Football Saturday!

Today was football Saturday! Usually for me this consists of the Big House with 114,000 fans, but today was my first professional football (soccer) match. Professional sports in Europe and in the US are organized completely different. The US uses a league structure for their four main professional sports (Hockey-NHL, basketball-NBA, football-NFL, and baseball-MLB), while European professional team sports typically use the club structure. Out  of the many soccer teams in the UK, I believe only two generate profits. This is drastically different than the US where every team generates enormous profits regardless of their talent. Another big difference is the promotion and relegation of soccer teams in the UK. For soccer, there are four main divisions a team can be in: Premiere League, Football League Championship, Football League One, and Football League Two. The best of the best is in the Premiere League (well known teams such as Liverpool, Manchester United, and Chelsea are in this division). In each division the best few are promoted to the next best division, while the worst few are relegated to the next division down. Soccer teams therefore have a lot more reason to do well and succeed than US teams that will make a large amount of money and always be in the professional league no matter how poorly they do.  


We started off the day by meeting with Steve Dawson, the Finance Director of Leyton Orient Football Club. This soccer team is in the Football League One division, but was in serious danger of being relegated to Football League Two (luckily they just found out that they are safe for this year). He told us about a current stadium issue that has come up due to the Olympics and how it can harm the strength of their company. The Olympic Park is located just about a half mile from Leyton Orient's stadium. After the Olympics, West Ham was hoping to take over that venue and had the government's support (West Ham is a rival team but in the Football Championship League--the division above Leyton Orient). The problem is that West Ham, due to the large size of the venue, would have to drastically reduce their ticket prices in order to sell enough tickets and this will steal many fans from Leyton Orient. Why would people pay more to see a Football League One match when they could pay less for a Football Championship League match? West Ham was given the rights to buy the Olympic stadium by the government, but Leyton Orient has taken this to court since the Olympics had previously decided in contract to not sell the stadium to a team that would financially hurt another organization (and Leyton Orient would clearly be hurt by this). I believe the decision on this will be May 23rd, so we'll have to see what happens.

Leyton Orient (red) vs. Rochdale (blue)

We then met with Neil Taylor, Chief Executive of the Leyton Orient Community Sports Program. This organization is a charity that has the goal of strengthening a community through sport with a lot of emphasis on youth sport. Neil also showed us their training center that some US teams have rented out to practice in during the Olympics. 

After this, we all went to this amazing Portuguese restaurant (recommended by Neil) that Tom paid for (Thanks, Tom!).  And then it was time to see Leyton Orient take on Rochdale. The atmosphere was so much fun, there are some very die-hard fans. Leyton Orient ended up winning 2-1 too, so that was really exciting too. I also met a London guy at the game who was talking to me about the Olympics and how they're a "pain in the arse" because no one can get tickets. While I would think it would be so exciting and cool to have the Olympics in my hometown, everyone that I have talked to about it really doesn't like it. 

Leyton Orient goaaaalllllllll!

Leyton Orient's dragon mascot

Off to a Mexican restaurant now in honor of Cinco de Mayo! Free day tomorrow and hoping to get a lot of sightseeing done :)