Is the football bubble close to bursting?

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The PL is now just the playground of the ultra super rich. Overseas PL games will be coming soon and there is no real link between the communities that built the clubs and what they are now.

Like many of our businesses, land, property and other British assets, we’ve opened ourselves to international acquisition without any thought or consideration of the implications.

Phoenix club please. Ground share with Orient. Enjoy a laugh and a day out again far away from the criminals who’ve destroyed our game.
 
Is the bubble close to bursting? Naaaah - nowhere near it.
Greedy capitalists have recognised the game for the cash cow that it is - that's not changing anytime soon.
Egocentric billionaires have latched onto it, like the parasites they are, boosting their egos even further. They're not going away in the near future.
Paradoxically, between them, the money & power-hungry individuals are both wrecking and improving aspects of Football for the modern-day fan.
As a supporter of one of the clubs that has benefitted most from all this crap, I am embarrassed and saddened by the inequalities this money has created, but I also enjoy the fruits of the dirty money trees (the Stadium, incredible footballers, beer that fills from the BOTTOM of the glass, digital ticketing lol).
This obscenely massive pool of money will continue to slosh around at the top end of the game, like a putrid green sludge engulfing us, until companies find a more effective way to sell their products. That change is some way off, if ever. Definitely not in my lifetime.

As a lifer, locked into one of the successful clubs, I am forced to accept all this, and like the Walrus, I shed a tear for every oyster I devour.
 
For decades we have heard 'the bubble will burst', yet the bubble is still very much inflated.

I can remember John Barnes being injured when he was at Liverpool and there was an uproar that he was still being paid £10k a week.

There is a long way to go before the bubble bursts, IMO.
 
A combination of attendance decline for a sport more dependent on ticket sales than most, so much of team revenue being connected to local sports TV networks that are overpaying for the games and sputtering financially and getting squeezed off of streaming TV options, and just really bad demographic trends in terms of who’s interested.

I love baseball, I’m sad to see it, but the outlook is rough. The NBA and NHL have a lot of the same problems if less so. The damn NFL is just impervious to any of it somehow.

You could kinda argue both ways for MLS. The demographics are great, but how much upside is there? They’ve just announced they will start essentially playing a midseason World-Cup style tournament with all the MLS and Mexican league teams competing, it’s a gamble but I wouldn’t bet against it being a massive success.
Baseball was always a very niche sport with very little possible expansion. It could indeed go pop.
 
It will be just stadiums half full with tourists and billions of foreign fans watching game 8 of the play offs between city amd Newcastle. No ta.

I’ll be down at my local non league club having an ale with me dog on the sideline
Hello old chap, hope you are well

Next time I am back in England my best mate (a gooner) and I are going to watch an AFC Wimbledon game instead of the shit our clubs dish up as he lives nearby, can actually enjoy the game, no tourists, cheap, have a laugh and shout at ref and go home happy, which is impossible with spurs now

I also used to love going to watch non league Ramsgate games back in the day
 
Is it bad that I kind of hope so?

Football to me is becoming more and more depressing, and not just because Spurs seem to be going nowhere fast.

Hell I'm only 34 years old and the sport just seems more soulless than it's ever been in my lifetime.

When you have clubs that are essentially owned by countries, how can anyone else hope to compete?

I can say with confidence we'll likely never see another Leicester 15/16 situation again, in that a team comes from nowhere to win the PL Title (granted that wouldn't have happened had Spurs not decided to shoot ourselves in the collective heads that season).
 
The answer to the original question is: far from it. There’s a danger that because Spurs have hit a perceived (I say perceived because in reality it isn’t) a sticky patch, some fans are disillusioned. But overall football is incredibly well supported

 
From the financial POV I believe football clubs are undervalued.
A small startup with very little substance nowadays get an IPO of 9billion USD, yet Manchester United with real estate and millions of people paying for their merch is valued under 2?
Perhaps football clubs will go back to stock markets soon to enjoy the boom.

But football is also a closed regulated market for so long as FIFA are dictating the rules and the leagues have to comply. There are still steps to be taken to ensure equitable sport:

A. Abolish entitlement protection on players. Big clubs can’t buy out players like property, players have to honour their contracts.

B. Maximal salary caps.

C. Equal distribution of broadcast money within each league.

D. Crackdown on any infringement. Any club contemplating a super leaguers get an immediate ban.

E. All clubs on first tiers must allocate 25-50% of voting rights to supporters with veto rights on key decisions

F. Yearly financial stress tests by big 4 accounting firms to spot clubs in turmoil before they collapse.

G. Restructure international tournaments. Their format was planned for a world with 50 nations not 200
 
no - lets let the billionaires and franchise clubs have their league. Let them have all of the players they want and pay them the salaries that the stupid bastards are prepared to pay.

Then lets have peasants football, national leagues, internationals that don't include the moneybags teams and players - and have a grassroots game played on a level playing field financially.

Yep there will be people prepared to pay £50 to watch it on Sky and amazon, but eventually people will migrate across to the grassroots game because it's affordable and inclusive, people will regain their joy of being part of a football club, rather than donors into a money making machine geared around a tiny minority.

Football England can rejoice in having Middle eastern football teams playing teams without British players in stadia owned by tax exiles and foreigners, and meanwhile the rest of the country will simply find another level of entertainment in the game - that encourages us to go along and watch.

We can still watch Spurs, because ENIC will probably sell the team to Tesco's and host The Taliban Terriers Football Club, run entirely on the sale of heroin from their poppy fields, in the NWHL stadium

New THFC will be playing home games in Borehamwood

Failing that - the FA and premier league could try and grow some balls and say the minimum requirement to own a British club is to be a minimum of fifth generation citizenship, and that all clubs have to run their team from a set amount paid up front, at the start of every season. All transfers, player salaries, coaching staff salaries and expenses to be paid from the pot.
Agents are to be banned from the game - but players can be represented for any contracts they secure outside of the game.

Woolwich will be wound up and the stadium burned and levelled to show all of the other clubs what will happen to clubs stepping outside of the new PL model. Their extinction will be an example to everyone else. The demise of the club will be recognised by the sponsorship of a public toilet in Delhi.
 
ESL in some form will eventually take place. Sadly this may be a cartel. Relegation will not take place. The so called super club owners get no thrill from playing some PL teams, when these could be replaced with RM, PSG, Barca etc.
The main concern is I hope they keep geographical locations. A USA franchise in sport can leave a city and move. Sadly we saw the same with Wimbledon. I trust it never gets where a UK based team moves to a city in another country.
US sports franchises only move for one reason - stadiums. We have a nasty habit of allowing billionaires to goad taxpayers into paying for their stadiums. Look at Spurs stadium debt - that's why US franchises move, it allows them in certain situations to completely skip that debt.

This isn't a common practice in Europe, as far as I'm aware? So long as you prevent that, you've got great reason to worry about clubs moving, really. But a sports team will pretty much always move for a stadium - same as it was in the 1800s.
 
no - lets let the billionaires and franchise clubs have their league. Let them have all of the players they want and pay them the salaries that the stupid bastards are prepared to pay.

Then lets have peasants football, national leagues, internationals that don't include the moneybags teams and players - and have a grassroots game played on a level playing field financially.

Yep there will be people prepared to pay £50 to watch it on Sky and amazon, but eventually people will migrate across to the grassroots game because it's affordable and inclusive, people will regain their joy of being part of a football club, rather than donors into a money making machine geared around a tiny minority.

Football England can rejoice in having Middle eastern football teams playing teams without British players in stadia owned by tax exiles and foreigners, and meanwhile the rest of the country will simply find another level of entertainment in the game - that encourages us to go along and watch.

We can still watch Spurs, because ENIC will probably sell the team to Tesco's and host The Taliban Terriers Football Club, run entirely on the sale of heroin from their poppy fields, in the NWHL stadium

New THFC will be playing home games in Borehamwood

Failing that - the FA and premier league could try and grow some balls and say the minimum requirement to own a British club is to be a minimum of fifth generation citizenship, and that all clubs have to run their team from a set amount paid up front, at the start of every season. All transfers, player salaries, coaching staff salaries and expenses to be paid from the pot.
Agents are to be banned from the game - but players can be represented for any contracts they secure outside of the game.

Woolwich will be wound up and the stadium burned and levelled to show all of the other clubs what will happen to clubs stepping outside of the new PL model. Their extinction will be an example to everyone else. The demise of the club will be recognised by the sponsorship of a public toilet in Delhi.
Banning agents, no thanks. There are some that get some bad press, and surely some that have some manipulative practices. But footballers deserve, and need, professional representation negotiating their contracts and looking out for the interests against club owners who are (even in your proposed regulations) experienced and successful businessmen/women well accustomed to winning negotiations.
 
People have been saying this sort of thing since the PL started. Attendances are very high, Sky sells plenty of subscriptions and wealthy people continue to plough shit loads of money into clubs. Even the problems in Spain will be resolved and Barca and Real Madrid will be back.

Us romantics don’t like it and would be pretty happy of some sort of collapse happened. It won’t.
 
US sports franchises only move for one reason - stadiums. We have a nasty habit of allowing billionaires to goad taxpayers into paying for their stadiums. Look at Spurs stadium debt - that's why US franchises move, it allows them in certain situations to completely skip that debt.

This isn't a common practice in Europe, as far as I'm aware? So long as you prevent that, you've got great reason to worry about clubs moving, really. But a sports team will pretty much always move for a stadium - same as it was in the 1800s.
‘So long as you prevent that, you've got great reason to worry about clubs moving, really‘

got no reason ?
 
Banning agents, no thanks. There are some that get some bad press, and surely some that have some manipulative practices. But footballers deserve, and need, professional representation negotiating their contracts and looking out for the interests against club owners who are (even in your proposed regulations) experienced and successful businessmen/women well accustomed to winning negotiations.
Good, that'll keep their mental salaries down.

In what rational world does someone actually earn $75M pa salary for playing games?

That kind of nonsense is why it costs a fortune to watch matches now.
 
Banning agents, no thanks. There are some that get some bad press, and surely some that have some manipulative practices. But footballers deserve, and need, professional representation negotiating their contracts and looking out for the interests against club owners who are (even in your proposed regulations) experienced and successful businessmen/women well accustomed to winning negotiations.

Would it even be legal?

I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to straight up stop someone from hiring an expert to represent your interests.
 
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