Is the European Super League Such a Terrible Idea?

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Violence, racism, decaying stadiums, an indifferent population and two full-scale tragedies had contributed to football’s degeneration. In 1989, when yet another calamity visited the sport in the form of the Hillsborough disaster, football’s crisis deepened. The sport seemed in terminal decline. (Hillsborough was the name of the stadium in Sheffield where 94 football fans died — three more passed away later — after too many spectators were admitted.)

Revolution

Thirty years ago this week — February 20, 1992, to be precise — English football changed dramatically. When the clubs in the First Division announced they were leaving the Football League, they could have had no conception they were starting a revolution that would turn the debilitated game into the most popular, marketable, glamorous, culturally diverse and arguably most valuable sports competition the world has ever seen.

The inaugural season started on August 15, 1992, with 22 clubs making up the newly branded Premier League. The original plan was for ITV to screen the games of England’s leading clubs — Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Everton (Manchester City and Chelsea were not among them) — but this was revised to a more equitable arrangement.

Earlier, in 1990, Greg Dyke, then a senior executive at London Weekend Television (an affiliate of the ITV network), pledged financial support for a breakaway from England’s Football League — this being an assembly of clubs split into four divisions — with revenue distributed among all member clubs.

The proposal was for a different structure in which the leading teams formed a self-contained alliance — independent of the Football League — and which would generate its own revenues, especially from the media, without any responsibility for sharing with the 87 clubs outside of the new entity. The Premier League was designed to operate under the auspices of the Football Association and would preserve the system in which the teams that finished the season at the bottom of the top tier would be relegated to the division below, while those at the top of the second tier would be promoted into the new league. But the key difference was that the elite would not share income with lesser clubs.

Sky’s Bid

ITV had presumably not expected a rival bid from Sky television, which, having launched its telecommunications satellite in 1989 and started transmission, had endured punishing losses.  So, when Rupert Murdoch’s TV station bid an unheard of ÂŁ304 million ($407 million today) for the rights to screen the new competition, it seemed not so much audacious as suicidal. It sounds absurd now, but there was a suspicion that non-terrestrial television might have been a flash in the pan.

Murdoch’s calculation was simple: Football fans would pay a monthly subscription in exchange for live games. Back then, live games were a rarity. Football clubs were historically opposed to screening games live for fear that their attendances would slump. That didn’t happen. In fact, football became an exemplar for market-oriented sport: it fashioned a commodity, created a new demand for it and offered it for sale.

Sky’s fortunes turned. Subscriptions rose so sharply that it soon became the ±«°­â€™s leading digital platform with revenues of over ÂŁ1 billion. In 2018, it was acquired by the American company Comcast in a deal valued at ÂŁ30 billion. At the time, Sky had 27 million subscribers.

Today, Sky no longer has exclusive rights to Premier League games. The European Union obliged it to share with other broadcasters. The present also includes BT Sport and Amazon Prime, expires in 2024-25 and is worth £5.1 billion. Retro-indexed to inflation, this would have been about £2.3 billion in 1992. The boards of directors of the clubs (they didn’t have outright owners) were probably astonished at Murdoch’s seemingly over-generous bid. None of them would have imagined how the value of English football would spiral upward as a result of Sky’s initiative.

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Buoyed by their new largess, the clubs refurbished their grounds (or stadiums, as most prefer to call them today), rendering them safe and family-friendly. To this end, the traditional standing areas, known as terraces, were removed and replaced with seats. Now, ironically, standing sections — or “safe standing sections,” as they are known — have been reintroduced.  

The lavish endowment also bankrolled the arrival of new players, often from overseas leagues that couldn’t match the salaries available in England. Eric Cantona was an early beneficiary, joining Manchester United in early 1992. Others included Tony Yeboah, Patrick Vieira and Ruud Gullit, black players who silenced any residual racist chants and comments leftover from the 1980s. In the mid-1990s, David Beckham personified the league moving seamlessly between sports and entertainment, acquiring a then-unique status as an all-purpose celebrity who could endorse practically any consumer product and guarantee increased sales.

Roman Abramovich

But the most influential figure in the Premier League was not a player, but a Russian oligarch, who, in 2003, decided he wanted to buy a football club in what was then emerging as the most fashionable sports competition in the world. Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea Football Club, then about ÂŁ80 million in debt. He made good on the debt and, over the next 18 years, splurged ÂŁ2 billion on transfers, that is, the amount paid to clubs to release players from contracts.

Following Abramovich’s example, moneyed business leaders from outside the UK began buying Premier League clubs, usually without any hope of breaking even. Despite the media and sponsorship income, clubs managed to hemorrhage money, mainly because of extravagant player salaries.

After the 2021 takeover of Newcastle United by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, there were 14 (of 20) top-flight clubs in overseas owners’ hands. Chelsea lost last year, Manchester City , mainly because both teams spent so much on transfers and paid high salaries; COVID-19 contributed, of course — the clubs lost income from spectators. Having benevolent owners means the clubs now operate less as businesses, more as foundations (like endowed colleges or charities).

Proponents of grassroots sports despair at the manner in which what was once a working-class game played by factory teams and supported by industrial workers has been hijacked by international plutocrats. Their intention has never been to cultivate local talent, but to attract the world’s most glittering names. Last year, Chelsea paid £97.5 million to Inter Milan for Romelu Lukaku. In 2016, Manchester United forked over £89 million for the services of Paul Pogba. Both players’ salaries are £12-15 million per year. Some argue this squeezes out aspiring young local players. Others suggest it inspires them.

Losers

What of the clubs that remained in the Football League, now rebranded as EFL? They were cast adrift and left to face the full brunt of market forces. Practically every club in the three divisions that make up the EFL struggles financially and many have declared themselves insolvent. There is little chance they can prosper outside the Premier League. Hence, their aim is to secure promotion. Ironically, these clubs might have benefited if the ill-fated European Super League, which attracted interest from several leading Premier League clubs, had taken off.

At the start of the 20^th century, money was, for many, a pestilence that would destroy the core value of fair play. Today, it could be argued that it was English football’s savior. Like every other professional sport — and all major sports are now professional — football has been embroiled in corruption, doping, violence and other activities that have despoiled sport’s central precept. All had their sources in money. Yet money is arguably the prime mover behind every single development in contemporary sport, and that is especially true in English football.

The Premier League is emblematic of recent developments in sports. It thrums with avarice, ruthlessness, triumphalism and an indifference to the collectivist principles that originally brought football into being.

*[Ellis Cashmore is co-editor of .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What England’s Premier League Did for Football appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

We never thought we’d live in a world without sport, but over the next month or so, we are going to do exactly that. What will it be like?

Social Distancing or the Danger of Life With Others

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At the moment, sports fans — and that means probably 60% of the world’s population in some measure (if television viewing figures are a very rough guide) — are accepting the absence of competition as a novelty. Cricket and basketball fans are grumbling louder than others, having missed a Test series and a week of hoops, with at least seven more to follow. Football fans in the UK are hopeful they’ll miss only a couple of weeks, though that sounds like wishful thinking. But, should the current trend continue amid the coronavirus pandemic, all sports would cease temporarily.

So, what will fans do? In short, take it on the chin. They have no choice. Or do they?

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the latest scenario is the complete lockdown of some sports. Discussions in recent weeks have centered on staging sports events behind closed doors. This would have meant allowing only employees, officials, security agents and television camera crews into the venue. The rationale initially was that the coronavirus spreads rapidly where there are large gatherings of people. “Large” has never been precisely defined, but 500 seems to be a working definition.

Doors Shut. Cameras On.

The “behind-locked-doors” approach has angered many sports fans who believe the atmosphere created by crowds is an essential part of the sports experience, even for those watching on their screens. But we now have exigent circumstances, and my guess is that they would accept this test-tube competition as better than nothing. I still believe this will return as an option. The number of people actually attending a football match is usually only about 0.4% of the TV audience, anyway.

The alternative is cataclysmic, at least in sports terms. Take the English Premier League, for example. Globally, this is the most popular league in the world — 188 of the world’s 193 countries carry the matches legally (and probably a few more illegally), with a total of about 3.2 billion people watching games over the course of a season.

In the UK, Sky TV has the biggest viewing contract, with BT Sport also screening games. There are also deals with myriad broadcasters around the world. The value of these deals is , or $11.1 billion at the time of publishing. In the absence of any action, TV channels lose advertising revenue. After all, no one wants to spend money publicizing their products when there are no consumers watching. So, chances are those broadcasters will insist on refunds.

The English Football Association (FA), which negotiates the deals and distributes the proceeds — much of it to the football clubs that make up the league — will then face a difficult choice: refuse to pay up and argue that it was helpless to avert the crisis or pay up and start scrutinizing the small print its insurance policies. And the insurers? They may value the FA contract so highly that they will cough up the lost revenue. Presuming the suspension ends, as projected, on April 3, this could run into several hundred million pounds. Perhaps over half a billion if it’s extended. Then insurers may invoke a force majeure clause and resist paying-out.

TV broadcasters will probably put pressure on the FA to resume games in secure environments. The initial resistance of fans will, by April, have dissipated and, while clubs will be obliged to play probably three times per week for a while, no revenue will be lost and the insurers will go. Phew!

Wimbledon to the Olympics

Some other sports will follow. But others will not. Will Wimbledon start on June 29? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that it could be played without spectators; many of the outside court matches are, anyway. Anthony Joshua’s heavyweight title fight with Kubrat Pulev is scheduled to take place in London on June 20. The problem here is that it’s booked to take place at Tottenham Hotspur’s new 62,000-seater stadium. A small nightclub would have been a wiser choice if a huge live audience were not anticipated.

The big one is the summer Olympic Games in Tokyo that is supposed to open on July 24. This is, of course, four months away. But could it possibly be sustained till its closing ceremony on August 9 without human spectators? It sounds unfeasible until you realize how much the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would be obliged to refund.

It is the IOC has set aside nearly $900 million in reserve to help deal with the financial fallout in the event of a cancellation. The city of Tokyo has $12.6 billion to stage the tournament, so the IOC’s piggy bank would be insufficient if the games were to be spiked. It may sound perverse at this point, but in a month’s time, if the suspensions continue to multiply, the IOC might be under pressure from broadcasters and organizers to sanction an unprecedented games in vitro, so to speak.

By then, audiences will have become habituated to viewing sports like they view movies — dismembered from other human beings. At least that’s how it appears whenever I go to the cinema. I’m old skool: I actually enjoy watching films in a theater, but there are rarely more than half-dozen others in the auditorium whenever I go. Maybe that isn’t such a nightmarish scenario. Think about what we’ll miss: racist abuse among football fans, drunkenness after the event and the periodic violence that breaks out during or after a competition.

Break Out That Smartphone

But how would people compensate for the lack of atmosphere? Social media. Twitter and Instagram are always alive with chat, images and other kinds of memes when sports competitions are in progress. We’ve become so accustomed to socializing remotely that the COVID-19 crisis may force us into another form of sociality — the virtual sports crowd “live.” Social media has its critics and, misguided as most of them are, they will be forced to concede its benefits.

Picture it: groups of people at home, in clubs, pubs and bars, or even in cinemas, all with their smartphones at the ready exchanging opinions and expressing outrage or ecstasy as the competitions progress. It’s all a bit like “Brave New World” for many. But we’re facing a future, at least an immediate and possibly short-term future in which Huxleyian principles are coming to the fore.

And, anyway, sports itself is a bit like “World State.” “Isn’t there something in living dangerously?” “There’s a great deal in it,” the Controller replied. “Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Getting Ready for a World Without Sports appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The bitter rift between Qatar and its Saudi and Emirati-led detractors could spill onto the pitches of English football. A flurry of reports suggest that the Gulf rivals are seeking to buy big-name English clubs.

Abu Dhabi billionaire Sheikh Khaled bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the ruling family, said this week he had  terms with Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley to buy the English Premier League club. Meanwhile, Qatar was in talks to purchase a stake in Leeds United — which plays in the second-tier Championship league — while Saudi Arabia had been earlier this year to be circling Manchester United.

Stepped-up interest from the Gulf could take the region’s rivalry from the European level, where the United Arab Emirates’ acquisition of Manchester City and Qatar’s buying of Paris Saint-Germain set examples, into a national competition. While both takeovers have contributed to the UAE and Qatar’s soft power despite hiccups, Manchester City’s owner, , has created a template for commercial exploitation. It has built what are of the Gulf’s most brands by acquiring stakes in clubs in the United States, Australia, Japan, Spain, Uruguay and China.

The Gulf Crisis

The rush to buy English clubs is, at least in part, the latest round in the Gulf crisis, which erupted in June 2017 with an alliance led by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, declaring an economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar.

Doha has, so far, emerged on top with Qatar’s unexpected winning of the Asian Cup earlier this year — in, of all places, Abu Dhabi — and its successful thwarting this month of UAE-Saudi-backed efforts by FIFA to force it to expand the 2022 World Cup from 32 to 48 teams and share the tournament with neighboring Gulf states. Qatar’s victories came on the back of a series of failed, or at best partially successful, Saudi and UAE efforts to their influence in global football governance, which would have enabled them to pressure the Gulf state.

The rush also suggests that the soft power gains of Arab states seeking to project themselves in ways that contrast starkly with their image as autocratic and often brutal violators of human rights, including widely-criticized migrant labor systems, outweigh the associated reputational risks. That assessment is borne out by Manchester City fans’ enthusiastic embrace of the club’s Emirati owners and willingness to ignore the country’s human rights record. Singing to the tune of the 1920s classic Kum Ba Yah, fans , “Sheikh Mansour m’lord, Sheikh Mansour, oh lord, Sheikh Mansour,” a reference to Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, Manchester City’s owner, who is also the UAE minister of presidential affairs and half-brother of UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

Like Sheikh Mansour, Newcastle’s buyer , whose business ties appear to be more with Dubai than Abu Dhabi, is likely to project his acquisition as personal even if the UAE’s de factor ruler, Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, keeps a tight lid on government as well as family affairs.

The Gulf states, responding differently to criticism, have nevertheless not had an easy ride in seeking to garner soft power and polish tarnished images. In contrast to the UAE and Saudi Arabia who seldom respond to their critics, Qatar has reacted to an avalanche of criticism since its winning of the 2022 World Cup hosting rights by engaging with its detractors. Although too little too late for its more strident critics, Qatar has made to its kafala or sponsorship system that puts employees at the mercy of their employers. To be fair, so , even if it did so less because of pressure by human rights and labor groups and more as part of an effort to project itself as a model, cutting-edge, 21st-century state.

Business Practices

Nonetheless, both the UAE and Qatar could see their reputational gains undermined if legal proceedings involving their football business practices go against them. Manchester City has reacted angrily to an investigation by UEFA into  of financial fair play irregularities, which could lead to a Champions League ban. Yves Leterme, chairman and chief investigator of UEFA’s club financial control body investigatory chamber, has referred the allegations to the group’s adjudicatory chamber to issue a ruling. Similarly, Paris Saint-Germain’s president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, was last week  in France with corruption in connection with the bidding process for this year’s world athletics championships in Qatar. Khelaifi is also a UEFA executive committee member and chairman of Qatar’s television network, beIN Sports.

In an argument that could spread to Britain, Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, Spain’s top football league, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain as “state-run clubs, one off petrol money, one off gas” that should be expelled from European competitions as threats to the sport. Echoing Manchester City fans’ rejection of criticism of the UAE as “racist,” the club’s chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, dismissed Tebas’ assertions as ethnic slurs.

That’s a tactic that will likely work as long as fans such as concede that they may be “hypocrites” who “don’t care about human rights in the Middle East.” A Manchester City podcaster, Hockin adds: “Abu Dhabi is an up-and-coming country [sic], and it wanted to boost its profile. It’s a PR thing, and we’re fine with that … I should care but I don’t. I should care about where my shoes come from — if they’ve been made by slave labour — but I don’t. I don’t look to football for my moral code. I don’t think I’ve sold my soul to support Man City.”

The question is whether Hockin would stick to his position if the business practices of his club’s owner or the politics of the UAE become a liability rather than an asset. With Khelaifi’s legal issues, the same question could confront Paris Saint-Germain fans.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Gulf Wants to Buy the English Premier League appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

With the FIFA World Cup underway, there are many out there who have no idea about the history of this long-loved sport. If you love football, you’re probably only aware of its history from recent times. But football has a long, gruesomely violent and hugely interesting past. And so begins a tale of how a violent peasant pastime became a multi-million pound industry.

Traces of football’s history go way, way back. The Greeks had a game called , which seems to have involved athletes hurling and catching a ball (there is a marble relief of this in the National Museum in Athens). This game may have been a precursor of the Roman game , where a small, hard ball was thrown among a throng of players divided into teams.

In the 9^th century in Britain, a monk recorded how every year on Shrove Tuesday the youth of London “would go into the fields to play at the famous game of ball.”

Unlike expensive courtly pursuits such as jousting, these games required no specialized equipment and were thus open to all social classes. The innovation of a goal (usually a prominent local landmark) may have derived from the chivalric “passage of arms,” a military exercise in which a group of knights attempted to defend the gate of a castle or town from attack.

Mob Football

The first unambiguous reference to football in England is a writ for preserving the peace in London (dated April 13, 1314), which notes the “great uproar in the City, through certain tumults arising from the striking of large footballs in the public fields.” That football could lead to serious injury or death is borne out by the records. In 1321, for example, one player died from wound sustained after accidentally running onto a sheathed knife.

Yet despite a succession of royal proclamations promoting archery and a statute of 1409-10 forbidding laborers and servants from “playing at the Balls,” this “common, undignified, and worthless” game remained ever popular.

So what now? No salary caps and unlimited transfer fees mean that in England there’s nothing to prevent the richest clubs from buying not only the best established players, but also many unproven kids — stars in the making who aren’t yet old enough to vote. 

Football was also entertaining; a spectator sport in the making. The dangers of the game, however, remained. Civic authorities in 17^th century London, Manchester, Grimsby and Clitheroe banned football playing in the streets, fearing broken windows and tumults.

They were not being alarmist, as a riot instigated by football players in the fens only a few months before the outbreak of the First English Civil War demonstrated. Another disturbance became a prelude to the Second Civil War: unhappy that Christmas had been abolished, rioters at Canterbury used a football match to attract an unruly crowd to their cause.

In the 18^th century, the rules we now recognize on the pitch today began to emerge. At one match, it was determined that “two men will not be allowed to engage one only.” Similarly, at a game played at Ditchingham in 1741, there were judges whose job was to settle “all differences that may arise.” By the late 18^th century, members of the aristocracy, keen to have a healthy work force, began organizing matches — often in concert with local publicans. Prizes in the form of hats were provided for the winners (losers tended to receive stockings).

Public School Rules

From the late 18^th century and through into the 19^th century, increased concern for public order, tighter labor discipline, the enclosure of land and migration to the cities led to an erosion of popular customs. Football was not immune from these changes.

Though the game continued to be played in highly publicized contests, traditional football was in decline. At the same time, public schools, where hitherto football had been regarded as ungentlemanly and “fit only for butcher boys,” began to codify the rules of their ball games.

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At Rugby,  rules that permitted players to carry a ball were set down in 1845. Eton followed suit in 1849 with  that, in deliberate contrast to Rugby, forbade Etonians from handling the ball. At the universities, undergraduates brought with them the rules favored by their public schools.

After some attempts to reconcile the various codes, Cambridge produced a  code in 1863, which made no mention of handling the ball. These Cambridge rules were to form the basis of the code eventually adopted by the Football Association established later that year.

Passion and Professionalism

The growth of Association Football in the late 19^th century was remarkable. Amateur clubs sometimes linked to firms or churches, but more often reflecting neighborhood loyalties, mushroomed in the industrial towns and cities of the north (in the 1880s, Liverpool alone had more than 100).

Many teams built their grounds among factories and the worker’s houses, cementing the support of their local communities. By the early 20^th century, many of the largest cities had two major teams and the often intense local rivalry between these clubs was regularly played out before hordes of excited, partisan spectators that represented the largest regular gatherings in peace-time.

The sectarian-fueled passions of the 50,000 or more who regularly witnessed the New Year’s Day clashes between Celtic and Rangers found an outlet in 1909, when 6,000 fans following a draw between the two teams; 54 policemen were injured, the ground damaged and virtually every street-lamp in the vicinity of the stadium destroyed.

The fierce competitiveness that drove teams toward league and cup glory accelerated the professionalization of football. Hungry for success on the pitch, teams began to recruit players from far and wide to realize their ambitions. Victorious teams, like the side that won the cup for Tottenham Hotspur in 1901, often contained no local players. Yet supporters continued to identify with the individuals that wore their team colors.

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Professional football players were perceived as working-class heroes and were paid accordingly: In 1931, the maximum annual salary of a professional footballer, including unofficial bonuses, was probably nearly ÂŁ400; a figure far higher than the average industrial wage. Transfer fees were also forever on the increase.

In the 1930s, football was still seen as cheap entertainment, but it was also big business, providing growing employment opportunities. Demand for news had created sports papers like the Saturday afternoon Ěý˛ą˛Ô»ĺ Green’Un. Demand for food and drink benefited the catering trade. Demand for cigarettes led to the cult of the cigarette card made famous by John Player and Son. And the demand for gambling spawned pools companies like Littlewoods and Vernons.

There was also advertising; the FA Cup finalists of 1934 promoted flannel trousers, Shredded Wheat and shoe-polish. By the eve of World War II, The Times could describe football as “something like a national industry.”

The Golden Age?

In the post-war era, we have witnessed an ever-widening gulf between rich and poor clubs, where success for the elite is no longer measured by performance on the pitch but by  on the stock exchange.

Clubs now recruit managers from outside the United Kingdom and buy players of every nationality. In their wake have come team doctors, dieticians, sports psychologists and publicists. Players are now celebrities with agents and personal assistants. The best earn more in a week than the prime minister does in a year — and more in six weeks than a nurse will make in a lifetime of service with the National Health Service (NHS).

The spectacle we watch and read about daily is sold to us with an ever-increasing sophistication that maximizes a brand loyalty unparalleled on the high street.

Football has never had it so good, but questions remain as to the game’s future direction. Will, as some predict, the industry’s bubble burst? Will fans tire of a handful of clubs cleaning up domestically and sharing the European prizes between them? Financial Fair Play has to be toothless. Hardly a surprise, perhaps, given the high-stakes nature of the game.

So what now? No salary caps and unlimited transfer fees mean that in England there’s nothing to prevent the richest clubs from buying not only the best established players, but also many unproven kids — stars in the making who aren’t yet old enough to vote. And if the best indicator of where a team will finish is its annual wage bill — occasional managerial brilliance and incompetence excepted — things might get a little too predictable for fans already forced to shell out more to watch a game than they ever have before.

*[Ariel Hessayon does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. This article was originally published on . Read the original .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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