Premier League Doesn't Need to Take a 'Regular-Season' Game Abroad

It being an international week and the news cycle being a little slow, Roy Keane's book notwithstanding, the thorny issue of playing a Premier League game overseas is once again part of the great football debate.

Dan Roan of BBC Sport, among others, reported on Wednesday that the infamous "39th-game" idea, which would involve an extra match being tacked on to the season and played at an unspecified far-flung location, has been abandoned in favour of instead playing a "regular-season" game abroad.

This is something that has of course proved successful in the NFL, with several games a season now played in London, to the extent that talk is growing that a team could well be based in the UK permanently, as suggested by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to Richard Graves of Sky Sports.

According to Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, such a proposal will happen, even if he isn't confident on the timescale. In reference to when the 39th-game idea was proposed in 2008, he was quoted by the BBC as saying in August,

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The clubs wanted it then and they all would still probably want it now. It will happen at some point. Whether it is on my watch, who knows?

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It's undoubtedly true that there would be plenty of interest in a Premier League game overseas; around £2.1 billion of the total £5.5 billion figure of the current TV revenue comes from abroad, plus English clubs regularly sell out stadiums on pre-season tours.

A game between Manchester United and Real Madrid in Michigan last summer attracted a crowd of 109,000, while almost every top-flight club takes part in exhibition matches as part of their summer preparation. This is not for the standard of opposition or climate but rather the exploitation of lucrative marketplaces in which the Premier League is hugely popular.

That last sentence is an uncomfortable one to write and indeed read for many reasons, not least because it marginalises the importance of local fans who attend matches. It is they who form the basis of the enormous success that the Premier League has become, so to compromise them does not, to say the least, sit right.

And if nothing else, the question must be asked: How much money do the Premier League clubs actually want? While it might be naive to discuss the concept of "enough money" in an industry like football has become, the introduction of BT, with the reserves of cash it has, to the competition for domestic television rights, means there will not be a shortage of money flowing into the coffers of the top clubs.

As reported by the BBC, the last round of bidding saw a remarkable rise of around 70 per cent, from £1.773 billion to £3.018 billion, largely thanks to the involvement of BT in the bidding process. And with the rights up for renewal again in 2015, the figure is only likely to go up, with Owen Gibson of The Guardian estimating it could rise by another 40 per cent.

All of which means the Premier League doesn't need to compromise the integrity of its competition, or inconvenience its own loyal fans, by taking a "regular season" game abroad. Perhaps if the extra money gained by this would help decrease ticket prices at home, then it could be justified, but the influx of cash after the TV rights increases has shown little effect on this score, so there is little to suggest it could happen this time.

Indeed, taking a Premier League game overseas might not even be necessary. Scudamore admitted as such himself in August, as quoted by the BBC:

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What has been interesting over the summer, particularly in the US, watching those audiences, you could argue that we don't need to [bring in the 39th game]. To get 102,000 to what we would call a pre-season friendly - you wouldn't get more even if there was three points, six points, or even nine points riding on that particular game.

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If the clubs and Premier League insist on broadening their audience, then an alternative suggestion would be to adopt the approach taken in Italy, where recent Supercoppa Italiana games (the equivalent of the Community Shield between the winners of the domestic cup and league title) have been played abroad. A total of around 223,000 fans watched the 2009, 2011 and 2012 games in Beijing, while the 2014 edition is scheduled to take place in Doha in December.

Ideally, of course, the Premier League will see that there is enough money in the game and will reject the need to make more by altering the structure of English football and pushing it further away from the fans who made it what it is today.