Bluelion7
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- Aug 27, 2021
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It is. The same problem with all the leagues outside the premiere league to one degree or another.Can't help but think that Bayerns monopoly and stranglehold over Bundesliga is killing the product.
The fact that the year end outcome is essentially pre-ordained was listed as the number one reason by most viewers simply prefer the premiere league. They will follow what happens in other leagues, they will keep up with what their favorite players are doing, but often you can do that with highlights on places like YouTube. By and large they are not watching the league games of other leagues week to week, and TV companies are responding by not offering them very good rights to their games.
But this isn’t an easily fixed issue. For all the flack the FA gets they have simply created a much better product. The amount of profit sharing the lowest top division teams get is much higher than other leagues… MUCH higher. The golden parachutes teams going down get are paltry or don’t exist other places. The level of investment in things like academies are much higher in England.
Credit to Man United really. There was a time they had enough leverage they could have strong armed the FA, infiltrated everything, and created a stranglehold on the EPL, but they chose not to do that, and it was the right decision.
And then it got even better when Liecester City won the League. And now Arsenal, a “has been” club are back and leading the league with exciting football. You genuinely don’t know what will happen from the start of the EPL to the end.
And every year the exodus of top talent, not from clubs like Bayern or Real, but from Valencia, Atleti Dortmund, Bayer, etc to mid level EPL clubs grows. The EPL has nearly twice the number of players at the WC as the Bundesliga this year; another gap that widens every 4 years. And many of this players from the Bundesliga at the tournament are waiting for? Big money offers to go to primarily the EPL.
People get angry when this is spoken of out loud.. which is weird. It’s in articles all over the place; articles spanning decades as a warning. But that assumes that if we don’t talk about it the problem will go away .. which is obviously absurd.
Back before I could really watch any sort of European football in tv (for a lot of us regularly getting to see games of any sort didn’t start til around 2006), the team I followed from articles, buying jerseys, etc was Bayern. I really thought highly of their whole structure and how it’s like a giant family juggernaut. I still admire it. But the fact that they didn’t do more to enhance the entirety of the Bundesliga ecosystem was a bad, shortsighted move.
The fact that it is commonly accepted that Bayern have almost first refusal on any top German player at another German club is … not good for their product.