Pre-Season Tours (from my blog)

[wizgell]

I recently started a new blog (which can be found on Twitter @IntheMixerBlog or on Facebook under the page name Earl.E.Daws https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Earl-E-Daws/475443439199521, please Follow and Like )

Here is my latest offering

The Pre-Season calendar in football for football fans up and down the country is an exciting period; it signals the season ‘proper’ is just around the corner. However, over recent years pre-season it would seem is more about profitability for top flight clubs rather than player’s fitness and conditioning.
Pre-season tours and overseas training camps are fast becoming a staple of a Premier League clubs summer schedules, this season newly promoted Cardiff City and Crystal Palace are the only two out of the 20 teams not to venture overseas. Although Palace do make the short trip across to Ireland to play Waterford on August 3rd.
We are constantly being reminded how powerful the Premier League brand is across the world. Fantastic news for the league’s marketing department and especially fantastic for the Premier League’s coffers. Terrific news for the legions of fans across the world who have adopted the Premier League as their division of choice. However, for the millions of fans left behind in England while their favourite players head for sunnier climes, the power of the Premier League brand is largely irrelevant.
I acknowledge the fact that the reputation of the Premier League attracts some of the biggest talent in the world, although this season many big names attentions have been caught by Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga. However, the pre-season calendar is a terrific opportunity for Premier League clubs to reach out to their local communities and in particular the younger generation of fans and those unable to afford the constant hiking of Premier League ticket prices. After all it, by and large, is these local based youngsters who will create the future capacity sell outs week in week out in the Premier League for these clubs. Despite this, the league and its clubs continue the charm offensive and flirting with the ‘lucrative’ Asian and American markets.
Take Chelsea as an example, who’s cheapest Adult Premier League ticket at Stamford Bridge is priced at just under £40 this season, spending their entire pre-season campaign abroad. Fixtures in America and Asia, where merchandising and ‘global’ partnerships will no doubt be the focal point, are preferred to games on home soil, resulting in young Blues missing out on a more often than not rare opportunity to see their heroes in action. Manchester City, similarly have opted to spend the entire summer attempting to win over international markets.
The remaining four clubs that made up last season’s top 6 play 7 UK based friendly’s between them, with 3 of those games played by Spurs.
Speaking of which, that brings me to the Premier League Asia Trophy. A competition played every two years, consisting of three Premier League clubs (this year Spurs, Man City and Sunderland) and the ‘home team’ of the country chosen to host the competition (South China). Anybody who claims that the thinking behind this competition is anything but money making is either lying or utterly deluded. The amount of ‘fan interaction’ and general schmoozing performed by all three clubs and their players is alien to fans of the Premier League back home. As for the conditions that yesterday’s ‘Semi Finals’ were played in, the Premier League head honcho Richard Scudamore claimed the conditions were no different to those endured across England in the winter. If a Premier League game went ahead in such conditions there would be uproar. Player safety wasn’t compromised according to Scudamore, but Spurs now must wait for the outcome of an MRI scan to see if their most influential defender last season, Jan Vertonghen misses the season opener against Crystal Palace. The fact that both games yesterday were cut to 80 minutes, suggests to me that this move was made simply to appease the 40,000 in attendance that had paid to witness their Premier League heroes in action 6,000 miles away from their usual stomping grounds. What disturbs me most is that the Premier League, in my opinion, are using their most prized assets (the players) as mere pawns in their quest for global domination.
The overriding point here is that, as the Premier League and it’s clubs continue to push forward with the plans to generate revenue and fans across the world, it is those fans who are packing out stadia up and down England 38 weeks a season that are being left behind. Those people who invest their own hard earned cash, time and emotions into these football clubs have to sit back and watch their ‘club’ turn into a global business.
Maybe clubs should reassess and venture across the world once every few years, after all television coverage maintains their presence in these countries that are so important to the business side of things. Television coverage will keep local people interested but nothing can replicate, particularly for children, the chance to see your heroes up close and personal whilst being able to witness firsthand all of the other trimmings that come with being at a real life football match.