Football's class appropriation problem

Manchester City's latest kit launch is another display of football's tendency to exploit working-class culture whilst marginalising working-class fans.

Poster advertising Manchester City’s new home shirt (Copyright of Manchester City and Puma: https://www.mancity.com/news/club/202526-puma-home-kit-launch-63882581)

As the barren sans-football summer stretches out ahead of us, one of the few things fans have to look forward to is the gradual roll out of kits ahead of the new season.

One of the first clubs out of the traps are Manchester City. Ever the commercial opportunists, City have spotted a chance to market their new strip at the upcoming Club World Cup in the USA.

Thus, at the start of last week City dropped an eye-catching new number that “pairs our unmistakable sky blue with a white sash, that has been reimagined for the new generation.”

How fun.

But beyond the (admittedly quite cool) design, what has really caught my eye about City’s kit launch is the advertising and marketing around it.

Amidst the splash of promotional posts on their club media and social channels, City have celebrated the kit launch with a short film. Filmed at the Clayton Supporters Club – a stone’s throw from the Etihad Stadium – the film centres on a talent show hosted by Mancunian comedy legend John Thompson.

As soon as one presses play, the images and tenor of the film are incredibly distinct.

As the camera fades in, a young woman huddles into her puffer jacket and skips along a washed out landscape of crumbling red brick walls and barbed wire fences.

She ducks inside a social club, and scans the room as the tinny soundscape of Mancunian hubbub, scrunching crisp packets and rumbling pool balls washes over her.

On stage a hammy MC knocks a feedbacking microphone before kicking off a variety show. A parade of close-up magicians, cruise ship crooners and balloon artists (all played with varying degrees of success by City players) whizz across the stage like an automaton clock, to the giddy delight of the pint swilling audience.

I’ll admit, it’s a great advert.

The Mancunian accents and locale invoke a distinct sense of place identity. The selection of players and club legends incorporated into the ad will play well with City supporters of various ages. There’s even one or two jokes that actually land.

Above all else, what makes the film tick is the uniquely evocative and authentic sense of place it conjures. It’s a parade of images and sounds that could only come from working-class England, specifically working-class Manchester.

But scratch at the surface of the campaign and the glaring hypocrisy at the centre of this campaign starts to reveal itself.

A cursory exploration of Man City’s online retail platform shows that the prices for these new kits are eye watering.

The base price for a new City kit is a staggering £85, heading up to a hideous £130 if supporters choose to invest in an “authentic” replica version of the home shirt. Even the cheapest children’s kit clocks in at an astonishing £60.

The question I would ask is this: how dare Man City exploit such on the nose references to working-class culture whilst also making their kits so unaffordable for the same communities who provide the cultural capital for their advertising campaigns?

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Let’s be clear, I’m not suggesting that Manchester City are the only culprits here. Over the past few seasons, a parade of Premier League clubs have created advertising campaigns which draw on the traditionally working-class culture of their supporters.

Indeed, just days after City’s kit launch, Chelsea launched a similar advertising campaign with almost identical pitfalls.

I’m also not against football clubs drawing from the deep well of working-class culture as a matter of principle.

Indeed, the very reason that there is so much cultural cache in advertising campaigns like City’s new kit launch is that football’s “cultural compass” is historically working-class and the game continues to play an authentically central role in contemporary British working-class life.¹

What I find difficult to swallow about the kit launch (and other campaigns like it) is how clearly one can observe City implementing policies and price rises which are actively excluding and marginalising the very same working-class fans they claim to represent.

I’ve written before about Manchester City’s crusade against season ticket holders and affordable ticketing as they seek to attract a more global audience to the Etihad.

When I looked this week, the cheapest ticket I could find for Manchester City’s last home game of the season against Bournemouth was £71. Given the club’s location in a nominally working-class city and the wider context of a stagflation driven cost of living crisis, that pricing is clearly a disgrace.

It's this top-down marginalisation of working-class supporters that makes Manchester City’s new kit launch look less like authentic representation and more like cultural appropriation.

Clubs should have the creative license to create advertising campaigns that speak directly to their most important stakeholders: the supporters.

Given the prevalence of working-class individuals within wider supporter communities it’s entirely logical that clubs should mine the rich seam that is working-class culture.

But working-class supporters have a right to ask for a bit of reciprocity.

By all means work with, speak to and reflect working-class supporters with your advertising and communications.

But to exploit the cool factor of a local working-class institution to hawk an overpriced new home shirt, whilst you’re marginalising and pricing out real working-class fans?

That’s rank hypocrisy.

1. Goldblatt, D. (2015) The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football, London: Penguin.