< p>I spent approximately 28 hours in front of the TV over the last few days watching the Ryder Cup. It was truly a marathon effort, but it’s a very special bi-annual event for any golf fan and it was another fantastic achievement by the European team.

I lead into this week’s blog with this topic as there was a financial link from the golf coverage when the commentators mentioned how different some of the players looked without their normal baseball caps on their heads. The TV pundit and current player, Darren Clarke, said that there were no sponsorship obligations during the Ryder Cup and hence the participants were not under their normal obligations to wear their sponsored emblazoned caps and shirts etc.

It is similar to Grand Prix drivers that have to swap various caps dependent upon the interview situation to keep the sponsors happy and it is a fact that corporate money now runs through all major sports.

The theme was continued as I was driving home with Talk Sport debating the current prices for football tickets and how ‘real’ fans are being driven from the grounds around the country by the upward spiral in ticket costs.

This seems to be a common thread in all the debates that I have heard on this topic – on the one hand fans want to be able to enjoy cheap ticket prices so that grass roots fans can take families, children etc, but the same fans are equally happy to have their clubs spend exorbitant amounts of money on players in the quest for success and trophies.

There seems to be a fairy tale, ‘never never land’ approach to sporting finance, whether it be £200,000 to £300,000 per week salaries, £80 million transfer fees or endorsement deals that run into the tens of millions and all the while the ‘pay per view’ punters and the Sky TV audiences continue to pay their monthly subscriptions it feels like the fantasy will never end.

For many in the finance industry that was the feeling pre-credit crunch and ever increasing volumes of business, proc fees, commissions and bonuses made lots of market participants feel like superstars, but alas for the finance industry the music did stop and the boom times came to a crashing end.

After a long grind we are now enjoying a growing market and I hear lots of comments along the lines of learning from past mistakes, of doing things differently this time around and the smart operators will no doubt be true to this ethos. However, I am equally certain that the phrases ‘people have short memories’ and ‘history always repeats’ will still have a resonance in the future as the boom and bust cycle continues.

If only we were lucky enough to be real superstars and played Premier League football, drove Grand Prix cars or played golf at a Ryder Cup level – then there would be no recessions, just huge rewards for doing something most people do for fun.