Which then raises the question, where was all this extra money going to come from?

The idea has been, presumably, to acquire much more TV licensing money from outside Europe, where people are not so much interested in the smaller "local" clubs; so they would pay more for seeing high-profile clubs against each other all the time.

In comparison: in current leagues, each team plays each other team twice per year. If you have only 2-3 internationally known top clubs (like in the German Bundesliga), that adds up to 2 to 8 "top games" in a season.

Also, these top clubs in the ESL would distribute all that additional money among themselves instead of sharing it with the smaller ones.

3.5 billion from J.P. Morgan for a start, and in the future all those T.V. rights (no need to share money with the lesser clubs), many more matches (ESL proposed a league system as a first round, so many more games), and all kinds of merchandising and...

So cannibalising all smaller clubs to make the big ones bigger, to the sole benefit of shareholders.

I think I won't mind this scheme collapsing.

As Matt Levine pointed out today, the JP Morgan money is a loan with a 2-3% interest rate. They worded it in a really weird way, presumably for PR reasons, but it was just a loan

I think it's obvious that J.P. Morgan won't simply donate the money. I had assumed they'd take an ownership stake, but the loan makes more sense. Thanks for that info!

Don't forget that the ESL would have bypassed the UEFA, which would probably have freed a lot of cash to be redistributed to the clubs.

There's a reason the UEFA was so outraged at the proposal.

Football is the most popular sport on earth.