Yes,I agree with you there.The german model is ,from the safe standing areas to the football itself. The Bundesliga is a very competitive league indeed,very exciting to watch and the atmosphere in the stadiums is very good.
One has to acknowledge the irony of Sky shelling out billions to the clubs in the PL (and below) yet costs for fans going through the roof. This has nothing to do with Sky themselves but what the Sky money has attracted to the game; speculators. Since Sky became involved, football has become an arena for investment and, unless you have a model which promotes fairplay right through the sport, these are not happy bedfellows. Godders has made some excellent points. I would add these: If you wish to buy/invest in a club, you must do so with your own money. Underwriting finance against the club itself is tantamount to criminal (just look at Man Utd). A percentage of revenue must be spent on infrastructure and player development. Ticket costs should be fixed across all grounds. TV money should be apportioned equally. The prize for winning the League should be the trophy.
I'm not a fan of the modern stadia. You're miles from the pitch for a start. I feel that sitting and watching the match in comfort detracts from the whole experience.
Whilst I find players wages obscene I think the wage cap as proportion of income is a bad idea. The TV fuelled revenues of the top teams and for th etop 4 the significant extra revenues from Champions league mean that they will always be able to afford massively higher wages than any club on the rung below them in the ladder thus perpetuating their own success and effectively barring competition from any team outside of the "elite" clubs, The only chance a smaller club has to compete is to pay over the odds wages up front to reap downstrean rewards, the wage caps limits teams ability to invest in order to grow and gain success. The difficulty is that the investment for growth is diproprtionate to the clubs ability to absorb the risks if they go wrong. I don't have an answer, but wage caps arent it in my opinion. The fair Fifa play rules may prove sufficient we can only hope!
The driving force behind the updating of stadia was the Taylor Report, not Sky TV. Murdoch merely gave the FA and the clubs an easy way of finding the money to implement the measures recommended in the Taylor Report. Otherwise another way would have had to be found. I would rather any way other than Sky TV had been found!
