Football and capitalism
Posted on Thursday 22 November, 2007
Filed Under Society
Football long ago stopped being primarily a sport and became just another branch of capitalism. Today it is a global $250bn-a-year industry.
No surprise, then, that players such as John Terry – salary: £130,000 a bleedin’ week – are paid the same sort of whack as chief executives of FTSE 100 businesses. They are no more worth the money than the fat cats are.
On some estimates, the players who made up England team that crashed 3-2 to Croatia at Wembley can be valued at £200m or more; the Croatians were ‘only’ worth an aggregate £80m. Who seriously doubts Marxist notions of the commodification of labour power in this context?
Despite that, England could not manage even the draw that would have seen it qualify for the 2008 European championship. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland didn’t make the cut, either. This will be the first major tournament without a British team for over two decades.
I am sufficiently immune from either nationalism or sporting fanaticism not to particularly care. But the fate of footie is yet more evidence that the deregulation and neoliberalisation of absolutely everything does have its natural limits.
I would never go so far as to argue that the pre-Murdoch game I remember as a Georgie Best-idolising schoolboy in the 1960s and 1970s represents some kind of golden age.
It’s just that there is something to be said for locally-rooted clubs, based on working class support, that represent more than substitute trophy brides for dodgy Russian businessmen.
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31 Responses to “Football and capitalism”
Dave, you might want to clarify that John Terry’s salary is £130k per week, not p.a.
Hope to see you at the GC tonight.
Locally-rooted clubs, based on working class support (and mainly run by working class people), are usually found at the lower levels of football i.e. non-League level. How working class people can afford to go regularly to a Premiership club is beyond me – perhaps less and less do?
Many fans aren’t that bothered about the national team – their own club is much more important – I think that local loyalties are more and more superceding wider e.g. national ones. Anyway, last night, every time I heard ‘Rule Britannia’ I was willing Croatia to score.
“This will be the first major tournament without a British team for over two decades”
The press has repeatedly made this claim today, problem is it’s not true. No British team qualified for the 1994 World Cup finals in the USA. However, the Repubilc of Ireland did qualify. Make what you will of the press decision to categorise the Republic as a ‘British’ team.
Please ignore my previous post – it is utter gibberish and demonstrates the need to engage the brain before engaging the fingers – lead me to a darkened room!
Ok, I’d like to know the Marxist reason why John Terry isn’t worth that money (seriously). isn’t he just paid for his labour?
(Not a wind up, want to know the argument)
LotB:
Because there are blokes out there who pay £5 a game to play who aren’t that much worse than Terry and the like. Especially when you consider they haven’t had the same level of practice/training/coaching. There are more disparities of ability in a factory than there are between Premiership footballers and those playing in local leagues.
i seem to remember a book about football and big business being published a while back , think it might have been by pluto press, does anyone know the one i mean?
Well Mark, there is this fine specimen:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/books/index.html
/End plug
Sorry, that should have been:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/ReclaimTheGame/ReclaimtheGame.htm
Duh!
The seminal, authoritative left-leaning recent works on football are David Conn’s The Football Business and the follow up, the Beautiful Game. Not written from a particularly ideological point of view, but offers a forensic skewering of the froth and bullshit about English football in its current, insane and unsustainable, turbo-capitalism. Ed Horton’s Moving the Goalposts from a decade or so back is good too.
So I hope to see a few of you down the O’s soon – except it’s 20 quid to get in there too.
In classic Marxist terms there is nothing wrong with a football superstar’s wage – it could be argued that a substantial part of their income is a form of rent (especially the media tie-ins and endorsements) – but in a strict marxian sense John Terry is being exploited (the owner of the club makes money out of paying him his wage). All that said, is he really thousands of times better as a footballer than a league 1 player? Or is the market over capitalised…?
Steady on with lumping Scotland in with the useless England losers.
Scotland had both France and the world champions Italy in our group and we very nearly qualified, beating France twice along the way.
Scottish football is in a really healthy state just now, take a look at the Fifa world rankings.
The secret to the Scottish football renaissance ?
Why none other than the youth programme of Hibernian FC which is producing an endless stream of new talent.
Going by Ingerland’s performance in the first 45 minutes last night I would suggest a trip to the Leith San Siro to learn how to play football is in order for your over paid losers.
A Marxist analysis of football ?
When Saturday comes, who cares ?
On the other hand there must be some very happy Austrian and Swiss Police !
E10 is write about David Conn’s books.
He’s ever such a nice chap too.
Good luck to the footballers.
If some stupid capitalists want to pay working class trades unionists a fortune not to sing the national anthem before representing Englanbd who are we to argue.
I’m a City fan and I love Gary Neville cos he never sings it. And he’s a leading light in the PFA.
I’ve written about this (in a local context) over at the PRT for anyone who’s interested:
http://republic-of-teesside.blogspot.com/2007/08/season-ticket-family.html
The scandal isn’t so much that the players are being paid so much; it’s that the fans are being ripped off and the working man has been frozen out to suit the interests of those who own and control the game. The two are related obviously, but it’s the latter point which should form the basis of a campaign to put things right.
Because there are blokes out there who pay £5 a game to play who aren’t that much worse than Terry and the like.
Not exactly a rigourous Marxist argument and I don’t think it’s true either.
When ever I have seen a real star player I know that about 99% of the things they do even I could do (ok, when I was younger). Not every time, probably not even one time in a thousand, but sometime.
Then there are the 1% of things they do that I know I never could do.
Went to Seville to see Celtic play in the UEFA Cup final. Larsson trapped the ball, turned, passed inside and the ran into the box in time to receive the next touch of the ball. It was a small thing, no goals were scored, but it was the most fantastic piece of play I’ve ever seen (even better than his wonder headed goal at the start of the second half). The TV coverage, which I watched later, didn’t pick up the magic of it because the angle was wrong… but that was skilled labour at it’s peak.
Red Deathy seems to be right. I couldn’t think of any Marxian formulation other than Terry was being exploited – he’s not the owner of the club, after all. I did think about rent, but unless you believe in “god given” talent then this is largely a learned skill.
The business probably is over capitalised too. Not many people make money out of football except the players. Most owners, especially in Spain and Italy (but think Leeds United or Rangers) lose money like it is going out of fashion.
LOTB,
you a bhoy?
LOTB,
I think we need to look at what the product is, and who the consumer is. ultimately, the consumer is advertisers, the product is the fans, and the clubs are middlemen bringing them together. Like you say, I doubt there’s much money in gate receipts or services provided by the club. A great deal of money comes from rent in the form of TV and media revenue – as Teesside blogger above says. Top players are as much a brand as clubs are.
The whole argument about whether footballers are exploited is fairly pointless. They don’t produce ‘surplus value’ and football clubs aren’t run for profit. The real problem with football is that too much money is involved in the game which produces inequality and reduces competition. The prize money and distribution of TV cash within the game just reinforce the domination of a few teams and it is fans who are really being exploited to pay for the extravagance of a few. Unfortunately the top clubs form a kind of cartel, so the best hope for change will be a financial collapse, starting with clubs like Chelsea and not affecting the lower league clubs who were already hit hard by the fall of ITV digital.
hail! hail!
This from the wonderful (Scottish) Daily Mash;
England Players Vow To Spend Their Way Out Of Depression
DAVID Beckham is to buy himself a Bugatti Veyron, a diamond covered horse and the nation of Equitorial Guinea in a bid to ease the pain of England’s Euro 2008 failure.
Beckham said the England squad was hurting and confused, to the extent that many could not remember which of their homes they were supposed to go to after the game.
“It was a poor performance. The only explanation I can think of is that maybe we’re not paid enough,” he said.
Scott Carson, the rookie goalkeeper blamed for England’s shock exit, said it was only the thought of his indoor heated swimming pool, sauna and fitness room which kept him going.
He said: “If it wasn’t for the Fabergé quad bike, the Maserati jet ski and the Patek Phillipe sandwich toaster, I think I’d have slit my wrists in my sunken bath and its eight whirlpool massage jets.”
Stephen Gerrard said the pain of defeat was so intense he had to be carried from the dressing room to his Aston Martin in a sedan chair.
He said: “I don’t know if buying a third Jacobean mansion and filling it with solid gold eggs will help, but for God’s sake I’ve got to try.”
Rio Ferdinand said he would cheer himself up by paying Paul Gascoigne £1 million to recreate his 1996 wonder goal against Scotland in his back garden ‘over and over again’.
Reg Hollis, 53, a lifelong England fan, said he could appreciate that the football stars were hurting but thought they might get over it. “I’m hurting too,” he said. “And I’m absolutely fucking skint.”
http://tinyurl.com/yquzxq
Eddie,
Brilliant
A worse fate would have been had Scotland gone through and England not, coz then we’d have been endlessly subjected to the nauseating sight opf England fans making a big song and dance about the fact that they would be steadfastly backing Scotland…so, Scotland, thank you for losing…
RD,
I think that qualifies as a barbed wire compliment.
Football is now more about the global TV audience than the local fans nowadays.
Which has led to a qualitative change in the earning power and lifestyles of Premiership players, but not to many benefits eleswhere.
A few years ago I met Bobby Smith, the Tottenham centre forward during their 1961-2 Double season
While he not hard up, he was on crutches due to constantly being played with pain-killing cortisone injections.
Compared to modern Premiership players, he got an absolute pittance though.
The highly capitalised clubs can afford to keep players on the bench at wage levels few could have dreamed of 15-20 years ago.
This, and the use of the squad system means they’re virtually guaranteed to be in the top 3 places and get into European competitions.
So the league has become far more predictable and it’s hard to see any clubs challenging Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal for the top spot these days.
The pressure to move towards a pay-per view European Super League will be hard to resist.
All of which is having its effect in the lower levels of the game and reducing genuine competition.
It’s increasingly difficult for promoted clubs to survive for more than a year in the Premiership, or stand a chance of winning the FA Cup.
The chances of an apprentice making it onto the professional books and winning a first team place are becoming slimmer each year.
Fewer working class supporters can afford ticket prices and the stadiums are increasingly reliant on corporate ticket holders and wealthier supporters.
This is destroying football’s roots as a popular working class sport.
In some respects it was a deliberate policy after the Hillshead and Huysel stadium disasters, but it’s mainly a consequence of media conglomerates and global investors dictating the agenda.
Jimmy Greaves’ autobiography “Greavsie” deals with some of these topics quite well.
So the league has become far more predictable and it’s hard to see any clubs challenging Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal for the top spot these days.
Next time you want to write that sort of thing, I’d suggest you take your head out of your prawn sandwich and actually look at who the top three teams are.
Next time you want to write that sort of thing, I’d suggest you take your head out of your prawn sandwich and actually look at who the top three teams are.
It’s only November, mush. One “outsider” always breaches the Top 4 and sometimes they even manage to stay there (eg. Everton a few years back). More often than not, they don’t. And if Manc Citeh actually do, it’s only courtesy of the billionaire human rights abuser whose pumped cash into the club and bought them a top quality manager and squad.
“Next time you want to write that sort of thing, I’d suggest you take your head out of your prawn sandwich and actually look at who the top three teams are.”
Being a bit of a statistics obsessive, I check it almost every week. I suppose you’re a Man City supporter?
Still early days yet, but the League has been won by one of the top three every year for at least 5 years (more I think)
A club manager(like Erikson is) can make a difference, even without vast spending on transfer fees, but I don’t think City will be champions)
BTW I should have said ‘Hillsborough’ and I think it’s spelled ‘Heysel’.
(With a hat tip to the Proclaimers)
All together now
You can freeze 500 million pounds
You can freeze 500 million more
Cos Taksin’s cos a billion quid
Hidden underneath his bedroom floor
Shinawatra! Shinawatra!
That should have said “got a billion quid” obviously.
Alan Sugar once said that all the increased money to the Premiership clubs was like prune juice in that the money came in to the clubs and then went straight out in the form of higher wages to players. That may have been the case in the mid-90′s but it no longer seems the case now. Sugar has sold his shares in Spurs and netted himself a £39 million profit. (http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2098104,00.html)
Others like Edwards at Man U made even more.
I agree with the comments made about David Conn, a great football journalist. He has a good article at http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/07/29/what_money_cant_buy.html
that looks out how the FA sold out to the money men.