A ‘launch game for differentiated fans’ is so last year

Ready your bids, then, broadcasters, for the competition you know and love, PLUS a singled-out launch game, featuring the previous year’s winners and preceded by (yes!) an opening ceremony.

“At the heart of the strategy,” says that rights team, “is the recognition that media markets are changing fast, with new global digital-first entrants offering differentiated fan propositions, while established broadcast partners remain eager to ensure optimal visibility for the competition.”

Well, speaking as a “differentiated fan” myself, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a bidding war declared open so politely. Also: loving the use of “heart” there.

Anyway, you may recognise in this “launch game” concept a tradition lifted from American sport. (The NFL season begins with a Thursday night game featuring the reigning Super Bowl holders, before everyone else plays on the Sunday.) Which is, naturally, a bit worrying. But at least they haven’t lifted a season-opening tradition from American television, because then Paris Saint-Germain, or whoever, would be looking at being part of a launch-night double-­episode and playing two of their group stage matches back to back.

Even so, this strategy – a courageous attempt to make the blunt end of the tournament look more like the sharp end via, no doubt, the judicious on-pitch application of a thick ­carpet of emblazoned tarpaulins and a locally sourced gospel choir – feels somehow alien to football and its rhythms.

True, Liverpool’s opening Premier League game this season got tweezered out and screened on Friday night. But, if I remember rightly, there wasn’t much “launch” fuss (which those of us who were waiting for our own teams to get going would have balked at in any case), and I certainly don’t recall ­rapper Central Cee being involved at any point.

And maybe this stuff works. Think about the upcoming first round proper of the FA Cup. It’s just a bunch of ties right now, isn’t it? The only people getting excited about it are the people getting excited about it, and they’re no use to anyone with a 10-slide commercial strategy freshly loaded on to their iPads. So maybe the FA’s people should be plucking out Wealdstone v Southend United, say, from the games set to go ahead on 1 November, and securing it its own slightly earlier solo platform on Amazon Prime, with the leverage of a pre-match show featuring a medley from Skepta and a drone show.

Except the FA, of all organisations, would know better, wouldn’t it? After all, in its not too distant past lies the fate of the day-long, twin-channel fuss that used to be made of the FA Cup final. That annual extravaganza thrived when live football was rarely on television. But then we moved swiftly into an age where football was on television even more than Alison Hammond, and the notion of a lavish build-up to the Cup final, or any other game, became inherently absurd.

Even nostalgia-addled Boomers, such as myself, who were once rendered reliably lachrymose by even a glancing reference to the old days of post-breakfast reports from the teams’ hotels, are now more likely to be found shaking our heads with disbelief and saying: “‘Cup final It’s a Knockout’? What the hell was wrong with us?” The haunting truth is that there wasn’t much to detain us in those days. And now there’s too much. Which is why the Cup final in the 21st century tends to get the statutory 30 minutes of build-up, the entirety of which we all know we can comfortably afford to miss.

In that light, this new Champions League strategy looks oddly old-fashioned. It seems to be drawing on ideas the viewing world outgrew over two decades ago. A launch ceremony with an aerial ballet dancer and a couple of numbers off the new album from Doja Cat? That’s so 1974, no?

Either way, I’ll probably be in the kitchen. Give me a shout when the teams are on the pitch.

Photograph by Bob Thomas/Getty Images