Anyone would think that the Cricketing Authorities had employed Max Clifford. The last week has seen the news programmes stuffed from start to finish with boring stories about yet more sports people taking bungs. Never had Cricket received so much free publicity. And at least this makes it seem more interesting.
It is, as I said just the latest in a series of revelations about people involved in Sport taking bribes in return for assisting in other people making large sums out of sports betting etc. I have even seen some stories that suggested that professional Wrestling matches are staged, which I find hard to beleive! Over the last few decades, Sport, like other forms of Leisure and entertainment has become very big business, as a greater and greater proportion of ordinary people's hard earned money goes on spending to consume it, as spending on basic like, food, clothing and shelter have declined. It is part of that huge "Services" sector which now dominates the economy, and the tiny number of people involved in the top levels of Sport and Entertainment, exercise a Monopoly position that has enabled them to cream off huge amounts of money. Poll after poll shows that people think Nurses should earn more than footballers, yet people are still prepared to pay out the money in ticket prices, and Sky Sports subscriptions etc. that ultimately finance those ridiculous footballers wages, they continue to buy magazines that fete the celebrities, whilst they moan about paying a bit more tax to pay nurses a decent wage. It shows why attempts to bring in economic planning from above fail, because what people say and what they do are two different things, and so black markets arise.
As long as that continues to be the case then Sport and Entertainment will continue to be Big Business. And, who would have thought that Big Business and the ability of a tiny number of people to make huge sums of money, would go hand in hand with bribery and corruption?
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