Americanization of English Football

Part I

The Premier League begin back in 1992, before I was born. I haven't got in-depth knowledge of what the club ownership situation was like in those days, but in terms of money it was nothing remotely close to what's going on now. People talk about "our game being taken away", and I assume this has been going on for nearly 30 years now. In particular, I look at Liverpool's ownership group as the blueprint. They bought the club at a decent price (for billionaires) when it was in bad shape due to the previous owners being frauds. Over the years, the valuation of the club's skyrocketed, and they'll make a huge profit whenever they decide to sell. My issue with this is they don't use their own money to do anything inside the club. I believe they paid off whatever debt was left by the guys before, but now the club generates its own money. Why even have an owner, in that case? In Germany, a country I'll reference in the following paragraphs, the rules state fans must own at least 51% of each professional club. Leipzig blatantly circumvent the rules, but everyone else can have investors that own a minority share of the club, which is how it should be. As it is, English fans have zero say in their clubs, much like franchises in American sports. Actually, one of the main NFL teams, the Packers, do have fan ownership, so even here it's more fan-based than in the Premier League.

In essence, and I'm not an expert on this or claiming to be, football fans in England have been played for decades, and it's rolling downhill to this day. This is gonna come off bad, but I believe the government allowed some of these stadium disasters to happen, especially Hillsborough. Just think about it. Look at what football was like then, particularly in England, and how much it's changed. Back then, stadiums were full of loud, working class people, who were the driving force of the game. I'll compare it to the Bundesliga. Why is German football popular? It's not the quality of football, as it's not even better than Italian football, much less English or Spanish. It's the atmosphere. People standing up, drinking and chanting for 90 minutes, rather than this pathetic, corporate version of football going on in England. The other obvious change was the price of football. I mean, there's a popular podcast literally named that, so it's certainly not just me chatting nonsense. My point is, you create a product that you market at a world class level, kill the atmosphere, but at the same time keep the stadiums full by "diversifying" the audience, aka getting working class white men out of it, and make a killing as a business. It's not difficult to grasp. Going back to the "conspiracy" thing, just look at the response. They blamed the fans, continuing the hooligan narrative, and it's been like that until very recently. Going a little further back, the whole Heysel thing has always been off in my mind as well. Like, you have people dying in the stands, yet the game still goes on. Seriously? But yeah, these two incidents in particularly tarnished English football fans, and it ended standing at matches for good. Drinking beer? Nope, not in the stands. It's clear as day that fear has been used to kill the atmosphere and make it a marketable product. They even created new stadiums everywhere and raised prices to "cover the costs". What's the logical explanation for not allowing beer, or standing? There isn't one. I'd say it's more sinister than that, as those up top know/knew how dramatic that situation was and used it to further their agenda. Again, referencing German football, they don't have incidents like this, because they're organized and don't have the government allowing people to die for financial gain.

Marketing and hype, with occasional European success (mostly Liverpool and United) makes it the biggest football product out there. Plus, you can't discount the advantage the league has over any of the other main leagues in Europe of the English language. You look at Africa and North America, as well as big parts of Asia, and millions (billions?) of people speak English. German and Italian are not spoken worldwide, due to colonialism and all that, so those two leagues are already at a disadvantage. The French league isn't even taken seriously by French people, and the best players are at PSG or in other leagues. This leaves two leagues to dominate, and the Spanish speaking one is run by clowns. I've mentioned it before, but I don't even have access to La Liga on tv because of a fallout with the cable companies and the broadcasters of the competition. This leaves folks that only speak English with one "top level" football league, hence why so many foreigners watch it. This, of course, wasn't a problem when fans could go to stadiums.

Part II

Thing with American owners (Arsenal, Liverpool, United) is they'll bring the successful aspects of closed leagues over to England, like this new proposal.

The current situation, which I'll cover a bit more below, pretty much means match-going fans are irrelevant. This is perfect for the big clubs, as it's been inferred for a while now. I mean, look at ticket prices, the 3 pm blackout thing, and the general screwing over of fans since the league came into existence. Oh, not to mention the PPV matches recently established by the tv companies that have long since been fleecing fans.

It's funny, well maybe not funny... idk what word to use. But the fact that this happened before and is going on right in front of the English public eye is entertaining from the outside. One way I'll put this is like over here, the UK government is arbitrary with their laws. It seems blatantly obvious that they don't want football with fans, and they're using the virus to push that agenda. The same thing's going on in Spain, by the way. The top two divisions depend on TV money, so they aren't as reliant on matchday revenue. France, Germany, and Italy, on the other hand, have fans in stadiums, albeit in small numbers at this point. Italy handled things poorly, yet here we are... Like I said in the first bit, having a tame audience, or no audience at all, makes it eerily similar to what we have here in the states. It's like going to a play, or church, rather than a testosterone driven, tribal experience.

Long story short, there's a divide between three factions; the "big clubs", the rest of the PL and clubs that think they "deserve" to be in the PL, and the remaining clubs in the football league (and below, I guess). I've thought this for a while, and I kinda explained it in describing my fandom (or lack thereof), but the "top six" are basically the same entity, based in different cities and wearing different colored kits. Three of them have American owners, two are run by oligarchs, and the other's decent, I guess. Anyways, each season, none of these realistically are going to be in the bottom half, much less relegated. Thus, along with Everton and Leicester, the 12 other clubs are constantly in no man's land, as they say. They're the one's, initially at least, losing out in any case with this situation. TV money is the only reason they have any sort of clout, but the top teams are by far the most popular. The argument is the top clubs bring in, let's say, 95% of the foreign audience, so why should the rest be making bank just for existing at this level? It's a valid question. Look at Brighton, Burnley, Fulham, Palace, Sheffield United, West Brom... Who would pay to watch them on a regular basis? You also have teams with "history" that think they deserve a spot in the league, which is another issue. The rest of the pyramid, at least through L2, realize they're "small clubs" and need the money, hence why the bailout is a thing. It's a negotiation; people who are at the top make easy concessions that don't effect them to get others on board, while at the same time proposing what they want, eventually settling on a favorable outcome. Even the "9 teams vote" thing is a joke. It's obvious the 6 are close in vision and will just overrule anything, so it doesn't matter who the other three are. Not to mention the whole takeover thing. If the farce that is "Financial Fair Play" wasn't enough, now the richest clubs want the ability to say no whenever a club is set to be taken over by someone capable of doing a Man City, or Chelsea before that. Again, this is irrelevant to all but a few clubs, as L1 and L2 are nowhere close to reaching that level. Newcastle, however, had a situation just like this go down the drain just this summer. The top clubs want more money, and less competition, which is only going to increase the gap. Might as well go with the super league.

Just to close this out, I'll give my last little take. To me, the chance for "getting our football back" ended once the Premier League became a global commodity. Since then, it's been made more and more obvious that fans don't matter. The only solution, which will never happen, is to grow a pair and say no. I'd even wager it's passed the point where English fans even matter. It's not the Bundesliga where fewer people watch, and the clubs are fan-owned. The product goes on with or without fans. Clubs could manage with just the TV deal money, which is obscene. Who knows, it could work if people came together and said "we're not having this", and stopped paying for Sky, BT, whatever other network, and just watched their local team in person or did something else with their free time. Like I said, this is an incredibly theoretical idea, and human nature wouldn't allow it to happen. Also, I'd say with the lack of social interaction, the businessmen running things know exactly how important it is to have an outlet, which for so many worldwide is football. Customers will pay for it. Notice I say customers, not fans. That's what they are now.