RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) When I was a child, I used to hear a line, one of those typical of self-help books, that said that there’s “strength in numbers”. Perhaps the speed of information and the number of innovations that pop up each minute has buried those old sentences or even moved them to those self-help books that, for the most part, only help their authors.
But it is a fact that old sayings have been forgotten in time, which is regrettable because they were “popular truths”, the fruit of experience.
The motto “there’s strength in numbers” is one of the most simplistic, logical, and, simultaneously, less and less used in the country – in the world, let’s face it – and it leads us to unbalanced situations when we each row in different directions. In our everyday soccer, it is no different.
It starts with the notion that selling TV rights individually is better than selling them as a group and goes as far as debating whether or not soccer should return to the pitch amid the pandemic. Everyone is looking out for number one.
On the other hand, there are people who have suggested the prospect of organized clubs helping those in a pre-bankruptcy situation out of the quagmire, invoking the power that union provides. After all, “we are an industry and nobody plays alone”. Anything is possible when it is convenient.
Soccer is not an action between friends. It’s an industry in which the goal is victory, which consequently means the opponent’s defeat. But it’s different from any traditional industry, where consolidation and increasing market share are required to be able to reduce costs and increase profits.
In soccer, there will always be a certain number of market participants. There is no championship with five or six, but rather with 20, 18, 16. You can’t play alone. This also does not mean that a forced balance between participants in this market has to be achieved. Each has its own size, its own ability to implement revenue and cost strategies and to exploit its brand and its market, which are the fans. This will lead the market to have players of different sizes, with different competitive abilities and chances of achievement.
On the other hand, once the structural differences are respected, in more developed markets these disparities are “corrected” by some joint actions which may occur through a league that coordinates commercial strategies or by associations for specific purposes.
To better negotiate the sale of TV rights, for instance, clubs organize agendas and sell segmented packages through competition. Then they divide the money raised so that one party receives it as an industry and another party according to sporting performance, audience presence, use of grassroots athletes, historical performance… whatever.
What matters is the ability to deliver an organized product, to various stakeholders, accessing the international market, and raising more funds with it. But in Brazil, the mistaken notion that individual negotiation of home games is the solution to problems is growing, increasing the chances of making more money.
This is a great idea: just look at the difference between what happens in Mexico and Portugal in relation to countries where clubs sell their championships collectively. To consider following that option is to want to be closer to Benfica and Club América in Mexico, rather than Barcelona and Manchester United.
The interesting thing is that clubs like Flamengo, which worship the idea of being global, prefer inefficient models like the Mexican and Portuguese leagues, simply because they believe they will profit more, ignoring that they are within an industry.
Naturally, the concept is to build sovereignty, making it unattainable in financial terms and in terms of achievements. In Mexico, this is not the case because the leagues are knockout style and have two annual champions. In Portugal, Benfica and Porto divide their national titles, but they are co-stars in the rest of Europe.
Meanwhile, Juventus, Bayern, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and PSG are battling it out in their national championships, with TV rights negotiated collectively, efficiently, and distributed in a balanced way. These clubs compete in interesting championships, which allow them to increase revenues with ticket sales (matchday) and advertising. Industry vision, business vision. You can be sovereign without being selfish.
In parallel, while Flamengo is concerned with finding an organization to return to the pitch amid the pandemic, some clubs exert tremendous pressure to keep soccer paralyzed.
After all, money is short without soccer. And that may account for such concepts as clubs pleading for government money for “this difficult time”, which, for some of them, has been going on for years.
Let’s face it, Brazil’s relationship with the pandemic is luck rather common sense: it didn’t address it early, nor in a collective and organized way; it locked people home; it didn’t ensure a minimum income that would allow them to safely go through the most complicated period; it took inadequate care of data; it opened the streets before the numbers were low enough.
If everything has already been done incorrectly, why not at least look for technical solutions for soccer to return, in acceptable safety conditions for the players, and the few people who would work in the matches?
The problem, again, is the lack of organization between clubs, for everyone to paddle their canoe in the same direction. It’s no wonder that in Europe four of the world’s top five leagues have already returned or are about to return to the pitch.
I’m not even considering a Brazilian league, impossible to organize since the days of Charles Miller, but rather on negotiations between clubs, thinking of the best for everyone.
This is good for the pandemic, for the TV negotiations, because it would create a sustainable product, to seek financial solutions for those in a difficult situation.
Again, it would not be an action between friends. If some clubs are unable to sustain themselves, unfortunately, it is time to step back and start the game from below.
But to be competitive in a world where more and more industries are competing for the same people’s attention and money, it takes collective organization and long-term business vision.
This is possible and some of the clubs’ technical areas have already taken steps in this direction. The financial sector has created the Brazilian Association of Soccer Finance Executives (ABEFF), a forum where CFOs debate their circumstances, share good practices and insights to help the industry evolve.
Brazilian soccer lives on fads. It was once internationalization, but now they talk about the “disneyfication” of clubs, the theory that content must be created to be relevant and compete against threats coming from other industries. This is necessary, but insufficient since for local clubs this is only a way to talk to converts.
A serious discussion is required, abandoning fads and setting priorities correctly. What Brazilian soccer needs is to create an industry that thinks and walks in an organized fashion.
The responsibility lies with the partners, associates, advisors, and fans who support managers who are more concerned with the short term than the long term. Perhaps it makes sense. After all, if there is no collective and structural organization, many of these will not make it in the long term.
Source: InfoMoney