The Billionaires’ Game
The Saudi-backed takeover of Newcastle has been criticised for sportswashing, but it also exposes a stark reality of football capitalism – that the only way to replace one billionaire owner is with another.
3 Articles by:
Ben Joyce is a railway worker and RMT workplace rep.
The Saudi-backed takeover of Newcastle has been criticised for sportswashing, but it also exposes a stark reality of football capitalism – that the only way to replace one billionaire owner is with another.
The European Super League would be a disaster for football, but it hasn’t come from nowhere – it is the end of a long road of commercialisation which has torn the game away from the working-class communities that built it.
When a government in a poorer country hands public money to their friends to provide public services, only to see them pocket the lion’s share, we call it corruption. In Britain, we call it putting out to tender.