Uefa president Ceferin raises prospect of playing Champions League final in US
Aleksander Ceferin has said the possibility of staging the Champions League final in the US has been discussed, with the Uefa president admitting he hopes to cash in on football’s growing popularity in the country.
Last September Ceferin, who also wants to introduce a salary cap in European football “as soon as possible”, denied reports that discussions about playing Champions League matches outside Europe had been held. But in an interview with the US outlet Men In Blazers released on Tuesday, he revealed that talks about potentially hosting Uefa’s showpiece club event in the US before the 2026 World Cup is held there had taken place and that he regarded it as a “promising market for the future”.
Ceferin said: “It’s possible. We started to discuss about that but then one year it was the World Cup, [20]24 is Euro, this year [the final] is [in] Istanbul, ’24 is London and ’25 is Munich and after that, let’s see.”
In reference to the US market Ceferin said: “Football is extremely popular in [the] United States these days. Americans are willing to pay for best and nothing for the less. So they will follow European football as basketball lovers in Europe follow NBA.
“it’s a very important promising market for the future. The thing is that we are selling rights very well. Sponsorship is so-so for now from the US, but here [in the US] commercialisation is completely different than in Europe. They [Americans] are much more talented for that than us [Europeans].”
Although the Euro 2020 final between England and Italy attracted only eight million viewers in the US, Ceferin believes there is a growing appetite for top-level European football there.
“What shocked me is our Euro finals [in 2021] were watched by more people in the United States than the NBA finals,” he said.
“What shocked me in 30 matches of the Euro, every match viewership was a Super Bowl viewership, so I think we’re doing well. The problem is the time difference, because if you play [Champions League games on] Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 12 noon in LA, it’s a problem.”
Ceferin, who was re-elected this month for a third term, hopes a salary cap could be the solution to protecting competitive balance and revealed it was under discussion with clubs and the European Commission. “In the future we have to seriously think about a salary cap,” he said.
“If the budgets go sky-high then our competitive balance is a problem. It’s not about the owners, it’s about the value of the competition, because if five clubs will always win then it doesn’t make sense any more. But it has to be a collective agreement – every league and Uefa. Because if we do it and the other leagues don’t, then it doesn’t make sense.”