Word: fannings
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...billion shelled out for Manchester United a couple of years later by U.S. tycoon Malcolm Glazer (owner of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers). The investors' goal: to score a slice of the richest soccer league in the world. Buoyed by rising broadcast revenues and a lucrative fan base swelling from the U.S. to Asia, the 20 teams in English football's top league netted some $2.5 billion in revenues during the 2005/6 season. That's almost triple the levels of a decade earlier...
...everyone's reveling in the good times. "Clubs are sitting in a pet shop window with a 'for sale sign'," laments Rogan Taylor, a Liverpool fan for almost half a century and the director of the Football Industry Group at the University of Liverpool. "[They] are not just businesses but much more important cultural and social assets for individual places ... This isn't the way these grand institutions should be traded." But with Liverpool among the Premier League's foreign-owned teams - Tom Hicks, owner of baseball's Texas Rangers, and George Gillett, owner of the Montreal Canadians hockey franchise...
...while the level of fans' financial interest isn't yet clear, their unrest is palpable. "We have been in this business for years," Hicks told TIME shortly after buying Liverpool last year. "All team owners go through a learning curve at how to be a good owner. We both have done that ... fans want stability. Players want stability." In truth, it hasn't really worked out like that. A public spat with Rafael Benitez, Liverpool's Spanish team manager and a favorite among supporters, has done nothing for the American owners' own fan base in the city. Uncertainty over...
...hinting at a longer-term commitment. For Taylor - who's not had any contact with either Liverpool owner about his scheme - picking up a private business that's not up for grabs in the first place seems like a pretty high hurdle. And even among Liverpool's legendarily large fan base, finding so many with enough money to pony up won't be easy. For now, though, Taylor's undeterred. "This is a market test. I don't know how widespread and deep the appetite might be," he says. "There's only one way to find out." Other goals could...
...supermarket. On sale near the checkout aisles, New England Patriots and New York Giants jerseys, cupcakes, banners and balloons lay side-by-side. I realized that I was in one of a few strange, Twilight Zone-like patches in the world: a place where Boston and New York sports fans could co-exist in peace. Certainly, Sunday’s Super Bowl matchup lacks some of the Boston-New York bite to which sports fans have become so accustomed. What pushes this game past the level of usual Super Bowl hoopla is, of course, the Patriots’ potential place...