Asian Super League
Target the second largest tournament in the world
Among the AFC's series of competition reform schemes, the most notable aspect of club competitions is the plan to introduce a "Super League" (or "elite tournament") of higher level and quality on the basis of the existing AFC Champions League. However, according to a series of assumptions by the AFC, this club event is not just a change of name, but more of a hope to conform to the current trend of the commercial development of world football, and make substantial breakthroughs in business and market development, and its ultimate goal is to become the second largest club event in world football after the Champions League.
In addition, the AFC Executive Committee held in Doha at the end of March decided to create a club competition similar to the Asian Super League on the basis of the existing AFC Champions League, and has set up a task force, including four member associations in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Uzbekistan in the West Asian region, and members of the four member associations in East Asia, including China, Japan, South Korea and Australia, with the aim of further comprehensively improving the level of Asian club competitions and pushing Asian club competitions to a new stage. Although the name of the event needs to be further confirmed, to some extent, this event is actually a shrunken version of the AFC Champions League.
1
The event budget is over $100 million
The reason why the Champions League attracts European clubs, in addition to the high level of competition, is the high prize money. According to the amount of prize money announced by UEFA for each stage of the 2021-22 Champions League, a team can earn 15.64 million euros in the group stage as long as they participate in the Champions League. In addition, the prize money is 2.8 million euros for a win and 930,000 euros for a draw. €9.6 million is awarded for the Round of 16, €10.6 million for the Quarterfinals, €12.5 million for the Final Four, €15.5 million for the Finals, and €4.5 million for the winning team. In other words, the team that wins the championship alone receives €85.1 million in prize money.
According to the AFC plan, the total budget of the AFC Premier League in its initial stages is more than 100 million US dollars. Each club will receive a $2 million entry fee as long as it qualifies, with additional prize money at different stages. The total prize money for the team that won the championship was $14 million. Although this figure cannot be compared with the Champions League, the overall budget and the amount of bonuses have increased significantly compared with the current operation of the AFC Champions League.
In 2021, the total cost of the AFC for the AFC Champions League is $40 million. Due to the impact of the epidemic, the AFC Champions League continues to adopt the tournament system, and the AFC gives each host area a subsidy of US$1.5 million, covering additional costs such as nucleic acid testing and epidemic prevention. The prize money for the champion team is $4 million, the runner-up is $2 million, and the team that reaches the final is each awarded $120,000 in transportation grants. The prize money for reaching the final four is $250,000, the prize money for reaching the quarterfinals is $150,000, and the qualifying team in the group receives $100,000 per team, while the winning prize money in the group stage is $50,000 per game and $10,000 in draws. Before the finals, each team will receive a one-time transportation grant of $60,000. If the team participating in the AFC Champions League wins all six of the group stages and wins the championship, it can theoretically end up with a prize of $4.8 million. So far this year, the total budget of the AFC Champions League submitted by the AFC is 37 million US dollars, which is 3 million US dollars lower than last year, the most important thing is that the home stadium of West Asia is concentrated in Saudi Arabia, so the expenditure is reduced, while the amount of other bonuses and subsidies remains unchanged.
Therefore, if the "Asian Super League" is introduced, the final championship team prize money alone will increase from the current $4.8 million to $14 million. This is of course quite attractive to the current Asian club. If you add other subsidies such as transportation subsidies, no matter from which point of view, participating in the Asian Super League is a sure thing to lose, unlike the previous AFC Champions League teams may also post money. Of course, the so-called "upside-down money" is mainly used for travel transportation and accommodation costs, because the AFC transportation subsidy only provides business class round-trip air ticket costs when participating in the championship and runner-up finals, and the group stage is all calculated in economy class, whether it is the Chinese Super League or The Korean and Japanese clubs competing in the away field, especially to Australia, etc., the round trip is all business class.
Therefore, from the perspective of economic benefits and market development alone, the Asian Super League is still very tempting. Moreover, under the premise of determining that the best clubs in Asia can participate in this competition, copyright will also have broad market prospects. This can form a virtuous circle.
2
Membership associations have a maximum of three teams
According to the AFC plan, the next AFC Champions League (that is, the 2023-24 season) will implement a cross-annual format, which will also be the first season for the AFC Champions League to resume the cross-annual format. After a season of trial runs, a new "Asian Super League" will be launched in the 2024-25 season.
Although in the spirit of the AFC Executive Committee meeting, this new tournament task force includes representatives of four member associations in East and West Asia, but in the end, will it be the top eight or top ten member association clubs from the AFC's technical points rankings that will finally participate in the "AFC Super League"? The jury is still out. At the beginning of the AFC Champions League, the AFC only allowed the top six member association clubs in the east and west asia regions to participate in the technical points ranking, and when the army was expanded in 2021, it was open to the top 12 member associations in the eastern and western asian regions. In the future, the Asian Super League will also be based on the technical points ranking of the AFC member associations. In this regard alone, the Chinese Super League is actually in a rather unfavorable situation, because the two clubs that finally participated in the group stage this year sent out the youth army, the loss is even greater, and the ranking of the Chinese Super League may even be fully overtaken by Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia.
The starting team of the "Asian Super League" is envisaged to be between 16 and 20 teams, and in terms of seat distribution, the biggest difference from the current AFC Champions League is that there is no "0.5 seats" in the allocation of seats. In terms of the current allocation of seats in the AFC Champions League, according to the technical points ranking, the top two have "3+1" seats, of which the fourth team needs to participate in a play-off round, and only the winner can enter the group stage. However, in the future Asian Super League, a member association can only have a maximum of 3 participating teams.
3
AFC Champions League or AFC Champions League or merger
The AFC founded the Super League, which undoubtedly hopes that the member association clubs with conditions and foundation can accelerate the pace of development, and then comprehensively enhance the competitiveness against traditional clubs in Europe and the United States, so as to win more honors for Asian football in the future world club competitions. But after the super league was created, what about the AFC Cup and the current secondary club competition, the AFC Cup?
Unlike UEFA's current Champions League, Europa League and newly created UEFA Cup, which are completely open, club teams from UEFA's 55 member associations have the opportunity to play in the Europa League after missing the Champions League, and after missing the Europa League, they can also have the opportunity to play in the UEFA Cup. However, among the 46 member associations under the AFC, the AFC Champions League is a relatively professional member association of the AFC member associations to send clubs to participate, while the member associations that compete in the AFC Cup belong to the clubs that have not yet started to professionalize or have not yet been professionalized, and the latter are not eligible to play in the AFC Champions League at all. The AFC has developed two completely different standards for the AFC Champions League and the AFC Cup, and of course, the purpose of drawing up different standards is also to hope that the member associations with underdeveloped football can speed up the pace of professionalization.
In the future, after the establishment of the Super League, which clubs belonging to the member associations of the Super League will participate in the AFC Champions League? Or will the current AFC Champions League and AFC Cup matches continue to be retained? Or is it like UEFA, breaking through the barriers between the AFC Champions League and the AFC Cup, and organically connecting the two events? All of this also requires further study.
At present, the Asian Super League has been officially put on the agenda, but before it is finally implemented, the AFC still has a lot of research work and details to be fully demonstrated and implemented. As for Chinese football, before the Introduction of the Asian Super League, how to better respond to the changes in the competition in Asian football? This topic is more worth discussing.
4
Create a new "shrunken version of the AFC Champions League"
In the development of modern football so far, in addition to the consideration of factors such as football skills and tactics, the development of the business market has increasingly shown its importance, and even to some extent has overtaken the football itself, so we can often hear the saying, "Football was made by the poor and stolen by the rich"! Opponents of this trend insist: "It is a game, not a product, a sport not a market and a show not a business!"). "But the reality is that no one can stop the commercialization of football, just as FIFA, chaired by Infantino, has been insisting on changing the World Cup from the past four years to a biennial one, essentially adding more than $5 billion in revenue."
Therefore, it is easy to understand why over the years, many world and continental enthusiasm for expanding the army, just as the AFC has increased the Asian Cup from 16 teams to 24 teams, and the AFC Champions League has increased from 32 teams to 40 teams, because the larger the scale, the more people in different countries and regions are attracted, the easier it is to sell copyrights, and the income will naturally increase significantly. However, when the scale of the event is getting larger and larger, the level of competition and the quality of the competition have not shown a positive ratio, but the ornamentation has decreased significantly. Because of this, those strong dialogues have shown their value more and more, so there will be a "European Super League" initiative. This event is the product of this background. For now, though, the name of the event has yet to be further confirmed, or "Elite Club Championship" or possibly "Super League."
The reason why the AFC selected three countries in West Asia, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, is that the professional leagues of these three countries are the professional leagues with the largest and highest level of investment in West Asia, while China, Japan and South Korea are the three professional leagues with the highest level and the most investment in East Asia. Pulling up Uzbekistan and Australia, because they are the two representatives of Central Asia and Southeast Asia respectively, the relative level is also high, which can reflect the extensiveness of Asian football, thus showing the comprehensiveness of the issues considered by the AFC when it founded the new tournament. Moreover, considering that European clubs are far more professional than in Asia, and the history and influence of Asian professional clubs cannot be compared with giants such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juve, etc., the possibility and chance of success of the AFC to organize the Super League are far better than those of the European Super League.
In an interview with the UAE media, AFC Secretary-General Windsor once said: "The purpose of the AFC to create this new tournament is to accelerate the pace of catching up with world football at the technical level and market development level. The AFC has been successful in the Asian Cup, with the number of teams growing from 16 to 24 and the number of teams in the AFC Champions League from 32 to 40, all out of the development race itself. Today, we have a lot of new ideas to change the face of many competitions in Asia, especially the AFC Champions League, which we will officially announce after a detailed and complete study. I must point out that we have achieved remarkable results in terms of market development, commercial sponsorship and revenue from the event. Moreover, we look forward to further breakthroughs in event copyright in the next two years. ”
From Windsor's speech, it seems that it is not difficult to see the true intention of the AFC to establish the "Asian Super League". The expansion of the AFC Champions League has indeed greatly increased the attention of the AFC Champions League, after all, the top 12 member associations in East Asia and West Asia in the technical points ranking of the AFC member associations can send teams to participate, but the quality and standard of the overall event have shown a downward trend. In this case, replacing it with a relatively higher level of competition for the participating team, that is, the "Asian Super League", has become a wiser choice for the AFC.