How football’s amorality and transactionalism became the game within the game | Aaron Timms

By James On Nov 14, 2024

IIn the chaos of the money machine that is modern football, it is considered a relatively small affair. But when Liverpool recently announced that they will earn more than £60 million ($76.3 million) a year from next season from a new kit deal with Adidas, the reactions from the club’s supporters on social media said a lot about the nature of the modern fandom. Aside from the usual grumbling about what this could mean for the team’s kit design, fans mostly seemed to react to the announcement in two ways: Why doesn’t the new deal bring the club in line with the £90 million ($ 114.3) m) that Manchester United receives from Adidas for a similar arrangement? And more pressingly, what kind of squad investment could secure an extra few million pounds a year? “Enough to pay Virgil,” one Reddit user stated. “Does this mean we’re going to buy a RB and a 10?” asked another.

These are of course completely normal reactions; any other club announcing any sort of commercial ‘victory’ would receive a similar response from its supporters. But they highlight the extent to which we, as fans, have all been psychologically colonized by the grubby extractionism that defines the modern Premier League, applauding from the sidelines as a new content deal, shirt sponsorship, asset sale or new set of unaffordable subscription packages. appears on the club’s balance sheet. That ‘tier’ for seat upgrades and points-based VIP fans may be part of the commercial trend that is making football less affordable and taking it further and further away from the communities it claims to represent, but if they find us a quality backup goalkeeper to put pressure on that number one who chronically fumbles under the high ball? Well, maybe they’re not so bad after all.

The quest for revenue is the defining battle of modern football, and many fans rightly see increased revenue as the surest route to glory on the pitch; Balance improvement and team improvement now go hand in hand. Fans, faced with this economic reality, have become unwitting cheerleaders for the rampant commercialization of the sport, for the exploitation of small pockets of commercial value and the manipulation of regulatory loopholes, for the dark administrative arts on which backrooms depend to keep their clubs provided with an edge. The deep anger that many supporters feel towards referees because of perceived injustice and prejudice on the pitch – some of which, as recent events suggest, may have a legitimate anchor in reality – is countered by the cool indifference with which any evidence of the circumvention of the law rules are greeted. in the corporate suite.

We all have a group of Chelsea supporters in our lives who rave about the club’s ability to sell their own hotels to themselves at generous prices in an effort to stay below the league’s losing limits; we all know that a Man City fan is comically unbothered by the 115 charges hanging over the club he loves. Even – or perhaps especially – as the Premier League enters a new era of regulation and accountability, the temptation for fans to view their own clubs’ off-field chicanes as part of the ‘game’ of modern football is only increasing. become bigger. Regulation at least offers manipulative club owners another ‘enemy’ against which they can mobilize fan support: it is perhaps no surprise that Manchester City fans welcomed the recent arbitration ruling against the Premier League’s rules on related party transactions, or that Chelsea fans were supported by the failure of a motion at the league’s annual general meeting in June to ban clubs from making artificial windfall profits on property sales. Never mind that both the ATP rules and a Chelsea-style restriction on hotel sales would help create a fairer competition; all that matters is the win, the extra bit of financial juice that boosts the bottom line.

Of course, fans have a choice in this matter, and not all fans behave this way. But it is the club owners and sports administrators, not the fans themselves, who bear the responsibility for this reduction of football to an exercise in financial and regulatory pressure, a soulless game of numbers and loopholes. However emotional they may be by nature, fans who applaud this progress off the field are responding in a completely rational way to the world as it is presented to them. More money, more deals, more maneuvering around the rules: these are the routes to success in the modern Premier League, and with them invariably come more lawsuits in the courts and tribunals, more challenges to the authority of the Premier League, more moral equality , a deeper league-wide drift towards cynical amorality and transactionalism. These values have now penetrated the bloodstream of the sport.

As the arrival of big money in European football has become routine, debates over the ethics and morality of club ownership are losing their initiating power, and football as a whole is shuffling towards a numbed acceptance of its new status as the plaything of global capital, supporting the team on the field and encouraging the corporate chicanery off the field that keeps teams competitive have merged into a single culture of whatever it takes fandom. This is not simply a matter of following off-field events, which have always been the subject of debate among supporters; it is about the emergence of a collective mentality in which fans do not simply accept the commercialization of all aspects of modern football, but celebrate each successive indicator of money’s increasing grip on the sport. Anything that allows clubs to keep growing, keep spending, keep chasing the top players while staying within the letter of the law – no matter what it means for the sport’s overall accessibility, sustainability or community connection – is a toast to the discussion board waiting to happen. Club owners and directors have obviously done their part to encourage and exploit this mentality; The science of ‘customer engagement’, along with a host of strategies designed to gamify and finance the fan experience, have encouraged and rewarded blind, vocal club loyalty among fans, while discouraging dissent.

None of us who follow football are immune to the power of this devious rationalism. As fans, we are all now petty traders and unethical accountants, running our own shadow ledger of the mind to keep track of where our clubs can go long, take profits and squeeze a few extra dollars on the margin to pay for those attacks , but defensively solid left back/20 goals per season No. 9/squad utility who can play across the back four but also has a header on goal from set pieces/technically adept and positionally secure midfielder who has a glorious future of sustainable development will unlock success on the field. Fandom has become yet another domain of human life conquered by gambling and speculation; Fans are emotionally and mentally invested in the league-wide quest for the highest returns with the smallest costs, becoming foot soldiers of the extractive economy. Players, meanwhile, are seen as assets: units of value on the balance sheet that pump up the asset column, while liabilities drag the operation down. Squads are increasingly being assembled in the manner of venture capital portfolios, as a volley of casual bets on untested products.

In the long run, the only people who benefit from the new gamified climate of risk-taking and rule-bending in the Premier League are the billionaires and private equity parasites who control the clubs. But as fans, we are the useful idiots who turn their plans for self-enrichment into a cultural prize. As we hail the latest streaming deal, merchandise tie-in, gaming partnership or tribunal victory, football continues its transformation into an asset class, gleefully entering the jaws of the market.