Is Football Dead as a Sport

[houseboy]

Just been on Mirror Sport and a couple of other sites to see if I could find a match report, out of curiosity. Not a thing. A small mention of Rooney and Plymouth (because it’s Rooney no doubt) and way down so far you wouldn’t notice, a piece about Lowe’s sacking. If it’s not the PL it doesn’t exist and if you aren’t a fan of the so-called big six you might as well give it a swerve too. Endless drivel about United, Arsenal and Chelsea etc. but football in general is just about by-passed. Plus a piece about some idiot chairman (not a PL club surprisingly) saying we must start playing games abroad to ‘generate more income and grow the brand’. FFS what is going on? What good is ‘the brand’ if the customers who want ‘the brand’ can only watch it on TV or spend hundreds of pounds to go to the game?
This is my point with the title of the thread. Whatever happened to football? Money and the ‘the brand’ (the PL) are killing the game we love. The money men and their servants the media are destroying all that is good in the game and just making it a cash driven fckn circus that is losing all its meaning. It breaks my heart to see this crap going on and now we are even saying (a lot of us anyway) that we prefer Burnley being in the Championship. Why? Because there is absolutely no point, from a football perspective, to the PL.
Sorry guys. Awful rant I know but it’s just the way I feel about the game I (used to) love.

[CleggHall]

Powerful stuff houseboy, many good points there and many questions. Football is losing itself but after last night’s performance many are still proud to support the clarets including those of us brought up on McIlroy, Irvine, Coates, James and Dobson.

[Nonayforever]

Newspapers no longer employ journalists to report on live sport.
Most articles are written from home or are AI generated.

[bfcjg]

Agree about the endless drivel about the top 6,it's as though we are all insignificant but should crowd round the tele to get an update on a Man City player's ingrown toenail.

[Woodleyclaret]

The DT prefers Prince Ginger Winger and Fat Prince drivel
No report on our game

[quoonbeatz]

Full match report and btl comments on the guardian cos we is massive.

[Hipper]

It's newspapers that are dying.

[BigF]

Whilst the PL itself has a lot to answer for so does SKY. Not only does Sky Sports constantly report on the top 6 but if you look on their sports channel at the games from previous seasons etc, so many of them are the top 6 playing each other.

[Walton]

Match reports on the Daily Mail, BBC and the Guardian from a 10 second glance.

Wouldn't expect to see anything but rubbish on a Reach PLC site like the Mirror.

[ArmchairDetective]

I think it's easy to fall out of love with football these days.

To try and contribute to answering the question in the thread title. I think that depends what you enjoy about and get out of football. If your enjoyment of football relies on equity, sportsmanship, and relatability of players, football could look pretty bleak. If you enjoy travelling to matches to spend time around familiar faces, catch up with friends and family, and that feeling of having a collective goal with a whole community of people, then football is still well and truly alive.

That's what I get out of football anyway. Regardless of league position, performances on the pitch, and all the crap that comes along with modern football, those things above have always remained consistent for me and keep me going back. I try to enjoy or at least put up with the circus that comes along with football now. But without Burnley I'm not sure I'd watch football these days. Burnley keeps football alive for me.

[The Shire Claret]

I think another thing to point out is that Media has massively changed over the years, especially the last 5 years. I would argue there is much more coverage of the championship and the football league that ever before....

Written reports are being replaced by Video highlights almost straight after the game along with a huge amount of stats... Fan Youtube channels and instagram/X etc... going into incredible depth at times...

Podcasts dedicated to each individual league ....

I've personally never felt more informed - I.e. the Lowe Sacking popped up on my phone through livescore news and Instagram ... I wouldn't have known till after work on talk-sport etc..

Just like people have replaced Eastenders and Corrie for Netflix and Youtube, many people are choosing other ways to find out what happened in a match alternate to a write up

I love write ups by the way !

UTC

[NottsClaret]

I find it easier finding ‘content’ about Burnley now than in the pre-digital age. It used to be exciting if you got 5 minutes on Granada Soccer Night at 11:30pm and two lines in one of the national’s lower league roundups.

Today you can watch highlights, goals, interviews on demand as soon as the game is over. There’s loads of stuff created by fans, pundits and even journalists if that’s still your thing and you can search it out.

Loads to hate about modern football, but accessibility to it and lack of coverage aren’t it for me.

[houseboy]

I find it easier finding ‘content’ about Burnley now than in the pre-digital age. It used to be exciting if you got 5 minutes on Granada Soccer Night at 11:30pm and two lines in one of the national’s lower league roundups.

Today you can watch highlights, goals, interviews on demand as soon as the game is over. There’s loads of stuff created by fans, pundits and even journalists if that’s still your thing and you can search it out.

Loads to hate about modern football, but accessibility to it and lack of coverage aren’t it for me.

I take your point entirely about accessibility but what is missing is the little stuff, like reading out scores after the news at ten, for ALL teams not just United et al. And the obsession with how much clubs have paid for this player or that player. And the somewhat sickening idea of your club maybe having to play Watford in South Korea because the ‘brand’ demands it. I know you can watch highlights within minutes if you wish but I like to read a report and get someone else’s perspective.
As has been said earlier in the thread I doubt if I’d watch football now but for BFC.

[AfloatinClaret]

Loads to hate about modern football, but accessibility to it and lack of coverage aren’t it for me.

Exactly that. I get irritated whenever (often!) I hear people bemoaning that the satellite/digital pay-to-view TV channels mean you 'can't watch it for free on the BBC/ITV anymore' forgetting that back in those 'good old days', the terrestrial channels were rarely showing any live football matches and certainly not a 2nd division game between Burnley & Luton.

[IrkthePurists]

Some great points Houseboy but the bottom line is that football at EFL level is still alive and kicking. A quick look at attendances over the weekend shows some quite remarkable crowds considering the weird kick off times and every game being on tv.

Looking forward to buying the Football League paper every Sunday this season. Superb EFL coverage and no PL coverage at all.

[The Shire Claret]

Some great points Houseboy but the bottom line is that football at EFL level is still alive and kicking. A quick look at attendances over the weekend shows some quite remarkable crowds considering the weird kick off times and every game being on tv.

Looking forward to buying the Football League paper every Sunday this season. Superb EFL coverage and no PL coverage at all.

Where is this paper available ?

[IrkthePurists]

Newsagents.

[boatshed bill]

Dead as a game, at the higher levels it's just big business.
We still watch and enjoy it, but perhaps it's too easy to get on the internet.

[Enola Gay]

All a bit 'jumpers for goalposts', this.

As said in other posts you may not be able to buy a sporting pink at 5:30pm on a Saturday with a blurred picture and half a match report, but the idea that football's dying as a sport seems bizarre when most of the time you can barely get away from it on newspaper websites and social media. I was made up when the Olympics came along to give a fortnight-long palate cleanser.

[Enola Gay]

Exactly that. I get irritated whenever (often!) I hear people bemoaning that the satellite/digital pay-to-view TV channels mean you 'can't watch it for free on the BBC/ITV anymore' forgetting that back in those 'good old days', the terrestrial channels were rarely showing any live football matches and certainly not a 2nd division game between Burnley & Luton.

You could make a fairly decent argument that the terrestrial channels are to blame for the focus on the top six.

In the few years immediately prior to the Sky takeover the main (only?) live games were on ITV's "The Big Match". And how did they exercise their rights to the entire Football League? An endless diet of Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Everton, Spurs and Arsenal with occasional outbreaks of Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday. Even after the Sky split you saw the echoes of it United's frankly ridiculous run of televised Cup games as BBC and ITV tried to get their ratings fix.

tl;dr... by focussing almost entirely on the Top-Six-that-was, terrestrial TV created the market that Sky then priced them out of. No sympathy for them.

[fatboy47]

Not sure where the OP's been these last few years.

Increasingly feel like I've had footie shoved up my arse since circa 2009. ....pre 2000, Burnley's presence outwith Turf Moor and the local rag wasnt much more than a couple of minutes on MOD and ITV about 3 times a season.

[Burnley1989]

The thing I'm disliking is the "we need to grow the brand" outside the UK, basically because that's what the top 6 have to do.

I couldn't care less about growing the brand

[Greenmile]

I think for a few on this thread it’s their youth that they miss, more than some largely imaginary “better” version of football.

[Big Vinny K]

Bit like a Monty Python sketch this !!

There’s lots not to like about modern day football that I’m sure that many of us would agree on - especially those of us who are getting on a bit !!

I’m not sure a lack of coverage of Burnley FC would be one of them though.

Look at the game itself last night - more than 3 hours of live coverage. Go back only 15 or 20 years we’d be lucky to get that much coverage in a full season.

If you have not got Sky and wanted to read a report on the game I’m not sure why you would look at our national **** newspapers websites to seek this out when you have the bbc website, Sky sports website, this message board and literally hundreds of other sources. In true Monty python style when I was a lad I had to go to the newsagents and buy a paper just to find out the results.

We have our own highlights for the football league too in addition to god knows how many live matches this season.

There’s too much football on tv - but that at least gives you the choice as to how much you want to see.

As for Burnley FC I’d make a pretty educated guess that we have had more coverage in the last 10 years than we have had in the whole of our previous history as a club. And a good proportion of this has been extremely positive for the club and for the town.

[PremierLeagueClass]

I think for a few on this thread it’s their youth that they miss, more than some largely imaginary “better” version of football.

Nail on the head. Which is fair, I’m sure we will be the same one day.

[Stockbrokerbelt]

Reality TV has taken over football & sky have replaced football pundits with tik tok & u tube influencers.

[Buxtonclaret]

It's newspapers that are dying.

Our local village shop has recently stopped selling them.

[Greenmile]

Nail on the head. Which is fair, I’m sure we will be the same one day.

Don’t get me wrong, I already am, albeit maybe less so than many on this thread / messageboard.

I just recognise it’s the fact that I was young that made “the good old days” seem better, not anything intrinsically better about the days themselves.

[boatshed bill]

I think for a few on this thread it’s their youth that they miss, more than some largely imaginary “better” version of football.

Not sure about that.
I am of the generation who saw and enjoyed football as a game. Sport with the minimum of cheating, what we would call sportsmanship rather than the gamesmanship we see (and tolerate) today.
So one could justifiably say it's dead, or at the very least dying, as a sport as we knew it.

[Walton]

Didn't football in the old days have stuff going on like Peter Swan and Tony Kay doing match fixing, Leeds sides going out to deliberately break legs, things like that?

I'd say that's the maximum of cheating

[JohnMcGreal]

The problem isn't football. It's the out of control, hyper capitalist world we live in that's pretty much destroying anything of value or importance.

The money men are doing their best to ruin football just like they have everything else.

Anyway I thoroughly enjoyed the game last night, so they haven't succeeded just yet

[boatshed bill]

Didn't football in the old days have stuff going on like Peter Swan and Tony Kay doing match fixing, Leeds sides going out to deliberately break legs, things like that?

I'd say that's the maximum of cheating

I totally agree.
The real dirty stuff has been reined in, replaced by shirt-pulling, blatant obstruction and diving.
I wouldn't be surprised if match fixing still happens.

[houseboy]

All a bit 'jumpers for goalposts', this.

As said in other posts you may not be able to buy a sporting pink at 5:30pm on a Saturday with a blurred picture and half a match report, but the idea that football's dying as a sport seems bizarre when most of the time you can barely get away from it on newspaper websites and social media. I was made up when the Olympics came along to give a fortnight-long palate cleanser.

Think I just need to clarify. When I said ‘dead as a sport’ I didn’t mean it is dead as a major, money obsessed media hype. In that sense it’s alive and kicking. If you want to watch a business playing another business, using players that are over paid and, in many cases, over hyped then you are on a winner. If people want to swallow the ‘best league in the world’ rubbish (because the English media says it is) then that’s okay. If people want to witness players going down clutching their face after being tripped that’s okay too. But what you are really watching is a circus, a media hyped show that is becoming the team equivalent of WWF.
Meanwhile the money involved in the PL is causing rampant inflation that in any other ‘industry’ would cause chaos. Lower league clubs, the grass roots of football, are seriously struggling but do the ‘big boys’ care? Not a jot, they just want to keep more of their stash and to hell with the effect on football itself. They want to play games thousands of miles away to make even more money and to hell with their own fans. They want (some of them) a European super league only open to clubs with massive stadia and huge support. They want to protect, and increase, their share of TV money ‘because they draw the audiences’. Meanwhile fans of Bury FC no longer have a club and other fans are worrying if their club is next. There have always been the haves and have nots, but the gap is now so wide the two ends can’t even see each other.
Football started its long slow decline as an actual sport when clubs started being businesses instead of sports clubs.

[Enola Gay]

And if you don’t want to bother yourself with all that froth you don’t have to. It’s still possible to rock up at 3:00pm and watch 2 teams of 11 players plus subs have a football match.

Maybe not as easily as you did it before, it might take more of an effort of will, but you buy into the fripperies surrounding football as far as you feel you need to. Wringing your hands and moaning “whither football” is still a choice you don’t have to make.

[RammyClaret61]

And if you don’t want to bother yourself with all that froth you don’t have to. It’s still possible to rock up at 3:00pm and watch 2 teams of 11 players plus subs have a football match.

Maybe not as easily as you did it before, it might take more of an effort of will, but you buy into the fripperies surrounding football as far as you feel you need to. Wringing your hands and moaning “whither football” is still a choice you don’t have to make.

Ahhh… I get it. Support a club for 30, 40 or more years. That club becomes successful, because of that they turn themselves into a business that is only concerned with making money. You then become almost irrelevant, if you don’t have very deep pockets. Your season ticket becomes devalued. You can’t make Sunday, Monday… Friday night games. You decide not to get a season ticket, no worries, your old seat for the odd game you go to is now £55. But don’t worry, if that’s too expensive for you? After 40 years of supporting YOUR club. But don’t worry “ It’s still possible to rock up at 3:00pm and watch 2 teams of 11 players plus subs have a football match.”. It might be Rochdale, or Bury!!!

You don’t understand what a supporter is do you?

[mikeS]

The Premier League has become a closed shop which just looks after the top eight clubs and the rest are served up as fodder for them to beat week in week out.
Nothings changes. It's predictable. City or Liverpool or Arsenal will end up winning the League and all the trophies year in year out.

The Championship and the EFL is how the top level football used to be, much harder to predict and where on a good day any team can beat any other, although with parachute payments in which we can count Burnley as fortunate, the top end of the Championshio is becoming more predictable than it ever was.

[houseboy]

Ahhh… I get it. Support a club for 30, 40 or more years. That club becomes successful, because of that they turn themselves into a business that is only concerned with making money. You then become almost irrelevant, if you don’t have very deep pockets. Your season ticket becomes devalued. You can’t make Sunday, Monday… Friday night games. You decide not to get a season ticket, no worries, your old seat for the odd game you go to is now £55. But don’t worry, if that’s too expensive for you? After 40 years of supporting YOUR club. But don’t worry “ It’s still possible to rock up at 3:00pm and watch 2 teams of 11 players plus subs have a football match.”. It might be Rochdale, or Bury!!!

You don’t understand what a supporter is do you?

Perfect. This is what I mean. You can’t ignore all the ‘peripherals’ if it’s costing you so much to watch a game due to seat pricing. Season tickets are a risk because of the weird kick off times. On the pitch your team walks the Championship like Brazil then gets demolished in the PL because it can’t compete (witness all three promoted teams coming back down).
As you rightly say if you support say City you are now faced with the very real possibility of your team playing some games abroad. That is not improving football it is making money, and that has nothing to do with sport.