But that’s obvious, isn’t it?
For a great many fans, their football culture shapes their view of which ways of making money for a club they can accept. Sometimes, this even extends to a club’s right to exist.
In other words, for many a fan, their football culture doubles as both a moral as well as factual standard by which they assess a club’s most fundamental right to exist and ways of acquiring money.
I’ll give you an example: just pick a random fan-made podcast from @GNetzer’s podroll and you will probably find that they subscribe to all or most of these views:
-
a club without a history of more than, say, 20 years is morally and factually inferior to other clubs. Their right to exist is questionable because of this.
(RBL, TSG) -
clubs who are „owned“ by a company or an investor are morally and factually inferior to other clubs. Their right to exist is questionable because of this.
(Leverkusen, Wolfsburg, RBL, TSG, Hannover) -
clubs who have certain (main) sponsors are morally and factually inferior to other clubs. Their right to exist is questionable because of this.
(Red Bull, Bayer, Volkswagen)
[sidenote: other sponsors, curiously, are somehow totally acceptable: Gazprom? Evonik? Commerzbank?]
-
a club must have earned the right to enjoy sporting success through hard work and years of trying. Other clubs’ quicker and less arduously achieved success is morally and factually inferior. Their right to exist is questionable because of this.
(RBL, TSG, possibly Leverkusen, Wolfsburg) -
clubs who don’t have a big, devoted fanbase and attract great crowds on a matchday are morally and factually inferior (Wolfsburg, RBL, TSG, Leverkusen) or at least totally boring and expendable („who cares? We could do without.“) (Augsburg, Mainz, Hertha)
The hypocrisy in this is that these fans are blind to the fact that their clubs, too, are also run like businesses, have just as questionable sponsors, explore the same avenues of making money etc. We have already discussed this at length, here and elsewhere.
Indeed, THIS is the crucial question. Well met, my friend.
Provisionally, I would say yes. The ultimate responsibility for which sponsor to accept, where to set up one’s winter training camp, which business decision to take, should lie with the people in charge at a club and shouldn’t be the responsibility of the sponsor or investor (unless, of course, investor and people in charge are the same entity [Kind, Hopp, Red Bull]).
This, at least, is how I would design my governance structure. A clear allocation of responsibilities: it is the sponsors’ responsibility to pay their agreed payments, it is the club executives’ responsibility to define their club’s morally acceptable business conduct and choose e.g. the sponsors and training camp destinations accordingly, and it is the fans’ responsibilitiy to decide if they like what their club is doing and to give or withdraw love and attention accordingly.
But this view of mine is only tentative and I’m open to other ideas.
(edited for style and readability)