Keir Radnedge - The Insider

UEFA club battle on the horizon

XA showdown is looming over the future of European club competitions. The major teams and leagues have been rattling their sabers in preparation with headline-grabbing jabs in the face of UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin.

The Slovene is growing irritable at the demands for one change or another, all aimed at expansion to generate more money. Clubs want more money to feed the appetite for trophies while UEFA wants more cash for its development programs.

The expansion would also either favor the grandees of the club game (think more money for Barcelona, Real Madrid, etc) or the leagues (more money but nothing to upset their domestic schedules) or the middle and lower-ranking clubs (more money to reward their foundation-laying).

But the snag with this is the money market is slowing down. If even the English Premier League is resigned to a virtual standstill in revenue growth then no other competition – not even the Champions League – can expect to continue onwards and upwards.

Premier League clubs this past season shared around £690million but hopes of a further leap upwards have been stymied by the reluctance of internet broadcasters to enter a streaming auction.

UEFA was so pleased with the early response to the Nations League that it ramped up the financial distribution. But broadcasters have their own budgets and just because UEFA creates another competition does not automatically mean more money in the TV pot. Europe’s smaller clubs may be disappointed by the projected return of the “third competition”.

The European Club Association (ECA) summoned its 200-plus members to St Julian's in Malta for a two-day brainstorming session on its demands for the next era of the Champions League, the Europa League and Cup number three. They came up with plenty of noise but no united front.