IAN AYRE, I AM *VERY* DISAPPOINTED IN YOU
Iain MacintoshIain Macintosh, ladies and gentleman. He's got something to say...
I’ve always rather liked Liverpool. Hardly surprising really. In 1980s Essex, as they were in most of the Home Counties, they were the natural affiliation for all 8 year old boys. Indeed, until my dad took me to Roots Hall and turned me to the mediocre side, I had ‘Shankly Gates’ bedcovers. There, I said it.
But there’s something about Liverpool that appeals to me even now, much to the amusement of other more cynical souls. I love the history, the ethos, Bill Shankly’s socialist principles, the Kop and their standing ovations for opponents who have pleased them. As they careered towards financial oblivion in 2010, I was writing columns that savaged the Premier League for allowing the ruinous Hicks & Gillett leveraged takeover. As other people revelled in their imminent demise, I was bemoaning the state of modern football and hoping aloud that someone would ride in and save them. I nailed Roy Hodgson, defended Rafa Benitez (to a certain extent), and when everyone else was sniggering about Kenny Dalglish, I was telling whoever would listen that the return of the King would stabilise and save the club from the very real risk of relegation. Until last night, I fear that many people assumed I was still a Liverpool fan. I’m not. It’s just a soft spot.
But Managing Director Ian Ayre’s desire to dump the collective foreign TV rights and strike out on his own has turned my soft spot hard. Of all the clubs in football, why does it have to be Liverpool who try to ruin it for everyone else?
Individual TV rights will serve two clubs and harm 86. Liverpool and Manchester United will clean up around the world. Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham should do ok, but no more. The rest can, to be frank, get fucked. It’s not just that Liverpool and Manchester United’s revenue will increase sharply, it’s the fact that everyone else’s revenue will drop hard. Without that £17.9m a season, the same amount handed to those who finish from 1st to 20th, clubs already struggling to keep up will no longer be able to afford to keep the players they have. The big two will break off, dominate and everyone else will reach for the controller and give the rugby a go.
The Premier League isn’t just popular because of Liverpool. It’s popular because it’s exciting and because it’s trusted. The irony, as with the 39th game scam, is that the greedy are attempting to maximise their revenue by trading in the unique selling point that makes people watch in the first place. It is as self-defeating as it is spiteful.
I may have been a little unwise when I brought this up on Twitter. I may have used indoor language and offended people. For this, I apologise. I like football a lot and I get quite emotive about it. Over the last 24 hours, a number of questions have appeared repeatedly on my timeline from angry Liverpool fans. Here are some answers.
1, Why shouldn’t Liverpool, as a larger club, have a larger slice of the pie?
When the Premier League was formed in 1992, a revenue stream to 70, now 72 clubs, was squeezed so hard it made our eyes pop, all so that you could have more pie. That domestic TV cash is carved up three ways. Firstly as part of a collective pie-off, which helps the league maintain some sense of competitive balance. Secondly, in end-of-season prize pie, which as a larger club you are better placed to win. Finally, as individual match fee pie, which as a larger club, benefits you. Then there’s the Champions League pie which, as a larger club again, benefits you, helping you to stretch further and further away from the rest of us. And that’s before we discuss individual merchandising and marketing pie. You have a very large slice of the pie already. In fact, it’s so large that you’re dripping gravy all over my carpet.
2, Oh, so it’s alright for Man City/Chelsea to financial dope their squads?
No, it’s not alright. No-one ever said it was alright. Find me a neutral fan who thinks that City’s spending is alright. Find me one in 2003 who thought Chelsea’s spending was alright. Find me one in 1994 who thought Blackburn’s spending was alright. Clubs are going to the wall for the same sums that the big boys are fining their grumpy players. We grudgingly accept it because, for the moment at least, it doesn’t break any rules. But it’s pretty fucking far from alright.
3, Oh, so it’s alright for Barcelona and Real Madrid to have individual TV rights?
NO! Who keeps telling you that it is? Find them, bring them to me! Have you watched Spanish football recently? Me neither. It’s a procession, a parade lap, a futile two-way jerk-off of cash that only Malaga, with their own spending spree, might one day hope to rival. Last season, Barcelona finished on 96 points, Real Madrid on 92 points and somewhere back in a cloud of exhaust fumes were Valencia with 71 points. Does Spain have gigantic foreign TV rights deals borne out of the fact that everyone thinks La Liga is really competitive and exciting? No, and neither will the Premier League if they follow suit.
The wilful destruction of society and community to facilitate individual financial gain is a policy that Thatcher would have been proud to call her own. This week, with her bastard spawn shamefully attempting to block debate on Hillsborough, it’s genuinely shocking to see so many Liverpool fans adopting her ‘I’m alright, Jack” stance.
I know that modern football is all about money, I know that a super league is inevitable and I know that eventually there will only be two teams, playing each other every day while 94% of the planet’s population watch on pay-per-view through holographic brain-staples. What I didn’t know is that it would be Liverpool who would lead the charge to this dystopian end game. Obviously, I have no right to speak for Shankly, but I have a hunch that he’d be appalled by this.
Follow Iain on Twitter @iainmacintosh, and read more from him at The New Paper, si.com, Life's a Pitch and The Irish Examiner.
Reader Comments (28)
Excellent article
Iain, some good points well made, I think the reaction you got on twitter from a number of Liverpool fans was due to in large part to you seemingly laying everything rotten with football at Liverpool's feet, and due to the limitations of twitter you couldn't add "Barca, Real M, Man U, Man C and Chelski are just as bad", some fans naturally went to defend their club from attack.
In regards to the Ayre's specific statements I don't agree with all, but i'd say a few people would agree with his last statement "If they (Real/ Barca) just get bigger and bigger and they generate more and more, all the players will start drifting that way. Will the Premier League bubble get burst because we are all sticking to this equal-sharing model? It's a real debate that has to happen.", I don't think it's the end of football to suggest this is something which should be discussed and debated.
Fantastic piece, fantastic timeline for the past 14 hours or so. I wonder what chace there is of these plans getting off the ground? My gut says very little, but you never know, stranger things have happened in football. However, if, as I suspect, they are unlikely to get the go ahead, it sems to me like very badly judged operating from Ayre. Why attract this level of criticism, bad feeling and resistance if your plans will come to nothing? Similar to the 39th game proposal - if anyone actually wanted it to happen, they should not have announed it until it was a realistic possibility. To go back to Thatcher, its the lesson she learned from the school milk debacle - maximum loss of political capital for minimum potential gain.
Anyway, thanks Iain for some fantastic analyses of what is a very interesting, and dangerous, situation.
Sorry to go on, but a final thought: How have UEFA failed to incorporate TV rights deals into the FFP rules?
Benji, they have included tv rights in FFP, it's revenue. FFP is about spending a percentage of earnings not about trying to reduce them. Rightly so, illegal to stop a company making profit, however large it may be.
Barca fan, but great piece :)...Although, I'm not a big fan of English football(beginning to enjoy watching Norwich though:)), I have to admit that the reason I follow EPL is because of how competitive the league is and messing around with the TV rights will not help.
So why not attack Spanish football & the Spanish FA for destroying their league?
Or attacking Uefa for letting Spanish football be so one sided?
As a Liverpool fan I don't agree with the idea that TV rights should be sold individually, but certainly something has to be done with regards to the Spanish big two. Ian Ayre has no control over Spanish football or Uefa, but he has the right to debate their effects in a meeting with other PL clubs.
Liverpool lost two of their best players (Alonso & Mascherano) to Real & Barca respectively, and even Man Utd couldn't say no when Real offered 80M for Ronaldo.
So who are the bad guys? Liverpool or Spanish FA/UEFA?
What you're essentially complaining about, is capitalism in football. So, what are you hoping to happen about that by ranting? We radically change world football, control who get's what money and make sure it's balanced and fair and everyone get's the slice of pie they deserve? Good luck with that dream...
Please can we drop this nonsense that the premier league is competitive...the only teams that have won it have spent a boatload more than anyone else at some point.
Football is already fucked, let's face it.
Finishing top 4 and getting into the Champions League is regarded as an achievement (remember Spurs celebrations?) hell just being promoted to the PL has those teams going crazy.
If you want to pretend the PL really is great, then why have only 3 different teams won it in the last 15 seasons? (compared to 4 in Spain, 6 in Germany, 5 in Italy, 6 in France)
Everyone sneers at the '2-team' SPL but in reality, England isn't much better in terms of who comes out on top since Arsenal have fell by the wayside in the last 5 years.
All this would do is widen the gap even further from what's happening now.
I am a Liverpool fan and I am completely against the Ian Ayre concept. I agree that Chelsea and City examples should be regulated too because that also creates very unfair terms.
Shankly has probably turned in his grave after hearing this come from LFC CEO. Sorry Ian, but you're wrong.
Great perspective, and though a liverpool fan, that was my initial reaction. I'm afraid it would ruin the league. However, I understand from the Madrid / Barcelona perspective why lfc might feel that way. Things don't sink so low for the club the last few years of the Spanish giants don't steal the reds best two midfielders. Obviously, the right decision would be for Spain to adopt the epl model, which would improve la liga immensely. However, that won't be happening because the big two have all the power and no motivation to have a fair competition. Unfortunately, even if the lfc proposal is shot down now, that is the way that football is going.
Also, from John henry's perspective, MLB is the most top-heavy, unfair League in the us. The reason the red sox and Yankees dominate is their immense financial advantages, partially from having their own tv networks.
I am a Liverpool fan with Shankly-ist outlook. I think the problem is one of unlevel playing fields which take two forms: a) at a national level the presence of billionaire sugardaddys who hugely distort the transfer market (and in doing so push the smaller clubs closer to administration as they are unable to cover player values and wages from static revenues) and b) at a European level the different regulations around TV rights work in a self-reinforcing way to benefit Real and Barca (to the detriment of their domestic league, and also the European game more broadly as even the top clubs become unable to compete with the now obligatory summer offer from Real for their best players). To my mind both of these issues need attending to if you want genuine competition. It strikes me that Iain Ayres comments signal not the greed of LFC but exasperation at FIFAs unwillingness or inability to make these morally and financially just moves
I think it's been proven that the teams with the highest wage bills have the most success, certainly in the Premiership. This is becoming more and more true and you only need to look at Chelsea and the relative success of Man City in a very short space of time for even more proof. LFC is in the business of winning trophies and to continue that tradition they must look to expand their revenues. They are already behind Arsenal and Man United in matchday revenues hence the need for a new, or updated, stadium.
So they're looking at all avenues to expand this revenue simply to keep up. If LFC didn't look at this option one of the other big clubs would. Sure there'd be the same horror at the suggestion if whoever the top man at Man United was but my opinion is that if TV rights weren't the first option to be explored they would find another way of increasing revenues, the most likely of which is streaming web content to overseas users on a subscription basis.
People are a lot more media-savvy now, and know when their buttons are being pushed for the sake of ad revenue and/or page hits. Must try harder.
When did Mr Ayre actually say this stuff? And when was it reported? I doubt it was even said this year, let alone in the last few weeks. This it just another weak attempt to bad mouth Liverpool before another United game, and perhaps a chance for amateur-hour bloggers to capture some eyeballs with some cheap heat.
The media can't get any mileage out of bullshit hatchet-jobs on Kenny like they could for Rafa and Houllier (literally breaking the heart of the latter) to so they pick someone else out of the LFC hierarchy to attack. It's tiresomely predictable.
The prevailing ethos seems to be that anyone at Liverpool FC that's any good is fair game for media morons to throw mud at (if club staff/management), or media pressure is put on them to jump ship at the earliest opportunity (if players). See the column inches devoted to Fowler, Macmanaman, Gerrard, Torres, and a host of others. It happens on/off with Reina, and no doubt Suarez will be top of the list as soon as the next transfer window opens, alongside Carroll - if he starts scoring a few.
And then there was Evans (given the media caricature of naive Uncle Roy), Houllier (Inspector Clueless until his heart problems, then they kept quieter for fear of kicking a man to death when he's down), Rafa (Conspiracy Nut). Amazingly, it didn't happen with Hodgson, though. Certain media were exhorting fans to "give Woy a chance" as the team went into free-fall.
Fuck the media.
Ron, how on earth do you get anything done with that big tinfoil hat on your head?
Ron, believe it was this week:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15271284.stm
Ron, I'm not sure you noticed, but recently the papers have stopped covering only LFC players. In fact, recently they had a couple of stories about Carlos Tevez, Wesley Sneijder and even Cristiano Ronaldo a couple of seasons ago. Oh yeh, and Nasri and Fabregas. This is by no means an anti-Liverpool phenomenon.
Don't listen to them, Ron. You were right, you were right all along! Ian Ayre doesn't even exist. We created him two years ago at one of our meetings. We needed him to spread bad stories about your club. You're the only team we care about, the only team we ever write negative stories about. An entire industry dedicated to....
<thunder rolls across the night sky>
....BEING RUDE ABOUT LIVERPOOL!
*laughs manically in the shadows*
Awful. Media agenda against LFC this.
YNWA JFT96
Abso-bloody-lutely, Dr Manhattan. Especially those first 200 words, eh? Really gave it to LFC there, didn't I? Phwoar.
Yes Iain, This just another hate attack by the media towards the King and the new LFC. Suddenly Liverpool r the bad guys, It all makes sense now, Mancs play us later today therefore the media have to disrupt the King and LFC.
Silence, Dr Manhattan! Or I shall smite thee!
Enough. It is clear that you know the truth. The truth we have hidden for so long. Yes, we must disrupt Liverpool before they play Manchester United. We CANNOT allow them to thwart Sir Alex Ferguson's side. For no journalist has ever had a greater friend than that brave Scotsman, that defender of the press, that warrior of freedom.
I'm dreadfully sorry, but I'm going to have to kill you.
*takes out pistol*
It's nothing personal. It's just...business.
*fires*
Fantastic piece, and how thoroughly depressing that to see the attitude adopted by some of the Liverpool fans above. Nobody is defending the unfair advantage currently enjoyed by Real and Barca, but bringing every other league in Europe down to their level is hardly a sensible response. Wait and see how big La Liga's TV revenues are in a few years when the Spanish government has tightened the income tax laws and every season is a two-club procession. And "amateur-hour bloggers"? Has Ron been reading The Shields Gazette?
I've sat there and watched United get thoroughly bottomed by Barcelona twice in a Champions League final, but my reaction wasn't to stamp my feet and shout 'it's not fair'. Nor, when £80m came in for Ronaldo, did I fill my nappy in protest. I didn't do it on purpose, honest.
To look overseas and wish for more, or to get all stroppy when a couple of your best players get scooped up by a club with an equally dysfunctional financial model as many of the creaking Premier League clubs, sounds exhausting. The very fact that Ronaldo has disappeared into relative obscurity (I honestly don't know how his hair is styled at the moment), unless you choose to subscribe to Sky's coverage, is perhaps testament to the fact that La Liga isn't actually the utopia we are looking for.
Essentially, the debate that needs to be had around individual selling is one of a super elite isn't it? So, I say go for it. Stop all this traditionalist, romantic, unrealistic nonsense. "It's just the way football is going these days."
Let's do it. You would have the teams that are most lucrative globally playing against each other for the most cash they can possibly stuff down their shorts. That would make a league of about 8 or 10 teams by my reckoning. The season would be too short, so they'd have to play each other four times to get any reasonable mileage out of it. I'd say make them play 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Really milk the cow!
Obviously, this global footprint would make being a spectator impossible. I wouldn't get the time off work to travel to Madrid or Beijing a couple of times a month, and these skirting boards aren't going to paint themselves. TV companies don't like broadcasting empty seats, so they should really look into banning spectators altogether in the long run. Who needs that problem on top of everything else? Get them out of the road and we're looking at pure screen entertainment. Pure cash.
So, the long term solution? The ten best, most lucrative teams in the world, play for 24 hours every day in a spectator-less dome somewhere equidistant to the major football markets of the world. It needs to be somewhere between Europe and Asia then, doesn't it? Kazakhstan it is then. Who gets the contract to build the dome? I'll ask Sepp.
While all this is going on, I am not sure that I'll be involved to be honest, but I wish everyone all the best. Enjoy it as best you can.
There are re-runs of Come Dine With Me on More4 pretty much every day and I like something with enough tension and competition to really get me really fired up. So, when all this is done, that's where you'll fine me.
Personally, I really hope this happens. I want every multi-national PLC masquerading as a football club to flog it's own TV rights to promote it's own international brand, and then kindly fuck off to some European Hyper Super Mega League where petulant teenagers earning millions a week play each other whilst morons around the world can watch it all in glorious Sky HD on their 99" super 4000x HD screens, drinking cans of premium continental pisswater and flinging round their misinformed opinions to their misinformed friends.
Then the rest of us can get back to watching football. You know, where a club still belongs to it's community, and the guys on the pitch earn the same as the guys in the stands, and things like pride and dignity are more important than winning trophies.
The fact is that football was fucked over in 1992, and this would just be one more revolution of the giant ball of shit that started rolling down the hill when they decided only the top 22 clubs should get any money.
If they want their own TV rights, please, just take them and fuck off. Nothing would make me happier.