Bernd Reichart (Scheidegg, Germany; 49 years old), the CEO of A22, the company promoting the Super League, receives EL PAÍS in the lobby of the office building in the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid where Key Capital, the company, has its headquarters. investment firm that controls the company and that has helped Real Madrid, for example, obtain the latest loan of 370 million euros to complete the renovation of the stadium. From the auditorium of that building he presented the latest Super League proposal on Thursday, a few hours after hearing the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) which, among other things, declared illegal the procedures with which UEFA stopped the first attempt at the competition in April 2021.
Ask. What was it like when you learned of the ruling?
Answer. First of all, much joy, many congratulations from all sides. Also from the clubs, which were pending. They said: “Wow, we didn't expect that clarity. Here it says 'abuse of dominant position', 'illegal'… It surprised us all a little.
Q. Also to you?
R. U.S. too. We didn't have that optimism. And when there is a sentence of 200 or 300 pages, you always think that something will remain to be defined, or there will be a gray area. And it was very forceful. That was the first reaction, widely shared with the clubs. We have the expectation that everything can change, that it is truly a new time.
Q. But many clubs published messages saying they were still with UEFA.
R. Some warned us and said: “In this context, we have to release a statement. You will see that the word 'Super League' does not appear and you will see that we are referring to the old model, or we left it very open.” And we understand, we obviously understand that some clubs, after 70 years of monopoly, need time to clear their heads and realize that the fear of threats and sanctions from UEFA has lost its legal basis.
Q. It was different in 2021.
R. I was not here, but the simple fact that a judge in Madrid had to protect the clubs from destruction is enough for me; For UEFA to take away any European perspective and their income was to risk the continuity of the biggest clubs in the world. And if not, just take a look at the AppleTV documentary where the president says verbatim: “I didn't even look at the proposal, I went to war.”
Q. What did you think when, after learning of the ruling, Ceferin said: “We will not try to stop them. We didn't even try to stop them before”?
R. I thought about Enrique Cerezo and his comment the other day on Onda Cero. [”No quisimos arriesgarnos a que la UEFA nos pudiera sancionar”, dijo el presidente del Atlético para explicar por qué se habían desmarcado del proyecto]. Maybe it's part of the arrogance and arrogance that UEFA has accustomed us to.
Q. What are they going to do now?
R. Try to group and put together the best competition, keep collecting ideas; Any club is invited to propose, to say 'I love it, but here I question…' We want to continue doing that dialogue. Let's go for it in this new year.
Q. According to point 142 of the ruling, UEFA retains the ability to authorize competitions within its system. What do you think of the authorization criteria that you approved for that in 2022?
R. It is a joke. But the monopoly has been opened, the door has been opened to free competition in the market, it has been declared that there was not even a procedure to access the market, and that those that have been invented later are not legal either.
Q. When you want to start the competition, will you ask UEFA for authorization?
R. This project will always comply with the procedure. We are linked from the European Union to the laws of the European Union. We are not a private Swiss organization trying to escape the rule of European law. Explain to me where the boxes are, where I put the green tick, and we are going to comply with that to the letter.
Q. On the day of the ruling he said that football was free, but he did not want to name any club that is in the project. Because?
R. Giving a statement about which club is interested, which club has been interested in the past, would only result in us dividing football and making it much more difficult to unite it, which is our goal.
Q. Doesn't not giving names take away their credibility?
R. In much of Europe, a project led by the two biggest clubs in the world is very easy to consolidate.
Q. But when you meet with clubs, they will ask who else is interested.
R. Yes, and I allow myself to be a little more open. And I am also aware that the clubs also talk to each other, and contrast. It seems logical to me. What does not seem logical to me is article 51 of the UEFA statutes, which is called “prohibited relationships.”
Q. If Girona is not the League champion, but comes second, third or fourth, it does have access to the first European competition that exists now, which is the Champions League. In their proposal they would only qualify if they win the League and would enter the third division. Isn't it difficult to tell modest clubs and their fans that second place does not give them access to the great European competition?
R. The clubs themselves can explain it to the fans, who have formed and decided on this format, that it will be for a reason, and if this proposal does not convince the clubs, it will not be done. But I am convinced, analyzing it coldly, of two aspects. First, sporting merit. Why does Girona go to the Champions League and the champion of Austria or Belgium does not? Is that meritocratic, is that fair? The second conviction, my personal one, and I discuss it with anyone, is that there are a lot of clubs that fail to take advantage of the possibility of entering the Champions League, playing a first phase, unfortunately going home in December, not having been able to adjust their squad to the competitiveness that exists in the Champions League, and faltering in the domestic League. We have many examples, I know my Germans what has happened to them in the past. I want to debate football. We can finally do it.
Q. Why do you think the Super League proposal is better?
R. First you have the opportunity to play an entire season, from the first day to the last day, not that after a few games you go home before even eating your nougat. No, you have 14 games, you can even dare to invest more in your squad to live up to a double tournament that perhaps you are not used to if you come from below pushing. And then you have two possibilities to reconfirm your place in Europe. Now Girona has to win the Champions League to retain its place in Europe. You can be a finalist in the Champions League and it's worth nothing the following year? It doesn't seem fair to us. We can adjust meritocracy and openness as we want, in the end the clubs will do it.
Q. They estimate at least 5,000 million euros of annual income through a new platform streaming free call Unify. What are they based on?
R. In the power of the best football competition, without inconsequential matches. It is the only football that is seen and followed on all continents. But many customers in Europe are not satisfied with the offer, because access is prohibitive and super complicated, with two or three different subscriptions. And outside Europe, value was destroyed by piracy, and Thebes says a lot about that. [Javier Tebas, presidente de LaLiga]. We want to invite an unprecedented community of fans to consolidate, connect them with their clubs, make them identifiable by them, and so that they can address them; It has enormous value for advertising, and also for clubs.
Q. How do they arrive at the calculation of 5,000, and not 7,000 or 3,000?
R. I cannot break down our models for you now. There are calculations that I know from my 20 years in commercial television, where free football financed by advertising also existed: it is not the invention of the wheel. The axis is the enormous coverage in a fragmented media market. The few events that provide extensive coverage are worth more than ever. You can take a look at American television and how advertising is sold in increasingly scarce broad coverage.
Q. They say they have funds for three years…
R. Guaranteed.
Q. To build the Unify platform?
R. No, for both things. We need investors to launch the technology. We understand that it is something new and that we have to show that it works and generates what the clubs expect. That is why we guarantee in the first three-year cycle a guaranteed minimum for the clubs, which in the future will always share 100% of the net income generated by Unify.
Q. What type of investors are they?
R. Europeans and Americans.
Q. The judicial process pending in the Madrid court that transferred the consultation to the CJEU could last for years. Don't you think the passage of time harms you or do you don't care if you start in two years or five?
R. If you tell me that you notice a lot of concern about me starting now, I take it as a good sign. I hope we can do it as soon as possible.
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