More Than a Game

The Premier League is the most commercially successful football league in the world, the self-proclaimed ‘best league in the world’. Yet in the summer of 2019, while Manchester City celebrated their second successive Premier League title, Bury FC were thrown out of the English Football League: the first ever FA Cup winners to go out of business.

We are at a tipping point. The success of the Premier league has come at a cost, unbalancing English football to a profound and damaging degree.

The signs are everywhere: it is estimated that 61 of the country’s 92 professional clubs are loss-making; payments to agents involved in transfers in 17/18 were more than the combined income of all 44 clubs in Leagues 1 and 2; supporters face higher prices every season, while travelling the length and breadth of the country at ever more inconvenient times to accommodate TV schedules; young English players find their route to the top blocked; and the socially beneficial community activities that clubs undertake are underfunded. Racist incidents are on the rise, grassroots facilities are in a dreadful state and failed World Cup bids have severely weakened England’s standing in the global game.

There is an alternative. In this revealing and eye-opening analysis of the modern game, leading economist Mark Gregory reveals the breadth and depth of the problems facing English football, and shows us a way to bring football home for good.