Sport bosses are always out to sod the public

Way back in 1985 Kingsley Amis wrote an article published in The Spectator entitled “A Consumer’s Guide to Sod the Public”; an A-Z of “annoyances perpetrated on the public by those who should be serving us”. Someone more energetic than I might care to bring it up to date, covering all depressing areas of modern life. So meanwhile I’ll restrict myself to sport. It’s a big enough target for it sometimes seems that the required qualification for membership of a sport’s governing body is indifference to public opinion, a willingness indeed to sod the public.

The public isn’t of course a uniform body. There are people passionately and actively involved in a sport. There are people with a keen and often long-sustained interest in it, people who are regular supporters of their clubs as well as of the national team. There are people whose interest is occasional. They like the sport but often don’t follow is closely. They watch Test matches and international matches, Cup Finals, Wimbledon, The Open, The Grand National and the Derby. Administrators should bear them all in mind and recognise that they have a duty to them.

But do they? Do they hell? It only needs Mr Moneybags disguised as a Private Equity firm to dangle the promise of a big “investment” for them to cry out, “let’s grab it – and sod the public!” Who can forget the ECB’s “deal” with the Texan tycoon, Allen Stanford for a $20 million five match T20 series between England and a West Indies All-Star XI? The media highlight was the arrival at Lord’s of a helicopter supposedly stuffed with cash to be welcomed by the ECB chairman Giles Clarke and its CEO David Collier. The shoddy deal fell through only when the US tax authorities moved in on Stanford.

Still, let’s set that little embarrassment aside. Nobody ‘s head rolled. In any case the ECB had already shown its willingness to sod the public if there was money to be made. The Ashes Test series of 2005 was broadcast ball-by-ball by Channel 4 on free-to-air TV. The quality of the coverage matched the quality of the cricket in that gripping series. So what did the ECB do? They sold the TV rights for Test cricket to Sky – the price doubtless reflecting Channel 4’s success. Consequence: the audience for Test matches is much smaller, very much smaller that it was, and a generation has grown up ignorant of the game. But who cares so long as the money rolls in?

Four-day County Championship matches rarely attract crowds now, but the Championship is followed eagerly by all traditional cricket lovers.They of course are utterly unimportant, meat to be sodded. And so sodded they well and truly are. Matches are mostly tucked away at the beginning and end of the season , while the months of high summer are given over to the shorter forms of the game.

One consequence is that the Championship is now usually played on bowler-friendly wickets no longer seems to nurture batsmen capable of playing a long Test match innings. But the ECB shrugs its corporate shoulders.

Now, to boost cricket’s popularity and attract a new audience of women and children (in the patronizing language of the ECB – why don’t they add ‘ignorant’?), a new tournament “The Hundred” has been devised to satisfy this imagined audience who find T20 matches a bit drawn-out. I have never heard a cricket lover express enthusiasm for the idea of “The Hundred” or indeed speak of it without contempt. So what? TV deals have been signed, sponsors lined up, and the ECB’s director of marketing tells us it’s already a big success, more than a year before the first game is played. Sod the true cricket lovers. We’re not interested in them.

Now consider Rugby Union, a game which, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, is in prime health a quarter of a century after it abandoned its commitment to amateurism. There can be very few tournaments in any sport which match the Six Nations for popular appeal. Interest is widespread, grounds are full, television audiences on the BBC and ITV large.

In the northern hemisphere rugby’s problem is how to maintain this level of popularity and how to reconcile rising costs (salaries and insurance) with concerns for players welfare in an ever more physically punishing game. Now we find the game’s overall Governing Body proposing a world-wide league, partly to solve the financial problems of southern hemisphere countries, while in the North the Six Nations committee is considering the sale of some 27 per cent of itself to CVC Capital, a Private Equity company. The opinions of the clubs who constitute each national Union haven’t apparently been canvassed, let alone those of ordinary fans or supporters. Meanwhile we are told that accepting this CVC “investment” would almost certainly mean that the BBC and UTV would lose broadcasting rights which would be sold to SKY, BT or some other subscription, or perhaps pay-as-you-view company.

Is this wise? Not in the opinion of Bob Fernley who was manager of the Grand Prix motor-racing team Force India when Formula One accepted an investment from CVC Capital. “All their actions,” he has been quoted as saying, “have been taken to extract as much money from the sport as possible and put as little as possible into it.” Perhaps he is biased. Perhaps he is speaking the truth.

The Wales-England match in Cardiff this year attracted an audience of almost six and a half million on BBC One. “Ah”, say those indifferent to the public, “you must realize that people’s viewing habits are changing. They watch live-streams on their laptop, or follow the game on a tablet or phone… No doubt, no doubt, but those who do so are probably on the move. Nobody at home would surely choose live-stream coverage to TV coverage. And indeed they don’t. Of those who watched that match in Cardiff only 54,000 did so on laptop, tablet or phone.

Taking the Six Nations off the BBC and ITV, will anger many, disappoint many, and, on all evidence, shrink the audience. But a subscription channel can and will pay more for a small audience than the BBC or ITV.

So, once again, those who should be serving the public will contentedly sod it.

I’ve written here before about the lamentable decision of the tennis authorities to replace the Davis Cup with an end of season International Championship and won’t repeat my arguments, adding only that to get rid of a tournament which delights crowds and takes tennis often to places where there is usually little opportunity to watch international competition, but brings in little money, and to replace it with one which is commercially more attractive is yet another example of a governing body’s willingness to ignore its sport’s true fans in order to sell the product to investors and advertisers; so, sod the public.

Surprisingly, football, of all sports the most money-swollen and therefore most open to corruption, shows in some ways more respect for the ordinary fan – that is, its public – than either cricket or rugby union. This is partly because it can afford to, partly because of the sentimentality attached to the game – a sentimentality which requires the adjective “beloved” to be used to describe any fan’s relationship with his or her club.

Yet football isn’t free of the “sod the public” attitude either. Remember Kingsley Amis’s definition? Well, there was a time, not very long ago, when all, or almost all, league matches kicked off at the same time on Saturday afternoon. The 3 o’clock kick-off was a fixed point in the rhythm of life, and a satisfying one. Now that’s long gone. Matches are staggered. Is there anyone who prefers a 7.45 kick-off in midweek to the old fixed point of a Saturday? I would guess not, but I don’t know. I don’t know because I do know that the one set of people never consulted about such changes are the fans. The fans, the public… sod them, say the men in sharp suits and plush seats.