Saving the FA cup

[peterhague]

Does it need saving? Can it be saved?

If so, how?

Personally I think it could be done fairly simply - just make the prize money for the winners and runners up something close to the other rewards available in football. I'd relaunch it when the next TV rights negotiations are due with a £30m prize for the winners and £15m for runners up.

That would surely transform the level of interest from the clubs, make the matches far more important, fill up the grounds, and crucially, drive the TV money up to fund the prizes. They'd need to remove the listed status of the FA cup final though, so that any broadcaster could bid for it.

 

[Spionkop69]

Does it need saving? Can it be saved?

If so, how?

Personally I think it could be done fairly simply - just make the prize money for the winners and runners up something close to the other rewards available in football. I'd relaunch it when the next TV rights negotiations are due with a £30m prize for the winners and £15m for runners up.

That would surely transform the level of interest from the clubs, make the matches far more important, fill up the grounds, and crucially, drive the TV money up to fund the prizes. They'd need to remove the listed status of the FA cup final though, so that any broadcaster could bid for it.

Stop playing semis at Wembley is another thing.

But the tv money needs to be distributed to the lower league teams as well. So the prize money for the finalists will make it pretty exclusive.

 

[Gerry_A_Trick]

I don't think it needs saving. It's a great competition and all teams(bar Arsenal) want to win it.

 

[hmmmmm1]

Romance of the cup still there, with beating Wigan beating city last year.

 

[gkmacca]

Yes, scrap the Wembley semi finals, make the final the last domestic match of the season, don't do the draws until the round has been completed, play all the games in one weekend, and make it an exclusive terrestrial TV-protected tournament.

 

[doctor_mac]

A champs league place would spice it up some.

 

[Gerry_A_Trick]

Looking back through the finalists over the past few years, only once in the past 23 years has one of us, Arsenal, United, City and Chelsea not being in the final. I reckon the top clubs still but a huge emphasis on winning it.

If you include Everton and Spurs, there's only that one instance back as far as 1975.

 

[Glock21]

A champs league place would spice it up some.

Yup! Agree! Move the fuck on and win the rest of the league games and we can be a sentimental shit about the FA Cup!

 

[Athens]

I reckon if they just sold it better it would get more importance.

Bring in a few marketeers who know what they're doing, some of those guys that work for Apple would do the job. They're great at selling over priced products to people, they could easily sell the FA cup.

 

[Fallon]

I'd be tempted to up the prize, but not to champion's league group levels, that'd be obscene.

I would also fuck off Wembley for semis. Just because the idiots spent £1 billion on it doesn't make it important or special enough (it's not the same, and a new national stadium should have been more central in the country) to host a bloody semi-final.

 

[RolandG]

The FA Cup is magical and doesnt need saving. It doesnt get the esteemed prestige it deserves.

 

[Tal]

A champs league place would spice it up some.

I can't see this ever happening because over time crap teams would still fluke an FA Cup win, gain a CL place, get hammered and we'd start to lose our ranking points and maybe have to lose an entry.

 

[peterhague]

Stop playing semis at Wembley is another thing.

But the tv money needs to be distributed to the lower league teams as well. So the prize money for the finalists will make it pretty exclusive.

I think the first order of business is to get the PL clubs interested again. The possibility of a bonanza pay out for reaching the final would make the early rounds genuinely important matches again. That would bring the crowds out - and those higher gate receipts would be shared with the lower clubs too.

 

[peterhague]

I don't think it needs saving. It's a great competition and all teams(bar Arsenal) want to win it.

16,000 at Sunderland this weekend says otherwise.

Paul Lambert openly stating that most PL managers would prefer to do without it says otherwise.

 

[peterhague]

A champs league place would spice it up some.

It would, but having major prize money for the finalists would have a roughly equivalent effect.

 

[peterhague]

Looking back through the finalists over the past few years, only once in the past 23 years has one of us, Arsenal, United, City and Chelsea not being in the final. I reckon the top clubs still but a huge emphasis on winning it.

If you include Everton and Spurs, there's only that one instance back as far as 1975.

IMO that's the wrong analysis. What's happened is that the smaller PL clubs now don't bother with it either, and given that there's a bigger difference between, say, Chelsea's second team and Villa's second team than between the respective first teams, the competition has become ever more the preserve of the CL clubs even as they place less and less importance on it.

In short, Chelsea don't give a shit. But Aston Villa give even less of a shit.

 

[peterhague]

The FA Cup is magical and doesnt need saving. It doesnt get the esteemed prestige it deserves.

Way to contradict yourself!

 

[RolandG]

Way to contradict yourself!

I'm not contradicting myself. Its treated as a hand-off by the big teams until they are dumped out of Europe but by and large appreciated by all the fans. It still has mass appeal.

 

[localny]

A champs league place would spice it up some.

This

 

[SummerOnions]

The really shit team starts with a one goal advantage

 

[Dahuge]

Why should Everton get a 1 goal start...

 

[peterhague]

I'm not contradicting myself. Its treated as a hand-off by the big teams until they are dumped out of Europe but by and large appreciated by all the fans. It still has mass appeal.

In the long term what fans think is dictated by what clubs think: it's hard to maintain enthusiasm for something when your team shows contempt for it, or more to the point, when other teams show contempt for it.

But I'm not at all convinced what you said is even true right now. We already see lots of half empty grounds, and where tickets are sold it's at reduced prices.

 

[gkmacca]

The Europe prospect would be important for clubs. The exclusive terrestrial coverage would be important for the popularity with fans. The match on Sunday on BT drew in about 900,000. The same match on BBC1 or ITV would draw in about 5 million, and the biggest games could dwarf anything Sky or BT can manage by about 8-10 million. So one tournament each year that reaches a far bigger section of the population than anything else did would build more interest. At the moment, even though the odd game is fobbed off on ITV, the majority of the coverage is restricted to a tiny part of the potential viewing audience, who are already so spoilt for choice there's little impact. The BBC would be the ideal place for the FA Cup, if the controllers really wanted popularity rather than just money.

 

[peterhague]

The Europe prospect would be important for clubs. The exclusive terrestrial coverage would be important for the popularity with fans. The match on Sunday on BT drew in about 900,000. The same match on BBC1 or ITV would draw in about 5 million, and the biggest games could dwarf anything Sky or BT can manage by about 8-10 million. So one tournament each year that reaches a far bigger section of the population than anything else did would build more interest. At the moment, even though the odd game is fobbed off on ITV, the majority of the coverage is restricted to a tiny part of the potential viewing audience, who are already so spoilt for choice there's little impact. The BBC would be the ideal place for the FA Cup, if the controllers really wanted popularity rather than just money.

But tv access to the PL is far more restricted than the FA cup and yet it's still much more 'popular' with the fans. What builds interest with fans is the feeling that the games are really important, that there are huge stakes involved in each match.

 

[gkmacca]

Yes, but hard core fans are just there anyway. You're not going to change what the regular punters think after years of the hyped up Premiership. What the FA Cup needs to do is tap into the general national audience, the vast majority of whom don't watch games on TV at all. If the FA Cup (like international tournaments) was shaped as a national event via a national broadcaster, it would have its best chance of recovering some lustre.

 

[Mystic]

The champions league idea whilst in theory sounds great, really wouldn't work in practise. Imagine if Wigan got champions league this year? They'd have invested in lots of overpaid short term players, which would have damaged there club in the long run. Also it would damage the UKs coefficient, which is a no no.

 

[gkmacca]

Let's not forget that, for all the talk about how huge the FA Cup used to be, it got really huge because it was a TV phenomenon. When it became pretty much the only live game of the year on TV, then the final was massive: hours and hours of coverage. Then when live games became commonplace, so the FA Cup declined in impact. So the media angle is in this instance quite relevant. And of course the thing is, thanks mainly to Sky, we're saturated these days by the Premiership and the Champions League. There's just no more juice you can squeeze out of that. The average teenaged fan couldn't give a toss about a clip of Ronnie bloody Radford belting some mud towards goal. You're also not going to get more interest inside actual stadia unless you cut the prices in half because people have been bled dry by all the other games. That's why I think the only chance is to move it away from the rest and encourage non-footy obsessives to watch the games free on the telly. Then it's got its own niche. Like Wimbledon - most of the audience aren't really tennis fans, but they'll watch that tournament. But to the average regular fan, the FA Cup is now just a minor competition and there's no solution to that.

 

[tony]

Maybe a mad idea but how about a 5 point bonus in the league for the winner with 3points for the runners up. Should sharpen the focus of the teams at the top with CL ambitions as well as the relegation threatened teams - could spice things up a bit.

 

[RolandG]

But tv access to the PL is far more restricted than the FA cup and yet it's still much more 'popular' with the fans. What builds interest with fans is the feeling that the games are really important, that there are huge stakes involved in each match.

Thats not true here in Africa, particularly SA. We get the majority of games from all the major European Leagues especially The Premiership. The FA Cup is held in high regard.

 

[Le Chacal]

Get rid of the League Cup, Premiership clubs coming on at earlier stages, smaller clubs play at home, no replays, bigger prize money for winner..etc..