How Football Changed After Hillsborough

Talk to a football supporter under 30 about the squalor and danger that greeted match-going fans in the 1980s and chances are their jaw will hit the floor before the scales fall from their eyes.

The decrepit, crumbling stands ringed by spike-topped fences, and the ever-present hooligan menace are almost unimaginable to the generations raised watching football in today's all-seater temples to the game's success.

The transformation of football in the last 27 years is remarkable, but it might not have happened so swiftly, if at all, had it not been for the deadly events of 15 April, 1989, at Hillsborough.

:: Hillsborough Victims Unlawfully Killed

It was, first and foremost, a tragedy that claimed 96 lives, but it was also a turning point for the English game, with the reaction to it dragging football from its darkest hour into the modern age.

Hillsborough was the final act of a deadly trilogy in the 1980s that left football in apparently irreversible decline.

In the space of a month in 1985, 56 people died when the main stand at Bradford City caught fire, and 39 Juventus supporters were killed when Liverpool fans rioted at the European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels.

The causes of the two incidents were complex and particular, but they had in common poorly maintained stadia and policing focused on preventing violence rather than safety.

"The whole agenda was dominated by the hooliganism problem, that informed people's reactions, it informed the authorities' reactions to everything and that means that other basic things like safety precautions and treating people properly at football were overlooked," Malcolm Clarke, chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation, told Sky News.

Hillsborough was the final straw and the response to it, largely in the form of Lord Justice Taylor's report, shaped the modern game, laying the ground for the Premier League and the boom that continues to this day.

His recommendation that standing terraces be replaced with all-seater stadia prompted a physical and cultural transformation.

The organised chaos of the Kops was consigned to history, and with it some of the terrace culture that defined the English game.

Public grants helped, but the founding chief executive of the Premier League Rick Parry told Sky News the need to build new stands also focused the minds of club executives already pondering a breakaway competition.

"I think uppermost in many of the club's minds was how are we going to generate the revenue?" he said.

"It wasn't a question of 'this is a massive opportunity to change the way we market the game', it was more a question of 'how are we going to pay for this?'"

The answer was broadcast revenue from nascent satellite broadcaster BSkyB, which together with the BBC stumped up £44m to show 60 games-a-season in the re-branded Premier League, a 400% increase on the previous TV deal.

The curve has been upwards ever since. From next season, the clubs will share around £2.7bn and matches will be watched in around 20 countries worldwide.

If the clubs have not looked back, debate continues as to whether all the change has been positive.

Money has inevitably made players and increasingly foreign-owned clubs more remote from their communities and, despite the TV income, the cost of tickets has soared, pricing out many fans.

The intensity of the atmosphere has diminished too, but few would argue that is not a price worth paying for safety.

"But after Hillsborough all stadiums had to be all-seater," said John Aldridge, a member of the Liverpool team at Hillsborough.

"One life is too many, never mind 96, when someone's going to watch a game of football, and they don't come back.

"It has taken the atmosphere away from grounds but that doesn't matter if they are safe."