Money is Killing Sport

Monday 1st June

Well, Arsenal have won the F.A. cup for the second year running, and good luck to them.  But was it anything to with luck or did money win it?  Just as Chelsea and the two Manchester clubs have won the league for the last few years, they just happen to be the wealthiest clubs too.  It is all a money merry-go round; in order to afford the best players in the world, they need not only to buy them for many millions but pay them hundreds of thousands a week in wages.  The fans coming through the turnstiles can no longer begin to pay for this, it is TV money, and essentially money from European games that makes these clubs so successful.  To get into Europe you need to win, to win you need money, you get money from being in Europe, so the same clubs keep qualifying and winning.

And now we have the unedifying spectacle of FIFA, the world body responsible for among other things, the World Cup, being mired in scandal and corruption.  It is because big business and sponsors make so much money out of hosting the thing that voting delegates are bribed so outrageously.  How long before the Olympics themselves are similarly found to be corrupt.  Cricket and soccer players have been found guilty of fixing matches for money, while in-game betting is rife, with even the first player to be sent off a bet-able challenge.  We all love sport, or most of do, and one essential of that is that it is a fair contest.  But if money is the main reason that sports people are playing for will that not ultimately affect everything, even the result.

We cannot turn the clock back to a more innocent amateur time, but one does wonder where exactly it will all end.  With more and more money being sucked into Sport we are in danger of killing the very thing we think we love.