Gareth Roberts hosts the latest edition of ‘The Big Question’ where the panel discuss whether football can ever be fair, can the balance between financial necessities ever balance out with the average fan?
What has driven this massive escalation in the cost of football and where is the tipping point?
Joining Gareth on the panel this week are John Gibbons, Glenn Price, Andy McCann, Rob Gutmann and Ian Salmon.
No its not fair in the business world of football for people that put their emotional and financial support into clubs and get ripped off. The big final cup coming up is prime example. UEFA/FIFA don’t give a fuck about people travelling wherever.
All the good things with clubs investing back into their community, charity, food banks, kids in developing countries given a chance in life with an education that’s fair.
But this is such a broad subject for example ticket prices aren’t coming down in European games and anfield to be honest. the old cat d matches are up near 100 quid. I’m not a season ticket holder.
On a more domestic basis I was listening to BBC 5 live sundays sport report in the car about year ago and john terry was on speaking about how top players in England should be fast tracked to the top of coaching because they were good. What about the guy that loves the game as much but has to live a normal life, has the talent but the fee to do a pro licence is unaffordable. That’s not fair.
that’s my pennies worth.
How baseball works is a good guide, player power came along in the late 60’s and they had player strikes as they were starting to get ‘big cash’ but their contracts were more like slavery. Getting traded across the country uprooting families to arrive say NY to LA only to be re traded again somewhere else so the players went on strike. A labour union guy was brought in to set the rules. Young players who had come through any particular clubs ‘farm system’ was not aloud to be sold or leave until they had played so many years or reached a certain age so the club got the benefit of their investment. The process is called ‘free agency’ so the players play and mature aiming to peak in their ‘free agency year’ when they can speak to other clubs and land ‘big’ contracts. It is a good way I think of keeping players focused despite the cash and their agents in check. Baseball is the oldest fully commercial sport. So modern football really can look to Baseball to take pointers of how to organise as the cash gets bigger. But what is different is the Teams own the League….everything they do is based on what is good for MLB. This FA old fashioned way of doing things stymies this…. in MLB you have 1Majours then A Ball , double AA Ball, and so it goes down. This is their farm system which ensures that the smaller clubs around the world benefit from cash coming down from their Majour League team affiliate. Their are lots of historic teams around the UK that are constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, (just using as example) Preston North End say, they are never going to challenge for the Premier league title but if part of an official farm system then revenues will be guaranteed as would be survival. It benefits all around, players in their Majour league team playing badly or unfocused get sent down to their lower farm tier to get their shit together. That works for coaching as well as gate revenues at the smaller affiliate, say Salah loses form he gets sent down to Preston where the pressure is less. But for Preston their Gate Receipts go up as Salah becomes a big draw for them. It is all focused on the grass roots survival of the sport. Any way I played baseball (at school in Liverpool weirdly) and football and always thought it was a good idea… check out a VID series called 100 years of Baseball and it explains everything… oh and here is the NY Yankees wikki page of their Farm System.. it is a good idea I think : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_Yankees_minor_league_affiliates
Cheers Al
I think you asked the wrong question. The question you should be asking is, “What is fair?”