Murdoch and Bates - Pie in the Sky ? So far I've refrained from going off half-cocked about the news that Rupert Murdoch's Sky conglomerate has acquired a 9.9% stake in Chelsea, but, now that the dust has settled, a few comments seem appropriate. On the face of it, it would appear to be a sensible deal for both Chelsea and Sky, but I worry that the fans will be the ones who will be forced into providing the huge profits that Murdoch and Bates are obviously looking forward to from the deal. We are already paying a fortune for the privilege of supporting our team, so this development has worrying implications. It doesn't take much intelligence to realise that TV rights are at the bottom of it. Sky have made no secret in the past that they want pay per view for football matches. Vic Wakeling of Sky confirmed it, albeit using appalling techno-gabble, when he spoke about the deal: "Chelsea Village plc and BSkyB will combine their strengths to
benefit fans and shareholders. The club will be able to maximise
its return from its media rights, sponsorship and advertising
deals, and to develop broadband and new media opportunities,
whilst remaining focused on its performance on the pitch." Reading between lines of obfuscation, that sounds pretty like Pay Per View to me. Not content with raking in millions from huge advertising revenues and heavy Premium Channel subscription fees, they now want to charge fans extra to watch each of their club's matches. Personally I am fundamentally opposed to this, as I see it as cynical exploitation of the fans' loyalty to their clubs; I think it's a scandal that you already have to subscribe to Sky's Premium sports channels to watch live Premiership football, and with away tickets restricted to a few hundred and a home capacity of only around 40,000 in Chelsea's case, clubs with large support are now realising that they too can jump aboard this untapped gravy train, so they're falling over themselves to sell out to media companies like Sky. I don't object to clubs making a profit, but most are clearly not doing that. Most of the money raised from TV rights, etc. appears to go straight to agents, foreign players plying their trade as mercenaries, shareholders of various media organisations, other multinationals and various dodgy Jack the Lads. Chelsea's wage bill alone is around £22 million a year ! It just doesn't add up, especially when you factor in the ludicrous transfer fees for very average players - Chris Sutton springs to mind. The whole reason this situation exists is because of the millions Sky are paying for the TV rights to the Premiership. They were forced into a bidding war with the BBC, and paid up on the grounds that they'd get the money back through advertising, subscription and, eventually, pay per view. Obviously they've now realised that it's a lot easier and cheaper to buy into the clubs. If they own the clubs, what's to stop them doing exactly what they like ? There will be plenty of arguments put forward by people like Ken Bates as to why this deal is a good thing for Chelsea and the fans, and you can bet that foremost among these will be the "We want this club to be the biggest in Europe, and we need the finance to attract top players to the Club, thereby guaranteeing a successful future" chestnut. A powerful argument if you listen with your heart, but lacking in substance if you listen with your head. It's there for all to see: football is being run by idiots who know nothing about football or what it stands for, but quite a lot about how to make money. I'm not including Ken Bates in that group yet, as his actions in the past have shown that he does care about Chelsea, but let's just say that his views and the interests of Chelsea's fans appear to be diverging rapidly. To give just one example of the incompetence of the people who are running things, look what greed and a complete lack of understanding of the reasons that fans love the game have done to the Champions League. In any other industry Uefa would have been sued just over the name - it's clearly not a Champions League by any definition. It's lost what made it a holy grail, but crucially it's making ten times the money, so by Uefa's criteria it's a success. The fact that virtually nobody actually involved in the game (i.e. the players, coaching staff and fans) is happy about the fact that it's been turned into a second class competition with no real meaning is overlooked in the name of profit. Instead of being a game run by and for the fans, football has been hijacked by a faceless governing body who are in league (forgive the pun) with multinational corporations dedicated to shareholders who are looking at the bottom line on a balance sheet. As long as the bottom line keeps increasing they're happy. Meanwhile the spirit of the game slides inexorably into the mud, and we're left with huge increases in ticket prices, disloyal mercenaries on the pitch, cynical manipulation of everyone from kids to pensioners via merchandising, and an administration that shows contempt for its paying customers in virtually everything it does. It seems to me that the ideal situation for the football authorities and most of the top clubs would be to collect the money for the replica kits, tickets and programmes at the gate and then send everyone home to watch on subscription TV, thus avoiding the expense and inconvenience of having thirty to forty thousand customers cluttering up the place. I admit that I'm taking an extremely pessimistic view, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong about all this. Judging by the events of the past five years, though, which is all one can do, I'm not too hopeful about the future.
