The football empire

Millions of South Africans are emotionally enslaved to English Premier League teams they've never seen in the flesh. How did this happen? Sipho Hlongwane investigates the long-range voodoo of the world's biggest league ...

This was not how things were supposed to go. Arsenal were not supposed to be screwing up like this again. Not after finally breaking a nine-year trophy drought and making smart additions to the squad.

This season was meant to be different. But there I sat in a Melville restaurant three weeks ago, overwhelmed by a flood of hellish déjà vu as the Gunners took another hiding from Everton just a fortnight into this new beginning.

Arsenal took some heavy beatings last season - not least a six-goal demolition by Chelsea - but the 3-0 loss at Everton may have been the worst. Getting taken apart like that, by a team that lusts after Champions League football (a perennial status for Arsenal), was humiliating. But here we were again, with Arsenal trailing 2-0 before half-time at Goodison Park.

Nine years of supporting a team of chronic underachievers has a way of draining even the most hopeful. More pain seemed inevitable.

But this time around, Arsenal came out more determined in the second half. Big Olivier Giroud replaced new signing Alexis Sanchez to provide more heft in the attack. In the closing minutes, the Toffees faded - and two rapid goals at the death sealed a draw.

I celebrated as though we'd claimed another trophy. My life was suddenly and significantly better.

Why did the fortunes of this distant troop of athletes, playing a routine league fixture, have such an influence on me? It was irrational.

A friend once remarked that I seem to love Arsenal more than I love football itself. He was not far wrong. There are few leagues on earth that command such tribalist zeal among fans as the English top flight - perhaps only Turkey, Italy and Argentina. And in South Africa, the English Premier League has bitten deep. We are a vital part of the competition's gigantic global audience.

Football might not technically be a religion yet, but the most-watched league in the world boasts an audience of 4.7billion souls, in more than 212 countries and territories around the world. That's more hearts and minds than Christianity and Islam put together.

The story of why the league is so successful in South Africa has less to do with anything particular to our culture - though the colonial legacy did scatter some seeds of loyalty in decades past - and more to do with the extraordinary appeal of the league itself. Its conquest of much of the world over the past two decades is arguably the greatest feat of sports business in history.

The Prem is even seducing the States. Last month, Liverpool played Real Madrid before a crowd of 109314 in a pre-season friendly at the Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. The US has been notoriously disdainful of "soccer" - a sport traditionally deemed too slow, draw-prone and homoerotic for that market. But immigration and globalisation have spliced the football gene into the mainstream American mind: witness the packed-out stadiums across the US to watch World Cup games on giant screens.

Now Major League Soccer is also attracting big names and big money. ESPN, Fox and Univision have just signed a new eight-year TV-rights deal with the MLS worth more than R7-billion.

By contrast, most of South Africa has never needed persuading that football is nutritious - but during apartheid, we were starved of the good stuff. Even after South Africa had multiracial domestic football in 1978, the sports boycott meant no international competition, and very little TV footage of foreign action.

A handful of exceptional black stars moved abroad, such as Kaizer Motaung, Ace Ntsoelengoe and Jomo Sono, who campaigned in the US, and Albert Johanneson, who played for Newcastle United in the 1960s. It was only with the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 that the full footy buffet opened up to us, just in time for the dawn of the Premier League.

The terrain was ready for invasion. Pockets of English football fandom had survived across South Africa's major cities throughout apartheid, despite the lack of TV coverage.

For many young South Africans, especially coloureds and Indians, supporting a team like Manchester United or Liverpool was a defiant connection to a free identity, beyond the parochial confines of apartheid life.

And then, during the '90s, English football changed almost as dramatically as South African society did. Out went the stodgy old First Division, rife with hooliganism and long-ball tactics. In came the sexy Premier League, with all-seater grounds, elegant continental forwards and rock-star fans. It was full of Cool Britannia spirit.

Transfer rules were liberalised, top clubs were listed on the London Stock Exchange, and big spenders from abroad started buying up teams. But most importantly, the Sky Broadcasting Corporation stepped into the game, bringing marketing savvy and a mountain of cash from advertisers and satellite subscribers. Bigger spoils from TV rights meant more money to spend on the best players, which kept the audiences riveted. In South Africa, SuperSport broadcasts Sky's matches, news reports and analysis.

Unlike in Spain's La Liga, where half the broadcast revenues are hogged by Real Madrid and Barcelona, the English Premier League's broadcast money is split equally between all 20 clubs, ensuring open warfare in which anything can happen in any given game. Currently, the league nets an astonishing total broadcast pot of R30-billion a year - and a new auction next year is likely to net even more. And that's not counting gate receipts, sponsorships and merchandising.

In his book Englischer Fussball, veteran German football journalist Raphael Honigstein explained the genius of Sky's broadcasting methods. "Sky, the broadcaster that has revolutionised football in England with its money and know-how, does not like to discuss its production techniques. Secrets of the trade. The boys from Isleworth in West London certainly do a good job however, as their pictures are swooned around the world. The slow-motion sequences are spectacular; the picture is incredibly sharp and yet has the kind of softness one associates with Hollywood productions. It is television that looks like cinema."

The volume is critical, too. The traditional British football stadium is the scene for the outpouring of "the whole ghastly secret, vile, dirty laundry basket of young Englishmen's fears, prejudices and braggadocio". On Sky, it is cranked up to 11. You don't miss a single syllable.

"The journalistic ethos in Germany demands distance. It is not uncommon for a commentator to analyse the reasons for an unsuccessful tackle before it is over. On English television, the commentator must sound as intense and close to the game as possible ... The faster the match, the more the man behind the microphone will talk," Honigstein wrote.

No wonder the Premier League has been called a soap opera for men (though countless women are just as enthralled). All the production values and drama - the cheaper, the better - are there.

By contrast, South Africa's own Premier Soccer League is usually unwatchable. Poor crowds mean poor atmosphere, and the action is scrappy. Last season's top scorer, Bernard Parker, netted just 10 goals. Compare that to Luis Suarez's total of 31, and the 16 other English Premier League strikers who scored more than 10. It's a 38-game season, as opposed to the PSL's 30 games, but still.

More than six in 10 matches in the PSL end scoreless or produce only one goal. In the English league last season, about one-third of the games had a victory margin of one goal, about a quarter had a two-goal margin, and the rest a margin of three goals or more. Six matches had a goal margin of more than five. In England, the goals are as abundant as the rain.

Young South African fans are increasingly discerning. They are frustrated by the PSL, which was the initial lure for millions of lower-income viewers who bought DStv subscriptions in the past seven years. They got live English action as part of the bouquet, and were hooked. While the Soweto derby still enjoys potent appeal, the drug of choice is the European product. This preference is even stronger elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, where the fan bases of local teams have been decimated, often at the cost of player development.

Honigstein suspects that the reason the Premier League is so huge in emerging countries is a cultural inferiority complex and a desire for international recognition. In Asia and Africa, the cult of star players and personalities is a strong driver of interest. Most UK teams head east to play pre-season warm-up games in Thailand, Vietnam, China and Japan.

These tours entice new crops of die-hard fans who will not only watch every match on TV, but buy up every available scrap of merchandise.

Chelsea fan Khaya Dlanga, a rugby-loving native of the Border district in the Eastern Cape, told me that he only started watching football in the mid-2000s to fit in with his new friends in Joburg.

"The appeal of a sport has a lot to do with the personalities of its stars. When boxing was dying, Mike Tyson came up and he was this incredible personality and revived the sport. Michael Schumacher in Formula One was this supremely talented being who could carve his way from the back of the field to win, and make controversial choices in pursuit of victory.

"Jose Mourinho is that kind of legendary figure. He seemed larger than life, and his collection of African players obviously attracted me to Chelsea," says Dlanga.

His story is not much different from those of millions of Africans who started watching English football in the late '90s and early 2000s. With Nwankwo Kanu and Patrick Vieira starring at Arsenal, and then Michael Essien and Didier Drogba at Chelsea (both clubs have a healthy appetite for French-born African players as well), the choice really boiled down to one of these two. The first match I can ever recall watching was an away loss for Arsenal at Auxerre in the Champions League, but the technical brilliance of Thierry Henry won me for the Gunners that night.

For many more fans, allegiance is a matter of family legacy, handed down over generations. Support for Liverpool and Manchester United tends to be of this type, because these were the dominant sides in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

"I think that the historical appeal of the Premier League cannot be underestimated," says Neil Andrews, a presenter for SuperSport. "Even for a younger audience, most boys and girls have parents that have supported a particular side for years. This support, whether it be for the same club or an alternative team, promulgates increased interest and debate in family circles, among friends and work forums."

Even in South Africa, club loyalty is a strong thing, says Andrews. You won't find people switching sides. "I'm a Tottenham Hotspur man. Growing up, I was drawn to the side captained by Steve Perryman. That side had some great players such as Garth Crooks, Steve Archibald, Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa. But it was Paul Gascoigne's brilliance and flair that cemented my love of the club."

Once it cements, that kind of love has a cost. It leads grown men to squeeze themselves into plastic bodysuits designed for athletes half their weight. It means regular heartbreak, and relentless cruel banter.

But if your team's year comes along, then all that pain is cheap at the price. LS

Working Stiffs

Here are the Premiership's highest wages - converted into rands for easier comprehension, and broken down to each superstar's rate per minute of on-pitch action, assuming they play 50 games a season. The joint top earners, Radamel Falcao and Wayne Rooney, earn roughly R275-million a year, excluding bonuses and endorsements.

Radamel Falcao (Man United) R5272749 per game = R58586 per minute of play

Wayne Rooney (Man United) R58586 per minute

Yaya Toure (Man City) R47242 per minute

Sergio Aguero (Man City) R44285 per minute

Robin van Persie (Man United) R44285 per minute