In the spring of 2021, as the UEFA Champions League approached thirty years of existence, a spectacular new competition project threatened to change the fortunes of European football. Promoted by Florentino Pérez, president, as well as Andrea Agnelli and Joel Glazer, vice presidents, the Super League was born with the support of its 12 founding members: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham, Juventus, Milan and Inter. Just over four years later, the Champions League is still the top continental competition – in which all the clubs mentioned above participate – and the Super League, unprecedented to date, has not only lost strength in the venues, but only has the support and unwavering defense of one club: Real Madrid.
Faced with such a scenario, the club chaired by Florentino Pérez and A22 Sports Management, the promoter that has allied itself with the Super League project in 2022, last October threatened UEFA with a request for “compensation” of around 4.5 billion euros so that Aleksander Ceferin, president of the body that governs European football, would finally agree to negotiate the redesign of the Champions League.
Up until that point, meetings between the two sides had taken place over time without moving in any direction. So much so that sources familiar with the conversations believe that UEFA’s objective was precisely that, to keep the matches empty to let the time pass without significant progress. “There is no other option,” sources later assured of the imminent multimillion-dollar demands from Real Madrid and A22. “It is in UEFA’s hands to avoid this, but this can only happen through serious negotiations.”
Florentino Pérez himself confirmed this Sunday during the Real Madrid assembly that the white club has already started the bureaucratic procedures to accept his request. “We have not come this far to elaborate judicial rulings, but to put them into practice,” he proclaimed to the members, who he assured that he had received private support from several clubs to relaunch the Super League. “It is not normal that in the 21st century watching football on television is increasingly expensive,” he added, in defense of the accessible and free broadcast on Dazn during last summer’s Club World Cup. “An increasingly expensive product (in reference to the model implemented by UEFA in the Champions League) does nothing but alienate football fans,” he said.
For its part, A22 not only claims “damages”, but has also presented an official letter to UEFA. In the letter, the company led by German Bernd Reichart urges Alexander Ceferin to respect the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which in December 2023 ruled that both UEFA and FIFA exercised an abuse of power to limit the launch of the Super League, positioning themselves as “umpires” of the European football industry and violating European Union competition law. Furthermore, last June, the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) had already opened an investigation into UEFA for its maneuvers aimed at hindering the launch of the Super League.
“Despite final rulings from three European judicial bodies, including the CJEU and the provincial court in Spain, UEFA maintains regulations and practices in place that directly contravene these judicial decisions,” A22 warned in a statement on Monday. “Challenging these rulings, the only appropriate course at this time is to seek compensation for the damages suffered, (so) UEFA now faces a scenario of significant claims from both clubs and A22.”
It should be noted, however, that the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union to which the Super League is clinging specified in 2023 that such a sports project, called Unify League from 2024, “does not necessarily have to be approved” as long as it is intended to be implemented in the UEFA ecosystem, i.e. in the current scheme of European football.
