Out of the ashes of Hillsborough, modern football was born

That English football was transformed for ever by the events of 15 April 1989 is beyond dispute. Whether all the changes that followed were for the better continues to be debated over post-match pints up and down the country, but there remains a firm consensus that the final report of Lord Justice Taylor, published in response to the Hillsborough disaster in January 1990, belatedly dragged the sport into the modern age.

It drew an overdue line under a century during which supporters had often been crammed into crumbling, unsafe grounds behind fences topped with spikes. As has been repeatedly noted since, the tragedy was that it took the deaths of 96 men, women and children to bring it about. Some go so far as to say that Taylor saved English football from both itself and from a Tory government that had come to see it as an embarrassing nuisance. The Premier League and the ensuing revolution would not have been possible without it.

There were in fact two Taylor reports. The first, the interim report, dealt directly with the tragedy and largely laid the blame on the police and the stadium. It was his second and final report that effectively acted as a blueprint for the future, dealing with issues from stadium safety to hooliganism and Margaret Thatcher's controversial ID card scheme, which he effectively curtailed.

"What was extremely positive about Taylor was that he identified and strongly criticised the appalling way the football industry had treated spectators until then," says Malcolm Clarke, chair of the Football Supporters Federation.

"We'd been killing football fans for a century, the bodies stacking up every decade," adds Professor Rogan Taylor, head of the Football Research Group at Liverpool University, in reference to earlier disasters at Ibrox, Valley Parade and elsewhere.

That changed with Taylor's report, with all teams in the top two divisions required to convert to all-seat stadiums and given £31m a year of public money to do so through the levy on the pools that was channelled into the Football Trust. For a sport that jealously guards its independence, it is worth noting that it was an influx of public money and a government review that forced the game to upgrade its antiquated infrastructure.

"The game died and was reborn. Some people might not like the new creature that it has become," says Professor Taylor. "[But] Taylor wrote a future for the game at a time when the government was seeking to consign it to the same dustbin as the miners and anything else that smelled of the smoke–stack industries and flat–capped working classes."

Even those who queried the report's insistence on all-seat stadiums, insisting that a safe standing solution could have been found and suspecting that clubs used it as an excuse to raise prices, acknowledge Lord Taylor did football a huge ­service. Hooliganism was drastically reduced, with CCTV and seating making the prospect of large-scale disorder inside grounds recede into history.

Transport a fan from 25 years ago into one of today's Premier League grounds and they would be astonished that you could take your seat five minutes before the game, enjoy a clear view for the duration and get out of the ground without the prospect of injury. They would also be astonished at the cost of entry. In his report, Lord Taylor cautioned that fans should not be priced out and suggested a fair ticket price of around £6. Adjusted for inflation, that would be around £14 or £15 today. Instead, £40 and up is the norm.

Clubs stopped treating supporters as "terrace fodder" and started treating them as consumers – for good or ill. Last week's Manchester United accounts, which revealed annual turnover had soared to £256m, stated that one of its four main mission statements is to "treat supporters as customers".

It is tempting to view Hillsborough as a definitive turning point, but the seeds of the Premier League revolution were arguably sown at Heysel four years earlier, with the subsequent European ban leading the big clubs to start considering a breakaway. And it would have been stillborn without the Football Association's backing – which had nothing to do with Hillsborough and everything to do with football's internecine internal politics.

Gazza's tears, Nessun Dorma and the adoption of football shirts as leisure wear played a part, as did the growing middle class respectability for which Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch became convenient shorthand. And if Rupert Murdoch had not been inspired to bet the farm on Premier League football to rescue his then ailing satellite television business, things would have been very different.

One of the remarkable things about the transformation was how quickly it happened. It was not long before the first wave of foreign imports were marrying flashes of genius with the traditional passion of the English game to create a formula that would prove popular around the world. The latest wave of overseas owners, globalisation and the Champions League have raised the stakes, and the rewards, still higher. But without Taylor's report and the enforced uplift in standards it precipitated, it is unlikely the story would have evolved in anything like the same way.

The changes have not all been positive. "The make-up of crowds has changed," warns Clarke. "People on low incomes and young supporters find themselves priced out. The big danger for the football industry is that the average age of people going to a Premier League game has been steadily increasing."

Many children of the Sky era have grown up experiencing football on television and video consoles and now pack into pubs, he argues, standing with a pint and their mates in front of a big screen in the way their fathers once stood on the terraces.

Kenny Dalglish, the Liverpool manager at the time of the Hillsborough disaster, made a similar point in his auto­biography, published in 1996. "One legacy of Hills­borough is that the game has become less accessible to the working classes. The prices are too heavy, particularly for a family wanting to go. All clubs must have their commercial side, but there has to be a place for ordinary supporters," he wrote. "With smaller capacities, no one standing and a wealthier audience, grounds have become quieter."

The money that poured into English football has largely gone on players' wages. "The industry is characterised by amazing debt levels," says Clarke. "History will not judge lightly the people who squandered that money. Premier League clubs failed to appreciate that if you want a strong apex to a pyramid, you need a strong base."

But while there is much criticism of football's "prune juice" economics, without those wages the best players in the world would not be attracted to our shores. Without them, the Premier League would not be the huge global attraction it undoubtedly is and would not bring in ­billions in rights fees.

The Premier League points to figures that show stadiums are largely full, that football is proving resilient in a recession and that, while there may be fewer younger faces as a proportion of the crowd, there are more of them in absolute terms because overall crowds are bigger.

Football is more pervasive than ever before. Other sports look on with envy at the saturation coverage it enjoys and it continues to inspire devotion in new generations of fans – whether they experience the game live or through their TV.

The money flooding in from Sky and season-ticket sales has made English clubs the strongest in Europe and made the Premier League itself envied around the world as a model for other countries and other sports. And in recent years, there are signs some clubs have started to think more strategically about the make-up of their crowds and their long-term future.

In 1990, Taylor wrote: "Boardroom struggles for power, wheeler-dealing in the buying and selling of shares, and indeed of whole clubs, sometimes suggest that those involved are more interested in the personal financial benefits or social status of being a director than of directing the club in the interests of its supporter customers."

It would be interesting to know what the late Lord Taylor would have made of the latest wave of takeovers and the boardroom battles at Liverpool and elsewhere.

Football, by its nature, is a short-term business – owners, managers, players and fans rarely look much beyond the next match, the next round of the cup, the next season. As the English game pauses this week to remember the human cost on the anniversary of its worst tragedy, it might be a moment for football to look to its past for lessons in constructing its future.