How Bad Is It? Snooker and Darts Do Better; No Soccer on Telly
The bold, dark headlines tell the story. Soccer, England’s national sport, a game as popular here as baseball and football in the United States, is facing one of its worst crises since it began as an amateur game in the mid-19th Century.
“Soccer’s Going Bust,” headlined the Mirror.
“Soccer: Who Cares?” reported the Sunday Times.
Problems abound. Never have there been so many at one time, according to the Sunday Times’ Brian Glanville, among the more knowledgeable of England’s soccer writers.
Many clubs are losing money, including Liverpool, one of the strongest of the elite Division One teams. Crowds for the first 10 games of the new season were off by as much as 10% in some areas. Only four of the First Division clubs have shown an increase in attendance, and the 21 teams, which drew 17.8 million fans last season, are expected to lose more than 1.5 million customers before the season ends next May.
The sport has lost much of its glamour, as well as money, because the English clubs have been banned from European competition in the wake of the riot at Brussels last May that killed 39 people and was caused, investigators found, by some of England’s infamous hooligans from Liverpool.
And with its image tarnished, the sport was dealt another blow when it quarreled with television and lost its contract, leaving Britons without soccer on the telly for the first time in 20 years. Oddly, major games are televised to 35 nations in Europe and the Far East, but not in England.
That television could allow the season to begin without a deal on the table is a striking indication of how much appeal soccer has lost here. In the last eight years, the number of viewers has dropped from 10 million to 4 million, and apparently television found that it no longer had to televise the games at any price. The loss of such ancillary benefits as advertising, sponsorships and public relations is costly to many teams at a time when they could least afford it.
Now, with the game in trouble, the sponsors have dealt the clubs another crippling financial blow. Because of the absence of a television contract, Canon is reducing its prize money, from about $250,000 to about $110,000.
In addition, Canon and other sponsors are cutting back on advertising in club programs and other types of payments. In all, the clubs will divide only $485,000 instead of $1,225,000.
None of this is surprising to those who have followed soccer closely here. The truth is, attendance has been declining steadily for 35 years.
How bad off is the Football League today? Commenting in The Observer, soccer writer Ronald Atkin wrote: “The earth has finally shifted beneath that venerable edifice, the Football League. Even an urgent and long overdue shoring-up operation may not be enough to prevent the world’s oldest soccer organization from crumbling away.”
Professional soccer began in the industrial cities of England about 100 years ago. The game, which most Americans find boring, had a strong appeal among the working-class males of the northwest, northeast, Yorkshire, the midlands and London. A record attendance of 41 million was set by the 92 Football League teams in the 1948-49 season, and the crowds have been dwindling ever since, hitting a low of 17.8 million last season.
Despite its problems, the game is still Great Britain’s No. 1. sport and gets the most attention in the country’s sports sections. However, it has fallen behind swimming, darts, golf and snooker as a participation sport. Of the millions who still play it, only about 2,000 are professionals whose salaries average between $870 and $1,450 a week. A few major stars earn as much as $3,000-$4,000 a week.
Most soccer fans here today are still predominantly male and predominantly young, ages 15 to 24. The sport, critics are saying now, took its popularity for granted and did not respond to the increasing competition for Britons’ leisure time. Ticket prices soared, mainly due to higher player salaries and partly due to exorbitant transfer fees, which are paid when players switch teams. Manchester United, perhaps the most successful of all the 92 teams, paid more than $2 million for a player in 1981. Manchester, which is averaging more than 50,000 spectators a game this season, could afford it.
Then, late last season, the sport was rocked by two tragedies, the one at Brussels and the fire at Bradford that killed 56. Death and violence became the public’s perception of soccer, and the sport went on trial with the start of a new season last month.
Politicians led the hand-wringing over the plight of the game.
“If this is the price of football, we cannot pay it,” said Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Her government took major steps to tighten safety standards and she dodged the flak that followed by declaring, “If we do nothing, the game will be destroyed.”
Sponsors, advertisers and the media, on whom soccer depends today for survival, seem to support Thatcher’s tough stance. But some, including the Sunday Times’ Glanville, thought the prime minister was throwing the baby out with the bath water. Her remedies, he said, were “strident and simple-minded.” The feelings of the sports administrators were summed up by Bert Millichip, president of the English Football Assn. “One thing is certain,” he said. “If football is disfigured by any more incidents of the kind that happened at the end of last season, there won’t be a game left in this country, so we must try anything to get the image right again.”
Watford Manager Graham Taylor said: “There is an anti-feeling against football at the moment, but we ought to ask ourselves if all the decisions that have been taken are the right ones. We have let a small minority spoil the enjoyment of football for the majority. The danger of the steps taken to remedy the situation could easily lead to the minority enjoying the game and the majority staying away. I see little comfort in that.”
Unless the decline in attendance slows down soon, Liverpool, another of the most successful clubs, stands to lose almost $300,000 this season, Chief Executive Peter Robinson said. Further, he said, “If gates continue to decline at their present rate for any length of time, then we’re all going bust.”
In recent polls taken by the Sunday Times and The Mirror, most people said they were staying away from the stadiums because of the threat of violence and the fear of hooliganism. But a large number also said the game had grown too expensive and many found it boring.
The game is expected to survive what Glanville calls “this tormented season.” And Taylor said: “We’ve got to retain the support of the ordinary decent fan who wants to enjoy his football in a friendly and safe atmosphere--or we are in trouble.”
