THE PREMIER LEAGUE: NEOLIBERALISM'S GREAT TRIUMPH

Peter Radan (5 April 2019)

It has been said that a, if not the, shining example of Margaret Thatcher's free-market neoliberalism is the English Premier League. As Richard Giulianotti has observed:

"Neoliberal policies have underpinned the political-economic transformation of global sport since the late 1980s. Neoliberalism served to deregulate the wider media environment, enabling ... [the] English Premier League to sell broadcasting rights to transnational media corporations for ever-higher sums."[1]

Just how this was done is documented in detail by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg, two American based journalists for the Wall Street Journal, in their recent book, The Club.[2]

The magnitude of the growth in the sale of broadcasting rights is readily apparent from the contrasting sums paid for them, on a per annum basis, for the 1992-1993 season - the first Premier League season - and the current levels of payment.

For the 1992-1993 season, the price for the right to broadcast matches in Britain was £38.2 million. For the current season it is £1.7 billion.

The price for the right to broadcast matches internationally for the 1992-1993 season was £8 million. For the current season it is £1.1 billion.

These figures alone justify Robinson and Clegg's assertion that the Premier League 'is first and foremost a media-rights-selling organisation'.[3]

Domestic Broadcasting Rights

Most of the money from broadcast rights flows directly to the Premier League Clubs.

Domestic rights broadcasting money is divided into three pots. The first pot - 50% of the money - is divided equally between the clubs. The second pot - 25% of the money - is divided up according to a club's position on the ladder at the end of the season. The third pot - also 25% of the money - is divided up according to the number of times a team's game is broadcast live on television.

International Broadcasting Rights

International broadcasting rights money has, up to now, been shared equally by the clubs.

A number of factors played into the phenomenal growth in international broadcasting rights. The first was luck. As Robinson and Clegg point out, the Premier League is played out in English, which, as a legacy of the British Empire, is the world's second language, and its first in the biggest market of all - the United States. The second is England's time zone which means that, with appropriate timing of games in England, football can be watched live at relatively reasonable times - early morning in the US and late night in the Far East. The third is the occasional unexpected season that provides drama that would be dismissed as fantasy were it not true. Who can forget the amazing finish to the 2011-2012 season when, having already scored one goal in extra time in the last game of the season, the 'noisy neighbours' of Manchester City scored a second with less than 30 seconds to go to snatch the title from Manchester United, their bitter cross-city rivals and perennial Premier League champions. And, of course, no football fan will forget the miracle of the 2015-2016 season, which saw Leicester City crowned champions, instead of, as many expected at the start of the season, being relegated to England's second tier of football.

A second factor was the way in which international broadcasting rights were sold. Initially they were sold to a single broadcaster, who then sold off rights to individual countries and territories. At the behest of the League's CEO, Richard Scudamore, the decision was made for the League to directly negotiate overseas rights with individual countries and territories. As Robinson and Clegg point out, this saw the Premier League switch from the 'most convenient way to sell itself internationally ... [to] the most profitable' with the result that 'the only corners of the world where you couldn't watch live Premier League on TV [are] North Korea and Cuba'.[4]

The success in marketing international broadcasting rights has, however, led to a change in the way in which those funds are distributed between the League's clubs. Led by the big six clubs - Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham, and Chelsea - a new arrangement has been put in place that will further expand the gap between the League's haves and have-nots. From the start of the 2019-2020 season, the increase in international broadcasting rights over the current level will be distributed according to where a team finishes in the league, rather than equally, as has been the case to date. It is reported that the deals for international broadcasting rights for the next three seasons will be 25% more than the current season.

The Premier League's Big Six

The decision to change the method of distribution of funds from international broadcast rights was agreed to by 18 of the 20 Premier League clubs. Thus, 14 of the League's have-nots agreed to the change. What persuaded them to do so was the subtle threat by the big six to break away from the Premier League and, together with other powerhouse European clubs, form a European Super League. There has been much speculation in recent years about such a league and some European clubs, such a perennial Serie A champions, Juventus,[5] have openly voiced support for it. Although it is likely that such a league will emerge at some point of time, its establishment is not on the immediate horizon. However, its possible emergence, even if only at some distant future date, was enough to attract the 14 Premier League have-nots to vote for the change. These clubs realise that the Premier League's mantle as the preeminent European football competition would pass to a European Super League, and, with it, so too the rivers of broadcasting rights' money that the Premier League now attracts.

Richard Scudamore

Scudamore welcomed the change in the distribution of international broadcasting rights as follows:

“This … further incentivises on-pitch achievement and maintains the Premier League’s position as the most equitable in Europe in terms of sharing central revenues. By coming together and agreeing to this change, the clubs have provided a platform for the future success of the League for many years ahead.”[6]

Scudamore is engaging in spin when he claims that the new international broadcasting deal "further incentivises on-pitch achievement". The fact remains that "on-pitch achievement" correlates to the amount of money a club has to spend on players, with the best players going to the clubs with the most money, which in the case of the Premier League are the big six. The new international broadcasting deal simply entrenches the dominant position of the big six clubs. They will, invariably, be the only contenders for Premier League titles. The only "incentive", if that is what it can be called, that the remaining clubs have is to avoid relegation and financial distress.

Scudamore is on firmer ground when states that the Premier League is more equitable when it comes to revenue sharing than other European leagues, but that is not saying much, given the very inequitable revenue sharing that is in place in those leagues.

As for Scudamore's statement that the new deal provides a platform for the future success of the Premier League, that all depends upon what one defines as success. For an ordinary fan a successful league is one in which his or her team has, over a period of time, some reasonable hope of actually winning it. The new deal, all but guarantees that Leicester City's 2015-2016 triumph will be the Premier League's one and only miracle. If, on the other hand, a successful league is one in which only six of twenty teams compete for the title and are essentially guaranteed places in the financially lucrative European Champions League or the less financially lucrative Europa League, and the remaining 14 teams compete to avoid relegation, then the new international broadcasting rights deal does provide a platform for the League's future success.

The Premier League's Neoliberal Legacy

The commercialisation of the Premier League has transformed English football clubs into what David Conn describes as vehicles for "financial speculation".[7] However, as Robinson and Clegg point out, the result has been that ordinary football fans have been "left behind". They have had access to the sport increasingly reduced in the wake of the escalating cost associated with watching football, be it at club grounds or on television. Illustrative of this trend is the 800% increase, since 1992, in ticket prices for the privilege of attending Tottenham's home games.

Robinson and Clegg refer to the frustration of one Tottenham fan, expressed at a home match last season against Manchester City:

"On this evening, with his Tottenham team losing to City, one supporter was particularly fed up with being taken for granted. Half an hour into the game, not long after City's second goal, he unfurled a blue and white banner in the corner of the stands that read: DON'T PRICE ME OUT. ...  [He] had barely begun his protest when he was engulfed by a swarm of orange-jacketed stewards. This was the home of football; there would be none of that here. He'd held up his banner - roughly the size of a bedsheet - for all of two minutes."[8]

A more sickening symbol of the wretched excesses the Premier League’s embrace of neoliberalism is the practice of some have-not clubs charging a fee from the parents of children who walk alongside their players before the start of a home match. For example, at West Ham United, this privilege attracts a fee of £700. At Leicester City the fee is £600.[9]

David Andrew was undoubtedly on the mark when he wrote that, "when consuming ... English Premier League Games ... one is confronted by a meticulously produced phantasmagoria of neoliberal commerce".[10]

Footnotes

[1] Richard Giulianotti, 'Sport and Globalization', in Richard Giulianotti (ed), Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Sport, Routledge, 2015, 445.

[2] Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.

[3] Robinson & Clegg, The Club, note 2 above, 222.

[4] Robinson & Clegg, The Club, note 2 above, 225-6.

[5] Robinson & Clegg, The Club, note 2 above, 289.

[6] David Conn, 'Premier League's Top Six Win Battle for Larger Share of Overseas TV Rights, The Guardian, 7 June 2018.

[7] David Conn, The Beautiful Game? Search for the Soul of Football, Revised & Updated Edition, Yellow Jersey Press, 2005, 42.

[8] Robinson & Clegg, The Club, note 2 above, 308-9.

[9] Richard Williams, 'Sky-high Mascot Fees Prove Nothing is Beneath Premier League Profiteers', The Guardian, 8 January 2019.

[10] David Andrew, 'Sport, Spectacle and the Politics of Late Capitalism: Articulating the Neoliberal Order' in Alan Barnier, J Kelly & Jung Woo Lee (eds), Routledge Handbook of Sport and Politics, Routledge, London, 2017, 232.