EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ – JULY 22: Bruno Fernandes #8 of Manchester United celebrates with teammates … [+]
The Premier League will be coming to America this summer.
Nine of the eleven Premier League teams that have announced their pre-season tours will be heading Stateside.
The pick of those fixtures include Liverpool taking on Arsenal in Philadelphia and Manchester City playing Chelsea in Ohio. Of the so-called “big-six”, only Tottenham Hotspur, who are traveling to Japan and Australia, have not yet announced any pre-season fixtures in the United States.
But could regular Premier League games be heading to the United States in the near future? An announcement by FIFA this week makes that more likely.
The FIFA Council, in a meeting in Bangkok this week, agreed to create a working group to look into the impact of leagues holding games abroad.
FIFA’s main considerations when looking at the issue include its fairness on fans, the balance between home and away fixtures and sporting fairness within the fixture schedule, the impact on the leagues in the country the games are being moved to, and issues of player and fan welfare and safety.
This comes after FIFA settled an antitrust lawsuit with Relevent Sports in April this year, with Relevent Sports saying that FIFA would consider changing its rules about playing games outside a league’s home territory.
Back in 2008, the Premier League had considered playing a 39th game each season overseas. But this time the Premier League is unlikely to be the trailblazer behind overseas games.
Rather, it is Spain’s LaLiga which is pushing the most to play league games overseas. It already attempted to hold a match between Barcelona and Girona in Miami in 2019, which was canceled, leading to the lawsuit between FIFA and Relevent Sports.
LaLiga is now pushing to hold league games in the States as early as in the 2025/26 season. LaLiga boss Javier Tebas, talking to Spanish newspaper Expansion, said “Official matches in the U.S. will strengthen our position in the North American market, which is the second for LaLiga after Spain.”
But should LaLiga lead the way, the Premier League might follow.
Fan data firm CLV, cited in Insider Sport, estimates that there are 88 million soccer fans in the U.S. and that 42% of these fans are undecided on which team to support. Head of CLV, Neil Joyce goes on to say that if Premier League clubs don’t take the opportunity to capture these fans, they could lose momentum to Major League Soccer and to their European rivals.
U.S. sports leagues have already started taking games abroad, with recent events including American Football in London last October and Major League Baseball throwing the first pitch of the 2024 season in Seoul. Roughly half of Premier League teams have American ownership in some form, and those owners will be well aware of the strategies behind successfully holding those games overseas.
Such a move won’t go down well with UK-based fans, but should LaLiga make the first move, Premier League owners might try to argue that overseas games are necessary to compete with Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Owners of Premier League clubs might not be ready to push for games in the States just yet, but they will certainly be paying close attention to FIFA’s working group and its report into the impact of overseas games.
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