, most of the teams agreed.

The same situation also appears on the second issue, which is the distribution of broadcast sessions.

According to the plan of the Premier League, starting from 2016, a new Premier League broadcast contract will increase the number of live broadcasts, from the current 154 games to 168 games.

The 14 extra games will be arranged according to the broadcaster’s plan.

This is not to be resisted.

Sky TV and British Telecom are willing to auction the broadcast rights of the Premier League at such a high price. The purpose is to be able to select more games that fans like to watch, as well as some game schedules and other supporting matters.

If nothing happens, the 14 extra games will basically be strong teams, especially superstars like the Saints.

But so what?

In the Premier League broadcast fee sharing plan, the number of live broadcasts only determines 25% of them, and when the strong dialogue has basically been robbed, the extra live broadcasts must be strong teams and mid-lower teams. Game between.

In other words, assuming that Southampton broadcasted eight more games, there must be eight mid-lower teams to follow.

What's more, the remaining other teams can also benefit from the remaining 75% of the broadcast fee.

Imagine that there are 14 more games, with an average of more than 10 million pounds per game, which is 150 million pounds.

After sharing, each team can get a lot of money.

Therefore, for this set of distribution methods of the Premier League, the 20 Premier League teams basically do not have much objection.

It can be said that The atmosphere of the meeting has been pretty good from the beginning to now.

Regardless of whether it is the European War reward system or the increase in broadcast times, the interests of the Premier League teams are very consistent with each other, so there is little controversy, and everyone has raised their hands in support.

But when it comes to the third topic, which is about the adjustment of overseas copyright distribution, the problem can be serious.

According to the current Premier League’s overseas copyright distribution model, the 20 teams evenly distribute the broadcast fee income, and each team has long been used to it.

But now, if the distribution model is reformed and distributed according to the English Premier League’s local copyrights, despite the substantial increase in overseas copyrights, although the revenue of each team in the new contract is still greatly improved, it is obviously not able to be called People satisfied.

Especially the downstream teams of the Premier League.

Almost immediately after Skudmore had finished speaking, they took the lead in attacking, believing that this series of reforms in the Premier League violated the principle of fair distribution of the Premier League.

Newcastle chairman Michael Ashley even pointed the finger at the top-ranked teams to further widen the gap between rich and poor.