Soccer is perhaps the most popular sport across the globe. Anyone can play it, on the streets, at home and of course on the field. The passion exhibited by soccer fans from all over the world for their favorite team is unmatched by fans of any other sport. Matches are, for the most part, exciting and a huge spectacle that fans look forward to each weekend of a football season.

Motorsport, similarly, is widely watched around the world. It’s all about the spectacle, and fans add healthy doses of passion by swearing allegiance to different manufacturers or racing teams. And while football fans aren’t necessarily motorsport fans or vice-versa, both sports have huge fan bases. But is it a case of ‘East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’?

The Superleague Formula aims to bring the two sports and their fans together by tapping into a football fan’s feeling of pride and passion. Hence, the driving force behind the Superleague Formula is competition between the top football clubs – eternal rivals, all together for the first time on a different but level playing field. The Superleague Formula will have one car representing each football club, with all the teams using identical cars. The organisers carried out focus group market research with season-ticket holders at major clubs across Europe to see how football fans would react to their teams doing battle in a different arena. It was concluded that the emotion and passion would spill over, and attract fans to the SF League as well.

According to the men behind the SF League, fans sport their club colors and pledge allegiance to their respective clubs. The SF League is another form of fan engagement. The individual clubs will also be heavily involved and will assist in promoting the championship. The feature races will be on Sunday afternoons, between one and three o’clock, so there won’t be a clash with major matches. The idea is to capture a television audience that will then tune in to the football. The organizers go on to emphasis that, “The football clubs pay nothing. They are net recipients. The costs are fully funded by Superleague Formula. Initially, the championship will be in a loss situation, but we’re fortunate enough to have secured a very strong investment package – investors who believe this is a concept that will be a success.”

The Superleague Formula car has been developed by the US-based Élan Motorsports Technologies. Founded in 1997, Élan Motorsports Technologies (EMT) designed and built the winning Indy 500 chassis in 2003 and 2004. The SF chassis which will be branded Panoz has been developed by chief designer Simon Marshall and chief aerodynamicist Nick Alcock – the men behind the Indy 500 successes.

What is most exciting is the engine powering the SF car. It’s a 4.2 liter V12 unit running on Bio Fuel. It’s been designed by Menard Competition Technologies (MCT), an American company based in Oxfordshire, and is reputed to have a glorious and intoxicating sound. It weighs just 140 kilos, is less than 700mm in length and produces 750 horsepower at the flywheel.

Superleague Formula’s two-day race format will have a Saturday qualification and two Sunday races of an hour’s duration each. Each round, the clubs will battle for a weekend purse of more than 1 million euros in prize money. Like in soccer, points will be awarded on a scale from first to last (1-20), so each race team / football club accumulates points, and the Superleague Formula Champions will be the Team with most points at the end of the season.

The cars have been painted in the club colors and a number of clubs have confirmed representation in the SF league. These clubs are Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur & Rangers from UK, AC Milan & AS Roma from Italy, Anderlecht from Belgium, Al-Ain from the UAE, Flamengo & Corinthians from Brazil, Beijing Guoan from China, FC Basel & FC Porto from Switzerland and Portugal respectively, Borussia Dortmund from Germany, Galatasaray from Turkey, and Olympiacos from Greece, PSV Eindhoven from Holland, and Sevilla from Spain.

Taking a leaf out of NASCAR, each SF race weekend will have a programme of off-track entertainment, with an ‘open-to-all’ philosophy that will allow fans access to the paddock and to the rear of the garages to meet their football and racing heroes. There will be six rounds in six countries in the first year, which will expand to nine in the second year. The 2008 season will start with a race in Donington, UK, on August 30/31st, move to Nürburgring, Germany, on September 20/21st for the second round with Zolder, Belgium hosting the third round on October 4/5th. The next two rounds will be at Estoril, Portugal on October 18/19th, Vallelunga, Italy on November 1/2nd, and the concluding round will be at Jerez in Spain on November 22/23rd.

It’ll be interesting to see if the marriage between motorsport and soccer is a happy one.