Premier League outlines plans to go global <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>LONDON (AFP) - Cities like Hong Kong, Dubai and New York could be playing host to English Premier League matches by 2010 under radical plans put to the top flight's 20 clubs here on Thursday. Under the plan, which club chairmen agreed to explore, each team would play an extra match each season at an overseas venue with the results counting towards the final league table. The move would mean each club playing 39 matches over the season with a draw deciding which teams would face each other in the ten matches per season to be held outside of England. According to the BBC, the ten extra games would be allocated to five different overseas venues, with the two matches at each venue hosted on the same weekend. The league's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, was due to confirm details of the proposals later on Thursday, but it is unlikely any decision will be made before the league's annual summer meeting in June. The proposal will inevitably be highly controversial because of the possibility of imbalances in the matches that teams are drawn to play in their overseas games. For example, Manchester United could be drawn to face a struggling club like Derby while a title-chasing rival could be given a much tougher assignment against, say, a club like Everton. One way to mitigate that would be to have a system of seeding to ensure that the clubs at the top of the table all face opposition in the bottom half -- but that would reduce the attractiveness of the matches for cities bidding to host them. For the league, the overseas matches would be an opportunity to consolidate the huge popularity of English football around the globe, potentially boosting club revenues by increasing the value of broadcasting/new media rights and attracting new sponsors from the markets concerned. The sale of overseas broadcasting rights is the fastest-growing source of revenue for the Premier League. Booming demand from armchair fans in Asia and the Middle East increased their value for the 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10 seasons to 625 million pounds, double their level under the league's previous deal. British and Irish television rights will be worth 1.7 billion pounds over the same period but Scudamore warned earlier this year that the days of double-digit percentage rises in the fees paid by domestic broadcasters were numbered. Malcolm Clarke, the head of the Football Supporters Federation, predicted there would be a backlash from domestic fans against the proposals. "I'm fairly confident in predicting that the overwhelming majority of football supporters will be totally opposed," Clarke told the BBC. "This is yet another case of the PL threatening the tradition of our game simply to follow money. "The idea that teams can play a league game in a place where their supporters won't be able to go and watch them will be totally opposed by the vast majority of supporters." The plan could also prove controversial with football's world ruling body FIFA, which regards the popularity of the Premier League in regions like Asia as a barrier to the development of their own leagues and national sides. That issue was highlighted last year when Manchester United came in for some severe criticism for playing a pre-season friendly in Malaysia at the same time as the country was jointly hosting the Asian Cup. Lawrie Sanchez, the former Northern Ireland manager, also foresees tensions. "Other national associations won't be happy about the Premier League coming into their game, taking sponsors, taking advertising, taking revenue from their game," Sanchez said. The Premier League's proposal to go global follows similar moves by the National Football League (NFL) in the United States, which organised a regular season match between the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants at London's Wembley stadium in October. The event was so successful -- a scramble for tickets resulting in the 90,000-capacity venue being sold out -- that the NFL is planning a rematch later this year.</div>
don't know if it would work. Football is already global but when the giants and the Dolphins came over it was to promote a sport that is only big in America.
i know ppl in TO would love to see some EPL, as it is TFC sells out and when the big clubs from Europe come over, things really get crazy!~
Yeah I went to a game (Barcelona vs New York) 2 years ago, at the Giants stadium, the thing was sold out. (more than 75,000 fans) It was an amazing experience even though it was a friendly game.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (CelticKing @ Feb 7 2008, 02:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Yeah I went to a game (Barcelona vs New York) 2 years ago, at the Giants stadium, the thing was sold out. (more than 75,000 fans) It was an amazing experience even though it was a friendly game.</div> I remember that, I was on holiday at the time, twas quite cool.
No to the idea 1) tradition is going out the window lets keeps the last bits of it 2) When we are restoring the national crisis 3) Turn into finance war 4) Too many games
This is an awful idea. It takes the game away from the fans and is only to make money. Anyway Blatter won't let it happen so its all fine.
Worst idea ever. Just think Arse-nil and Manure title race goes to 39th game. Arse-nil have to play Derby and Manure have to play chavski. Arse-nil would have played Derby 3 times and Manure would hav played chavski 3 times.
