Leigh Steinberg, a veteran American sports agent with decades of experience representing top NFL draft picks, argues that European football could benefit from adopting structural elements of the National Football League’s draft system to address growing competitive imbalance.
Speaking in a recent interview, Steinberg highlighted how the NFL’s mechanism—where teams select college players in reverse order of the previous season’s standings—has helped maintain competitive parity across its 32 franchises. He contrasted this with European football, where a modest number of clubs consistently dominate domestic leagues and European competitions.
The core of Steinberg’s argument centers on competitive balance as a driver of long-term league health. He points to the NFL’s model, which includes slotted rookie contracts that prevent bidding wars for top talent, as a way to ensure smaller-market teams can build through smart evaluation rather than financial superiority alone.
According to Steinberg, the results speak for themselves: over the past 20 seasons, 13 different NFL teams have won the Super Bowl. In contrast, during the same period, only five clubs have won the English Premier League title.
He argues that this disparity in outcomes affects more than just trophies—it impacts fan engagement, broadcast value, and the overall commercial sustainability of leagues. When outcomes become predictable, he contends, interest wanes and the product loses its appeal to neutral audiences.
Steinberg acknowledges that a direct transplant of the NFL draft into European football faces significant hurdles, particularly around player freedom of movement and European Union labour laws, which protect athletes’ rights to choose their employers.
Instead, he proposes a hybrid approach: implementing a draft system for players under the age of 21, while preserving the existing transfer market for established professionals. This, he suggests, would allow young talent to be distributed more equitably without overturning the entire system overnight.
To further support competitiveness, Steinberg recommends that European leagues adopt luxury taxes—similar to those used in the NBA—rather than relying solely on financial fair play regulations, which he views as ineffective at curbing spending by the wealthiest clubs.
He emphasizes that the goal is not to Americanize European football, but to borrow proven mechanisms that promote sustainability and broad-based competitiveness. “The resistance stems from reverence for tradition,” Steinberg says. “But tradition must serve the present, not constrain the future.”
Drawing from his own experience negotiating rookie contracts under the NFL’s wage scale, Steinberg maintains that the system creates pathways for young athletes while giving teams cost predictability. He cites examples like the Jacksonville Jaguars, who improved from last in the league to playoff contenders within two years through strategic drafting, as evidence that poor-performing teams can rebuild quickly.
Steinberg frames the debate not as a question of whether change is needed, but whether football’s governing bodies and club stakeholders have the vision to reform a system that, in his view, has become overly predictable and financially skewed toward a narrow elite.