Hard sell reinforces football's world dominance

Is there no end to football's world domination? A successful World Cup this year, defying the sceptics, consolidated the game's position as the planet's most arresting and widely feted sport.

Not content with this, football scours the globe for those corners still ambivalent to its appeal. India has one of the last big populations to be conquered. If 1bn Indians get sucked in, who knows how big the business of football could become?

The latest signs are reasonably promising. The Indian Super League was launched in October and comprises teams of Indian nationals joined by a clutch of veteran European stars such as Italy's Alessandro Del Piero, French international Robert Pires and David James, the former England goalkeeper. The quality is mediocre, but crowds are averaging 23,000, which makes it the highest attended league in Asia and the fifth-biggest in the world.

Broadcaster Star India said the first week of matches had a cumulative TV audience of 171m, and digital impressions on social media reached 2.5bn.

It may all fade away. But football's strength, its ability to excite, enthral and command intense tribal passion, gives it a better than even chance of succeeding in such an uncharted market.

The sport is now making merry in another market that had long spurned the advances of the beautiful game: the US. A sizeable audience of American "millennials", 18-30-year-olds, is waking up early at weekends to catch live coverage of football's most talked about offering: England's Premier League.

Other sports try to break new ground. Basketball has long courted China. American football keeps sending over NFL teams to London. The world cup tournaments staged by rugby and cricket offer a fleeting glimpse of how these sports could spread beyond their traditional markets.

But football can spread its wings more widely because it is so obviously a world game, says Stefan Szymanski, professor of sport management at the University of Michigan. "It's one of the few games that doesn't have a specific cultural affinity," he says. "England invented and exported the game, but the world doesn't care about that. No one nation can claim ownership."

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

"Rugby and cricket are so British," says Szymanksi. "All the American sports are very American. Football has been global for a long, long time."

Formula One can claim some worldwide recognition, but it has nothing like the depth and reach of football. Broadcasters fill their schedules with live football, and sponsors compete to be associated with the highest-profile games.

Public demand for live content promises more rich pickings for football rights holders. Vodafone's move into broadband and TV is the latest evidence of telecoms companies looking to football and other live sports to win customers.

That puts existing rights holders such as BSkyB and BT under pressure and sets up next year's auction for live Premier League rights as another financial bonanza for clubs and, of course, their players. Their glamorous lifestyles and behaviour on and off the pitch are rich fodder for tabloids and blogs. Cristiano Ronaldo has - after the singer Shakira - the second-most followers, 103m, on Facebook in the world.

Clubs are developing media hubs to exploit their players' global following and their own brands via social media.

The purists say that by selling itself, football is moving away from the game's traditions. Players' wealth makes them far removed from fans. That is the romantic and jaded view of an older generation, says Szymanski. But there is no way round it: "It's like people's view of capitalism: 'I'd rather it wasn't like this, but I can't think of an alternative.'"

Football will dominate the sports landscape over the next 10-20 years, he says, adding that in the 1990s it would have been labelled a small business. "It's now a medium-sized business."

It matters little that football creates so many negative headlines. Racism, sexism, homophobia, corruption, match-fixing, debt, bankruptcy - the public is both appalled and fascinated by football's diet of controversy. Attendances in Europe and the US are rising.

Sponsors often flee sports bodies caught in governance crises. But football is too big for sponsors to walk away from Fifa, where allegations of corruption have brought criticism and threats from some nations to boycott the World Cup.

But the threats have a hollow ring. It takes a strong nerve for a football nation not to compete in sport's prized tournament. The World Cup provides Fifa with strong and growing revenues - this year's tournament made $4bn in TV rights and marketing deals. The value of other rights holders, such as England's Premier League, Germany's Bundesliga or France's Ligue 1, is growing.

The temptation is to offer more, but rights holders have resisted adding to the content. Say what you like about Fifa, says Emmanuel Hembert at management consultants AT Kearney, but you have to give credit for the way it runs the World Cup: "It hasn't tried to overexploit it. It is still every four years and that keeps it as an exceptional event."

Football's growth may be too fast for some. The game's ultra-competitive nature puts the financial stability of many clubs and national associations in peril. Uefa's solution - the Financial Fair Play rules that require European clubs to live within their means - has plenty of critics, because it entrenches the established order, although there are tentative signs of greater financial discipline.

Latin American clubs, despite producing world-class players, have yet to create the sustainable financial base to prevent these players' exodus to Europe.

Similarly, football is hugely popular in Africa but needs stable economies to establish a proper organisational framework. Its showpiece event, the Africa Cup of Nations, has had to be hastily relocated because of the Ebola outbreak.

Football will continue to generate casualties. Players will earn more, club owners will carry on throwing silly money in pursuit of glory, small debt-ridden European clubs will stagger on.

Threats to football's dominance will not come from other sports, says Hembert, but will be internal, such as meddling with the rules or adding to the number of competitions.

For the moment, football is resisting those notions. "Where football is very niche is that over the course of a single game, you can't predict the outcome. It is still difficult to score a goal," he says.

Naoba Singh of the Indian Super League recognises such problems all too well. The Delhi Dynamos right-back was asked recently why his team lost 4-1 to FC Goa. "There were plenty of mistakes in the defence and the midfield," he said. "That was the reason we couldn't score and conceded so many."

Sometimes, it is worth remembering that football is a very simple game.

© The Financial Times Limited 2014. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation