Sport governing bodies should focus on organisational framework but professional activity can largely be left to the free market, argues Ed Warner.
Who doesn’t love a badge, especially if having the right to flaunt it conveys status? Witness the urge to wear replica kit, even though the status this gives is simply identification as a fan.
Club crests will be deemed protected assets by the incoming Independent Football Regulator, requiring fan consultation before they can be altered. It is no surprise, then, that sports leaders are often derided as blazerati, their right to stitch on an official badge symbolising the divide between ruler and ruled.
Yet another sport is being pulled apart at the seams. This time it is rugby league where Super League clubs are reported to be seeking greater powers of self determination.
The Rugby Football League is being challenged over control of a review of the sport’s governance, with the identity of the board’s chair one issue at stake. What is it about an oval ball? Both rugby codes in Britain are struggling for cohesion.
Would the real Super League please stand up! Are you the record 82-0 thrashing of a financially threadbare Salford Red Devils on opening weekend? Or the thousands of Brits trekking to Las Vegas to watch Wigan beat Warrington?
The longer I spend within the governing body world, the more I believe that the traditional structures of sport are unsuited to the commercial forces that dictate what we watch as fans.
The right to wear a leadership blazer bestows a responsibility to deliver international teams, competition structures, major events, rules and regulations, safe sporting environments, coach development, media profile, commercial success and thriving grassroots sport.
The order of these priorities will vary from stakeholder to stakeholder. Forget trying to keep most of the people happy for most of the time. Simply keeping some happy for some of the time is a more realistic ambition. The scope of work is just too great.
Rugby league’s battle for control is just part of a wider trend. In football, governing body the FA has allowed the professional game to be devolved into the hands of the clubs, in the guise of the Premier League and EFL.
Rugby union has formed a partnership between the RFU and clubs to run the professional game. The ECB is using the power of its purse to exert control over cricket but, having opened up The Hundred to outside investment, may soon need to cede a degree of power to cope with a likely clash of ambitions between franchise owners and the sport’s establishment.
The trend is inexorable, although flare-ups on the way are inevitable and these will understandably create friction with grassroots volunteers who have their own pressing issues they want their sport’s leaders to address.
The answer is for a governing body to focus on the organisational framework for its sport, to look after its rules, ensure a coherent competition hierarchy, support grassroots coach, athlete and club development, and run a licensing system to ensure as safe an environment as possible for all participants.
International team responsibilities are a given, such is the structure of global sport. But the meat of professional activity – clubs, leagues and major events – can largely be left to the free market. The governing body should be there to assist, not dictate.
The badge on a blazer might seem to carry less social weight as a result, but the best service to give a sport can sometimes be to keep out of the way.
Looking for love
Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly made headlines at last week’s FT Business of Football Summit. Not all of his ideas are quite as bonkers as detractors might suggest, even if they face in the opposite direction to the general direction of travel in the sport – notably his espousal of increased protections for clubs relegated from the Premier League, and his dream of a global TV rights deal with a single streaming platform.
The repeated ability of investors in sport to take leave of their financial senses never ceases to amaze, and is a constant rich source of material. An excellent piece in The Guardian, reflecting on football’s failure to generate revenues to match its global popularity, concludes:
“But perhaps it also reveals the complicated and complex reasons why investors get into football in the first place. For all that sportswashing and financialisation may play a part, listening to owners and executives you also hear very strong personal motivations: a desire for legacy, for excitement and, even, for affection. The human component in any business decision, especially a business as emotional as football, is perhaps undervalued.”
Jump start
The streaming platform Boehly cited was Netflix, which has helped supercharge Formula 1’s global appeal. Every chance, then, he’ll have been watching online coverage of the grandiose F1 75 Live launch event at the O2, which pulled in 4.6m viewers on YouTube.
No live sport, simply hype ahead of the new season. Memo to the Premier League: scrap individual clubs’ annual kit reveals and meld them into a single show with platinum production values. Sit back, count and then monetise the eyeballs. No shame in being a fast follower.
Dust busters
Events this weekend reminded me of two seminal sports books gathering dust on my – and probably many readers’ – shelves.
England’s ignominious exit from cricket’s Champions Trophy has seen white-ball captain Jos Buttler resign. Cue much discussion of the effect of the captaincy on his potency as a batter. Could any sport other than cricket have produced Mike Brearley’s The Art of Captaincy, published back in 1985? Or was the cerebral Brearley simply in a class of one? Never the greatest batsman; possibly the greatest ever captain.
At Selhurst Park on Saturday I witnessed Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts’ outrageously reckless head-high clattering of Jean-Philippe Mateta. A red card and ban for the goalie; hospitalisation and 25 stitches in his ear for the Palace striker.
It is hard to conceive of an equivalent foul being committed by an outfield player. Over the weekend news emerged of a rule change to deal with keepers holding onto the ball for the allowed six seconds – a rule all break and none are punished for.
As Brian Glanville’s 1971 novel had it: Goalkeepers are Different. Football is an entirely different sport for those between the sticks.
Both books have stood the test of time. Brearley’s is still in print. You’ll find used copies of Glanville’s to buy online.
Stick to the day job, Mondo
An 11th world record last week from the globe’s greatest athlete, pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis. Plus the release of his first record, Bop.
As an old headbanger I’m hardly qualified to judge Mondo’s abilities as a crooner, so make your own mind up after listening. For me, though, it’s three fails at his opening height.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com