The Government and nearly everyone else is up in arms about the idea of a new European Super League and rightly so. But this is the Government whose leader boasted recently that the covid vaccine roll out was a sign that greed is good and the free market works.
He was wrong, of course, the vaccine was funded by Government and backed by decades of Government spending on research, because the pharmaceutical industry couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. But if you think greed is good in one market why not in all markets, what has the government got against the super league?
Well, there is a reason why the government can and should intervene. This proposed super league is a market with no competition for the founding members and only limited temporary entry for a minority of other sides. In any other industry this would be banned under competition rules, which tend to frown on oligopolies.
Which is intriguing because the companies involved and the bankers destined to become billionaires on the back of this new scheme are not short of lawyers. Doubtless they have been over the contracts the clubs have with existing competitions and found a way of protecting them from expulsion, fines, demotion or points deductions. They must have done the same with competition law, I assume they have found a loophole.
But if governments think greed is good, the least they must do is ensure a level playing field. If they back down on this one which market will the oligopolists come for next?
https://jonty.substack.com/