Taking football global
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The pitfalls when soccer tries to break into the US and Asian markets - and when American football tries to break into Europe.
Ed Butler looks at the plan by Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, to take the top-flight Spanish football league international. It includes an as yet unsuccessful attempt to stage a regular football fixture in the USA. Dan Jones, head of the sports business group at Deloitte, says Tebas is correct to see great opportunities, but Spanish sports journalist Alvaro Romeo explains why he's run into so much resistance.
Tebas can look to the success of the UK's Premier League in internationalising its brand, or indeed America's National Football League. But has the NFL actually made any profit from its long-running campaign to build a fan-base in the UK? Ed speaks to the their UK director Alistair Kirkwood.
(Picture: Marcelo of Real Madrid takes the shot on goal during the International Champions Cup Friendly match between Atletico de Madrid and Real Madrid at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, America; Credit: Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:05.5 | Today, the controversial plan to stage top flight Spanish league football in the US. |
| 0:11.5 | He's trying to please the American market and he's also trying to please the Asian market. |
| 0:16.1 | The thing is that La Liga has never been able to persuade the players, the Spanish FA and the media, |
| 0:23.0 | that this is a good idea. |
| 0:25.0 | It's not happening just yet, but the plan is afoot to take Europe's top games around the world. |
| 0:30.6 | Big money talks. |
| 0:32.0 | For advertisers, for broadcasters, football is the biggest sports in the world, |
| 0:37.0 | and therefore, if you've got great football |
| 0:38.7 | content, you want to find the best way you can of maximising on that. |
| 0:42.8 | That's all to gum in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:50.7 | A quite remarkable scene that I got to witness earlier this year, |
| 0:55.1 | the championship deciding game between two football clubs in Istanbul, Turkey, |
| 1:00.1 | the home team Galatasarai versus local rivals Bashak Shahir. |
| 1:08.9 | The players are coming out. |
| 1:10.6 | The stadium, of course, is a sea of orange and red and people cheering. |
| 1:16.7 | You can hear them all around me. It is a cauldron here. |
| 1:22.0 | The home team eventually won. |
| 1:29.8 | Fireworks going off over the stadium. |
| 1:33.2 | Fire crackers inside the stadium. |
| 1:36.4 | People throwing ticket tape over each other. |
| 1:38.8 | Strangers are hugging. |
... |
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