Such a large and cooperative project too is the restructuring of soccer as an industry. For the group of stakeholders in Ghana sports, including the government, the National Sports Council, the Ghana Football Association, the GHALCA representing the league clubs, as well as the sports-friendly business community, the dream of making sports a viable and marketable entity that will support a large population of employees becomes the collective aspiration and the challenge of the early part of the twenty-first century. Privatization and full scale development of football as a business enterprise is the only path that leads to genuine professionalism and great achievements in the international sports arena, and we are all stakeholders in that dream.
The Business View of Football
Soccer has spread around the world like a global epidemic. With professional leagues filling stadiums in nearly every country and games televised all over the globe, the soccer/football phenomenon unites diverse world populations like no other human activity. Sports/soccer information predominates in all media so ubiquitously that the world often seems reduced to a virtual soccer village.
Soccer has not always been so widespread and successful. The last hundred years have seen the evolution of the sport from its humble origins as a local recreational pastime into a highly organized worldwide industry that has become integrated into the economic infrastructure of a majority of nations. To facilitate such extraordinary growth as a commercial entity over many years, the soccer enterprise has been obliged to cultivate an extensive network of associations with all other areas of economic activity, including administration, marketing, legal and medical practice, land use planning, engineering, and many other professions too numerous to mention. Soccer has joined the major leagues of industry and has become a high-volume consumer of materials and services provided by many other fields. As a big business, therefore, it can no longer be regarded as nothing more than a physical discipline practiced by zealous enthusiasts. Modern soccer is more properly understood as a system of interdisciplinary activities that operate in unison to form a coherent enterprise.
Such a systems view of soccer has become meaningful as sports in general have grown increasingly businesslike, and nothing demonstrates professional soccer organization better than FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the governing organization of international soccer. FIFA defines both how soccer is played and how it is set up and operated as a business through a comprehensive series of programs and guidelines that are disseminated on a global scale as a fundamental toolset for soccer administration. FIFA’s offerings include bylaws on racism and the use of illegal drugs, a Masters program for soccer management, funding for lesser-endowed football associations, solicitation of sponsorship deals, and many other programs and activities that are not readily discernible on the playing field but that enrich the quality of the game and the value of soccer as both a celebratory cultural activity and an economically productive institution.
This book is primarily concerned with how soccer is best organized as a self-sustaining system, with particular focus on and application to Ghana. It is intended to be read by athletes, sports enthusiasts, administrators, students, and professionals who may have come into contact with soccer in the course of their career activities. It is my great ambition and cherished hope that this book can contribute to the building and ongoing operation of a formidable soccer league.
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