Liverpool are right to raise anomaly of TV rights – but it is La Liga that should change

Ostensibly, it appeared that Ian Ayre, the Liverpool chief executive, had given a series of interviews to coincide with the one-year anniversary since Tom Hicks and George Gillett were successfully ousted as owners.

Yet, deliberately or not, the story today is not the changes at Liverpool over the past 12 months but his call for the Premier League to allocate more of their £1.4 billion from overseas television rights to its most popular clubs.

As it stands, the Premier League markets its product collectively and broadly shares the income.

It means that Manchester United, with their vast global fan-base, benefits just as much as Swansea City or Wigan Athletic from the sale of television rights to 212 countries outside the United Kingdom.

Liverpool have understandably pointed out that in some other countries, notably Spain, clubs sell their rights on an individual basis. It means that Barcelona and Real Madrid can generate considerably more income from this specific revenue stream than any English club.

Yet it also means that the smaller clubs in Spain’s La Liga earn dramatically less than their counterparts in the Premier League.

As a whole, La Liga also earns considerably less than the Premier League. The result? Barcelona and Real Madrid are exceptionally wealthy and well-placed to dominate in Europe while the rest of La Liga begin just about every season playing for third. Indeed, over the past two years, no club has finished within 20 points of either Barcelona or Real Madrid.

In that context, it is easy to understand the temptation for the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool.

They are the clubs with the largest global fan-bases and, in theory, the most to gain from selling their television rights individually. The wider and more long-term question, however, is just why those clubs have developed such a vast worldwide fan-base.

All of the evidence suggests that it has really snowballed during the incredible booms years of the Premier League. And why has the Premier League been so popular? Because it is generally very competitive. Widen the gap between the clubs and that key quality would be lost. The Premier League certainly subscribe to this theory and are certain that it is the collective strength of all the clubs which underpins its vast global reach.

In his interview, Ayre cited the 80,000 fans who came to watch Liverpool in Malaysia, but would they really have been so aware were it not for the type of league his club plays in?

In any case, the hard reality of the situation is that it is not the Premier League who Liverpool have to convince of their case. To pass a change in the way overseas television income is distributed, they would have to persuade a two-thirds majority of their rivals clubs. That’s 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs. Given that Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal are all opposed to the idea, it is clear that there is little prospect of change.

If Ayre cannot convince those who would most benefit, he has no chance of persuading others to sign up to something that would reduce their income and further cement the dominance of the elite clubs. It should also be noted that Ayre’s comments have been met today with significant scepticism from around the country.

After all, with Liverpool having made such little progress on building a new ground and with their commercial revenues dwarfed by Manchester United, they are currently faced with limited options as they try to build their income.

Yet at a time when Uefa are introducing regulations relating to ‘financial fair-play’, Ayre was right to highlight the obvious anomaly of clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid being able to sell their TV rights individually.

If Uefa are serious about financial fairness and introducing collective fiscal rules, they should surely also insist on a uniform method among the major leagues for selling their television rights. And it is the model of Spain’s La Liga which should be changed rather than that of the English Premier League.

Liverpool are right to raise anomaly of TV rights – but it is La Liga that should change and not the Premier League

Ostensibly, it appeared that Ian Ayre, the Liverpool chief executive, had given a series of interviews to coincide with the one-year anniversary since Tom Hicks and George Gillett were successfully ousted as owners.

Yet, deliberately or not, the story today is not the changes at Liverpool over the past 12 months but his call for the Premier League to allocate more of their £1.4 billion from overseas television rights to its most popular clubs.

As it stands, the Premier League markets its product collectively and broadly shares the income.

It means that Manchester United, with their vast global fan-base, benefits just as much as Swansea City or Wigan Athletic from the sale of television rights to 212 countries outside the United Kingdom.

Liverpool have understandably pointed out that in some other countries, notably Spain, clubs sell their rights on an individual basis.

It means that Barcelona and Real Madrid can generate considerably more income from this specific revenue stream than any English club.

Yet it also means that the smaller clubs in Spain’s La Liga earn dramatically less than their counterparts in the Premier League.

As a whole, La Liga also earns considerably less than the Premier League. The result? Barcelona and Real Madrid are exceptionally wealthy and well-placed to dominate in Europe while the rest of La Liga begin just about every season playing for third.

Indeed, over the past two years, no club has finished within 20 points of either Barcelona or Real Madrid.

In that context, it is easy to understand the temptation for the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool.

They are the clubs with the largest global fan-bases and, in theory, the most to gain from selling their television rights individually.

The wider and more long-term question, however, is just why those clubs have developed such a vast worldwide fan-base.

All of the evidence suggests that it has really snowballed during the incredible booms years of the Premier League. And why has the Premier League been so popular? Because it is generally very competitive. Widen the gap between the clubs and that key quality would be lost.

The Premier League certainly subscribe to this theory and are certain that it is the collective strength of all the clubs which underpins its vast global reach.

In his interview, Ayre cited the 80,000 fans who came to watch Liverpool in Malaysia, but would they really have been so aware were it not for the type of league his club plays in?

In any case, the hard reality of the situation is that it is not the Premier League who Liverpool have to convince of their case. To pass a change in the way overseas television income is distributed, they would have to persuade a two-thirds majority of their rivals clubs.

That’s 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs. Given that Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal are all opposed to the idea, it is clear that there is little prospect of change.

If Ayre cannot convince those who would most benefit, he has no chance of persuading others to sign up to something that would reduce their income and further cement the dominance of the elite clubs.

It should also be noted that Ayre’s comments have been met today with significant scepticism from around the country. After all, with Liverpool having made such little progress on building a new ground and with their commercial revenues dwarfed by Manchester United, they are currently faced with limited options as they try to build their income.

Yet at a time when Uefa are introducing regulations relating to ‘financial fair-play’, Ayre was right to highlight the obvious anomaly of clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid being able to sell their TV rights individually.

If Uefa are serious about financial fairness and introducing collective fiscal rules, they should surely also insist on a uniform method among the major leagues for selling their television rights. And it is the model of Spain’s La Liga which should be changed rather than that of the English Premier League.

Banning Tottenham supporters for abusive chanting is a waste of time

Abuse victim: Emmanuel Adebayor was singled out by some of Arsenal's supporters at White Hart Lane (GETTY IMAGES)

I am not condoning the horrible chants from Tottenham and Arsenal supporters during Sunday’s North London derby. Having to write that feels like an insult to our collective intelligence. No-one much likes torture, tragic deaths or Hitler, either. We are rarely forced to clarify those positions.

Of course it’s horrible for Arsène Wenger to be ludicrously, baselessly called a paedophile. Of course it’s inhuman to mock Emmanuel Adebayor for being the victim of a terrorist gun attack in Angola. But did small pockets of supporters singing songs about these things really overshadow Sunday’s game, as has been mooted?

There has been much easy use of the word “overshadowed” in coverage of the chanting, which feels like lip service to imagined offence caused. Of course, football as an abstract whole cannot be seen to tolerate such behaviour and it’s no surprise to read Harry Redknapp saying: "It was disgusting, yeah, disgusting.

“How do you chant something like that to someone? You can't be right mentally. You need help. There are kids up there as well. It's got no place anywhere in life, that sort of stuff."

That sort of everyman moralising from Redknapp will strike a chord with those swathes of the population that become outraged at the merest provocation.

Personally I resent that apparently agreed league table of “sickness” which makes one kind of cruelty fine and another “disgusting”. Many of us share an unspoken understanding of what constitutes “acceptable” abuse at a football match, but trying to enforce that line collectively, or chastising those that cross it, is extremely problematic.

The concept of abusive chanting is nebulous in itself. We will rightly stand behind the idea that racist abuse is out of order. But it’s apparently fine to tell Cardiff supporters that they enjoy congress with sheep. Homophobia is correctly frowned upon, but most wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a player exaggerating injury being slandered with a gay pejorative from the stands.

This unclear collective moral compass touches lots of crowd behaviour at football, and is riddled with inconsistencies. Home supporters will cheer when a visiting player pulls up in pain and hobbles off. They’ll applaud if he’s taken off on a stretcher. Who knows which of these injuries will prove most serious in the long run?

It’s extremely difficult to change this ingrained group behaviour but it does happen. When it does, the change in attitude usually comes from within, not as a result of condemnations from clubs or managers. When I started watching QPR in the early 90s I remember a man a few rows behind me spewing racist abuse at John Fashanu, unencumbered by stewards.

A few years ago a different bloke shouted something vile at a different black player. Before he’d even had chance to finish several people around him shouted at him to shut up.

Those incidents did not happen at particularly intense games, unlike Sunday’s at White Hart Lane. The beloved media narrative for any game like Spurs v Arsenal is all about bad blood, a heated rivalry, a lack of love lost. How can that coexist with impeccable behaviour from each side’s supporters?

We want that edge, that excitement. Football is not clean, genteel and sophisticated, and this is part of the attraction for many of its followers. Such shallow condemnation of abusive chanting achieves little and represents the thrust of sanitisation creeping into the Premier League product.

Demonising supporters, dismissing them with that patronising epithet “so-called fans” betrays a wilful ignorance of what football support is about. The uncomfortable and generally unmentioned truth is that those undesirably fervent supporters who sing horrible songs are often the backbone of a club, certainly they constitute a large part of any team’s travelling support.

There will always, always, be people that misbehave in heated situations. Spurs’ policy of “taking out one or two of the ring-leaders who are initiating the chants," sounds sensible, but why are the people that start the chants worse than those that join in?

The evidence is hardly watertight, either, as demonstrated by Ian Trow’s quashed conviction for chanting at Portsmouth in 2008.

Until Sky has HD cameras trained on each block of a ground, how can you expect to identify those that are guilty of singing a significantly abusive song? How much of it do you have to sing to be guilty?

I’ve never heard the majority of a stadium singing one of these top-tier offensive chants in 20 years of going to football. It’s very small pockets of support, and banning the perpetrators achieves nothing.

Everton fans still throw coins at Luis Suarez, nutters still send Neil Lennon letter bombs. There will always be new idiots ready to take up the mantle. But attitudes change. Eventually the sane will outnumber the fools and collectively shout them down.

In the meantime, when it comes abusing opponents there will be some who go over the top, because there will always be people in society that are not self-aware enough to realise how ridiculous they are. And people who just aren’t very nice.

Tokenistic banning of a few of these will not change that fact.

 

 

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has but a few short weeks to shape the next few years for him and his club

Arsene Wenger is under increasing pressure (REUTERS)

How to create a PR disaster (part one): With your club slipping out of four competitions at the end of a season that had promised so much, thus extending a trophy drought to six years, why now wheel out your chairman to greet unhappy fans with the following statement?

“I simply cannot believe Arsene will react to these stupid comments from these silly people. They are supposed to be supporters, but, in fact, they do quite a lot of damage.”

How to create a PR disaster (part two): Despite the hurt and pain at the aforementioned collapse still hovering over the club like a dark and angry cloud, why not take the decision to raise ticket prices by 6.5 per cent? After all, you already charge some of the highest prices in Europe, so why not charge some more? Easy money.

How to create a PR disaster (part three): Let your manager insist that the club will not countenance the sale of both of your best players in the same summer. Then, a few weeks later, concede defeat and sell both.

How to create a PR disaster (part four): See your manager claim that you only want “super-quality” signings to improve the squad. Then when you balk at the price being asked for his primary defensive target, move on to a much cheaper option. Even if he has just been relegated, and missed the final four months of last season with a hamstring injury. Goodbye Phil Jagielka, hello Scott Dann.

——————————————————————–

So far this summer, Arsenal’s PR department have been having the sort of nightmare experienced on a weekly basis by Sebastian Squillaci. Almost with every passing week, the public image of the club has deteriorated further. This week Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri will go. Next summer it could be Robin Van Persie and Theo Walcott. Could even Arsene Wenger join them in the revolving door at the Emirates marked ‘Exit’? It is by no means inconceivable, and the next three weeks will go a long way to defining the next few years for the club.

It is paramount that the club show some real ambition in the transfer market over the next 20 days. They may be rightly proud of the model of self-sufficiency they have adopted, but as has been repeated ad infinitum, football fans do not want a healthy bank balance, they want trophies. For some fans, it is perplexing to see two billionaires with major stakes in the club, yet continue to see Arsenal scratch around for the next bargain.

Never has their place in the upper echelons of the Premier League been so threatened as now.

Manchester United have strengthened significantly, a real show of ambition from a club not prepared to sit back and admire their achievements in winning the league last season. Manchester City have, predictably, spent big to bring the superb Sergio Aguero to Eastlands. Liverpool have spent heavily to immediately improve their midfield, with Jose Enrique set to fill their problem position of left-back. Chelsea have added some much-needed youth to their experienced, powerful squad. Only Tottenham have had a similarly frustrating summer to Arsenal, though at least they have kept hold of Luka Modric so far.

Despite the defensive errors that have come to characterise this Arsenal side, it comes as no real surprise that Wenger’s two major signings this summer are Gervinho – a winger/second striker – and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, a precocious attacking midfielder acquired for around £12m from Southampton. The only defensive reinforcement to arrive has been Carl Jenkinson, a 19-year-old right-back with less than 10 first-team appearances for League One side Charlton under his belt.

If ever there was a time for Arsenal to spend it is now. They must convince Van Persie and Walcott, whose contracts expire in two years’ time, that they can achieve their ambitions at the Emirates. And they can do that with some positive, morale-boosting dealings in the transfer market. If not, we will come to next summer and – just as the club have been forced to do with Nasri – Arsenal will have to sell both players to avoid losing them for nothing the following year.

But it is perhaps Wenger’s action that will be most closely monitored by the fanbase. Losing Fabregas is a grevious blow for the Frenchman. Fabregas was the emblem of this Arsenal team, the man chosen to lead the club into a brave new world following the departures of Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry. Now he too is exit-bound. That Nasri has joined the Spaniard in losing patience with the Wenger ‘project’ can only be a slap in the face for a manager who has placed such faith in his two young tyros. What can he do to pick up the pieces and rejuvenate an ailing squad?

When sections of the Emirates support booed their team off two weeks ago following the 1-1 friendly draw with New York Red Bulls, it was not an expression of dismay at missing out on lifting the Emirates Cup. At its root was a deeply-held frustration at the regular capitulations of the team at the first sign of adversity, and also anger at the club’s perceived lack of ambition at a time when it is clear that urgent surgery needs to be undertaken.

This was meant to be the summer that Arsenal were “very active”, to quote Wenger. Instead it has been a summer of anger, upset  and uncertainty, a summer which will be remembered for the departure of two of the brightest talents at the club. Arsenal have been “very active”, but it has been in terms of outgoings, rather than incomings.

Wenger is now under pressure like never before. How sad it would be if the Frenchman, who has done so much for Arsenal in his 15-year tenure, was to leave the club under a hail of anger and abuse. Undoubtedly he is partly responsible for the current situation, but the board have been more than happy to hide behind their manager and let him bear the brunt of the criticism.

Wenger deserves much more than that. But over the next 20 days, it will be up to him to change perceptions and change the fortunes of a club that have experienced a summer that could prove pivotal in its recent history.

 

Future TV technology: a recipe for crowd trouble disaster

Richard Scudamore wearing a prototype Scudatron device. Copyright John Sibley/Action Images

Richard Scudamore has seen the future. It sounds pretty neat. Although one must concede that the future does sound suspiciously like the movie Avatar. The Premier League chief executive is on a fact-finding mission in Hong Kong (facts found out so far: they have money; we want some of it) and has had his head turned by an amazing new gizmo called “Immersion Technology”.

IT (that acronym isn’t already taken, right?) allows the sports fan to strap on a device through which he or she can view the action. Turn head to left, see one end of the pitch; turn to right, see other end. Scudamore reports that headphones are also involved. Entertainment ensues.

And because these machines are broadcasting TV pictures from the ground, as Scudamore says: “You could be on a Saturday evening in Hong Kong, 3pm in England, deciding whether you want to be on the Kop or the Holte End at Aston Villa.”

Leaving aside whether this sort of pick-and-mix approach to choosing which football team to watch is to be encouraged, would this be any good? IT would certainly make watching football at home a bit more like being at the ground. The purist will insist actual physical attendance is the only way to enjoy football, to which I say: that depends on the club you support. Many is the time watching my own team that I have wished I was far away and wearing a large digital box on my head; not least because it might short-circuit and electrocute me, thus saving me from having to watch my team play football any more.

Assuming that it is not morally reprehensible to enjoy a football match without being there, there are still questions over the practicalities. What if, sitting on the sofa with the Scudatron Premier League Visualisation Unit strapped around your melon, you turn minutely to your left in order to scoop up another fistful of delicious Official Premier League Partner Cardio-destructo-snacks, and suddenly the headset is pointing squarely at a pillar, or the fat neck of a person in front of you, or at the hapless, pouting figure of Fernando Torres, moping around 70 yards from where the action is?

Aside from the possibility of technical malfunction, and the philosophical questions (“If you are bored to death watching Stoke v Blackburn but you were not there, did you actually die?”), the major problem with the Scudatron is crowd segregation. Scudamore says that he envisions fans sitting together on the sofa to enjoy the exciting, headsets-on, in-no-way-Jaws-III-ish experience. What if they are from rival teams? It is simply not practical for the constabulary to police every home in Britain, let alone Hong Kong as well, just in case a United fan and a City fan find themselves in the same living room, techno-ed up and ready to go.