In a past life, I was a geophysical engineer, and in 2007 I spent 5 months working in Indonesia, sailing around, looking for oil, watching whales and taking snaps of sunsets.
The crew was mostly Indonesian, some young, educated and in love with all this Premier League.
The guy I was friendly with was an Arsenal fan.
Well, this isn't quite true, as he was a Thierry Henry fan, and was going to support Arsenal as long as Henry played for them. When Henry left, he would follow the player and support his new team.
He wore an Arsenal shirt every shoft, so must have had more than one, but these were knock-offs, bought in a market or maybe a sports shop that sold immitations of the £50 ones we bought home. Not a penny of that short went to Arsenal.
Neither did TV rights, as Premier League was either on free to air, or if on subscription TV they would go to a bar or watch a pirate stream.
And this is the truth about the "new" fans the ESL were planning on abandoning their "legacy" fans for; the poorest people, and least able to pay for the right to watch the team they support.
I can remember Man Utd once claiming they had half a billion worldwide fans, based on social media interactions. But most can't afford to spend anything on the club, their support, though is welcome, in finacial terms, is meaningless. Casting aside current wealthy matchgoing fans to chase some imaginary army of monied fans around the world is a foo's errand, but if the elete clubs want to do this, to upset their very base support.
Fuck 'em.
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