8h ago

How modern football’s exploitation model brewed fan resentment | Jonathan Wilson

www.theguardian.com How modern football’s exploitation model brewed fan resentment | Jonathan Wilson

Supporters have marched in protest at a number of Premier League grounds. It’s not hard to see why they believe their game is being taken away

Jonathan Wilson elegantly describes why many, myself included, have been falling out of love with modern football, little by little. The best part of the article describes it really well, in my opinion:

"Those traditional fans have gradually seen the sport their families have perhaps supported for generations change. (...) Lip service is paid to fans and their devotion, but increasingly they are exploited and marginalised and their importance to the club is diminished."

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The one good thing about being a fan of an MLS team is that we are less exploited. We're still exploited, mind you, especially in the ticket price discussion; but at least they aren't holding MLS games in London or Berlin. It's also nice that MLS TV broadcast is included as part of season ticket prices (and is relatively cheap in general if you aren't a STH).
The bad thing for MLS is that the spending cap makes ANY amount of exploitation suck because fans don't at least get the benefit of a better team out of it. My team is the most valuable with the highest priced tickets and most merch sold, but we can't dump more money in better players to enhance our squad.
- Although I don't know MLS, your description could also be true when considering smaller European leagues. As a Dutchman I somewhat follow the Dutch Eredivisie. There we have a generally well developed fan culture, full stadiums with good atmosphere and several teams challenging for the title all while not being skinned alive as English fans often are.
  
  And there won't be talks of Dutch teams having regular season games in the US, like in La Liga.
  
  Haha! We had one supercup in 2021 that was played in Tel Aviv of all places for some reason. Well, at least the league has promised never to do anything like that again after some serious backlash.