lost that loving feeling - The National Game

Every Saturday lunch-time I pull a red jersey over my head, wrap a scarf around my neck, and with ticket in hand, I head off for the football. Unfortunately this is a dying tradition. More likely today is that every Sunday afternoon, the average football fan will pull on his jersey, get up a packet of crisps and a beer and sit down in front of the box to watch the football on there.

Without wanting to be alarmist, football is becoming more and more centred around money, and most of this money comes from TV coverage. This means that TV is becoming more and more a part of football. Not a bad thing you may think. In some cases no, but it is my belief that fans will suffer from this.

From personal experience, I prefer "live" football to watching it on television. I know other people prefer it the other way round, with the added bonuses of action replays, a host of camera angles, and informative commentators. I don't object to watching a game on TV, and if that is all I can do I will. But I would much rather be there in person. The trouble is, as TV coverage of the beautiful game increases, so the attendance of games will go down. Therefore, to make up the difference, clubs will have to put the ticket prices up. This will mean less and less people can go to games and will turn to television instead. The result of which is, natch, empty grounds.

Ok, some grounds will always be full. I can't see Old Trafford being deserted on match day in the near future. But other clubs will suffer as a result. Not just by the lack of match day support, but support overall. The danger is, if your team are never on TV, but Man United or Liverpool are, you may be tempted to support a team you can actually get to see. So with clubs not receiving TV revenue, and not getting people in through the gate, they starts losing money rapidly.

It's early days yet, and there are plenty of other factors which could also lead to the collapse of lower league football, but grass roots footie faces a great threat from the corperate giants who are gradually swallowing up the game. With so much focus being placed upon the Premier League and the European competitions, the Football League and other competitions in this country start to be left in the shadow. In a recent bidding war for the rights to Premiership football coverage next season, the BBC lost it's right to cover Premier League highlights to ITV. The BBC was then offered Nationwide League rights instead, but turned them down. Currently the Nationwide League caters for around half the footballing population. But the way the BBC turned their noses up at it surely says something about the way they anticipate the balance shifting even further towards the Premiership and that the Nationwide League doesn't make a worthwhile investment anymore.

This bidding war will repeat itself in 4 years time, and next time competition will be even fiercer. This year Sky lost part of it's exclusive right to show live league games to ON Digital who will be screening Pay-Per-View games in the 2001/02 season onwards. With so many new media companies springing up, they are all jockeying for position for the next license bid. Communications company NTL have recently been buying into clubs with sponsorship and investment money. Although this does not give them any rights per say, they will command a lot of power over what is now a percentage share in League club ownership. This will give them incredible power to sway the FA's next decision about football coverage. Another similar move came in the form of Rupert Murdoch's bid to buy out a majority share in Manchester United. If the owner of Sky had control over the biggest club in the world, he would be able to influence not only the English game, but the world game as well. Fortunately the bid was blocked.

But the fact is, with so much money currently held in the Premier League, and so much of it depending on advertising and sponsorship the game will have to become more media friendly. Of course there's no question of the rules being changed, with American style Quaters instead of halves to fit more adverts in-between, but the way the game is distributed will have to change. For instance, Manchester United receive most of their fan made money not from Manchester, but the South of England. Therefor, it makes sense for them to be available throughout the country to their fans in order to make the most money (and benefit the team from this, as the club's owners would have you believe). To this end, Man U have made a number of enquiries towards having their own Pay-Per-View service. They already have their own Cable TV channel, and if their plans to go through, fans will be able to pay a weekly fee to watch the team's game on the box, live. ON Digital's new rights have certainly paved the way for this. Currently the FA have prevented Live TV games being shown on Saturday's so as not to distract from the 'real' game. But it won't be long before every Premier League game (and perhaps other League's as well) will be available at the touch of a button at 5 to 3 on a Saturday afternoon.

Personally I will always prefer to be there in person, and like I said, I don't think we will see empty grounds. But what worries me is that Clubs not in the Premiership will not benefit from this Media Revolution and could lose out big time. Of course it could come full circle, with somebody making use of the inaccessability of the Premier League to provide the Nationwide League fans with an equal TV service. But as an FA executive once said "The Premier League is like a microwave ready meal. It has all the ingredients but lacks substance. Put it in a nice package though, and you can sell it to anyone."