Shares of Juventus fell 12% in Milan on Wednesday, placing shares below their closing price on Friday, the last trading session ahead of the new league’s shock announcement. Shares of Manchester United, which are listed on New York, fell more than 6% on Tuesday and even headed down in premarket trading.
In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, Juventus president Andrea Agnelli said the project could not continue with the remaining six of the original 12 founding clubs.
“I’m convinced of the beauty of this project, of the value it would have developed for the pyramid, of creating the best competition in the world, but obviously not … I don’t think this project is still up and running.”
Investors were already rescuing themselves from the shares of the two listed pro-independence clubs.
The founding clubs were to be permanent members of the Superliga, a structure that resembled Major League Baseball or the National Football League and promised spectacular pay days for media rights and merchandising.
But it went against the traditions of European football, with its roots in industrial working-class neighborhoods, where even the poorest clubs rise to the top leagues if they win and no amount of money can protect rich teams from relegation if they lose. .
Six English clubs – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur – initially said they would join the league, along with AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus of Italy and the clubs Spanish Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid. The league planned to add three more permanent clubs, while five more would be ranked annually based on performance.
In an attempt to move away from the competition, the founding clubs were accused of orchestrating a massive cash outflow that would harm the smaller competitors and potentially destroy the Champions League elite, who play top division clubs across Europe.
The biographies of the club owners reinforced the idea that money was the engine of the decision to start the league.
American billionaire John Henry Fenway Sports Group, owner of the Boston Red Sox, is at the helm of Liverpool. Another American billionaire, Stan Kroenke, controls the sports franchises of Arsenal and the United States, including the LA Rams and the Denver Nuggets. Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich owns the royal sheikh of Chelsea and the emirates Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan owns Manchester City.
Chinese investors are behind Inter Milan, and Elliott Management, American billionaire Paul Singer, is pulling the strings on local rival AC Milan. The owners of Juventus for a long time are the Agnelli family, who earned their money with companies such as the car manufacturer Fiat.
The Glazer family, who own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, run Manchester United. Protestant fans on Monday unveiled their sentiments about American leaders, who had a banner outside the club’s stadium saying, “Created by the poor, stolen by the rich.”
“We believe that part of the drama and beauty of European football comes from the ability of any club to achieve success thanks to its performance on the pitch,” Amazon Prime Video said in a statement.