I have been a football (soccer) fan my entire life. Back in the 1990s, professional football was hard to watch in the United States. The local game was sparse and the international game was difficult to follow. That all changed in the 2000s when the major networks decided to ink deals for broadcasting rights. I was suddenly awash with Premier League action, which let me fall in love with Manchester United at the peak of the Ferguson era.

I’ve been a dedicated fan ever since. But alas, all good things must come to an end.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock as a football fan, you have seen The Beautiful Game get corrupted at every level. And not just run-of-the-mill corporate greed, we’re talking supervillain levels of oligarchic greed. Look no further than Manchester City, who were just found guilty of 115 breaches of Financial Fair Play. It’s a very long story, but the take-home point is that it left fans shellshocked. This wasn’t the ordinary bribe scandal. This was new. An eye-popping level of malfeasance and betrayal.

Sadly, it was the inevitable result of a rotting system.

Modern football is long disconnected from its working class roots. Gone are the days when players were from the towns they represented. Today, they come and go from all over the world. Managers too. They are all multi-millionaires with zero loyalty. The best players and managers go to the clubs with the most money. The fans understand this and begrudgingly accept it as part of the modern game. They love their home teams, even if the players don’t love them back.

This on top of the ever-increasing ticket prices that make local headlines every year. The working class people that built the Premier League are now being priced out of watching it. Clubs are more interested it offering executive packages to rich casuals than supporting the purchasing power of their most dedicated fans. They would rather sell expensive jerseys to wealthy tourists than cheap concessions to regular people who live nearby.

You would think that US fans would be unaffected, but we have to endure the insatiable greed of streaming companies. This greed is baked into the broadcasting rights, which they fracture into several different buckets. Even if you pay for a core service, you still can’t watch all the games. You also have to pay for peripheral services. NBC Sports currently owns the Premier League rights in the United States, which they split between the USA Network, Peacock, and NBC. And of course, the biggest games are often exclusive to peripheral services in order to milk subscriptions. It’s blatant to the point of rage.

And then there’s the plague of sports betting. This is an ongoing issue in England, which has had a devastating impact on the working class. Gambling is rampant, but the US was largely spared. That all changed in 2018 when the Supreme Court overturned a critical ruling (after relentless lobbying, of course). The results were disastrous. Today, sports betting apps are aggressively prevalent. The ads are merciless to the point of parody. These companies rake in so much money that it’s not uncommon to see major celebrity endorsements. The result, like in England, was a gambling epidemic.

Money is king, but there is a limit to fan tolerance. We were already at the precipice after the latest World Cup, where FIFA embraced a shocking level of corruption. (The “hydration break” ads were bad enough, but I still cannot believe that they created a “peace prize” to placate the orange toddler.) That was the final straw for many fans, but most persisted because they still enjoyed their domestic leagues … for now.

Fans watch football for the excitement. They want to see world-class players put on a show. This was possible during the heyday of Messi and Ronaldo. But now? Money has become such a powerful factor that players are now trained to take as little risk as possible. Long-range shots have decreased. Long throw-ins have increased. Teams maintain possession and play into the box for tap-ins. Every player wears a bio monitor that collects millions of data points. The entire game has been reduced to a spreadsheet simulator where every team uses the same playbook. It’s very effective, but also joyless to watch. You can almost hear the suits in the boardroom dictating play. Their investment is on the line, so teams are no longer allowed to be creative.

It all adds up. And the greed is killing the game.

“Who cares?” I can hear people say. “Pro sports is corrupt.” Yeah, but not like this. As a devout Premier League fan, I cannot stress enough how deflating it is that one of the greatest eras in modern football (Klopp vs. Pep) has been nullified. All those years watching and cheering, only to find out that it was all a ruse. Ask yourself, how would you feel if your beloved league was unmasked as a cheater’s paradise? I can only imagine how lifelong Manchester City fans feel. They just learned that their club defrauded an entire generation.

And that was it. No more Premier League for me.

In the wake of this debacle, I made two deliberate changes to my fandom. First, I decided to support my local team as my primary team. My true local team, i.e. not the nearest top-flight behemoth. I was already doing this, but not in sporting conversation. Now, instead of saying Manchester United, I say New Mexico United. Those are my lads.

And second, whenever I watch top-flight football, I restrict it to the Bundesliga. Why Germany? Because of their much-loved 50+1 rule. This states that every club must maintain at least 51% member ownership. In other words, no billionaire can buy a German club and milk it as a investment. The fans are always in control, and I love that about the league. They still suffer from some modern crutches, but it’s so much better than watching clubs that are little more than oligarchic playthings.

So that’s where I am now. I have abandoned the Premier League for local pride and German strictness. As an added bonus, most Bundesliga matches are available for free via Fandango and Telemundo. That may change in the future, but I am now blissfully detached from NBC Sports and their anti-consumer ecosystem. And I must say, if you haven’t heard a Spanish announcer yell “Gooooal!” during a German match, then you’re missing out on a delightful sporting experience.