David Conn’s report on the Football Association’s proposal to sell Wembley (Sport, 27 April) is as informative as ever. But in saying the FA will revert to its former position of paying rent to stage matches, he omits to record that the former situation entailed paying rent of between 25% and 32% of the take from finals and international matches to Wembley, then a company ultimately owned by a US corporation, under an agreement signed in 1984. Wembley then had little incentive to upgrade its crumbling facilities and every potential to ambush the FA’s advertising and television rights.
After the formation of the Premier League in 1992, new revenue streams meant football was able to exert greater control over its destiny and build the game’s own national stadium. I do hope that the FA will make good on its promise to plough money from the sale back into grassroots facilities; it’s very draughty for us oldies getting changed for Walking Football behind a hedge.
Graham Kelly
FA chief executive, 1988-1998
• According to David Conn, the FA argues that this is a positive plan “because it would spend the money on improving grassroots facilities”. Will it work? Perhaps the FA could learn from the experience of cricket. After the superb 2005 Ashes series when the Tests were viewable free to air and half the population had watched at least some of it, support for cricket was at an all-time high, so the ECB sold the rights to Sky on the same attempted justification. How did that work out? Because so few people can now watch cricket on TV, grassroots support for the game is at all all-time low. As Andy Bull points out (Sport, 25 April), three out of five children don’t even rank cricket in their top 10 sports and the ECB is reduced to pushing the ludicrous The Hundred plan that no one in cricket thinks is a good idea. Will the FA learn from the foolishness of the ECB? Precedent isn’t encouraging and sadly, I expect they’ll blunder through the same crass mistake.
Dr Richard Carter
London
• With the potential sale of Wembley stadium one option would be to play NFL matches there in the autumn meaning any England football internationals would have to be staged elsewhere. Why not at Lord’s, which would be free at that time? It may not have previously been thought that the “Home of Cricket” should stage football games, but in a world where money clearly counts for a lot more than sporting traditions, why not?
Keith Flett
London
• In our materialist age we are poised before yet another demonstration of our knowledge of the price of everything and the value of nothing. Historic Wembley is about to be sold to an American billionaire! What next? Big Ben, Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London would, no doubt, all attract substantial crowds (and cash) in an American theme park.
Jim McCluskey.
Twickenham, Middlesex
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