Louise Taylor (Road to Damascus: Championship must divorce EFL to earn its deserved share of global attention, 7 February) compares the English Football League Championship to a TV series that she describes as “a strong product”. Football in this country is more than a “product” or “brand”. It is a community of communities. It is an ecosystem that is built from the bottom up, not top down.
Your average future Sky subscriber starts on a Saturday, with a parent taking them to the Accies or Leyton Orient and experiencing that cathartic moment of the home side scoring a goal. Most Championship clubs run at enormous losses and are dependent on the (sometimes morally questionable) wealth of their offshore owners. This is because the Premier League drew up the drawbridge years ago.
Louise Taylor now wants the Championship to do the same, suggesting that some of the wealth should “trickle down” to the EFL (just as it didn’t do then?). This is neoliberal multinational politics as approved by the sainted Margaret Hilda Thatcher applied to football.
I’ve been a Pompey fan for 60-plus years and have watched my club play in all the four leagues at least twice. I have no wish to watch my side get back to the Premier League ever again. The hype, the histrionics and the tailoring of “the product” for TV (eg VAR and the game schedules dictated by TV) will drive fans away. Football is more than a “product”; it is part of society’s glue, much like the BBC.
Keith Martin
Portsmouth
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