Football's return may seem unpalatable but the survival of the game depends on it
Sam Wallace
Chief Football Writer
Football is facing a crisis so severe that no-one can say for certain what will survive and what will not. The 20 clubs that dialled in for the Premier League shareholders’ conference call on Friday might be considered the strongest specimens in this particular struggle for life but even some of them will harbour doubts about their future.
They have to get the games back on again - at the very least they have to try to give hope to the broadcasters who pay the bill for the whole show. It can be unedifying, as the world grapples with the era of the coronavirus, that football seems to be shouldering its way to the front of the queue but what then will be the alternative?
That scenario is plain. Football faces collapsing under a £1.137 billion deficit in the Premier League alone – contractual debt unpaid in wages and transfer fees, renegotiated broadcast contracts, the draining of market confidence that eventually leads to a curdling of the whole system. It is not simply about paying the vast salaries of the Premier League stars, although those contracts are about as easy to unpick as a nuclear submarine.
It is about the £140 million of solidarity money that flows down annually through the Football League system, the next payment already advanced. It is the tax yield estimated at £3.3 billion for the 2016-2017 season alone. The grassroots football supported by leagues and the Football Association, itself facing unprecedented losses of up to £300 million. The canker will spread from the top and once it has taken grip who knows what can be saved?
What was remarkable about Friday’s Premier League meeting, from the view of some attending, was the readiness of some clubs to abandon the season without first attempting to save it. These are the clubs that fear relegation more than anything, and whose anxieties threaten the league that finances the rest of the game.
This group of around six clubs cannot impose their will through voting where a quorum of 14 is needed to carry a motion. Instead those who do not want to see 2019-2020 played can sabotage by other means – amplifying fears, generating resistance among players and staff and encouraging the kind of doubt that makes everything feel impossible. To put it simply, it would be hard to complete 2019-2020 with all 20 clubs on board. It could be impossible with rebels in the group.
Those resisting the attempt to play games are currently marching under the flag of competitive integrity. They say that playing the remaining rounds of games at neutral grounds is out of the question. To which the answer is that the notion is certainly far from ideal. But when placed in the context of global economic depression, the collapse of the most lucrative broadcast contracts in the history of English football and potentially seismic knock-on effects, they are quibbling over the best way to attach a hosepipe while the building burns.
We will all have to adjust to a new normal over the coming months. If neutral grounds for the remaining league fixtures offends you then wait until you see what eating out might entail once restaurants re-open, or having to test one’s self before boarding public transport. The same problems will exist next season but first the clubs have to survive long enough to play next season. It may yet not be possible to finish 2019-2020 but there has to be a unified attempt to do so to give football’s chief wealth creator a chance for life.
The call-it-off brigade says it is all about money. They are right. Unfortunately football cannot recalibrate itself mid-global pandemic as a game in which the stars travel to games on the tram in return for a modest wage, and all the Woodbines they can smoke. Those £9.2 billion of broadcast contracts have been budgeted for to the last cent. In fact, for decades football has been run by those who scheme, borrow and live on the edge of their means. The great clubs of the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s would have struggled to continue operating with no crowds through the turnstiles for a year. All that is different now is the scale of the deficit.
What constitutes a safe time to play football? Waiting for a vaccine, as the epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse told the New Scientist last month, is “not a strategy, it’s a hope”. Should we hold off until the death toll reaches zero before the game resumes, regardless of whether that target comes before or after Phil Foden’s 35th birthday? The hygiene and testing protocols for training grounds are so strict that the greatest danger to players will come from infection at home. Of course, once the games begin then there will be more variables.
Modern football can be tough to love. This is not an easy sell to the public but there is so much at stake which is why, as the weeks roll on and the stadiums remain closed, football has an obligation to try to save itself within the boundaries of what government considers appropriate. Few industries have the resources to protect their own employees as football does. What else can it do but try?
The alternative is, most likely, for the game to die waiting. If there is no attempt to complete the current season then the clubs can expect the broadcasters to renegotiate the remaining two years on the current rights cycle. They will do so knowing that the clubs are desperate, starved of revenue and for the first time since the explosion in the values of rights, the power will be entirely on the other side of the table. Already in France the broadcaster Canal Plus has withheld its last two payments to the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) at the cost of €253 million.
The French season is over and the LFP is reduced to asking its government for a loan to survive. There is a way to complete the English league season, safeguard contracts and keep the money that is the lifeblood of the game flowing. However unpalatable it may feel in the midst of a crisis it is the least worst option.
