Supporters Bought and Sold

In the Premiership and elsewhere, professional football clubs have for the most part ceased to be clubs; they are businesses, there to make a profit, and to be bought and sold. And what is an investor mainly buying when he buys a club? Not the players, whom he will be trading for others as opportunities arise, but the club’s mass of supporters, who naively still support the club as though it were still a genuine club – their club. In fact, it is the supporters (read: brand-loyal customers) who belong to the club, not the club to them.