Football Finance

Insideworldfootball

Last weekend’s English Premier League match between Sunderland and Arsenal does not on the face of it merit much attention. A regular Premiership match, one of the rare ones played at 3pm on a Saturday, it ended in that classic score: 1-0 to Arsenal, after the Gunners weathered a late Sunderland assault.

Yet it is what happened in a committee room next to the Stadium of Light, followed by discussions in the one of the executive boxes of the stadium, that shows how the game has radically changed. This proved that football is no longer eleven men against eleven men on a park, but a vehicle of commerce and business. Not just in this country, but all over world and, in particular, Africa.

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Insideworldfootball

It would be foolish in the extreme to believe that just because the Commons Select Committee on Culture Media and Sport has given the football authorities a bollocking, things will change in the national game. This may be the second verbal lashing the MPs have administered football in two years but just because the MPs wave a big stick it does not mean they will follow up by using it to whack the football authorities if, as so often in the past, football does nothing.

Here it is worth recalling what John Whitingdale, chairman of the committee, told me back in July 2011 when the committee looked at the bidding for 2018 World Cup. His words were: “I am instinctively against government intervention. The government has an awful lot on its plate, the state of English football is a lesser priority than improving the welfare state and the NHS. I don’t think there will be a great wish for legislation.”

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talkSPORT

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Evening Standard

In the frame: Ross Hair says ESPN has tried to be innovative with its coverage. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

Sky and the Premier League is such a partnership – it has lasted longer than most marriages – that talk of a rival seems absurd.

Yet Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned television channel, is now seen as a serious contender to Rupert Murdoch’s prize possession. The bidding for the next set of rights, which will run from August 2013 for three seasons, is expected to start in the spring and the man talking of an Arab bid is Ross Hair, the boss of ESPN in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Hair has a vested interest as he seeks to hold on to his channel’s existing package of live matches.

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A look at German and American systems would serve British football well

PlayUp

So the Prime Minister goes to Scotland and in between trying to save the United Kingdom he has time to talk about Glasgow Rangers. If anything illustrates the power of modern sport, particularly football then this, surely, is it. But it also shows curious our football world is.

The most important question is: if football is so powerful how come our legislators have not taken steps to make sure we have proper rules for football clubs and a level playing field? The simple fact is we talk about the importance of football but allow it to be run like a cottage industry. Worse still an industry which is allowed to make its own absurd rules.

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