Well I see that there's plenty of anti-footie sentiment here. Of course we all subsidise it. Advertising costs money and advertisers pass the costs to us. But that's just capitalism and I assume we all operate within the capitalist system, even if some of us wish we didn't have to be of it. I almost never watch ITV or Channel 4 or 5 but I still pay more for the stuff they advertise. You could advise me not to buy that stuff, but, as I don't see the ads, I dunno what stuff it is. This website is peppered with annoying ads for stuff vaguely linked to what I might have been googling. There's no such thing as a free lunch. But I'm not bothered. You pay the same taxes that support schools and universities even if you don't have kids. My council tax pays for police that I haven't seen anywhere near my house in thirty years and for taking my rubbish, which doesn't happen because I live too far from the main road. I pay for a nuclear deterrent that I despise and I'm about to pay for a new vanity railway costing tens of billions that I'll never be able to afford to use. But my only recourse may be to vote out the buggers who want to spend my money on these hare-brained schemes. The singling-out of footie - we pay for the advertising, the policing, the clearing-up, blah blah - makes me question the motives of the people who do the singling out. To them, footie is a Bad Thing/tribal/replete with rotten role models/overpaid/overhyped/22 silly men chasing a silly ball/bloody Wayne bloody Rooney...

How about instead that it's great entertainment for millions, it adds colour to a lot of lives that lack it, it requires supreme fitness, skill and tactics, it encourages youngsters to get outside in the fresh air, it's a way of forgetting the vicissitudes of life for a little while...above all, it keeps me and Mike off the streets and gets me and him arguing about Man U and Liverpool (naturally, he's always wrong about it all the time, just like my grandad was) instead of bloody brexit and bloody Thatcher and bloody popes. Things like that are all I talk about with some people here and it's pretty hard to imbue the conversations with much bonhomie. But Mike and I are at polar opposites of the political spectrum and guess what? Never a discouraging word to one another ever crosses our keyboards. And, Mr Red, it's true that big crowds are dangerous. The most dangerous big crowds are called armies. Very few people argue that armies are a Bad Thing, not even me. Everything comes at a cost. Consider your position!