The death knell of the English Premiership as a fan-based competition was sounded yesterday by Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, with the announcement that, from season 2010/11, Premiership games will be branded around the world as a globalised product. His selection of the day of Chinese New Year for the publication of this proposed strategy is more than revealing.
Aside from being an original way of dealing with the declining domestic attendances, this globalisation of the game will have huge and dramatic influences on the global betting turnover as more and more punters become plugged into the theatricals. This regression is one of the standard practices of a highly abusive form of capitalist flight - take over a viable business, flog it to death in its core territory, as it deteriorates towards the demise of its meaninglessness, simply take the business model to new territories that might be sold the invalid narrative. It is a cyclical private enquity entity.
The trial window of 2010/11 will lead to that season's Premiership being increased to 39 games with an extra weekend of five games on each of the days spread neatly across the 24 hour clock to maximise exposure. The clubs are been guaranteed a basic £5 million. The cool reaction from FIFA, the British government and supporter's lobby groups to this Scudamore spectacular society scam will be addressed by some platitudinal irrelevencies and the project will move forward. The FA were only told of the project two hours prior to the release of the proposals which is as clear an indication of where the real power lies in the English game as you are likely to find. Even more so when one considers the response of Brian Buffoon Barwick to the breaking news as he blabbered out some randomly selected words that indicated that he might be cautiously supportive of such a development, perhaps.
Extensive marketing should secure an extension of the project for the following seasons. As there is no feasibility of the league season extending to forty games and beyond, the increase in the games outsourced to desirable locations will eat into the season proper. Unless the matches are assigned symmetrically, the obvious concern has to be that Chelsea get Arsenal at home whereas Arsenal have their "home" match in the real Emirates or Bangkok. Assuming that the 39 game season is a one-off to assess the feasibility of a suitable input-output ratio of profit, and that symmetry will triumph - not necessarily a good call when Scudie has got his hand in the till - the following seasons may see the export of 2, 4, 6, 8...n (where n is any number up to 38). Additionally, although the teams are being guaranteed a week of non-activity both prior to and following the global adventures, once the project begins in earnest, there will numerous occurrences of invalid weekend advantage where the Wenger boys will have to face a 15 hour flight back from the Venetian Macau in order to face Man Utd away. This will be a further strong persuader for the Arsenal board to do the decent thing and join the club. Being slightly less flippant, Scudamore gave us one of his duplicitous grins prior to informing us that: "Every club knows they will have an equal chance of being treated unfairly [in the choice of the head-to-heads]". The fixture list is already a carefully constructed entity, all this talk about computers and randomisation should be replaced in the public consciousness by the reality of tuned software creating exactly the correct number of Super Sundays and Grand Slam Saturdays coinciding with known windows of gambling liquidity - nothing is left to chance, and the 39th game will be a step too far in this fabrication of a branding exercise. The product's value will be optimised by an estimation at the season start based on a layered structure. This would allow a futurological maximisation process to be developed. The "perfect" 39th round could include the events below:
Arsenal v Chelsea (Bangkok); Manchester United v The Liverpool Reds (Beijing); Manchester City v Everton (Bangkok); Sunderland v Newcastle (Dubai); Villa v Brum (New York); Portsmouth v West Ham (Macau); Bolton v Blackburn (Preston - only joking...).
Rewinding to the pre-season tournament in Hong Kong where several Premiership teams fought it out with a local team under the tutelage of Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) officials and, among the "dignitaries" present were Scudamore and his sidekick Shinawatra (obviously, on a hierarchical basis this partnership should be inversed, and then some). There was no reason for Scudamore to be there but it was in the shadows of this event that the completion of an entirely new strategy for the Premiership was hatched - the planning had been moving along relentlessly, even further in to the shadows, in the previous months. Despite media lies to the contrary, the English Premiership has only broken through in certain Far East countries. Although the Chinese dominate the professional betting markets, only a miniscule portion of the Chinese people watch the game (I think I am correct in stating that the Premiership was 14th ranked among the global football leagues for television coverage last year). This whole project has marketing and gambling as its core concerns.
This current season in the Premiership has seen an entirely new template of reality which is evolving in real time both incrementally and holistically. It keeps us traders on our toes. It is a cowboy trading market and we're happy to slug it out in this bare-fisted environment. You pays your money... The most major impact of the Sinawatra-Scudie Spectacular (SSS) will be on the betting markets. New addicts will be created, new liquidity will be introduced into the markets. New liquidity from unprofessional sources merely leads to greater winnings for the professional ones. Buyer's should obviously beware but, having a legal narrative based on the responsibility of authenticity being in the hands of the purchaser rather than on the purveyor under the watchful eyes of the regulators, there will be a lot of irrationals out there lining up to be fleeced. The dovetailing of the Premier League, its Asian, Russian, Israeli and American paymasters, the bookmakers, the PGMOB officials into a tightly knit cartel bound together by excessive pools of profit absolutely optimises the infrastructure. At the same time, this oligarchy totally destroys the game. The Premier League will morph into OPEC and product will be dealt with as a commodity bearing no resemblance to the community game of yesteryear. A further massive problem will be coercion. Powerful people exert control over sporting events in a range of manners, the two most obvious of which (but by no means the only) being bribery and coercion. A leading young footballer, away from his girlfriend, is "set up" with an underage Thai boy by, say, a leading English bookmaker. The job's a good'un. There will also be ample leisure time for the various participants to meet informally with the necessary people to strengthen bonds, to enhance the web, to solidify the corruption. Stuff happens but this stuff happening to football is one bad thing.
Aside from the evident concerns towards the extension of the gambling elements underpinning the sport, what about the fans? Well, apart from the multitudes who no longer bother attending the gambling theatres in our midst, that would be. What about the obsessive who hasn't missed a Reading game for 27 years? Who cares? No, really, who cares? Reading? 27 years? The truly fundamental will pilgrimage their way to the distant lands which have a footballing culture etched into their national psyche - the USA, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Thailand, Macau, Hong Kong, China, Israel, Moscow, Gibraltar (?)... Now if the SSS were thinking of football culture liaising with football culture, a swap of selected games between the main European soccer cities would be feasible, possibly - an extra Milan derby at Old Trafford, El Clásico at The Food Mall, Arsenal v Chelsea in Paris etc. But football and the fans are the very very last items on the agendas of the SSS. We're in the territory of product and branding and gambling and efficiency and productivity and input-output-optimisation and a spectacular society consumerist entity being created from what was once just this totally amazing game. The fucking bastards... We are not even allowed the option of not playing along with their propaganda and lies. If we fold our arms and say "No", they will pick up their product and go home (to where the next dollar might be earned).
In one of our occasional bouts of public scenario analysis, we suggest that the product might be further optimised by the merger mentality coming to the fore. Forget Anfield, what about the Houston/Liverpool Reds or the Bangkok/Manchester City Blues? What about a season where the home matches are divided between the two merged entities? Oh, fucking joy...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
