Possible New Reforms?

     The president of the blaugrana club, Sandro Rosell, brought up the financial disparities in La Liga this past weekend in Switzerland and talked about possible reforms that could be instated.  Judging by the fact that only four teams of La Liga's 20 are considered in a financially "stable" condition, something needs to be done to balance the budget of other teams.  These four teams Barcelona, Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, and Osasuna are in the minority.  It is believed by many that the other 16 teams will fail financially, resulting in relegation or a complete disintegration of the club.
     Sandro Rosell's solution was to decrease the league size from 20 teams to 16 teams.  His advice was to complete this downsizing in the next couple years.  Why is this idea proposed?  By doing this, the best players will be more concentrated and possibly increase the competitiveness of the league.  This theory is plausible; however, since there are many other leagues in existence, it is likely that players would travel outside Spain.  The main argument to downsizing lies in conjunction with a new TV deal.
     As stated in one of our earlier blog posts, a part of the financial disparity among La Liga teams exists in TV deals.  Real Madrid and Barcelona get a huge sum of money from Media Pro and other sponsors due to their popularity.  However, other La Liga teams are not able to get as much money from individually negotiating their TV rights.  In this meeting, Rosell finally conceded that La Liga BBVA is in a very poor condition financially.  In order to help weaker teams and increase competitiveness, he says that La Liga must adopt an English Premier League or Serie A style of TV rights.  By reducing the number of teams while adopting this new TV reform, the amount of money teams in La Liga get will increase since they are splitting it amongst fewer clubs.  All in all this is not a terrible idea.
     So what are the arguments against it?  First, you are changing the history of the league.  Reducing the number of teams is changing the foundation of the league, similar to what NFL owners wanted to do by expanding the NFL season.  By eliminating four teams, you are removing eight games from the season.  This changes match day ticket sales, the amount of games a player plays, and all the records in the history of the league (fewer games makes it more difficult to match goal totals).  The benefits are that the players do get more rest in a busy season, the league could possibly become more competitive, and it would save teams from financial disaster.  Do the pros outweigh the cons?  Let us know what you think.

Sources:  http://www.deltaworld.org/sport/Sandro-Rosell-advocates-a-16-team-League/ ; http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/3277/la-liga/2011/11/08/2747731/barcelonas-sandro-rosell-wants-16-team-league-la-liga-has ; http://www.zimbio.com