The problem with football
Sport is not high on the European agenda, compared to the mess in the Balkans, the enlargement of the European Union or the looming trade war with the USA. Even so, it can be worthwhile to think about sport from time to time. As opposed to the heavily subsidised farming sector, sport is a growing part of the European economy. But, just as with the financing of European farming, European citizens pay at least twice for sport: taxes are widely used to support stadiums, policing and club activities, and quite a lot of the television licence fee goes into sport. Not to mention sponsoring and advertising money, in effect paid by consumers as part of product prices.
Next summer the European Football Championships will be played in Belgium and the Netherlands. It will be the first time since the Heysel catastophe that Belgium is hosting (well, co-hosting) a big international sporting event.
Needless to say, the Belgian stadiums are still not up to specifications. If the Dutch football federation hadn’t stepped in, Belgium would probably have lost the tournament altogether. Whether it was a smart move to save them remains to be seen (Belgian police have voiced serious doubts). One thing is certain: it will cost Europeans a lot of money.
Say “sport”, and most people think “television”. And rightly so, since the two have become entwined and interdependent in a way that makes it hard to see where one ends and the other begins. The bidding wars over the right to broadcast major tournaments have made some clubs and sports organisations rich. And televised sport has delivered huge audiences to advertisers, with corresponding revenue for television companies.
Broadcasting rights to big European sporting events have even made it to a directive from the European Commission – European citizens still do not have a Charter of Rights like free speech, the right to organise etc, but we now have the right to “important national sporting events” without having to resort to pay-per-view television. At least in theory.
Sport is not something most people do. Sports is something most people watch. And I would say that – very much in the same way as sex changes when it becomes an activity by professionals, watched by “amateurs” – the passion of a game of table-tennis or football in your back yard is hard to re-create in something you only see on the screen. Not to mention the lack of exercise in the thumbing of the remote control.
Advocates of elite tournaments and professional sports often claim that they are necessary for generating a healthy interest in everyday sporting activities among the general public. This connection has not been proven. There are, however, some disturbingly unhealthy tendencies connected to professional sport.
Now, I might be wrong. But I see a widening gap between physical exercise or games played by us amateurs, and the media circus called “sport” by the television stations and newspapers. This gap is also political and financial, something that is easily understood by schoolkids who are not allowed to use the public ice-hockey rink because of “the training schedule” of the famous team, or by someone wanting to know why police patrols in their neighbourhood have been cancelled; policing football matches meant too much overtime and there are no funds left…
These real-life experiences are not the worst, though. The dark side of “sport” also includes violent, criminal and racist groups that have found friends, status and protection among European football crowds. For young and easily impressed men, the violence in the stadium inspires to “heroics” in the streets.
And even if the police manage to contain the hooligans, the ideals celebrated in modern “sport” have very little to do with sportsmanship. The world’s most celebrated football professional, Maradona, is perhaps most famous for his goal in 1986, where he scored with his hand. Tour de France has been exposed as little more than a mobile drug cartel. And just think that they used to call boxing “the noble art of self defence”. That was before Evander Holyfield got his ear bitten off.
Published in Euro Metro, 29 November 1999
Next summer the European Football Championships will be played in Belgium and the Netherlands. It will be the first time since the Heysel catastophe that Belgium is hosting (well, co-hosting) a big international sporting event.
Needless to say, the Belgian stadiums are still not up to specifications. If the Dutch football federation hadn’t stepped in, Belgium would probably have lost the tournament altogether. Whether it was a smart move to save them remains to be seen (Belgian police have voiced serious doubts). One thing is certain: it will cost Europeans a lot of money.
Say “sport”, and most people think “television”. And rightly so, since the two have become entwined and interdependent in a way that makes it hard to see where one ends and the other begins. The bidding wars over the right to broadcast major tournaments have made some clubs and sports organisations rich. And televised sport has delivered huge audiences to advertisers, with corresponding revenue for television companies.
Broadcasting rights to big European sporting events have even made it to a directive from the European Commission – European citizens still do not have a Charter of Rights like free speech, the right to organise etc, but we now have the right to “important national sporting events” without having to resort to pay-per-view television. At least in theory.
Sport is not something most people do. Sports is something most people watch. And I would say that – very much in the same way as sex changes when it becomes an activity by professionals, watched by “amateurs” – the passion of a game of table-tennis or football in your back yard is hard to re-create in something you only see on the screen. Not to mention the lack of exercise in the thumbing of the remote control.
Advocates of elite tournaments and professional sports often claim that they are necessary for generating a healthy interest in everyday sporting activities among the general public. This connection has not been proven. There are, however, some disturbingly unhealthy tendencies connected to professional sport.
Now, I might be wrong. But I see a widening gap between physical exercise or games played by us amateurs, and the media circus called “sport” by the television stations and newspapers. This gap is also political and financial, something that is easily understood by schoolkids who are not allowed to use the public ice-hockey rink because of “the training schedule” of the famous team, or by someone wanting to know why police patrols in their neighbourhood have been cancelled; policing football matches meant too much overtime and there are no funds left…
These real-life experiences are not the worst, though. The dark side of “sport” also includes violent, criminal and racist groups that have found friends, status and protection among European football crowds. For young and easily impressed men, the violence in the stadium inspires to “heroics” in the streets.
And even if the police manage to contain the hooligans, the ideals celebrated in modern “sport” have very little to do with sportsmanship. The world’s most celebrated football professional, Maradona, is perhaps most famous for his goal in 1986, where he scored with his hand. Tour de France has been exposed as little more than a mobile drug cartel. And just think that they used to call boxing “the noble art of self defence”. That was before Evander Holyfield got his ear bitten off.
Published in Euro Metro, 29 November 1999
posted by Pelle at Monday, November 29, 1999
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