Wanted : A football sugar daddy

Wanted: a football “Sugar Daddy”. Apply to a football club near you – note: must have deep pockets.

The hunt for the elusive no strings attached football club owner is on. Anyone heard of John Moores? He was the Roman Abramovitch of his day with his Littlewoods pools millions who lavished his family wealth on his beloved Everton football club, spending money like their was no tomorrow. In the sixties, the club became known as The Millionaires, such was his willingness to splash the cash. Sir John was always good for a few thousand (a lot in those days!) whenever his manager spotted talent. Sadly, when Sir John died, so did his money and the club went into decline.

Everton were not the only club with a local benefactor. The football league, as it was then, was full of “local” businessmen spending their wealth on their local club. Hard to believe that, in their heyday, Manchester United got their cash from the local butcher’s family, the Edwards.

So why did it all go wrong? It’s easy to blame it all on television (especially Sky TV), but, since the mid-eighties, football’s local connections have been steadily erased. A victim of its own success, football became a business with the profit & loss scores becoming the only game in town. The cash rich, no questions asked carpetbaggers from the Middle East and Eastern Europe descended like a rash on the football league.

In the mid-eighties, when the word of the day was “loadsa-money”, these brash, flash billionaires coming from football team poor countries were welcomed into town. With their oil rich millions, they wanted a piece of the most successful league in the world – and, for some, it was the lifeblood they needed. Who wouldn’t snatch the hand off a willing benefactor promising millions?

Some clubs, like current premier league champions Manchester City, had to kiss a lot of frogs before they found their Prince Charming. Other clubs, like Leeds United and the Blackburn Rovers, have paid the price for jumping into bed with wealthy foreign investors and gone from champs to chumps, whilst others like Manchester United and Liverpool have bet it all on red and gambled on success the corporate American way.

The days of the local club forlocal fans are a thing of the past. How can it be local when it’s a global phenomenon, with every game beamed live all around the world? The average Liverpool fan is as likely to come from Tokyo as Toxteth, and for thousands and thousands of supporters every game is an away day.

Could the Edwards’s family from Manchester ever have imagined how big a business their little old football club would become? If they thought they had it good in the sixties and seventies, what would they make of the club today? Manchester United PLC is quoted on the stock market; the board room where decisions are made isn’t in the bowls of Old Trafford, but the skyscrapers of Wall Street – it’s the shareholders the board answers too. The fans are are just the television extras that fill out the stadium week in week out. The price all these clubs pay for selling their heritage is to sacrifice what the fans want for what the shareholders demand. You get your success (occasionally!), but at the whim of the owners. No longer a football fan, more of a business fan. Success isn’t measured so much by cups won as by the pounds banked.

Those Manchester City fans celebrating their premiership title last season have a lot to be thankful for, as they are run as a modern day family business, albeit a Middle Eastern royal family. The manager is lavished with cash and can attract the world’s best players with promises to pay them huge amounts. They play at a state of the art stadium and enjoy facilities second to none. The former millionaires of Everton in their rundown shabby ground can only look on enviously at their “new money” billionaire neighbours. The days of the millionaire are long gone – it’s a billionaire or nothing.

Sadly, the cash to fund the rich mans plaything is drying up, just like the Saudi oil princes and the Russian oligarchs. It’s the TV contracts that are feeding the fire of modern day football. With worldwide deals filling the pots, the premier league elite have never been so cash rich. But the question is, for how much longer? Football once relied on the fans for the majority of its revenue, but not anymore. The beautiful game is dictated by TV schedules; they pay, you play (whenever they say).

What happens if Sky decides to pull the plug? How can clubs hooked on TV cash pay the wages of the lucrative contracts, the loans? Where’s the cash going to come from? It’s a knife edge for many clubs balancing the books and when the money’s gone and the accountants and liquidators move in, the first question they’ll be asking is “Where’s your daddy?”