Are you not entertained?

Question: what is sport there to do?

The paragraph below is what an England cricket fan said during the recent test match with India at Edgbaston.

‘I just want to say that this is the best time I’ve ever had being an England cricket supporter. I know there is a strong chance they’ll lose the match, but there is this huge sensation that they are playing just to try to make me feel great as their fan! I keep telling my son how lucky he is to follow this side right now.’

They did lose the match. But they won the one before and the one after. All three matches could have gone either way, but that’s a feature of pretty much any England test match these days. Under the swashbuckling leadership of coach, Brendon ‘Baz’ McCullum, and captain, Ben Stokes, they have pretty much ruled out draws. They play to win. That might mean they could also lose. But whatever happens, they’ll sure as hell try to entertain.

Rightly or wrongly, they are also trying to not only make their team more fun to watch, but this form of cricket – under heavy pressure from the limited overs, big hitting white ball alternative – too. The ultimate ‘for the good of the game’ attitude?

Which brings me back to the question…what is sport there to do?

In a way, the sentiments shown by McCullum and Stokes are more reminiscent of a bygone age where the players weren’t paid a King’s ransom to play and therefore entertaining the fans was what sport was all about.

Somewhere along the line, it became more of a business. Clubs began to refer to themselves as such, while they - and the leagues they played in - started to call themselves a brand (or franchise). Obviously, money was at the heart of this change. If more money is involved, then it becomes more necessary to think and act in a more business-like way manner.

And winning is far more important when it’s a business and not for entertainment, right?

But fans want to win too, right? And can you have both? Also, just out of interest, how many clubs are playing in a way that makes their fans think it's just to make them feel great? How many are making fans say ‘this is the best time I’ve ever had as a [club] supporter?’

I’d suggest it isn’t many.

They’d probably dispute it, but the evidence is difficult to ignore.

In football last season for example, how many clubs played weakened sides in Premier League games because of a cup fixture being deemed more important?

Spurs turned it into an art form. I’m not saying it was necessarily wrong, I’m just pointing out that several league games became little more than glorified friendlies where players didn’t want to get injured, and the result and league position seemed irrelevant. Winning and the feelings of fans – or their entertainment - who had paid up to a hundred quid to watch were, at best, second and third on the priority list.

But the end might have justified the means. Spurs out all their eggs in the cup basket and it paid dividends. They gave their fans arguably the best day of their lives at the end of the season. And that might have been worth putting up with any amount of crap to that point.

Risk & Reward

Their brand of football at the start of the season was the closest to the ‘Bazball’ style of the current England cricket team. The leader had a very clear philosophy and didn’t want to compromise. He wanted to entertain the fans and despite the high-risk nature, fans did really like it because it was good to watch. Well, at least up until it wasn’t.

Injuries and defeats began to pile up and make fans rethink. The manager, Ange Postecoglou, had to focus on the Europa League at the behest of their bread and butter. It became the only viable route back into the Champions League, and a way to win something – a feat not achieved since 2008 – and a first European trophy since 1984. In the end, he abbreviated ‘Ange-ball’ into a more pragmatic approach that won them the cup, and in doing so, gave their fans a night to forever remember. Great for business and fans.

Then he was promptly sacked. One of the reasons; the club that didn’t win anything for years now wanted to win bigger things. The Europa League was – apparently - too small.

Now, full disclosure, I think his replacement, Thomas Frank, is a brilliant coach. But that’s by the by. I’m not trying to analyse what they did with their managerial situation. I’m more interested in what this means for the fans.

Let’s say, for arguments sake, that Frank does a great job and similar to the one he’s done at Brentford for several seasons. Spurs play a neat style of football, win plenty of games and score lots of goals. They even finish in the top four or five each season. It’s entertaining.

But say they don’t win anything. Is that better or worse than what they did last season?

Does that make the fans feel great? Or like the club chose being a business over having some success? Maybe that depends on how we as fans – or the club – define success.

Points or Prizes?

Qualifying for the Champions League, and finishing highly in the Premier League, feel like successes, and certainly bring considerable financial rewards with them. Good for business.

But is it anywhere near as good as actually winning things?  

Their North London rivals, Arsenal, offer a counter-perspective. Under Arsene Wenger, they were mocked for having the attitude that fourth place in the league was the equivalent of getting their hands on a trophy. Great for business, yes, but it had fans pulling their hair out.

Now, under Mikel Arteta, they are getting close to the same accusations being thrown their way. Several second-placed finishes and near misses have made their fans long to win silverware again. They might have accumulated more points than anyone in the last few years, but they don’t hand out trophies for that, and even if they did, they don’t hand them out after winning at Wembley, or some big European venue, in front of thousands of delirious fans. Ask fans of Arsenal’s women’s team if they preferred the WSL runners-up position or their Champions League win? No, don’t.

See the dilemma here though?

Fans want to win things, or at least get close and they’d also quite like to be entertained. Businesses aren’t quite so focussed on either of those things as long as they take care of the bottom line. So decision makers will usually do what’s right for the business - not the fans – even though they are the ones paying the money and supporting them.

No Sacrifice

England’s cricket team – or the people making the decisions anyway – have gone the other way. They have chosen to make themselves and the sport they play entertaining. They want to win, but not if they have to sacrifice the entertainment factor. Even a little pragmatism, as they displayed in the third test, was still played with a win-or-bust attitude. The middle ground was not an option. Letting the fans get short changed was not an option.

As they see it, their fans don’t want – or deserve – to see their team playing out a draw. For the kind of prices charged for tickets, the least the team can do is offer their fans value for money. So is that what sport is really there to do?

But then, what represents real value for money when it comes to fans? Winning at all costs? Entertaining whatever the cost? Making the fan feel great either way?

A fan definitely wants that feeling. Who wouldn’t? It would be nice to think the club had that in mind too. It’s not one size fits all. It might come from just winning; it might just come from being entertained. PSG fans had both last season but that’s not easy to maintain. And most fans are realistic enough to know that you can’t have everything all the time.

What will Spurs’ fans want in 2025/26? What is sport there to do for them?

Over to you, Thomas Frank.