The Future of Football
Is the Club World Cup a success? Was Ballers league doomed to fail? Is the game gone...?
I’ve recently been reading Mark Carney’s book ‘Values’. In it, he lays out how market fundamentalism has led the way to markets entering more and more areas of our lives. The Canadian PM repeatedly references the idea that we know the value of an amazon stock, but not the value of the amazon rain forest. Similarly, in modern football, we often know the value of a club or player, but not the value of the game itself. And as Carney suggests with the amazon rainforest, football’s true value will only become evident when the game itself is destroyed.
The Club World Cup offers fans the chance to watch clubs from nations around the globe fight for a cash prize of 1 billion dollars. But could this competition be the beginning of the end for football as we know it?
Initially I was fairly skeptical of the new and improved Club World Cup. I found Fifa’s promotion of the event, and the body’s insistance that it was to be football’s premier competition, nauseating. But Infantino is not the only fame hungry, wannabe Gen Z, cringe inducing ‘celebrity’ who claims to have invented the future of football, as the nation’s least favourite SideMan (KSI) has also thrown his hat into the ring with his product ‘Baller League UK’. My question, after watching matches from both competitions, is… Is this really the future of football?
Okay okay I’ll admit it - the Club World Cup (CWC) is quite fun. The novelty of watching giants of modern football like Bayern Munich put 10 past some semi-pros soon wore off, but the sight of European sides struggle against South American and Middle Eastern teams has kept me interested in the competition for far longer than I had expected to be.
I have no quarrels with the concept of this competition - it is the execution which has me concerned. As I wrote in a recent piece on the dangerous financial situation at Sheffield Wednesday (still unresolved) and other EFL clubs, fans are the beating heart of football, which is why I am frightened by the lack of fans in attendance at stadiums in the CWC.
On the surface, an average group stage attendance of 35K~ per match is not bad at all. Sure it’s below that of the World Cup in Qatar (50k~), but it’s far above that of the Championship and about on par to the Premier league last season. The real problem is that the stadiums aren’t being filled…
While the Championship filled 80% of its seats and the Premier League nearly 100%, the Club World Cup staggered in at just 56.7%. This is made all the more embarrassing when you discover that Fifa continually lower the price of tickets up until match day to try and entice more fans into coming.
Fans are not central to Fifa’s plans, and that should be concerning to all all football lovers. ‘Bums on seats’ doesn’t matter to Infantino, as he’s managed to create a glossy, digestible, global footballing product. Fans are not central to Fifa’s plans, and that should be concerning to all all football lovers. ‘Bums on seats’ doesn’t matter to Infantino, as he’s managed to create a glossy, digestible, global footballing product.
Once a working-class game, now a billionaire’s business plan.
It’s no longer a game. Infantino, John Henry, Perez, the Glazers, Laporta, these billionaires don’t care about local fans, they’ve seen the revenue that international fans generate and have since focused solely on them. The CWC is the endgame, and we’ve let it happen.
If you think the CWC is far removed from your local EFL team then think again. Changing kick off times, ticket prices and lucrative pre-season tours to far flung corners of the globe are all symptoms, don’t ignore them, it may soon turn terminal.
We’ve entered a world where the beating heart of the game has been ripped from the body, and the void it left has been filled by money.
I’m not against the Americanization of sport. I understand the need to modernise, but the constant yearn to expand and attract more eyes is exhausting. It’s yet another example of how market logic is invading cultural spaces - from the environment to the pitch.
But while FIFA’s product at least pretends to honour tradition, the Baller League throws out the rulebook entirely.
While I can see the appeal of the CWC, I am struggling to see the appeal of ‘Baller League’. Described on the Wikipedia page (the font of all knowledge) as a merging of ‘traditional football with elements of entertainment to appeal to a younger demographic.’ 30 minute games, complex twists and rules and six aside teams composed of failed and ex-pros, what’s not to love!?
This tik-tokified version of football is supposed to appeal to children who, according to a load of non-children, don’t have a long enough attention span to watch a full 90 minute game. So instead of teaching children the value of patience, we are changing fundamental aspects of football in order to appease people born post-London Olympics.
Instead of helping young fans understand the rhythm and nuance of a 90-minute match, we’re feeding them bursts of content with half the depth and twice the noise.
Both of these proposed footballing revolutions fail to take into account the fans. Why must football compete for airtime? Why must it always grow? Why can we not just appreciate football for what it is? (ps. the answer to all these questions is market fundamentalism).
Fans still have power. We fill the seats, buy the kits, and carry the culture. But for how much longer? If we don’t act fast, then the game we love will be lost, if it isn’t already…
This piece is part of a series I have written on the value of football. Find links to the other articles in the series below…