Sport has changed over the last twenty years. All sports across the world have been impacted by one universal fact, Money. Money has changed the way fans watch their favourite sports and how they view the players of them. It’s mad to think that only twenty or twenty five years ago, professional players in their respective sports were getting paid about a tenth of what players nowadays are getting paid. This is due to the franchising of certain sports and how business has become an integral part of them.
Soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world, and therefore there is a huge money interest in it. Recently a world record transfer was made in the summer of 2013 for Welsh player Gareth Bale. He was purchased by Real Madrid from English team Tottenham Hotspur for £ 86 million (€ 91 million) and now earns €15.6 million a year. This is a huge increase in wages and transfer fees since the 1990s. In 1994, Striker Chris Sutton became the most valuable player in the English top flight division after moving from Norwich city to Blackburn Rovers for £ 5 million, and was paid £ 10,000 a week. 20 years on, Wayne Rooney, A current Manchester united player, signed a new five year deal recently. This deal means that he now gets paid £300,000 a week. The power of money in this sport has changed the way fans now view it. Many people watch soccer nowadays and have no sympathy for players who go down injured and are out for weeks as they are still getting paid way more money than the fans who actually pay to see them play, week in week out.
The main football organisations such as FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) have tried to put in sanctions to stop football clubs that have rich owners to stop spending so much money on players. UEFA have put a new rule in place starting this year called the financial fair play rule. This means that big spending clubs like Manchester city or Chelsea must not have losses exceeding £ 105 million over 3 seasons, and this could prove very difficult for these rich clubs. The fact that this rule had to be brought in in the first place shows how much money has impacted the sport in the last two decades. It’s overtaken the actual love for the sport for many of the owners of the club, who see the club they buy as a business decision rather than following how the team are doing each week. It’s sad to see the beautiful game come to this. This thinking transcends down to the players. Many of them have little or no interest in representing their country anymore, which 20 years ago would have been an absolute honour. The reason behind this is that they do not get paid for international matches. This may sound like an accusation, but there are a few situations that back it up. In 2011, Arsenal football club said that one of their players, Jack Wilshere, could not play for England in upcoming important matches, because if he kept playing, he would injure himself. They put a medical report out trying to prove this, but this was not well received in the footballing world, from fans to sports health experts. This shows that money has consumed the sport in many ways. Clubs want to stop their star players playing because if they get injured on international duty, they would not be able to play for their club, which in turn would lose the certain club money because there is a higher chance that the club would lose following matches. It is all about money and income for clubs these days.
US Sportswriter E N Gardiner once said “when money enters sport, Corruption is sure to follow”. Money corrupts people. There have been allegations in the past whether the main governing bodies in sport are corrupt, especially in soccer. In 2010, FIFA gave Qatar the privilege to host the 2022 world cup. Many people were sceptical of how Qatar managed to get it, since many other countries that are well known for their soccer prowess were not chosen. It is widely believed that rich Sheikhs in Qatar bribed the judging panel to pick them. Controversy with this situation still continues today.
Sports in America have also changed due to the continuing increase of money associated with them. This year, an American football player named Peyton Manning, was paid $900,000 a week by his team, Denver Broncos. This is an indication as to how important this player is to the team, and to how much money is in the NFL (National Football League). In another American sport, Baseball, the top earner in the sport is a New York Yankees player named Alex Rodriguez. He has an annual Salary of $29 million, a record in the sport. When news like this comes out to the public, it can be said that many young people are overcome with the thoughts of making that type of money, and could possibly lose their initial love for the sport that they had in the first place. In today’s world, people are becoming more and more driven by money, and this can transcend from the business world to the sporting world.
The GAA has been one of the few sporting organisation in the world that has not been overcome with money or corruption. This could change in the near future however, as the GAA has recently sold 20 hurling and football matches to SKY. This deal could change the integrity of the game and its players, as since there will be much more money coming in to the sport and players may want to start getting paid. This in turn could again change people’s mindset on the sport. This amateur sport could turn into a multi-million sport thanks to this sky deal, just as SKY has done to Darts. Will Irish people accept this probable outcome? We will have to wait and see.
