Super League promoter A22 Sports mentioned on Tuesday that it had submitted a proposal to UEFA and FIFA, asking soccer’s governing our bodies to formally recognise its proper to organise a brand new European competitors.
The transfer follows a ruling by the European Court of Justice in December 2023 — after the Super League sought safety for its plans underneath EU regulation — which held that UEFA and FIFA had been “abusing a dominant place,” calling their guidelines governing new codecs “arbitrary.”
UEFA then mentioned it believed guidelines introduced in for the reason that Super League’s tried launch in April 2021 had ensured it now complied with EU regulation.
On Tuesday, A22 mentioned it had utilized to UEFA and FIFA for “official recognition for its new cross-border European membership soccer competitions,” arguing that the ECJ ruling meant that “any competitors the place qualification is inclusive and meritocratic, and which complies with the general match calendar will be formally established.”
A22 mentioned its newest proposal included modifications to its mannequin — which was most just lately set out hours after the December 2023 ruling — after consulting with soccer golf equipment, leagues and different teams.
ESPN has approached UEFA for remark.
“A key function is a revised qualification system during which membership participation is predicated on annual, home league efficiency,” the A22 assertion mentioned.
“Our in depth engagement with key stakeholders revealed quite a lot of urgent challenges going through the game together with rising subscription prices for followers, an overloaded participant calendar, inadequate funding in girls’s soccer, and dissatisfaction with the format and governance of the present pan-European competitions,” A22 CEO Bernd Reichart mentioned. “Our proposal is designed to immediately deal with these challenges.”
A22 has mentioned Super League matches could be broadcast on a brand new streaming service, Unify, which might supply a free-to-air mannequin supported by promoting.
On Tuesday, the agency mentioned the Super League would now be generally known as “Unify League” to mirror that.
In December 2023, Reichart mentioned the brand new format would contain a three-league, 64-club males’s competitors and a two-league, 32-club girls’s competitors — with promotion and relegation between leagues — to exchange the UEFA Champions League and Women’s Champions League.
On Tuesday, A22 mentioned the newest plans for the Unify League would see 96 golf equipment participate within the males’s competitors in 4 leagues. The high two leagues, “Star” and “Gold,” would every embody 16 golf equipment, divided into teams of eight. The “Blue” and “Union” leagues would host 32 golf equipment every, additionally in teams of eight.
In the league stage, groups would face the others of their group, dwelling and away, earlier than qualifiers progress to the knockout stage. The semifinals and remaining could be one-off matches, performed at impartial venues. Clubs would qualify based mostly on annual home efficiency, with matches going down in midweek.
The Super League undertaking was initially backed by 12 member golf equipment: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, AC Milan, Arsenal, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
However, the Premier League golf equipment quickly distanced themselves from the plans underneath strain from followers and the U.Okay. authorities.
After the December 2023 ruling, the Premier League, Bundesliga, LaLiga and Serie A — in addition to quite a lot of high golf equipment and the European Club Association — all reiterated their opposition to the Super League, and their help for competitions organized by UEFA.
LaLiga president Javier Tebas said in a post on X on Tuesday: “Those from @A22Sports are again with a brand new concept: they produce codecs as in the event that they have been churros, with out analyzing or learning the financial and sporting results on the competitions. The tv mannequin they suggest solely favors the massive golf equipment, (they usually realize it…) whereas endangering the financial stability of the nationwide leagues and their golf equipment.”
