Earlier this week, telecommunications giant BT clinched another audacious rights deal as the company continued its determined attempt to make a serious impact upon the domestic television market when its two BT Sport TV channels launch this summer.
BT Vision agreed to buy ESPN’s television business, including the Disney-owned channel’s existing sports rights, for a sum believed to be around £33 million.
This was a smart piece of business, for it delivers a portfolio of valuable content, including matches in the FA Cup, Europa League, German Bundesliga and Scotland’s SPL that would have cost considerably more on the open market.
The ESPN deal, expected to be completed by 31 July, increases the likelihood of BT becoming a serious challenger to Sky’s sporting hegemony.
It has already secured the rights to screen 46 Premier League matches a season for four years from 2013-14 at a cost of £738 million as well as Premiership Rugby over the same period, an arrangement which comes at an annual cost of £38 million.
Yet it’s highly unlikely that any of this expensive jostling for the attention of sports fans and their television subscriptions would have taken place had it not been for a teetotal Scot who moved to Birmingham where his foresight effectively led to the creation of the football business.
In the late 19th century, a debate raged over whether professionals should be allowed to play for football teams governed by a nascent Football Association; few were more opposed to the notion than Charles Alcock, FA secretary from 1870 to 1895.
Apart from being a gifted, energetic administrator Alcock, described as “the father of modern football”, also represented England on five occasions and created the competition known as the FA Cup in 1871.
Alcock’s view on paying players to turn out for football teams was encapsulated in his famous phrase that, “veiled professionalism is the evil to be repressed.”
However, football club owners, recognising the game’s burgeoning popularity amongst the paying public, continued lobbying for the introduction of professionalism.
What was to become football’s financial juggernaut was slipping into first gear and in July 1885, the FA finally agreed that ‘waged players’ could play for clubs subject to certain conditions.
The response of Athletic News, a widely-read Victorian sports newspaper, to the FA’s decision was akin to that of ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’, for it wrote, “the reality of the fact is that they [professional footballers] are only servants”.
Whatever their status, professional footballers needed to be paid.
Step forward Scottish-born William McGregor, a Midlands draper, member of the Birmingham Football Association and of Aston Villa.
It’s his rotund statue which stands proudly outside of Villa Park clutching a piece of paper, arguably the most important in football’s often chequered commercial history.
Despite the formal introduction of professionals, late Victorian matches were either friendlies or cup ties, which meant that football clubs had no reliable source of regular income – being drawn against a minnow in the FA Cup or a smaller, regional knock-out tournament, did little to boost attendances.
The story goes that on one occasion, Villa’s scheduled opponents failed to turn up for such a game, much to the chagrin of McGregor and Villa’s directors.
In 1888, therefore, McGregor composed a letter to the owners of England’s leading clubs in which he suggested that as a means of circumventing the ad hoc nature of cup matches and intermittent friendlies, “that ten or twelve of the most prominent clubs in England combine to arrange home and away fixtures each season,” adding that his proposal was “in no way to interfere with the National Association” as the FA was then known.
The Football League was born.
More importantly, perhaps, is that this new body effectively took over the management of the professional game, leaving the FA to concentrate upon the thousands of amateur clubs.
While the FA Cup had been a huge success, responsible for ensuring a national football code was accepted nationwide, its existence actually hampered the commercial development of major clubs.
In other words, it was the understandable ambition to be successful in both business and sport (the two were now inextricably linked) which motivated the Football League’s founders.
The growth of England’s major cities also provided large catchment areas for Football League clubs who began attracting spectators in hitherto unheard-of numbers, while the national structure – based upon America’s professional baseball league, first established in 1871 – proved enormously popular.
In its first year, the Football League registered 448 playing professionals, suggesting average squad sizes of 37.
By 1896, a total of 16 Football League clubs had 675 professionals registered on their books, although a sizeable number of these players were semi-professional or triallists.
However, at this stage even well-established professionals were paid comparatively small retainers for their services. Blackburn, for example, paid their full-time professionals 10/6 (52.5p) a week, while Sheffield Wednesday offered 9/- (45p) for a home match and 11/- (55p) for an away fixture.
Moreover, players had to provide their own kit and boots. As crowds grew, so too did the league – as did wages. By the late 1890s, players received an average of £3 a week during the season and a weekly £2 in the summer.
Saturday marks the 125th anniversary of William McGregor’s suggestion that the country’s largest professional clubs should establish a national football league.
This simple format has been copied across the world and accounts for the beautiful game’s unprecedented popularity.
Neither McGregor nor any of his nineteenth century colleagues could have foreseen what has occurred since, although the words of BT’s Marc Watson, the company’s chief executive of television, following this week’s acquisition of ESPN’s television and sports rights, had an appropriately nineteenth century resonance.
Mr Watson said: “We’re a big business and we’re a profitable business, so we can afford to invest in things that make sense and we can afford to stay the course and to be successful.”
The comment could have been made by the chairman of Accrington Stanley in 1888 after his club became founder members of the Football League.
Instead, Mr Watson was talking about a business that reported pre-tax profits of £2.44 billion last year and is now desperately keen to make an impression with football fans.
However, had William McGregor not composed his letter on 2nd March 1888, one wonders what BT, or Sky, would be spending their money on.
