A Different View
Football is a money game – and it’s worth millions
![Galway County Council cathaoirleach Cllr. Mary Hoade, Paul Molumby Central Bank Director of Currencies, Peter Heffernan CEO Marine Institute and Mayor of Galway City Donal Lyons at the Central Bank's launch in the Marine Institute in Oranmore of a €15 limited edition Silver Proof collector coin to commemorate John Philip Holland [1841 - 1914], the Irish born inventor of the modern submarine.](https://connachttribune.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/new-coin65.jpg)
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The English Premier League is back in full swing and, with the closure of the transfer window on Monday night, we can now thankfully concentrate on the actual football again as opposed to who might be moving from one club to another for the price of a small nation.
But it’s still hard to get away from the figures – and a recent paper produced by Simon Chadwick, Professor of Sport Business Strategy at Coventry University, brings into focus the astronomical figures that just ricochet around this world.
It is hard to put a figure on what the Premier League is actually worth, but income tax and national insurance contributions alone top £1.3 billion going to the British Government.
And how this has grown on every front – when, for example, BSkyB first upped the ante by buying exclusive broadcasting rights back in 1992, it cost the station £633,000 a game. Today it works out at an astonishing £6.53 million….per match.
That’s before the global rights which, for example, cost NBC $250 million for the US rights for three years.
Writing for The Conversation – a UK website collaboration between editors and academics – Professor Chadwick pointed out that the league is now broadcast in 212 countries with a total audience of almost five billion per season.
But this isn’t just about television – although there are times when you might be forgiven for thinking that the actual paying fans come last on the list of priorities.
Visit Britain estimated that around 900,000 people who came to the UK in 2011 went to a football match – two-fifths of them came specifically to go to a game.
The tourism body further calculated that football visitors spent £706 million, or the equivalent of £785 per fan – which is £200 more than an average visitor to Britain normally spends. In Greater Manchester alone, football contributes upwards of £330 million a year to the local economy.
So it’s not just the clubs themselves that benefit; try booking a hotel in Liverpool or Manchester on the weekend of a big game, for example. It will have comfortably doubled in price from the match-free weekends.
Flights rocket in price as soon as the fixtures are revealed for the year, and the bottom line is that you can comfortably plan to spend at least €750 unless you’re going to fly back and over on the match day itself.
That’s the income side of things – but the outflow of cash is equally phenomenal.
When the Premier League began in 1992, the average weekly salary of a player in England was £1,755. By 2000, this figure had risen to £11,184. Now, the average Premier League salary is £31,000 per week.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
It’s impossible to put an exact figure on it, but the consensus by now is that there are actually more Irish bars outside of Ireland than there are pubs in Ireland itself.
Covid played its part in this, signalling the death knell for so many licenced premises here, but in truth the pendulum was already swinging in that direction.
Two years ago, the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland estimated that there were 6,788 still in business here – and that was after one in five Irish pubs had closed their doors since 2005. Since then, Covid further accelerated that reduction.
At the same time the most recent figures produced by the Irish Pubs Global Federation – admittedly for 2015 when the organisation was originally launched – estimated that there were approximately 6,500 Irish pubs doing business outside of Ireland.
And there’s no reason to think that number hasn’t grown since.
There’s a BBC Radio 4 programme called More or Less – where experts attempt to answer listeners’ burning questions – which calculated that there is at least one Irish bar in more than 160 of the world’s 195 countries.
Which all begs the question; what actually makes a pub an Irish pub; is it having Guinness on tap or at least in cans, a few tricolours on the wall, shamrocks on the pint, trad tunes all day?
Is it wood-panelled walls, loads of old antique signs for cigarettes and long-vanished whisky – or is it the warmth of the reception that comes from having at least one Irish member of staff behind the counter?
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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