Unless you’ve been in a cave, you’ll be well aware of the suggestion from Liverpool’s managing director, Ian Ayre, that his club is getting short changed from the overseas TV money pouring into the Premier League these days. Or, more to the point, the smaller clubs in the league are getting what’s really due to Liverpool.

The good people of Kuala Lumpur, Ayre informs us, are not subscribing to the Premier League TV packages available in their neck of the woods to watch Bolton, they hand over their hard earned cash to watch Liverpool. Playing someone other than Bolton, obviously.

Man Utd? Certainly. Chelsea? Probably. Arsenal? Maybe. Man City? They’d like to think so. Tottenham? Possibly. Aston Villa? Well, if it’s good enough for Mr. Tom Hanks in Hollywood, California, it’s certainly good enough for the folk in Kuala Lumpur. *

The rest of the league? Meh.

Small problem: it takes 14 out of 20 votes to make a change to Premier League commercial arrangements. Ayre’s ideas are thankfully dead in the water then.

For now.

Oh, and by the way, no one will buy his bogeyman threat of the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid scampering off into the distance if the other clubs in the Premier League don’t vote to royally screw themselves for Liverpool’s gain now rather than later.

But hey, Ayre is just saying, man. He’s just putting it out there. It’s “a debate that has to happen”, that’s what he said.

No. It. Isn’t.

But look, we all know it’s inevitable anyway, don’t we? The Champions League is the obvious forerunner to a European Super League. We all know it will happen eventually. It’s just a matter of time.

Maybe Liverpool are mooting it now to keep themselves relevant when the breakaway occurs. I mean, they’ve never actually won the Premier League and they’re not even a Europa League team this year.

“Hey everyone, it was our idea, remember?”

“Hello?”

“Anyone?” *

Broken

People will tell you that this is all the evidence you need of how broken the game is, how wrong football has gone. They’re only right up to a point, they seemingly fail to appreciate that football doesn’t live in a hermetically sealed bubble, separated from the rest of the world. What we see here isn’t really the broken game per se, it’s just a symptom of the world we live in.

The economy is in the toilet, just about anywhere you choose to look around the world you can see the signs. You don’t have to trace the causes back too far to find the root; time and again it comes down to nothing more complicated than greed.

That’s all this is from Mr. Ayre; greed. Football is a sport, sport is competitive, why anyone would expect greed to be magically excluded from football is beyond me. Greed is practically an inherent component that needs to be kept in check as far as I’m concerned.

What they have isn’t enough, they want more. It’s not fair that the smaller clubs get the same share they do – in fact, the very principle of sharing equally isn’t fair – they want more. They don’t care about the consequences for anyone else, it’s all about them, right here, right now, and they want more.

More!

MOAR!!1!

Until the whole thing collapses in on itself like the proverbial house of cards. Not unlike the current global economy. Not that Ayre would give a rat’s arse, it’s not the Chairmen and CEOs who are losing their houses at the moment, is it?

Global Growth

Greed is always ugly, but in this case it’s particularly vomit inducing since the Premier League’s global reach continues to grow, and the revenue it generates along with it. All 20 teams in the league will see their income from overseas TV money grow.

In 2009/10, 24% of the total Premier League pot of gold came from foreign TV money, in 2010/11 it was 38%. It’s only a matter of time before the balance tips in favour of the overseas money.

During 2010/11, a mind-boggling 4.7 billion viewers around the globe tuned in to watch the Premier League. 300m people in China are now watching thanks largely to a switch to free-to-air television. That’s practically five times the entire population of the UK!

In the United States, FOX has also recently shown a handful of games (featuring the big boys, natch) on their main free-to-air channel for the first time on “tape delay”, but will be showing Chelsea vs Man Utd live on February 5th as part of their Super Bowl coverage.

The explosion of interest in the Premier League, fuelled by internet and television, is clear to see all around the world. There’s plenty of room around this particular trough, we can all get our snouts in and gorge ourselves silly. Don’t worry about that, little piggies.

The collective TV bargaining, it seems to me, is one of the main reasons why the Premier League enjoys the global position it does in comparison with the other top leagues in Europe. Though Liverpool have undoubtedly been one of the headline acts over the years, and their “brand” has a phenomenal following around the world, they’d be nowhere without the rest of us.

As if to prove this point, Ayre is actually advocating adopting the model employed in La Liga at the same time that the Spanish are exploring ways to move to collective TV deals themselves. Barcelona and Read Madrid might not be leading the charge, but the other clubs are desperate to find a deal that benefits everyone. Serie A switched back to selling TV rights collectively just last season. Would we expect the Bundesliga to do anything else?

No wonder Ayre has received such widespread condemnation. The majority of Liverpool fans have been embarrassed by his suggestion, I think, but there are many who feel that the smaller teams are indeed mooching off their good name. To their shame.

The hypocrisy of that club, of all clubs, wishing to sell their fellow football clubs down the river to suckle greedily on the great capitalist teat has already been covered with far more eloquence than I could possibly muster. Please give that post at IBWM a quick read, if you haven’t already done so, and when you return we’ll ponder our own position ever so briefly.

Aston Villa

We’ve got nothing to complain about, we’ve felt the benefit from this global growth ourselves at Villa. We actually received more money from the Premier League last season (£49m) than in 2009/10 (£46m) – despite earning less from our equal share, live TV appearances, and performance based prize money – thanks to the 77% increase in overseas TV money which is shared evenly among the 20 teams (£18m each in 2010/11).

Aston Villa’s 2010/11 turnover won’t be publicly available until next year, but the £49m we received from the Premier League will more than likely be around half of the total, give or take. Probably a little more than half actually. The £18m portion that came from overseas TV deals will therefore represent something approaching 20% of our income last season, probably a bit less.

The chances that last season provided anything other than another significant loss, to add to the £94m that the club lost from the bottom line between August 2006 and May 2010, are practically zero.

Do you think anyone will be thinking about that the next time the transfer window opens?

Or will they be shouting for more?

And that question provides a reasonable segue, albeit clumsily, to Chris Nee’s post at Twofootedtackle: Why “lack of investment” is a blight on football. The lad makes a good point, but at the end of the day the post lacks ambition. *

* This was a feeble attempt at humour. I understand that now, and I will try to learn from it.