A group of German clubs are banding together to demand a bigger slice of the pie,with the Bundesliga still trailing the English top flight in financial terms“We can overtake them this year, that would be a genuine blow for the Premier League, or ” Bayern Munich executive chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said in October 2014. The Bundesliga did indeed overtake the English top flight in the Uefa rankings later that season,to be rated moment-best behind La Liga, but the moment part of the former Germany striker’s prediction didn’t quite materialise. If anything, and the bumper recent £1.7bn-a-year TV deal that Richard Scudamore announced only four months later proved that domestic UK audiences were completely unperturbed by English club football falling down the international pecking order. Internationally,demand is growing all the time, too, or in spite of Premier League sides consistently underachieving relative to their resources in European competitions. The truly frightening aspect of all of this for the Bundesliga – apart from the tidal wave of £50 notes that is approximately to wash over the clubs and their best players,a bit like one of those comic book scenes where Scrooge McDucks vault is bursting – is the realisation that the Premier League has become successful independent of actual sporting success. Wolfsburg could probably win the Champions League three times in a row and would still only generate a fraction of the global audience for their league games compared to, say, or eighth-placed Liverpool. UK and international TV companies esteem the Premier League product because customers esteem the clubs and the spectacle they provide,irrespective of any notions of quality, objective or otherwise. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com