Harnessing the Forces of Commercialism: The Financial Development of the Football Association, 1863–1975

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the Football Association for permission to access materials used in this article and David Barber of the FA for his help in interpreting some of that material, although neither should be assumed to share any of the views expressed in the study.

Notes

 1. G. Green, History of the Football Association (1953) Naldrett and B. Butler, Official History of the Football Association, Queen Anne (1991).

 2. See, for example, W.C. Neale, ‘The Peculiar Economics of Professional Sport: a Contribution to the Theory of the Firm in Sporting Competitions and in Market Competition ’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 78 (1964), 1–14. These arrangements have varied from the wage restrictions (admission) price-fixing and dividend controls of the Football League in England to the income-sharing and draft-pick arrangements of the American National Football League; see A.J. Arnold, ‘Rich Man, Poor Man: Economic Arrangements in the Football League ’, in J. Williams and S. Wagg (eds.), British Football and Social Change (Leicester, Leicester University Press 1991), pp.48–63.

 3. Nottingham Forest was for many years the exception in remaining, and retaining the voting rights of, a members' club.

 4. See, for example P.J. Sloane, ‘The Economics of Professional Football: the Football Club as a Utility Maximiser ’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 17 (1971), 121–46 on the characteristics of utility- and profit-maximizing behaviour. The behaviour of clubs whose shares have more recently been publicly quoted is probably closer to orthodox profit-maximization than that of privately or family controlled clubs.

 5. A. Gibson and W. Pickford, Association Football, Vol. I (1906), p.130. This was still the position in December 1975.

 6. Much of the analysis is based upon data set out in the annual Minute Books of the FA, Football Association Library, London. The financial statements prior to 1880 are very brief and have been discussed in the text. The sequence of fifth years has been modified where the world wars intervene.

 7. Table 3 shows the FA's assets, incomes and expenses in constant (December 1975) £s, using the index of retail prices as set out in C.H. Feinstein, National Income, Expenditure and Output of the United Kingdom, 1855–1965 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1972) Table 140 for the period 1880–1914 and the standard retail price index thereafter.

 8. Sheffield FC, the earliest organized club, was founded in 1856.

 9. R. Holt, Sport and the British (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1989) pp.84–5.

10. Green, History of the Football Association, p.46.

11. T. Pawson, 100 Years of the F.A. Cup, Heinemann (1972) pp.5–6.

12. Payments of more than £3 had to be approved in committee, all cheques were to be countersigned and a full-time clerk was appointed to assist the Hon. Secretary. Two years later, an audit of the annual accounts was required; see also Green, History of the Football Association, p.72.

13. The exceptions being Queens Park (Glasgow) and Donington Grammar School, Spalding. The latter was one of three teams that scratched before the competition actually started; see Gibson and Pickford, Association Football Vol. 1, pp.36–44.

14. The generosity of the Old Etonians can be exaggerated; having conceded four goals in the last 15 minutes of the first match they refused to play extra time, thereby inflicting considerable expense on their opponents. The second match was drawn 2–2 and the Old Etonians, who were to go on and win the Cup that year, only won (6–2) at the third attempt.

15. Green, History of the Football Association, p.66; Butler, Official History of the Football Association, p.25.

16. The Scottish FA did not come into existence until March 1873 and the Scottish team for the first two official internationals was chosen by the captain of Queens Park (Glasgow), the senior Scottish club; M. Farrar and D. Lamming, A Century of English International Football 1872–1972, Robert Hale (1972), pp.11–12. Despite an entrance fee of one shilling (a twentieth of the average weekly wage of the time), nearly 4,000 attended the first official match. See also Green, History of the Football Association, p.51.

17. Gibson and Pickford, Association Football, Vol. 1, p.61.

18. The various arguments and the progress of the dispute are fully covered in Green, History of the Football Association, pp.95–109. It is salutary that the split between Rugby Union and Rugby League took place over ‘broken-time payments ’ for wages lost due to playing, rather than over full professionalism, as the senior northern rugby clubs greatly preferred that their players be working men rather than full-time professional players.

19. The last amateur to play in a full international match was A.G. Bower of the Corinthians, who captained England against Wales in February 1927.

20. Butler, Official History of the Football Association, p.46; Gibson and Pickford, Association Football, Vol. 1, p.130.

21. Home games against Scotland were by far the most remunerative.

22. For matches between the four British national sides, where home and away fixtures alternated, the home country retained the receipts, an arrangement largely to the advantage of the English FA.

23. Butler, Official History of the Football Association, p.48.

24. Farrar and Lamming, A Century of English International Football, p. 15.

25. A combined British team played in the Olympics of 1936, but did not win the competition.

26. A. Tomlinson, ‘North and South: the Rivalry of the Football League and the Football Association ’, in Williams and Wagg, British Football and Social Change, p.28.

27. P.J. Beck, ‘Going to War, Peaceful Co-existence or Virtual Membership? British Football and FIFA, 1928–46 ’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 17 (March 2000), pp.120, 129.

28. An England all-amateur side had been beaten in Copenhagen in May 1910.

29. In 1927–28 the previous year 's cup-winners, Cardiff City, played the Corinthians and, during the 1930s, professional sides played for the Shield.

30. On 28 April 1923, before the famous ‘white horse ’ final between Bolton and West Ham.

31. Whereas the receipts from matches between the British international sides were retained by the home nation, when England played away games against European nations (which were not followed by a matching home fixture) they received part of the gate.

32. In 1933, Herbert Chapman had been the first professional manager to take charge of the England team, for the game against Italy in Rome, although the team was still chosen by the FA 's selectors.

33. Green, History of the Football Association, pp.444–8.

34. England had been beaten by Eire at Goodison Park, Liverpool in September 1949.

35. The first, highly experimental, floodlit match took place in Sheffield in October 1878. When interest revived, the FA banned such matches from 1930 until 1950. The first competitive fixture played under lights was at Southampton in October 1951 and the FA 's willingness to allow replays in the early rounds of the Challenge Cup to be played under floodlights in 1955 brought about a rapid change in the innovation 's acceptability.

36. Radio broadcasts began in January 1927 and televised football in 1937, when part of the Cup Final was shown although, even in 1954–55, the BBC was charged only £2,000, an amount shared between the FA and the Football League.

37. See J. Hill, Striking for Soccer, Peter Davies (1963); S. Wagg, The Football World: a Contemporary Social History (Brighton, Harvester 1984), ch. 8.

38. The finals of the competition that started in 1962 were held in 1964. England reached the semi-finals in 1968 and the quarter-finals in 1972.

39. The FA 's 1967 accounts suggest that the figure of £435,000 may have been an exaggeration and show instead a surplus of £225,000 from proceeds of £800,000. See also Butler, Official History of the Football Association, pp.140–1, 163–4.

40. In 1975, the FA 's net match receipts exceeded £400,000, with the home internationals against West Germany (£173,000) and Scotland (£156,000) providing by far the largest surpluses.