Premier League Playoffs?
We don’t usually do speculative thinking on Pitch Invasion, but the Premier League’s increasingly disastrous 39th game concept has got us thinking. Was this a major PR goof — they seem to have pissed off everyone in world football not wearing Barclays English Premier League shades — or do they have some clever fall-back plan in mind? We raise a frightening prospect.
I’ve seen it argued in numerous places that the plan all along has been for the Premier League to back down from such an audacious proposal as an entire extra round of games, argue there’s still a need for international exposure, and agree to a watered down plan that sees some teams sacrifice home games for abroad. The problem with this is it would do little for the smaller clubs, who know a Wigan-Birmingham clash won’t sell tickets in Shanghai. Moreover, it would have much less appeal to the big clubs, who already earn huge amounts at home games: the extra revenue they’d generate by playing abroad would be minimal. They’d rather play glamorous friendlies overseas instead as extra games, surely. Could be possible, but I think there’s a smarter and scarier alternative.
What’s needed is to find a way to play more meaningful games abroad with the biggest teams guaranteed to be involved, whilst not intruding on the league schedule and giving a chance for the smaller clubs to be involved and make money. Are you thinking playoffs, too? (Thanks to Dave Boyle for raising this prospect to me) Say the top eight qualify, for example.
Here are some reasons why this could work (note: “could” does not mean “should”):
- Playoffs already exist within the English league structure, having been introduced to the Football League in 1987. They are still used to determine the final promotion spot for the three leagues below the Premier League. Therefore, the Premier League will be able to say they are not a foreign concept to English league football.
- They will argue that a playoff to decide the winners will “even the playing field”. They will link it to the historic appeal of the F.A. Cup, as fans love a knockout tournament. They will say it gives smaller clubs a chance to compete with the biggest clubs, ending the endless and damaging hegemony of your Arsenals, Chelseas and Man Utds for the title. Smaller clubs will vote for it if it’s a playoff of six or eight teams, thinking they can sneak in at the bottom end and win the whole thing. It would be perfect for the likes of Everton and Tottenham.
- It will be a massive money-spinner. Think of the build-up a big Premier League clash gets on a given weekend and multiply that by four. Compared to the 39th game idea as a television event, why would fans in Asia be more interested in watching Man Utd-Wigan in a regular league game in New York than in Manchester? They would, in fact, be less so as it removes the heritage and atmosphere they’re interested in. But add an extra meaningful game that decides something, and it’d be a big television draw.
- They could play the games anywhere and there’d be fewer complaints than moving a league game abroad. Perhaps the first round would be home and away fixtures (thus giving local fans an extra game), then a final four-team tournament over a weekend in a different country each year — a real event that New York or Tokyo might actually want to bid for, three games with massive television exposure worldwide. They would sell-out anywhere for all games, unlike for many of the prospective 39th games.
None of those things, of course, make it the right thing to do. There are also some obvious negatives:
- It’s manifestly unfair to award the title to a team other than the one that won the “regular season” league based on everyone playing everyone twice. Why should the playoffs decide this? Playoffs in the North American sense are a reasonable way to decide things given the divided conference system, which mean not everyone plays everyone else an even number of times. Sure, it’s not as fair as a straight league, but it gives a reason for the playoffs to exist. This is not the case for the Premier League. Unfortunately, they can point to the Football League playoffs as an example of this unfair system already existing in England. There’s no reason in terms of fairness for the third placed Championship team not to be promoted automatically and to possibly lose out to the sixth place team via the playoffs, but it happens every year.
- The scheduling would be a serious problem. It’s hard to see how they could make room for an extra tournament at the end of the season, especially in World Cup years. It would further exhaust players.
- It would devalue the regular season enormously. Only Champions League qualification and seeding for the playoffs would give the race to the finish any appeal. The integrity of the league would be destroyed.
- It would also destroy the F.A. Cup. The big teams would treat it with even more cavalier contempt, as no-one would want that extra game interfering at the end of the season. It would introduce another knockout tournament with more television appeal. We know the BBC prefers to show Wigan-Chelsea than Liverpool-Havant & Waterlooville already.
- It would be a major challenge to other international tournaments if it was a commercial success. An early summer major event would impact on the Champions League, European Championships and World Cup negatively. It would also generate further huge revenue for the Premier League teams, furthering their international buying power and forcing La Liga or Serie A to pursue moneyspinning ventures themselves to compete or face losing the best players. But there’d be little anyone could do: it’d still be a money-spinner even if FIFA ensured they played the play-offs domestically.
- The rich would still get richer. Just as teams have bankrupted themselves chasing the pot of Champions League fools gold, so Premier League teams would burst a gut trying desperately to get into the playoffs. Even mid-table teams would feel the need to spend lavishly at the January break to give themselves a shot at the Big Title. But given their larger resources, we’d know the Big Four will always make it, and the rest would be fighting for a few spots. It’d be a big, tempting and foolish gamble for mid-level clubs to go for. Meanwhile, the likes of Liverpool would have ever more guaranteed lucrative income to pay down their massive debts.
That final reason is why this could still be pursued as an alternative. Even the elite Premier League teams need to find new revenue streams, and if the 39th game doesn’t work out, you can bet this will be a serious possibility. What do you think?
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I could actually see the Premier League creating a playoff for the 4th and final Champions League spot, putting teams 4-7 in a “promotion” battle to enter the qualifying rounds. (IMHO, they should use the FA Cup for that, so long as there’s a stipulation that you have to *win* the FA Cup to get into the Champions League, and if the winner is already in the Top 3, then the 4th place team goes. But we all know the Big 4 would block such a move, even if it wouldn’t really hurt them that much.)
If the Premier League *really* wants more money in America, how about giving us a full-season PPV package in HD, a la NFL Sunday Ticket? I’m already paying $28/mo. extra just to get FSC, GolTV & Setanta Sports, and I only get a smattering of PL games at SD-quality. Do they think they couldn’t find 1,000,000 soccer fans in America willing pony up $200/year to watch any PL game they want in hi-def?
Dave, that’s quite a realistic idea that’d follow the use of the playoffs at the lower levels. You should work for the Premier League. Of course, the FA Cup would be better and a more fun way to do it.
I don’t know if there are 1m fans in the US who’d pay that much, but I think we’ll see HD in a couple of years here once the cost of it drops a bit, probably from Setanta before Fox. I heard an interview on EPL Talk last year with a Setanta supremo that implied that kind of timeframe.
All sound points, Tom, so let me quickly deconstruct the reasons in favour of it!
1. Play-offs exist to determine promotion in other divisions, but not championships. If they’re thinking of introducing play-offs to determine the championship, a vast amount of the ordinary season will be grossly devalued.
2. We already have a knock-out competition, which is one of the finest in the world.
3. If these play-off matches were to be so important, then why should they be played on the other side of the world, at a time that would be massively inconvenient to the domestic audience? Kicking off a match of this “importance” at any time in, say, Tokyo, would be more or less the most contemptuous thing that the Premier League could think of, so far as home supporters are concerned.
4. See 3. The debates over this in this country have been, to my eyes, very open-minded. In a country that is as prone to xenophobia as anywhere else, the vast majority of the debate surrounding the issue has been over the practicalities and preserving of traditions within the English game. However, it is critical that the English game is played for the benefit of (and the convenience of) the English audience. If the Premier League forgets about the people that pack out their stadia in the first place, they could end up playing a lot of matches in empty grounds, and risk permanently devaluing their “brand”.
The only honourable way out of this for Peter Scudamore is to resign with immediate effect. Our game doesn’t need his particular brand of “blue sky thinking”.
Doesn’t the Eredivisie do a play-off for CL/UEFA cup?
Anyone know how well that works?
Ian, agreed on all points. One question, though: it’s quite possible they could do these playoffs domestically, and make a ton of cash (which obviously is the ultimate need rather than building-global-brands-guff). That leaves points one or two, but steadily we start to get to the point where everyone is worn down and glad they’re not going abroad, don’t we? Like you, this whole turn of events has left me with little patience for anything Scudamore says, but sadly I don’t see anyone taking the honourable way out.
Hudsonland, good question. Can anyone help?
Asked and answered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eredivisie#European_competition
If the Intertoto Cup goes away, I think we can expect that 6-9 competition to disappear, too.
BTW, the current price of NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV is about $259/season. So no, I don’t think $200/year is too much to pay for 38 weeks of the Premier League in HD. Even if they only find 500,000 subscribers for it, that’s still an extra 50 million quid in gross revenue — more than they’d get from a one-off West Ham v. Chelsea match here.
Well, first they’d have to start filming every Premier League in HD and providing live production for the games, which doesn’t happen right now in England and isn’t cheap. I would be interested to know how many currently watch games on FSC and Setanta — anyone have any ratings info?
Tom, Ian’s point #3 seems the most devastating to me. The idea of the league champion being determined by a game played in a foreign country sounds to me like something that would provoke even as much outrage as the 39th-game idea. England would suddenly be the host of a massively devalued regular season and then bid the top teams farewell to play for the championship in Tokyo? I’m afraid the Sun might actually cave in on itself and become a black hole.
Of course it’s a whole separate question whether Richard Scudamore is secretly using the 39th game as a decoy and playing for some other stakes. I’m increasingly having a hard time seeing him as that crafty or intelligent, but man, if he wants us to underestimate him, he has done an amazing job.
Brian, I agree point three is the most devastating. But again I’m also suggesting such playoffs could be played in England and make a boatload of money: it’s more about the potential global television audience than anything.
Tom, sorry I missed that. If we’re talking about a domestic playoff format, I’m sure it would lead to some exciting games, but on the whole I’d rather watch a 90-minute special in which the TV executive who prioritized Wigan-Chelsea over Liverpool-H&W would be mercilessly taunted by the audience.
Definitely would be interesting to see some hard ratings figures for FSC and Setanta. I keep hearing that more people in America watch soccer than hockey etc., but I never see numbers, and it’s never clear how much of the audience is watching the Premier League compared to the Mexican league on Spanish networks or—I don’t know—Real Salt Lake.
Like the majority of soccer fan my reaction to 39th Game or any regular overseas game was very negative, but after some thinking I made a 120-degree turn.
In this globalized world there is a competition for fans, participant and revenues. We have team America football (NFL), team baseball (MLB), team basketball (90% NBA and I guess FIBA), team hockey (I think they are in trouble) and team soccer (a very dysfunctional team). Based on a personal experience, if soccer lets you go somebody else will grab you.
In my opinion FA should consider staging FA Cup final overseas and Football League should take League Cup overseas, both tournament will get bigger attention out side England and bring new fans. And UEFA should consider taking CL or Cup finals overseas.
“Definitely would be interesting to see some hard ratings figures for FSC and Setanta. I keep hearing that more people in America watch soccer than hockey etc., but I never see numbers, and it’s never clear how much of the audience is watching the Premier League compared to the Mexican league on Spanish networks or—I don’t know—Real Salt Lake.”
I admit that I know an infinitesimally small fraction of the U.S. soccer viewing community, but in my experiences, American fans (with the obvious exception of Hispanic fans) care very little for the Mexican league, at least not enough to actively watch broadcasted matches that are rarely, if ever, translated into English. Most watch Premier League games on stations like FSC, Setanta, GolTV and the like, and even the casual soccer fan is far more familiar with the English league than they are with, say, Serie A or Bundesliga. I think the idea of a PPV package of the Premier League in the style of MLS Direct Kick would be a great idea, though I think HD broadcasts are still a ways off unfortunately.
Oh… and no one watches Real Salt Lake. Not even in Utah.
Correct about the US playoff system being necessary because each team doesn’t play each other an even number of times (32 teams play 16 games).
The only way a playoff system would come about would be if the Premier league splits away from the rest of the league, with no relegation and then ends up allowing so many teams to enter that they cannot possibly fit in all the games. With so many managers complaining about too many games, I think the Premier League should come down to 16 teams anyway, saving 8 games in a season. Makes sense for the national team as well.
They need the extra revenue from being mismanaged.
Steven – http://unitedstatesvicepresident.com
North Americans see sports very differently. The National Hockey League had only 6 teams in one league for much of its long history, yet every season ended with a 4 team playoff! Similar examples of playoff frenzy exist from the days when other North American leagues had few enough teams to play an even and fair schedule like the Premier League.
Americans tend to see the even schedule of the Premier League as not much more than a fair-handed way of deciding who should make the post-season (as they call their playoffs), since their divisions and conferences often entail situations like this year’s NFL where the defending champion of the American Conference, the New England Patriots, missed the playoffs with an 11-5 record while a team from San Diego has an opening home game despite only mounting an 8-8 season!
Imagine the top 4 teams in the Premiership qualifying for a knock out round seeded by position and you’d have the best of both worlds. In Britain it seems absurd for a team that wins the table to have to prove anything beyond that to win the league, while for Americans ending the year with the “regular season” (as they call it, suggesting its ordinariness to the North American mind) makes it all rather mundane. A recent fan of the Premier League from California guessed that there are no playoffs in the top European Leagues because the only meaningful part of the season is to seed entries for the Champions League! He could imagine no other reason that playoffs were not held, as a league that played a season without some sort of playoff and ultimate “championship game” afterwards was virtually meaningless to him.
Well, first they’d have to start filming every Premier League in HD and providing live production for the games, which doesn’t happen right now in England and isn’t cheap. I would be interested to know how many currently watch games on FSC and Setanta — anyone have any ratings info?