HibeeJibee Posted April 24, 2018 Share Posted April 24, 2018 So FIFA are wanting to establish 2 new tournaments: a 24-team 'Club World Championship', held every 4yrs; and a 'World League of Nations', effectively expanding the new UEFA Nations League and the equivalent CONCACAF League of Nations into a global format capped by an 8-team finals tournament. Unfortunately the Confederations Cup would apparently be binned, in order to free-up space every fourth June.https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43868703 They're also looking at retrospectively turning the Qatar 2022 WC into a Middle Eastern WC with 48-teams not 32. They say these tournaments could generate £25bn over 12yrs. What is more unusual is that they propose to do this by effectively selling half the equity in the tournaments to unnamed business investors. FIFA itself would not run the tournaments but would become a 51% stakeholder in a separate company with the rest of the shares being sold. FIFA would hold half the board positions. Although the investors cannot be identified due to non-disclosure agreements they are said to come from Asia, Europe and North America. This separate company could market the commercial and media rights (from which I'm assuming FIFA and the investors would then proportionately share the profits). Sensible idea or potentially dangerous territory? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thistle_do_nicely Posted April 24, 2018 Share Posted April 24, 2018 13 minutes ago, HibeeJibee said: So FIFA are wanting to establish 2 new tournaments: a 24-team 'Club World Championship', held every 4yrs; and a 'World League of Nations', effectively expanding the new UEFA Nations League and the equivalent CONCACAF League of Nations into a global format capped by an 8-team finals tournament. Unfortunately the Confederations Cup would apparently be binned, in order to free-up space every fourth June.https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43868703They're also looking at retrospectively turning the Qatar 2022 WC into a Middle Eastern WC with 48-teams not 32. They say these tournaments could generate £25bn over 12yrs. What is more unusual is that they propose to do this by effectively selling half the equity in the tournaments to unnamed business investors. FIFA itself would not run the tournaments but would become a 51% stakeholder in a separate company with the rest of the shares being sold. FIFA would hold half the board positions. Although the investors cannot be identified due to non-disclosure agreements they are said to come from Asia, Europe and North America. This separate company could market the commercial and media rights (from which I'm assuming FIFA and the investors would then proportionately share the profits). Sensible idea or potentially dangerous territory? In effect does that mean adding a bunch of jobbers like Kuwait to the tournament because they've got money? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forameus Posted April 24, 2018 Share Posted April 24, 2018 Club World Championship - meh. Not sure it'll gain much traction, and it'll essentially turn in Champions League Two, as outside of a few exceptions I doubt clubs from outside Europe would be able to compete. Do we really need another competition to watch Bayern/Barcelona/Madrid/Man City etc? Can see the bigger clubs treating the games like friendlies while the South American sides really, really care. World Nations League - would this still be regionalised? If so, doesn't really change a whole lot apart from having the expanded finals tournament. Nations League is one of the better ideas that has been come up with in modern football, so good to extend that. Confederations Cup - presume they'll just put one of their new tournaments in the gap to test out the host country, so that's fair enough. Shame though, as the CC can throw up some decent matches. Expanded World Cup - f**k it, bring everyone in. I'm not as against it as some seem to be, and not just because it gives us a better chance of qualifying. I'm not going to turn my nose up and go all elitist by pretending that putting two "good" teams together means a good game. I'm quite happy to watch two absolute diddies going at it in a low-quality, high-entertainment game. Plus you'll get to see things you haven't before, and probably never will. That's something that used to be key to the World Cup being so exciting. Like if it was down to watching Denmark vs Panama or something like that, I'd much rather watch an African nation full of hope, drums and fucking happiness play an absolutely mental South American outfit. Equity - does this not throw up the possibility of companies essentially buying a change to the tournament? I know FIFA like to meddle, and they're changing the tournament to look very, very different to how it used to be, but it does seem like an odd decision for FIFA to essentially sell their flagship tournament Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HibeeJibee Posted April 24, 2018 Author Share Posted April 24, 2018 5 minutes ago, Thistle_do_nicely said: In effect does that mean adding a bunch of jobbers like Kuwait to the tournament because they've got money? No idea. There's long been raised eyebrows over Qatar's ability to host even 32-teams, given their number of stadiums has already fallen from 12 to 8 (of which 4 are in Doha, only 2 currently exist, 2-3 haven't been started yet, and even 1 city doesn't currently exist). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross. Posted April 24, 2018 Share Posted April 24, 2018 26 minutes ago, HibeeJibee said: Sensible idea or potentially dangerous territory? Dangerous. Serious investors would expect a financial return for their money. The big hitters would be given every advantage going to ensure they made the final stages, in order to increase the financial returns. I'd expect that certain teams would be given guaranteed qualification and something like the CL "Champions Route" to be introduced to keep the number of diddies down. It would also be a trial for a similar approach to World Cups. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broomhill Ultra Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 Club World Championship is not going to generate interest. A Euro Superleague of the 20 biggest clubs is coming, TV will demand it. The CL will be the route in for other teams initially before more tiers are added. No CWC will compete with that. World League of Nations sounds alright. The WC should be shrinking imo - 16 teams is plenty. The commercial stuff just sounds fucking creepy.They should be sorting out the Scottish pyramid before any of this other stuff anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Estragon Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 On 24/04/2018 at 13:48, forameus said: Expanded World Cup - f**k it, bring everyone in. I'm not as against it as some seem to be, and not just because it gives us a better chance of qualifying. I'm not going to turn my nose up and go all elitist by pretending that putting two "good" teams together means a good game. I'm quite happy to watch two absolute diddies going at it in a low-quality, high-entertainment game. Plus you'll get to see things you haven't before, and probably never will. That's something that used to be key to the World Cup being so exciting. Like if it was down to watching Denmark vs Panama or something like that, I'd much rather watch an African nation full of hope, drums and fucking happiness play an absolutely mental South American outfit. Hope, drums, and fucking happiness. Brilliant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nsr Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 Scrap the idea of teams representing countries, and instead introduce teams representing the corporations sponsoring the whole thing. CocaCola United v Pepsi Rovers. There is no chance in hell FIFA wouldn't do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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