The Archive

While there is a certain inevitability about this home victory, it’s only August and these two clubs have very different expectations and requirements from a season in League One, writes Julian McDougall

Away, at Hillsborough. In the days leading up to and following this match, it is in the news again with speculation about relatives of the 1989 disaster victims getting access to crucial documents and Billy Bragg releasing a song about the phone hacking scandal called Scousers Never Buy The Sun.

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Mark Segal explains a campain to allow fans to watch games with a pint, like in other sports

It is the age-old quandary for a football fan. Do we leave the pub now and get to the game before kick-off, or have another and miss the first five minutes? It happens every week and inevitably it is always the wrong decision. But what if there was a third option? What if you could get to the ground in good time, buy a beer and take it up to your seat in time for the start of the game?

That’s what happens in cricket and both codes of rugby, but if you tried at a football ground you would be breaking the law. A new campaign is trying to change this anomaly. At their most basic the arguments calling for the scrapping of the law, which was first enshrined in the 1985 Sporting Events Act, are hard to dispute. The campaign’s backers claim that it is finally time to remove the stigma of being a football fan and give them the same matchday experience as supporters of other sports.

The campaign was only launched in June but already has the backing of 40 of the 92 Premier League and Football League clubs and various other bodies including the Football Supporters’ Federation, who claim reversing the ban would stop the last-minute crush as hundreds of fans knock back their pint and rush up from the concourses for the start of a game.

Supporters say it will also stop binge drinking among fans and help increase revenues for clubs who are feeling the pinch during a prolonged economic downturn. So the first instinct of many who are faced with discriminatory law against football fans is to support this cause. But, even as someone who has experienced the worst excesses of “crowd control” down the years, this campaign leaves me feeling uneasy in the extreme.

The first thing to point out is that football crowds haven’t really changed that much since the Act was first introduced. The way they are forced to watch a game is certainly different and, in most cases, far more pleasurable. But in a crowd of 20,000 there is always going to be a not-insignificant number who don’t necessarily go looking for trouble, but will not back down if trouble finds them. 
We need to admit that not all football fans are like the ones to which the Sky cameras are 
always drawn.

Now add into this group constant access to alcohol during a 90-minute period where events are not always going to go their way and you are opening up a new point of 
potential conflict. Fighting between rival sets of fans may no longer take place inside grounds, but there are plenty of examples of fans of the same team wading into each other during matches.

There is also the constant movement in the stands as you have to shuffle up and down as someone slips to the bar every five minutes, and comes back again, and do you fancy being showered in beer when an important goal go in?

Comparisons with other sports are also fatuous. While it’s hard to claim a football crowd is any more passionate than those that watch rugby, they are certainly more volatile. And again adding more alcohol to the mix is not going to calm things down. While canvassing opinions I found support for a reversal of the ban to be about 50-50, so it’s interesting then that a recent report claimed that all the clubs who had voiced an opinion so far were right behind the campaign.

Could it be that clubs, already fleecing fans at the turnstile and in the club shop, are looking for more ways to make money without fully thinking through the consequences? Some argue that the law could at least be tweaked to end the ludicrous situation where corporate clients are forced to draw a curtain in their executive box to shield the pitch before they can open a bottle of beer. But then you can’t support a campaign based on ending discrimination, only to discriminate against those who can’t afford the best seats in the house.

At its heart there is something a little naive about the whole endeavour. In case it had escaped their attention, crowds don’t gather in large numbers every week to enjoy a huge communal session, they go to watch a football match. And even the most hardened of drinkers among them would admit they can wait 45 minutes between each pint.

From WSC 296 October 2011

Gary Andrews delves into this year’s FA Cup, which kicked off with a pioneering move that offered free football streamed online (for adults only)

When Ascot United were drawn at home in the FA Cup’s extra preliminary qualifying round to Wembley FC, their board may have reasonably expected a gate of around 100. That would have been a wild underestimate. After 88 fans watched their midweek Hellenic League draw against Ardley United, a record crowd of 1,149 made their way to the Racecourse Ground.

Those punters weren’t the only ones watching the tie. On Facebook 27,000 tuned in to a live stream of Wembley’s eventual 2-1 victory, all of whom chose to stay in on a Friday and watch two teams playing five steps below the Football League. That’s more than the average attendances of eight Premier League teams. The reason can be summed up in one word: Budweiser. The all-American beer hardly seemed the most natural fit for the FA Cup when the sponsorship was announced in June. Since then, however, the brewer appears to have demonstrated a better understanding of the competition than previous sponsors.

At the ground, fans were offered cheap beer and free burgers, while corporate razzmatazz was kept to a minimum. Online, users had to become a fan of the beer’s UK Facebook page (providing they were over 18) then click on a bespoke widget on the page to view the match.

Instead of the usual jerky, slow video, the quality of the stream was high, and commentators Dan Roebuck and Stewart Robson had done plenty of research. There were no patronising asides to second jobs as binmen that often characterise ESPN’s and ITV’s coverage, while occasional pitchside swearing and one fumbled handover seemed in keeping with the occasion.

But for Budweiser and the FA, Ascot v Wembley was about more than bringing attention to teams in a round of the Cup that would usually attract next to no sponsorship. Viewed as an experiment, the Facebook stream can be seen as a success and several parties will be analysing the data with interest. Facebook has over 700 million members, meaning there is a large captive audience, both in the UK and abroad. Having “Liked” the Budweiser page in order to watch the game, all users will see the company’s updates in their Facebook news feeds. The benefits to the brewer’s marketing arm are obvious.

Streaming games legally online is not new. All major broadcasters offer online streaming of their live games, while sites like bet365.com have an array of rights to foreign leagues. ITV.com even streamed Wantage Town v Brading Town at the extra preliminary qualifying stage of the competition in 2008. Although ITV did an impressive job, viewing figures were low and costs high, and the extensive coverage was quietly dropped the following season.

With cricket’s Indian Premier League signing a deal with YouTube and organisations as diverse as Major League Baseball and film studio Miramax experimenting with Facebook broadcasting, it was only a matter of time before football decided it wanted a piece of the action. The FA and Budweiser have now shown the appetite is there – the viewing figures for Ascot were certainly more than some broadcasters’ Europa League streams and, you would suspect, Premier Sport’s Conference coverage (although Premier doesn’t release any viewing figures).

With ongoing uncertainty over TV rights, not least due to Portsmouth publican Karen Murphy’s case against the Premier League, leagues and clubs are already having to plan for the possibility of a different media world. Facebook itself has ambitions to grow into a major broadcasting player. Although the cost may be prohibitive for individual clubs below the Championship to produce their own broadcasts (at least of the same quality as Budweiser’s), it wouldn’t be unexpected if the Conference, or sponsors Blue Square Bet, offer live streaming via Facebook when their current deal with Premier expires, if the sums add up.

However, unless Budweiser does further matches, it’s difficult to tell if the figures were down to a one-off novelty factor or a wider desire to watch grassroots football. But a large portion of younger fans were unable to access the beer’s Facebook page due to the age restrictions, meaning the numbers could be even higher if the brewer can find a way around this.

In the short term, it’s hard to criticise Budweiser and the FA too much, as they pitched their initial stream perfectly. In the longer term, it remains to be seen if Facebook viewing can be sustained and, if it can, exactly what kind of broadcasting monster it may spawn.

From WSC 296 October 2011

Henrik Manninen explains how a raft of match-fixing allegations in the far north of Europre has swiftly ended an international experiment

“If I was wearing my cap the bet would be on, and if I took the cap off, there would be no business,” said Wilson Raj Perumal on his chosen method for catching the attention of players during a Finnish league cup game between Rovaniemen Palloseura (RoPS) and Jaro played on February 20 this year.

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Fans are raising funds for their clubs through a variety of means, writes Rich Middleton

You would be hard pressed to work out what a gnome dressed in a Mansfield Town home kit has to do with former Stoke and Swansea striker Paul Connor. Saying that, the link between Oxford United’s Jake Wright and a crested mug could be considered to be equally confusing. But both footballers have been direct recipients of creative financing as fans turn to new and increasingly innovative methods to fund players’ salaries.

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