There’s a blunt quote from the film Network that sums up how many a businessman would view loyalty in global sport.
“You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.
“Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, euros, yen, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet.
“The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale.”
There is no loyalty, there is no real national pride, sport like anything else is just business – the boredom-killing business. Let go and give in to the tidal forces of the free market.
In terms of sporting loyalty, Australia is still a little antiquated.
We still have a large number of sporting teams where the players were born and raised in the area that their team represents, playing juniors, raising their families, some even refusing bigger money to stay settled in the area they grew up in.
This isn’t to say that we aren’t highly professionalised, but many our sports have a mixture of racehorse trading professionalism with a touch of local heritage and pride.
In Australia, however, people still have a great deal of pride based on where a player is from.
They will argue to the ends of the earth about where someone played juniors, whether they are a Kiwi or an Aussie, which state can rightly claim that they the ‘produced’ the player in question.
This is partly because Australia sports are more of a religious ideology. Because of this people are clannish and feel uneasy with those who lack loyalty or cross codes. They are met with skepticism and their character is often questioned.
When Australians (and New Zealanders and South Africans) look at English Premier League and American sports, they will either see sports that have lost their way or they might see the future.
They are sports that focus on nothing but the best players and athletes no matter where they are from – nothing more, nothing less.
If we were to look at a spectrum, many antipodean sports hold strong values on tradition and loyalty, and that there is a level of commercialisation that devalues sport.
European premier grade football or French Top 14 rugby hold strong traditions and rich histories, but the idea of the importance of players from the local area, or even from the country itself, is an antiquated concept.
Many are private business often owned by foreign billionaires who trade players like highly prized racehorses and will search the globe to attract players with huge sums of money.
American sports – predominantly baseball, basketball and American football – are either looked at as highly financially innovative and superior, or they are derisively mocked.
The opening of the movie BASEketball sets up a premise of a dystopian American sporting future based on continuing over-commercialisation, declining sportsmanship and grandstanding, mercenary professionalism, teams moving from city to city and cheap money-grubbing events that eventually turn the public off them all together.
It’s a great piece of satire because it isn’t that far from reality, and perhaps adds a little food for thought for Australians who want Australian sports to emulate America.
Now let’s jump back to where it all began.
The first football to which all footballs originate, ‘mob football’, was a game played between neighbouring towns and villages.
It involved an unlimited number of players on opposing teams who would clash in a heaving mass of people, struggling to drag an inflated pig’s bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town.
It was literally a way of saying “my town is stronger and better than your town”.
Even to this day, despite all the changes of professional football, this basic primordial concept is at the heart of every major sporting event or rivalry.
Football in those days became popular because a town could have pride in victory, because they were involved in it.
From there football became games of talented amateurs and gentleman and the concept of professional sport was abhorrent and reprehensible, while the common man would look at football as a way out of the horrible drudgery of working class or peasant life.
This legacy is why we have two rugbys.
For a common person to be physically better than a wealthy gentleman with all their monetary advantages would have been a great revelation and burgeoned all of the different footballs’ popularity.
Sports since then have had an obsession with ‘rags to riches’ romantic fairy tales and the belief that an underdog could defeat a favourite through sheer determination.
People want to live vicariously through players and imagine themselves in their place, and these romantic stories give that to them.
As fans, a small part of us wants to think we contributed to our team’s victory, however ridiculous that may seem. We want to think that it was something to do with our city, our state or our country more than just money that made our team win.
The State of Origin concept is the representation of this.
Origin shows that no matter how professional sport becomes that the antiquated concept of that players should play for and represent the place that they were born and raised can still unleash an amazing amount of pride and financial popularity.
There is also incredible anger when the concept is devalued.
In Australia we have many sporting myths that are often implicit – about our outdoors lifestyle, climate, our toughness, skill, athleticism, our winning sporting culture or our never say die ‘Aussie spirit’.
Our opponents will often have the very same ideas in reverse with a slightly different twist.
In reality, we have more than likely paid for the best players, the best coaches, built the best facilities, and so on.
We think this because we want to believe our athletes are a bit more Rocky, a bit less Ivan Drago.
All products in a free market, and sport in particular, rely on brand loyalty. Damage to brand loyalty, image and integrity can devastate any business.
In professional sport, if we step back it can be a bizarre concept.
Everybody has a different idea of loyalty, and loyalty between players and clubs is often very shallow.
With fans some will blow with the wind, some can have many sporting loyalties and others can follow a team their entire life in one sport, love and hate players like they were their best mates or worst enemies.
When I lived in London for six months helping to set up events I worked with a global mixture of Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Polish, Portuguese, French, Africans, Indians and maybe the odd Englishman or Irishmen.
I learnt that the most common topic of conversation was soccer/football; that everybody, no matter what, followed a team with serious passion (and you had to call it football).
The Australians I lived with, born and raised in Adelaide, were diehard Arsenal supporters. Other friends I was surrounded by from Melbourne supported a mixture of Newcastle FC, Chelsea, Fulham and Everton.
I felt this whole thing was a bit bizarre. I ‘picked’ a mixture of those teams but, not being enamoured with the game, I didn’t want to fight with someone pointlessly over something about which I had no real passion.
I couldn’t really get into it, but I did try.
While, I understand that Premier League teams and NFL teams are global brands – less about geography, more about the brilliance of the teams – I personally struggle to manufacture such disconnected, yet diehard loyalty.
“Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify,” Jerry Seinfeld said. “Because the players are always changing, the team could move to another city… you’re actually rooting for the clothes, when you get right down to it.
“You’re standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. Fans will be so in love with a player, but if he goes to another team, they’ll boo him.
“This is the same human being in a different shirt, they hate him now! Boo! Different shirt! Boo…”
Now when it comes to the free market, following a sports team is not exactly the same as going to the shop and buying milk – it can take a lot of passion, hardship and cost.
Sports still have to motivate people to get off their bums and pay for an expensive non-essential purchase to exist.
Sports are driven by consumer demand and the most loyal fans are like gold. They are shareholders that require only an emotional dividend rather than a financial return.
Memberships have become a vital component of modern Australian sporting teams and building this loyalty. Sports marketing is getting more and more intricate to build a solid financial base for sporting teams.
But in return they feel that they should have a say on the decisions and the directions the sport and clubs take.
There is nothing that says people have to put up with any decision the sport they love makes, and the costs are severe if they feel that it devalues why they like the game in the first place.
The decisions teams and competitions must make with a free market must still be mindful in alienating the core fan-base of a team or sport can have dire financial consequences.
Although perhaps I am overestimating the consumer, like most consumers they are easily led.
Do they really care that much? Maybe they aren’t so savvy and like a mob “just follow the clothes”.
Sport is, after all, in the boredom-killing business.
Jimbo
Guest
Excellent read. Very spot on.
Rugby stu
Roar Pro
Yep, this big deal really has illustrated it all doesn't it. Forget all the fuzzy myths. Money talks, bull**** walks. Greed for lack of a better word is good. Here's the full speech from the network if nobody has seen it, it pretty much sums up the harsh reality of the globalised business world in one of the best speeches in movies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqrY2F_Xz3s
nickoldschool
Roar Guru
"Point being, the idea that Australians are more traditionalist, I’m not sure I buy it (although I know we definitely like to think we are)." So true ciudad and that was a point I was trying to make. When there is money to make, nice values like "tradition, pride, dignity" etc do not matter much, whether you are an aussie, a yank, a french or a brit. Man city buying (ok 'investing') an aussie football franchise just shows that aussies like everyone else say 'thank you very much' when you show them a big cheque.
Rugby stu
Roar Pro
That's true but loyal fans "spread your teams gospel", they are free marketers and they raise they kids to be the next generation of loyal fans. The multiplier effect is huge financially if you think about it. Yeah that's why I'm glad that memberships have become so important because teams will be able to watch the numbers and see whether they are engaging or losing key supporters. The kids stuff is interesting the kids have become more important than the parents who no longer dictate the market as much even though parents are the financial gate keepers. The way of the world I suppose, the balance of power has shifts on the school holidays.
ciudadmarron
Guest
Stu you talk about the loyal customers with their emotional dividends being vital but I do wonder how important these types of people are to franchises. These are the fans who will put up with a lot more than more casual fans and therefore can be taken for granted to a certain extent - this often means that what they want can more easily be ignored. I know that ideally franchises want to turn customers into these types, absolutely. This perhaps is why there is so much of a focus on kids and entertaining kids. Once you've got the kid hooked, they will turn into a rusted on type and that's the aim. But clubs seem to go for gimmickry etc to attract the kids.
Rugby stu
Roar Pro
I realise that Australian teams moved, merged and killed teams but rarely is it successful. The Brisbane Lions and Sydney Swans did offcourse do it with relative success.
Rugby stu
Roar Pro
If the Eels moved to Western Australia or Queensland or New Zealand would you still follow them or would you start following Wests or the Bulldogs? Or would you just forget about League and focus on Liverpool? That's why I put the U.S as the more extreme part of commercialisation because of the movement of teams to other cities. Could you imagine if Liverpool moved cities. It probably wouldn't kill the team there would still be many people who support "the reds" a large, loyal contingent of Liverpudlians would feel like they were walking alone forever and hate the team and follow any team that opposed it.
ciudadmarron
Guest
Or because it was almost impossible to move. Most major leagues around the world, including football in Europe, baseball in America, Aussie Rules down under, all made it extremely difficult for players to move. This gave many fans a false sense and false expectations of player loyalty.
Rugby stu
Roar Pro
I agree, that's why I love the Baseketball clip the idea (fantasy) that commercialisation could get to the point where people get sick of it and switch off. I'm not against commercialisation, I don't think sport would ever go back to tin sheds and suburban grounds unless that is what people wanted. I wonder if there would ever be a extreme tipping point that would make people want to turn off their T.V and go support their local club. But you hit the nail on the head that much of the changes to games are in fact fan and consumer driven. Fans should take ownership in what has happened to their sport.
SuperEel22
Roar Guru
I've followed sport most of my life and as such have developed big connections to my sporting teams. I follow Parramatta because it's the closest club to where I live, I follow Liverpool because Harry Kewell played there. I'm under no illusions that sport is a business nowadays, it's no longer semi-pro. Not all fans blindly follow their clubs or get fiercely loyal when it comes to player movement. As an Eels fan I've seen plenty of juniors turn up at other clubs. Am I angry at those players? No (Except Jamie Lyon but he's an outlier), I'm more upset at the club for not holding on to a talented player. With Liverpool I wants buying the best in the world so we can win, even if it's at the expense of a local kid. Steven Gerrard may be a local but he has consistently been one of the best football players for a long time. The arguments of player loyalty is a hang over from the amateur days when players played for a club for a reason other than money.
Rugby stu
Roar Pro
Thanks Aaron, I appreciate it. I hope I haven't overgeneralised too much its a big place and hard to summarise with each region and state having a severely unique sporting culture. I've heard that Boston and the much of the East Coast is a bit wee bit more traditional and tribal than say California. And the South would be interesting too look at. I take peoples arguments that America is simply a lot bigger and that their top level of competition is more professional as you get a couple of grades below the NFL I bet it gets more parochial.
Rugby stu
Roar Pro
"This isn’t to say that we aren’t highly professionalised, but many our sports have a mixture of racehorse trading professionalism with touch of local heritage and pride." I agree completely, what I am focusing more on is the mythology of the origin of the players having more importance to people. There's a lot of articles on the roar about the "Americanisation of the AFL" and "What the NRL can learn from the NFL". They paint a picture of American sports as being far more free market oriented and innovative. This leads to a divide between people who fear to much commercialisation the breaking of state/national loyalties that they hold dear to others that reject this concept as stupid and in professional sport we might need to let go of this when players drift, teams change city etc etc. When once you were saying "My town is better than your town" The end point is that you are left with "My clothes beat the clothes of another team." My final point is that in a free market there is still room for loyalty. In fact no product or business can exist without some form of loyalty and it makes a lot of financial sense. Memberships for example are representation of this. So teams have to walk a fine line that if they are always ruthlessly chasing $, they can alienate the most loyal fans/consumers. No fans has to follow their team or sport they can very easily walk away if they believe it devalues why they liked it in the first place.
astro
Guest
Honestly, I think there is no difference between Australian sports and sporting teams and American sports and sporting teams, with the only exception being the size of the market. Teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, Lakers, Knicks etc have the same origins and the same level of fan commitment (at their core) as teams like South Sydney or Collingwood. They are just as 'traditional'...maybe even more so. The only real difference is that these teams are worth billions of dollars, so operate on a much larger scale.
Rugby stu
Roar Pro
"Another reason is that each of the two largest comps have half their teams based in one city. This makes almost anyone a hometown kid )or, conversely, hardly any, as how many players were born in Collingwood or what have you)" "Point being, the idea that Australians are more traditionalist, I’m not sure I buy it (although I know we definitely like to think we are)." Traditionalist was probably not the right word, every game has some sort of traditions. I agree that we have many players playing and basing themselves in the city they grew up in because of the unique structure of how our games are set up, but in turn that breeds a slightly unique culture that public buys into the origins of players and many fans do find it difficult when players break the loyalty. A good example I can think of would be Wendell Sailor, I was there at his first game for the Reds and everyone when nuts when he touched the ball and than more famously when he played for the Waratahs seeing a man who was a staunch born and raised Queenslander and one of the best known Maroons wearing blue led to a classic spiteful and intense game. The origin thing still adds an extra layer to a rivalry you have got to admit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7OReiWQrq4 As for AFL I know that origin no longer exists, but is their still a strong SA, WA and Victorian rivalry? And I didn't mention BBL but I probably should have, it is really breaking the mold and is closest thing to an American franchise type competition where the players and teams are interchangeable. I know American's still have lots and lots of tradition I didn't mention Ice hockey because it seems a little more traditional/old fashioned. But I don't know if anybody cares about origins in America, I think it would be interesting if they would ever go for an origin concept
Dogs Of War
Roar Guru
Seinfeld is a big sports fan. He was just doing his social commentary thing he does so well.
ciudadmarron
Guest
Another reason is that each of the two largest comps have half their teams based in one city. This makes almost anyone a hometown kid )or, conversely, hardly any, as how many players were born in Collingwood or what have you). The AFL used to have zones where players had to come from to play for certain clubs but even then these were arbitrary really.. what links did some of the country areas have to the inner city suburbs? If you look at these big commercial sports - the American ones and the EPL as well as other football the world around - you actually see that hometown heroes are valued just as much as they are here too. Man United fans are proud of the players that have come through the system. Mark Noble is one of the most popular players at West Ham despite arguably not being the most talented. On the continent you've got teams like Bilbao which only allow locals to play! Uefa has it's home grown rule meaning clubs have to effectively develop local talent. In American sports their are farm systems, with local sides in local leagues that produce players for the top flight team. I don't follow American sports but do watch a bit of baseball and David Freese is one such player that comes to mind. Point being, the idea that Australians are more traditionalist, I'm not sure I buy it (although I know we definitely like to think we are).
nickoldschool
Roar Guru
Hmmm I have to say it is not how I see Oz and Australians when it comes to sport. "This is partly because Australia sports are more of a religious ideology. Because of this people are clannish and feel uneasy with those who lack loyalty or cross codes. They are met with skepticism and their character is often questioned." Are we talking about the same Australia? The franchises in all sports i.o clubs, franchises who move to town/cities which have more money? Are we talking about the country with the BBL, the AFL teams 'created' on the GC and Sydney's west because 'there is a market there', same with the NRL and all other sports, the code/sports switchers (Izzy, Tuqiri, Mundine etc), the 'stars' who try boxing (QC, sbw, Ferguson), the hundreds of rugby players who go overseas to make more money, the Cahill, Kewell and co who do the same in football? IMO the reason why Oz doesn't have a NBA, EPL or Top 14 type of comp isn't because they are 'purer' or philosophically against that, not at all. Its just that Oz is a small country which doesn't have the market potential to host such comps in major sports like football, basket or rugby. If they had the market/money/public/tv deals, imo they would even go further than what we see in Europe in the epl and top 14. Not saying Aussies are worse than others, not at all, but they aren't any better/more loyal when it comes to sports, economy etc. To finish, one of the reasons why you have more 'local' boys in your sport than say football nations in europe is that your major sports are only/mostly played by aussies (afl, nrl, netball, ). If one day football is big enough in this country to attract billionaires who can afford CR7, Messi and co on our shores, believe me they will and local boys will be on the terraces not on the pitch.
Steve
Guest
Even though I am a die-hard fan of a few sporting teams, Jerry Seinfield nails it once again. I remember being at Darren Lockyer's last SoO game in Sydney, and while I support NSW, I stood up an applauded this legend when his name was announced. All of my fellow New South Welshmen was saying he was a scummy Queenslander. Not two months before however those same New South Welshmen were all worshipping him when he was lining up against the Kiwis. Different Shirt? Booo!
Johnno
Guest
Australian sport, has been seduced by the money since the Super League war, which started it in the 1990's in 1995. Initial shock horror, at the commerialisation of Aussy sport, and the influence of pay-TV, has now turned to a consumer reality, where most consumers of sport now seem to accept or identify with the commercial realities of sport, and no loyalty either. In fact many sports fans here just want there team to have the best players, so have no problem poaching players from other teams, in fact they revel off it, the roosters 1 major example. Now most aussies want the big tv deals, and the big stadiums, and pay-tv influence. Now they realize there'd be no big deals with out the big money eg super league. Where as in the 90's most aussy fans didn't understand the values of super league, or what the future of aussy sport held. And also we didn't understand pay tv either as it only just entered the market in 1995. You won't see massive protests of people power marching in the streets to save clubs like the sharks, as we did with souths. More just an acceptance of commercial realities. And other teams anyway, are baiting with breath eg central coast bears, 2nd Brisbane,Perth,Wellingting NZ, Ipswich,Central QLD, so they would like the sharks to fail anyway, as it helps there cause. AFL and cricet is just as commerical. The new younger generation of sports fan, clearly approves of the commercialisation of it's game T20, as shown by the big bash ratings. Big money and proffesionalism, have eroded loyalty. But what's the other option. We go back to playing in tin shed run down stadiums eg North sydney oval, Henson Park, Windy Hill, old Adelaide Oval, an make aussy sport a tin shed game played in the suburbs, or do we move with the times and modernise continuiosly and make it a big money national market. Money talks, and a national market in modern stadiums is how sport has evolved here, and with big pay-tv influence. And free to air channel 9, when they have had a monopoly have always ruined sport anyway, and always been out of date and out of touch, and haven't moved with the times. Heck Ray Hadley, that baby boomer dinasour to call the 2011 rugby world cup for them, with no rugby background says it all.
Aaron
Guest
Great article. I'm over in the US of A at the moment and amazed by the saturation of sports that are available for never ending consumption. Every night there's a roomful of TVs in a sports bar, with beer chugging fans trying to keep up with the various brands on offer. The number of talk shows, commentators and interviewers where they dissect and discuss everything from their background to their love interests. As I don't have a particular interest in any of the teams, I find it to be a complete information overload. I can't focus on a game, simply because there's so much choice and so much noise. Unfortunately I think Australian sport is going down this route. It's becoming so much more about the marketing and the entertainment side of the business than it is about the game itself.