Well, why not take the game to the customers?

Singaporeans are customers. You buy the brand, you sit up in the night glued to the box. You know the moves of Cristiano Ronaldo, Fernando Torres and Co as well as I do. And, you deserve to see more than glorified exhibitions.

Will you get it?

That is the billion-dollar question. It is going to cost. The EPL plans to hold auctions to see who bids the highest, and anticipates plenty of competition out there for the Greed is Good franchise.

It is not often that Alexi Lalas, the general manager and president of the Los Angeles Galaxy puts his finger, or his vocal chords, on the pulse of the 'English' game, but he cut right to it this weekend.

'Obviously, LA would want to partner up (to the EPL),' he said. 'It's a no-brainer. When it comes to the United States, you want as much bang for your buck as possible, so you've gotta go to these markets.'

Right, Alexi. Nobody talks in terms of markets, brands, bangs and bucks quite like you.

But the Brits are getting there, and their chief executive Scudamore, who owns an expensive house in America, believes that if the EPL does not do this thing, then some other league will.

He is following the National Football League's lead, after American football hired Wembley Stadium last fall for a 'regular-season' game.

Scudamore is the man who sold England's top league to 204 territories to boost annual TV rights to the 20 EPL clubs for £900 million (S$2.5billion) a year.

'The globalisation of sport is both an opportunity and a challenge,' he says. 'One that needs addressing in a responsible way.'

The British government, the supporters' associations, Fifa, Uefa and Uncle Tom Cobley reacted with shock horror.

How dare the league take the game away from its roots, asked Andy Burnham, who has been the Minister for Sport for all of five minutes.

Scudamore brushes critics aside: 'We are looking at five cities, (hosting) one game on the Saturday and one on the Sunday, and creating some sort of festival weekend.'

He has done preliminary homework, and figures it would have to be January (starting in 2011), because that is the month free of big money flowing in from the Champions League.

There would be 10 matches during the weekend, one for each EPL club, and the points would count towards the title.

So, instead of the habitual pre-season kick-arounds you and the world have been sold on summer promotional tours, the fans East, West and anywhere but England would get an authentic taste of the best league on earth.

A caveat, several in fact, crop up. The EPL, Scudamore says, would have to avoid venues with bad weather.

Aha, so the clairvoyant can foresee the snow that paralysed Tokyo and parts of China this week?

He can tell which year Chicago will be under a blanket of 25 inches of the stuff? He knows what effects 24-hour flights to and from Sydney would have on players?

Stop it, Hughes! Stop asking journalist's questions. This is going to happen, the 20 clubs are beside themselves with excitement.

How do we know that? David Gold, co-owner of Birmingham City, says so.

Now it may be that Singapore, Dubai, New York, Beijing would want more bang for their buck than Birmingham versus Middlesbrough on their turf. But, hey, Scudamore says it will be pot luck.

The league will select five cities to do business with, but the five will have no say on which fixtures they get.

That's fair, isn't it? What do you want for a minimum £5million outlay?

It's a feast of football for you, and it turns the English supporters into long-distance TV viewers. Turns the world on its head, in fact.

I refer, again, to the aptly named David Gold. He made his fortune selling 'passion and fashion' in women's lingerie.

He happens to be a Londoner, not a Birmingham man, and spent last year trying to sell his club to a Hong Kong businessman Carson Yeung.

But he insists he has never seen the Premier League chairmen so excited as when the proposal was put on the table.

Has anyone counted more than the potential profit? Anyone consulted players, managers, doctors? Anyone done logistics of flights, day-night time zones, or disruption to local league football in the chosen lands?

It's a frightening thought that the money men might size up Singapore's National Stadium, capacity 55,000, and conclude that it would be more profitable to play in Malaysia because its Bukit Jalil Stadium seats 87,411.

For that matter, the Rungrado May Day Stadium in North Korea holds 150,000.

All things considered, it's very kind of the EPL to share its competition with planet earth. It's just the details that need working on.

stsports@sph.com.sg