This piece might be incoherent. Bear with me, will you dear reader, as I waffle and hopefully eventually reach an end.
I would like to rant a bit. Specifically, about one of my great loves. Sports. I’ve spoken before about how the professionalisation of sport has led to the loss of romance. Money has made most sports lose its innocence and it’s happening in real time, in front of us. Every year the sporting calendar for different sporting codes is extending that little bit more.
Sponsors are throwing eye watering amounts of money at the traditional sports while also fishing in non-traditional markets (read America) for new revenue. To this end we have the umpteenth Manchester United pre-season tour to the United States.
Last time out the travel schedule was so hectic it prompted manager Erik Ten Hag to comment on the extensive early season madness. Manchester United’s commercial and marketing arm claim there are one billion fans of the “Red devils” in this world we live in. I know there are three in the house I live in, so it’s easy for me to believe that the global numbers touch something as crazy as 1 billion.
The English Premier League which is the biggest in terms of revenue is in the business of business so they have to make gravy with the knowledge that one of its elements has that many fans. The league tries, therefore, to present an unbelievable and unmatched product. Their intention being to attract (and keep) as many eyes as possible glued to the screen.
They make sure every game is entertaining. And where the football isn’t entertaining, well, at least there’ll be a VAR controversy that will keep us enthralled. If it sounds like I’m skeptical of VAR and its continued controversy; it’s because I am. Specific to the English game. At the Afcon tournament recently we saw how effectively and efficiently the technology can be used. This led one to wonder, why, or how the British were getting it so wrong?
Let me park football for a moment. Rugby is evolving, rapidly too. There are new competitions with new strategic partnerships aimed at garnering different crowds and cross pollination. SANZAR has all but collapsed while Australia and New Zealand carry on their merry way. Last year’s world cup saw Dr Rassie Erasmus’ Boks emerge victorious in spite of France and Ireland’s perceived strengths. Having hyped them up prior to the event the Northern hemisphere media have stuck to their guns, continuing to talk up Ireland’s greatness and casting tiny aspersions on the Boks every so often.
This year’s cricket world cup was played in America and the West Indies. The West Indies are a traditional cricket playing power house. America very much are not. The American squad is a mash up of second generation traditional cricket playing nations players and naturalized offshoots deemed surplus to requirements from the other nations.
All of these sports have a common thread. Executives and administrators who insist the games NEED to expand and grow. The question I’m asking myself is why the expansion and growth must be at the expense of the essence of the sports? Why can’t the sanctity of each sport be preserved? Why should the new markets be exposed to a bastardised version of these great games? Many leagues are Americanising themselves in to oblivion. Many are evolving in to something completely different to what the core market recognizes…
When and how will the madness stop? Who will be brave enough to interject and say, we don’t need year-long leagues. We don’t need to see the sports growth so big that it becomes unrecognizable. We don’t need new markets entertained by the drama and pageantry rather than actual excellence. It’s too much, too quick, and it’s not good.
Somebody please intervene soon, before it goes to pot.
