You are here: Home » Comment »

Football isn’t just about entertainment; Labour knows it means a lot more than that

12th February, 2015 3:04 pm

John Clarke

Tags:

football fans

The Premier League is richer than God. Burnley is richer than Ajax.

That’s the result of the megabucks television deal the Premier League has just signed. The top division in English football is due to rake in over £5bn from 2016 to 2019.

It’s been bit odd listening to Richard Scudamore, well known sexist and Chief Executive of the Premier League, on the airwaves recently talking about how football is an ‘entertainment’ product.

The Premier League is an amazingly successful British export. It is glitzy wrapping paper around the top division of English football. Financially, it’s more successful than any other league in the world and it’s the most watched to boot.

But, there’s something wrong about the way so much talk about football in England revolves around money, glitz and glamour.

As any football supporter knows, it’s not always nice being committed to a club (although as an Arsenal supporter it’s generally not that bad). And most football supporters can question the entertainment value of football at some point. As a supporter of Ireland I’ve seen more miserable midweek matches than I’d care to mention.

Supporters exist more out of love for a club than any expectation of entertainment. Fans dedicate their lives to their clubs and clubs have a very special place in the communities they’ve grown from.

We should celebrate the success of the Premier League as a global export but we need to make sure clubs of all sizes and leagues make a little space for their fans. After all they are the very people who keep them going.

The fans are always there, a club is pointless without them. But in most cases they’re locked outside the running of their clubs. Their voice can be heard on the terraces but doesn’t reverberate in the boardroom.

This is why Labour has committed to ensuring fans have a voice in the running of the clubs they love and support. Under a Labour government supporters will have a place on the boards of clubs.

When the policy was launched last year the positive response was overwhelming. It really meant something to fans across the country. These are supporters who want their clubs to succeed and to do it by treating them with dignity and respect.

Opposition to the policy was based mostly on the idea that football is simply an entertainment product.

How many supporters really think football is purely an entertainment product?

When something goes wrong, the fans will still be there. When a club goes bankrupt, the fans will still be there. When a club drops a division, the fans will still be there.

Did York City supporters fight tooth and nail to prevent their club being driven into oblivion for a bit of fun?

Did Portsmouth supporters raise their club up from the ashes of administration for their own entertainment?

Did Wimbledon supporters rebuild their club from scratch for their own amusement?

Of course not. They organised themselves and saved their clubs. They did it for the love of their clubs and their communities.

This sort of passion is why Labour will put supporters on boards and why football is much more than entertainment.

Tommo

The clubs should be much more representative of their local communities And a basic set of matches should be required to be broadcast on terrestrial free TV.
- treborc1
  
  Fa Cup,World Cup, Internationals can be shown on the BBC or any channel which pays the fees .
  
  Do not forget nothing is free if lets say the BBC wants to show MUFC game it will cost eight million quid , that is on top of having to pay sky a fee.
  
  Sky although it has won to show all of the Premier league games, it also pays to show each team a fee which at this time is now £8 million quid.
  
  So why do the BBC or ITV not take on the Championship teams, at least we would have some football.
treborc1

It’s OK for now but a time will come when Clubs demand more and the league will split with the top four operating a EU wide league with games being player around the world in America and in Asia it was on the agenda not to long ago.

It would then have a club from Asia and a club from America Russia may have one and then Germany Italy Spain it would be a league of twenty with a second tier to keep promotion and to keeps the smaller clubs happy

Then two billion will go further so the cuts and the profits would keep these club happy for a little longer but once the fans lose interest stop paying for the product then what.
http://petermartin2001.wordpress.com Peter Martin

So does this £5.14 billion football TV deal, coupled with the reported failure of 19 out of 20 EFL clubs to be able to pay a living living wage of £7.85 an hour, or £9.15 in London, to all their employees, mean that the theory of ” trickle-down economics” is invalid? I’m shocked! This is not what we were told. The other one is a that a rising tide lifts all boats. Not quite all boats eh? Just the luxury yachts.

What else is wrong about neo-liberal economics? Privatisations? Deregulation? Globalisation? Economic Austerity? The requirement that government budgets must be balanced at all times?

Are those theories invalid too? Ed Balls might want to check them out before committing to them at the next election.

Latest

Comment
Why Labour shouldn’t play the Tories’ game on welfare

By Emily Thornberry

These days, it’s almost conventional wisdom that welfare, like immigration, is an issue where the Tories have an unassailable political advantage. But as a member of the committee which began scrutinising the Government’s Welfare Reform and Work Bill this week, I’ve been reminded of just how tenuous this supposed advantage is. The Government’s claim of a “mandate” for sweeping cuts rests largely on the fact that they’ve spent the last five years marching to the tune of right-wing press hysteria on […]
Read more →
Comment Featured
Sadiq Khan won a significant victory over the frontrunner – how did he do it?

By Maya Goodfellow

It’s been touted as a close race for weeks now, but Labour’s London mayoral result was a surprise to many. In the final round of voting, Sadiq Khan triumphed with a significant victory – 59% to over long-perceived frontrunner Tessa Jowell’s 41%. How did he do it? Khan’s team have said from the offset that their strategy was to focus on their own campaign and not compare it to Jowell’s. They had clear messages on key issues like housing (to […]
Read more →
Featured News
Labour’s Mayor of London candidate result: full breakdown

Sadiq Khan has been selected as Labour’s candidate for London Mayor. There were six candidates in the election, and Khan won on the fifth round of voting. Turnout by section was: Members 81%, Registered Supporters 92%, Affiliated Supporters 45%. Results 1st Stage Members Registered Supporters Affiliated Supporters TOTAL % of Valid Vote ABBOTT, Diane 6,890 6,216 1,692 14,798 16.8% JOWELL, Tessa 19,324 4,442 2,355 26,121 29.7% KHAN, Sadiq 17,518 11,077 4,331 32,926 37.5% LAMMY, David 5,191 2,318 746 8,255 9.4% THOMAS, […]
Read more →
Featured News
Sadiq Khan wins race to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor

Sadiq Khan has won the election to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor. The former shadow justice minister was pitted against Tessa Jowell in the final round of voting (the results of each round are listed below) – he triumphed with 59% of the vote to Jowell’s 41%. It was thought that it would be a close race between the two, but Khan won a sizeable victory over the former Olympics minister. Khan said that he was “overwhelmed and deeply […]
Read more →
Comment
Corbyn and the Common Good

By Jon Wilson

‘We challenge the narrative that only the individual matters, the collective is irrelevant. And instead we say the common good is the aspiration of all of us.’ And there, in two confident sentences which define what Labour has always stood for, we have the reason Jeremy Corbyn will be leader of the Labour Party by Saturday lunchtime. Since the trauma of division and defeat in the early 1980s, Labour has been beset with insane anxiety about its relationship with the […]
Read more →