At the expense of

At the expense of

The phrase I’d like to concentrate on today is “at the expense of.” I’m worried that if the top clubs form a European Super League, they will get bigger television contracts and better matchups, but their success would come at the expense of the smaller teams in the individual leagues. I’m worried that the big, rich teams would get bigger and richer, but that the smaller teams would suffer as a consequence. And that’s what “at the expense of” means. We usually think of expenses as being something you pay, but in this case, it’s about who’s the loser in a situation. The big teams might get richer at the expense of the national leagues; those individual country leagues would suffer while the biggest teams prosper.

You want to use “at the expense of” when you say that one party is doing well, but only if, and only because, another party loses out. In the United States today, online retailers big and small are doing very well at the expense of traditional department stores, which are going out of business. That means the online retailers are doing well, but their success is causing harm to traditional stores. Their success comes at the expense of traditional retailers. Here’s a similar example—small online startups are selling their products directly to consumers, at the expense of established brands that sell in stores. One example here is called Dollar Shave Club—I actually order from them. They send cheap shaving razors to your house by mail every month, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying the traditional brands like Gillette razors at the store. So Dollar Shave Club’s success has come at the expense of high-cost brands like Gillette.

Apartment building owners around Europe, and especially in Madrid and Barcelona, are doing very well these days, because they can rent out their apartments to tourists for short-term stays. But the apartment owners’ success comes at the expense of local renters, who have seen the supply of apartments shrink and prices increase. The building owners are doing well off tourist rentals, but the people who find themselves paying the price are the locals who need a place to live. The building owners’ success comes at the expense of local renters, who have seen their prices increase.

Online advertising is really popular these days—but it comes at the expense of traditional newspapers. Time was, your local newspaper was where you went to find advertisements for things for sale, apartments to rent, homes to buy, used cars, things like that. All that went online now, and there are oodles of web sites to find all manner of things. But that all came at the expense of local newspapers, who had to find a way to replace that revenue. Many couldn’t do it and shut down, right?

Okay that’s it for today. If you’re a football fan, don’t forget to tell me what you think. PlainEnglishPod on Facebook and Twitter, or send me an email to [email protected]. And don’t worry just yet about European football; we still don’t know what’s going to happen. This is all just based on leaks.

JR and I will be back on Thursday—see you then.