The largest public protest held in Australia's largest city in the 1990s was over the death of the Rabbitohs. A football team. In October 1999 about 30,000 people took to the streets of Sydney to protest about one of the competition's oldest teams being wound up. But most of the protesters were not regular Rabbitohs supporters. Most were out there under the banner ‘Reclaim the game’. They were protesting about the commercialisation of their sport.

But why did commercialisation matter? The players are better skilled and better paid than ever before, there are more games to watch and the games are on at convenient viewing times. Commercialisation, it can be argued, has improved the sport's product delivery. But this is where the marketers appear to have got it wrong. They have misunderstood what the game delivers. One newspaper said, ‘[the protesters] were protesting about what rugby league has become, which is corporate and marketed and slick but lacks soul’. Football clubs had once been the centre of communities. Children were raised to be loyal to a particular club and felt part of a football community. When the game became commercialised and got caught up in corporate wrangling, it became manufactured entertainment to be sold to customers. It faded into a façade for getting ratings and making money.

If we broaden the goal of the market to delivering quality of life, the death of the Rabbitohs counts as a market failure. Football is not simply an entertainment product.