After England’s poor showing in the 2010 World Cup, a failed bid for 2018, sex scandals and players painted as greedy mercenaries, football may have lost some of its sheen. But says, Ryan McKnight, editor of F.C. Business magazine, the murky world of football

Here’s one for you – you’re the marketing director of a huge global brand with millions of pounds to spend on promoting it. You are planning a major new offensive and now all you need is a good platform, where to turn? Football, of course!

Yes, what could be more attractive than being aligned with clubs or governing bodies that are either riddled in debt, corruption, mismanagement, or a mixture of all three? Add in the recent FIFA debacle over the World Cup bids and one could argue that the game has never had such poor street credibility.

Yet, it seems that no matter what football does to damage its reputation, it remains immune from sponsors and corporate giants looking elsewhere to spend their marketing dollars, euros or pounds.

remains irresistible for global brandsThe gravitational pull of football on big brands and sponsors is tangible and quantifiable. The World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) has revealed UK advertising spend this year rose to its highest point since 2006, thanks to the World Cup – even on the back of one squad member having ‘relations’ with another squad member’s girlfriend and of course the alleged indiscretions of talisman Wayne Rooney.

Football has numbers, big numbers that make any feelings of guilt towards leveraging off an impure game feel that little less painful. But what does this say of business, football and indeed consumers?

Let’s go back to our marketing director mulling over where to spend the company’s sponsorship budget. He or she could go and sponsor a charity, a sustainable local community activity or a green conservation project. Boring!

What football offers is people, passion, money, corruption, debt, sex, lifestyle, power, ego, more money, more sex, and millions of eyes on television sets or in stadiums all around the world. Can you blame business for wanting a bit of that in the current climate?

FC Barcelona describe themselves as ‘more than a club’. What a load of s**t! Their recent £125 million shirt sponsorship deal (the first paid for shirt sponsor in the club’s long history) has seen them tie up with – wait for it – the Qatar Foundation, a deal that Nou Camp vice-president Javier Faus said would position Barcelona as “the undisputed brand leader in world football, far ahead of their international rivals.”

I beg to differ, Javier. The club was forced to take out £129 million of bank loans in the summer to deal with a ‘cash-flow problem’ that meant the club was on the verge on defaulting on players’ salaries. More than a club? No, very much a business.

Here in the UK, a growing number of Supporters Trusts such as FC United and AFC Wimbledon have shown that there is appetite for structural reform at club level. On an international level, early calls for England to ‘break-up’ with FIFA because they didn’t give us our ball back have, ‘to be fair’, been dealt with beautifully by FA General Secretary Alex Horne – refusing to acknowledge the misguided militant views of readers of cheap tabloid newspapers who contradict themselves on a minute by minute basis.

Yes, FIFA are a mess. Yes, the FA has a huge amount of reform to do. And yes, clubs need to realise the realities of being a business. However, it is still the beautiful game. Like a naughty son or daughter, no matter what they do we will always love them and continue to sponsor them. That is the power of football.