Essay
Essay Globalisation of Football (FP614)
- Institution
- Southampton Solent University (SSU)
A 3000-word essay arguing for whether the huge amounts of money in English football has been overwhelmingly successful or not.
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Globalisationof Football
FP614
‘The significant increase in wealth witnessed in the
modern game, brought about largely through overseas
broadcasting deals and foreign investment, has been
overwhelmingly positive for English football’.
, Over the last 30 years, a huge increase of money has been invested into the modern game
through foreign investors, television deals, and sponsorship deals. Since the creation of
the Premier League, formerly known as the English First Division, TV deals alone have
skyrocketed from £304 million in 1992/93 season over a five-year period, to £5.186 billion
in the 2016/17 season for a three-year period (Soccerex 2018). During this time Premier
League club wealth's have hit the roof and the migration of the best foreign coaches and
players has coincided with this increase in wealth. On the opening day of the 1992/93
Premier League season there were only 13 players who were not from Britain or Ireland in
a comparison to over 70% of the players playing in the Premier League in the 2020/21
season from outside Britain and Ireland (Unwin N.D.).
One off, if not, the biggest factors in the increasing wealth in the modern game has come
from the TV deals. As mentioned previously, the increase of £4.8 billion from 1992 to 2016
has been able to give clubs the opportunity for better and safer stadiums. After the
unfortunate tragedies at Bradford in 1985 and at Hillsborough in 1989, the Taylor report
was creating after an inquiry into the safety of the stadium. This would require the top
two tiers of English football to have all seater stadiums by 1994/95 season, and teams in
the two tiers lower to follow suit by 1999 (Wikipedia 2021). This brought huge
improvements to all stadiums and the safety for the fans within them whilst nullifying the
hooligan problem that affected football in the 70s and 80s. Up until the Taylor report
stadiums were incredibly run down and protected around the outside by fencing with
barbed wires on the top but now were these colossi all seater stadiums. This also allowed
clubs to maximise profit from ticket sales as they knew exactly how many people could fit
in due to the new all seated stadiums thus increasing the clubs’ revenues. Without the
money from TV deals that came into the game, none of this could have been accomplished
as the funding to improve the standard of the stadiums simply was not there.
In contrast to this, there was a division amongst fans as some are happy with the evolution
of the stadia in regard to safety and comfort however some fans criticise the moving away
from traditional stadiums, questioned the atmosphere now associated with the modern
game. An analysis found that clubs who had transitioned from modern to the post-modern
stadiums were now exploiting commercial opportunities previously neglected within the
industry (Paramio, Buraimo and Campos 2008). This is just another one of many examples
demonstrating the ways in which the foreign investors have a bigger interest in making
money from the investment rather than developing the game.
However, this is not true in all cases as with this money increase in the English game,
clubs have been able to reinvest into facilities and their local communities through this
new level of funding. In the last 15 years, 99 projects worth a total of £25 million from
Premier League funding through the football foundation and football stadia improvement
fund (Ahmed 2018). In 2014, Manchester City invested between £150 million and £200
million into a new training centre called the Etihad camp (Wheeler 2014). This training
centre is deemed to be one of the best in the world including 16.5 football pitches, three
gyms, medical treatment centres, six swimming pools and player bedroom's meaning it is
effectively a team hotel as well, with them all being located adjacent to the Etihad
Stadium. Manchester City worked closely with the Manchester City council throughout this
project and even donated 5.5 acres of land to the council within the 80-acre complex for
public use. Within this donated land Manchester City council has created a leisure centre,
six form college, and an Institute of Health and performance. New Economy (2015)
estimates that the total public value benefits of the new facilities to be over £206 million
in the next decade due to permanent job creation, improved educational outcomes,
health benefits, and increased visitor spending. Before this project was created, the 80
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