It was February 2008 when a meeting of Premier League executives and chairmen at London’s Churchill Hotel concluded with the decision to press ahead with plans for what would become known as the infamous “39th Game”.
An extra round of competitive league fixtures, to be played in January. Five games in five cities around the world, each going to the highest bidder.
“I’ve never seen the mood in the boardroom quite like today, the enthusiasm of all clubs,” the late David Gold, then co-owner of Birmingham City, said at the time. “The reason for it is that they know the large clubs can go abroad and spread their product.”
The top-flight clubs thought they had sparked English football’s global revolution. They patted each other on the back, probably guffawed a lot, then started counting the money that would roll in – an estimated £40m to £80m per year.
“We have to recognise this is a world game and sport has become an international business,” former Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said. “The Premier League is in a prime position to take advantage of this. It’s as big a strategic move as the league has made since it started. But if we didn’t do it, another sport will come and do it to us.”
Then came the backlash. It wasn’t quite European Super League proportions, but it wasn’t far off, the rage reaching far and wide. The Football Association, who had a rule forbidding matches to be played abroad, was frosty on the idea. As was the UK government.
“Is it April 1st?” a struggling Middlesbrough manager called Gareth Southgate said. Steve Bruce, then Wigan manager, said: “Can you imagine going to Fergie and telling him, ‘By the way, you’re not playing at home this week, you are playing in Japan?’”
The Times’ back-page splash the following day read: “Fans furious over Premier League plans for world domination.” The Daily Mail’s back page described Scudamore as “The man who sold our game”.
In a tense press conference, when Scudamore was asked by a Sky News reporter why fans were not polled on the idea, he responded that if supporters were allowed to vote on everything in football all games would still kick off at 3pm on a Saturday and then where would the broadcaster be?
The plans in 2008 were abandoned. But they never went away. They were filed in a cabinet somewhere under ideas to try again in a more favourable climate, where all the best ideas are filed.
And here we are 15 years later, the discussion of competitive Premier League games abroad has peeped its head above the parapet yet again, via one of the organisers of the 2026 World Cup. America would “die” for a competitive fixture Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, said.
The idea had resurfaced in 2010, then again in 2014. By then the NFL and NBA were coming to London for league games to spread their product and Premier League execs were adamant they wanted a piece of the action. The 39th-game element was removed, the proposal instead being that one regular match weekend be played abroad. “It will happen at some point,” Scudamore said. “Whether it is on my watch, who knows.”
Indeed the landscape has shifted significantly. In 2014, TV rights deals were split roughly £3.4bn domestically to £2.1bn overseas. In the latest round of negotiations, overseas overtook domestic for the first time: £5.05bn to £5bn. In a particularly uncertain domestic broadcasting landscape, that’s clearly the direction of travel.
The opening of the Premier League’s new office in New York recently coincided with the first official pre-season tournament, the Premier League Summer Series, featuring eight top-flight sides.
Meanwhile, the Premier League has ceased being an inherently English product. Never mind managers and players, the majority of owners aren’t English, either. Next season, nine of the 20 clubs will be American-owned. And the thing with American sports team owners is, uprooting a club from its home and moving it hundreds of miles away is no big deal for them.
Fans will almost certainly protest it, but they also can’t escape their part in it. The demand for bigger transfers and subsequent increasing wages, the prevailing ethos that spending money is the only way to stand any chance, all creates the necessity for owners to seek more, bigger, better elsewhere. Scudamore was right. That elsewhere is around the world, not England.
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