Bill Edgar who writes a column in the ‘Game’ section of The Times each Monday had an interesting piece last week about the way in which the leading conurbations are increasingly dominating the Premier League title race.
There are seven ‘built up areas’ in England with a population of over three quarters of a million. In order these are: Greater London; Greater Manchester; the West Midlands; West Yorkshire; Liverpool; south Hampshire (which would include fierce rivals Portsmouth and Southampton); and Tyneside.
Bill Edgar who writes a column in the ‘Game’ section of The Times each Monday had an interesting piece last week about the way in which the leading conurbations are increasingly dominating the Premier League title race.
There are seven ‘built up areas’ in England with a population of over three quarters of a million. In order these are: Greater London; Greater Manchester; the West Midlands; West Yorkshire; Liverpool; south Hampshire (which would include fierce rivals Portsmouth and Southampton); and Tyneside.
Edgar points out that since 1995 only one club from outside these seven areas has finished in the top five of the Premier League (Ipswich Town were fifth in 2000-01). Yet in the previous 49 years back to the Second World War there were 39 such instances. Nottingham Forest and Derby County had the most impressive record, but others included Norwich City, Burnley, Preston North End and Blackpool.
One possible reason is that the best supported clubs tend to be found in conurbations and the ability to make money out of that support base has increased since the mid-1990s with big increases in the real price of tickets. Major cities are also an attraction for wealthy owners, particularly London as a world city.
This piece particularly interested me because I was involved in some discussion about the notion of a club’s ‘catchment area’. In London the areas that can claim primary allegiance to one club are relatively small. But even away from London patterns of support can be quite complex.
Over time it has become cheaper and more feasible to travel long distances to home games. Recently I was trying to calculate the relative levels of support for my non-league club now and a hundred years ago. In 1913 one knew that the support had to be within walking or cycling distance so it was much easier to come up with a figure. In 2013 the support is spread out across the southern half of Warwickshire, and this is for a non-league club.
People are also more geographically mobile so they may end up some way from the club to which they have a continuing allegiance. They may, of course, develop a new allegiance or find it impractical or too costly to attend home games, particularly when some away games are nearer. But many fans do make the effort.
For many younger people, however, an allegiance is formed through television and for some a choice of university is influenced by the location of their favourite club. For example, a friend of mine grew up in Guernsey where quite a few people support Southampton, but he followed Leeds and went there to university.
The identities of football supporters are much less geographically determined than they were and more shaped by a conscious consumer choice which tends to favour the top clubs, although there is a tendency for Norwegian supporters to adopt obscure clubs.