European football is seen as the most prestigious tournament, and also has significant financial rewards for just getting into it. European football is not gu

European football is seen as the most prestigious tournament, and also has significant financial rewards for just getting into it. European football is not guaranteed for any team at the moment, you need to finish in the top places of your domestic league to qualify. The ESL guaranteed European football for a some teams, making the domestic leagues less important as it doesn’t get you access to European football, and also stops growth of smaller teams (how do they get into the ESL etc). For me it was a grab by the top teams to de-risk their financials by having guaranteed European football, nothing to do with seeing the best teams play each other etc (if they are the best they’d meet in champions league..). I guess it would be like if 10 teams said we are making our own playoffs or something, and no other teams can join our playoffs unless we let them, the regular season is suddenly worthless (sorry if this is a terrible analogy - I don’t really know American sports).