A Game of Two Halves?: The Business of Football

The football business is changing while the game's traditional regulatory institutions are struggling to keep up with the problems raised by the sport's success. This work takes a look at who runs football and where the increasing amounts of money that flow into the game actually go. Contributors include David Conn, author of "The Football Business"; Armand Caraben, a former general manager of Barcelona Football Club; Adam Brown, a member of the Football Task Force; Brian Lomax, elected director of Northampton Town; Andy Walsh, chairman of the Independent Manchester United Supporters' Association; and a number of leading academics and analysts in the areas of corporate governance and regulation. Despite the problems, the authors are far from pessimistic. There are new forms of ownership emerging that combine fan equity with the new commercialism, and increasing revenue provides an opportunity to strengthen football from the grass-roots up. Seizing these opportunities means learning lessons from the past and developing systems of regulation that will enable the whole game to flourish - from the local park teams to the Premier League.