If you have been listening to the BBC’s coverage of the latest football scandal you may have noticed a constant theme that gets slipped into the discussion…that of ‘TV money’, not actually naming Sky of course, corrupting the beautiful game.
Is it just my imagination or is there an underlying line that the BBC is pushing…such as an attack on Sky?
Perhaps we could check out what the BBC’s outhouse journal and partner in so many crimes, the Guardian, says….
Over the next few days more tales of football’s dirty deals are promised. The beautiful game will be besmirched.
Since television money flowed into the sport in the early 1990s, the Premier League has become less a local English affair and more a global one. That has some benefits: better facilities and bigger names on the pitch. However, with top-flight clubs owned by foreign investors and English players making up a third of Premier League teams, there is a feeling that English football is becoming detached from its roots. Such is the concern that Andy Burnham, the Labour mayoral candidate for football-mad Manchester, thinks a quota on foreign players is needed.
The television cash is largely swallowed up by players’ wages, managers’ contracts and agents’ fees. England’s team of millionaires being beaten by Iceland, whose top division is a part-time league, shows how little money is related to talent.
So really it’s not ‘TV money’ that’s the problem but immigration and free market failure? The Guardian….such a racist rag. But er…the Premier League is not the England Team….the market brings to the English league top players and managers from around the world….so not a market failure…it’s the failure of the footballing authorities to distribute the money and train the youngsters that if anything puts a hold on the development of many more English players. Having said that do players from African or the Balkans or South American have the money and facilities available to English players? No. So more to it than money.
But what does the Guardian think is the answer? A little bit of anti-capitalist [Murdoch] socialism and matches given free to the BBC….who’d a thunk?..
To correct this market failure, politicians should restrict the number of games broadcast on pay-TV and set aside some top matches for free-to-air TV. More people will watch the games. The BBC would be able to showcase an expression of national cultural identity. Commercial free-to-air channels could benefit from advertising. Highlights on the BBC draw millions more than a single match on pay-TV. With competition from free matches, TV deals will shrink. Clubs will reduce player salaries. The wealth of club owners and media tycoons will drop.
Guess Milne must already be back at the Guardian doing a fine job pushing the Corbyn new/old politics and helping out the lefty BBC on the way as well as attacking the old enemy, Murdoch. Three for one, certainly getting value for money these days at the Guardian.