Table of Contents

1. 2. 3. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 2 History..................................................................................................................................... 2 The impact of football on British society ............................................................................... 3 3.1. Football and the economy ................................................................................................ 3 Football has created business .................................................................................... 3 Financial problems of football clubs in recent years ................................................ 3

3.1.1. 3.1.2. 3.2.

Youth styles and social problems associated with football culture .................................. 4 Fashion and hooliganism style .................................................................................. 4 Racism in soccer ....................................................................................................... 5

3.2.1. 3.2.2. 4.

Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 5 4.1. 4.2. To reduce hooliganism and disorder ................................................................................ 5 To assist football clubs in having healthy finance .......................................................... 6

5.

Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 6

References ......................................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.

1. Introduction In recent years, millions of people coming from over the world spend a lot of money on tickets and travelling costs to go to soccer stadiums to see their favorite team and billions of others watch football matches on TV every week. In Britain, currently, soccer is one of the most popular sporting activities for people (Oakland, 2006: 285). As Brimson (2006: 196) said, each week, millions of Britons both male and female will play it, watch it, listen to it and read about it. Media empires are founded on it, weddings, christenings, funerals and even births are arranged around it and children name after those who play it. Because of soccers attraction and benefits, today, many public companies have been created from football clubs (Oakland, 2006: 286). Economic benefits created by football are considerable. However, some problems appeared. Oakland (2006) showed that 80 percent of Englands football clubs lost money in 2001. Moreover, soccer is also criticized because it relates to racism and hooliganism. This report will illustrate that while football can be seen as big business, this type of sport has also created social problems due to hooliganism and racism. This report, firstly, will summarize the history of soccer then it will examine the impact of football on the British economy, youth styles and social issues associating with football culture, before giving some recommendations. 2. History Football matches with fairly sufficient rules started to be popular in the middle of 19th century in some universities in England. According to FIFA, in October of 1863, Cambridge Rules, the oldest football rules, was re-written in order to create the Football Association (FA). Dobson et al (2001) reveals that this event was also the beginning for the modern football. Five years later, in 1888, the Football League, the oldest professional football league over the world, was established (Williams and Wagg, 1991). The first FA cup was organized by C. W. Alcock in 1972 with the first international football match between Scotland and England in Glasgow, and this match contributed to the foundation of Scottish Football Association (SFA), Football Association of Wales (FAW) and Irish Football Association (IFA) (Williams and Wagg, 1991: 27). Today, the organization monitoring football rules over the world is the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which was created in Manchester in 1886 with the agreements of FA, SFA, FAW and IFA (FIFA, 2010). In 1904, the Fdration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was found in Paris, and managements of IFAB currently has four

representatives from FIFA and four others from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (FIFA, 2010). It can be seen that one of the most famous football leagues in Britain is now Premier League (Barclays Premier League). The foundation of this cup was made with the creation of the Founder Members Agreement on 17th July 1991 (Williams and Wagg, 1991). 3. The impact of football on British society 3.1. Football and the economy 3.1.1. Football has created business As Oakland (2006: 286) concluded, football is now big business . According to Dobson and Goddard (2001), the match attendances of English league were always over 16 million in each season from 1922 to 1999. This, obviously, brought huge economic benefits for football clubs. For instance, the total match receipts in Football league in 1988-9 season were nearly 20 million (Williams and Wagg (1991: 57). In 2000, soccer clubs in the English Premier League achieved around 530 million in revenues (Dobson and Goddard, 2001). These huge profits led to the marked change in the structure of football clubs. In 2003, the majority of football clubs in the Premier and Football Leagues were public or private companies (Oughton et al, 2003). On other hand, benefits from soccer do not only come from match attendances but also from other sources. Take broadcasting media as an example, from 1993 to 1996, the profit that Prier League clubs achieved from the BSkyB-BBC contract in each season was about 40 million, and this number increased to 83 million in 1997 and over 125 million in 1998 (Dobson and Goddard, 2001: 83). As BBC (2010) stated, the League's earning was basic on the sale of TV rights In addition, not just football clubs benefit from football. The development of soccer has led to the development of other markets, such as football pools, broadcasting media, and footballer transferring market (Williams and Wagg, 1991). For example, due to benefits from football clubs TV right, on 7 September 1998, BSkyB wanted to pay 575 million for 100% takeover of Manchester United (Dobson and Goddard, 2001: 82). In the transfer market aspect, as Tunarut et al (2005) presented, just in the 1999-2000 season, soccer clubs in English Premier League spent over 255 million on player transfers. 3.1.2. Financial problems of football clubs in recent years

In recent years, football has not made benefits for clubs as it did before. Most football clubs in Britain are confronting with financial problems, and many cannot control their finances. For instance, in 2001 although with the huge profit made from media income, 80 percent of football clubs still lost money (Oakland, 2006: 286). Beech (2009) also illustrated that from 2001 to 2006, the loss of 92 English league clubs peaked at over 1 billion. Some top clubs also are now in this situation, such as Manchester United is in debt around 716 million, in comparison with 297 million, 237 million and 180 million for Arsenal, Liverpool and Fulham, respectively (Bose, 2010). Although these debts of these big clubs can be seen as soft debt which means these can be repayments, but they are seemingly changing to hard debt (Beech, 2009: 140). Some of the reasons for this crisis are poor club organization, bad business sense, and huge salaries for top football players (Oakland, 2006: 286) stated. As figures showed by Bose (2010), in 1985 the total television income that Football League received from selling overseas right was 200,000, and now this amount of money cannot be enough to pay John Terry for two weeks. 3.2. Youth styles and social problems associated with football culture 3.2.1. Fashion and hooliganism style Footballs importance, of course, is not only economic, but also social and cultural (Dobson and Goddard, 2001: xv). The impact of football on youth culture in Britain was quite obvious since 1950s. It influenced youths fashion. For instance, the appearance of skinhead style in the 1960-70s was created by hairstyle of some famous football players and the popularity of t-shirt Baggy style which means football fans wear club shirts with slogans instead of shirts from famous brands such as Lacoste or Perry (Williams and Wagg, 1991). Another style, football hooligan, appeared in the 1970s, and this disease was considered as the serious problem in the late of 1970s and 1980s. (Back et al, 2001). The time for the combination of the skinhead style and the football hooligan style to be skinhead soccer gang style or soccer style wars marked the most serious time of disorder in football (Williams and Wagg, 1991). As a result, negative consequences were created by this style. For example, in May 1985, at the Liverpool Juventus match in the European cup, 38 mainly Italian supporters died (Dobson and Goddard, 2001), and at Euro 96 in England, there were many English people relating to disorder, both within and outside the country (Clifford Stott et al, 2008). In recent years, nevertheless, according to BBC

(2009) the number of hooligans and the amount of disorder in football was smaller than it was before, but it is reaching to people in younger age. As BBC (2010) claimed, amongst hooligans, who were arrested in the UK in 2010, the youngest was just 13 years old. 3.2.2. Racism in soccer Racism in English football became a serious concern from the late 1970s together with the increase in the number of black players among professional football players (Back et al, 2001: 21). This problem spread quickly, and racism also happened in the match, such as the incident occurred in the match between the Republic of Ireland and England in Dublin in February 1995 which forced the match to cancel, and this event was mainly contributed by racist groups among supporters (Back et al, 2001). It can be seen that the relationship between hooliganism and racism is strong. However, as Brimson (2006: 187) pointed out, not all racist are hooligans, just as not all hooligans are racists. The serious concern about racism is because of its prevalence outside hooliganism, and because it can also appear on the behavior among footballers. According to Back et al (2001: 23), racism in football in Britain also acts in other areas, such as managers, owner and directors. He made the point that although there is a dramatic increase of the number of black players in Britain from 1980s, but the number of black managements working in important positions is very small. More specifically, in 2006, there were around 20 percent of professional footballers are black, but there were just three managers and three coaches coming from ethic groups (Brimson, 2006: 178). In recent years, nevertheless, racism is not a serious problem. From 1990s, in order to reduce racism in football in Britain, many efforts have made with the appearance of the words Kick It Out and Show Racism the Red Card (Garland et al,1999). Besides, there are a number of anti-racism groups trying to tackle racism (Brimson, 2006). According to Guardian (2006), the fight against football racism in England is the best over the Europe. 4. Recommendations 4.1. To reduce hooliganism and disorder Firstly, alcohol consumption is one of the reasons contributing to aggressive behavior of football supporters, thus preventing the public from drinking and carrying alcohol around areas that football match takes place can reduce disorder (Home Office. 1998). Secondly, the role of

the private security companies is very important. In order to reduce violence in sport events, a close law needs to be created to control these private companies (Savkovc and orevi, 2010). Besides, developing the relationship with local police is worth because this can assist managers to collect up-to-date information about groups of fans to build maps, this in turn can help managers to control situation effectively. (Savkovc and orevi, 2010). Furthermore, to tackling racism in football, the Government, Football Foundation, and clubs should rise the level of funding to support the Kick It Out and Show Racism the Red Card (Bassam, 2001: 14).

4.2. To assist football clubs in having healthy finance According to Beech (2009), football clubs should do these solutions to remain healthy financially: First of all, they should develop a long-term relationship with a financially stable investor. This relationship will prevent clubs from achieving fluctuant funding in case their sponsor has a financial crisis. Furthermore, he concluded that many clubs now choose a solution that paying more money to buy top footballers, and this is not a long-term approach. Instead of this method, Beech suggests that clubs should apply a salary cost management scheme (Beech, 2009: 132). This method means that there will be a limit of the percentage of revenues being used to pay salaries, such as the president of UEFA, Michel Platini, said this limit should be 60 % revenues. Another recommendation is to manage salaries of player as revenues and the position of the club. This means that footballers will be paid less if the performance of their team reduces. This approach can help club balance clubs finances as well as encourage players in performing. Moreover, football clubs should remain stable position in the middle of the table of a league, avoiding the regelation, and in some situations, they also need to avoid promotion because this position can bring clubs a stable number of fans.

5. Conclusion It can be seen that football has the ambivalent impact on British society. As this report concludes, football has influenced British markets and made many types of new business, such as broadcasting media and player transfer market. However, soccer also has negative influence

on British behavior. The phenomenon of hooliganism and racism mentioned in this report is an example. Moreover, in recent years, financial burdens are drawbacks that this kind of sport brings to soccer clubs. In order to reduce hooliganism and racism in football, controlling alcohol consumption around football stadiums, developing the close relationship with local police and private security companies, and supports of Government, Football Foundation, clubs in the Kick It Out and Show Racism a Read Card, are necessary. Besides, in the economic aspect, football clubs should use a salary cost management scheme, manage the salary of player as the revenue or the position of the club and maintain a stable position at the middle of the table of a league. Improving the current situation is not easy. It, however, can be definitely done with some concrete solutions above.