Why read Pay Up and Play the Game?

Book cover of Pay Up and Play the Game: Professional Sport in Britain, 1875-1914

Book description

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…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Pay Up and Play the Game as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Stephen Morrow

Author

I came upon this title quite early in my academic career while working in an Accountancy and Finance Department and struggling to convince myself, and I suspect my then boss, that there was a lot of mileage in the business of sport as an area of research activity.

Wray Vamplew’s book – a systematic economic analysis of the emergence of mass spectator sports in the UK in the years leading up to the First World War based on primary financial and other records – played a major part in convincing me, at least, that there was indeed a future as…

From Stephen's list on The best books to make sense of football as a game, as business, and as community.