Profile: The commercial agency that made European football rich

UEFA’s formal announcement earlier this month had the complexion of a coronation, albeit one with a twist.

TEAM Marketing AG, UEFA’s exclusive commercial agency since the early 1990s, would retain its remit to sell commercial rights to the most lucrative franchise in world football for the three year cycle from 2024/25: UEFA club competitions.

There was, however, a kicker: US company, Relevent, best known for running the pre-season tournament, the International Champions Cup, would take US rights for the competition.

Both companies, said the UEFA president, Aleksander Čeferin, delivered “a compelling vision for European club football and we are convinced that the world’s best club football competition – the UEFA Champions League – and our other men’s club competitions will continue to go from strength to strength.”

Within hours, projections for their successful bid were being widely published, variously - $4 billion, £4 billion or €5 billion. Sources familiar with the process say that the projection range is actually €4.3-€5 billion annually

Whichever source or currency projection you believe, it was clear that promises of a massive increase – around 40 per cent on the previous deal – had been made to secure the deal.

What many of the reports overlooked was that these numbers were projections, not guaranteed revenue. The only guarantee from the deal is Relevent’s $750 million (over 3 years) for US media rights. TEAM’s sales process is yet to even begin.

The other point that was overlooked is who, exactly, are TEAM Marketing? What makes them such a unique partner? And what has given it a grip on UEFA commercial deals that will extend to 35 years when this deal has ended?

Has a company that has delivered so much – at least €21 billion over the past 18 years alone, with perhaps another €27 billion through to 2027 – ever had so little known about it?

Sleepy origins

To understand the co-existence between UEFA and Team Marketing, one must go back to the early-1990s and look at the state of the European governing body then.

Far from being the broadcast and commercial behemoth that we know today, UEFA was a sleepy, parochial organisation based in the Swiss city of Bern. With a headcount of just 20, it organised a quadrennial eight nation European Championships and three knock put club competitions each year.

These matches had plenty of local drama, but even the finals were far from the major international broadcast events we know today. Domestic football in Europe was the dominant brand. To win a European Cup, a club had to prevail in just four two-legged knock out ties and a final.

There was no seeding, and only one club per country (plus the previous years winners). At one stage, so marginal were the finances in broadcast deals for UEFA competition that the European body outsourced their management to FIFA.

In the late 1980s, the AC Milan owner and Italian broadcast magnate Silvio Berlusconi had started challenging UEFA to revitalise the European Cup. He commissioned M&C Saatchi to develop a blueprint for a European Super League based on 18 clubs playing throughout the calendar year

This was rejected, but the UEFA president from 1990, Lennart Johansson, bowing to pressure from the big clubs and being more commercially minded than his predecessor, Jacques Georges, took the ideas on board. In October 1991 a UEFA Extraordinary Congress approved the rebrand and reorganisation of the European Cup to become the Champions League.

Champions League rebrand

UEFA, at this point, simply didn’t have the technical or commercial expertise for such an undertaking. So, an independent company was set up by broadcast and commercial executives in Lucerne, named Television, Event and Media Marketing AG. Known by its acronym TEAM, it changed the landscape of European sport.

From a straight knock out competition with limited broadcast opportunities, UEFA and TEAM developed and implemented a new brand identity for the Champions League, right down to the distinctive classical anthem.

An exclusive ‘family’ of corporate sponsors were signed up, and TV packages were not simply sold to the highest bidder, but according to a highly prescribed TV production and eventwide presentation format that guaranteed exposure to commercial partners. A huge procedural manual was drawn up that prescribes all aspects of matchday operations, ultimately to ensure broadcasters and sponsors have seamless coverage.

“The UEFA Champions League host broadcast operation represents an unprecedented level of control exerted by a governing body over the broadcast output on behalf of its corporate partners,” writes Mike Milne in The Transformation of Television Sport: New Methods, New Rules.

Incredible results

The financial results of this partnership were staggering. From a handful of millions of broadcast revenues from the old European Cup, UEFA was pulling in £185 million annually from the Champions League by the end of the 1990s  – TEAM were taking an estimated £30 million of that, and the clubs were sharing £100 million.

Within a decade these figures had quadrupled. By 2020 they had trebled again, so that the total take from European club competition was €3 billion annually.

So successful was the partnership that UEFA rarely opened up the club competition commercial rights to the market. In turn, TEAM were a largely hidden organisation.

Executives very rarely give interviews. Seldom do you see them on the podium of sports conferences.

TEAM Marketing has social media accounts, but has never once posted on them. These are the hallmarks of a business that is so successful at what it does that it simply doesn’t need to engage publicly.

TEAM provided some factual verification for this article, but would not comment.

But then why would they need to speak? The organisation has one client alone – UEFA – and if they need to speak with them, they presumably have no need to do so via the press.

Shifting dynamics

TEAM have had a significant input into evolving competition formats. It was under their recommendation that UEFA scrapped the second group stage of the Champions League and rebranded the UEFA Cup as the Europa League in 2009. The Europa League’s revenue nearly quadrupled over the course of a single rights cycle because of this.

TEAM still make commercial recommendations as UEFA evolves its competitions, but the European Club Association (ECA) – which is dominated by the elite European clubs – has a more influential role now in deciding how they would look.

One view is that UEFA have gotten more demanding. Previously, when Lennart Johannson was the European governing body’s president, TEAM would effectively dictate the terms of broadcast and sponsorship packages and deliver a cheque to UEFA at the start of each season.

Now UEFA has far more sophisticated commercial and broadcast functions in house and is more exacting in terms of what it demands from its partners.

One UEFA veteran says that the relationship was hitherto “very cosy” and needed challenging. TEAM employees would shadow UEFA counterparts in parts of match operations, for example, and there was a kind of indivisibility about who their ultimate bosses were, said the source. This is no longer the case.

ECA role

Pressure from clubs via the ECA saw the creation of a joint venture between the ECA and UEFA, UEFA Club Competitions SA (UCCSA), to oversee the sales process for the 2024-27 broadcast cycle. This saw a Request for Proposals initiated last Autumn by UCCSA – the first time in a generation TEAM had seen its hegemony challenged.

This invited offers across either a three or six year period to sell commercial rights across UEFA’s three men’s club competitions, plus the Super Club and Youth League. Presentations were made in late-November to UEFA and ECA representatives, but UCCSA rejected the initial bids.

After resubmitting by late January, TEAM emerged victorious again – albeit having lost US rights to Relevent Sports Group, the marketing company backed by the Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. In so doing bids from IMG, Octagon and Infront Sports & Media were seen off.

Changing landscape

TEAM remain a safe bet. The logistics of its sales operation are vast. UEFA competitions are sold to more than 180 territories, to around 150 broadcast partners. It doesn’t deal with any other clients.

The sales phase typically lasts for two years, with an additional year-long preparatory phase. TEAM’s account management function oversees 250 contracts.

Nevertheless, the broadcast landscape is changing. The model that they created in 1991 has evolved over the past 30 years, but more fundamental changes have happened in the past five years with the growth of digital and OTT products.

A partnership with the LiveScore app for the 2021-24 cycle in the Republic of Ireland offers a hint at the direction of traffic.

The score update app provides access to 137 matches, 104 exclusively, with the remainder of matches shared between other broadcasters, such as state TV, RTÉ. Is this a template for how the future of broadcast is played out?

Questions on increase

The other question is where the extra money will come from. Only $750 million of the projected €15 billion proposed broadcast bonanza – 5 per cent - is actually guaranteed. According to the New York Times Relevent secured the deal by promising to guarantee at least $250 million for the US rights annually, around $100 million more than UEFA’s competitions currently deliver there. The rest is based on forecasts.

Under a new format from 2024 UEFA will adopt a so-called “Swiss model” in the group stages of the three European competitions, and expand Champions League participants to 36.

It will create an additional 100 Champions League matches and four additional match weeks. Last spring there was huge debate over how this format would increase demands on the match calendar, exacerbate existing inequalities within the game, and, more fundamentally, whether broadcasters would simply open up their chequebooks and pay more for it.

Much of this discourse was lost in the backdraft created by the Super League plot, but the supposition that by increasing its output by 40 per cent, UEFA would boost its revenues by the same amount has not been fully tested.

François Godard, Senior Media and Telecoms Analyst at Enders Analysis, has cast doubt on whether these figures can be attained, telling Off The Pitch that the projections are “baloney”, with European broadcast markets already saturated and uncompetitive, and limited growth elsewhere. He questioned whether broadcasters and subscribers would pay more even if it meant more games. To do so would alter the balance between national leagues and European competition.

“To really alter the balance of power between the Champions League and national league, you would need the Super League,” says Godard. “We won't have the Super League. But the Super League would have definitely altered the relationship. But it's not the case with this.”

TEAM will be under more pressure than ever to deliver on these forecasts. As the power of elite clubs grows – and it will surely grow further as UEFA competition makes them richer – there is a feeling across many in the industry that they will want control of broadcast deals and competitions themselves.

“I think long term they see themselves taking over the responsibilities of Team SA and controlling rights,” one senior executive told Off The Pitch last year. There are good reasons why they shouldn’t have that power. … if you have too many powerful interests at an operational level nothing gets achieved.

“But ultimately you’ve got to understand this is about power and control, and it’s not just the ECA that are at it. Sometimes the big clubs go off on their own. Threats are made in the media – such as over the super league – and the debate jumps forward. There’s a howl of outrage and they’ll inch back, but the marginal gains remain. 

“There’s a constant creep towards their strategic goal, which is more power and more money for the big clubs.”