Money and sport
What has struck me recently about some of the developments in the world of sport is the fact that, as a branch of the entertainment business, its governors and administrators are constantly wrestling with the fundamental issues of attracting the paying public, television (or online) viewers and – well, basically – money in all its forms and origins, right through to sponsorship, bartering, advertising and product placement.
Looking back in history most sports – whether game, activity or individual challenge – were originally devised as hobby diversions and initially evolved organically before our (usually British) ancestors codified them for the first time and thereby ‘created’ the monsters than eventually grew into the complicated organised sporting hierarchies that now dominate the globe.
At the outset it was all about the ‘doing’. Sport was intended exclusively for the benefit and amusement of its players or participants. Who can run the fastest over 100 yards, or to the top of Ben Nevis and back? Let’s play this pastime called cricket and then stop for tea and cakes before we go to the pub on a summer’s evening. The only time money came into was if an organiser charged his players a fee to cover his expenses, or organised a wager with his opposite number as to whose team would win a particular game. Sport was all about fun for those taking part.
A friend of mine recently showed me an Edwardian newspaper story about some rule changes to the game of rugby union being proposed by Australian and New Zealand rugby authorities in order to make the game more attractive to spectators. It quoted the horrified reaction of a senior Scottish administrator to the very prospect – the gist of his diatribe was that rugby was a game for its players, not its spectators, and that the day that fact changed would be the day the day it died. This attitude was not outrageous or unique. It was the approach of the sporting world generally in those days.
The growth of mass popularity and specific sporting hero and/or team worship brought inevitably crowd control and security issues (and costs) but also money. And money changed everything, of course. It always does.
Modern sporting authorities are constantly playing catch-up with the ongoing developments and evolution of spectator habits, interests and business generally.
Take cricket as a pertinent example. Once it was a gentile affair in which (in England) Test and country cricket for decade after decade provided a rigid, even didactic, structure under which every player, administrator and spectator (right down to the schoolkids playing Owzat?!) knew, understood and loved the certainties of their place in the scheme of things – whilst every other Test-playing country adopted a similar structure in their own fashion.
In the 1960s along came the one-day (50 over) version of the first class game, a development viewed by some as the beginning of the end. Ironically, those gainsayers were actually proved correct. It did effectively herald the end of game as it had formerly been known and loved.
Suddenly the spectator – and of course the cash that could be earned from mass popularity – was king. Sponsors, cricket grounds being renamed in return for payment, day-night games, video-referrals, timings being switched to suit television schedules or commercial breaks, interviewing players as they came off the field, playing in coloured pyjamas festooned with advertisements, the Big Bash, IPL, T20 games, city-based franchises … whither the county game in the future(?), suggested four-day Test matches, and so on. It’s all about the money and how best to maximise it going forward.
Bring a representative sample of English cricket players, administrator, fan or indeed commentator or pundit from any period between the 1920 to the 1980 forward to into 2016 and a penny to a pound would have it that 80% of them would be shaking their heads in disbelief and/or thanking their lucky stars that they were ‘of their time’ and not of the modern generation.
This isn’t a case of a dog-in-the-manger inability to consider changes or evolve, but simply a product of the fact that lovers of sport grow up learning from the cradle how their sporting world is organised and works … and somehow being able to consider everything that happens in the context of those ‘tablets of stone’ (and yes, in cricket that includes batting and bowling averages and all the historic Test and county match records) is all part of what attracts people – to the point of obsession sometimes – to the game in the first place.
No sport is immune from the mad dash to modernity and ever-greater commercial success.
Formula One changes its complicated rules with such bewildering regularity in a quest to remain relevant and attractive to its spectators and funders that it has become a bit of a ‘Marmite’ sport. People are split into either ‘petrol-heads’ (fanatical supporters), or those are totally turned off by its inconsistencies and the lack of real competition between its teams.
Modern rugby union is bedevilled by the ‘gap’ between what its rules say and how referees and players interpret them. These days its spectators and television viewers are more than aware that passing the ball forward is not allowed and that, when a scrum takes place, there is a requirement for the ball to be put in straight – and yet the evidence of their own eyes is clear: in every elite match that takes place ‘forward passes’ and ‘crooked’ scrum feeds are generally permitted because that is the way referees have been told to officiate in the cause of keeping the ball in play and the action moving. The credibility of the sport is thus being seriously undermined. What parent feels comfortable teaching his child the rules of rugby – what school PE teacher feels comfortable when refereeing a game to the letter of the law – when the elite club and international game patently operates so differently?
As in life, so in sport. When money-making is king, priorities such as principles, integrity and even ‘the good of the game’ are very definitely secondary or by-the-by.
Let us be direct about it – why did anyone ever think it would be different?
