In black and white, and read all over – English football's White Paper

Proposals for what could be the most wide-ranging reform of the way the English game is run assessed

It’s just over a month since the government’s White Paper on football was published. Since then I’ve been reading it, discussing it, and thinking through what’s in it.

Taking time, though, can be frustrating, especially when there are pressing issues in the game that need to be dealt with. And the slow pace of reform makes it even harder to retain the attention and faith of ordinary fans whose judgment on the results is key. But reform this is – not the revolution some want – and it’s important to base any judgment in context.

The latest, A Sustainable Future – Reforming Club Football Governance, has to be seen against the background of multiple failed attempts to reform the game over many years. There have been six since 1983’s Chester Report. I’ve had conversations with people who say the proposals are weak and who have been surprised that I am broadly supportive. I’ve replied that context and history are key. If you were starting with an entirely blank sheet of paper and no previous history, you almost certainly wouldn’t come up with what’s in this White Paper. The point is, you’re not.

Football clubs have traditionally been, and largely still are, run by people who don’t like to answer to anyone. All the previous reviews have been kicked into the long grass or compromised in some way, with football able to argue that ‘if you leave it all to us, everything will be OK’. That has changed and the White Paper is evidence of that.

Previous attempts at reform had failed because there was sufficient unity within the game to maintain a united front against ‘outside interference’. But that unity has been shattered by the very tensions and contradictions those advocating reform wanted to address. After its top six clubs attempted to break away, the Premier League (PL) is isolated and divided. The FA and the Football League have largely welcomed the White Paper, while the PL sulkily begrudges any concessions and looks increasingly out of touch. That has rarely been more clearly demonstrated than in the performance of its chief executive Richard Masters at the Parliamentary Select Committee hearing on the White Paper. The whole session is over two hours long, but the content is revealing and features excellent contributions from both Tracey Crouch MP and FSA chief executive Kevin Miles.

The fact that the regulator is going to be independent is the biggest win, and the reality that it will be independent seems to be hitting home even among PL clubs. Which doesn’t mean they like it or that they are going to make the regulator’s job easy. And proposals on financial control and regulation, some areas of governance, and heritage protection are not only encouraging but vital for the future of the game.

But where the White Paper is weakest is on fan engagement. That’s a disappointment from a fan-led review, and I’ll return to this. But reform of the game is about more than this one element, important as that is, and the positives need to be recognised.

It's clear quite early on in the executive summary of the paper that a pretty fundamental shift in mindset has occurred. Here’s the paragraph.

“The free market does not properly account for the importance of clubs to their fans and communities, and industry self-regulation has remained inadequate – seeing clubs collapse and fans harmed. Therefore, football needs a strong centre to independently apply reformed rules.”

Think about that. Football has been run so badly that even an aggressively free-market and anti-regulation government has decided it needs to be regulated. In the context of years of campaigning, and the current political climate, that is quite an extraordinary statement.

It gets better. Outlining the Regulator’s role, the summary says: “The Regulator’s primary strategic purpose will be to ensure that English football is sustainable and resilient, for the benefit of fans and the local communities football clubs serve.” And, most importantly: “The final institutional location of the Regulator will ensure independence and proper accountability. For this reason, the government is not convinced that an industry body would be an appropriate home for the Regulator.”

Some in football had hoped the Regulator would be placed within another football body so that it could be controlled. But that is not going to happen. What’s also encouraging is that a shadow regulator is to be established as soon as possible to get to grips with the practical mechanics of implementing the regulatory regime. It will be properly resourced and funded, with funds coming from the game.

The PL clubs will pay the most, with the so-called Big Six paying the lion’s share of the PL contribution. This is significant. Not only is it a progressive funding model in which those who have more contribute more, it also means the Six are to pay the most to fund a system that will be put in place as a direct result of their attempts to take an even bigger slice of the pie than they had and to ruin everyone else’s meal in the process. Owners at the other 14 PL clubs will no doubt have shown their appreciation that their colleagues’ greed and selfishness has cost them all money, and that rift is what has broken previously formidable PL unity.

Sports lawyer Nick de Marco has given a very good overview of potential legal issues and challenges that need facing, and I made some observations on that in one of the rare instances where my day job overlapped with my extra-curricular activities. Make no mistake, regulation is happening.

The basic principle that is being put in place is that of a licensing system. Clubs will be required to obtain a licence from the regulator to participate in competition, and that licence will depend on complying with the principles set down in the White Paper. That would, for example, prevent clubs from breaking away and joining another competition if doing so was found to contravene licence terms. The licensing model also means some of the potential legal challenges can be avoided because clubs will be signing up to a mutually agreed set of competition rules.

Government backing for the framework in the form of legislation has led to accusations that what is being proposed is state control of football. This argument is at best disingenuous, but nonetheless has been put forward by some sports journalists who should know better – one suspects after some briefing. The fact is that for the regulator to be truly independent and to have teeth, it needs statutory powers, which means those powers must be laid down by Parliament. The Football Supporters Association explained the issues in this informative post. No serious legal or regulatory experts, or sporting bodies, are arguing that what is proposed is state control, and the fact that PL CEO Masters didn’t go anywhere near this argument at the Select Committee suggests it might be better if the few remaining writers still wheeling the argument out stopped wasting our time.

The White Paper’s title talks of A Sustainable Future, and addressing the financial issues in the game is vital if one is to be secured. That’s why it’s important not to dismiss the plans as too meek. If implemented and supervised properly it could stop the reckless pursuit of success that has ruined too many clubs. Even more importantly, it could mean that such recklessness is not baked into the game. Which means tackling the disparities that are becoming institutionalised.

One of the reasons even ardent free-market idealogues find it hard to defend such an approach in football is because it is increasingly clear that pursuing success at any cost has been incentivised. The rewards at the top are so huge, and the cost of failing so great, that everything has been distorted. The turnover of the Football League was 75% of the Premier League’s when the PL was established. Now it is 6%. As EFL chief executive Rick Parry said at the Select Committee, that is no longer a gap, it’s a chasm.

More equitable distribution of funds throughout the game has to happen if we are to avoid being left with a rump of state-controlled clubs. That means, among other things, an end to parachute payments, a move that will also require the issue of player wages to be addressed through the application of relegation clauses in contracts.

There are those who will argue that any regulatory framework will disincentivise investment, but again this assumes – or demonstrates - ignorance of the real world. The type of investor with the funds to invest in the upper echelons of English football will be extremely used to operating in highly regulated environments. And there’s little in what is proposed for IREF that even approaches the complexity of the frameworks administered by the FCA, the SEC, FINRA or the CFTC, for example. Crouch made this very point at the Select Committee when referencing discussions made in advance of the purchase of Chelsea FC by Todd Boelhy’s consortium, and there is a strong argument to suggest that better regulation in fact attracts, rather than repels, investors who will conduct strong risk assessments.

There is also nothing wrong at all with a system that disincentivises potential owners or investors who do not share the values set out in the introduction to the White Paper.

There is much, then, to be encouraged by in some of the detail on finance and governance, and those sections are worth reading in full. But, as mentioned earlier, the fan engagement sections fall short of where many of us would have wanted.

Where originally a Golden Share was proposed that would be held by recognised Supporters’ Trusts as a way of preventing change to key heritage issues such as team name, shirt colours, badge and stadium location without fan consent, now it is proposed that backstop is written into rules elsewhere. This delivers the same result, but the optic of withdrawing the Golden Share proposal is not a good one, and it sets the scene for the rest of this section.

There are lots of positive suggestions about how the voice of fans should be better integrated into club governance. But not enough to ensure it will be. The aspirations in many of the proposals are good, but there is still a resistance to properly embedding fan voices in club governance structures.

The problem fan groups have faced for years is the grace-and-favour nature of the relationship even with the clubs more genuinely committed to engagement. Too often, consultation ends up being clubs listening to what fans have to say and then deciding to do what they were always going to.

I was one of those who pressed for properly constituted shadow or fan boards, linked to posts of fan director and independent non-executive director on the main board. The framework proposed at my club, Tottenham Hotspur, is set out in detail in Appendix 1 of the Supporters’ Trust’s submission to the FLR. Unfortunately, some supporter groups argued against a model that included fan directors and a proper shadow board. I understand the reservations about corporate capture and the difficulty the fan director in particular would face in performing the role, but I retain the view that if we push for influence we should not be afraid to take on responsibility. Nonetheless, opposition from a number of fan groups gave review panel members who had little appetite for giving a fan director equal weight to other directors reason not to pursue that route.

That might explain why, since the Review’s original recommendations were published, the PL and its constituent clubs have been working to come up with a Fan Engagement Standard (FES) that ticks the right boxes without upsetting the balance of power. It tells you all you need to know about the set of standards finally published that they were drawn up with minimal, if any, engagement with fan groups, and were watered down by clubs through a series of discussions stages so that what is left is the minimum they feel needs to be conceded. There are plenty of bright colours used in the document to lift the mood, though.

At the Select Committee hearing, Miles said: “There’s nothing in their FES which prevents the chief executive of a club from selecting the Fan Advisory Board” and he described a process in which initially solid proposals were gradually whittled away. His pleas was “don’t let the Premier League mark its own homework”. Strong pushback from fan organisations has focussed particularly on the need for the regulator to consider qualitative rating of engagement by fan groups when assessing whether clubs meet licensing requirements. Put more simply, the regulator needs to assess whether fan input is real, or cosmetic.

In the end, a system works best if people are genuinely committed to it. The PL FES doesn’t suggest genuine commitment, because those clubs most opposed to any meaningful engagement will always act a brake on those that see the benefits. While the regulator will need to address this, practical gains can be made by taking a lead from clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester United which have put plans in place that, while still containing some flaws, demonstrate greater recognition of the benefits of genuine engagement.

The White Paper doesn’t go into great detail about the women’s game, partly because a separate review chaired by Karen Carney is looking at that. How supporter engagement in the women’s game works should ultimately be decided by clubs and supporters in the women’s game, so it’s important to wait for the results of that review before drawing any conclusions. There is, however, a danger of pre-empting those conclusions as clubs are moving to embed places for women’s game reps on fan advisory boards primarily concerned with the men’s game.

While the rhetoric on “one club” sound very progressive, the fact is that the economics and the matchday experience differs between men’s and women’s teams at the same clubs. So tacking a women’s game rep on to a fan advisory board that will deal predominantly with issues around the men’s team risks marginalising women’s game issues. I’ve heard the argument that ‘it doesn’t look good’ not to have a women’s game rep on a FAB, but surely we should have learned by now that there is an important difference between what something looks like and what its practical consequences are. The FA has already set up separate discussions with reps from the men’s and women’s games as part of its efforts to improve fan engagement after finding that one forum led to precisely the problems mentioned above. Hopefully the Review can point the way before any opportunity is lost.

Overall then, much to welcome in the White Paper. It looks as if we will finally get changes many have been arguing for over many years. The challenge now is to communicate in simple terms why those changes are important, because fan confidence is going to be key to the success of any system of regulation.

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Two short items to end a long edition of The Football Fan. Amanda Jacks, the FSA’s long-time caseworker, has left her role. Amanda was an inspirational figure for me. She worked hard to advise and represent fans who had run into trouble, and she was never afraid to question negative perceptions of fans held by police, stewards or clubs. She not only provided invaluable support to many individuals, she made a practical contribution to establishing and supporting more progressive models of policing and stewarding nationally. She was also never afraid to tell fans not to be idiots when that needed to be said.

I first worked with Amanda when I was writing a regular column about football fan culture for The New Statesman, and she opened my eyes to a lot of issues. She continued to be an invaluable source of support and advice when I was co-chairing the Supporters’ Trust at Spurs, and she remains a great friend. Her departure leaves a huge gap at the FSA, but the move she’s making provides hope for the future. Liverpool FC, one of the clubs to have more progressively embraced the coming new world of fan engagement, have made her their Director of Fan Engagement. It’s classic poacher turned gamekeeper territory, but LFC’s smart move should be noted by other clubs.

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I was one of many in the supporter movement to be shocked by the news of the death of Ian Stirling, the independent supporter liaison officer at Manchester United. He was only 57. I can’t add much more to the lovely tribute paid by the Club or the obituary written by Amanda Jacks, who worked closely with Ian over many years, other than to say on the occasions I met him he was a passionate and knowledgeable advocate for fans, and an absolutely top bloke. My thoughts are with his many friends and his family.