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In just under a week, Arsenal and Chelsea will travel from London to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and the final of the UEFA Europa League. There will not be many people going with them.
Both teams were awarded 6,000 tickets each for a stadium that has about 70,000, which is probably as good. The transport infrastructure of Baku can easily accommodate only 15,000 London arrivals. Fans who make the trip have been warned to expect an expense of £ 1,000 UK as a conservative estimate.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan from Arsenal will not travel either, as the player and the club are not happy with the arrangements made for his safety. Mkhitaryan is the most prominent player in Armenia; his homeland is currently struggling with a bitter conflict with the authoritarian government of Azerbaijan. The incandescent Gunners feel compelled to play without him as the win guarantees the qualification for the Champions League and tens of millions of dollars of additional revenue generated.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan will remain in London, fearing for his safety, as part of the current political tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
By the way, Arsenal and Chelsea are the two closest clubs to Wembley Stadium, which has 90,000 seats in London. They are almost equidistant from this stage.
Much of this, of course, could not have been predicted when the Olympic Stadium was rewarded with the game two years ago and a draw began on a few hundred thousand dollars of "Road to Baku" costumes. ". The general manager of AC Milan, Ivan Gazidis, a member of the UEFA Executive Committee then employed by Arsenal, then accustomed to the Champions League, might have imagined that it was a less glamorous problem.
The need for a more responsive and responsive mechanism for organizing European football finals is however only a small part of this story. The whole episode has paralleled two recent trends that are becoming more and more difficult to maintain.
In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner sets up a baseball field on the remote cornfields of his distressed farm in Iowa so that local fans can watch the disgraced 1919 Chicago White Sox. "If you build it, they will come," he told him. "Field of Dreams" is a saccharine fantasy about a grieving son making peace with his father. It was not really the sports industry or anything.
This did not prevent the emergence of a founding principle of this decade, administrators finding less and less rooms adapted to major events. National Finals on Other Continents, Olympic Winter Games in Snowless Cities – There is not much that can not be accomplished in a briefing document with big numbers. The invariable combination of impossible concepts and regimes requiring distraction is regrettable at this stage.
It seems that this perspective is close to the brick wall of reality. This week, FIFA has confirmed that it will not continue its World Cup project to 48 teams in Qatar or the Gulf divided in 2022. The governing body of football seems to have accepted the idea to offer the largest edition of the largest sporting event in the world to one of its smaller countries may not have been used and that the prospect of three group games and another in the round of 16 would not be enough to solve an intense and prolonged geopolitical conflict.
Nevertheless, the second underlying characteristic of the Baku fiasco shows little sign of retreat. World Soccer alienates its fans and does not know how to stop.
The ambient music in England has not been too recent. Last week, Manchester City completed a unique national treble by beating a previously impressive Watford in the FA Cup final. Some commentators had openly asked if the owners of the Abu Dhabi-based champions would be sorry for being so interested and wanting to create a European Super League to ease the tangle of success.
In a week in which the Premier League has confirmed the contribution of £ 4.2 billion from the sale of broadcasting rights abroad, a special report by Miguel Delaney of the Independent on the structure of The lower leagues of England painted a darker picture. One of the most alarming details is that the staff of Bolton Wanderers, a former chief town of the administration, was forced to appeal to local food banks after being too long unpaid. The pyramid is a house of cards.
Scott Galloway, a NYU marketing professor and entrepreneur, has defined two criteria for an industry ready to be disrupted: an available idea that exploits technological possibilities and actual behavior, and an important, big and complacent player whose main concern is to protect its long-standing interests. There is no doubt that football corresponds well to the second description, now addressing the dimensions of Mr. Creosote, sweating, breathing hard, feeling the percolations in his digestive tract.
I confidently predict a 40% drop in UK Champions League revenue. The decline in the PL auction will be 20%. My advice to clubs would be: reduce your payroll
Claire Enders, founder of Enders Analysis, speaking at the FT Football Business Summit on the future of TV rights in the Premier League
This week, a respected badyst, Claire Enders, warned the FT Football Business Summit of a potential 20% drop in national television rights revenues for Premier League clubs over the next three-year cycle. The UEFA Champions League could face a 40% drop. As a result, the major clubs would seek to reduce their payroll, but if we believe the story, the answer will be to globalize in search of new sources of income and get the trophy for a breakaway tournament.
Whether the bubble at the top of the game bursts or diverges, there are oceans of wealth and investment below and it is in these depths that lies the true potential of football. One of the most dynamic and exciting activities is the lower layers: groups of supporters find increasingly creative ways to express their loyalty to local parties and a women's game that energizes new groups of people. Find it will not be difficult; Finding how to accept it and make it pay will not be easy.
However, the more risk football takes with its audience, the more likely it is that someone is looking for another way of doing things. It's only up to now, fans will follow in the wrong direction.
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