Exporting Football

by desachi

Talk about exporting the EPL is all well and fine, but will the latest craze of the billionaire gang creep north of the border?

With Richard Scudamore talking about the need for expansion of the EPL and the need to play a 39th game abroad in order to satisfy the global appetite for the EPL, one might have been left wondering where this would all end? Games in Bangkok, Mumbai, New York, Beijung, Sydney and Johannesburg would, of course, be a great treat for fans of the clubs who have been born, or indeed settled in those parts of the world, but what about the other arguments?

Some of the arguments for this were particularly interesting. "We cannot sit still on our brand, look what happened to Marks and Spencer" and "the NFL do it" were two of the oft cited reasons, but it is the "this is how we deal with globalisation" argument that was of particular interest.

The very same argument is used, quite expansively on the other side of the coin as well, as I was interested to learn from a friend of mine who is involved extensively in grass roots football development in one of the countries named. Having recently discussed the African Cup of Nations, and the growth of domestic structures to develop young footballers, he made a salient point, namely that there are only a handful of European clubs that are actually active in promoting themselves and indeed football in other parts of the world and even these are more interested in taking the talent out of these areas very early on and not allowing them to stay in their domestic game to benefit other youngsters. This in itself is a side effect, the coaches are told of "globalisation" but all done for the benefit of the player as an individual at the expense of the entire footballing community.

One can imagine the knock on effect as the domestic game is re-arranged so as not to clash with the TV schedule of a league from another continent. This of course makes it much harder to develop any real interest in any domestic game. Interestingly enough, when Sky's presence loomed large over the Scottish game, clubs in Scotland also saw those youngsters they would have traditionally expected to support their local team being pulled away by the lure of the shiny EPL.

Then of course there is the question of whether it is in the interest of fans who like to see their team week in week out. It goes without saying that fans, who might struggle to follow their team all season would not find a round trip to Beijing an easy thing to negotiate to watch a game of football.

So who benefits? If the domestic game in these countries has to suffer the futher ignominy of having talent leave through the conveyor belt, the fans of EPL clubs have no ability to take in their side in the long run, the players themselves, who complain about the rigours of the 38 game league season (something that UEFA and FIFA have both sought to change), then who? The answer lies of course in the notion that now, more than ever, football is a business and this has been driven by the needs of sponsors in order to increase their own global footprint. There is no doubt that the stadias will not be full on most occasions, gracing the likes of Wigan and Fulham, where the appeal would be, but the overall marketing opportunity, with television and sponsorship rights would be good enough for the large corporates to go for.

Now, what of the same thing happening north of the border? There was a brief mention of this in the media, but in my opinion would be a non starter. The only game worthy of export is the big one, and part of the appeal of that is the location, the hotbed of football that is Glasgow and the game being played at either Celtic Park, Ibrox or Hampden. The game is of interest because of the very real atmosphere (not the rivalry on paper that has characterised so many of the games from the EPL now), and this is something that the Scottish game is not ready to shed as there are strong cultural and historical reasons for it.

Now the question is whether or not the SPL and indeed the SFA have the strength of will to resist the call on behalf of sponsors and the like to try and export this very real rivalry to New York or wherever, where there would an interest to host it. It would, sadly, probably be the kind of thing that they would try, such is the dearth of imaginative ideas that come from the heads of these organisations. Overcompensation for having done no marketing in the past?

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