Colin Sheridan: With big sport and dirty money something's got to give

BOILING MAD: The GAA is obsessed with growth. Pic: Getty

Big Sport is at a crossroads. Last week the European Court of Justice ruled that Uefa and Fifa acted” unlawfully” by blocking the formation of the controversial European Super League in 2021. The EU’s top court ruled that Fifa and Uefa abused their dominant position by forbidding clubs outright to compete in any version of a Super League but added that the Super League may still not be approved. 

At the same time, Fifa president Gianni Infantino announced plans for the 2025 Club World Cup will be an international club soccer competition that pretty much nobody wants but Fifa. The next tournament will be played in the United States in June 2025, and will have an expanded format with 32 teams, including the winners of the four previous continental championships. Infantino's announcement was met with widespread derision, and even threats of legal action from La Liga.

In golf, last June the PGA Tour agreed to merge with rival LIV Golf, which we are all aware is backed by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, an entity controlled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man who - amongst many other things - the CIA reckon sanctioned the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The PGA-LIV merger announcement was six months ago. Since then, the PGA tour has imploded, and its rival/partner has continued “growing the game "by gorging itself on insecure golfers, but producing very little product. The fallout from Jon Rahm’s recent defection to LIV suggests neither the regular tour players, nor Greg Norman’s rebels are any closer to a united front.

Despite a 'successful' World Cup in France, Rugby union is fighting an existential crisis on two fronts. The ongoing concussion litigation has recently increased to 300 players who are taking legal action against World Rugby, the RFU and WRU arising from the brain injuries they have sustained from, allegedly, playing rugby. The sport has come increasingly under the microscope as many retired players now suffer from various irreversible neurological impairments, including motor neuron disease, early onset dementia, CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), post-concussion syndrome, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s disease. While the next Rugby World Cup in Australia will increase from 20 to 24 teams, the evidence of much of this Autumn's lopsided action suggests the game is not growing at a rate commensurate with the sports ambition.

As for boxing…well, where do we start? A sport that once upon a time brought the planet to a standstill and boasted the world's biggest stars is now little more than a traveling circus. Aside from the already confusing situation of having four main bodies sanction fights (thus depriving us of undisputed champions), the most hyped bouts of the last few years have been between Youtubers and influencers. The sport is riddled with the dirtiest money which is propping up a business that is suffocating the most noble of martial arts.

Closer to home, the GAA is like the frog sitting in a pot of water that's slowly boiling. Expanding backroom entourages is only one reason for the ever-increasing costs of running inter-county teams. More games, more demands on players, a reluctance to change the rules - and thus the focus of Gaelic football - has led to a sport asphyxiated by its own inflated sense of self. In short, people are largely bored, and instead of stripping it back, the GAA - another governing body obsessed with growth - seems intent on adding more and more layers to an already overdressed torso. It seems unsustainable and I genuinely believe that it is, but then that's been said for some time and here we are. Hence the frog, sitting in the boiling water, with 50 layers of clothes on.

For all this existential woe, everybody still watches them. For now. You can be certain each of these sports will endure beyond the greed and the hubris of those who administer them. Twenty handicap golfers don’t play golf because or in spite of LIV, no more than the pitches across Dublin are full because of Gianni Infantino. The worry is what will become of the kids that come after us if they’re priced out of watching football or golf or if rugby simply becomes too dangerous a sport to play?

It’s not all Armageddon. Last August, the World Athletic Championships were the perfect antidote to all the capitalist chaos that has corrupted so much other sport. Athletics has had its own, well-publicised problems, and no one should be so naive to think either the governing body or all the athletes are sudden paragons of virtue. But, for those eight days in Budapest, track and field felt detached from the entropy surrounding football, golf and rugby, even inter-county games in the GAA. 

Perhaps it was the increased Irish interest, but I’m not so sure. This summer's upcoming Olympics in Paris will be a truer test of whether track and field has regained its status as a blue-ribbon sport, but on the evidence of last Autumn, we should be more optimistic than cynical.

This year's Tour de France had the same aura of nobility about it. Cycling - another sport that had essentially bottomed out in the credibility stakes - has somehow rediscovered its essence. I defy you to watch the peloton struggle up the Col du Tourmalet and not feel something.

What athletics and professional cycling have in common is that both bankrupted themselves - morally, financially, emotionally - before being forced to look inward and rebuild. There is no world in which Fifa polices itself and slows down its money grab. It will continue to “grow the game” and in doing so will further enable the cancer of sportswashing and the needless expansion which will dilute the import of its already cluttered calendar. It used to be that the overpaid footballers were the ones we blamed for killing the beautiful games, so removed from reality were they with their £1,000 toiletry bags and hedonistic lifestyles. Now, given the demands on them by clubs and agents, you could argue they’re not being paid enough.

Somethings gotta give. The pandemic taught us that less is more. That perspective already seems lost. For the sake of the sports we play and follow, we should do everything we can to rediscover it.