Money and sport

[Domski]

You can tell I'm supposed to be cleaning the house this evening as I'm spending far too much time thinking about stuff and generally wasting time doing other things.

In recent days/months/years sport in the UK has more and more been influenced by how many pounds you've got behind you. This has especially manifested itself in football (soccer) where the likes of Roman Abramovich have come in with vast amounts to change the face of the game beyond recognition.

Money in sport is nothing new and in the US American Football, Baseball, Basketball etc have long had superstars earning vast amounts and elsewhere Formula 1 has never exactly been a sport of the pauper.

I just was wondering what other folk here thought about how sport was going, especially when you see some of the recent performances by relatively underpaid sports men and women at the olympics.

Is it ruining sport long term? Can it continue? What incentive does it give to smaller teams who may never see this wealth? Would we be better off without it and going back to the original ideals? Have you turned your back on the big money?

Your thoughts...

Dom

 

[Norie]

Dom

Are you sure these footballigarchs/footballsheiks are actually investing pounds?

Romanov (Hearts) - Kopeks

Abromovich (Chelsea) - As Above

Abu Dhabi United Group (Manchester City) - Riyals

The first 2 have caused problems at their particular clubs but we'll need to see about the last - £34m for a player.

 

[Domski]

Fair enough Norie but you get my meaning.

I'm not even sure some are investing but rather dishing out loan notes to the clubs. It would be very interesting to see what happened if Abromovich got bored and walked away from Chelsea.

The point I guess I'm making is what effect the availability of this vast wealth is having on sports in general whether they are getting the benefit of it or not.

Dom

 

[Norie]

Dom

I'm not really sure what effect it's having, but I don't think it's good for the smaller clubs.

Any money the big clubs doesn't really 'trickle down' to them as far as I know.

And a lot of this financing seems a bit dodgy - Abramovich allegedly just using it to syphon money out of Russia.

The Arabs just seems to be chucking money around left right and centre, not just in football.

And of the top of my head there are least 1 English club where the investor/owner has huge debts.

Also there's another where there's 2 owners/whatever that seem not getting on all that well.

Sorry for just mention football.

But I did notice your comment regarding the Olympics.

The GB Athletics team had a miserable showing, apparently due to lack of funds due to lack of previous formance.

But the Cycling and Swimming teams did very well, because of previous good performance.

Dom

PS You do know that if somebody in the US team gets a medal they actually get some sort of performance bonus.

Probably paid to them by some guy in a trenchcoat handing out thick brown envelopes.

 

[kgkev]

I think it only ruins the game if its not your team that gets finacial backing.

Fulham weren't complaining when Alfieds backing got them to the premiership.

and I bet no Man City fans are complaining now.

 

[Domski]

True, but there has always been the moderately rich investor that has bank rolled football clubs and most would not survive without them.

The emergence of the super-rich owner is something of a new phenomenon. Without harping on about football too much it's not necessarily a bad thing that the 'big 4' will have someone to challenge them but it's unfortunate to hear the likes of Bill Kenwright saying Everton need a billionaire owner to compete.

 

[schielrn]

This whole money issue may move the NBA (basketball) from the US to overseas. There has already been a couple dozen players opt out of their US contract and go overseas. Even some of the biggest stars have said if the money was right they would play overseas. Only time will tell with this, but with the weakening US dollar it may seem logical and more probable that many of these players will leave to play in Europe and other places.

 

[Andrew Fergus]

You can't blame the players for accepting huge sums to change loyalty (what is loyalty anyway?) but I think the excess of cash is ruining a number of sports. We end up with prima donna performers who a) don't want to put their body on the line and / or b) are more interested in the media than the sport.....in short I think it makes sport boring and the club /grouping / franchise concept is contrived.

 

[Oaktree]

(sigh) It must be nice to turn down a contract that would pay you $8MM/year to play a game.

Want to see professional athletes try harder? Structure the compensation like a golf tournament, where the winning team gets a disproportionate amount of the league's money paid out in salaries.

 

[DonkeyOte]

First off the below relates to Football in European sense... the Worlds favourite game... I like my NFL (How 'bout them Cowboys?!) but that's NFL and most definitely not "Football"... I can't bring myself to say that horrid S word.

It's sad to see what's happening in the UK Premiership at present... and the effect it's having on the players themselves... you only have to look at Robinho leaving Real Madrid for the bright lights of Manchester, but that's City not Utd ... we all know what's going to happen at City but it's not going to happen for a few years yet and for someone of his stature to go "mercenary" is a little sad... reminiscent of the journeyman Rivaldo.

What this whole situation does bring up is the issue that ANYONE should be THAT wealthy... We all laughed when Chelsea became Chelski with Abramovich's £10 billion dwarfing the likes of the Glazers at Man Utd with a "mere" £2 billion to play with... but when you think about it should anyone be that rich ? It's just not cricket. Then along come the UAE group with a whopping £500 BILLION at their disposal !

Sides like Chelski and even Blackburn with Jack Walker's money in the early 90's devalue the Premiership in my eyes... I see little joy in watching one side or a handful of sides hoard the best players only for them to sit on the bench or whatever whilst the remaining sides play on in perennial mediocrity never able to build a side to challenge as the mega clubs just come in and tempt the best players away with big wages and a warm bench to sit on.

On the matter of the players themselves... assume you were head hunted by a firm offering you 3 times your annual salary - would you stay at your current employers out of loyalty for them giving you your big break...? The latter is unlikely... and these guys are being offered 3 times their weekly salary not annual... some of these guys are being offered £600k a month... you'd have to pretty pious to be able to turn that down.

It is let's be frank an absurd amount of money for someone to kick a football around (and sometimes very badly) ... offered by others with absurd amounts of money at their disposal...that's perhaps the greatest travesty of all ? I'd much rather see these groups putting their obviously disposable income to better uses around the world perhaps feeding the millions and millions living in dire poverty but hey that's just me.
Perhaps the powers that be should introduce some sort of Gift Aid -- ie for every £10 you pay your players in the Premiership you must donate £1 to charity... ?

C'mon the Spurs ! (& Colchester United of course)