Advertisers Abandon Fox Soccer Channel Host After He Blames Liverpool Supporters for 96 Deaths in Stadium Crush

Advertisers on Fox Soccer Channel and Sirius in the U.S. have been asked to pull out of shows linked to British presenter Steven Cohen after he made remarks blaming Liverpool F.C. supporters for the death of 96 of their fellow fans at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield, England, 20 years ago. The demands to withdraw were triggered when American fans of Liverpool besieged Fox and Sirius’s advertisers with angry emails demanding that they not support shows such as Fox Football Fone-In on which Cohen, a familiar face to American soccer fans, appears.

UPDATE: A recording of Cohen singing “Murderers” about Liverpool fans on his show in 2008 has emerged on Liverpool fan site EmpireoftheKop.com. A YouTube file of the clip is posted below.

Sponsors withdrawing from either Cohen’s Fox or Sirius shows include British magazine FourFourTwo, Fado (a chain of Irish pubs in the United States) and the company that runs the merchandise shop for Cohen’s radio show, World Soccer Daily.

The dispute (which doubtless baffles Americans unfamiliar with soccer) has been aggravated by the fact that Cohen is a self-professed fan of Chelsea F.C., one of the clubs whose fans reserve a special hatred for Liverpool.

The significance

The boycotts are interesting for four reasons:

1. They indicate that soccer fans are starting to have real economic power in the U.S., even if only at the limited level of pay-cable advertisers.
2. This is corporate America’s introduction to the strange new power of football in the U.S., and its long memory.
3. The advertisers seem to understand that referring to certain fans as “the Taliban” (as Cohen did) is a step too far.
4. It is the first major mark that American fans have made in support of a European club (the boycott has been led by the Liverpool F.C. New York Supporters Club*), indicating that Americans have started to take the world’s game to heart.

Back story: On April 15, 1989, Liverpool played Nottingham Forest F.C. in the semi-final of the F.A. Cup. The game was scheduled at the Hillsborough stadium, home ground of neutral club Sheffield Wednesday F.C. About 10,000 Liverpool fans attempted to enter a section of the stadium which had been divided into a series of pens, rendering them too small for the crowd. Ninety-six fans were crushed to death. The deaths were shown live on TV, as neither broadcasters nor the teams playing on the pitch understood what was going on in the stands.

A government inquiry concluded that the stadium’s design and inadequate policing were to blame.

Since then, the memory of the 96 L.F.C. fans who died at Hillsborough has been fiercely guarded by Liverpool fans across the globe. Cohen’s remarks occured around the 20th anniversary of the fans’ deaths.

Cohen’s remarks

Here’s what Cohen said on the April 13, 2009, episode of World Soccer Daily, a Sirius radio show (Cohen also regularly presents on FSC’s Fox Fotball Fone-In):

“People showing up without ticket, hell bent in getting into somewhere where they shouldn’t be going because they don’t have tickets, is the root cause of [the Hillsborough Disaster].”

“… nobody discusses the 6-8,000 who showed up without tickets and my argument has always been, if those people don’t show up, this never happens.”

That statement infuriated Liverpool fans as the official inquiry into the deaths concluded that very few fans turned up without tickets. The inquiry — which became the “interim” Taylor report (download zip file here) – came out a few weeks after the deaths, but by that time most media reports had wrongly blamed a crush of ticketless Liverpool fans desperate to get into a crucial game. (The “final” Taylor report addressed wider issues in football stadia generally, and led to the end of terraced stands where people stood to watch games. Thus the “interim” report is the official verdict on the deaths.)

Given a chance to back down from his remarks on the April 20 show, Cohen repeated them. Cohen then said this to the L.A. Daily News:

“I’ve seen the Taliban less defensive,” Cohen said. “If this was being done in Afghanistan or Pakistan, we’d call these people terrorists. A lot of them are little cowards hiding behind their computers.

“I feel my life and my livelihood is at stake.”

Needless to say, describing Liverpool fans as “the Taliban” or “terrorists” has made things worse, not better. BNET understands that Cohen has been replying personally and unapologetically to the more than 3,500 emails he has received on the topic. Cohen claims he has received death threats, among other unpleasant protests, from fans.

The history

It is extremely difficult to explain to U.S. residents who are not football fans why a talking-head’s opinion about an event 20 years ago in a foreign country still carries such weight. But here’s my attempt:

The “English” Premier League is a misnomer. No more than 25 percent of players in the league are actually English; the major clubs of “English” football are staffed by the world’s best African, Asian, European and American continental players, drawn by clubs that pay the most and just happen to be in England. (The U.S.’s best striker, Clint Dempsey, plays for Fulham F.C.; its best goalkeeper, Brad Friedel, is an ex-Liverpool player who now appears for Aston Villa.) The EPL is, literally, an international contest of the world’s greatest footballers.

U.S. fans have made themselves part of that. There’s a network of American-Liverpool fans across North America, with supporters clubs in New York, Boston, New Haven and Toronto. Liverpool has an oddly hypnotic effect on Americans, something to do to with the team’s style of play — free-flowing and wildly unpredictable — its bright red uniforms, and the club’s mixture of championship wins and underdog status. These Liverpool fans regard themselves as the spiritual and literal representatives of the world’s most decorated club in the world’s greatest game.

Thousands of their fellow Liverpool fans went to that game in 1989, and 96 of their friends didn’t come back. They were killed in an effort to support their club. For American Liverpool fans, criticising people who “show up” at a cup tie is akin to criticizing Oklahoma City residents who “show up” at the Alfred P. Murrah Building.

The solution

For Liverpool fans, it is probably improper to send death threats to Cohen. It is not helping your case. He’s a journalist who is entitled to his opinion. In the U.S., the First Amendment protects controversial speech, unlike Europe where people are routinely prosecuted for saying unpopular things.

Conversely, it is within Cohen’s power to make the controversy go away. All he needs to do is read the Taylor report and make a brief factual “correction” on air, preferably apologizing for the error as he does so, the way normal journalists do. He’s got the facts wrong and should say so — it really is as simple as that. It’s strange that he hasn’t done so. The fact that Cohen is a Chelsea fan merely tempts his opponents to question his integrity as a broadcaster.

Advertisers would do well to steer clear of Cohen until the controversy is cleared up. Once it is, they should return to the airwaves — a market has passionately demonstrated its existence.

*Disclosure: The author was born in Liverpool, is a Liverpool fan, is a U.S. citizen, and is a card-carrying member of the L.F.C. New York Supporters Club (Hello 11th Street Bar!). He had a friend at Hillsborough on the day of the disaster (he survived — he’s a Notts Forest fan).

• See previous coverage of football sponsorship:
• Why Manchester United Must Ask Prudential for More Money to Replace AIG Sponsorship
• $28 Million in AIG Taxpayer Money Spent on Manchester United