Well this one came out of nowhere. Reports of LaLiga wanting to move the FC Barcelona vs Atletico de Madrid match from Spain to … Miami? In December?
Ok … sure … this is exciting news. A regular season LaLiga game played in the US would be huge, and when you add on top of that one of the teams being FC Barcelona, there’s no doubt that it would be a huge success. But how likely is it to happen?
We say … highly unlikely. There are so many problems with trying to pull this off on short notice, including:
- Basic logistics: they want to move a game into an NFL stadium this December? The current match is scheduled for December 22nd in Barcelona. On that same day, the Dolphins host the San Francisco 49ers at Hard Rock Stadium. Even though Dolphins ownership would undoubtedly be thrilled to host this match, the logistics around putting this together on such short notice are significant, especially with an NFL game scheduled for the same day/weekend.
- Broadcasting: who will broadcast the game? That’s a pretty valuable piece of television inventory, so if there isn’t a clear-cut owner of these media rights, you can imagine that the fight over them will be significant. And don’t forget – there’s the US rights, the Spanish rights, the international rights … and those rights may belong to different entities. Are they going to negotiate all of these deals in the next few weeks? Highly unlikely.
- Ticketing: by putting tickets on sale so late for this, they would be over-relying on a local audience. This is the sort of match that fans would absolutely travel for, but on such short notice (especially with the match being Christmas week), many traveling fans either already have holiday plans, or might be challenged to find affordable reservations this close to the event date.
- Advertising: this is the kind of match that would normally be advertised months before the event. They would want the biggest audience possible. With such a late start to organizing it, would they get the massive audience they would want without having enough time to hype it?
- Just the general timeline challenge: have you ever done business in Europe? Well, we have. And just getting a reply to a generic email can often take a week or two. So the idea that this match will just be whipped up in a few weeks is sort of ridiculous. In the most perfect of circumstances, this type of event should take a year to plan. But on this timeline? We think it’s virtually impossible.
For us, here’s the bottom line: attempting to do this on short notice will inevitably result in a half-assed result, and we think the powers that be will ultimately realize that. This game should be planned a year in advance. There should be time to sell tickets, there should be time to hype it up, there should be time to plan local activation, and there should be time to give fans the chance to plan travel. So we’re pretty skeptical that this will actually happen.
But do we love the idea? Absolutely. We think it’s just a matter of time until the Premier League puts regular season matches in the US, and the same for the first divisions of the other European leagues. These leagues and teams have undoubtedly noticed the success of the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB scheduling regular season matches in other countries, and there is undoubtedly an audience in the US for European football. We just think it will take a wee bit more time than eight weeks.
For more on this story, check out this story in Forbes, or an even better breakdown in The Athletic (paid subscription required).
