Football as gate to the society

Source: stadiumworlds.de

FC United board member Dr Adam Brown presents his paper as part of a public lecture series at Technische Universität Darmstadt

17.05.2006 / 19:00 Uhr

“Not For Sale”?: The Destruction and Reformation of Football Communities in the Glazer Take-over of Manchester United

This paper will explore some of the issues for, and impacts on, football fans through the commercial globalisation of professional football. It will do this through an exploration of one example, that of the Malcolm Glazer corporate takeover of Manchester United in May 2005.

In particular the paper will cover:

• The background to club ownership and regulation in England, as compared to other European models of ownership and governance.

• The particular historical background of Manchester United.

• The fan formations and politicisation of Manchester Untied fans and how this relates to notions of local identities and fan communities.

• The nature of the opposition to Malcolm Glazer’s takeover and the divisions created by the failure of fan protest.

• Threats to the Glazer project.

The paper will conclude by outlining the reformation of fan communities and continuation of protest to the successful takeover in the form of a new, member owned, ‘rebel’ club, FC United of Manchester.

Dr. Adam Brown is Senior Research Fellow of the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has extensive research experience in the area of sport and community: co-director of the 3 year Football and its Communities project, lead researcher for the ESRC Sport and the City research, regional director of the Home Office Positive Futures social inclusion programme case study research, and he conducted pre- and post-event studies for UK Sport on the legacy of the 2002 Commonwealth Games. He is co-author of Not For Sale: Manchester United, Murdoch and the defeat of BSkyB (Mainstream 1999), editor of Fanatics! (Routledge 1998) and author of numerous articles relating to football, its fans, sport, policy, and cultural industries. Adam was a prominent member of the UK Government’s Football Task Force and has been intimately involved in fans organisations at Manchester United and nationally. His interest in football is lifelong: as a season ticket holder at Manchester United until the Glazer takeover of 2005 and since then has been a board director of ‘rebel’ club FC United of Manchester.

Fußball im Schlosskeller Darmstadt:
20:45 Uhr: Endspiel UEFA Champions League