European football giants, Manchester United and Juventus, have had their shares experience a spike on Monday following reports that they plan to boycott the UEFA Champions League for the elite Super League.
Super Sports reported that the shares of United, which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, had gone up by 8.3 per cent about an hour into US trading while Juve’s shares rose by nearly 18 per cent to €0.91 on the Milan stock market.
“The financial incentive for the clubs is plain to see, with a multi-billion dollar package at the heart of the scheme, albeit it would forever break the integrity of the club game,” said Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com.
“The sort of additional revenues the ESL will deliver would need to be offset by a potential material decline or total loss of existing earnings from media deals through national leagues and Uefa,” he said.
WuzupNigeria reported that at least 12 top European clubs including, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid agreed to join the new elite league.
With the inaugural season set to commence “as soon as practicable”, it is expected that “a further three clubs will join ahead of the inaugural season” of the new mid-week competition.
Although the founding clubs said they “look forward to holding discussions with UEFA and FIFA to work together in partnership to deliver the best outcomes for the new League and for football as a whole,” the move has sparked outrage from football authorities, fans and pundits.
Prime Minister the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, has said the plan is not good news for fans and football as a whole, adding that “We are going to look at everything that we can do with the football authorities to make sure that this doesn’t go ahead in the way that it’s currently being proposed.”
However, popular Journalist, Fabrizio Romano, revealed that UEFA president, Aleksander Čeferin, wants to “ban them as soon as possible”
As a result of the club’s announcement, UEFA would decide whether to exclude City, Chelsea, Real, Man Utd, Arsenal from the ongoing UCL and UEL semi-finals in the next days after meeting with the legal team.
