Professional Sport

Amateur sport is when no financial incentive or gain is offered to players.

Gentleman Amateur: was a wealthy man in high social position; these amateurs did not need financial compensation to participate in sport.

Professional sport has a financial benefit to those playing.

Playing Professional: were male workers of low social position and needed financial compensation to afford to participate in sport.

The rationalisation of sports and the growth of spectatorism resulted in clubs making money from gate receipts. It was in football that payments became most regular because clubs wanted to be successful so the best players began to get paid.

Paying men to play was not new as the factory owners had been reimbursing workers ‘broken time payments’ in the years before. Small payments were made to good players who had to miss work to travel or play in matches. This came about because some of the best players had refused to play because they had their wages docked when they weren’t at work. Wages were poor and the men simply couldn’t afford to have their wages cut.

Fifteen clubs competed for the first FA Cup in 1871 and Wanderers, a team of ex-public school boys, won this and five of the first seven tournaments. However, many of their players left to play for their previous school’s ‘old boys’ team and the Wanderers folded before the turn of the century.

The Football league was formed in 1888, with six teams from the North and six from the Midlands involved in the inaugural association. Teams like Preston North End, Stoke City, Everton, Derby County and Aston Villa are clubs that were involved in this competition and Southern clubs were excluded because of their Amateur ideals. As clubs began to pay the best players it meant people from a lower class background could earn a living through playing football. The middle and upper class, because of their social status and financial position, did not need income from sports. However, the teams that contained professionals became more successful and teams like Old Etonians (a team of ex-Eton public schoolboys) and Cambridge University were never to repeat the wins they accomplished in the FA Cup in the 1870s and 1880s.

Amateurism and Professionalism in Rationalised Cricket

Cricket was predominately a middle or upper class game at the end of the 18^th Century. The game had become extremely popular throughout the century, with matches drawing large crowds. County games had become popular, especially in the home counties (e.g. Kent and Sussex). Most of the teams composed of ‘gentlemen amateurs’; middle and upper class men, often ex-public school boys. They took part for the love of the game and for the thrill of competition. However, there may not have been enough players to make up a team and this led to teams allowing the working class to join in. Like other activities payments were often made to the working class players and this led to teams paying more money for the best cricketers. Initially this was done in an underhand way, for example the players were ‘employed’ by the gentry as a gardener or gamekeeper. These ‘shamateurs’ claimed to not be receiving payment and included the great W.G. Grace, yet some of the matches lasted for three days and only people who could afford not to work could pay in such matches.

Later, paying players became more accepted, especially at Hambledon and certain other clubs around the country. Professionalism grew, and the players often coached in the local public schools to make more money or as a requirement of their job. The amateurs respected the skill levels of the professionals but they saw them as being socially inferior and this reflected by their roles and acceptance within the team. For example, the amateurs would have different changing facilities and eat tea in a different location; eating much better food. They wouldn’t travel together, the gentlemen would arrive later often travelling first class when using the railways. Their names would appear differently on the match programme; amateurs’ initials being included as a prefix but professionals only had their surnames listed. This enabled spectators to see which of the players were paid to play. As cricket and the clubs were run, and often funded by, the gentlemen amateurs they were captains of the team. They would usually open the batting and occupy most of the positions higher in the batting order, where as the professionals who were accomplished batters would bat lower down the order. However, most of the professionals were bowlers.

Some professional teams are now owned by corporations e.g. Red Bull in F1. In other instances some teams are now named as the corporation name itself e.g. Ferrari in F1.

The consequences of the influence of corporations is that in some cases athletes are more accountable to the sponsor than the team and sponsors can demand that athletes compete in prestigious competitions.

In resent years there has been a significant increase in the numbers of athletes crossing national borders for the purposes of sport. This growing ‘internationalisation’ primarily involves athletes, however it also includes:

• coaches,
• officials,
• administrators,
• sports scientists.

Benefits of Labour Migration

• Increase standard of national competitions, which leads to a better spectacle and level of competition (as seen in the NBA, Premiership Football/Rugby, MLS Soccer, IPL/Big Bash Cricket, NHL)
• Improved opportunities for female athletes in professional leagues such as the WPS league (Women's Professional Soccer) in the US.
• Easier transition from domestic competition to the international stage, gaining valuable experience from foreign players
• Increase commercialisation leading to increase in revenues
• Increase pay for players
• Improve integration of nationalities and political relations
• A way out of their country
• Add variation to tactics and training
• Play in the off-season to improve skills e.g. IPL
• Train where the climate is more favourable, e.g. skiing

Disadvantages of Labour Migration

• Take positions from home-grown players
• Smaller nations suffer from reduced talent due to bigger nations attracting players
• ‘Plastic Brits’- 2012 London Olympic situation with increasing numbers of athletes born abroad
• Supporters may feel resentmentRepresenting a nation can be viewed as a big business/corporation venture, therefore lacking loyalty and patriotism
• Players start to be known as ‘mercenaries’- who migrate for extrinsic rewards

The law is becoming more involved because quite often the rules and regulations in sport conflict with those outside it. For example, performers’ terms and conditions in their contracts with their club would not be allowed in other businesses. This led to the ‘Bosman ruling’ in football where players are free to move clubs at the end of their contract. Before this ruling, players had to remain at a club unless another team bought the player but this meant, as in the case of Jean-Marc Bosman, that players could be paid less money and relegated to a club’s reserve team. Bosman challenged this rule in the European Court of Justice and won, meaning any player could move for free at the end of their contract.