Soccer

» SimonMelville - British soccer's dodgy dealings

In response to British soccer's dodgy dealings posted by dantilles:
My view is that it's unfortunate but a inevitable consequenece of football clubs being run as businesses.

While it brings increased levels of professionalism off the pitch, the mega bucks that football attracts will also attract people who want a slice of it, like in other industries.

I would argue that transparency had increased as clubs float on the stock exchange -- although the level of info that Manchester United has to reveal as a PLC on the London Stock Exchange is far more stringent than Arsenal has to reveal as a company floated on OFEX.

Take the example given at the below ESPN article:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/sto...
Burnely won the league in 1960 with local sausage-baron Bob Lord as chairman -- how much more information about the club's finances would he give out to curious fans than Roman Abramovich? Very little I'd imagine.

Of course football clubs are not like other businesses as their customer base are irrational, willing to come back tiome and time again no matter how bad the product served is and feel great emotional attachment.

The least committed of the multi-millionaires will soon be on their way when they realise running a club where everyone hates you is just not worth the fuss. The bigger clubs like Man Utd and Real Madrid have been big business for a long time now and a change of ownership every so often will not change anything.

-- posted by SimonMelville