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The Premier League have revealed a tightening of the rules regarding ownership of football clubs. Richard Scudamore considers that the changes reflect concerns raised by the government in the wake of the Thaksin business, where a man allowed to buy a football club was subsequently indicted on corruption charges in his own country. And they are necessary, all well and good.

Scudamore himself is not one to effect change for the sake of it, if we look at his background there is much more to the man than Sepp Blatter and Platini combined.
He is a lawyer, first of all, who began in sales and marketing, subsequently moving up to strategic planning with such organisations as BT and the Thomson Group. This background has enabled him to apply his marketing expertise first to the Football League, and more recently the Prem. He has come under some criticism recently for his handling of the Tevez/Mascherano affair, although if you apply free-market logic to it a different perspective emerges. Richard Scudamore looks at our game as a product to be sold to the highest bidder, a very valuable commodity which has become even more valuable under Scudamore's hand than at any other time in history and as the ball continues to gather speed, it is perfectly understandable that foreign investors are going to be attracted to such a high-octane market. Hope it doesn't melt.

From the Guardian in 2006

"Forced by the European Union into a potentially shattering strategy of selling Premiership football to a variety of bidders, Scudamore was shaken to his free-market roots. "If somebody comes along to buy your house," he argues, "you normally sell it to the highest bidder. The anathema to us was selling a package to somebody who wasn't the highest bidder - because you're artificially interfering with the market.

"But before we took that leap off the precipice we assessed the packaging and decided it could be done in a way that would not harm the value too much. As it's turned out we concluded the UK rights [for three seasons from next August] at £2.1bn, up from £1.3bn. We start the international sale in September and we'll end up around £2.5bn to the good. These figures are clearly higher than we expected. But when you put together a competitive market and a compelling product, things happen."

Scudamore will not reveal the lower figure he would have accepted a few months ago but, with a small smile, emphasises that "the clubs' expectancy was somewhere less than where we ended up."

And so, instead of reining in the rich, European regulators have simply ushered in another spurt of disconcerting inflation. The rest of us will bear the brunt by paying even more to watch football on television.

Bearing the brunt by paying more to watch games is the price we have to pay to see the likes of Robinho, Tevez (ouch!) and sundry other world-class players in our league.

So a lot depends on your point of view, Scudamore has a business background, and will look for the best deal for our game in all circumstances. He believes, although I am putting words into his mouth here, that the free-market will regulate itself if given the right tools to do it, hence the tightening of the rules; and that bigger deals and bigger wages ultimately can only be good for the league, adding to the value of the product and increasing interest in the game. Where it ends is a subject for speculation, who will suffer along the way? only the weak. Including me, probably.
I believe the only way forward for a game that is so inextricably linked with big business, is to have someone at the helm who has a strong business ethic, and I'm not talking entreprenuers or showmen like Sore Alan Sugar, but the real McCoy like Scudamore. Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini can pose and posture all they like, Scudamore will win in the end.

CLEVBLUE