While money is a huge help, it is culture that drives success in football

If there is one phrase that we keep hearing when talking to other people in the game, it is that “football is different to other businesses”. Granted, you never see employees kissing the logo of their company shirts, but it seems to be used as an excuse for unsustainable business models, concentrating power in a small group of individuals, ignoring broader stakeholders and propping up outdated, often sexist cultures. Throughout my career, I’ve witnessed signals that indicate an opportunity for disruption in other industries; travel in the late 1990s, dating and financial services in the last 15 years. I think those signals are strong in football today.

As this education into the realpolitik of football ownership continues, one example of where these signals are strong is around player transfers and contracts. Deals in the transfer market are relatively boring because once a player is identified, the only variable that really counts is price. Beyond the binary (and relatively uninteresting) nature of these conversations I think this is problematic for a bigger reason in that it reinforces to some clubs that the contracts they are creating are commoditised in nature. This has come up again and again in the way players are viewed or at least discussed in transfer conversations. As the philosopher Simon Critchley says, football’s “form is association, socialism, the sociability and collective action of players and fans, and yet its material substrate is money”.

This creates an unsatisfying power dynamic for buyers and sellers. As we looked to bring players to Grimsby this summer we knew some of the clubs we approached had smaller budgets and resources than ours and so we could potentially take key players away if we paid a