The Athletic. The Athletic. Hello I'm Mark Chapman welcome to the Business of Sport Podcast on the

Athletic with as usual the athletics mat's later the focus of today's pod is the

European Superleaf because it just will not seem to die will it

Matt you've written an excellent piece on the athletic which will discuss here I think a lot of

people particularly in this country, would have thought

that it had been killed off, really. Since everybody pulled out, bar the three, what has been happening?

Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's this, this was,

in terms of product launches,

this is like New Coke and, you know,

all the other sort of famous disasters.

Launched on a sort of midnight on a Sunday, April the 18th, I think it was, sort of dead by April 20th,

with the English clubs, the six English clubs pulling out, you know, amid huge fan protests. I mean, talk about people voting with their feet,

you know, if this, if they were fly to flying this kites, you know, see how it went,

well, it was shot down. It was, it was disaster, right? And it all seems completely done and dusted within the week as I said the

six English clubs pulled out and then AC and Inza and Athletico pulled out within about a week

or so early May, there were settlements reached with

the UEFA for these nine clubs, nine of the 12, which involved paying goodwill

contributions, can't call them fines because fines sounds like a punishment,

which we will get into, that's quite important.

So these goodwill contributions were made with a further 5% to come off their U revenues for these clubs in 23-24.

Fast forward about a month, the Premier League made similar agreements with these clubs, you know, which came across to many people as sort of slaps on the wrist.

But again, the language was important. These were goodwill. These were settlements, not sanctions. So that was what was going on in terms of the punishment, if you like, for these clubs. In the backgrounds, you had three of them, Basa, Rial, and UVA, who didn't go along with any of this, who didn't say sorry, who didn't, who didn't drop the idea, who didn't race for the exit and to understand why you have to go back to April the 18th. You have to go back to those first few crucial days because what the 12 Super League clubs did right at the beginning was they got

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