There are few things more honoured in British football than the sport’s oldest knock out
competition. In 2016, Arsene Wenger defiantly stated: “The FA Cup is something special.
You cannot imagine how big it is abroad. In England, you cannot be a big club and say
we don’t care about the FA Cup.” For the 2017/18 season, from the money-hoarding giants
of the Premier League to the almost-Sunday- league-quality minnows, 737 clubs entered
the ultimate last-man-standing contest. It is a competition of heritage and tradition,
adored by most and anticipated by all. Although, the FA Cup is no longer revered
like it once was, despite the ex-Arsenal manager’s kind words. Contrary to many fans’ beliefs,
it was not the BBC’s over- usage of the phrase ‘magic of the Cup’ which actually
killed the magic, but something much simpler. Club rationality and business-like thinking
killed the lofty reputation of the cup, as many realised that the competition acted as
little more than a distraction from the serious business.
The decline of the cup can be neatly traced from 1970s to present day. Until the 1990s,
the FA Cup consistently got higher attendances than corresponding fixtures involving the
same teams in the league. In fact, England was the only country in Europe who unfailingly
achieved higher attendances (and significantly higher too, often 30% more) in the domestic
cup competition than in the domestic league, illustrating that there really was some kind
of ethereal and untraceable magic about the competition.
The downturn in attendances started in the 1989/90 season, but plateaued at 25% higher
than the league equivalent for further five seasons before dropping like a stone. By the
1997/8 season, Premier League attendances drew higher crowds for the first time and
has never been out-attended since. Given the timing, it would be understandable
to blame the Premier League for the death of the FA Cup. That, however, would be too
simplistic. It was not just the top division that out-attended the cup, but all of England’s
divisions. Most telling is the general popularity of football during the latter stages of the
20th century. In the 1960s, cup attendances were up at over 3 million a year, but by the
early 1980s they had dropped to below 2 million. League turnouts likewise suffered due to the
drastic decline in respectability for the sport; stadiums were old and rickety, while
the perception of those who did attend was that of troubled youths who enticed violence
and crime. The only time that football traversed from
the newspaper back pages to the front was when hooliganism was rife. Football became
depicted as dangerous, and this sentiment was backed up by incidents like the Heysel
Stadium disaster and Bradford City fire, both in 1985, and the Hillsborough disaster in
1989. For all the pain caused by these horrifying instances, they had the positive effect of
forcing the government to intervene and ensure that these tragic cases would never be repeated.
In 1990, the Taylor Report was published. The legislation enforced all major stadiums
to convert to all-seater models, ban alcohol in view of the pitch and remove crush barriers
and fences to allow spectators to flee onto the pitch if required. The Football League
adopted the report and imposed all clubs competing in the top two division to adhere to the recommendations
by 1994. The process effectively forced owners to invest in gentrifying the experience of
watching football, which in turn expelled hooliganism.
While this rejuvenation was a crucial step in the re-popularising of football, it was
not the defining factor. The key change was introducing football to television. While
it may seem unthinkable now, football made fleeting appearances in the front rooms of
families before the 1980s. In fact, the only football matches which were televised live
in the early days of broadcasting were England internationals and the FA Cup final, which
was shown on both BBC 1 and ITV simultaneously. No wonder the cup had an enchanted aura.
The administrators of football were worried that televising live football would lead to
even greater depreciating attendances. In fact, the opposite was true. Televising football
allowed the public to see football for what it really was: high value entertainment. As
the saying goes, all publicity is good publicity, and football attendances grew in correlation
with the number of broadcasted live matches. The financial crisis of the early 1980s forced
the Football League to begrudgingly sell what they thought was their soul to the broadcasting
companies. In fact, if the decision-makers had taken the time to observe what was happening
in the USA, they would have noticed that their sports had seen vast growth since agreeing
live television deals. From 1986 until 1992, even as Britain went through a gruelling recession,
attendances in the Football League grew. With Rupert Murdoch looking to expand his
media conglomerate, the businessman contemplated two industries which he regarded as interesting
markets crying out for investment. The first, pornography, posed difficult legal and ethical
issues despite the reward of huge revenues. And so, Murdoch settled on his secondary option:
televising sport. It just so happened that, in 1992, the FA had ceded power to the clubs
of the First Division to form a breakaway league which allowed them to collectively
sell their broadcasting rights and split the money between the 20 competing teams.
The Premier League was born, and with BSkyB’s enormous financial backing and ‘sexy’
new marketing, the greatest sporting economic revival was underway. The FA, and its heralded
cup competition, lacked the same modernising impetus and stayed loyal to the BBC. Where
Sky’s deep pockets lent itself to shamelessly flogging the Premier League all over the world,
the more frugal BBC, and its prized FA Cup, could not compete.
While many wanted to believe that the FA Cup’s magic lived on, the viewing figures and attendances
said otherwise. The clubs noticed it too. A good old-fashioned cup run was nowhere near
as glamorous as a surge up the Premier League table, and
so, owners told their managers to prioritise. Money talks, and the prize Southampton received
for finishing 17th in the Premier League (the lowest position still avoiding relegation)
in the 2017/18 season was £107.2 million, not much of a comparison to the £3.4 million
Chelsea received for winning the FA Cup. It seems odd that something as revered and
respected as the FA Cup could crumble so feebly. In the wake of one diminished sporting institution,
another rose to take its place. The Premier League now holds the honourable status of
the best football competition in England, and quite possibly the world, largely thanks
to one man’s decision to invest in football over pornography.