The Business of Football: Image Management in Narrative Communication

Abstract

Football at club level has changed markedly in the last decade or so. Indisputably, major football clubs are now complex businesses, intrinsically concerned with financial matters. One of the most important contributory factors in the new business era of football has been television, in particular satellite television, both in terms of the amount paid for broadcasting rights and also in radical alterations to the distribution of that income among clubs. The increasing business orientation of clubs is also evident in other areas: for example, the status of players, where alterations to the transfer system have given players greater freedom of movement and contractual bargaining power, and changes in the ownership structure and governance of clubs. How football, or more accurately, football constituencies or stakeholders, should respond to this economic transformation remains a contested area.