The Football Business: Fair Game in the '90s? (Mainstream Sport) (Paperback)

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?