Footballers wages

[Young Master Smeet]

Some of the most exploited people on Earth are footballers.  Not in the Premier league, but in the Irish gaelic Football (GAA).  These people are amateurs, strictly so, and yet Sky paid £2 million for screening rights to GAA games.  We can logically infer that for Sky, they will make more out of screening those games than they have paid.  That money will come from advertisers who in turn feel that they will make more money than they pay out of buying advertising time when GAA fans are watching the screens.  And, of course, fans buy tickets to matches.  And, of course, ticket prices are pretty in elastic, people will pay what they are willing to pay to watch a match.  If GAA don't charge enough, touts will pick up the extra value from udersold tickets.

So, the GAA stars are slogging their guts out on the pitch, to make a bunch of capitalists very rich indeed.

Premier league footballers are luckier, they ar professionals, and they have aunion, and they can claw back some of that profit from their work that would have gone top their employers.  yes, premier league stars have vast property portfolios (in the form of image rights, sponsorship agreements, etc.) but that's only a top few, most player depend on their skill in order to earn their curst.

Yes, they're rich, and if they don't piss their incomes up the wall, they'll become capitalists the second it hits the bank.  But the fact remains they are workers, wealthy workers, and we're opn their side against the management.

[alanjjohnstone]

i forget the statistics but the vast majority of professional players who work in the lower leagues are pitifully paid.Our blog Socialist Banner has featured a few posts on the new African slave trade…youngsters with football talent trafficked around the clubs of Europe and elsewherehttp://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/search?q=footballAnother factor that is often is forgotten, the huge amount of players put out the game by injury, often in their prime,  with not much compensation from their employers…http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/search?q=sport+injuriesif health and safety regulations applied to football they's blow the final whistle on it…(rugby football too, i'm betting as well, YMS)Again i forget the statistics for the NHS cost to sporting injuries (i don't think they ever narrowed it down to specific sports but i'm betting from the anecdotal evidence of all those knee operations given to people i know, football is high up the list)I recall talking to a nurse who worked A and E …apparently it isn't Saturday evenings after the matches that has the rush of patients, but Sunday mornings …Saturday night,  the team is on the piss with alcohol acting as a convenient anesthetic  …only when they sober up on Sunday does the extent and implication of their game injury become apparent. (I knew a few guys who endure the pain and hobble into work on the Monday and then stage a work-place acccident to get a claim.)Not so sure i would be so cynical about the GAA…may have its faults but also has a few merits. I posted on my personal blog thishttp://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2009/03/socialism-of-gaelic-athletic.html

[Young Master Smeet]

Indeed, but that £2 million from Sky isn't amateur, and the gates at the all ireland finals are huge, and some of the poor buggers are signing on the next day.  Sky is making a killing off the commons of amateur sport.The NHS would have to pay for a lot more chronic ailments if some of us weren't egg chasing in the park (and we have to pay to play!).Whilst amteurism may seem more in line with our ethos, it was the professional codes, soccer and rugby league that had historically the support of the working class.Anyway, I for one am glad when one of our own escapes and makes good — Wayne Rooney wants to screw another couple of Mill from the Glazers?  Good on you, lad.  We start letting them split us agint the footballers, next its the doctors, the IT operators, anyone who isn't paid a pittance.  The cry of "The footballers are paid too much" is the cry of management.So, Jimmy Hill, working class hero.

[alanjjohnstone]

I suppose another issue is just how indoctrinated and brainwashed the average sports consumer is that the obsession is with football that fills the coffers of broadcasters and advertisers.Where i live there is regular volley-ball on tv and being on the village volley ball team carries as much prestige as the football teamSo called minority sports are always "on the brink" of breaking through but seldom do….the 2 million chickenfeed deal that the GAA managed to extract from Sky hurling (or shinty as its called in Scotia)   is an example the lack of lack of interest in any real sport by the average spectator… Football has gone beyond tribalism…Why are the big clubs global entities with a worldwide fan base? Totally off topic…just what is fascinating with grand prix car racing…zoom zoom around a track with a mind-numbing repetition…why not substitute Scaletrix?……In fact ditch football and televise  subbuteo

[alanjjohnstone]

Challenging the owners.We had Man Utd a while back organising opposition to their owners. Blackpool fans are busy doing the samehttp://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/may/02/karl-oyston-blackpool-tangerine-nightmare-stan-mortenson

[Victor]

Thanks for the link.  This is good.  It does give us hope because it's only a short step from saying 'We can run the system ourselves' to saying 'We can run a whole new system in our interests'.

[rodshaw]

I think it's a bit misleading to say that socialists are on the side of the workers against management, most of whom are workers themselves, at least as I understand the term. It's workers against owners.

[alanjjohnstone]

It does get a bit blurred, doesn't it?…a CEO is "employed" by the share-holders, yet his "wages" is often in the shape of privileged share options. Takes us back to all that discussion on the state-capitalist apparachiks and nomenclatura and Rizzi's and Burnham's managerial elites as a ruling class (not to mention Paul Cardan), and not the owning class….but i don't think we should go off topic too muchManagement in football is not the manager or coach but the board and , oh we know only too often, the battles football managers have had with their board of directors and the resignations and the sackings that have ensued. Always as you say…the ultimate winner is the person at the top with the most shares in the club – the owner. 

[Darren redstar]

I work with a woman whose son is a championship player. He has been injured for most of this season and now at the end of the years football has been offered a new contract at a fraction of his previous wages. Because he has been injured he has not had the opportunity to build up a portfolio of appearances to display his skills to other potential employers(a situation made worse by his managers refusal to field him for weeks after he was declared fit)  his agent is now having to travel Europe hawking him to whoever will offer the highest purse, and my colleagues son faces having to uproot himself and his family.

[Victor]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

It does get a bit blurred, doesn't it?…a CEO is "employed" by the share-holders, yet his "wages" is often in the shape of privileged share options. Takes us back to all that discussion on the state-capitalist apparachiks and nomenclatura and Rizzi's and Burnham's managerial elites as a ruling class (not to mention Paul Cardan), and not the owning class….but i don't think we should go off topic too muchManagement in football is not the manager or coach but the board and , oh we know only too often, the battles football managers have had with their board of directors and the resignations and the sackings that have ensued. Always as you say…the ultimate winner is the person at the top with the most shares in the club – the owner. 

Yes, but I think it's also fair to say that often even the equity owners aren't all that vested in the profits and losses of the club itself.  Their interest is usually in the commercial side of things – i.e. merchandising sponsorship, restaurants, supporting businesses.  In the lower divisions, the motives of owners might also be a little more complex than they appear.  Some of them, though successful businessmen in other respects, will be motivated by a genuine wish to keep a club going in the interests of the community.  There's also the prestige this gives them.  Of course, some of the lower league clubs are invested in because they have a potential fan base that could be lucrative and so a new consortium put the money in to build-up the club and see it promoted through the divisions in the hope that this commercial potential can be better exploited with a higher profile and TV rights.

[alanjjohnstone]

Much is made of the "youth" policies of clubs as the means of developing talent but actually it is merely bringing players on to be sold on. Many clubs never make their money from the match attendances, sponsorship or media fees but from the transfer market…they are the flesh peddlars of young people's skills. Club transfer policy is to find players with a sell-on value, put them in the metaphorical shop window, as you say, sell them on at a profit and then repeat the process with the proceeds.http://sport.stv.tv/football/scottish-premier/celtic/295669-what-has-your-team-spent-on-transfers-in-the-last-five-years/Personal anecdote…Hibs will sign on many youngsters to their books but once they get to 18 and entitled to an adult wage…"off you go, laddie, find another club" … my work colleague's boy was lucky…American colleges are active in the UK scouting and offering sports scholarships to such discarded players and he ended up in some no-name Wyoming college but with his education and accommodation paid and a part-time job provided coaching young kids for  spending money.  Returning to the injury issue Dr. Tobias Moskowitz, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and author of Scorecasting, warned about the economic imperatives that are pushing players to their limits. “The economic incentive is there for more games and the hefty schedule that is in place. The fans want to go to and see as many games as possible, generating more revenues from ticket sales. You also have higher TV revenues from more advertisements. All of that adds up, and the players don’t get paid per game,” Dr. Moskowitz said. For the owners of the teams and the league bosses who control the game, it really does not matter if the players play too many games.“It may be that the league and players have to be willing to accept fewer financial rewards in order to obtain a more humane calendar,” Dr. Moskowitz said.Our socialist courier blog has touched on thishttp://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2013/08/health-and-safety-in-sport.htmlhttp://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2013/07/blood-sports.html

[Young Master Smeet]

I did say

Quote:

 The cry of "The footballers are paid too much" is the cry of management.

I didn't say it was workers against management, but the cry of management is a cry in the interest of the owners…

[alanjjohnstone]

Spanish football on strikehttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32618821

[alanjjohnstone]

Hearsay but more than probable in my opinionThe FA …we don't want too many blacks in the England teamhttp://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/may/06/graham-taylor-told-not-pick-too-many-black-players-fa-england

[rodshaw]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I did say

Quote:

 The cry of "The footballers are paid too much" is the cry of management.

I didn't say it was workers against management, but the cry of management is a cry in the interest of the owners…

I don't particularly want to labour the point, but it was your first post I was commenting on:

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Yes, they're rich, and if they don't piss their incomes up the wall, they'll become capitalists the second it hits the bank.  But the fact remains they are workers, wealthy workers, and we're opn their side against the management.

[Author]

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