Whose Game Is It Anyway?

BSkyB have regained the high ground in televised football by increasing their share of live Premiership games to more than 80%. Setanta have rights to England internationals and FA Cup matches along with ITV which means that you are more likely to see Churchill and Rolf Harris than a goal.

So, if you want to see all the live football available plus watch your team at home you are going to have to cough up somewhere in the region of £1,000 per year as a minimum. Am I the only one who thinks that this has now gone a little too far?

The advent of the Premier League and the influx of foreign players funded by the Murdoch revolution has benefited a game that was down and almost out at the end of the eighties. But the days of Cantona, Klinsmann and Zola enhancing domestically-dominated teams have long gone and we are now at a point where any English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish player is almost automatically an international if they can force themselves into the starting eleven of any top tier club so few and far between are the opportunities.

I know several people who gave up long-held season tickets at various clubs last year due to the ever-spiraling cost involved in the whole experience. The number of people who subscribe to both Sky Sports and Setanta is certain to decrease as prices go up, as they always do, and as wallets tighten as recession bites. The sheer volume of searches undertaken for ’free live football online’ and variations on the same theme indicate the growing number of fans who are still keen to watch football but are not so keen to pay for it.

One single fact presently sits above all others in deciding whether Mr Scudamore and his cronies ever consider putting the fans first – £1.782bn. That is the mind-boggling figure that is generated from selling the rights to Premier League football. Shared out in prize money and appearance money, is it no wonder that the clubs who are in the premier League are desperate to stay there and will sign whoever they can to make that a reality. When you compare this to the £191M that selling 6-0 matches from the first Premier League generated, you see exactly how far the game has traveled.

The argument against the current status quo is a simple one. Our game is one of the most popular in the world. We see some of the worlds greatest players week in-week out, and the English game is now back where it belongs – at the very top of European and now World football. Okay, I get that side of the story. But, consider this.

“No more boom and bust” said Gordon Brown not too long ago. Erm……got that one a bit wrong didn’t we Gordon?

House prices will never crash again. Again……

The Premier League will be this good and this popular for ever.

At some point, the walls will come crashing down. Years ago, it was the Bundesliga that was the league to be seen in. Then, it was Serie A. Then, La Liga. Now it’s the Premiership. What is the common denominator?

Money.

Players at the top of the game are motivated by money. Sure, they love to play the game and set out with desire to play professional football and would have done it for free. Yet as soon as the filthy lucre (or £50K a week) is waived at them the desire to play for their local team for life dissolves into a love for Bentleys, page 3 models and holidays homes in Qatar.

So, when finally the money runs to Spain, or Italy, or Germany or somewhere else whether it be in 3 years or 13 years, what will be left?

English football may have transformed into greyhound racing where the people who turn out to watch are either tucked away nicely in their air-conditioned room with food, drink and creature comforts or are few and far between and are numbered in hundreds as opposed to thousands.

The message is this. Enjoy it whilst it lasts. What will be left is what was left during the 1980’s. A hard core of loyal and long-suffering fans and a further number of individuals who see the chance for using the sport for their own perverted form of entertainment. If only the Premier League had followed the example of the NFL, limiting salaries, sharing revenue evenly, and of course mirroring in some way the draft scenario where the team who comes last gets the first pick of the next generation. Maybe only if something along these lines develops, will we once again produce an international team to be proud of and will have the game returned to those from whom it is apparently being taken – the average fan.

Will it happen? Not a chance. Too much money in the wrong hands means that they simply don’t care about us any more. All I can hope is that when it all does come crashing down, and it will, that it does so around the ears of the likes of Premier League Chief Executive Peter Scudamore.

But until it does, normal partisan rules apply. So, does anyone have a spare £30M to buy Boro a striker who actually knows how to score goals?