Atlantic League back on the cards?

[blueballss 2,975]

the power and financial muscle of the epl needs to be stopped by the perceived big clubs in Europe, IMO many different variables will be currently looked at

[cp9 753]

Whatever ends up being the best option for Scottish football, you can guarantee that the SFA will do the opposite. For that reason, I can't see it happening, or at least it involving us. 

[FSM 20,892]

How many of us would be able to travel to away games?

[quabba 440]

3 minutes ago, FSM said:

How many of us would be able to travel to away games?

and could clubs afford travelling costs maybe every second saturday

[Courtyard Bear 41,357]

34 minutes ago, FSM said:

How many of us would be able to travel to away games?

Allow away fans to watch the game at home live on a pay per view scheme, with a small number of away tickets sold to fans on a rotation scheme so everybody who wants to travel will get his chance maybe 2/3 times a season. 

[harlands plater 17,065]

Really this "big five" is a big three, England, Germany and Spain. France is only PSG, a sugar-daddy club along the same lines as Chelsea and Man City. And apart from Juve, Italian clubs have had little recent impact in Europe. 

In fact it should only be a three team league with Real, Barca and Bayern, they're the only clubs who will ever win it.

[DrLaudrup 4,883]

While it would be enjoyable to play these sides it would be bad for football and create a further second/third tier European competition.

The key issue is the disgraceful behaviour of UEFA that has allowed the Champions League to become all about money and less about football. At the moment all it does is increase the money available to particularly EPL teams and takes the fight out of the league if teams in 3rd place know the Champions League is guaranteed. 

It should be open to Champions only, which would increase competition in all leagues and be opened to more countries which would redistribute income around into the smaller leagues. It would also re-invigorate the UEFA cup or whatever it would be called as there would be bigger teams in it. It would also have knock on effects in the National teams from smaller countries. 

Rummenigge's idea of an invitational league is idiotic, and will result in exhibition football. Would Chelsea be invited for example, in spite of having a dreadful season at the expense of a team like Leicester who have potentially earned it and have a chance to kick on. Chelsea did nothing for years before Abramovic's billions, similar with Man City. Are they now big clubs. It is part of a wider issue of ridiculous disparity of TV money and outrageous salaries, with ordinary fans are having the pish ripped out of them with ticket prices while players are dicking around on social media posting pics of £200,000 cars after 6-0 defeats, not caring in the slightest as they are made. This sort of corrupt decision making in football, with money ahead of fairness should not be tolerated by fans of any clubs, and makes a mockery out of sport and will eventually drive people away from the game.  

[sandyinroyalblue 16,478]

The way broadcasting rights are awarded in Europe I assume are controlled by the EU so any changes in the Champions League could be scuppered by them if they believe the smaller countries are being treated unfairly.

[Inigo 32,761]

I've always thought the Atlantic League was a great idea. Rangers, sellic, Feyenoord, Ajax and so forth are sleeping giants that are held back only because of their TV based revenue, due to being in wee countries.  The Atlantic League was always an exctiting idea that would have taken a massive step to addressing that. It'd become a powerful league. Can you imagine it, just involving the countries mentioned above? I think given this kind of platform alot of the teams could grow and the league would become hugely exciting...

PREMIER                                           CHAMPIONSHIP

Rangers                                              Standard Liege

Porto                                                   AZ Alkmaar

Feyenoord                                          AEK Athens     

Ajax                                                    PAOK 

Celtic                                                  SC Braga

Anderlecht                                          KRC Genk

FC Copenhagen                                Aberdeen

Basel                                                 Standard Liege

Panathinaikos                                    FC Twente Enschede

Benfica                                              BSC Young Boys

IFK Gothenburg                                 KAA Gent

Rosenborg                                         Malmo

Sporting Lisbon                                 Molde

Olympiakos                                        Heart of Midlothian

Brondby                                             FC Zurich

Club Brugge                                      AIK Stockholm

 

Maybe the bottom two of the PL get relegated to the Championship , and the bottom two of the Championship get relegated and replaced from their national league. To ensure access at all times, if they're not in the bottom two, each lowest ranked team from the respective countries would playoff against the winner of the national league to see if they remain or are relegated. So above it'd be Zurich and Stockholm gone and playoffs of...

Hearts v Hibs

Molde v Viking

Malmo v Odense

Gent v Antwerp

Twente v Utrecht

Braga v Maritimo

AEK v Aris Salonika

If two Swedish teams (for example) are in the relegation spots, both are relegated and replaced from their national league.

Sounds great to me. You'd need an open mind, cause it could potentially mean being relegated to your National league from the PL in some unlikely circumstances. Pros outway the cons, though.

But yeah, not as an competitor to the kind of superleague that it's being suggested Rummenigge is putting forward. It has to be just another strong league below the Champions League, and having access to it.

 

[Big Al 55 9,327]

2 hours ago, FSM said:

How many of us would be able to travel to away games?

We wouldn't, well not all of them, which is exactly why the market for live TV would be so large which is ultimately what will provide the cash for the smaller teams to travel around Europe.

[GersInCanada 7,775]

The big 5 leagues have big populations and so are very attractive to sponsors/advertisers. An Atlantic League would have a similar population base. The idea has to be to form a league to rival the other 5 in terms of revenue and quality of football. i would move away from the Atlantic bit and include teams from Greece, Turkey, and perhaps Eastern Europe.

A league of 20 teams with the bottom 2 or 3 relegated. Not to be replaced automatically with sides from the same country. Let the Champions of the national leagues play each other on a knock out basis to determine promotion. The earliest this can happen is 2019 so no reason why we cannot be in the running for a place in such a league.

If, as I suspect, the Champions League does becomes a closed shop then we need a new cup competition.

I also think that the 'super clubs' will continue to play in their national leagues and at this stage it's just a revamp of the Champions League.

 

[raging blue 1972 894]

13 minutes ago, Inigo said:

I've always thought the Atlantic League was a great idea. Rangers, sellic, Feyenoord, Ajax and so forth are sleeping giants that are held back only because of their TV based revenue, due to being in wee countries.  The Atlantic League was always an exctiting idea that would have taken a massive step to addressing that. Ut'd become a powerful league. Can you imagine it, just involving the countries mentioned above? I think given this kind of platform alot of the teams could grow and the league would become hugely exciting...

PREMIER                                           CHAMPIONSHIP

Rangers                                              Standard Liege

Porto                                                   AZ Alkmaar

Feyenoord                                          AEK Athens     

Ajax                                                    PAOK 

Celtic                                                  SC Braga

Anderlecht                                          KRC Genk

FC Copenhagen                                Aberdeen

Basel                                                 Standard Liege

Panathinaikos                                    FC Twente Enschede

Benfica                                              BSC Young Boys

IFK Gothenburg                                 KAA Gent

Rosenborg                                         Malmo

Sporting Lisbon                                 Molde

Olympiakos                                        Heart of Midlothian

Brondby                                             FC Zurich

Club Brugge                                      AIK Stockholm

 

Maybe the bottom two of the PL get relegated to the Championship , and the bottom two of the Championship get relegated and replaced from the national their league. To ensure access at all times, if they're not in the bottom two, each lowest ranked country from the respective national leeagues would playoff against the winner of the national league to see if they remain or are relegated. So above it's be Zurich and Stockholm gone and playoffs of...

Heart v Hibs

Molde v Viking

Malmo v Odense

Gent v Antwerp

Twente v Utrecht

Braga v Maritimo

If two Swedish teams (for example) are in the relegation spots, both are relegated and replaced from their national league.

Sounds great to me.

But yeah, but not as an competitor to the kind of superleague that it's being suggested Rummenigge is putting forward. It has to be just another strong league below the Champions League, and having access to it.

 

the logistics are a bit of a nightmare to be honest and what about turkish / russian / ukranian teams etc. 

that being said, I'm all for it with the winners and runners up straight into the champions league and 3rd / 4th in playoffs.  keeps all happy and scrap europa league as no need for it

[FSM 20,892]

How would it work for Scandinavian teams who currently play their season from March to November due to weather? Assuming we keep Aug to May format then would they only play away games during our winter? How would they feel about doing that every week for 4 months?

[Inigo 32,761]

Just now, moody blue 1972 said:

the logistics are a bit of a nightmare to be honest and what about turkish / russian / ukranian teams etc. 

that being said, I'm all for it with the winners and runners up straight into the champions league and 3rd / 4th in playoffs.  keeps all happy and scrap europa league as no need for it

What logistics, mate?

Nothing to stop other countries doing similar. It's really up to Russia, Ukraine and anyone else to either try to get involved, create their own setup or do nowt.

[Inigo 32,761]

1 minute ago, FSM said:

How would it work for Scandinavian teams who currently play their season from March to November due to weather? Assuming we keep Aug to May format then would they only play away games during our winter? How would they feel about doing that every week for 4 months?

They'd need to adapt in some way if they wanted to be involved, which presumably they would.

[kris1984 1,360]

why I think it wouldn't work...

 

Let me start by saying this is how I see the Atlantic League, not necessarily what has been proposed.

 

2 leagues – 18 team Premier and 24 team Championship. 3 up/down with play-off system just like England, only the final is two-legs.

The competing nations and their amiable slots would be

Nation

Places

Scotland 8

Holland 8

Belgium 8

Sweden 6

Denmark 6

Norway 6

 

Now I’ve probably been more generous to Scotland than the other nations would see it.

 

I think that would give us league tables like so:

 

Atlantic League - Premiership

Capacity

1 Rangers Scotland 50,987

2 Celtic Scotland 60,832

3 Aberdeen Scotland 20,890

4 Hearts Scotland 17,420

5 Ajax Holland 53,502

6 Feyenoord Holland 51,577

7 PSV Holland 35,000

8 Twente Holland 30,206

9 Standard Liège Belgium 30,000

10 Cercle Brugge Belgium 29,945

11 Genk Belgium 20,000

12 Anderlecht Belgium 21,000

13 AIK Sweden 54,000

14 Malmo Sweden 24,000

15 FC Copenhagen Denmark 38,065

16 Brøndby IF Denmark 29,000

17 Vålerenga Norway 25,572

18 Rosenborg Norway 21,850

 

Atlantic League - Championship

1 Hibs Scotland 20,421

2 Dundee Utd Scotland 14,229

3 Dundee Scotland 11,506

4 Motherwell Scotland 13,677

5 Heerenveen Holland 26,100

6 Vitesse Holland 25,000

7 Utrecht Holland 23,750

8 Groningen Holland 22,550

9 Charleroi Belgium 25,000

10 Gent Belgium 24,900

11 Lierse Belgium 14,538

12 Waasland-Beveren Belgium 13,290

13 Djurgårdens IF Sweden 33,000

14 BK Häcken Sweden 18,900

15 IFK Göteborg Sweden 18,900

16 IF Elfsborg Sweden 16,899

17 Esbjerg fB Denmark 18,000

18 OB Denmark 15,633

19 AaB Denmark 13,797

20 Randers FC Denmark 12,000

21 Brann Norway 17,824

22 Viking Norway 16,600

23 Start Norway 14,300

24 Odd Norway 13,500

 

Obviously you could argue over which teams get selected. From Scotland it’s naive to think that Rangers and Hibs wouldn’t be picked.

 

The combined population of the participating nations would be roughly 54m. That’s somewhere between Spain and Italy in size.

 

If every team got an average attendance of 90% full the Premier would be 31k and the Championship 17k. That isn’t a million miles away from the English Premier League.

 

Sounds good?

 

Well…

 

UEFA are unlikely to sanction Champions league places to such a competition. So we have to assume that carrot is gone. With none of the teams above realistically having any chance of winning the Champions League then the only affect there is financial. 

 

Largest current TV deal is Holland with roughly £4M per team, a season. If one of their teams also get to groups of Champions League then potential TV money is £24M a season. To make this viable, then TV deal for top league would need to be equal to this. So the league would need to secure a TV contract for £432M a season. To put that in perceptive, the Bundesliga currently gets around £485M a season. This is also before allowing for prize money and potential parachute payment to the championship and regional leagues.

 

The TV deal would be largest reason for going ahead. Even if it was less than the £432m required to guarantee every club at least equal terms to what the currently earn then they would likely still opt for a guaranteed sum rather than fight it out in the Champs League.

The TV deal also takes on extra importance as traveling fans would be something on a rarity. Glasgow to Stockholm would require a payment of around £180 return for flights, a 27 hour drive or nearly 2 days on a train. That’s before tickets, hotels, food etc. The club FA (whatever that may be) may have to enforce maximum ticket prices and negotiate cheap travel with companies for sponsorship in return. All eating into the all-important funding which is so vital to persuade teams to take part. 

 

The Championship would also require a TV deal…

 

And what about those teams who are left in their home countries, surely they get a chance to replace those in the Championship?

 

You could have the winner of each 6 regional league take part in some form of tournament to replace those being relegated back to their own leagues. The risk is, one league dominates while other suffer. Say that 3 Belgium teams enter 3 years in a row while Scottish teams continue to disappear back to their own league.

Or maybe the lowest placed team from that league is relegated? What if all the Dutch sides are 1-4 in the Championship? A side participating in the Play-Off’s is also relegated?

 

Clubs could still participate in their own FA cups to ensure more domestic games.  

 

In summary – the potential for the bigger clubs to play in a bigger league, with more money and greater exposure. They probably would forfeit the champions league if the steady income was greater than what they could potentially earn in an increasingly difficult competition. However, the funding would need to be vast for that to be possible, something akin to the German Bundesliga and that is simply unrealistic. The fans wouldn’t be able to travel regularly to away games over time some nations may lose representation in the leagues all together while the Dutch/Belgium teams dominate.

 

It’s a pipe dream.

[GersInCanada 7,775]

A long way to go before this can be finalised but as an idea it is very much worth exploring.

[FSM 20,892]

5 minutes ago, Inigo said:

They'd need to adapt in some way if they wanted to be involved, which presumably they would.

What logistics, mate?

Nothing to stop other countries doing similar. It's really up to Russia, Ukraine and anyone else to either try to get involved, create their own setup or do nowt.

As would Russian teams, but think about the distances involved in Russian teams having to travel to Europe every week for 4 months of away games during their winter?

[Inigo 32,761]

1 minute ago, FSM said:

As would Russian teams, but think about the distances involved in Russian teams having to travel to Europe every week for 4 months of away games during their winter?

I wouldn't have thought Russian teams would be involved. I'd hope for it to be a western(ish) European thing.

As for CL places, I reckon that could be solved in some way as well, by sharing them out based on the highest finishers of the nations. It isn't actually the Champions league now anyway, so it wouldn't matter if the entry qualification places are fiddled about with even more. Requires a bit of flexibility and acceptance of something very different, but I think it'd be far, far preferable to the status quo, which'll just cause alot of big clubs to be slipping further and further behind.

[Big Al 55 9,327]

There would need to be considerable financial compensation given to the teams left in the national leagues as well. It would more or less mean the death of the Scottish League and Dutch League.

[Inigo 32,761]

Just now, Big Al II said:

There would need to be considerable financial compensation given to the teams left in the national leagues as well. It would more or less mean the death of the Scottish League and Dutch League.

Not if there is a playoff allowing access to the top. IMO it'd be no different to how England works that way. It's just an extension of the pyramid.

[Big Al 55 9,327]

9 minutes ago, Inigo said:

Not if there is a playoff allowing access to the top. IMO it'd be no different to how England works that way. It's just an extension of the pyramid.

Pyramids only work when there is an element of financial fairness all the way down, which is why there is a £160m parachute payment for relegation from EPL.

Yes but there would be no money left in the national game, realistically how likely are Motherwell going to be able to compete in a play off with a relegated team, say Vitesse who have 10 or 20 times the income? (assuming any Atlantic TV deal is a success), All we would be doing is increasing our income at the expense of the teams left behind, putting them in the same position are we currently are with regards the existing financial gap between England and Scotland, albeit it on a slightly lesser scale. I can pretty much guarantee for this to get off the ground there would be compensation payments made to the national leagues shared out between the clubs.

I like the principle, there's a helluva lot to overcome, not least agreement UEFA, all National Associations and majority of member clubs...but good to see discussions are ongoing.

If a broadcaster comes on board with a financially viable deal, potentially televising all matches PPV where there's a market, then the other issues will become surmountable.

[Creampuff 22,629]

Some cracking away days. Wouldn't need to watch us draw 1-1 with the KFC in the background.

[Inigo 32,761]

1 minute ago, Big Al II said:

Pyramids only work when there is an element of financial fairness all the way down, which is why there is a £160m parachute payment for relegation from EPL.

Yes but there would be no money left in the national game, realistically how likely are Motherwell going to be able to compete in a play off with a relegated team, say Vitesse who have 10 or 20 times the income? (assuming any Atlantic TV deal is a success), All we would be doing is increasing our income at the expense of the teams left behind, putting them in the same position are we currently are with regards the existing financial gap between England and Scotland, albeit it on a slightly lesser scale. I can pretty much guarantee for this to get off the ground there would be compensation payments made to the national leagues shared out between the clubs.

I like the principle, there's a helluva lot to overcome, not least agreement UEFA, all National Associations and majority of member clubs...but good to see discussions are ongoing.

If a broadcaster comes on board with a financially viable deal, potentially televising all matches PPV where there's a market, then the other issues will become surmountable.

Have a parachute payment, then. If it works for the EPL, it can work at a lesser level for an Atlantic League. These arguments were made for the EPL, but you still find that varying considerably from year to year, and teams outwith being able to compete. 

Besides, if anyone has to suffer, I'd prefer it to be other Scottish clubs rather than Rangers. At the moment it's the likes of us that's going to be suffering the most.

Plenty to overcome, but all it needs is good leadership, some inventive ideas and a realisation that the Rummenigge vision of the future is not viable at all for the big clubs in the smaller leagues.

Surmountable, as you say. 

[cushynumber 25,178]

@kris1984 - good post.