Football a Business

I Was at work the other day and we got talking about football in general. My boss - who has no intrest in football what so ever - asked the question "When did football become a business?"

I thought it was a very good question. Even though football will always be a sport, it is also a business. In my opinion, it became a business around the time of the start of the English Premier League.

My reasons for this is mainly down to Sponsorships, and Sky Sports. Football wasn't shown on TV week in week out (correct me if i'm wrong but i cant really remember that far back) as it is now. Sky must pay the Preimer League a huge amount of money to show games, in my opinion, Sky pretty much run the fixture list. The good old days of going to a game on Saturday for a 3pm kick off seem to be changed more often for TV viewing.

Sponsorships also helped football become a business. Practically everything to do with football has a sponsor. Players boots, team shirts, even the ball's they use in the leagues!

Football agents didn't help either. They get a big percentage of the signing on fee i believe. They are the negotiator between player and club, in my opinion they are the reason transfer fees and players wages are so high.

I'm suprised there isn't more teams that have gone into administration with all the money that there is in the game. Look an Man Utd, apparently have huge debt - even though they sold Christiano Ronaldo for £80million.

Now all of the above may not be facts but it is just what I believe made "football into a Business"

I would like to here your thoughts on this subject, do you agree, don't agree and why you think the reasons you do.

The start of the premier league definitly has something to do it and the movement to sky tv, it's evident with the championship actually the teams are pulling in more money recently which they can buy better players with since the move to sky for more championship games, ie Michael Chopra's move to Bahdiff was £4m and Maynard's move to Bristol City £2.25m which was a new transfer record, by a fair amount i think.

You're probably right with it becoming a business when the Premier League started. Oh yeah don't tell anybody but football only began in 1992 when the Premier League was formed. Doesn't matter what anybody did before but it seems that records only date back to the beginning of 1992.

Maybe I'm just a disgruntled non Premier League fan because we haven't made the jump up yet

up the championship, the home of true football

hodge13 wrote:

up the championship, the home of true football

Indeed! We have another season left with it at least. Can't see us doing anything other than mid table now, too inconsistent. Get beat at home 4-1 by Barnsley and then beat Cardiff 3-0

ummmm lost to Bahdiff 6-0 at home, beat West Brom 2-1 next home game.

Man Utd as a business was for ages light years ahead of the opposition and it's because of that, that they have such a global audience. They looked to the overseas markets and branched out beyond football products far earlier than their pitch rivals. Until the Glazers came in and saddled them with debts Utd were a great example of how a business should be run.

Guys, i must admit, the championship most of the time has better matches than the premiership. I think this has something to do with the amount of foreign players. I thing the Premier League shold have at least 5 english players in the starting line -up. This will help the national team find more stars and make compititon for places instead of people taking their place for granted.

This will also help the money side as well, not as many foriegners demanding stupid wages.

Although I do agree with having a certain number of "home grown" players, I don't agree that it would make for a better national side, for a number of years there was a limit on the amount of foreign players you could play in europe and that had zero impact, none.

It just made for a bigger pool of very mediocre players to select from.