Recently, I had an article (‘As an American, I worry about how American owners can be the ruin of football’) published on The Mag.
In the article, I put forth my opinion on the risks of English Football, particularly The English Premier League, of having a majority of American ownership.
The reasons were FINANCIAL (murky ownership – often private equity firms with offshore accounts), CULTURAL (American ownership often views Clubs as investments rather than a community’s inheritance), and STRUCTURAL (A closed system with salary caps, overseas games, and a closed system without possibility of relegation).
These financial, cultural, and structural differences should be abhorred and kept away from English football, but we all know the power of billionaires.
I decided to do a follow up piece.
In this latest article, I wanted to personalise the “experience” of being an American fan of the National Football League (ED: American Football).
Case 1:
One Fan’s Endless Heartbreak: Steve M. and the NFL Teams That Left St. Louis
Steve M. keeps an old Big Red pennant above his garage workbench in the west St. Louis suburbs. Faded and frayed, it reminds him of 1980, when his father took him to Busch Stadium to watch the NFL Football Cardinals. “I thought that was forever,” he says.
It wasn’t. In 1988, owner Bill Bidwill moved the team to Phoenix. Steve, then 28 and newly married with a young son, felt the city had been gutted. For seven years, St. Louis had no NFL team. He watched games on TV like old wedding photos—fond, but painful.
In 1995, the Rams arrived from Los Angeles. The city celebrated with parades and a new dome. Steve and his wife bought season tickets. Their kids grew up with the team. The 1999 season delivered the Greatest Show on Turf and a Super Bowl win in 2000. Steve was there for “The Tackle.” He still keeps the ticket stub. “I thought they’d never leave again.”
But they did. By 2015, owner Stan Kroenke eyed Los Angeles. St. Louis voters rejected a stadium tax. Negotiations failed. In January 2016, the NFL approved the move. Steve joined others in despair. “We gave them a championship and packed the dome even when they were bad,” he says. “Twice the league said St. Louis wasn’t good enough.”
For three years, he barely watched NFL games. Sundays became yard work and silence before eventually he started to follow the Kansas City Chiefs – also based in Missouri – but a four hour drive from home. He felt nothing when the Rams won another Super Bowl. “They weren’t ours,” he says flatly. The rise of the Kansas City Chiefs helped ease the pain – but still it wasn’t the same. (And, ironically at the time of this writing, Kansas City Chiefs will be moving to a new stadium on the Kansas state side of Kansas City as a result of state financial and tax incentives).
The Cardinal pennant still hangs. Every fall, when the NFL schedule omits St. Louis, Steve sits in his driveway with a beer and radio, or watches the Chiefs on the telly – but it’s not like it was. “Two teams left us,” he says. “I do not think there will be a third. But if they ever return, I’ll be first in line. That’s what St. Louis does—we show up, even when they don’t.”
The red flag flutters in the breeze, a quiet emblem of loyalty in a city the NFL forgot twice. Steve remains, still hoping the game remembers fans who never left.
Case 2:
Toon Man and how the NFL and the Eagles drove him away
It was a dreary March in 1984 when the Baltimore Colts left the city for which it was named. They left under cover of darkness lest the fans they were jilting cause a riot. Their owner, Bob Irsay (with a heart as dark as Mike Ashley’s) had repeatedly, year after year, refused to invest in the club or its players. He refused to communicate with the fans or the playing heroes of “the glory days”. He treated the city, the fans, and the club heritage with contempt. He stated that he needed a taxpayer funded new stadium to compete and, when the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore turned it down – he contacted the moving vans and they were off.
There were eight kids in my household…and nine diehard Colts fans backing their heroes from birth. I was the one who didn’t – I was an Eagles fan. We lived about an hour from Baltimore but only two hours from Philly. Since the JFK assassination there was never tears shed in my house or in the area – until the morning after the cowardly move of the team by Irsay.
For those who rightfully hated what Mike Ashley did to NUFC…can you imagine if he would have been able to move the club
Perish the thought.
But, for me, the Eagles fan whose team yoyo’d up and down the standings (albeit more bad years than good ones), I took it all in stride. In 1989, at the age of 26, when I began to work for a company based in Philadelphia, I took the dive and bought season tickets. $220 (~£138) for the season of eight home matches plus two pre-season matches. I never missed a home game and traveled with the team across America in the next decade. Every year the price of the season ticket went up…I think they were $840 when my company transferred me to Chicago in 1996. I kept them though. I would sell all the game tickets to brokers except for the Cowboys and Giants games each year and the money raised would pay for my tickets and airfare. It was a good gig.
In 2002, the Eagles began the construction of a new stadium. To help pay for it they charged fans for Personal Seat Licences (PSL) that are kind of like a condominium. You BUY the seat for a lifetime but not the events that are held there. You still needed to buy your season tickets. Mine was $2,200 (~£1,430) for each seat. Again, I bit the bullet, and it almost cost me a wife.
Fast forward to December 31, 2017. The Eagles were on a tear…13-3 and hosting the hated Cowboys. There was nothing to play for (the Eagles were already set in the play-offs) the weather was dismal and the Eagles stumbled to a 6-0 loss…losing in the 4th quarter. The game lasted the better part of four hours! Sixty minutes of action stretched to 160 minutes of shivering dullness! Fourteen penalties, TV timeouts, replays and challenges, it was miserable. I decided then that the NFL didn’t care about fans. Nor my Eagles. I had driven three hours to an airport, flew two hours, and spent another six hours at the game – tailgating before and fighting traffic to leave. This all cost me and the wife over $2000 (~£1,500), although I was still selling my tickets and earned enough to fly there and get a hotel for free.
I was done with the NFL and dropped it cold turkey, although I confess, I did peek in to watch the Eagles in their Super Bowl appearances. It was actually easy because I had and have another team: Newcastle United. My first match was at St James’ Park in 1978 – and I had been across the pond dozens of times prior to root for my Black & Whites – cashing in my frequent flyer miles and hotel loyalty points to make it affordable. And, with the advent of the internet I could follow the team online and contribute to The Mag. And I could watch every match on the telly – usually with friends as passionate as I am.
Conclusion:
The case studies I put forth were to personalise what American ownership would mean.
Whether teams moving, prices always rising, the ability to sell your tickets to the highest bidder, and the Personal Seat Licenses (PSL), it’s a constant money grab with games lasting longer and getting more like a pop culture event than a sports event. Be careful of American ownership in English football, lads and lasses.
Lastly, Steve M. and I will be at the Bournemouth match next month and Tyneside all week. It’ll be Steve’s first time over and his first real football match. Hope to see some of you about…please feel free to buy us a pint.