Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100661 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 308 pages

Book Jacket
Football is the sport of the '90s and much hyped by the new adoring media. Crowds sit down in slick new stadiums, watching an exciting generation of millionnaire players in thh satellite-television-fuelled FA Carling Premiership. In The Football Business, David Conn examines the changed game of football in the '90s and analyses the transformations of clubs such as Manchester United, Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur and others into stockmarket money-making machines. Why have so many top football clubs been taken over by businessmen? What have the changes meant to supporters? Why, with football enjoying phenomenal new wealth, are some Nationwide League clubs facing financial ruin? How healthy are football's grass roots? This book searches behind English football's hype to ask what has really happened, what has been gained and what has been lost as football has ceased to be a game and become a business.

About the Book
"David Conn has written an impressive book... He has done football a service" --Financial Times

About the Author
David Conn contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including The Times and FourFourTwo. This is his first book.

Synopsis
In eight years English football has been transformed. In 1989 clubs were banned from Europe and the Hillsborough disaster exposed football's crumbling grounds. Today football is cleaned up and is also big business. Since the Taylor report forced English clubs to spend #600 million rebuilding their grounds, and since Sky and the BBC put #1 billion into the game, serious businessmen have arrived in football, and have mostly been welcomed because of the money they were "investing" into the "long-term health of the game". This book examines the transformation and asks is it still a game or a business?

Customer Reviews

football business
very good seller

David Conn: The Football Business.
I bought this book when it was first published. It is written in an easy Sunday paper editorial style and bobs along with lot's oooh's and aaahhhs' until you arrive at the Hillsborough part. Not once I have managed to get through that chapter without having to choke back the tears. Not always successfully.

A beautiful excoriating essay on the sale and lease back of our game

Unfair game since the '90's ?
A real eyeopener into the world of football beyond 22 men on a grass pitch.

The book looks at the aspects of the game which have caused it to go into serious decline ... largely to the ignorance of football fans throughout Britain.

It begins with case studies into various clubs and the takeovers and/or stock market flotations. The turning of football clubs " ... into money making machines".

Read these case studies to discover how various club chairmen have made fortunes from the game far beyond the wildest dreams of most 'punters'.

Read about how the lowet level grass roots of the game is dying due to the greed and politics of those at the top.

Read how a century old institution - the FA - turned on its own beliefs and morals to help the big guns breakaway and form what we know now as the Premiership.

Read how the big clubs took advantage of the Taylor Report to line their own pockets.

Read an account of the Hillsborough disaster and the everlasting effect it has had on the families of the victims and also the extent to which it (along with the Tayor report) essentially changed the face of football.

Even the most hardened football fan will surely feel anger when reading the Hillsborough chapter.

If you havent considered before how finances in football really operate and the true extent to exactly how the 'rich get richer and the poor get poorer' then you must read this book!

As an Accountancy student, i read this book as a basis for a dissertation i was writing based on football finances and it was extremley helpful. It literally changed my outlook on the world of football.

The beautiful game ..... i always thought so ... i dont now!