As the new SPL season gets into its stride, Luke Ivory examines the role of
big business in football and asks how we might reclaim the game.

Football, long the national sport, has been an integral part of working class culture since, well, there was a working class. From the days of ‘folk football’ where often hundreds of people would chase and kick an object around an area, through to the modern day rules of association football, the sport has been an enormously popular leisure activity both on a participatory and spectator level.

With the rise of trade unionism, the successful fight for a shorter working week, resulting in the Factory Act (1850), lead to mills closing at 2pm allowing for regular 3pm kick-offs and a subsequent explosion of new football clubs in industrial areas with the creation of organised leagues.

Many of the original teams formed were workplace sides; however with the creation of large stadia, it did not take long for local businessmen to get in on the act - after all, property must have an owner! With many clubs in the early twentieth century regularly commanding crowds of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, and players who were then genuinely treated in a slave like manner - being subjugated to a maximum wage and clubs maintaining rights over a player without having to pay them after the expiration of a contract – it is easy to see that many from the lower bourgeois classes must have financially benefited handsomely from the sport.

Despite this football was still able to prosper with prices very affordable for the working class and leagues competitive with a large number of different clubs picking up trophies. This remained the case until the 1980s when as part of the general ideologically driven neo-liberal assault on every sector of society, capitalism began to sink roots deeper into the sport. Just like the nationalised industries of the day, football was viewed as an area where there lay great untapped resources for the capitalist class; megabucks were there to be made because of the mass appeal of the sport and every parasite wanted a slice of the cake.

The introductions of shirt sponsorship in the mid 80s alongside other forms of advertisement were merely the thin end of the wedge. Big business people were now in charge of the top clubs and other companies such as media corporations were wanting to profit from the game. This lead to the breakaway Premiership in England in the early 90s which was soon to be replicated with the Scottish Premier League a few years later. Whereas a modicum of fairness and genuine ‘competitive’ competition were previous strived for with the sharing of revenue throughout the football leagues, the big clubs now insisted on keeping Rupert Murdoch’s millions – courtesy of SKY TV – to themselves.

In order to maximise profits further, a new, more affluent clientele had to be found to attend football matches. The introduction of all-seated stadia was used as part of an image makeover to entice to the games the middle classes who were increasingly being drawn into the new fad which was increasingly glamorous with millionaire top players the new pop stars of society – endorsing fashionable brands for extra millions wherever possible. Meanwhile, many professionals of the smaller clubs left behind are only able to gain 10 month contracts which only cover the playing season with many having to compete with students in finding temporary summer work. Others less fortunate thrown on the dole queue unable to make a living from the only trade they had learned.

Every passing season more working class fans reluctantly give up their season tickets because they can no longer afford them and pay the bills. A season ticket each for a couple and two children would now set somebody back well over £1000 for a top division club. Before the introduction off all-seated stadia at the beginning of the 90s it could cost as little as £3 each for a topflight match ticket – roughly equating to a trip to the cinema. Now it could cost a family of four £80-£100 – around four family outings to the movies.

Heaven forbid you actually try and get the T-shirt too! At £40 a time it would be much easier to allow the kids to develop square eyes! The club bosses and kit manufacturers also know well that the right wing arguments in favour the ‘free market’ – namely that the consumer can take their custom elsewhere – don’t apply here as supporters cannot simply find a new team like they would try out a new breakfast cereal. They also know that they can still milk those supporters no longer passing the turnstiles via subscriptions to cable and satellite TV companies. Sadly, it is now becoming more expensive to watch live football on TV than it used to be to attend the matches.

And what of the product on offer? We are repeatedly being told that the English Premiership is the greatest league in the world. The fact that Manchester United and Chelsea contested the European Champion’s League final last may is supposed to be testament to that. However this all England final has merely exacerbated the fact that the league which allegedly enjoys such a great depth of talent is so strong that even out of the so-called ‘big four’ clubs it is only now Manchester United and Chelsea who have a realistic chance of winning the title.

The same clubs who routinely play in the money spinning Champion’s League now also completely dominate their domestic leagues. The French league was traditionally one of the most open leagues in all of Europe with a number of different clubs taking their turn to win the domestic title. In recent years Lyon, after enjoying a couple of lucrative runs in the Champion’s League now have the financial resources to crush all opposition in France, and they have subsequently romped to seven successive league triumphs in a seemingly endless cycle of success leading to greater wealth resulting in more success. Prior to this run seven different clubs had won the league over nine years.

Another example was Norway, where after becoming the first Norwegian club to gain access to the great revenue of the Champions League they were able to reinvest in their team which allowed them to repeat their league successes and gain even more cash from Champion’s League. A world record ten successive league titles were won with the run only ending once the biggest clubs changed the rules again to allow a higher number of teams from the big countries to enter, thus squeezing teams from smaller countries such as Norway out of the competition.

The best any national league can now hope for is to have two or three teams which compete for the domestic title. In Scotland, Celtic and Rangers have always been dominant but other clubs occasionally managed an upset to have their day in the sun. Now, after 23 years of dominance it has become seemingly impossible for any other club to win the Scottish league again. While Celtic and Rangers are the giants in Scotland however, they are now among the also runs in the Champion’s league as are the bigger clubs from other smaller nations such as Portugal and Netherlands. In the last 20 years only twice has a club from out with the four big nations of England, Spain, Italy and Germany managed to win Europe’s premier club competition. The big TV companies pay more for viewing rights to the countries with the largest audiences, and without Murdoch’s million’s it is increasingly difficult to compete.

It would seem that supporters of smaller clubs should just give up and find another hobby. Another alternative would be to fight back and reclaim our sport from the big business sharks. The first step to this has to be the democratisation of football clubs with boardrooms being democratically elected. One possible blueprint could be supporters electing one third, players and other low paid staff another third, with the wider local community electing the final third in a bid to ensure that everybody benefits from greater access to sporting facilities so that sport is increasingly enjoyed on a participatory level rather than football being an excuse to indulge in the other great aspect of working class culture – namely boozing down the pub.

This would then lead to the democratisation of the governing bodies which should be elected by the clubs and players/staff unions, thus ensuring that the majority of smaller clubs could run the game in favour of everyone, rather than allowing the rich and powerful to bully the rest.

Other measures such as the reintroduction of cheap and safe terracing to sections of ground to encourage back those who no longer attend matches could then be carried through. Splitting all attendance revenue evenly between both sides as used to be the case would give the provincial clubs a better chance to compete with clubs from the big cities.

Ultimately though, the fight to save football as a fair and genuinely competitive sport is intertwined with the fight for a fair and just society. As well as kicking the big business sharks out of the clubs the big corporations need to be tackled. Democratic public ownership of the national and international television companies would ensure that supporters are not denied access to view games they cannot attend and help enable a more equitable distribution of wealth throughout the different nations and leagues.

Perhaps then the thought of an arrogant old leftie leading a provincial English club to the final of the Champions League against a team of part-timers from a small Swedish town would seem quite possible. Capitalism has proved it has nothing to offer football as a sport – either for supporters or the majority of poorly paid professionals. A democratic sport run by the working class in the interests of society as a whole could however produce a game where Scottish clubs from out with Glasgow could once again challenge and win honours on a European level.