‘Football belongs to everyone!’ So says the voiceover to a trailer on BBC1 showing a video montage of goals being scored and shots saved by men and women, girls and boys. Exemplary diversity and equality. The only problem is the statement is patently untrue. Even a cursory acquaintance with the Premier League is sufficient to become all too aware that football is securely in the deep pockets of capital. Clubs are owned by the international mega-rich, some linked to regimes with records on human rights that are dubious at best.
August and it’s back! As if it ever went away. The summer break just means footballers play in competitions other than the main season. The transfer market has also opened and assets, footballers, are traded for tens, even hundreds of millions of pounds. Regular contenders for winning the Premier League and then contesting the European Championship are those that have access to seemingly bottomless coffers. There is absolutely no acknowledgement that those coffers are kept generously topped up by wealth created by the working class and then appropriated by the few, 1 percent or so, who constitute the capitalist class around the world.
The Premier League was created in the early 1990s to serve the requirements of satellite broadcasters. Those who own the game could profit by selling it through the media directly to fans at home who outnumber by huge numbers those who actually attend matches. There was a notion that supporters might be allowed into games at reduced prices, perhaps for free, to provide the atmosphere. However, clubs found that there were still fans who prefer to go to games, making them a further source of revenue. Apart from the actual football there is a huge trade in replica shirts and other merchandise.
Football is a commodity, a product that has value produced through the labour power of workers, including the footballers. While some of those workers are apparently generously paid, this merely reflects the far greater income they generate, realised through streaming services, tickets sales and club shops. For all the glamour football is no different to any other commodity, being produced for profit. While a club is successful no one questions the ownership. Declining prowess or relegation can lead to one set of owners having to sell to another. This may involve financial shenanigans such as leveraged buyouts when a club is purchased using its own assets.
This though is just the modern iteration of the way it’s been since league football began in the late Victorian period. The 12 original founders were clubs formed by local capitalists in the English economic powerhouses of the day.
Football will belong to everybody when the world belongs to everybody. As long as the profit motive is the only motive for producing anything, the game must remain a spectator sport, not the spectators’ sport. Just as there can’t be socialism in one country, fans becoming owners of their clubs would change little. Unless those fans were super-rich capitalists, their club would remain vulnerable to takeover and ultimate economic failure.
Until there is a worldwide embracing of socialism as the game changer around the world, football, like every other commodity, will belong to the minority who exploit it for their own ends. Whatever the BBC says. What about another sport? Cricket was once a major alternative during football’s more rigorously observed close season.
Just as the Premier League was developed for television, so cricket has undergone changes driven by the same imperative. The most obvious example of this is the twenty-20 format. A game played within a time period that suits media scheduling. It has also proved popular with spectators who can attend and see a complete game in an evening.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) has become the leading version, attracting players from all the major cricketing countries. With a potential home audience drawn from a billion-plus population already wedded to the game over generations it has proved a fecund money tree. As with the English Premier League (EPL) in football, television delivers cricket into the homes of viewers around the world. Such is the profile of the IPL it became an issue during the recent border conflict between India and Pakistan.
Matches were left unplayed and players instructed to return to their own countries for their safety. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had only suspended remaining fixtures that were eventually played and the competition concluded as the crisis simmered down. The financial strength of the IPL is indicated by its being the second largest money generator in sport, only exceeded by the USA’s National Football League (NFL). This not only allows it financial influence in other cricketing nations, but political as well.
The Caribbean Premier League has six Indian owners involved and South African SA20 has major Indian investment. While back in England the chief executive of Lancashire County Cricket club, Daniel Gidney, has been reported as suggesting the Hundred competition should sell a stake in itself to the BCCI. The sport’s governing body is the International Cricket Council (ICC) whose present chairman is Jay Shah. Jay is the son of Amit Shah, a long-time political ally of Narendra Modi, leader of India’s governing party, the BJP.
It seems more than likely that closer examination of any popular international sport would reveal financial and political ties and influences. For example, the estimated cost of staging the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 was $9.5 billion. The revenue generated by staging the games was around $12 billion.
It’s not the winning, but the taking part, was the old mantra. Perhaps that should be amended to, it’s not just the winning, but the taking the cash. Every activity, while capitalism continues, is ultimately driven by the profit motive. It has to be. It cannot be otherwise unless, of course, the working people of the world cease being merely spectators. By forming a worldwide league dedicated to their own interests the vast majority could step over the boundary, blow the whistle on capitalism and win the race for socialism.
Dave Alton
1 comment:
The accompanying picture is not from the August 2025 Socialist Standard. It's from the 1981 Panini sticker album. It was either this or a picture of Jimmy Sirrell. You lucked out.
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