I am not a football fan. Reactions to plans for a European super-league remind me why. According to the BBC ‘critics say the move is being driven purely by money.’ Whereas in the prelapsarian days of, say, last week, professional football was all about craft and community?
Free marketeers should be relaxed about this. You could argue that the super league members’ decision is a matter for them and them alone. They are private businesses supplying a product – entertainment – to paying customers in a market. If they want to supply that product via slightly different arrangements, why should anyone else care? If the public anger in today’s headlines and pixels is really that deep, there’ll be no demand for the product and the league will fail. The Super League may be all about money, but there’ll only be money if people pay to watch it.
Public fury about the move is therefore an interesting illustration of human psychology.
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