Chapter 970: Being a Good Person
Some people say that seniority is a serious issue in English football.
That’s absolutely right!
A few years earlier, when Terry, Lampard and other players were still young and had just joined the first team, they had to help their teammates wash their socks and polish their shoes, and they had to be respectful to the team leader.
For example, this is how Roy Keane of Manchester United taught Cristiano Ronaldo a lesson.
This is true within the team and at club level as well.
The tradition of bosses' gatherings in England's top league is so long-standing that it is almost as old as the tradition of the home team coach inviting the visiting team coach for a drink after the game.
But unlike the latter which was gradually forgotten or even abandoned early on, the top league bosses' summit has been passed down.
The establishment of the Premier League was agreed upon at the bosses' summit.
The layoffs in the Premier League were also decided at this meeting.
Even how to further tap into commercial resources, how to develop overseas markets, and how to attract more stars were all discussed at the bosses' summit.
The Premier League is just a facade for the bosses' summit, and CEO Richard Scudmore is more like a steward and spokesperson hired by the 20 Premier League bosses with an annual salary of nearly one million pounds, nothing more.
But even at the Premier League bosses' summit, there is still a hierarchy based on seniority.
For example, the three teams that are newly promoted to the Premier League every year basically have no say.
God knows if they will fall back to the Championship after a season?
Therefore, the boss of the newly promoted team has to play the role of a good boy appropriately so that he can fit in.
As for a team like Southampton, which just got promoted to the Premier League and called for a strike and withdrawal from the Premier League, it is the only one in the history of the Premier League Chairman’s Summit!
In the past, the right to speak at the Premier League Chairman's Summit was fully in the hands of five teams, all of which were the most traditional top five teams in England, namely Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Leeds United.
But later Leeds United declined and Newcastle gradually took its place.
But unfortunately, the magpie itself was not up to the task and soon fell.
In the past decade or so, teams such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have changed owners and managements one after another, and the right to speak at the presidential summit is no longer as important as in the past.
Today's Chairman's Summit is no longer the one-man show it used to be.
But relatively speaking, the strong teams still have the greatest influence and to some extent control the rules of the game in the Premier League.
As Manchester City gradually rises, its influence in the Premier League Chairman's Summit is also increasing.
In the past two or three years, the Saints have leapt from a newly promoted team to a rising star in the Premier League, and now have become the standard-bearer of the Premier League in Europe and even the world. In addition, the Saints' two former CEOs, Peter Kenyon and Ron Gourlay, are both veterans of the Premier League Chairman's Summit. Therefore, the Saints' voice in the Chairman's Summit is becoming more and more important.
More importantly, saints know how to be human.
For example, John Stones.
Originally, the Saints had signed the young player, but when they heard that Everton needed him, they directly loaned Stones to Everton.
During Stones' time at Everton, the Saints did not charge a penny for the loan. Even when they recalled Stones, the Saints paid Everton a six-figure training fee and loaned two young players from their youth system to Everton for free.
It's not just Everton. Other Premier League and Championship teams also want to loan Saints' youth players. Although the requirements are relatively high and even some conditions are set, the supporting services provided by the Saints are also quite good.
The reason why Watford, the newly promoted team in the Premier League, was able to be successfully promoted from the Championship this season was because they loaned three young players from the Saints. After being promoted to the Premier League this season, Watford proposed to buy out the players, and the Saints did not set any obstacles on the transfer fee. They just added a buy-back clause and then let them go.
It is precisely because the Saints know how to behave that their reputation in English football is growing day by day.
Now, at the Premier League Chairman's Summit, the CEOs of Manchester United and Arsenal are both newcomers, and Southampton has naturally become the team with the greatest say.
Together with Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Liverpool, they form the first group of the Premier League.
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 was eventually brought to the Premier League Chairman's Summit for discussion and voting.
According to the rules of the Premier League Chairman's Summit, reform proposals will be passed as long as two-thirds of the members agree.
As this meeting was of great importance, FA Chairman David Bernstein, FA CEO, several other sponsor representatives and important industry figures in English football were specially invited to attend.
However, they only have the right to attend, not the right to speak, let alone the right to vote.
At the beginning of the meeting, Premier League CEO Richard Scudmore was the first to speak.
He first introduced the operating conditions of the Premier League in the past season and the outlook for the coming season.
Among them, one point that attracted everyone's attention was that the Premier League will cooperate with Miracle Media to actively carry out the Premier League pre-season overseas challenge, and the main target is the mid- and lower-level Premier League teams.
But this obviously made Abramovich depressed.
You know, the Premier League currently has a close partnership with Miracle Media.
Saints, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City and Liverpool all participated in the International Champions Cup, and Everton and Swansea both participated in the invitational tournament organized by Miracle Media.
Everyone knows that these are the events with the biggest and most lucrative revenue.
But as a veteran team in the Premier League, Chelsea was excluded. This has a lot to do with the fact that Chelsea placed the wrong bet in the first place. Who made them support RS, the arch-rival of Miracle Media?
Several teams that participated in the North American Invitational Tournament organized by RS, such as Chelsea and AC Milan, were unable to cooperate with Miracle Media. They could only watch their competitors making huge profits while they were drooling and anxious.
Today, the Premier League is launching a pre-season tournament. Although there are appearance fees, they are very little and are more for promoting the Premier League.
Although Chelsea holds the title of the first-team, it is forced to participate in this kind of competition among mid- and lower-level teams. Abramovich is really depressed.
But something is better than nothing, right?
Granovskaia once calculated that by missing out on the International Champions Cup, Chelsea would lose at least 15 million euros in direct revenue each season. If potential income from sponsorship and other aspects were taken into account, the loss would be even greater.
So, at this moment, Abramovich had to secretly calculate in his heart, should he continue to fight with Yang Huan?
After introducing the preseason, Scudmore focused on the various budgets for this season, which were not too controversial, so they were basically just glanced over.
The real focus comes later, when Scudmore proposes 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 of which is the so-called European war reward system.
Scudmore reminded everyone present that the role of European competitions in promoting the Premier League is still quite obvious.
The poor performance in European competitions does not bring glory to the Premier League, which has the title of the world's best league.
Therefore, he proposed that the Premier League should allocate a portion of its annual financial budget as European competition rewards, and distribute them to each team according to their performance in the European competition.
This one did not encounter much resistance.
The role of European competitions in promoting the league is indeed obvious, and everyone agrees on this.
If the Premier League does not have enough points in European competitions, resulting in a reduction in the number of participating places, this will cause serious damage to the Premier League's brand value. Therefore, it is understandable to appropriately stimulate the desire of European teams to participate.
What's more, the rewards given by Scudmore are indeed a lot if concentrated in the hands of some teams, but if distributed among twenty teams, it will not be much.
As the pie gets bigger and bigger, no one takes this little bit of change too seriously.
For example, the revenue per season used to be 50 million, but now that the pie has become bigger, the revenue can reach 80 million, but the Premier League said that it would take a smaller share, say 70 to 80 million, and the rest would be used as rewards for European competitions to stimulate strong teams to gain more European competition points, so that the league broadcasting fees will be higher in the future.
As a result, most of the teams agreed.
The same situation also occurred in the second issue, which is the allocation of broadcast sessions.
According to the Premier League's plan, starting from 2016, a new Premier League broadcasting contract will increase the number of live broadcasts from the current 154 to 168.
The extra fourteen games will be arranged according to the broadcaster's plan.
This is not repulsive.
Sky TV and BT are willing to auction the broadcasting rights of the Premier League at such a high price in order to be able to select more games that fans like to watch, as well as some game schedule arrangements and other supporting matters.
If nothing unexpected happens, these extra fourteen games will basically be won by strong teams, especially teams like the Saints that are full of superstars.
But so what?
In the Premier League broadcasting fee sharing plan, live broadcasts only determine 25% of the total. Moreover, as the strong teams’ dialogues have basically been snapped up, the extra live broadcasts will definitely be the games between the strong teams and the mid- and lower-level teams.
In other words, if Southampton broadcast eight more games live, then eight mid- and lower-level teams would definitely get to eat the cake.
What's more, the remaining teams can benefit from the remaining 75 percent of the broadcasting fees.
Just imagine, with fourteen more games, with an average of more than ten million pounds per game, that would be one hundred and fifty million pounds.
After all the money is shared, each team can get a considerable amount of money.
Therefore, the 20 Premier League teams basically do not have much objection to the Premier League's distribution method.
It can be said that the atmosphere of the meeting has been quite good from the beginning to now.
Whether it is the European competition reward system or increasing the number of broadcast matches, the interests of the Premier League teams are very consistent with each other, so there is almost no controversy, and everyone raised their hands to support its passage.
But when it comes to the third topic, which is the plan for adjusting overseas copyright distribution, the problem becomes serious.
According to the current distribution model of the Premier League's overseas copyright, the broadcasting fee income is evenly distributed among the 20 teams, and all teams have long been accustomed to it.
But now, if the distribution model is reformed and replaced by distribution based on the Premier League's local copyright, with the substantial increase in overseas copyrights, although the teams' income in the new contracts will still increase significantly, it is obviously not satisfactory.
Especially the lower-tier teams in the Premier League.
Almost as soon as Scudmore finished speaking, they took the lead in attacking, arguing that the Premier League's series of reforms violated the Premier League's principle of fair distribution.
Newcastle's chairman Michael Ashley even pointed the finger at the top-ranked teams for further widening the gap between the rich and the poor.