The layers of irony do not end there, though. About 70 per cent of player fees in the world’s most successful football franchise (the English Premier League — EPL) comes from television rights. And a significant portion of this is from outside the United Kingdom. In other words, football fans pay the salaries of footballers in the EPL — in Africa’s case, largely through MultiChoice. Put differently, all the footballers in the EPL are employees of the hosts of couch potatoes and armchair football analysts.

