Football's next big thing? The European SuperLeague ft. Anthony Macedo

The idea of a European Super League that would see top European clubs regularly compete against each other has bee in the news again in recent months, following a recent ruling at the European Court of Justice and its backers' latest proposals. But what would the Super League mean for European football, and will this project ever become reality? In this episode, Francesco and Guy talk to Anthony Macedo, a Portuguese academic based at the Lisbon School of Economics and Management and the University of Minho to put the court ruling in context, past efforts at putting a European Super League into action, who the main players and what it might look like.  Anthony also explains what has stopped the a European Super League from happening in the past and why we may well see some incarnation of it at some point in the future.

Transcript

Football's next big thing? The European Super League ft. Anthony Macedo
 

Francesco Belcastro 00:09

Hello and welcome to a new episode of FootPol, the podcast where football makes politics. I'm your co -host, Dr. Francesco Belcastro and here is my other co -host, Dr. Guy Burton. 

Guy Burton 00:18

Hi, how are you doing, Francesco? Good to see you again. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:21

I'm fine Guy, we received emails and messages from listeners worried about your well -being because they cannot hear you very well. Can I just clarify that this is just an IT problem and you are effectively doing well? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:33

And also I'm not silencing you, you are... 

Guy Burton 00:36

Well I'm kind of feel like I'm going to sort of take a cue out of the episode from a couple of weeks ago from James Montague who said that he quite liked the retro feel. It sounded like sort of late 80s, early 90s broadcasting so maybe we should stick with it. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:52

Well, we've had some improvement from the episode of a couple of weeks ago with James. So I think we're getting there. I think your audio is getting there. I mean, we really need you to be back because today we're going to have a fascinating discussion in a very, very topical episode. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:09

Yeah, what are we talking about today? We'll talk about the European Super League. So our guest, it's Anthony Macedo. Anthony is a Portuguese academic and he's based at the Lisbon School of Economics and Management and at the University of Minho, which is a city north of Braga, I understand. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:27

Now, Anthony obtained his PhD from the University of Aveiro last year and has worked in... His PhD is in business and economics. And his work covers business and sport in particular. And as focus, which is great for us on the European Super League in particular. Anthony has published several co -authored works on the topic of the Super League with his colleagues, Paulo Reis Mourao from the University of Minho and Marta Ferreira Dias from the University of Aveiro. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:54

So he's got great expertise in this particular topic. Anthony, welcome. We're really, really happy you accept our invitation. How are you? Thank you. 

Anthony Macedo 02:03

Hello, hello, I'm fine. I'm also very happy for your invitation because I really love to talk about the Super League. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:11

It's a topic that football fans are all very interested in, aren't they? 

Guy Burton 02:17

But before we can start on that Francesco, can we just ask about whether Anthony has a football team and whether that football team will be in the European Super League any time soon? 

Anthony Macedo 02:27

I was a huge fan of Benfica for several years, but then I understood that it was hurting me more, that it was giving me pleasure. So I kind of did a treatment to stop supporting the club. Today I say that I'm like, I just like, I have a preference for Benfica, let's say. 

Anthony Macedo 02:51

So I don't suffer now. Yes, yes, I don't suffer because of football now. 

Guy Burton 02:59

So you're just going to watch other people suffer instead! 

Francesco Belcastro 03:03

The thing about the Super League is now it has been kind of going in and out of the news for a while. And there seems to me that there is sort of a push towards the Super League by several parties. So the reason why we won't talk to Anthony is to get a bit of a context for this and also see where we are. 

Francesco Belcastro 03:24

So I mean, the first thing I wanted to ask Anthony, the Super League has been... the European Super League, which for listeners who are not aware is this idea of a sort of different tournament that would bring together some of Europe's top clubs and it would be a close tournament in most expectations. 

Francesco Belcastro 03:42

You tell them whether this is right or not. And it would basically take the place of the current Champions League. So last month, the month before, in December, correctly. The European Court of Justice issued a ruling saying that FIFA and UEFA rules that demand prior approval for formation of a competition were unlawful. 

Francesco Belcastro 04:05

So essentially a ruling by the European Court of Justice, well, Antoni will explain a bit more to us, favoring the formation in the future of a European Super League. Is that the case, Anthony? And were you surprised by the European Court of Justice ruling? 

Anthony Macedo 04:21

So personally, I was not very surprised considering that a few weeks before the Advocate General Rantos gave his opinion on the case and he pretty much predicted this decision. And additionally, I'm not surprised because the decision doesn't imply that the super league announced in April 2021 would have been in line with the European Union law. 

Anthony Macedo 04:53

It only means that an organizational market should exist. And the law requires competition to be transparent, objective, non discriminatory and proportionate. So personally, I'm not sure if the 2021 super league would have met these non discriminatory criteria. 

Anthony Macedo 05:17

However, what I find very amusing is that UEFA will retain competence to run the prior authorization system. So this means that they will have to establish detailed licensing requirements for potential rivals. 

Anthony Macedo 05:37

Of course, these requirements must comply with European Union law, but I'm curious to know how much time this process will take and how challenging it will be for new competitors. 

Francesco Belcastro 05:51

So what will be expected of UEFA in this sense? For people who are not familiar with UEFA, I have to take a leading role in this basically? 

Anthony Macedo 05:58

They just have to establish the detailed licensing requirements and they have to comply with the transparency, objectivity, non -discriminatory and being proportionate, which today is not the case because they don't allow new competitors to emerge. 

Guy Burton 06:23

In effect, it's asking UEFA to license a competitor to its own competition, the Champions League, right? 

Anthony Macedo 06:30

Yes, that's what I find very amusing in this story, because they keep the regulatory power. They just have to share the organizational power, which are two different things. 

Guy Burton 06:47

Can we set that in context with the 2021 proposal that came out? Because that initial idea of the Super League back in April 2021 did not meet the requirements. And now we've got the court judgment saying that, well, actually, a competition can be set up, and UEFA has to adjudicate it fairly, I suppose. 

Guy Burton 07:13

So what's changed between April 2021 and December 23? 

Anthony Macedo 07:18

Now we know that an entity, an organizing company, can propose a competition and then UEFA will have to check if they meet the criteria that is not public yet. They don't have really a criteria for now. 

Anthony Macedo 07:38

So that's why I'm curious about how much time they will take to do this. But before that, there was threats, for example, in 2021, UEFA threatened the A22, or not really A22, but the clubs and the players. 

Anthony Macedo 08:01

And today they know that they can do this because there is an organizational market for football competitions. 

Guy Burton 08:11

Okay, and so can we set this idea of the European Super League in wider context then? Because the idea is not a new one, is it? I mean, can you give us a little bit of a sense of what the history of the European Super League or its predecessors has been? 

Anthony Macedo 08:26

Talks about the Super League started a long time ago, it is important to bear in mind that very different models have been discussed. Some with a closed format, others with an open format, some requiring clubs to break away from their domestic leagues, others not. 

Anthony Macedo 08:46

A lot of features can change in a Super League and there are not many rules apart from the idea of creating a competition with several big European clubs. So the oldest reference about the Super League that I have found in the literature, dates back to the 60s in a book called The Football Man from Arthur- Arthur Hopcraft. 

Anthony Macedo 09:11

In his book, Hopcraft made reference to a potential Super League where leading European clubs would break away from their domestic leagues to form a transnational league. And it is funny to read that today because at the time his main argument against its occurrence was the costs and difficulties of travelling, which today we clearly know that this is not a concern. 

Anthony Macedo 09:40

Even though maybe it should be due to environmental concerns, but okay, this is a discussion for another podcast I think. So this was the oldest reference in terms of books. But as far as I know, the first prominent figure from a big football club that advocated for the Super League was in the 80s-

Anthony Macedo 10:06

Silvio Belusconi, who held the majority stake in AC Milan. During that time, to qualify for the European Cup, so now the Champions League, it was necessary to be the domestic champion. So after multiple seasons without qualifying for the competition, Berlusconi began making threats about the Super League. 

Anthony Macedo 10:29

Then during the transition from the 80s into the 90s, the largest English clubs also threatened to start the Super League because they were dissatisfied with the distribution of TV revenues in the domestic league. 

Anthony Macedo 10:45

And probably this was an argument to create the Premier League in 92. So then some years later, at the end of the 90s, the first complete project of Super League was announced under the name European Football League. 

Anthony Macedo 11:02

It included a lot of detail, such as format size, potential revenues, really everything. Really, having seen this project, I'm unsure if the 2021 project was more detailed. For example, in 2021, the criteria for selecting the participating clubs remained somewhat unclear. 

Anthony Macedo 11:23

But in this earlier project, the selection was based on the weighted average of several components announced beforehand. Components like the success in the last 10 years, the commercial value of the league, the UEFA country ranking, and each of these components had a specific weight. 

Anthony Macedo 11:44

For example, the success in the last 10 years was the most important one, which represented 45%. So this league was supposed to be owned by 52 clubs, being 16 of them founders, and 36 called as candidate clubs. 

Anthony Macedo 12:03

However, the membership was intended to remain fluid, and there was provisions for national champions to participate in the league. This project was not only a league -style competition, it was also a cup. 

Anthony Macedo 12:18

The 16 founders would play in the Super League, and some of the candidate clubs would play in the Super League and the others in the cup, alongside the invited clubs. So evidently, this project aimed to challenge the international club competitions organized by UEFA. 

Anthony Macedo 12:34

On the other hand, it was designed to be compatible with domestic leagues, incorporating plans for resource distribution that would benefit the national leagues, amateur football, and the game in global terms. 

Anthony Macedo 12:49

So at the end of the day, this project, I just explained, seemed like a very credible alternative to UEFA's competitions, and apparently several clubs were supporting the idea. So UEFA needed to take action to protect its competitions. 

Anthony Macedo 13:06

And their solution was quite simple, but also very effective. they increased the number of teams in the Champions League and allocated more spots to clubs from the top leagues. And this was enough to convince the clubs to stay with the UEFA and the Super League failed. 

Anthony Macedo 13:27

So this seems so simple that there are even theories arguing that the clubs never had any real interest in joining the Super League. They just used the threat of the Super League against UEFA. By the way, the company leading this project was called Media Partners International. 

Anthony Macedo 13:46

It's again Silvio Berlusconi! This time, I don't think he was directly linked, but he was an associate of the person, of the person running Media Partners. So then in the aftermath of the failed proposal, the clubs understood that together they would have greater negotiating power. 

Anthony Macedo 14:07

Therefore, the lobbying organization G14 was created. And in the next few years, the idea of Super League persisted a little bit. It is also during this period that different models of Super League were presented by scholars. 

Anthony Macedo 14:25

However, the rumors quickly disappeared because the G14 was transformed into the European Club Association, but most importantly, because the Champions League was experiencing great success. 

Guy Burton 14:39

Mm -hmm 

Anthony Macedo 14:40

So it was only around one decade later that we heard about the Super League again, when the Football Leaks platform exposed secret plans in 2018. 

Guy Burton 14:52

Hmm. 

Anthony Macedo 14:53

Unfortunately, in my opinion, I don't think we paid enough attention to this at the time. And I'm not sure that this project of 2018 is entirely unrelated to the 2021 project. Between these two projects, Florentino Perez, the president of Real Madrid, appealed several times in favor of a super league, but most did not believe him. 

Anthony Macedo 15:20

And probably because it was not the first time that clubs used these kind of trades. But even those that believed him were surprised by the almost closed competition announced in April 2021. So the rest of the story, I believe everyone knows. 

Guy Burton 15:40

Mm. 

Anthony Macedo 15:40

became the headline news on every TV channel. On April 18th, 12 clubs announced they support the super league. And just two days later, only three clubs remains under the pressure of fans, web sponsors and even politicians, such as Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron. 

Anthony Macedo 16:02

Most clubs abandoned the project. And all of this lead to the European Court of Justice. Well, let's say that UEFA threatened clubs and players with bands if they participated in the super league. And the super league organizing entity called A22 claimed that UEFA was abusing its power and argued that an organizational market should exist. 

Anthony Macedo 16:32

Indeed, the court ruled in their favor. 

Francesco Belcastro 16:36

Thank you very much. Can I ask you something? There's been these trends towards and European Super League attempts to impose it for quite long. What's the driving that? What is the argument in favor of the European Super League? 

Francesco Belcastro 16:50

Is it only money? What makes it a good argument for people to ask for the European Super League, for clubs in particular? 

Anthony Macedo 16:58

It's completely money. That same main focus is to get money. But for fans, football fans, for those that are in favor of the Super League, it's to try to find some more competitive balance, which is a problem in several domestic leagues. 

Anthony Macedo 17:22

But even at the international level, in the Champions League, we know that, that for example, since the beginning of the century, only one club won the Champions League that was not from the Big Four. 

Anthony Macedo 17:39

It was Porto. And for example, since 2010, only 11% of the clubs that played the quarterfinals were not from the Big Five. So there's a problem of balance, both at domestic and international level. And it's the main reason for a fan to seek something different with the Super League. 

Francesco Belcastro 18:08

So, the current Super League project, what would it mean? Would it mean that clubs wouldn't play in national leagues anymore, they would play only the Super League or are some of these most recent proposals trying to bring together playing in the league and playing in the Super League? 

Guy Burton 18:27

basically an alternative to the Champions League, right? 

Anthony Macedo 18:29

Yes, yes. The last projects we saw are all about being rivals of the Champions League, or substituted to the Champions League. But there are ideas from scholars, and even from an idea that I think they created in one of my papers, of replacing or not, not really replacing the domestic leagues, but being a league, the top division league, above the domestic leagues. 

Anthony Macedo 18:58

So, like I said before, we have very different models of super league that could exist. 

Guy Burton 19:08

You can only have one champion and so you could be a great team domestically, but then you get in with a bunch of other really good teams at the European level and you're not so great anymore. Someone's got to come bottom. 

Guy Burton 19:19

So I don't know what the advantage is to a European Super League. 

Anthony Macedo 19:26

But do you mean about the super league replacing the domestic leagues or about a super league replacing the Champions League? 

Guy Burton 19:34

Okay, so what you're saying is that there could be... I guess, another one of the challenges, right, that when we're talking about the European Super League, we don't really know what it's going to look like, right, because there are so many different models and ways of doing this out there. 

Guy Burton 19:48

So maybe you could talk a little bit about that. I mean, have there been attempts to try and create transnational leagues before, and what has made them work or not work? 

Anthony Macedo 19:58

The ideas of transnational leagues, I already told you about some of them. And they were practically all about replacing the Champions League, not about replacing domestic leagues. But about leagues replacing the domestic leagues: 

Anthony Macedo 20:16

they are more theoretical. We know that for a club that are advantage for fans, advantage for clubs. These are two different things because for clubs, it's dangerous to replace domestic leagues by a super league. 

Anthony Macedo 20:33

Because as you said, it will be a lot more difficult to win titles. And titles also mean popularity, so it also means money. On the other hand, for fans, it may be different in terms of competitive balance. 

Anthony Macedo 20:51

Nowadays, for example, if you take an example, the Portuguese League, you know that every year only three clubs will win the Champions League- sorry, the Portuguese League. Porto, Benfica and sometimes Sporting. 

Anthony Macedo 21:06

But if you take these clubs into a super league, the discussion is completely different. And in terms of competitive balance, it would be a lot more interesting than every year you know that these three clubs will win. 

Anthony Macedo 21:24

So there are aspects in favor and against replacing the domestic leagues. And I don't think that current discussions are about replacing domestic leagues. The destroying the tradition is one of the things that you don't want to do with football fans. 

Anthony Macedo 21:44

Football fans are very, very, very adverse to change. And even though I have quite a cynical view about that also, because however they are very adverse to change, they are also... This version doesn't transform into a stoppage of consumption. 

Anthony Macedo 22:08

It's more about complaining. And I really believe that if a super league is created, the fans will continue to watch the games of their clubs. 

Francesco Belcastro 22:19

May I ask you one thing on this? So you mentioned how like Boris Johnson in Britain and other politicians were very quick to react in 2021 when this super league crisis took place, if we can take it, talk about it in this way. 

Francesco Belcastro 22:33

Is it because it's kind of easy popularity? That you know that most fans are against it so you can just say, well, you know, we're not gonna allow it. So does that mean that most fans don't want the super league and politicians are exploiting that? 

Anthony Macedo 22:50

In my opinion, I think it's totally that. And we saw that a lot of times, for example, with Emmanuel Macron, he did that with the Super League. He also leveraged footballing situations like the expected transfer of Kylian Mbappé. 

Anthony Macedo 23:07

And when he decided to be present in every photo after France won the World Cup, this is a very typical action from politicians. 

Guy Burton 23:21

You've also touched upon the fact that it's most likely that the leading clubs, whether it's in the Champions League or the Super League, are going to be from the Big Five, Germany, Italy, England, Spain. 

Guy Burton 23:33

What does the European Super League look like to a more mid -level market like Portugal? I mean, where do the three big Portuguese clubs stand in all of this? 

Anthony Macedo 23:45

Probably they cannot stand in favour of the Super League. Today it's not the trend of the clubs standing in favour of the Super League. But if we are very cynical about this point too, we know that the Super League will be pretty much like the Champions League for Portuguese Leagues, for Portuguese clubs. 

Anthony Macedo 24:06

So we know that it will be a competition only for three, maximum four clubs with Braga. So it will depend a lot on the format of the Super League format, on the format of the competition. So if it's a competition that, for example, in today's Champions League, if Braga does an incredible league, an incredible championship, it can qualify for the Champions League. 

Anthony Macedo 24:40

Today in the Portuguese League, the expectation of the clubs about the Super League will probably be the same in the Champions League. If a club like Braga does a very big championship with good performance, they will probably qualify to the Super League like they qualify to the Champions League. 

Anthony Macedo 25:05

However, one of the differences is that, for example, in the last model of Super League announced in 2023 at the end of December, a club that does such a good performance domestically only qualifies to the third division of the Super League. 

Anthony Macedo 25:24

And that could be a very important difference. Because, OK, we know that most of the time these clubs that do a very big performance in the following season, the Champions League is not very, they cannot sustain this good performance. 

Anthony Macedo 25:45

So for the balance of the top division, it's important. But in terms of that dream of the clubs of participating in the biggest clubs, in the biggest competition, it will be a lot more difficult because they will only qualify to the third division, then they need to qualify to the second division, and only after that they can qualify to the first division. 

Anthony Macedo 26:08

So it's a longer process. So this is the main difference. But for the top clubs, for example, of Portugal, I don't think it will be very different. And probably they will not attain the first division. 

Anthony Macedo 26:21

They will be in the second division, third division, it will be too difficult to stay in the first division. 

Francesco Belcastro 26:27

Can we ask you one final thing? I know that academics don't like to make predictions, but do you think eventually we're gonna see a European super league managed by someone other than UEFA or is UEFA power always gonna be too strong? 

Anthony Macedo 26:42

Yes, this is a very tough question. The emergence of a Super League is difficult due to the aversion to change that fans have, but also because of the catastrophic approach in the project of April 2021. 

Anthony Macedo 27:04

This proposal tarnished the name Super League. And now every time we hear about Super League, we hear about close format competition, money, greed. Even though the project announced a few weeks ago is completely different. 

Anthony Macedo 27:21

And the A22, the company organizing this competition, knows that very, very well. And they try to avoid this confusion with the name in their communications by avoiding calling it Super League. But the media and the fans continue to refer to the project as a Super League. 

Francesco Belcastro 27:43

Super League for everyone, right? 

Anthony Macedo 27:45

Yes. So besides that, they claim to have several clubs supporting them. But we cannot be sure if it's true until the clubs themselves admit it. So I just think it will take time for people to forget about the 2021 project. 

Anthony Macedo 28:02

And besides, it would help them a lot if this new format of Champions League does not work well. And at the end of the day, I think it's beneficial for fans that we have as a rival as it encourages them to improve their product. 

Anthony Macedo 28:21

For example, A22's idea of making all the games available for free streaming. Today, of course, we are all very suspicious because it goes completely against the recent trend. And the numbers don't seem to edit. 

Anthony Macedo 28:40

Nonetheless, I believe it's important to put that subject on the table. How many football games do we have today on free TV? In Portugal, we have some, but I know that in much countries, there are none, or almost none. 

Guy Burton 28:55

Hmm. 

Anthony Macedo 28:56

However, perhaps this is why nowadays there is a concern that young consumers don't watch the entire games. Many of them likely did not grow up with easy access to this match. And I'm not suggesting that completely free games are the solution. 

Anthony Macedo 29:16

But having one or two games per week available for free is different from having none. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:23

Yeah. 

Anthony Macedo 29:23

In one of my studies, I estimate that when a person has free access to some games in a competition, their willingness to pay for the rest of the games is higher. Therefore, it would be valuable if we have paid attention to this aspect, as it also relates to the sustainability of the sport. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:47

Why policy makers never listen to academics!

Guy Burton 29:50

This point you make about free streaming is a really interesting one because this came out a couple of weeks ago talking about showing a lot of these games for free and it's prompted a lot of discussion as to how does this work, right? 

Guy Burton 30:04

Can you say anything about how would A22 actually generate the revenue necessary for this? How does it currently work with the Champions League, for example, and what would A22 have to do differently from the Champions League? 

Guy Burton 30:24

Finally, the last thing I must ask is also, presumably, the A22 in order to try and win fan and other supports are going to have to make more money available to grassroots football, community football as a way of placating the suspicion about them, no? 

Anthony Macedo 30:43

Yeah, so about the streaming platform they want to create, pre -streaming platform is not only free because it will work like Spotify, for example. You can pay to not have ads because what they say that will make them earn a lot of money is a lot of ads, a lot of ads, ads, ads. 

Anthony Macedo 31:07

I hope that if some day this happens, we will not have an ad interrupting a goal of a game. So I don't think it will reach that point, but they will make us watch a lot of ads. So in terms of revenues, they claim that they will get a lot more of revenues because there will be a lot more games between big clubs. 

Anthony Macedo 31:35

That's what they claim. So if you have more revenues, you have more revenues to share among the top clubs, but also among grass roots and even domestic leagues. They claim that they will share a bigger part, more revenues with domestic leagues than the Champions League is currently doing. 

Anthony Macedo 31:59

However, what I'm concerned about is that today we already have a problem in most leagues of balance provoked by the Champions League because the clubs participating in the Champions League have get more revenues than those that does not participate. 

Anthony Macedo 32:20

And this problem could, in principle, will continue with the super league. And it can be even worse if the revenues are much higher for the Super League participants. So this is a concern that I don't think this last model of super league is correcting. 

Anthony Macedo 32:46

However, they also talk about limitations in terms of with salary gaps. And that could be interesting. So they seem to have some financial concerns too. But I don't think they bring much more solutions than the Champions League and what is offering. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:11

There are a lot of questions that we really don't know the answer for yet, but really, this has clarified things for us football fans. 

Guy Burton 33:20

What's striking to me is just how up in the air it still is, right? So we have, if I was to just paraphrase and summarize what we've, what we've taken, what I'm taking away today is that, yeah, the European super league isn't going away anytime soon. 

Guy Burton 33:36

It's, it's possibly likely to appear on the horizon, but what's the contours, what the structure of it's going to look like, who's going to be involved, how much money is going to be involved, it's all still very much unclear, right? 

Guy Burton 33:48

And maybe, maybe that's its advantage, right? The fact that we don't have anything concrete makes it very difficult either for fans and UEFA and others to, to, to, to, to, to challenge and criticize. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:02

Definitely. Well, I think we really need to thank Anthony for this fascinating conversation. And thanks so much for taking the time and speaking to us. And then we need to remind a few things to our listeners as well. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:14

We're on all the social media. We are on Blue Sky. We are on Twitter, we are on Facebook. So find us there. Also, we want to hear from you in terms of what episodes we should be doing. But we also want you guys to... you guys and ladies, to rate us, share the episodes and... what else? 

Francesco Belcastro 34:36

What am I forgetting? 

Guy Burton 34:38

Yeah, subscribe. Always a very good way of making sure that you get another episode dropping into your box. First thing on Monday morning, which is when we put these episodes out. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:51

And we got very, very interesting episode next week as well. Quite an important shift of topic where we're looking at something quite different, which is football players, trade unions and representation. 

Francesco Belcastro 35:02

And we're going to have as guests Alex Culvin and Alexander Bielefeld from FIFPRO, the world players union. 

Guy Burton 35:09

Well, that's great. Anyway, thanks again, Anthony, for coming in and taking the time to speak to us. And hopefully, maybe when A22 comes out with a much more concrete example later on, we can have you come in and talk about how it's actually going to work out in practice. 

Anthony Macedo 35:23

Yes, and we don't even talk about the woman super league, which is another subject that they also presented. Yes, so there are a lot of stories to tell about the super league. Thank you a lot for your invitation. 

Anthony Macedo 35:40

It was a pleasure for me. Thank you very much. 

Guy Burton 35:43

Thank you very much.