While football struggles to beat the cost of coronavirus, there’s no going back to normal

Politicians talk glibly about ‘beating the virus’ but there will be no victory until sport can be safely played in front of large crowds

For millions of us, the return of some “normal” to the “new normal” has been the return of Match of the Day on Saturday night. The empty stadiums made the atmosphere just as lifeless as an intimate family conversation on Zoom, but there was plenty of skill and some brilliance on offer. And footballers are once again becoming famous for what they are good at, and paid for, rather than for anti-social breaches of lockdown regulations or political coups.

Soccer and the other main spectator sports – not least rugby and cricket – represent, in an extreme form, the challenges of the pandemic. Their fate is one of the best indicators of a successful response.

It was football, in the form of the Liverpool v Athletico Madrid European Champions League match, which provided one of the main super-spreading events which gave a big boost to Covid-19 transmission in March. Big matches represent one of the paradoxes of the pandemic: those playing are at minimal risk of dying from Covid-19 (though some catch it); those watching as part of a dense, shouting and chanting, crowd are in prime conditions for community transmission, from which many have died.

Football, and other professional sport, has also illustrated the brutal economic consequences of lockdown and social distancing. Football clubs are businesses, but few are run in a truly business-like manner (and the owners of those that are, such as Mike Ashley at Newcastle, are heartily loathed by supporters). Even before the pandemic the finances of football were in a dire state, with wage costs completely out of control and dependent on the largesse of trophy hunting billionaires.

The English Premier League – the pinnacle of the game – is (or was) worth £6bn but made a collective loss last year of £600m. Half the clubs spent over 70 per cent of their turnover on salaries and several well over 100 per cent, mostly weaker sides trying to hold their own at the top. Average player pay is £60,000 a week. One top yet underperforming club – Arsenal – pays around half a million a week to a former star who isn’t considered good enough to play.

I recall from my days as business secretary trying to understand the mindset of bankers and top city executives who expected similar sums, regardless of performance. Like footballers, they live in an inflationary bubble devoid of any sense of how they are seen from outside.

The benchmark for leading players is pay at the world’s richest clubs such as Paris St Germain, Real Madrid and the two great teams of Manchester. Inflated pay and transfer fees then cascade down from the sublime to the good to the mediocre.

Until the pandemic, the show was kept on the road by broadcast revenues, which made up 60 per cent of clubs’ turnover – and often more than 80 per cent for the weakest clubs. In Lord Sugar’s memorable phrase, this income went through the clubs “like prune juice.”

Then came Covid-19. No more matches, so no more paying spectators or hospitality income, and no more TV income either. But expensive staff who need to be paid (attempts to offload the costs of non-playing staff onto the taxpayer were not well received, since the richest clubs like Manchester United have large cash reserves). The sheikhs and oligarchs can dip into their piggy banks, but for most clubs those options are not available.

Meanwhile, the lower divisions get nothing from the screening of Premier League games, apart from modest “solidarity” payments which trickle down from the top clubs. The second tier, the Championship, depends almost entirely on spectator income despite often paying Premier League level wages. As Mr Micawber would have said: “Income negligible; spending substantial; result misery.”

Apart from Stoke, which has the support of an online betting company, and Leeds and West Bromwich, both destined for promotion, almost all clubs are now effectively insolvent.

One idea being touted is to declare collective bankruptcy, default on contracts, and then start again with players on lower pay. An explosion of some kind is close.

The decline of clubs in former industrial towns of the north and midlands is part of a broader malaise which has had political consequences. The northwest boasts three of the world’s great clubs in resurgent (and Remain voting) Manchester and Liverpool. But they are surrounded by (Brexit voting) struggling towns with struggling clubs. Bury went bust last year; Bolton almost did. Former top teams like Blackburn, Blackpool, Preston, Oldham and a host of lesser sides face a grim future. These financial travails matter not just for football fans and players. For many communities, the football club is both a part of their identity and a tangible link to the wider world.

The recent envelopment of the Black Lives Matter movement into football is a prime example. I am sufficiently long in the tooth to have been a football fan when black players were almost unknown or treated as a kind of mascot. Then we had a few speedy wingers who were mocked and jeered when they didn’t perform miracles. Abuse followed. As recently as 2018, a banana skin was thrown at a black player at Tottenham. Good riddance to the fan concerned, who was banned for life. If those Burnley fans responsible for the “White Lives Matter” banner flown over last night’s game are found, they should face the same fate.

Now clubs are following what started a few weeks ago in Minneapolis, with footballers leading fans in rallying round the #BlackLivesMatter emblem on Match of the Day. The challenge is that lurking behind the facade of multi-racial bonhomie, football embodies many of the ugly features of structural racism. The top clubs field teams with a high proportion of black and mixed-race players – but the mix on the field, and among TV pundits, is not reflected on the management bench.

With the disappearance of Chris Hughton, there is no black manager in the Premier League. The board rooms reflect greater diversity only because of the Asian and Arab tycoons who have bought their clubs. There is a striking similarity with the NHS where black and Asian staff man the frontline but the hospital managers and trust boards remain overwhelmingly white. That is why the Black Lives Matter movement has resonated both in hospitals and on the football pitch, and both could be drivers for change.

Football matters. Unlike rugby, cricket, baseball, golf, tennis, hockey and other sports, it is a truly global game played and watched by people of almost all race, class and nationality. A true leveller, despite the eye-watering sums paid to players. In consequence, the UEFA Champions League is Brexit-proof and the World Cup is Trump-proof. But the game isn’t pandemic-proof and depression-proof.

Even when fans can come back to stadiums, parts of football will need support to get going again, just as has already been offered to Rugby League.

Politicians talk glibly about “beating the virus” but there will be no victory until sport can be safely played in front of large crowds. New Zealand has managed it with rugby but Britain is a long, long way from that point. Only when we get there will the country truly be “back to normal”.

Vince Cable is the former leader of the Liberal Democrats