Commodified soccer clubs and cartelized parties both priced out loyal core fans

Evidence

Due to the sector’s growing commodification, clubs have become less and less dependent on their core fans, both financially and symbolically. Much as a steady stream of funding has driven the cartelization of political parties, the booming business of television rights has revolutionized the political economy of soccer clubs. It empowered a colluding elite whose main interest lies in preventing intruders from diminishing their market share: the Premier League. The old, loyal fans of local origin now began to look like gatecrashers, hampering the expansion of the club’s audience with their rowdiness and, in some cases, their hooliganism. The solution proved remarkably easy: overpriced tickets and restricted preferential access to the stadium. Soon the stands of the clubs in question would be filled by a new crowd—less local, and so with a far less passionate investment in the game. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 281

Categorization

• XREF: Cross-domain mapping of party cartelization onto soccer commodification is the author’s signature rhetorical move, echoing Michels’ iron law of oligarchy.