All Star Games, Americans and a new chapter in English football - what next?

When new Chelsea owner Todd Boehly suggested a Premier League All Star game between the North and South at a conference in New York last week it was met with a mixture of anger and derision.

Gary Neville used it as an opportunity to describe American owners as a ''clear and present danger to the pyramid and fabric of the game'' and call for the government to set up an independent regulator for the sport.

While some may find a level of irony in that statement coming from one of the co-investors in Salford City, who changed their badge, kit and spent their way to four promotions in five seasons under Neville’s ownership, it demonstrates the strength of feeling among some about American investment in the English game.

A more important announcement than Boehly’s came later in the week as it was reported that his compatriot Bill Foley, who owns the NHL team the Las Vegas Knights, was in exclusive talks to buy Bournemouth.

If successful the takeover would take the number of Premier League teams with American investment to 11, more than half.

Arsenal, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Fulham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and West Ham are the clubs who currently have either minor or major American investors, meaning that six of last season’s top seven fall into that category.

Those clubs were the driving force behind the controversial Project Big Picture of 2020 which intended to lock in preferential voting rights on Premier League matters for the big six teams.

Four of those teams were also under partial or full American ownership when they signed up for the European Super League, which was later scrapped after fan pressure.

A change in the structure of English football is clearly on the horizon.

The Premier League conducted a shareholders' meeting yesterday, with a 'New Deal for Football' reportedly on the agenda.

This plan would allegedly see the scrapping of FA Cup replays and have clubs involved in European football able to opt out of the League Cup or field a side of under-21s.

This 'New Deal' would also reportedly bring about a limit to spending for Premier League clubs linked to their revenue, in theory cementing the position of the biggest clubs at the top of the food chain.

The Premier League’s financial strength now outstrips that of all of its competitors, and as money has poured into the English game it is coming further and further under the control of American owners.

Certainly, there are question marks about other owners in the top flight, namely Manchester City's and Newcastle’s, but if more than half of the clubs in the league are at least partly run by American owners, what does their vision of the future of English football look like?

Boehly’s All Star Game suggestion was given with the reasoning that it would generate more money to give to the EFL.

The Premier League generated £4.9 billion in the 2020-21 season, with an operating profit of £479 million. If the top flight wanted to find the money to give to the rest of the pyramid, it could easily do so.

Boehly and many of his compatriots seem to be committed to disrupting the way English football operates in an effort to make ever-increasing sums of money, while the traditions and structures of the game are an increasingly irrelevant concern.

The European Super League may have been shelved for now but with talk of an additional relegation playoff, drastic changes to the League Cup and new spending caps, it’s clear that a new vision for the football pyramid is being laid out and the American Premier League vanguard are driving it.

Documentaries blur line between owner and content creator

One glimpse into the ways in which American ownership will continue to change football on these shores is the documentary Welcome to Wrexham, recently released on streaming platform Disney+.

Hollywood actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds took over the Welsh side in 2021, with the plan of creating a documentary in the process. Why bother paying a club to let you create content about it when you can just buy the club?

Peter Crouch and Robbie Savage have also produced documentaries as they try and turn around the fortunes of non-league clubs Dulwich Hamlet and Macclesfield.

At the other end of football’s pyramid, Amazon’s All or Nothing series has followed Manchester City, Tottenham and Arsenal in the top flight.

Football has always been entertainment, but increasingly its dramatic events come under the category of reality television as it becomes interlinked with streaming services and Hollywood content producers.

Certainly, efforts to save football clubs from financial ruin can never be a bad thing but the new trend of club owners making documentaries about their own attempts to turn around non-league clubs also begs the question, are they more interested in the fortunes of the club, or in what makes better television?

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