Ninety Quid? You're Having A Laugh!

There is an incredible amount of money sloshing about in professional sport, especially in football and even more especially in the English Premier League. Any journeyman player in the Premier League comfortably makes more per annum than I did even in the last of my thirty-six years of paid employment  and players like Wayne Rooney, John Terry, Joe Hart and their ilk will comfortably earn many times more in one year than I did in the whole of my working life. Should we begrudge these players their (inflated) salaries? Professional sport is a short enough career anyway and can be brought to a premature end by injury, but there is little doubt that the astronomical salaries that top sportsmen are paid now place them a world apart from those who pay to watch them, much more so than in the days when England's top footballers would earn little more than their fans and would even travel to games on the same bus as those who idolised them.

Tom Finney: £8 a week, a plumber in his spare time and travelled to home games on the bus...

....Wayne Rooney: What's a bus?

Football at the highest level is now really just a business whose stock in trade is sport rather than being simply a sport. The English Premier League is a brand in the same way as Coca Cola is a brand or that Microsoft or McDonald's are brands and by any definition the Premier League is a top brand. Globally recognised, the Premier League is watched by millions throughout the world; top players and top coaches aspire to be part of it. Top companies bid to sponsor teams or the competition itself as their association with the Premier League benefits them even if only intangibly. The strength of a brand is measurable in different ways, maybe by the values of the company, by the ethics of the organisation, by value for money or simply by reflected worth that its consumers derive from their association with it.

While for many of us non-United fans there is a certain amount of schadenfreude to be derived from the struggles at Old Trafford this season, Premier League Chief Executive Richard Scudamore has lamented United's failure to challenge for this seasons title because of the damage that this has done to the Premier League brand. "When your most popular club isn't doing as well, that costs you interest and audience in some places. There are lots of fans around the world who wish Manchester United were winning it again," Scudamore told Bloomberg. He went on to say, "But you have to balance that off against, generally, we're in the business of putting on a competition and competition means people can compete." Generally? Sorry, but surely by definition that is the sole point of a competition, which the Premier League is. If Scudamore is more concerned about brand image than the competitiveness of the Premier League,  then to achieve his goals vis a vis the brand he implies that this requires Manchester United assume some unassailable position that guarantees their success each season with everyone else trailing in their wake, but the brand's image is in part already predicated on competitiveness. It may or may not be the best league in the world, as some people describe it, but it would be all the poorer if there were no element of unpredictability, if the champions could be predicted unerringly before even a ball were kicked each season.

Richard Scudamore

No one would dispute that football has changed, evolved, been revolutionised over the years and much of this is for the better. Stadia are better and safer, the facilities a world away from the primitive terraces, catering and toilets that were prevalent forty years ago. Watching football is safer, inside and outside the grounds, but as to whether the game is better, whether the players are better, then the point is moot. What has changed most significantly is the money, both the players' salaries and the prices that the fans pay. The admission price for the first football match I went to in 1968, at Romford in the Southern League was 1/6d (that's 8p for those too young to remember pre-decimal currency); entry to a First Division match at Manchester United cost four shillings (20p) that season and a seat just six shillings. Today it costs me £8 to watch Romford whereas a ticket for a game at Old Trafford would set you back at least £53 and Manchester United are by no means the most expensive club in England. An upper tier seat at Arsenal can cost as much as £123 (yes, one hundred and twenty three pounds) or the equivalent of fifteen matches at Romford.

And now this week comes the news that the new England strip, manufactured by Nike and to be worn in this summer's World Cup in Brazil, is available to buy in the shops at the price of £90 for a genuine replica shirt. A so called "stadium" shirt, which does not include the "enhanced cooling technology" that the match shirts have (and which is probably of dubious worth) costs £60. The pricing has presumably been set so that those who will baulk at £90 will see £60 as positively reasonable (which it isn't). There is a pricing theory known as "Goldilocks pricing" that postulates offering three different versions of the same product to corner high end, middle and low end market sectors; there may only be two versions of the England shirt but you see where Nike are positioning their product.

£90, for this?

You cannot blame Nike for maximising their potential profit from the production and sale of the England kit, but it is scandalous that the Football Association seek to distance themselves from criticism with their statement that ,"The FA's policy is to avoid any involvement with how its partners/licensees set their prices, so as to avoid any risk of or implications of price fixing." Certainly they may not have any direct involvement in the price that Nike are charging for the shirt but no doubt the deal that has given Nike the commercial rights will have netted the FA a substantial sum which Nike will seek to recoup, no rephrase that, make a handsome profit on with income from sales. It is disingenuous of the FA to detach themselves from the price of the shirt that bears their name and all very well for them to boast about the sums that they put back into the game when those monies actually come (directly or indirectly) out of the pockets of the average fan.

Shadow Sports Minister Clive Efford has said in this connection that, "The game of football seems to be increasingly about profit and commercialism rather than the community and the fans, who have sustained football for many generations." True, if blindingly obvious and something that has been going on unchecked for years. Joey Barton Tweeted that £90 was "appalling" and "taking the mickey." Again, true and to the ordinary football supporter,  it is wearily typical of the near contempt it seems that they are held in by clubs and kit manufacturers who know that regardless of the inflated, unjustifiable prices they put on tickets, replica kit and other souvenirs, there will be enough deluded souls willing to pay.

In my wardrobe I have two replica England shirts, both of over five years vintage; in total they cost me less than £20 because by the time I bought them they had been out of date for some time. The new England shirt, when it is superseded (as it inevitably will be and much, much sooner than later - probably by this time next year), will be on sale in Sports Direct and other discount sports shops for a fraction of this year's price when a new design comes out, the price of which I would suggest could be in three figures.

An alternative to the official, £90 shirt has been circulating on the internet.

Despite the criticism from Clive Efford, Joey Barton and others there will always be enough mug punters willing to pay the ridiculous prices charged by the kit manufacturers but I will not be one of them, and I would suggest that neither should you be.