Over the last sixty years I have seen rapid technological changes transforming the way in which people live their lives. The internet and mobile technology has probably brought about the biggest changes. In contrast, the technology of football has not changed that much at all, and there are certainly many people who like it that way.
Over the last sixty years I have seen rapid technological changes transforming the way in which people live their lives. The internet and mobile technology has probably brought about the biggest changes. In contrast, the technology of football has not changed that much at all, and there are certainly many people who like it that way.
The biggest change has probably been the arrival of reliable floodlights, enabling games to be played in the evening or permitting later kick off times on winter afternoons. A heavy leather ball, covered in mud, has been replaced by a much lighter ball which permits a more attractive game. Notwithstanding the problems at Wembley, pitches have improved beyond recognition so that players are no longer trying to skim a ball across a puddle in winter. Artificial pitches have always been at the margin of the professional game, however, and the football authorities are resistant to the use of technology that would determine whether the ball has crossed the line. In rugby the video referee is an accepted part of the game.
What has really transformed the economics of the game has been television. Initially it was only available in black-and-white on small screens. The arrival of colour television made it much more attractive to watch football. More recemtly we have had the arrival of flat screen televisions and now HD and 3-D.
Television has become vital to the game’s business model. In the Premier League, broadcast revenues grew at a phenomenal compound rate of 29 per cent between the 1991-2 season when Division 1 still existed and 2007-8. Television and football are locked in a mutually profitable relationship, even if there have been a few casualties along the way like ITV Digital and Setanta. But any sector of the economy has its flops as well as its successes.
What is so attractive about football to broadcasters? First, it is mostly watched live. Relatively few games are recorded and watched later with fast forwarding through the adverts. Second, there are only a certain number of games in the Premier League and the top teams play each other a limited number of times. Third, ratings are almost guaranteed. As television has fragmented with a multiplicity of channels, generating a large audience becomes a big challenge. Because it is so hard to draw big audiences advertisers are prepared to pay a premium to reach them. Football, especially the World Cup, provides access to such audiences.
Football offers a particularly attractive demographic because young men watch it a lot and they tend not to watch much other television. They have money available to spend on brands and they are more likely to change the products they buy than older fans.
Of course, new technologies provide a challenge. It is possible to watch games illegally over the internet. But football is an exception to the rule that internet offerings and mobile television do not pay. ESPN charges internet service providers for access to its website and they pass on the cost to their subscribers. 3 Italia charges a million customers €2 a week to deliver video content to their mobiles.
The modern model of football is built on its attractiveness to television and that is not going to change any time soon.