The Football League announced last week that the overall attendance figures for the league were up on the previous year, once again. In fact, the Championship now has the fourth highest average attendance in Europe, behind La Liga, Serie A and its own bullying older brother, the Premiership.
Evidence maybe that the endless rebranding over the last few years has had a positive impact.
But, whilst large attendances show the Championship to be in rude health, closer inspection reveals that signs of decline are very much prevalent. Holding up attendance figures is merely ignoring the extent of problems existent in the Football Leagues flagship competition.
The Championship is often held up as a paradigm of competitive sport, when compared to the Premiership, but it simply is no longer the case. A quick glance at the final league positions shows nothing but predictability. At the time of writing, the three teams relegated the previous season all look likely to win promotion back to the Premiership. Looking further down, it is becoming akin to the domination of the “Champions League four” in the premiership. The brief respite offered by the admirable challenges of Colchester, Preston and Cardiff City became exactly that; challenges. Unsuccesful ones.
The Championship is becoming a league of stratification, exactly as exists in the Premiership, with the “haves” occupying the top few positions, courtesy of their parachute payments, and the “have-nots” occupying the bottom few positions, happy to hang on to their status. The most worrying aspect of all of this is that those in the middle, who fit neither financial category, find themselves so desperately isolated that they are increasingly looking to external investment in order to give them a leg-up to escape the division.
Just a few weeks ago, Ipswich Chairman David Sheepshanks, writing in a national newspaper, said-
“You have to see the writing on the wall - and the numbers on the wall. Some people may be aghast but these are the realities of life nowadays. We want only what's right for the club. We are speaking to merchant banks, advisers and one or two interested parties. We are hoping something will be forthcoming in the not too distant future. But there are a number of Championship clubs wanting to do the same as us - 12 clubs, maybe more.''
Teams such as Leicester, Derby and Coventry have already successfully sought out this external investment and the trend clearly looks set to gather pace. As Sheepshanks says, what other option is there? The league is failing to provide sufficient income for the clubs to be competitive within the boundaries of their day-to-day operation.Those small clubs being promoted into the league are finding it extremely hard to move their club on to the next level due to increased revenues being eclipsed by increased running costs- an obstacle which Colchester United are just beginning to find out as they attempt to keep together their current squad.
And even those attendance figures are not all they might seem. The plain truth is that the Championship lost Watford, Reading and Sheffield United to the Premiership and replaced them with the collective larger attendances of Sunderland, WBA and Birmingham City. At the other end of the table, swapping Millwall, Brighton and Crewe for Colchester United, Southend United and Barnsley barely made any difference, so increased attendances seems to reflect historic trends rather than a reflection on an improved product.
In fact, it now appears that League One has replaced the Championship as the most competitive and vibrant of all the Football Leagues divisions. The gulf between those relegation from above and those promoted from below appears to be very little, as eminently demonstrated by the success in recent years of Southend and Scunthorpe, alongside the failures of Nottingham Forest and Millwall following their respective promotions and relegations.
The Championship is fast attaining the predictability of much of what is bad about the Premiership, except without having the obvious sweeteners, namely; the money, the star players and the global interest. It’s a worrying situation and focussing on improved attendances isn’t fooling anybody.
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