Football Is Big Business
Three years ago I started a tiny blog all about Manchester United, the World’s Greatest Football Team (copyright © 2008 Christopher Rose), stunningly titled About Manchester United.
Due to a whole ton of reasons which will one day be chronicled elsewhere, I haven’t been keeping About Manchester United (™) up to date, but it features match reviews and news stories about the World’s Greatest Football Team (© 2008 Christopher Rose), nothing totally original, just one guy’s small tribute to his home town team.
About two years ago, at the start of the 2006-2007 season, I published an article looking forward to the coming season and detailing United’s fixtures for the season ahead.
It was no big deal, just a list of fixtures that I compiled myself from a variety of sources such as the online BBC Football section and from the Red Devils’ own site. I even went so far as to incorporate links back to all the other clubs’ home pages in the fixture list. Hey, even though I support the Greatest Football Team in the World (™), I’m not above giving the little guys a break.
Some time after posting the fixtures, I received an email from some overly excited law firm demanding that I remove the fixtures from the article as it breached the Premier League and/or the FA’s copyright. What? My tiny blog, which has a combined readership well into the dozens, was a threat to these mighty organisations or was somehow going to put these mighty organisations out of business? Surely this is the law gone mad? Or at least with too much time on its hands.
I was actually very busy struggling to survive at the time (some things never change) and never actually got around to removing the list. My bad!
Fortunately, the legal eagles somehow overlooked my terrible crime of loving a football club and never followed up on their threats to throw me out on the streets, seize all my vast possessions and curse my entire gene line until the end of time. Lucky me.
This was a salutary lesson on the power of big business gone mad and, to show my respect for the great powers that be and the wonderful corporations that now control the World’s Greatest Game (™), I present you the latest list of league fixtures facing the Red Devils in the coming season.
AIG v Northern Rock Sunday 17 August 2008, 16:00
Oki Printers v AIG Monday 25 August 2008, 20:00
Carlsberg Lager v AIG Saturday 13 September 2008, 12:45
Samsung v AIG Sunday 21 September 2008, 14:00
AIG v Reebok Saturday 27 September 2008, 15:00
Crown Paints v AIG Saturday 4 October 2008, 17:30
AIG v T Mobile Saturday 18 October 2008, 17:30
Chang Beer v AIG Saturday 25 October 2008, 12:00
AIG v XL Holidays Wednesday 29 October 2008, 20:00
AIG v Karoo Saturday 1 November 2008, 15:00
Emirates v AIG Saturday 8 November 2008, 12:45
AIG v Britannia Building Society Saturday 15 November 2008, 15:00
Acorns v AIG Saturday 22 November 2008, 17:30
Thomas Cook v AIG Sunday 30 November 2008, 13:30
AIG v Boylesports Saturday 6 December 2008, 15:00
Mansion v AIG Saturday 13 December 2008, 15:00
AIG v JJB Sports Saturday 20 December 2008, 15:00
Britannia Building Society v AIG Friday 26 December 2008, 15:00
AIG v Garmin Sunday 28 December 2008, 14:00
AIG v Samsung Saturday 10 January 2009, 15:00
Reebok v AIG Saturday 17 January 2009, 15:00
T Mobile v AIG Tuesday 27 January 2009, 19:45
AIG v Chang Beer Saturday 31 January 2009, 15:00
XL Holidays v AIG Saturday 7 February 2009, 15:00
AIG v Crown Paints Saturday 21 February 2009, 15:00
AIG v Oki Printers Saturday 28 February 2009, 15:00
Northern Rock v AIG Wednesday 4 March 2009, 19:45
AIG v Carlsberg Lager Saturday 14 March 2009,15:00
LG v AIG Saturday 21 March 2009, 15:00
AIG v Acorns Saturday 4 April 2009, 15:00
Boylesports v AIG Saturday 11 April 2009, 15:00
JJB Sports v AIG Saturday 18 April 2009, 15:00
AIG v Mansion Saturday 25 April 2009, 15:00
Garmin v AIG Saturday 2 May 2009, 15:00
AIG v Thomas Cook Saturday 9 May 2009, 15:00
AIG v Emirates Saturday 16 May 2009, 15:00
Karoo v AIG Sunday 24 May 2009, 16:00
Welcome to the future, sports fans.
I note that AIG have a particularly difficult start to the new season with the opening fixture against Northern Rock followed by three consecutive away games against Oki Printers, Carlsberg Lager and Samsung. Typical!
The author would like to convey his personal appreciation to the unnamed company that designed the almost identical web sites of a large proportion of the Premier League clubs. I especially like the obligatory two pages of adverts one has to view before actually accessing the web site content. What a great idea! It doesn’t make the football clubs seem somewhat of an afterthought at all…
Written by Christopher Rose · Filed Under Football
I’ve long since resigned myself to the idea that watching football now involves going into a ground renamed after a sponsor, sitting in a stand named after another sponsor, and watching two teams with sponsors’ logos on their shirts playing in competitions bearing yet more sponsors’ names. Such is the cost in dignity of affording players’ wages. There is, however, a line that should never be crossed, and your story hints at it: the renaming of clubs after sponsors. Please, dear footie authorities, let us in England and Scotland never reach the depths of depravity plumbed in the League of Wales, where fixtures between Airbus UK and Total Network Solutions have been known. What did the fans chant? ‘Come on you Solutions’ just doesn’t sound right, does it?
Though I did admire the ingenuity shown by the latter club when their deal with the communications company ended: they’d been known as T.N.S. for years, so they invented a new name to fit the initials. Smart move, The New Saints FC!
Hi Dave,
Yeah, how about those Welsh football teams?
Romantic stuff for such a poetic nation, eh? What next, renaming poems or something? How about Under Cravendale Wood instead of Under Milk Wood?