The Long View - 17/02/2009

Jonathan Freedland presents the series that looks for the past behind the present. He examines the parallels between the relationship between football and business today and the story of a Victorian club with expensive imported players which folded when its profits fell. The company that owned the New Brighton resort on The Wirral set up a football club, New Brighton Tower, to maintain profits during the winter months. The founders set about buying up quality players from other top clubs but were initially denied entry to the Football League and tickets to their home games at their massive stadium proved too expensive for the local population, with attendances barely scraping 1,000. With the club not making money as planned, and having failed to gain promotion to the first division of the League, the company disbanded it in 1901. Jonathan takes local historian Tom Sault and footballing lecturer Rogan Taylor to the Wirral to tell the story of New Brighton Tower and to draw parallels with today's uneasy mix of the worlds of sport and business.