Regulation isn't about football; 50+1 doesn't add up; Reassuringly expensive right backs; Being Mo Salah's agent; The Bundesliga Fetish; The real Drive to Survive; Bad metaphors; McCartney hates Nike
Overthinking the sports business, for money
Proxy battles
The one where I quote Orwell:
So, sport as a proxy for war.
This extends to the business side too.
The conversation has echoes of the real world, but - to me at least - has lower stakes.
One question though.
Am I the same person in the sportsbizworld as I am in the real world?
More precisely, am I intellectually consistent? Do I hold the same positions in both spheres?
Increasingly, it feels like no.
I’m different (and on reflection, that may be the whole point of writing about it, it’s a safe space to test and learn).
I find I’m less idealogical, less obviously aligned to right or left, more open to new ideas, to experiment with positions I’d instinctively dismiss IRL.
When a Tory politician comes on to talk about how the private sector will help revolutionise the NHS, I throw the dog at the telly - ‘Keep your filthy, greedy hands off that Ming Vase you selfish fucking vandals’ - that type of thing.
But on publicly funded sport’s National Governing Bodies I can sound like Jacob Rees Mogg at a Tufton Street coffee morning: Break ‘em up, let the market in, tax funded complacency crowding out private innovation…blah blah blah.
Winnable (proxy) wars
Let’s take the football regulator.
I should be for it, but I’m not.
And I’m trying to work out why.
I’m wondering if the motivation for change in English club football is about winning something.
Anything.
Because, let’s face it, there are very few clean victories out there in the real world.
We all feel a bit helpless when it comes to the big ones: structural inequality, the super rich, climate disaster and the UberAmazon employment marketplace.
By contrast, the football economy is a closed game.
It’s supporters sense there’s something tangibly achievable here.
The creation of a football regulator would be a signal that enough’s enough.
Let’s put aside for a moment the tricky questions of who, how, what etc - we can sort that later. This is about the movement, the moment.
It’s more important that a win is registered.
But against…who, exactly?
The 1%? The Man? Big Business? Petro-dictators? The Free Market? Vulture Capitalists? Randian neoliberals? Tory Scum (the ones seemingly helping to create a regulator)?
As Damon from Blur once pointed out, modern life is rubbish.
So a win’s a win. Take it.
Doesn’t make it the right decision.
Doesn’t mean ‘The Fan’ can’t be patronised into supporting something they’ll ultimately regret - if only there was a recent precedent for this type of thing somewhere…
The Wisdom of (Proxy) Fans
The Fan plays a heightened, romanticsed role in sportsbizworld.
The Fan is an homogenous group of proud, honest yeomen whose needs are simple: they want cheap tickets, shit food and standing in stadiums.
They quote Bill Shankly and their journey to the ground is like a Lowry painting.
Football is a game of the people. Their game.
But they’re priced out by the capitalist plot that is the Premier League, rendering them as the put-upon victim in the story.
This caricature is absurd, inaccurate and probably offensive.
But its a useful device for those seeking to lead football to regulated salvation.
A more realistic painting of football supporters would contain confusing nuance.
It would accept that The Fan is actually a host of constituencies, with sometimes conflicting agendas and annoyingly inconsistent reasons for buying a ticket.
But nuance isn’t politically useful.
Absolutists and Club Supporter Groups
Fan groups are often led by ideologues.
And like trade unions, the head sometimes separates from the body.
I was in a trade union once.
One thing I noticed was the difference between me - ‘the rank and file’ - and the leadership, who were on telly debating on my behalf.
The people in charge were different. They were angrier. They marched and leafleted. I’ve never leafleted. I couldn’t work the printer for one thing (it’s just this sort of joke that annoys them).
And they were useful to me. They shook me from my complacency. They fought my corner, pushed through changes from which I benefited - wage lifts, rights preserved, legal protections against bad actor managements etc.
But there were moments when the union leadership did and said things I wasn’t comfortable with, and which I hadn’t specifically signed up for.
By being in the union, my views were assumed to cohere with those in charge.
That’s part of the collective process. You can’t have everything your own way.
I’m wondering if a similar dynamic is at play within the pro-regulator lobby.
A small, elected head emboldened to represent the views of the entire body.
And I’m just not sure the majority of The Fans are as anti-Premier League as the people leading them in to the fight.
Compare the Premier League to its German counterpart, often cited as the holy grail of sports administration but which has had the same winner for a decade and is, whisper it, a bit boring as a product.
The left has a Bundesliga Fetish
I spoke to the German football agent Sascha Empacher this week.
We discussed the broader implications of the 50+1 rule.
Germany’s 50+1 rule states that football clubs must hold a majority of their own voting rights. Members - the actual fans themselves - enjoy a 51% voting majority when it comes to any and all decisions. Commercial investors can make suggestions, but unless fans get behind them, nothing can happen.
No German team joined the Super League weekend.
So, 50+1 must be A GOOD THING, a version of which should be enshrined within English football to keep the game for The Fan.
Surely?
Or, listen to Empacher on the impact of the rule on the financial health of the Bundesliga.
A cursory glance at the Deloitte Money League backs him up.
50+1 is a drag on the German football economy.
The lack of investment opportunity down weights the valuations attributed to even some of the most famous Bundesliga clubs.
Todd Boehly doesn’t want to buy a minority stake. Nor does MBS.
So, the money flows toward complete control of Chelsea and Newcastle, with more clubs likely to be sold soon.
The money in the transfer window was dominated by English clubs buying players, safe in the knowledge they have a) an exciting league product b) future media rights income and c) a Greater Fool club buyer awaiting if things go really bad.
A build on this:
If you had a billion or so quid to spend on a European football team, where would you put it?
A middling Premier League team?
Or Borussia Dortmund?
The argument for 2. is thrillingly counterintuitive.
The clever clever money will buy a famous Bundesliga team today and wait/hope/lobby for 50+1 to be overturned.
The result would see a debt fuelled football ownership boom in the biggest media market outside the US.
The world’s talent would chase the cash, followed by media rights money a la the Prem.
The value of the German clubs would presumably sky rocket.
Who’s with me? I'm never wrong on these things.
Reassuringly Expensive Right Backs
Another bit of the Sascha Empacher conversation was about the role of psychology in the market for football talent.
His view: big clubs don’t want cheap players, however good they are.
(See: ‘Spurs would pass on Mo Salah if they were offered him today’).
They won’t spend 1 million on a right back. They have to spend 30 million.
The Fan - him/her again - won’t accept the cheaper player.
The corporate ego of Manchester United is often focused on The Boardroom.
But it’s on the terraces too.
The real Drive to Survive
Forget Netflix, for the inside line on being an F1 driver, read this.
Drag has an image problem. It’s as uncool as sport
The Milwaukee Bucks held a drag show during halftime at a recent game, and there are some conservatives that are big mad about it. This is part of the same energy that’s behind a lot of these awful anti-LGBTQ bills that are cropping up in Republican states. I think progressive people should feel resolved to fight those bills and to oppose the broader right-wing effort to criminalize queer culture - and, maybe, a little sad that drag shows are now so unthreatening that they have them at NBA games. Drag used to be cool and countercultural; now it’s inoffensive enough to be embraced by a sports league, one of America’s most stubbornly apolitical industries. Conservatives don’t want that normalization to happen. I do, but I also recognize that something has been lost.
Spoiler: Journalists don’t understand economics
Good summary of the - very interesting - research in to journalistic bias at the BBC, in relation to how it reports on business.
Three regular bug bears:
Debt is assumed to be always bad.
Stupid metaphors: The UK economy is not the same as household finances. See also: purse strings.
Because journalists don’t want to discuss economics, they move the story to become a political conversation, where they feel more comfortable and their ignorance won’t be exposed.
McCartney hated Nike using Revolution
The deal was done after the band lost control of its own catalogue.
Although, John Lennon wrote it.
Job of the Week
Job: Senior Account Manager at Seven League
Blurb: Seven League are looking for a Senior Account Manager to manage the day-to-day social media output for the NBA across Europe and the Middle East.
The position will be wide-ranging and will require the candidate to plan the content output across a range of multi-language social channels, manage the remote Social Media Manager team and work directly with the client daily to grow the league’s audience and engagement in the regions.
Link:Â Apply Here Â