Post by QPR Report on Nov 1, 2009 14:04:59 GMT
The Herald Sunday/Ian Bell - Failed capitalists shouldn’t be entrusted to run football clubs
1 Nov 2009
It is a brave politician who lectures a bank on its moral responsibilities these days.
People tend to laugh. Credit, then, to Jim Murphy for reminding Lloyds Banking Group last week that there is more to a football club than a pound of fiscal flesh.
To be fair, the Scottish Secretary was not alone. The plight of Glasgow Rangers FC roused much of the political class. In addition to any monies due, they said, there is that intangible thing, community, or what academics term “social and emotional capital”.
Rangers fans were listening hard, I have no doubt, and were probably alert to a couple of ironies. Lloyds might claim rights over their club. But the Ibrox supporters – those who have not lost their jobs thanks to the banks – have a stake of their own. As taxpayers, they share 43% of lovely Lloyds.
A funny thing, ownership, nevertheless. Fans feel it, but can rarely put a negotiable price on it. They own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis. Can that law ever be rewritten? At Ibrox, as you will read elsewhere, we may be about to find out.
Fans own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis Ian Bell
First, though, ask a dumb question: what is a club, anyhow? Why do we still attach that hospitable word to sporting franchises tossed about among groups of rich men like poker chips?
Join a fishing club, say, and you have rights. You get to vote for office-bearers. You get a say over club policy. You are a member, not a minnow in the revenue stream. In football, most of the time, these notions are laughable.
Yet in some cities things are different. At Barcelona, Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, famously, members rule. The same is true elsewhere: Hamburg and Schalke do as well as any while remaining in the fans’ ownership. And this is not because they have discovered something new, but because they have stuck with an old idea: a club is an association of like-minded people, a community.
The modern corporate monsters arose when early clubs embraced limited liability laws. The idea, as every history of football explains, was to raise cash and protect office-bearers should financial catastrophe strike. The result, though, was shareholders. First the small businessmen replaced the working men, then the big businessmen swallowed the small. Now sheikhs and oligarchs swallow all.
But not Barcelona, or Hamburg. It stands to reason, or at least to what passes for reason among economists, that football isn’t really about money. No modern football club, least of all a Scottish club, makes a profit in the recognised sense. That shouldn’t be the point, in any case. So why should ownership be confined to a few?
Allowing the Rangers support to take possession of 49% of the club – reviving the club as a club – would reaffirm that football belongs to those who care most. That, in part, is what community means. And in the wider world, where the game remains a mark of identity and belonging, despite all its parasites, this matters.
Try one line of thought, tentatively. Begin with the fact that “the Gers” are not beloved among bystanders. Might a democratised club begin to change the atmosphere? Might the rest of us ease up on those jokes involving cartoon castles? And might the old diseases respond to the will of massed shareholders who have risked their own cash?
I know: a bit romantic, isn’t it? How many Barca fans have a real say? Who wants to be Clyde, or even Notts County? How do you raise investment once the fans’ cash has gone and a bank – a nice bank, call it Lloyds – tires of funding “amateurs”? Isn’t it the case, in fact, that so-called democratic ownership only becomes popular when a club is in trouble?
True enough, in each particular. The fact remains that the familiar model of ownership – call it the baronial model – is scarcely reeking of prudence. In fact, it’s a disaster. Leeds? Portsmouth? Gretna? Hearts? The list of British clubs that have flirted with disaster in the last decade is longer than I can calculate. Some players and their agents prosper, for now, but no one else.
We are supposed to accept that the crisis of Scottish football is due to a loss of TV revenue. That isn’t even half the story. We are then supposed to believe that “Europe”, elite football, offers salvation. How many can you cram into the elite bus? There isn’t much room.
Study one of the messageboards for fans of the mighty Man U. Watch them sweat over the Glazers and debt. The calculation is simple: one bad Champions League and the game is up. Liverpool fans, already sensing the worst, have a democratising thing called ShareLiverpoolFC for much the same reason.
You cannot call this the People’s Game and leave it in the hands of failed capitalists. You cannot talk about “social responsibility” and deny the demands of community. Clubs, real clubs, were not formed because the scufflers from the yards or the pits were in it for the money. Smart men, those.
www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/rangers/failed-capitalists-shouldn-t-be-entrusted-to-run-football-clubs-1.929667
1 Nov 2009
It is a brave politician who lectures a bank on its moral responsibilities these days.
People tend to laugh. Credit, then, to Jim Murphy for reminding Lloyds Banking Group last week that there is more to a football club than a pound of fiscal flesh.
To be fair, the Scottish Secretary was not alone. The plight of Glasgow Rangers FC roused much of the political class. In addition to any monies due, they said, there is that intangible thing, community, or what academics term “social and emotional capital”.
Rangers fans were listening hard, I have no doubt, and were probably alert to a couple of ironies. Lloyds might claim rights over their club. But the Ibrox supporters – those who have not lost their jobs thanks to the banks – have a stake of their own. As taxpayers, they share 43% of lovely Lloyds.
A funny thing, ownership, nevertheless. Fans feel it, but can rarely put a negotiable price on it. They own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis. Can that law ever be rewritten? At Ibrox, as you will read elsewhere, we may be about to find out.
Fans own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis Ian Bell
First, though, ask a dumb question: what is a club, anyhow? Why do we still attach that hospitable word to sporting franchises tossed about among groups of rich men like poker chips?
Join a fishing club, say, and you have rights. You get to vote for office-bearers. You get a say over club policy. You are a member, not a minnow in the revenue stream. In football, most of the time, these notions are laughable.
Yet in some cities things are different. At Barcelona, Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, famously, members rule. The same is true elsewhere: Hamburg and Schalke do as well as any while remaining in the fans’ ownership. And this is not because they have discovered something new, but because they have stuck with an old idea: a club is an association of like-minded people, a community.
The modern corporate monsters arose when early clubs embraced limited liability laws. The idea, as every history of football explains, was to raise cash and protect office-bearers should financial catastrophe strike. The result, though, was shareholders. First the small businessmen replaced the working men, then the big businessmen swallowed the small. Now sheikhs and oligarchs swallow all.
But not Barcelona, or Hamburg. It stands to reason, or at least to what passes for reason among economists, that football isn’t really about money. No modern football club, least of all a Scottish club, makes a profit in the recognised sense. That shouldn’t be the point, in any case. So why should ownership be confined to a few?
Allowing the Rangers support to take possession of 49% of the club – reviving the club as a club – would reaffirm that football belongs to those who care most. That, in part, is what community means. And in the wider world, where the game remains a mark of identity and belonging, despite all its parasites, this matters.
Try one line of thought, tentatively. Begin with the fact that “the Gers” are not beloved among bystanders. Might a democratised club begin to change the atmosphere? Might the rest of us ease up on those jokes involving cartoon castles? And might the old diseases respond to the will of massed shareholders who have risked their own cash?
I know: a bit romantic, isn’t it? How many Barca fans have a real say? Who wants to be Clyde, or even Notts County? How do you raise investment once the fans’ cash has gone and a bank – a nice bank, call it Lloyds – tires of funding “amateurs”? Isn’t it the case, in fact, that so-called democratic ownership only becomes popular when a club is in trouble?
True enough, in each particular. The fact remains that the familiar model of ownership – call it the baronial model – is scarcely reeking of prudence. In fact, it’s a disaster. Leeds? Portsmouth? Gretna? Hearts? The list of British clubs that have flirted with disaster in the last decade is longer than I can calculate. Some players and their agents prosper, for now, but no one else.
We are supposed to accept that the crisis of Scottish football is due to a loss of TV revenue. That isn’t even half the story. We are then supposed to believe that “Europe”, elite football, offers salvation. How many can you cram into the elite bus? There isn’t much room.
Study one of the messageboards for fans of the mighty Man U. Watch them sweat over the Glazers and debt. The calculation is simple: one bad Champions League and the game is up. Liverpool fans, already sensing the worst, have a democratising thing called ShareLiverpoolFC for much the same reason.
You cannot call this the People’s Game and leave it in the hands of failed capitalists. You cannot talk about “social responsibility” and deny the demands of community. Clubs, real clubs, were not formed because the scufflers from the yards or the pits were in it for the money. Smart men, those.
www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/rangers/failed-capitalists-shouldn-t-be-entrusted-to-run-football-clubs-1.929667
