Well if people think football sold its soul they are right.
But this is only just the beginning.
It started with so called "Financial Fair Play". Because thats only "fair" for owners who want to evade having to invest to compete. Its main lobbyists were the types who own teams increasingly in England and Italy ie the parasites.
There has been talk for a long time about super leagues, both British and Europe-wide.
Currently a team has to buy players to stay in the PL. But with an English "super league", there is no promotion and relegation - so teams dont have to buy players to keep their status. Its the "ultimate" (ie ultimate nightmare) of a corporate monopoly and all the price fixing that is associated with that.
The biggest low lives in business started buying football clubs for one reason. And that is that the normal laws of supply and demand dont really apply. Owners are told by their advisors "charge as much as you want, because if the fans dont pay up, you sell their heroes, and blame it on them".
Owners think "fans wont change teams, so we can charge ridiculous amounts". I mean compare £1.90 in the late 1980s, to £48 on the Kop today. And in the old days, gate income was the huge chunk. Nowadays the gate is just one part. But we have total extremists running the teams.
One of the big management consultancies (it was one of the big 6 accountants) did a feasibility study for future football. Its main clients were American banks and parties interested in taking over European football clubs, most notably in England and Italy. I don't think it was ever released into the public domain, but some friends of mine had seen some stuff. And I've been told about it from various parties in the City. The stuff you'll find on the Net is a much less radical/extremist plan than the one I've been told about.
The plan was, and still is for a European Super league, with regional sections much like in the US.
There would be no promotion and relegation. And you'd have say a team for N East England. It would be a further corporatisation of football. And probably the worst part would be "mergers" of teams. Fans would have less choice and be forced to support the local or the regional "superleague" team. So that means that the "day tripper" rather than "working class local with a season ticket" pricing system would be enforced even more. Again the merger of clubs would mean even more slashing of costs, and more of a cosy cartel in place.
Whether they manage to get to this shitty future remains to be seen. (Ofcourse there will be much resistance in different areas). But look how American "franchises" move around the country. And look what has happened to rugby league and rugby union in recent years in Britain.
Either way, without protests and boycotts football will move ever further towards this bizarre future of corporatisation, and destruction of all of its traditions.
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