Pay Up and Play the Game
Professional Sport in Britain, 1875–1914

This 1988 book presents an analysis of the emergence of mass spectator sport during the years prior to World War I.

Wray Vamplew (Author)

9780521355971, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 December 1988

416 pages, 60 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.78 kg

Based on a vast range of club and association records, Pay Up and Play the Game, first published in 1988, presents a systematic economic analysis of the emergence of mass spectator sport during the years prior to World War I. It explores the tensions behind an increasingly commercialised activity that was nonetheless suffused with 'gentlemanly' values at many levels, and highlights the retreat of the latter as working-class consumption and participation became predominant, symbolised most dramatically by the celebrated victory of proletarian Blackburn Olympic over the Old Etonians in the FA Cup final of 1883. Wray Vamplew examines the linkages between sport, gambling, crime and spectator violence, and concludes that many supposedly 'recent' developments (notably football hooliganism) in fact have their origins in this, the 'Golden Age' of sport in Britain.

Part I. An Overview: 1. Is money the root of all evil? A historical appreciation of commercialisation in sports
2. Comments on the state of play: economic historians and sports history
Part II. The Development of Professional Gate-Money Sport: 3. Popular recreation before the industrial revolution
4. Sporting activities and economic change, 1750–1830
5. The precursors of commercialised sport, 1830–75
6. The rise of professional gate-money sport, 1875–1914
7. From sports spectator to sports consumer
Part III. Sport in the Market Place: The Economics of Professional Sport: 8. Profits or premierships?
9. All for one and one for all
10. Paying the piper: shareholders and directors
11. Winning at any cost?
Part IV. Playing for Pay: Professional Sport as an Occupation: 12. The struggle for recognition
13. Earnings and opportunities
14. Close of play
15. Not playing the game: unionism and strikes
16. Labour aristocrats or wage slaves?
Part V. Unsporting Behaviour: 17. Ungentlemany conduct
18. The madding crowd
Part VI. A Second Overview: 19. An industrial revolution in sport
Appendices: 1. Shareholders and shareholdings in Scottish and English sport
2. Regulations defining amateurism and professionalism in British sports.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]