The ESL – Empty Terraces

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By Shaun Forrest

Football is a business, the overall fundamental running of a football club is like any other company that is trying to yield worth and produce a better, more exhilarating product. Football clubs have to advertise their brand and sell merchandise to customers. Where they have a slight advantage is that most of their consumers don’t actually choose to be consumers. It might be due to their family, where they were born or the community that put an arm around them but often fans didn’t explicitly choose the company they keep.

Football clubs have the unique and constantly under-appreciated leverage in business that they are breeding consumers who don’t just buy season tickets and strips because they choose to, it’s because they feel they need to. When someone is born into a footballing family or into a community where a single football club is the affiliation holding them together, people support and spend money on that club because they have a passion and an emotional attachment, not because they always enjoy the product or like the brand.

This is why the announcement or even the idea of a European Super League is so disconnected and disrespectful from what fans actually want. And, the real kicker, it comes from the clubs that they have devoted so much to.

The ESL had been whispered about around football communities for a few years, but it was always just scoffed at. Not even the fans of the super-wealthy clubs with billionaire owners could fathom such an empty capitalist proposal and blatant slap in the face to the fans who built these clubs.

The owners of these twelve “super” clubs took the leap of faith to cut away from UEFA and create their own European competition where the clubs would play each other mid-week throughout the season. Knowing the possible expulsion from their domestic leagues was a possibility, this still didn’t deter them -this possibly even encouraged them. 

Anyone who has purchased a season ticket for a football club instantly understands how fundamentally wrong the ESL is. Following a club is not simply about the ninety minutes on the pitch, and the actual result isn’t always the most important part of going to watch them. It’s the entire community experience, travelling to the games with friends, family, or the random people you only meet on match days, or going for a pint beforehand. Standing or sitting with your pack and being able to switch off from the daily grind with people who all desire the same thing: a little bit of victory if you are lucky. But if that success doesn’t fall for you this week it’s ok, because we are still going to be here for the next week.

When the ESL news broke the Sky Sports coverage was absolutely immaculate, breaking news and continuing coverage of the constantly developing story. Heartfelt opinion from former players and supporters who spoke so passionately about their clubs. It was breath-taking media. Gary Neville, in particular, demonstrated a real understanding while articulating perfectly how fans genuinely feel. This was being broadcasted live by Sky Sports who ultimately loved and drove the narrative that the billionaire owners are to blame for this financially motivated break away. Hypocrisy at its finest.

If you ask some people football began in 1992 when the English Premier League was rebranded but, in actual fact, this is when football bought into the slow rise of a capitalist work-ethic and disconnection from its supporters. In 1992, Sky Sports bought the rights to start showing live football and paid upwards of £300 million to the EPL, a substantially huge increase from what the BBC or ITV had been previously paying. This handed money to football clubs which they had never seen before and ultimately became the catalyst for bringing the businessmen and football agents into our game. 

The alien idea of a football club accepting such large sums of money to make it a better experience for people to watch their club from home instead of them trying to go to a game live absolutely cripples my ideology of supporting a team. Obviously not everyone can get into a football stadium but that is surely the business model you want for these born consumers. Having a mass waiting list of supporters for a match day ticket should be more important than taking a bung from Sky Sports meaning these supporters pay them a subscription and can now watch their team from the comfort of the couch.

So, what do these new owners do with all this money that has been so generously given to them? Do they reduce the ticket prices, or offer supporters discounts on club products? Do they update the stadium facilities while asking the supporters what they would like? Do they use the money to strike a deal with local transport companies so fans with a match day ticket get a discount on travel to the game? Do the football clubs do anything to make their dedicated supporters’ lives even slightly better and encourage more people through the door? Did they at the very least not let Sky Sports dictate when their games would be played, lobbying for 3pm on a Saturday so that fans can keep a consistent routine?

Absolutely fucking not!

What did every owner do with this newfound cash flow? They lined their own pockets and started paying footballers, managers and agents obscene amounts of money to play a sport that would be played with or without this new money because of the supporters. 

This unsustainable growth of overpaying only means prices for fans increased, and eventually that will come to an end. Clubs will look elsewhere into a more ”super” wealthy market to make money from the soulless subscribers and trading with money men at the expense of the fan. 

The protests are hopefully just the beginning of fans not taking the constant abuse and exploitation anymore, but I call on everyone who cares about the future of football to go back to what it used to be about. 

UEFA, players, managers, agents and especially owners need to take a look at why their football clubs even exist. What do they give back to the people who have devoted everything? Football has become a ticking financial time bomb, and when it eventually goes off with every club destroyed and on their knees, who do you think will pick up the pieces?

The fans.