In a conference suite at the Hilton hotel in Vienna, Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi is workshopping ideas. He is discussing the future of the UEFA Champions League and the kind of ideas that may allow clubs to uncover new commercial opportunities and, he says, reach broader audiences.
“The final should be bigger,” he says. “I can’t understand how the Super Bowl can feel bigger than the Champions League final. The Super Bowl, and the US generally, have this mindset, creativity and entertainment. That’s what I have suggested, to have an opening ceremony to the Champions League, to have one match on the opening night where the winners take on a big team — maybe it is not a good idea, but at least let’s challenge the status quo. Each match needs to be an event and entertainment.”
Sweeping out of a press conference in the Austrian capital, Al-Khelaifi is taking a brief pause from an increasingly relentless diary. His mind wanders further, outlining how he believes the UEFA Super Cup ought to be reimagined, while also stressing a need to consider “new venues, new markets, new formats”. Inspired by a presentation in Vienna, he says he has invited Harvard Business School into PSG to refine the way his club operates. More on that to come.
Al-Khelaifi, 48, is the president of Paris Saint-Germain but that is only one portion of an increasingly broad repertoire. The Qatari businessman is also the chair of the Qatar-owned global television network BeIn Sport, one of the largest acquirers of live media rights in the world, as well as the chair of the Qatar Tennis Federation and a vice-chair of the Asian Tennis Federation. He heads straight from Vienna to Doha, both to be in town for the World Cup draw and to promote a new Qatar-funded global padel tournament.
Yet over the past 12 months, Al-Khelaifi has also emerged as probably the most powerful executive in European club football. When he decided to reject the proposal to break away from the structures of European football and sign up to a Super League, a man long considered by his peers to be a threat to the game all of a sudden became the man perceived by some to be holding it all together.
When the 12 Super League clubs resigned their positions at both UEFA and the European Clubs’ Association (ECA), Al-Khelaifi stepped into the breach as his prominence grew on UEFA’s executive committee. He was then invited to become the chair of the ECA.
Since then, he has become one of the foremost spokespeople against the Super League, against a backdrop of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus continuing to snub UEFA and the ECA by pursuing legal avenues to justify a new tournament via the European Court of Justice. In his first speech as ECA chair in September, he castigated the “fabulists and failures” of the Super League. Last week, he spoke about the trio of clubs “waving around a piece of paper” and forgetting that football is a “social contract” rather than a “legal contract”. It can still, at times, feel like a trick of the mind when the president of the club who spent world-record fees on Neymar and Kylian Mbappe casts himself as the protector-in-chief of the European football pyramid. He counters by recalling PSG’s own rise and arguing that every club should have the potential to replicate this, rather than locking in the same old clubs in perpetuity.
When he meets The Athletic for a short conversation in the Austrian capital, it is in his capacity as chair of the ECA. For the uninitiated, the ECA is the organisation that represents the interests of clubs that compete in European competitions. It is often framed as the body that lobbies UEFA for greater power and wealth to be awarded to clubs who believe they drive the interest in competitions such as the Champions League and Europa League. Yet the ECA, like UEFA, was blindsided when the Super League came along. Nine of the Super League clubs — including all six English sides — have returned to the ECA and have been welcomed back into the fold. And they have a new overlord in Al-Khelaifi, who was flanked at a press conference last week by ECA vice-chairs Oliver Kahn and Edwin van der Sar of Bayern Munich and Ajax.
In 2024, the Champions League will increase from 32 teams to 36. UEFA has already made a major concession by establishing a joint venture with the ECA to manage the media and commercial rights, which were worth £2.7 billion per year in the last cycle. Al-Khelaifi revealed that this is forecasted to drive an “amazing 39 per cent increase in the commercial value of the men’s UEFA club competitions for the post-2024 cycle” and he also said, “We still need to explore additional untapped revenue streams together.”
A year ago, the Super League clubs wanted the world to believe that all avenues for growth had been exhausted under existing European structures, so where is the growth to be found? The challenge for clubs, as ever, is how to make more money without damaging the product or further alienating those who follow the sport. So is the growth in direct-to-consumer streaming and a swing away from conventional television contracts?
“First, don’t dismiss linear TV (scheduled programmes) — everyone has said it is dead for 10 years,” Al-Khelaifi says. “Every major broadcaster is both linear and digital. Four in five people watched the Russia World Cup final (France vs Croatia) on linear. But of course, digital innovation is one of the things we are looking for. We’re also thinking with UEFA about event formats and experiences. Take the Champions League — by far the best club competition, but how do we make each match an event? My suggestion is to have a creative and entertainment department as part of the new joint venture between UEFA and ECA. How do we make the group stages compelling? The time difference is a problem for the US and Asia. So how can we work on this for international rights which have huge potential? We are thinking about all kinds of things — new venues, new markets, new formats.”
He argues the Champions League final should feel more like the Super Bowl, although it should be pointed out that the Champions League’s global audience dwarfs the NFL showpiece event.
At the ECA, lots of ideas will be discussed and debated. Many will never see the light of day. One currently under discussion with UEFA is whether to change the Super Cup. This is normally played before the season begins and pits the winners of the previous season’s Champions League against the Europa League winners. One concept under consideration is to instead have a final four mini-tournament to replace the Super Cup, where the four finalists (of the Champions League and Europa League) compete against one another. If some clubs have their way, this could also be marketed to appeal to different venues and audiences, perhaps even taking the Super Cup out of Europe to give international audiences a competitive taste of their heroes.
Al-Khelaifi reflects on the Champions League knockout stages in the 2019-20 season, when the pandemic meant that the final stages of the tournament were all played in Lisbon and players stayed together at a base. PSG reached the final and his players fed back that they “loved the experience because they were together and focused”.
At the ECA General Assembly, clubs heard fresh voices, including the former Liverpool chief executive Peter Moore presenting on the metaverse, while the ECA announced a new women’s membership and a €1 million donation to humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
Al-Khelaifi adds: “We listened to Harvard Business School professors at this conference — the first time ECA has done something like this because I insisted we need to challenge our thinking — and one of the professors explained how you can miss the big picture by focusing on one small thing too much. So I have invited Harvard to look at our club and see what things we can do. We need these fresh-eyes ideas. We need our best team to help us and drive us; digital, bitcoin, over-the-top (OTT) media service, NFTs; all this should be explored because it is an amazing potential opportunity. By being first you can be a leader.”
For many years, traditionally successful European clubs such as Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich — as well as the American-backed Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal — have sought, via financial fair play (FFP), to restrict the spending of PSG and Manchester City — two clubs backed via funds linked to nation-states Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Critics of PSG argue that it is part of a sportswashing project that seeks to improve the global image of Qatar and dim criticism of the state’s record on human rights.
Al-Khelaifi, however, counters that he has overseen an investment project. He begins the conversation with a history lesson, pointing out that FFP regulations were first drawn up before QSI had invested in PSG and arguing that PSG’s investment has created a more competitive landscape.
He says: “We only came into football in 2011 — financial controls were already seen as a problem that needed solving before we arrived. People talk about controlling costs but I am the first one who would sign for a cap on salaries. UEFA discovered it’s not in their interests to have only two or three clubs in the finals (as you need competition) but that is the mentality of the Super League, a closed small group.
“For us to come to PSG, think of it in the way as if you go and buy a small company, which loses money, so you need to inject and invest money. We bought PSG for €70 million. Now it is worth many many multiples of that — and we’ve had huge offers to buy the club.
“So from where we came from, that shows this is an investment project. We have grown the market in France and grown the TV markets. Here at the ECA General Assembly, we heard new numbers on the most-watched match this year, the top two involving PSG. We have added value to European football by spending at PSG.”
European clubs have come to a new understanding on financial restrictions, as clubs will be restricted to spending 70 per cent of their revenues on transfers, wages and agent fees from 2025.
He interjects: “We can talk about FFP but we should also look at other investment models, particularly the debt. A big Spanish club came to me here in Vienna (at ECA General Assembly) and said, ‘Nasser, Barcelona are €1.5 billion in debt, now they are taking another loan, now they may do stuff on their stadium another billion. That is the key, to stop clubs going into bankruptcy and have cost control’. This is what I was told by another Spanish club yesterday! Nobody wants to pay millions on salaries but the relationship with European law is not easy. We cannot have caps like the NBA.”
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Several club directors who spoke on the condition of anonymity to The Athletic expressed fears that the new financial rules will simply see the Premier League pull further away, as broadcasting deals for the English league continue to stretch clear of their rivals.
Al-Khelaifi says: “Someone asked Oliver Kahn today (at ECA General Assembly) what should be done about the gap between the Premier League and Bundesliga, but we cannot stop the Premier League. We can’t say, ‘Hey Premier League, please, slow down, don’t take revenue’.”
The French league, in its attempt to remain competitive and offset COVID-19 losses, has sold a 13 per cent stake in its commercial business to CVC Capital Partners in return for €1.5 billion to be shared between clubs in instalments.
Al-Khelaifi says: “You have Ligue 1 clubs and the second division but also 14 small-to-medium clubs within Ligue 1 who all have different interests. Some are simply thinking about how they are going to pay their players next month. They can’t think long-term. CVC, as such, gives us new commercial ideas. They are an investment fund with new ideas and they want to make money. They are not joking. All the clubs — the big, medium and small clubs — are thanking PSG because we have brought a lot to the appeal.”
And what about those who argue his growing number of jobs provide conflicts of interest? Critics have argued, for example, that he only opposed the Super League because his TV network BeIn Sport had billions of pounds tied up in UEFA broadcasting contracts. “When times are bad, people ask for my help,” he countered earlier on in a press conference. “But when times are good, I’m suddenly conflicted. I will give you some examples. I am extremely proud to be a part of this ECA family and I feel a responsibility to serve all the clubs. But when the not-so-Super League happened, I was asked many, many times over several days to be a chairman. I didn’t ask to do it myself — the opposite. So I helped, we rebuilt the organisation — and then apparently I’m conflicted when it’s sorted.
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“Another example was what happened with the French League TV rights (where a deal with Mediapro collapsed), again I was asked to help when it all collapsed, I helped them sort the TV rights — and when it’s OK, I hear I’m conflicted. Also on the Super League, I stand against the Super League out of principle and despite many reasons to consider it, and people are happy it all collapses — then I hear I only stood against it because of self-interest — it’s crazy. You can’t have it both ways.
“What’s most important for me is that I am enjoying what I am doing, I am trying to help as much as I can, in every role that I have and bringing positive energy to the amazing team that I have at the ECA.”
(Top photo: Stephane De Sakutin/AFP via Getty Images)
