It is hard for a rivalry to maintain its mythical importance when the clubs meet in mid-July for a friendly that is primarily about boosting the bank balance.
Yet for Liverpool and Manchester United, who face each other in Bangkok this afternoon, or Real Madrid and Barcelona, who will meet in Las Vegas on July 23, diluting tradition and history is evidently a worthwhile trade off for the commercial benefit of a globetrotting tour.
“We see it as an important test because it's against United - and we don't play friendlies,” Jurgen Klopp said before today’s game. While the excitement for supporters unable to see their team weekly should not be overlooked, it was hard to fully buy into the Liverpool manager’s claim.
For the players it is an exercise to gain sharpness ahead of another hectic campaign, for those behind the scenes it is a financial boon. This is the first summer of expansive tours since the pandemic and clubs are making up for lost time and lost revenue.
In a one-off game clubs can make between £2m and £4m in an appearance fee paid by organisers who run ticket sales - before factoring in lucrative boosts in merchandise sales, for which exact figures are hard to establish but are considered significant.
Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton and Manchester City will be Stateside for the bulk of their preparations, while Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Leeds and Manchester United, after their stay in Thailand, are going down under. Liverpool are off to Singapore next and Tottenham Hotspur have gone to South Korea.
In the case of Chelsea and Spurs there is another obvious layer to factor in - their squads feature the poster boys of American and Korean football in Christian Pulisic and Son Heung-min.
The International Champions Cup may have been abolished as a consequence but it spearheaded the proliferation with the top clubs earning up to £16m from organisers Relevant Sports. Agreements often contained incentives such as a star player being guaranteed to appear and were predictably slanted towards the behemoths.
That goes some way to explaining why many of the Premier League ’s less marketable clubs have remained closer to home - although Palace venturing to Australia without several of their biggest names is an exception.
Less comfortable is the topic of climate change with clubs increasingly under the microscope around their sustainability efforts. It may not seem ethically responsible and it will become harder to justify such forays in the future.
But for now the biggest clubs will continue to reach all corners, spreading their message and watering down history to help the accounts.
