Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly has suggested that the Premier League should borrow from American sports by holding a north versus south all-star game in order to help fund lower-division clubs in England.
Boehly, co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, completed a takeover of Chelsea this year as head of a consortium alongside investment firm Clearlake Capital.
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Speaking Tuesday in New York at the SALT Conference, a global thought leadership and networking forum, Boehly said that English football could benefit from adapting some ideas from U.S. sports, including a tournament to decide relegation to the championship.
“Ultimately I hope that the Premier League takes a little bit of a lesson from American sports and really starts to figure out why wouldn’t we do a tournament with the bottom four teams, why isn’t there an all-star game?” he said.
“People are talking about more money for the pyramid — MLB [Major League Baseball] did their All-Star Game in L.A. this year, we made $200 million from a Monday and a Tuesday. You could do a north versus south all-star game for the Premier League to fund whatever the pyramid needed very easily.”
There has never been an all-star game in the Premier League and Boehly admitted that “there’s a cultural aspect that’s real,” though predicted “there’s going to be an evolution.”
