Why sell it though? With the amount of commercials we generally get submitted to every time we switch on the damn telly, shouldn't they have enough money to run their bloody TV station? And why the exclusivity? Would it not be better if you could switch on telly and have your sports event for free on the channel you want, rather than having to dish out 30 quid a month for SKY Sports?

It's a bloody vicious circle too - football players make huge amounts of dough because the success of the club depends on them, on which depends the amount of sponsors and licensing fees they can ask from TV stations, on which depend the TV ratings and ultimately the TV subscription fees. In the end it comes down to you - the viewer and pay-per-viewer - dishing out cash for the likes of Beckham to buy himself a shitty expensive car and behave like a tosser. Sounds fair to you?

And the same goes for big movies that cost millions because the big shot artists ask for millions. A DVD costs 5p production costs and yet it sells for £25 - ever wonder why? Because the money eventually flows back to the likes of Tom Cruise who need the cash to buy their babies Chanel undies and to stay exclusive members of Scientology. And the Shakespearean thespian doing the same work and far better acting on theatre stage gets fuck all, because his name isn't Charles f***ing Bronson. Sounds fair to you?

Incidentally the money could be spent on making more interesting shows and movies and actually equipping sports clubs with direly needed equipment and - oh - feed the poor? How about it?

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Well morality aside, football is still fun to watch

damn communist!

"gets me ma gun i'm a gonna shoot me some reds!"

still i think that if a team looses then they shouldn't get paid, it would make for a more.......interesting game to watch

Football should be replaced by Speedball or something like that. Then they can get paid all they want - if they have a risk to die, why not?

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full time multi-ball! if its a draw

Rollerball.... Now that'd be a good sport to watch.

I basically disagree with all of these

Sports and movies are not a drug, they are not addictive like cigarettes.

People have a choice to either pay that £30 a month to watch the football, or give it to the poor
They have a choice to spend that £25 a month on entertain or go to the theare.

Its not as if we are dealing with a rich minority here, if it was I could see your point. But this is the masses, and the masses want to be entertained as well as give money to the poor

Ne, I give X amount of money to charity each month, I also spend X amount of money watching football (in the pub) who are you to say what or who I should spend my money on?

And why stop there, if spending £25 on a movie is wrong, why spend £20 on a meal out, when that also could go to a charity

Why pay money for any lesuire activity at all when that money could go to charity?

Who are you to tell people what they want to spend thier money on?

If 100 million people want to spend £30 a month being entertained by football, just because you don't like it, why are you allowed to preach its wrong?

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"Freedom of Speech" actually ... but that is besides the point.

If that's how you want to spend your money, fair enough (though I doubt you would complain if you had to spend less on it) - but why does it have to affect how my money is spent? In the UK, just like here, you have to pay licensing fees for radio and television - but why must my money be spent on football licensing fees rather than on the creation of educational or cultural programmes? TV companies complain they have no money for anything anymore ...! No, instead it gets blown on sports licenses and the remainder of the money is just about enough to lock a dozen people in a container and point cameras at them all day.

I'd have no troubles if this was an opt-in/opt-out kind of deal, but it isn't ... I realise that football is the dominant sport here in Europe and that at least 50% of the male demographic subscribe to it - I admit it is not as bad as it used to be, when there was a football game on television on every second station every day of the week - but that's just a symptom of something else really. Licensing fees have risen to such an extent that TV stations can't even afford to do that anymore because it's so ridiculously expensive.

Anyways, if 100 million people want to watch football, there's still 600 million who don't ... and that's just Europe.

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Man, this conversation is getting way too serious for this place.

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founer members tottenham

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My scum-loving nephew likes to taunt me with the fact that Tottenham only win "shit cups", but as I like to remind him, shit cups are better than no cups at all!

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