Rubbish.
Football – sadly – is just another huge entertainment business. All tinkering around the edges does is create complexity, uncertainty and the opportunity for griifters to slice off their cut.
Take the current “financial fair play” fiasco in the Premier League. No one really knows what the rules are. Indeed, they seem to be making them up as they go along. One month Everton have a 6 point deduction. Another month it’s been reduced to 2 points. Nottingham Forest have a 4 point deduction, but the appeal won’t be decided until after the season finishes … . Meanwhile, the “big six” can do whatever they like and never get any deductions. It’s a farce.
Better to keep things simple and accept it for what it is. Better than feeding the lawyers and hangers on.
If you don’t like it, don’t go, don’t watch and don’t pay.
If you want a “fair” football league, start one yourself.
Football’s got nothing to do with democracy. It’s a sport/business. Or Thomas Piketty. Keep politics out of it.
Congratulations to Bayer Leverkusen.
All professional sport is an entertainment business. As such it has the same problems as capitalism in general, that it only properly works if it is regulated properly to maximise that entertainment value. As in business, without regulation you get monopolies, and that then reduces the entertainment value of the contest if the result is effectively decided before the kick-off.
David Giles
25 days ago
How boringly predictable that this article should end with a nostalgic reference to player wage caps. Of yes, those young but talented lads from Africa and South America are destroying football, no doubt about it.
I wonder. If Picketty’s analysis has much to say about the financial success currently enjoyed by the l”losers”, those clubs in Leagues 1 & 2. Because at the moment, they have never had it so good.
Alex Lekas
25 days ago
Some years back, various American sports – except baseball – took a headlong plunge into parity through the salary cap. Football, in particular, was almost maniacally driven by a desire for parity to sustain fan enthusiasm for the entire season. Attendance drops off when one’s team has been eliminated from contention and people disguised as empty seats is a bad look for television.
Like everything else, this came with tradeoffs – exorbitant salaries for often marginal players and annual roster changes through which clubs are more like mercenary units, tossing aside any vestige of loyalty. Even so, the NFL is a money-making machine. So is the NBA. Fans are far less wedded to continuity and watching players develop than they once were; like many other examples, sports is an instant gratification society in which winning is expected now.
Actually I’d argue the salary cap often does the opposite of what you’re saying. It helps teams keep homegrown/drafted players. There is a 0% chance Patrick Mahomes would be in Kansas City if Dallas/NY/LA could spend hundreds of millions more than them. As a Brewers fan, this has turned me off baseball. Anytime we manage to get a young star, you just know you’ll only have a few years before they’re traded for some 18 year old I’ll see in the majors in 5 years.
I don’t think either one of you said anything incorrect. But the MLB is just so different structurally than the NFL with the most obvious being that they play 145 more baseball games!
Baseball has always been a grind whereas each NFL game matters. Each game is a major event. The NBA somewhere in between. Unless they cut the baseball season in half (fat chance), I don’t see them adopting a salary cap anytime soon. What fun would it be if the Yankees and Dodgers couldn’t outbid every team every time!
Faith Ham
25 days ago
Over here we’re in knots because Caitlin Clark is getting a$76k contract to play in the
WNB-What? Even our dear president is weighing in on the injustice of it all, as if a broken border, ascendant Iran, and a very wobbly economy weren’t enough to worry about. We saw Galway play Athlone while on vacation in October. It was fun, I guess, but with a final scor of 7-1, not very good football. As with basketball so with football: I’ll pay good money to see a great game.
The irony of the Clark melodrama is that the one person NOT complaining about her salary is…..Clark. There is something of a cottage industry in which people claim to be offended on behalf of those who never asked for that.
Peter West
25 days ago
I agree with the article. As an American and relative newcomer to football (the global kind), I am a little frustrated that the same few Premier teams seem to win all the marbles year after year. I love Liverpool and Arsenal, but what about West Ham and a host of others? It would be as if the NY Yankees or Dallas Cowboys won their sport’s championships year after year. Great if you’re a diehard Yankees or Cowboys fan, but boring for the rest of us.
I’ve been watching football (soccer) since I was a kid in the 80s and it is more boring now with so few teams in with a chance, even if the quality is higher. And it is, of course, money and globalisation that is responsible.
But football is extremely successful, for now. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if the local fanbase that go the stadiums each week starts to decline – I can’t imagine it’ll sell so well overseas if the stadiums aren’t full.
In the women’s game some of the old established teams, like Donny Belles or Sunderland, were squeezed out so that the big brands could be utilised. Man U abandoned their womens team not long ago, but as the female game was taking off in England a way was found to resurrect it and make sure the Man U brand was involved at the top (it was Sunderland that lost out in that case).
asSOCiation football. Analogous to Rugger for Rugby. It was a British term originally.
SIMON WOLF
25 days ago
Despite the NFL Draft system who the coach & QB are seems to have had a big effect with for years the New England Patriots and now Kansas being so successful and the same may be true of the Premier League with Pep at Man City.In terms of spending Chelsea and Man Utd have outspent everybody else and yet not delivering.
UnHerd Reader
25 days ago
I was present at Wembley in 1966 when England won the World Cup
What is not realised ( and still less remembered ) Football though very popular amongst ” the working class ” had until then be largely confined within those parameters. In fact the attendance figures were declining ( as a % of possible cohort )
BBC TV had, until then, largely confined it`s coverage to “Highlights “( Rare full coverage to International / Cup Final etc ). There was , of course, interest but Footballers still had a maximum wage limit ( though certain 1st Div clubs illegally paid more and were discreetly ignored ) Support was essential local to Team & location .
It was the interest by TV ( eventually world wide ) that really became the ” game changer ” and continues to dictate the development ( or otherwise) of the ” beautiful game “
David Kingsworthy
24 days ago
I’ll be interested to see who writes, and how it will be done, the story that compares the corporatization of football (England would be the most interesting case study) to the decline of smaller clubs along with their towns (Thatcherism perhaps) and then in the very modern age, the post-Bosman impact on smaller teams corresponding to the un-Englishing of English towns.
Kirk Susong
24 days ago
I’ve got no objection to salary caps, and there should definitely be more transparency around Financial Fair Play. But to think Piketty is needed for this analysis is ridiculous, and invoking him here gives his dubious form of collectivism a legitimacy it does not warrant. If you own a steel mill, if a competitor goes out of business, you can keep on selling your product. If you own a football club, if your competitor goes out of business, you no longer have a product to sell. Rich capitalists have understood the merits of collectivism in these circumstances for a very long time.
Rubbish.
Football – sadly – is just another huge entertainment business. All tinkering around the edges does is create complexity, uncertainty and the opportunity for griifters to slice off their cut.
Take the current “financial fair play” fiasco in the Premier League. No one really knows what the rules are. Indeed, they seem to be making them up as they go along. One month Everton have a 6 point deduction. Another month it’s been reduced to 2 points. Nottingham Forest have a 4 point deduction, but the appeal won’t be decided until after the season finishes … . Meanwhile, the “big six” can do whatever they like and never get any deductions. It’s a farce.
Better to keep things simple and accept it for what it is. Better than feeding the lawyers and hangers on.
If you don’t like it, don’t go, don’t watch and don’t pay.
If you want a “fair” football league, start one yourself.
Football’s got nothing to do with democracy. It’s a sport/business. Or Thomas Piketty. Keep politics out of it.
Congratulations to Bayer Leverkusen.
All professional sport is an entertainment business. As such it has the same problems as capitalism in general, that it only properly works if it is regulated properly to maximise that entertainment value. As in business, without regulation you get monopolies, and that then reduces the entertainment value of the contest if the result is effectively decided before the kick-off.
How boringly predictable that this article should end with a nostalgic reference to player wage caps. Of yes, those young but talented lads from Africa and South America are destroying football, no doubt about it.
I wonder. If Picketty’s analysis has much to say about the financial success currently enjoyed by the l”losers”, those clubs in Leagues 1 & 2. Because at the moment, they have never had it so good.
Some years back, various American sports – except baseball – took a headlong plunge into parity through the salary cap. Football, in particular, was almost maniacally driven by a desire for parity to sustain fan enthusiasm for the entire season. Attendance drops off when one’s team has been eliminated from contention and people disguised as empty seats is a bad look for television.
Like everything else, this came with tradeoffs – exorbitant salaries for often marginal players and annual roster changes through which clubs are more like mercenary units, tossing aside any vestige of loyalty. Even so, the NFL is a money-making machine. So is the NBA. Fans are far less wedded to continuity and watching players develop than they once were; like many other examples, sports is an instant gratification society in which winning is expected now.
Actually I’d argue the salary cap often does the opposite of what you’re saying. It helps teams keep homegrown/drafted players. There is a 0% chance Patrick Mahomes would be in Kansas City if Dallas/NY/LA could spend hundreds of millions more than them. As a Brewers fan, this has turned me off baseball. Anytime we manage to get a young star, you just know you’ll only have a few years before they’re traded for some 18 year old I’ll see in the majors in 5 years.
I don’t think either one of you said anything incorrect. But the MLB is just so different structurally than the NFL with the most obvious being that they play 145 more baseball games!
Baseball has always been a grind whereas each NFL game matters. Each game is a major event. The NBA somewhere in between. Unless they cut the baseball season in half (fat chance), I don’t see them adopting a salary cap anytime soon. What fun would it be if the Yankees and Dodgers couldn’t outbid every team every time!
Over here we’re in knots because Caitlin Clark is getting a$76k contract to play in the
WNB-What? Even our dear president is weighing in on the injustice of it all, as if a broken border, ascendant Iran, and a very wobbly economy weren’t enough to worry about. We saw Galway play Athlone while on vacation in October. It was fun, I guess, but with a final scor of 7-1, not very good football. As with basketball so with football: I’ll pay good money to see a great game.
The irony of the Clark melodrama is that the one person NOT complaining about her salary is…..Clark. There is something of a cottage industry in which people claim to be offended on behalf of those who never asked for that.
I agree with the article. As an American and relative newcomer to football (the global kind), I am a little frustrated that the same few Premier teams seem to win all the marbles year after year. I love Liverpool and Arsenal, but what about West Ham and a host of others? It would be as if the NY Yankees or Dallas Cowboys won their sport’s championships year after year. Great if you’re a diehard Yankees or Cowboys fan, but boring for the rest of us.
I’ve been watching football (soccer) since I was a kid in the 80s and it is more boring now with so few teams in with a chance, even if the quality is higher. And it is, of course, money and globalisation that is responsible.
But football is extremely successful, for now. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if the local fanbase that go the stadiums each week starts to decline – I can’t imagine it’ll sell so well overseas if the stadiums aren’t full.
In the women’s game some of the old established teams, like Donny Belles or Sunderland, were squeezed out so that the big brands could be utilised. Man U abandoned their womens team not long ago, but as the female game was taking off in England a way was found to resurrect it and make sure the Man U brand was involved at the top (it was Sunderland that lost out in that case).
A big thanks for NOT calling our beautiful sport Soccer! I never understood what the heck that means!
asSOCiation football. Analogous to Rugger for Rugby. It was a British term originally.
Despite the NFL Draft system who the coach & QB are seems to have had a big effect with for years the New England Patriots and now Kansas being so successful and the same may be true of the Premier League with Pep at Man City.In terms of spending Chelsea and Man Utd have outspent everybody else and yet not delivering.
I was present at Wembley in 1966 when England won the World Cup
What is not realised ( and still less remembered ) Football though very popular amongst ” the working class ” had until then be largely confined within those parameters. In fact the attendance figures were declining ( as a % of possible cohort )
BBC TV had, until then, largely confined it`s coverage to “Highlights “( Rare full coverage to International / Cup Final etc ). There was , of course, interest but Footballers still had a maximum wage limit ( though certain 1st Div clubs illegally paid more and were discreetly ignored ) Support was essential local to Team & location .
It was the interest by TV ( eventually world wide ) that really became the ” game changer ” and continues to dictate the development ( or otherwise) of the ” beautiful game “
I’ll be interested to see who writes, and how it will be done, the story that compares the corporatization of football (England would be the most interesting case study) to the decline of smaller clubs along with their towns (Thatcherism perhaps) and then in the very modern age, the post-Bosman impact on smaller teams corresponding to the un-Englishing of English towns.
I’ve got no objection to salary caps, and there should definitely be more transparency around Financial Fair Play. But to think Piketty is needed for this analysis is ridiculous, and invoking him here gives his dubious form of collectivism a legitimacy it does not warrant. If you own a steel mill, if a competitor goes out of business, you can keep on selling your product. If you own a football club, if your competitor goes out of business, you no longer have a product to sell. Rich capitalists have understood the merits of collectivism in these circumstances for a very long time.