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The non-Watford football thread

Discussion in 'Watford' started by North North Watford, May 1, 2012.

  1. colognehornet

    colognehornet Well-Known Member

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    I enjoy alcohol as well Fez, in moderation, and yes, many people can live with it without problem. However, alcohol is more of a problem for our youth than tobacco is - so should football clubs be able to wear the name of an alcohol producer on their shirts ? Going to the extreme, Scarborough once had the name 'Black Death Vodka' on their shirts, until the league, understandably banned it. But there are plenty of others which are on the border line. How does a fan react when his club is suddenly sponsored by a firm which he, as a customer, would avoid like the plague. Does he just ignore it ? English football has gone a lot further along this slippery slope than most other countries - so that even teams in the Southern League have a sponsor these days. In La Liga 7 out of the 20 clubs there don't have the names of sponsors on their shirts. The largest being Valencia and Sevilla. The same applies to AS Roma, Lazio, Sampdoria, Palermo, Torino and Fiorentina in Italy - but apparently Yate Town (Southern League) need one ? I guess that many European clubs, being fan owned, do not want to be seen as 'selling out' by their fans.
     
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  2. oldfrenchhorn

    oldfrenchhorn Well-Known Member
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    I have just had a look to see who sponsors clubs in my French Ligue 2 and there are no betting companies on shirts. Supermarket chains, banks and insurance companies, builders merchants, restaurants, hotels, and in the case of my local team a wine merchant. Perhaps the most interesting is Red Star who play in the Paris area and have VICE on their shirts. Vice is a Canadian-American magazine focused on arts, culture and news. Unfortunately I will not have any real Vice this season as they were relegated at the end of last season. :emoticon-0101-sadsm
     
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  3. colognehornet

    colognehornet Well-Known Member

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    Maybe clubs in England should think this out more carefully. At the bottom end of the Premiership scale Brighton have a sponsorship with American Express worth just 1.5 million pounds per season. A lot of other smaller Premiership clubs have deals around the 3-4 million mark, but what does that buy these days ? Do football fans really want to see their clubs shirts used as a kind of billboard, and are many put off buying club merchandise for this reason ? I can understand an Arsenal fan wanting to wear his club's shirt, but does he want to advertize 'Fly Emirates' at the same time ? Bearing in mind that the advertizement is much bigger, and more prominent, than the clubs crest. My feeling is that if one of the Premiership clubs took the risk of having no sponsors - in effect giving their playing kit back to the fans, that they may well compensate for this by increased sales - if only for the novelty of having a shirt which stands only for your club and nothing else.
     
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  4. oldfrenchhorn

    oldfrenchhorn Well-Known Member
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    You can buy a very good football shirt in Decathlon, one of the largest sellers of sports equipment here for €9. Have one with the PSG badge and Fly Emirates on it and you will pay €55. Somewhere along the line there is a huge mark up. The sponsor must think it worthwhile to advertise the brand, otherwise they wouldn't pay up. Seeing as some people must buy a shirt with a players name on it, with every letter an extra profit, how many clubs will prefer players such as Oxlade-Chamberlain to a Sarr? Maximise your profit while you can is the message, and if it is a betting company that comes forward with such an offer I am surprised that SH wants to make exceptions, although I agree that betting is a disaster for many families.
     
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  5. superhorns

    superhorns Well-Known Member

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    Good post 100% agree.
     
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  6. superhorns

    superhorns Well-Known Member

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    I object to your inference that in my mind profits come before everything else, you obviously do not know me.
     
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  7. superhorns

    superhorns Well-Known Member

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    please keep your snide remarks to yourself.
     
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  8. oldfrenchhorn

    oldfrenchhorn Well-Known Member
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    Of course you are right that I don't know you SH, and can only judge what you are like by what you choose to post. There are many social issues that can have an adverse effect on people's lives, and it just seems strange to me that you have chosen just one thing to object to. As I said I am uncomfortable with betting and advertising on sports, but there are also other things that I have seen that do have a bad effect on families. As an example do you think it right that a person who has lost his job through no fault of his own cannot afford to take his couple of children to a football match anymore? Football once upon a time was cheap entertainment for the masses; you could not describe it as that anymore. Football clubs are there to make as much money as they can while they can, and that is understandable when you see a club lose status and suffer because they tried to buy success, and overreach themselves. How do you equate a footballer on £10M a year and the average person getting £27,000 for working more hours? If you want to stop one thing that can cause misery to people, you have to look that the way that society in general organises itself and tackle many problems.
     
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  9. superhorns

    superhorns Well-Known Member

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    There are many things wrong with society in all countries. This is a football based forum and I posted my views on our club's decision to chose it's sponsors. I think the insidious growth in online gambling should be reversed and I would like our club to follow Luton Town's admirable example to reject socially undesirable options.

    I understand WFC have recently had some games at very reasonable price of £5 for those aged under 18 in the family stand. My senior tickets are also very reasonable compared to most clubs. I doubt the cost of watching Watford in comparison to the average wage has changed much in the last 50 years.Thankfully there is no reason to be unemployed for long in most parts of the UK.

    As for the ridiculous amounts footballers are paid it is merely down to supply and demand. I would be interested in your solution to this anomaly? Can you also try to cut out the impolite comments so we can have a sensible discussion.
     
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  10. superhorns

    superhorns Well-Known Member

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    Coventry cup tie ticket prices, students £4, 18 and under £1, well done Watford FC.
     
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  11. oldfrenchhorn

    oldfrenchhorn Well-Known Member
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    As we are talking football, I would stop players hiding vast sums of money through such tax avoidance schemes as image rights. I would also create a tax on PL clubs for every ticket sold, money that would then be redistributed to clubs in the lower leagues. The PL is in danger of wiping out the teams in the lower leagues. The money given to the small clubs is quite derisory. Rugby introduced a wage cap that had the effect of players moving to France where one didn't operate. If such a cap was now introduced in football players would still come and play in England as they would still be very well payed compared to many other countries. The free for all that you advocate has adverse effects on people, clubs and players. It may take strong armed measures to restore some sort of balance, but I don't see the PL wanting to go down that route.
     
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  12. colognehornet

    colognehornet Well-Known Member

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    I would go further Frenchie. I would have strict rules as to what constitutes a football club - maybe along the lines of the German 51% ruling - ie. 51% of the shares must belong to club members. This prevents the type of predatory takeovers which take place in England. Amongst the top clubs in Europe, only PSG are organized similarly to the top sides of the Premiership. Real and Barcelona are both owned by their club members (fans) - Bayern are effectively controlled also by their members. The Premier League spends more money on transfers than the other 4 big leagues together, and takes a higher percentage of TV money. They are steadily draining Europe of talent - both on the playing and the managerial level. Only Barca, Real, Bayern, PSG and Juventus can compete financially with the big 6 in the Prem. and 3 of those are fan owned and are thus constrained to operating within their means. EUFA can take steps here to help us get back to a more balanced playing field but they have not made a good start in letting Man. City off so lightly - I was hoping for a Champions League ban at least.
     
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  13. NZHorn

    NZHorn Well-Known Member

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    Whilst I agree with your sentiments, Frenchie, there are three problems with this.
    First, governments are loathe to silo taxes from one source to be used is one particular way. Second, it is not for the government to make this decision. That is the job of the FA. Third, if the government got involved this could be viewed as political interference by the FIFA Given that the UK has four international sides the result could be expulsion of all four teams from FIFA.
     
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  14. NZHorn

    NZHorn Well-Known Member

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    Barcelona are bottom of La Liga. That will please the fans of my old local club RCD Mallorca.
     
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  15. oldfrenchhorn

    oldfrenchhorn Well-Known Member
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    I think I worded it badly NZ by saying taxes. I certainly wouldn't want government involved. They would probably want to levy VAT or something on it. The problem as I see it is that we have two bodies, the EPL and EFL, and one wishes to continue as it does at present, while the other struggles to make the clubs under its control viable. Can the FA as the overall body introduce such rulings, I am not sure. If they tried they would come under all sorts of pressure from all the current big six owners who are mainly from overseas anyway.
     
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  16. NZHorn

    NZHorn Well-Known Member

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    I think the Premier League is seriously worried about a breakaway European league so I think they are probably wary about trying to redistribute income. I doubt if there are many owners in the EPL who give a toss about what happens to Bury let alone teams like North Ferriby Utd. They are not football people.
     
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  17. oldfrenchhorn

    oldfrenchhorn Well-Known Member
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    Although I would like to see far more fan involvement, I suspect that things have gone too far with the big clubs to get them to agree such a plan. On a very much smaller scale Portsmouth were saved from extinction by the fans who effectively owned and controlled the club. A couple of years down the line and they realised that they couldn't raise the funds to progress and sold out to people who through a company could.
    Just look at who owns our EPL clubs. Only Brighton, Burnley, Newcastle, Norwich and West Ham are fully owned by GB nationals. Our football was firstly sold out to Sky, then to the super rich who could see there was a lot of money to be made. This has been bad for the 92 clubs, and shows how investment in the country, which this counts as, is not always the right thing.
     
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  18. superhorns

    superhorns Well-Known Member

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    If a cap was put on payment of players it would result in the absence of much of the fantastic talent from abroad the UK sees weekly in the PL. Subsequently less money would be paid by the broadcasters for the right to screen games resulting in even less revenue trickling down the lower divisions.
    Even an unlikely worldwide agreement to cap wages would soon be usurped by dodgy secret payments. A UK government would not be able to target football for a special tax, just not feasible.

    The answer to spreading the cash more evenly amongst the divisions is inside football. Hopefully the PL bosses can see the need for vibrant and sustainable divisions well below the rarified atmosphere of the PL. No system can protect foolish boards of some clubs overspending well beyond their means.
     
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  19. oldfrenchhorn

    oldfrenchhorn Well-Known Member
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    I agree with you over the European league. My comments to cologne about ownership of clubs raises the question about would an owner from the Middle east or the States even know that small clubs exist.
     
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  20. colognehornet

    colognehornet Well-Known Member

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    Maybe we need more exercise of fan power in England. The owners of eg. Man. City do not give a toss about Bury or Bolton, but the fans ? However rotten this once great club has become, there are still 50,000 fans going to watch this Abu Dhabi international all stars ensemble which still calls itself a football club. (I am picking out Man. City as an extreme example - but the same applies to some others). In Germany the fan comes first - this is emphasized by the fact that Borussia Dortmund have the biggest crowds in Europe but still have 70 million pounds less (per season) in gate receipts than Man. Utd. If you raise prices here - or even try to move Bundesliga matches to a monday night then fans vote with their feet and leave a large empty stand on match days. They also did this for matches against RB Leipzig. Maybe the thousands who still go to Old Trafford, or to Man.City, Chelsea, Arsenal etc. are ok. with the way things are - ok. with the fact that smaller clubs are going to the wall - maybe they are the problem. If football is played in front of empty stadiums then TV. takes notice of that, and the Oil Sheikhs take notice as well.
     
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