The controlled journalists were informed on Friday.
The mainstream media placed carefully crafted articles over the weekend.
The 39th Step "is still very much a possibility" according to a Premier League (PL) leak.
Richard Scudamore understands how to hype, scam and otherwise promote His Product.
And, it is His Product.
Scudamore is, effectively, a Dictator at the PL.
He tells Sir Richards what to do.
Sir Richards tells the minions what to do.
Then Richard and Sir Richards 'liaise' with other power lobbies to financially game theorise their Illusion.
When the idea of a 39th Round of Premiership games was first introduced by Scudamore, the reactions were polarised.
People interested in the integrity of the game, the sport of football, the link between fan and club, all fiercely resisted the plans.
The moneyheads, wherever their location, rubbed their grubby little hands with glee.
The Illusion is actually Superillusory.
The whole charade is marketed as being based on the Huge Appetite for Premiership football across the world.
This Huge Appetite does not exist.
In China, the Huge Appetite is so Huge that English Premiership football is only the 14th most popular soccer league in the country, with WinTV, the pay-tv company with exclusive rights to the English game, only achieving 2.5 million customers in a land of 1,313 million people.
And, it is China that is always quoted as the example of this Huge Appetite.
In my experience, the biggest English teams do get shown in, say, your average beach bar just as the Boston Celtics do. But, as soon as there is a local option, the channels are switched and the place comes alive. And this is only for the Big 4. I can assure you that nobody anywhere on the planet has any interest in Hull City versus Fulham.
Andrew Zimbalist, an economist, thinks that sport is different from other industries. "You can't produce your product in one country and sell it in another. You can do it with laptop computers, but you can't do it with a game".
True.
But try telling Scudamore that...
American sports have been attempting overseas growth for a decade or so, largely unsuccessfully. The NFL ruined the pitch at Wembley as the FA's short-term profit was placed ahead of the success of the national football team; baseball matches have been played in Mexico and Tokyo; the NBA plays friendly matches abroad; next season the NHL will play four regular season rounds in Praha and Stockholm.
As we posted recently, the Manchester United versus Portsmouth match in Nigeria was a dry run for the 39th Step in one of its forms (we outline all of the options further below).
Garth Crooks was employed by Sir Richards to oversee this event.
It is our belief that Mr Crooks is incapable of overseeing anything more complex than breathing in and out.
He was selected because he is Black - token Black.
Crooks crookedly crowed:
"It was one of the best friendlies I’ve ever seen".
"The appetite for English games is insatiable".
"It was as near to a proper game as you can get".
"I’m in absolutely no doubt whatsoever it [the 39th game or tournament] would be a success, whether in Australia, Asia or Africa".
Lets check the Reality rather than slimeboy's Illusion.
The 60,000 capacity ground was less than half-full.
Indeed, it would have been less than a quarter-full if 10,000 ticketless fans hadn't been allowed in after the Kick Off.
And, even this was problematic.
In the middle of all his salivating, Crooks gushed: "A number of fans who couldn’t afford the ticket price tried to storm the gates and the police beat them back". But he quickly qualified this statement, lest it might be interpreted as an indication that he is supportive of police violence underpinning the 39th Step, with: "The more chaos at matches, the more Africans enjoy it".
What?
All of them?
Oh my gosh, it will be easy to market to them then...
Incidentally, ticket prices ranged from £40 to £100 which totally undermines the fallacy of the PL bringing the English game to the global fan.
The global fan cannot afford such prices.
The reality of the Nigerian experiment was that it was a forerunner of next season's Community Shield being placed in some random global location linked to the international betting markets - Nigeria is Africa's biggest betting centre. The Nigerian experiment is also linked both to Scudamore's original concept of an actual round of Premiership games being played around the globe and to future expansions of both the biennial FA Asian Cup and to the creation of a mid-season tournament, once again sprinkled across the major global football gambling centres.
* The remainder of this post details the timescale for these developments, who is backing the venture, the role of the media, the impact of gambling money and the opportunities for creative fraud and corruption.
Unfortunately, these treats are for subscribers only, as are all posts labelled #.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
