Sorry, European Super League, but in soccer globalism vs. populism, guess who wins?

Supporters hold up placards critical of the proposed “European Super League” outside English Premier League club Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium in London on April 20. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)
Supporters hold up placards critical of the proposed “European Super League” outside English Premier League club Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium in London on April 20. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)

The announcement on Sunday that most of the richest soccer clubs in Europe planned to create a new “European Super League” may have seemed irrelevant to many Americans. The debacle of the league’s apparent implosion on Tuesday may have seemed equally irrelevant.

But this fiasco is actually the perfect template through which to view the ongoing debate between liberal globalism and national populism. As of Tuesday, it looked like populism won.

One must first understand the difference between European soccer and American sports. In America, sports teams are the property of their owners, who are granted monopolies over certain territories and permanent spots in a league. In reality, they own not teams but shares of the league, which they can use as they want. They can even move their teams to other locations.

In Europe, however, clubs are entirely independent of any particular league. Clubs are assigned to leagues within each country based on skill and can be moved between leagues depending on how well or poorly they perform. Each year, the bottom few teams in a league of higher skill go down one level — they are “relegated” — while the top few teams of the league move up one level — they are “promoted.” Legendary teams such as England’s Aston Villa or Germany’s Hamburger SV can go down while small-town teams such as England’s Bournemouth or Germany’s Paderborn can go up.

European soccer clubs are also rooted in neighborhoods and communities rather than cities. They are often the descendants of sporting clubs that served local factory workers as outlets for them to blow off some steam. Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen, for example, began with workers of the world-famous Bayer. Even today, fans must become dues-paying members of the club to buy tickets. History ties European teams to a specific set of people much more closely than any U.S. arrangement (other than the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, which is the only major U.S. sports team owned by the fans rather than a rich person or corporation).

This system means that fans believe the clubs are “theirs” in a way that most U.S. fans do not. Owners are often seen as “trustees” of the club and owe some duty to the fan base — especially to the dues-paying fan base. This is akin to a “stakeholder capitalism” model, which argues that decisions about a firm’s management must consider the interests of all investors, not just the owners.

Think of European clubs as a workplace with an informal union and the heavy hand of government sitting ominously in the background. Or sometimes in the foreground, as was the case when the Spanish government passed a law forbidding Spanish soccer giants Real Madrid and Barcelona from selling the television rights to their games separately from those sold by Spain’s top league, La Liga.

A sign reads "Give us our Arsenal back" outside Arsenal's Emirates Stadium in London on April 20. (Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
A sign reads "Give us our Arsenal back" outside Arsenal's Emirates Stadium in London on April 20. (Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

The rich owners of the proposed European league wanted to do away with this. They wanted to set up an American-style league with no promotion or relegation, and they wanted to be able to sell their television rights without sharing the proceeds with the lower-skilled leagues or the national football associations, as is currently the case. They would argue that this was all in the service of the broader, global fan base. The fans around the world who watch games only on television, these owners would say, want to see the best teams play each other more frequently. For them, only a league organized around that principle could give them what they want.

That was the theory, anyway. It is essentially the argument that defenders of liberal global capitalism make all the time. They argue that consumer preference is king, and that allowing owners of capital to make any arrangements they want is the best way to service the monarch. The fact that others — especially workers — are dependent upon the capitalist’s actions does not matter to the globalist. According to many free-trading globalists, the impersonal pursuit of economic efficiency and wealth maximization are the only values worth recognizing.

Opponents of the European Super League, on the other hand, made similar arguments as national populists. The nation and the community, they said, have interests that are equal to or stronger than those of the owners of capital or consumers. When those interests are threatened, it’s just and proper for legal recourse to prevent those interests from being trampled. Indeed, it’s notable that no German teams signed up for the new venture. That’s probably because the German football league system, the Bundesliga, already requires clubs to have majority fan ownership, and the minority owners of rich clubs such as Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund know they couldn’t get fan approval to destroy the system the community loves.

The logic of liberal global capitalism dictates that the European Super League should have prevailed, but its apparent collapse was probably inevitable. The “rights” of capital always ultimately rely on the consent of the people to allow them to take root. When democracy and capitalism battle, democracy — populism — always triumphs.

Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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