English Premier League, not respected abroad?

[Zatman]

sorry i meant all of the Spanish clubs were in a mess. bad wording on my part

[BOF]

Ah OK, yeah absolutely. I agree in that case. The big 2 are built on a house of cards and Barça took out loans to pay their players only last year or the year before. The whole Spanish system is stacked towards the big getting bigger. The trouble with that is the flipside is you potentially lose the small fry (the small get smaller). And without them, the ripple effect means taking it to its natural conclusion means you'll have 2 teams left playing each other. The English way of one common TV deal that benefits all clubs equally is actually far healthier. The Glazers must look with envy at how Barça and Real can dictate their own terms indepedendently. And yet it's precisely because Man Utd can't go down that route that their league is so relatively healthy.

[The_Rev]

Absolutely.  Barcelona and Real Madrid's entire business model seems to depend on the hope that every other club in Spain is happy to turn up and get humped by them from now until the end of time.  It's unsustainable. 

[Zatman]

Absolutely.  Barcelona and Real Madrid's entire business model seems to depend on the hope that every other club in Spain is happy to turn up and get humped by them from now until the end of time.  It's unsustainable. 

 

the problem is the clubs have no backbone to make a stand. except Sevilla chairman but nobody supports him

[BOF]

And by allowing it to go on as long as they have, the other sides have weakened their positions to the point where they couldn't even suggest a breakaway league with a fairer TV deal without most of the country dying of laughter. Which might help their unemployment situation come to think of it.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Not respected abroad?

 

[LesDiablesRouges]

I'll give you folks the American perspective. The new TV deal with NBCsports/Comcast is for ... you guessed it the Premier League. Every single game will be shown on NBC Sports this year. No other league comes even close to the PL in terms of coverage in the US and consdiered how big of marketing opportunities there are here in the U.S. the PL will continue to grow in popularity. The problem with La Liga is that there's only 2  recognizable teams for the casual fan Real and Barca if you asked most casual fans they'd have trouble going past 3-4 teams that they could name in La Liga. Whereas in the PL there's United, Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool, and even Everton (due to Landon Donovan and Tim Howard having played there.) Villa is nowgetting exposure in the US due to Guzan, and Sudnerland will get eyballs due to Altidore.

 

The PL is difficult league to win a player of the year award because of how dfficult it is to dominate and the difference between the top teams and the bottom teams is nowehere as great as La Liga, Serie A etc.

[The_Rev]

The Premier League is easier for American media to cover though.  Everybody speaks English, so they can get interviews with players & managers, use ex pros as pundits and even just use a British commentary team.    I understand that probably 10-15% of the US population are fluent in Spanish too, most of those people live close to the Mexican border and presumably are more interested in Mexican football than any European league. 

[Qwpzxjor1]

The 5 players you used as examples spread out among 3 different countries as to where they ended up. I think the solution to your issue is a mathematical one.. there are less teams in the Premier League to do the buying, than there are in the rest of Europe combined..

As has also been said, I don't think what you say is true anyway, most of the big players end up here at least once in their careers. And even if you put aside Man Utd, Chelsea, etc.. then further down the food chain you have players coming to Premiership clubs just BECAUSE its the Premier League. Michu, Pablo Hernandez and our very own Benteke were all heavily influenced by the lure of players in the Premiership. If Ligue 1 had the same reputation then PSG and Monaco wouldn't need to spend half the money they are.

[leviramsey]

For every person I have met and spoken to about football, where I have traveled and so forth, Premier League has always been the most coveted and "best" league if you wanna call it that. If I could only choose one league then I would pick this one, no need to think about it.

 

That is cyclical though, I mean when I was growing up in the 1990s Serie A was the "best" league in the world, it's not even in the top tier for Champions League spots these days.  The Premier League might be doing well at the moment but it's not infallible.

Economically, no one's catching the Premier League for a long time.

The competition is the other major leagues in Europe, all of which are, to varying degrees more dependent on the Eurozone economy turning around. Germany's best placed, but there'd need to be a massive cultural shift (towards accepting higher ticket prices) or an increase in what Sky Deutschland is willing to pay (and Sky Deutschland's finances aren't in the best shape). It's unlikely that any of those leagues match the PL's growth in domestic revenue for a while, and the demographics in most of Europe aren't favorable either (the core audience for sports is men under 40, more or less, and those numbers aren't increasing in most of Europe).

Looking globally, the key advantage the English Premier League has is the first word there. English is the language of the global middle class, which is who buys pay TV subscriptions and who the sponsors want to reach. La Liga, as a whole, takes in between 100m and 200m a year in foreign TV: Aston Villa will get about 50m by itself.

There are maybe 30 clubs in the world capable of paying their top 20 players (more or less their first team) 500k per week. Twenty of those clubs are in the Premier League.