The Fight for Football Fans

In their book Power Play, Boyle and Haynes argue; “a central element in the sport-television relationship revolves around the economics of the broadcasting industry and its use of sport as ‘television product’ in the drive to secure audience and subscribers.”
Are they right? Is football just being used to make the rich richer and the poor poorer by broadcasting companies? Or are they interested in the globalization of the game and delivering it to the masses? One thing we do know is that subscription prices are getting more and more expensive each season and it is starting to burn a hole in our pockets.
You can now expect to pay BSkyB around £50 per month to watch at least two Premier League games per week in their “Premium Package” which comes with hundreds of other mind-numbing channels. Irish company Setanta offer a monthly subscription of £9.99 for their two channels for at least two other Premiership games per week. Now that may seem quite a high price, but we must consider the amount of money that these broadcasters have paid the Football Association for the rights to show these games.
Sky paid £1,314 million and Setanta paid £392 million for broadcasting rights for the current season. This deal represents approximately £28 million to each Premier League football club per year, who in recent figures are shown as on average £50 million pounds in debt (with the exception of Manchester United). This is serious money that can make or break clubs and help keep their top players who on average earn five million pounds per annum.
But is it worth buying into? 3.7 billion people watched the 2006 World Cup finals which would have had the advertisers racing to broadcasters for 30 second slots which would have cost millions. World football is worth an estimated £160 billion so yes; it would seem that it is worth buying into.
This year BSkyB owner Rupert Murdoch was named as the most influential person in the world, with Chelsea Chairman Roman Abramovich at number 30, by Vanity Fair magazine. Sport evidently is a television product that does secure audiences and subscribers.
Recent deals involve the BBCs’ and BSkyB’s joint contract for the rights to show the so-called “B team competition” the Carling Cup and games from the Football League from the 2009 -2012 seasons.
It means Championship matches will be screened live on the BBC for the first time, with 10 first-choice games per season exclusively live on the BBC. The Carling Cup Final will be simulcast live with Sky, and two semi-final legs shown exclusively live on the BBC.
Under the new agreement, Sky Sports’ broadcast rights include 65 matches from the Football League, exclusively live, and the Football League play-offs, including all three finals, exclusively live. Sky will also show exclusive live matches from rounds one to five of the Carling Cup, two matches per round, and two legs of the Carling Cup semi-finals exclusively live. The new agreements are worth £88m per season to Football League clubs and encompass terrestrial and pay television, broadband internet, video-on-demand and mobile services. Meanwhile, the BBC's other football commitments remain strong; Match Of The Day is in the first year of a new three-year deal with the Premier League and has rights to show Euro 2008 next summer, and then the biggest events in international football i.e. the World Cups in South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014 (www.bbc.co.uk/sport).
Broadcasting has had a major impact on football and has had a large part in making it a global phenomenon.
In 2002, 106 million households were equipped with appliances to download pay-tv football. In the 2001-2002 season, the European television channels devoted 3.9 billion Euros to the payment of football broadcasting rights of an overall 5.5 billion euro bill for sports broadcasting (that’s 70 per cent). In 2003, broadcasts of football matches reached 61 per cent of the best sport audiences (The Economics of Sport and the Media; Jeanrenaud and Kesenne).
Referring back to the point made by Boyle and Haynes; it is true that the money from the broadcasting industry is a central element in the sport-television relationship and has helped globalize the sport, but it is not the only one. It can be argued that the public i.e. the fans are the ones that help make football global. They can choose whether or not to subscribe to watch games. It is their money that is going towards these clubs and helping it become global. Their money pays for foreign players and funds international competitions. Sales from the World Cup Finals in 2006 alone were over one billion pounds and sales from merchandising are at an estimated £170 million pounds per annum.
There are several central elements that are responsible for the globalization of football. Since public taxation and advertising can no longer grow much further as sources of football finance, it can be said that pay-tv has paved the way to a new era in the relationships between television and football.

Wembley Opening is upon us (finally!!!)

It’s typical of the British; nothing is ever built on time. Whether it’s road works, new gas-pipes, schools, office blocks, houses and of course how can we forget; multi-million pound stadiums.
Yes, after months of delays and miscalculated figures, the new Wembley stadium is finally set to open its gates to the patiently waiting public….. and it’s about time.
The first match inside the extravagant 90,000-seater football arena is scheduled for March 24th when England and Italy’s under-21 teams square off in a friendly match. But only 60,000 tickets have been allocated for this fixture, as it is to serve as a safety test for the official inauguration game, which will be the English FA Cup final on May 19th. It was around this time last year that we were saying the same thing about the West Ham and Liverpool final. But unfortunately for both teams and their fans, delays meant that the teams would have to see out a thrilling final that finished 3-3 and a penalty shoot-out victory for the Kop at the Cardiff Millennium Stadium (what an opening game that would have been for the new stadium). But will it be worth the wait? Or will it be a waste of taxpayer’s money?
Whilst we are on the subject of money; there have been substantial misjudgements in the amount the stadium was actually meant to cost, much like the 2012 Olympics (which is another event that the government has managed to balls up). According to the initial plan, construction works should have been completed in August 2005. The delays raised costs from initially around 250 million pounds to more than £757 million pounds, that’s quite a difference wouldn’t you say?
On Friday 9th March, Australia’s Multiplex Group handed over the keys to its owners. A spokesperson for Multiplex stated; “Multiplex Group is pleased to announce that the Certificate of Practical Completion has now been granted for the Wembley Stadium project in London. The granting of this certificate by Wembley National Stadium Limited (WNSL) marks the handover of the management and control of the stadium to WNSL.”
The stadium’s most notable feature is a 315 meter long arch, the longest single span roof structure in the world. It is 133 meters above the pitch at its highest point, which is taller than the nearby Millennium Wheel. The first concert scheduled for the revamped stadium is set to be by George Michael on 9th June.
The old Wembley, which opened in 1924, closed in 2000 and was demolished in 2002. The last game played at the previous stadium was in 2000, when Kevin Keagan's England team lost 1-0 to old rivals Germany (which led to the former manager’s departure).
England’s new home of football promises to be the biggest, brightest and best in the world. It dwarfs the previous Wembley and can be seen (when lit up) from miles and miles away. The first FA Cup final in the new arena could be even better than last year if Champions Chelsea and league rivals Manchester United clash. United are the only team to have appeared in the FA Cup final in every decade since the Second World War and have been in the final sixteen times, with eleven victories as the current record. Chelsea have to see off Blackburn Rovers and United have to beat Watford in the semi-finals if this fixture is to ever occur.
But before the cup final we can look forward to the first international game at Wembley. The under 21 match between England and Italy on March 24th will not use the stadium's full capacity of 90,000 because it is a test event required for the stadium to obtain a safety certificate from the local council. The record crowd for an England under 21 match is currently 34,000 which was set against France in November 2005 at Tottenham’s White Hart Lane stadium.
At the end of the day, even though there have been many delays, several let-downs, big money problems, thousands of disappointed fans and a lot of broken promises, we only have to take just one glance at our country’s new national stadium and be proud. We can safely say that once again our great nation has achieved greatness. All we need now is the World Cup safely locked away in the trophy cabinet. Well, we can dream can’t we…?

Is this the Beginning of the End for the Premiership?

Another season has gone by in the Premiership and another club has been sold to another super-rich foreigner. Not one but two clubs have been taken over by foreign million/billionaires in recent months and it hasn’t come as a huge surprise. No less than seven top-flight teams are now under over-seas ownership, the two most recent being West Ham’s £85million Icelandic takeover by Eggert Magnusson and Liverpool’s multi-million exchange with super-wealthy George Gillette. If you’re a fan of these particular teams then you are probably thinking that it’s great news; your club now has the financial backing to buy the best players, compete with the best in the world and start bringing home the silver-wear. But is it really great news? Could all this foreign money end up damaging the Premiership and eventually make our beautiful game ugly?

Chelsea fans will immediately disagree as they feel that the extra cash is nothing short of a god-send; seeing as they have won two consecutive championships since Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich took command. True, money does mean success and you do need a lot of it to keep the top players happy, but now that seven clubs are financially dominant; could these clubs and their fans expect to be like Chelsea; demanding that the team win every game and every competition with failure unthinkable? Could this extra amount of pressure end up destroying English football?

Lets imagine for a moment that all twenty clubs had unlimited funds to use in the transfer market. The race for the best players in the world will be even more of frenzy. And let’s face it, these players aren’t going to be easy to persuade; knowing that the chairman is a billionaire several times over; he is going to demand stupendous weekly wages and will only accept the highest bidder. The game really could end up just being played for the money. Also, with even more foreign players being imported where does that leave our England stars? On the bench most likely, or even moving country themselves to play for teams that we have never even heard of! With the England team scattered it could spell disaster for the national side.

And what does happen when each team has eleven of the best players in the world? Three teams have to get relegated, so a huge number of people are going to be extremely disappointed. And then we will have three super-powers in the Championship. How are clubs like Southend United, Colchester F.C and Luton Town going to compete with that? Sell out to a foreign billionaire perhaps?

The point is that while we are celebrating a prosperous future, we could be blinded by our greed. Fans may end up getting bored with the game as their team isn’t winning the Champions League or UEFA Cup and they could turn to other sports or just start following lower league teams.

It is good to know that at the moment the Premiership is very popular all over the world, but in ten maybe twenty years time, we could end up hating the game and god forbid- even turn to rugby!

The Referee's a Winner! The Referee's a Winner!

We all know the chants and we all know the stereotypes, but could fans be wrongabout our referees? Week in week out the match officials get a pounding from fans, players, managers, coaches and ever increasingly from the media. With more and more calls for video refereeing adding pressure to the man in black and white it really is becoming an even tougher job.

Imagine for a moment that you are a referee. You are standing in the middle of Old Trafford, it’s the biggest game of the season; Manchester United versus Chelsea, and you are surrounded by 70,000 unforgiving fans. Not only must you keep them happy by keeping the game fair and be neutral for 90 minutes; you must also ensure the safety of every player (all of which are super-paid with super egos and ready to pounce on every mistake you make like some sort of big cat), and all the while you have also got some bald, obese football hooligan calling you blind and shouting abuse at you from the nearest pie-stand putting you off. Its not so easy is it?

Football referees today have really got it tough and very few of us take the time to stop and realise that we probably haven’t got half the bottle that some of these blokes have. The responsibility is increasingly huge; one decision could decide which team wins the league, who gets relegated and who doesn’t make the cut for European qualification. The consequences of some of their actions are phenomenal. Some of them can still read about their mistakes in the national papers weeks after the game. Graham Poll’s infamous triple yellow card in the World Cup in Germany almost cost him his career. It truly has dented his reputation within the Premiership.

Speaking from first-hand experience as an FA referee I know exactly how difficult it is. I may have only taken charge in schoolboy’s games on a Sunday, but the pressure and anxiety before each game was unreal. I would be sweating over it days before the kick-off. Parents are a nightmare- especially mothers. The abuse is in some cases is extremely over the top and un-necessary. This is only at junior level; I don’t know how top referees cope with thousands of angry fans. To be a top referee you have to have a lot of courage.

Simon Chittock of the Referees Association is based in Essex. He and his father Gordon have been training referees young and old for several years now. He feels that football referees are extremely underestimated and are not treated fairly: “The impressions and stereotypes delivered to the public through the media are damaging the reputations of our referees at all levels. We do not see this in rugby. For some reason everyone blames the ref in football.” He also believes that top-level players are not helping; “Professional players are not delivering a very good message to the younger generation. When kids see their idols having a go at the ref they think that this is acceptable and copy them when they play for their local club or school, and it isnot acceptable. Things need to change soon. Perhaps the call for video refereeing should be answered.”

But will video refereeing work? It seems to in rugby. Or will this ruin the game as there will be a lot of stopping and starting making the game ultimately last longer. And what about grass-roots level? It will be extremely difficult and expensive to deliver the technology to this area. Manchester City manger Stuart Pearce and WiganAthletic manager Paul Jewell have both made it clear that they feel video refereeing should not be allowed. They believe that the game should be called as the match official sees it as this adds to the beauty of the game, in that anything can happen at any time.

Either way referees deserve more respect. The situation is getting worse and the referees are being made out to be the bad guys when really they have a huge hand in helping football move forward. Perhaps everyone that plays football, whatever level, should take the twelve-week course and actually learn the rules of the game inside out and referee a game themselves. That way people will understand where the ref is coming from and what he/she had to deal with. Until then our refs are just going to have to live in the shadow of the dark cloud that is slowly descending over football.....