Are Football Clubs Owned By Fans The Future Of Football?
For fifteen years now, media moguls, TV corporations and, latterly, self-interested millionaires and billionaires have ploughed cash into English football (or soccer, if you prefer), changing the upper echelons of the game beyond all recognition. Top Premiership clubs report annual profits running into tens of millions of pounds. Players take home weekly pay checks that exceed the average annual salary in the UK – with the top players getting four or fives times that. And the British Government mops up too, taking an estimated £4.3 billion (yes, that’s right, £4.3 billion) in tax from the sport every year. So, you’d think, with all this money flying around, everyone would be a winner? Well, no. Unfortunately not. Whilst blank chequebooks are being waved at Premiership clubs by investors from the US, Thailand, Russia and even Iceland, only a fraction of this money trickles down to the lower leagues. Whilst the top clubs have gone from strength to strength, the clubs in the lower leagues
