"Devaluing the matchday experience"

[STAR Voice]

In light of recent discussions in "Tte Team" and "General Football" forums, some people might find this blog, by Phil French of Supporters Direct, interesting.

http://snurl.com/1tvkj

[T.R.O.L.I.]

Can't got on to that at work - can someone post the gist of it please.

[g]

Are any bricks for sell?

[The 17 Bus]

Can't got on to that at work - can someone post the gist of it please.

Read the lot you lazy sod.

Nowhere is the march of globalisation more obvious than with the astonishing growth of overseas ownership of top-flight clubs. The question is what do football's new investors want and what will it mean for the game and its supporters? Do they regard their acquisition as a future investment or a leisure activity? Maximising the club's commercial potential, increasing the value of media rights, cutting costs and driving more revenue out of the T.R.O.L.I. or simply somewhere to spend their money?

Identifying motive is crucial, because it is the way to understand where globalisation is taking our game. We seem to have been having this debate - or versions of it - for some years, without things becoming clearer, starting with the perpetual threat of a European Super League, or an international club-fixture programme for elite clubs only, and now taking in franchising, and an end to promotion and relegation.

They may seem fanciful ideas but rugby league has already changed its entire fixture programme from winter to summer and slipped into a franchise system while embracing a range of reforms.

If recent seasons, and trends, have shown us anything, it is that a large group of the world's richest business people think football's financial boom has not reached its peak. These investors may face a fundamental problem. The drive to increase revenue points to an increasing globalisation of football but how far can you take this without isolating the fan base and eroding the very foundation on which their clubs' success has been built?

English football is so attractive because of the full stadiums of passionate supporters, the atmosphere, colour, history and local rivalries. If the investors focus on the global fan at the expense of all this, and tear up the structures of our game, they will end up with a top-heavy product built on rapidly weakening foundations, which can lead only one way.

Yes, we may be talking many years for all this to develop fully and it may never happen but exploiting the global audience first and foremost will be a tempting prospect.

Much of the Premier League's success has been achieved through trying to get the balance right between the global and local game, through investing in new stadium facilities and top overseas players, while keeping the League infrastructure underpinned by collective selling. This has already led to criticism over kick-off times, ticket pricing, transportation issues and, of course, thanks to the EC's competition unit, the saturation of live games on television.

Say the next step is to shrink the league again - an ever smaller number of clubs competing in showpiece fixtures: regular fans would be disenfranchised even further. And in time, you would imagine, global audiences would lose the appetite for seeing the same clubs in the same league over and over again, playing in increasingly empty grounds, devoid of noise or colour. Supporters will start voting with their feet, and with their remote controls.

Allowing the game's stakeholders a greater say in their clubs, which generations before them have built up, could help get this balance right. I am not talking about playing the fantasy-football manager with a club's fortunes, such as MyFootballClub are attempting to do, which is a very clever marketing idea, but basing a club's long-term sustainability on website voting is fraught with danger.

For those taking a more serious interest in the fortunes of their local club, Supporters' Trusts are one such vehicle to enable fans to achieve democratic representation through acquiring a stake. They want success as much as the most ambitious board but they want it in a sustainable way which provides a vital level of communication between the club and its fan base to help improve the governance and financial stability.

Yes, football must change with the times. It is heartening to see some within the game starting to understand the benefit such communication can bring. But where would be the justification for restructuring it so fundamentally? Exploiting the commercial potential of globalisation comes second: or the emotional attachment, that blind loyalty which clubs so enjoy from their fan base will completely fracture and clubs will simply become another competing leisure activity.

The top priority is the game on the pitch and the atmosphere in the stands. So change with the times, by all means, but don't devalue the game or the matchday experience - let's face it, that's what TV fans are buying, too.

Phil French is chief executive of Supporters Direct, the body that aims to increase fans' representation in football clubs