How a monopoly of money-sucking corporations colonised English football.
Dating back to the heart of medieval England, football has been an integral part of British culture and tradition for centuries. Yet now, in this modernist era we live in, the true foundations of football are being challenged by corporate dictators who are willing to collapse the spirit of the sport to financially profit from it. The question is: are we going to let it happen?
Soaring ticket prices, extortionate merchandise costs and travelling to games requires a bank loan every week. It seems exaggerated, yet this is the grave reality of football at this moment. Fans are exploited by clubs until every penny is sucked from their pockets. Going to the football becomes a burden: not an escape. A staggering 64% of football fans in the UK experience mental health problems and many have voiced the benefits of football for their mental health, leading local GPs to prescribing football as an alternative to anti-depressants. Yet, the financial strain is driving fans into further mental health issues due to the pressure they place on themselves to attend games whilst still being able to afford it. A study by the FSA has shown that 31.9% of fans have reduced their matchday spend and 26% are attending fewer games in recent seasons. Loyalty is punished.
A football club without its fans is nothing. The polarisation of fanbases is only growing due to the inconceivable prices that clubs are charging. Communities are being divided right before our eyes, the passion that once flooded fans into stadiums has been lost. These ticket prices aren’t just extortionate, they’re scandalous. Over half of football fans (53%) have admitted that the prices they are forced to pay to watch their beloved team is diminishing their enjoyment of the sport and 81% argue the prices are too high. Unfortunately, it's this remaining 19% that now make up the crowds every Saturday. Those that truly know what it means to wear the badge are excluded, outcasted and betrayed to make way for ‘casuals’. The lack of enthusiasm shown by the new era of football fans translates onto the pitch, plummeting clubs down the table and into crisis. The most recent example of this: Sheffield Wednesday.
One of the most historic clubs in English football is in turmoil. When Dejphon Chansiri bought Sheffield Wednesday for £37.5 million on January 29th, 2015, the future finally looked bright for the Owls, optimism was sky high among the fanbase and their 85 year wait for a trophy seemed to be more achievable than ever, yet, since then, it's been a complete disaster. 10 years of mismanagement and lies has left the club bottom of the Championship with a 12-point deduction for failure to pay wages for successive months. The sheer hypocrisy by Chansiri is the epitome of football owners in this day and age and it demonstrated how integral the fans are to the players. With the fans boycotting games in protest of the owner and the shameful prices of tickets and club merchandise (an adults first team shirt costing £82 and a junior shirt at £55 - the highest in the EFL), the Owls have performed substandard all season and were evidently missing their twelfth man. Thankfully, the club were rid of Chansiri as they were placed into administration on Friday the 24th of October, proving yet again the power of football fans as in the subsequent game against Portsmouth the fans packed the stadium and sang from the first to the last minute. However, shockingly this is just one example of such atrocities being committed by an owner and many clubs, such as Bury FC and Macclesfield Town, have not been so lucky.
Owners don't just own football clubs, they become the face of them. Plastering their business on advertising boardings, storming the pitch after a bad result or even being accused of match fixing: all this sounds utterly unthinkable yet it's the everyday life of Evangelos Marinakis – the dictator owner of Nottingham Forest. His rogue and rather unique management has been labelled as comedic by many, however if we look at it on a wider scale, it is deeply concerning. The voices of the fans are drowned out, silenced by Marinakis as he jeopardises the existence of their club as they know it. Furthermore, due to more uber-rich businessmen, like Marinakis, infiltrating football clubs and ploughing billions of pounds into them, the gaps between teams in the same division is now becoming unmanageable. The fact is, the more money a team has, the better they will be. Although it allows for smaller clubs to sensationally rise up the leagues, treating loyal supporters to watch their team play against the very best in the world and create unforgettable memories for everyone involved, this monetisation of lower league teams is making it harder than ever for clubs without the same financial backing to succeed. Through no fault of their own, football clubs who have not been blessed with billions from Saudi Arabia, Qatar or America are being left behind, letting down players alike as they simply become disillusioned by the mediocracy and look elsewhere to earn more money. With players leaving, fans do the same. And without the fans, there’s no football club at all. For football to function, we rely on fairness and sportsmanship, yet it seems that these core values are the last thing on the minds of those owning our clubs today.
However, it's still in our hands to bring football back to its working-class roots, bring it back to those that started it and eradicate the dystopian future that's looming over us.
To do this, we need ensure fans are once more at the centre of clubs. We need more fan committees to play a much larger role in clubs. The influence they have on matters on the pitch is nowhere near proportional to their influence off it. We need to impose ticket pricing caps on all clubs in every division to ensure every fan has the opportunity to watch their team play, no matter who they are playing or where the stadium is. With the average ticket price of a Premier league club being approximately £125, how can the average person afford to go one game, let alone follow their team for an entire season? The answer is: they cannot. We need to make travelling to games far easier and actually possible for fans. Whether it's a trip to your local rivals or an expedition down the country to Plymouth away, clubs should be at the centre of financing travel for fans who especially need the aid.
Ultimately, we need to abolish the utter lack of transparency by owners towards fans. This can only be done by involving fans in every decision made that affects the club. Whether it's through increased social media posts, fan surveys, petitions, community events or just simply telling fans what is going to happen before it does, a more democratic system within football clubs is proven to create success. For example, Bromley have had a remarkable couple of seasons and after gaining promotion to the football league for the first time last year, they are now fighting for promotion at the top of League Two, and it’s largely down to the excellent collaboration between the hierarchy at the club and the fans. The Bromley Supporters Committee has yielded extreme success and is now crucial to how Bromley operate on and off the pitch. The fans ambassador, Roy Oliver has sat in John Fiorini Stand for decades and is the embodiment of a football fan. With his close ties to the club directors and owners, the fans voices are undoubtedly heard and implemented every step of the way. What Bromley have achieved with this structure is only the beginning of their sensational story and is a key indicator of what can happen if the fans, players and owners unite.
Football has faced some dark times in the past, and it's our job, as fans, to protect the sport we love and vindicate the risk of facing anymore. The soulless rich, who are incessant on transforming the game into something it’s not, can only be stopped if we unite against them. The authoritarian owners of our clubs have no place in our sport. No matter how hard they try to take it away from us we will never let it happen.
Football was built by the working class and will forever belong to its founders.
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