The Rich People's Game

 

If you've been a follower of this joint for a while you've probably noticed that I'm a bit of a soccer fan.

And you'd be right; I've supported the local soccer clubs, the men's Timbers and the women's Thorns, since before the men were up in the Show and from the day the women started playing over ten years ago.

Plus I've been a Newcastle supporter for even longer - the Toon caught me back in the Shearer years of the 90's (I've never forgiven Ferguson and the ManU mob for stealing the crown in the 1995-96 season. Bastards.) - and so for the past thirty-odd years my life has been steeped in the Beautiful Game.

I'm a founding member of the "Axe Society", the season ticket holders from the Timbers' first big-league season in 2011.

I've stood and sung in the cold rain of October and the burning sun of August. I damn near tore out the walls of the cheap hotel in Medford, locked out of the playoff run of 2015 by a work assignment, during the insane 22-round-of-penalties "Double Post" game. 

 

I've been, as the tifo says, a Rain or Shine Supporter since the beginning of the modern Timbers era in 2001.

But no more.

Last year, with retirement looming and the cost of my season pass reaching almost $1,000 I gave up the place I've had in the Shed End for over twenty years.

And this season the club has moved its televised matches to the Apple+ streaming service...meaning that even to watch the Boys I'd need eighty bucks for the service AND another eighty for the MLS "Season Pass".

And that's without the cost of any single game tickets I might hope to nick off the spendy SeatGeek app. 

Look.

I get it. This is what I and you and all of us should expect from Late Stage Capitalism. Soccer is Big Money. Everyone in the game - players, owners, broadcasters, sponsors - wants a piece of the action. Nobody wants to leave a penny on the ground if there's cash to be made.

Here's the thing, though.

We. We, the fans, are the cow that's being milked. It's our wallets that all these people are hoovering, our support that's being mulcted to make the providers of the game a fucking buck.

And that's just getting real tiring.

I love this game. I love my town. I love our teams and I want to support them.

But it's getting real fucking old that every time I put my scarf on I turn around and there's another sonofabitch expecting to be hit in the palm.

I don't expect the Boys to play for free. I get it; it costs money to run a big-league team.

But.

It seems self-defeating to monetize every fucking aspect of the sport. It seems stupid to price everyone but the wealthy out of the "people's game".

Footy rose on the shoulders of the working men and women of England, Scotland, France, Argentina and Brazil and even here in the Americas.

But now?

When my beloved Toon is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Saudi oil sheiks?

When I can no longer sit down and enjoy seeing my Timbers struggle to a dreary midweek draw with the Houston Dynamo without paying Steve Jobs' heirs?

When it seems like the entire sport is sloshing with money yanked out of the people's pockets?

I just feel like Smokey the Bear standing silent as all the forest around me burns.