Week 40: Should We Let MR MBE Fight PPV ASAP?
In the crazier-than-ever world of football, Marcus Rashford MBE is getting a bit of a reputation when it comes to fighting for a cause.
In the summer he forced the Conservative Party into one of their numerous U-turns when he argued for free school meals over the six weeks’ holiday period. But making them change their policy wasn’t enough – after all, they were doing it every other day – so rather than stop there, he’s continued the fight.
His latest quest to further reduce child hunger – while pooh-poohed by the Government, and Boris in particular, who would rather just pretend he met with him than face the issue head on – has touched the hearts and pockets of many with countless councils and private organisations stepping in to provide funding and meals for school children during the half-term holidays.
As well as picking up the new title (in the delayed Queen’s Birthday honours list) for his humanitarian efforts, he has refused to back away despite the push-back from Parliament and has doubled-down with his campaign whilst exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy of those who voted against it (but continue to claim money for expenses and eat subsidised meals despite earning between £70K and £160K per year). In his spare time, he also netted his first senior hat-trick for Manchester United in the Champions League encounter against last year’s semi-finalists, RB Leipzig to follow up last week’s winner against beaten 2020 finalists, PSG, in Paris.
As Europe’s defenders are finding out all the time, he’s coming to get them and he will take some stopping. Mr Johnson and his advisers might find they can’t hide in the bedroom and ignore the knocks on the door this time. They’ll find he’s a lot more Churchill than IDS.
The UK public, however, have got fully behind him and his crusade. Or as fully as is possible when a footballer is involved because there are some that will always let partisan and tribal vantage points discolour their view. Rashford has been accused of virtue-signalling by some and best of all, told to ‘stick to football’.
Virtue signalling (I had to look it up) is, according to Google, the practice of ‘publicly expressing opinions intended to demonstrate one’s good character on a particular issue.’ So whoever accused him of this can’t really understand it; or Google’s meaning doesn’t mean shit. For a start, he’s not publicly expressing anything, he’s doing it; putting his money where his mouth is if you like and making things happen with action. If this happens to show him in a good light, then so what? It should do. If he also happens to be a good guy, is that really a problem either? It’s not as if he’s hanging about on social media with the sole intention of throwing mud now, is it?
As for sticking to football, are they suggesting that a footballer is no good for anything else but kicking a ball around? Often, they are the same people who complain that Premier League footballers spend too much time in their own bubble; unaware of the world outside their privileged lifestyle.
And while getting involved in things you know nothing about it is sometimes a bad thing – Oliver Dowden, I’m looking at you – it can also be a catalyst for change that wouldn’t otherwise happen. In that respect, a high-profile footballer can be exactly what is required because they are capable of getting coverage and reach, that mere mortals simply cannot achieve. Rashford has 3.7m (more than the Prime Minister) followers on Twitter, for example, and a further 9m (nearly 10X more than the Prime Minister) on Instagram. What he says and does goes a long way.
Interestingly, a recent study by Twitter showed that Rashford was the most trolled footballer on their social media platform in August and September with 28.5% of posts about him considered negative. By contrast, Paul Pogba received the most positive percentage of posts (45.5%) of Premier League footballers which suggests that sitting on your arse has its advantages in Britain today, and is possibly the model that the Prime Minister is following on many issues.
But the hate, probably fuelled by his campaign (his petition to get the Government to act has now for gathered over one million signatures), won’t stop Marcus Rashford.
Although maybe it tells us all we need to know about some of the society he is trying to make better.
Maybe it’s also time to get him involved in the PPV debate. Goodness knows it needs an injection of something that the public like the sound of.
With coronavirus robbing fans of seeing their beloved teams in stadiums, and after many have forked out on season tickets they cannot use (while also not requesting refunds in lots of cases), they are now being asked to pay £14.95 per match to watch their team play behind closed doors matches via the broadcasters. This is in addition to the Sky, BT and Amazon Prime subscriptions that many fans already pay for to watch live Premier League football.
Of course, lots of these fans have also lost jobs or seen their furlough money come to an end.
Like the government’s underestimation of the school meal problem and the reaction to it – one Tory MP likened that to ‘looking as if they are taking food off the starving kids’ plates’ – so the clubs and Premier League have misread the mood amongst the general public.
Marcus Rashford was told by the government that the public weren’t very interested in starving kids. Bankers, hedge fund managers and wealthy business-people, coming into Britain on private jets and into chauffeur-driven cars, yet being asked to quarantine, was what was really important to us ordinary folk. How wrong they were.
And the Premier League are equally wrong about this. But it should be noted that the clubs too were initially in favour (or 19 out of 20 were; Leicester City the odd one out in the vote and, as it turned out, the one now on the moral high ground).
Originally, when fans were prevented from attending games, the matches not on the scheduled broadcast list were shown for free-to-air, but that was stopped in October. The PPV was introduced as an ‘interim solution’ to allow fans to see their club but some smelt a rat. A. greedy fat one.
Fans began boycotting the broadcasts and sending the money to charity instead (£300,000+ has been raised already) and Newcastle United owner, Mike Ashley, whose club still owes season ticket holders about £7m in refunds, said the scheme had been ‘overwhelmingly rejected by fans’ and wanted to knock the price down to £4.95 (cough*sportsdirect.com*cough) until after Christmas.
This figure was rejected as it wouldn’t cover the costs of the broadcast, and it then emerged that BT Sport and Sky Sports want the PPV model scrapped too as it is damaging their reputations. Note: it’s not, their reputations were never that great to begin with.
Pundit Gary Neville thinks PPV is already dead in the water as ‘no one is watching it’ and it should be scrapped. He’s half right – the numbers watching are 40,000 per game on average so about the same as a full stadium so in that sense, it is being seen as a success – so you sense that its fate might rest on the way it has damaged public relations at a time when it was the last thing the Premier League or the clubs wanted.
But while the broadcasters threw them both under the bus and denied ever wanting to be a part of it, the ‘it wasn’t my idea’ claims were reverberating at boardrooms around the country, but the fans weren’t that interested in who was to blame, just that their voice was being heard.
People, mainly fans but not exclusively, had not just rejected PPV. They had said they didn’t want the piss taken out of them any longer. Just like they debunked the government’s belief that no-one cares about hungry children (a schoolboy error if ever there was one), it’s a clear sign that the public aren’t going to just sit there and take it in the post-Covid era (assuming we reach that at some point).
In the recent kerfuffle with Premier League clubs, the main source of disagreement was power.
The clubs want more. The leagues want more. Federations want more. The players, naturally, also want more.
But it might just be that the group with the most power – and members – of all has been overlooked. This could be a lesson in the way that fans are viewed, and treated, going forward.
While the ‘big’ clubs can probably survive without ticket sales, half-empty stadiums – especially when fans are allowed back – is never a good look. The broadcasters would hate that too. But there is possibly an assumption that fans will simply be ready and waiting when restrictions are eventually lifted and this might end up being well wide of the mark.
If, as predicted, fans are kept away until February or March, then that will be a whole year without football. While it’s easy to picture them as inpatient and desperate to return to something they love, it’s not guaranteed. At a recent game in Brussels, the Belgian FA made 11,000 tickets available for a national team game against the Ivory Coast and only sold 6,200; of which about 4,000 actually turned up on the night.
These are unprecedented times. It would be remiss to expect everyone to do as they always have.
This constant and unashamed exploitation of fans won’t have gone unnoticed – and it partly why the government probably haven’t rushed to help football out of its financial crisis. They, like us, can see lots of money and greed in there and assume it has the resources internally to cope.
The reality, of course – like life in general – is that most of the wealth is concentrated at the very top and everyone else is desperately trying to cling on.
That includes fans, even those of the big clubs. While shirt sales, broadcast deals and sponsorship might sustain a football club against pandemics and lost income, they don’t tend to help the fans make ends meet or pay the bills.
So asking for more, at a time when they are financially strapped, and some aren’t able to feed their kids, is always going to jar with the public conscience.
Maybe, this is not just telling us that we don’t need PPV.
Some of the off-field entertainment might make us wonder if we need to pay to watch televised football at all. There is certainly more fun to be had than watching West Brom and Burnley play out a goalless draw.
Marcus Rashford has already struck a few blows. Mike Ashley never disappoints when it comes to comedic value. The government have missed a wide-open goal while at the other end, the Premier League has just gone and put one in their own net.
And no one had to pay a penny to watch.
words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist