IMHO I think they are rather counting initially on the viewership that fans of the ESL clubs who hail from Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, and neutrals will generate. Those who do not have strong ties with the clubs at a local level will not care much about where the team is playing as long as they can see them playing against the best the world has to offer. And there are a lot of these types of fans out there. Hell, even I have been guilty of creating custom leagues in PES which would look suspiciously like the ESL. There are people who would love to see that mirrored in real life.I have been harping on this above, but I still can't wrap my head around this. If the business case laid out to JP Morgan was an explosion of revenue out of the states I just can not see any way this happens. Native (non ex-pat) Football fandom is still nascent here, and the majority of us take our cues from our ex-pat friends or from what we see on tv coming from Europe (just look at the MLS team names for gods sake). The complete negative reaction to this will trickle down to all the viewers and I just can not fathom any instance in which they maintain, let alone expand, on the current CL viewer base. Few people here are going to pay extra for this. I guess we would watch it if it gets bundled into Amazon Prime or Disney+, but we would not seek it out and I would drop any streaming service that starts charging extra.
tldr; if this plan at all requires a significant viewer base in the US they fecked up.
Eventually, there will be kids who will know only ESL as being the crême de la crême of football, and they won’t have a clue what we “legacy fans” (urgh) are talking about, or even why we cherish the old system so much.
They are playing the long game, but I think that they unfortunately won’t even have to wait that long before being vindicated for their decision to break away.