For more than a century, English football carried a romantic, almost mythic status as “the people’s game.”
It was born in the industrial towns and working-class communities of the late nineteenth century, played and watched by mill workers, miners and factory hands who found, in the muddy pitches and raucous terraces, a shared identity and weekly release.
Clubs were local institutions, often rooted in churches, pubs or workplaces. Ownership, for all its occasional eccentricity, was largely domestic. Success was hard-won, precarious and, crucially, imaginable for clubs outside the very top tier.
That world has disappeared. What remains is a glittering, hyper-commercialised product dominated by foreign capital, state-backed wealth and a self-perpetuating elite whose financial power has rendered genuine competition illusory.
The Premier League ‘Big Six’ — Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham — sit atop a system designed, whether by design or consequence, to keep everyone else in their place.
The World Cup final and “half-time show” made me nauseous. It’s become Americanised with glitter, glam, and an unending chase for money. Sadly, I believe that is the future of the EPL.
The transformation did not happen overnight. The roots stretch back to the formation of the Premier League in 1992, when the biggest clubs broke away from the Football League to capture a greater share of television revenue. That decision, driven by the then “Big Five,” was the original act of self-interest that prioritised elite enrichment over collective health. Sky’s money poured in, stadiums were modernised after Hillsborough, and the product was polished for global consumption.
What followed was an open invitation to international capital. England’s relatively permissive ownership rules, combined with the Premier League’s unmatched commercial appeal, turned clubs into attractive assets for oligarchs, private equity funds, American sports investors and sovereign wealth funds.
The scale of foreign ownership is now staggering. Only a handful of Premier League clubs retain majority British ownership. American investors alone hold significant or controlling stakes in roughly half the division, including four of the Big Six.
The Glazer family’s leveraged buyout of Manchester United in 2005 loaded the club with debt while extracting hundreds of millions in dividends and fees.
Stan Kroenke’s full control of Arsenal has been marked by criticism of underinvestment relative to the club’s potential.
Fenway Sports Group’s stewardship of Liverpool has delivered success but operates within a multi-club, multi-sport portfolio mindset.
Chelsea passed from Roman Abramovich’s transformative but controversial Russian wealth to the American-led Blue Co consortium of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital.
Outside the traditional elite, Newcastle United’s Saudi Public Investment Fund takeover and Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi ownership represent a different order of magnitude: state-linked resources capable of rewriting competitive realities. Of course, in Newcastle’s case, this largesse goes unutilised due to the rules that favour the established clubs, even if they are heavily in debt juggernauts.
These owners did not invent inequality but they turbocharged it. Abramovich’s arrival at Chelsea in 2003 ended the relative duopoly of Manchester United and Arsenal by flooding the transfer market with previously unimaginable sums.
Manchester City’s 2008 takeover by Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group went further, building a sustained machine of dominance through elite recruitment, infrastructure and wage spending that other clubs could not match without risking financial ruin. The result is structural. Over extended periods the Big Six have accounted for the majority of Premier League transfer expenditure. Even when their share of spending has temporarily dipped, their commercial revenues, global brand power and access to Champions League income create a self-reinforcing advantage. Smaller clubs can occasionally punch above their weight — Leicester’s 2016 title remains the great exception — but sustained challenges are rare and usually short-lived.
As mentioned, Newcastle’s Saudi-backed rise has been constrained by Profit and Sustainability Rules; other ambitious projects run into the same ceiling as the gap widens between the “haves” and “not allowed to have”.
The financial gap is not merely about transfer fees. It is about the entire ecosystem. The Premier League’s enormous broadcast deals, while shared more equitably than in some European leagues, still leave the elite with vastly superior commercial and matchday income. Wage bills at the top clubs dwarf those further down.
Talent concentrates where the money is: the best young players, the most experienced internationals and the highest-profile managers migrate toward the Big Six or those with comparable resources. The rest of the league functions increasingly as a development and selling market, feeding the elite while struggling to retain their own best assets. Competitive balance, already imperfect in a league with promotion and relegation, has been further eroded. The title race is usually a contest among two or three clubs; the top-four places are usually the same. Villa and NUFC may dip their beaks in the elixir of European football, but alas it cannot be maintained due to their inability to keep their best players and/or strengthen their squads.
Football is losing its appeal. I wonder if we’d have been better jettisoning off the clubs that wanted their “Super League” of elites without risk of relegation? I know I do not want to watch a season with pre-ordained winners, hydration breaks (money grab breaks), halftime shows, and the mix of pop and sport.
As an American, I’ve seen first hand how our sports have descended into money making entertainment, designed for the fairweather fan, that put adverts, pop culture, and owners, wants ahead of the fans needs. Whether its sports franchises moving cities or charging 100s of dollars for a ticket to a sports event, it’s no longer about the fans. I fear the “people’s game” will no longer be for the people, but rather the rich, the corporations, the pop stars.