Who owns football?

Or, as it might have been written, ¿Quién posee el fútbol?

'Who Owns Football? - The Governance and Management of the Club Game Worldwide'
(ISBN 978-0-415-44570-2)
Edited by David Hassan and Sean Hamil
First published by Routledge in 2011
Based on articles first available in 'Soccer and Society' vol. 11.4
£76 from Amazon

This is a slim academic volume, with fewer than 200 pages, but the densely written and analytical text requires time and effort to do justice to the wealth of information and ideas which the the book contains.

In the Introduction: models of football governance and management in international sport (David Assan and Sean Hamil), the invigorating thoughts of Michel Platini are followed by an introduction to the collection of seven articles, only three of which (1, 4 and 7) are perhaps strictly relevant to the aims of this blog.

1. Financial performance in English professional football: 'an inconvenient truth'
Sean Hamil and Geoff Walters

Question section 1
Between the 1992/3 and 2006/7 seasons, the combined annual turnover of the Premier League clubs increased by 900%. In how many of these seasons did the combined Premier League clubs make a collective pre-tax profit?

4. Who owns England's game? American professional sporting influences and foreign ownership in the Premier League
John Nauright and John Ramfjord

Question section 4
How many Premier League football clubs (2010-11) are owned by investors based outside the UK?

7. The model of governance at FC Barcelona: balancing member democracy, commercial strategy, corporate social responsibility and sporting performance
Sean Hamil, Geoff Walters and Lee Watson

The best section is left till last. Here you will find a blueprint for the club of your dreams. Return to it again and again when your club behaves in a lesser way.

Question section 7
How many socios had FC Barcelona on 30 June 2008?

The verdict?
At around £80 to buy, perhaps it might be thought expensive for a book. But looked at another way, it does not cost significantly more than attending a Premier League game. Or, even in these hard times. you might be able to find a library which has it on its shelves.

This is a book to be cherished.

Appendix: answers to questions

Section 1: none of these years

Section 4: 10 (at 5 March 2011: Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Sunderland, Tottenham Hotspur).

Section 7: 162,979 on 30 June 2008 (175,071 on 29 August 2010).