The Business
The more you look at the way football is run, the more the case for change becomes clear. It's important fans understand the opportunity.
In today’s King’s Speech setting out the Parliamentary business of the new UK Labour government, the Football Governance Bill will be among the measures announced. Indications are that the Bill will have ironed out some of the issues that I focused on in a previous post, making what was a good piece of legislation a considerably better one. I’d hope to see most if not all of the amendments proposed in the last session, but which were voted down by the Conservative majority, to be included in the new draft.
As I pointed out previously, there are a number of issues around some of the financial proposals that need resolving, most notably the exclusion of parachute payments from the regulator’s remit. The Bill also needs to acknowledge the impact of income gained from European as well as domestic competition. And the last-minute attempts to give the Premier League the power to weaken the regulator’s role need to be rolled back.
Fan engagement is the other area where the Bill needs to take a stronger line. The risk currently is that the framework allows for talking shops and not much else – more on that subject in a moment. The regulator needs to be given the means to make judgments on the quality of engagement, and the power to require change if sufficient standards are not being met.
The argument that fans should be properly involved in the business of the club they support is still subject to much misinterpretation, so it is important to be clear about what we are and are not looking for here. Fans are more than customers in this business like no other – a point I have argued for years. So there is nothing wrong with wanting fans to have an input into what is not just a commercial enterprise but a community and cultural asset. New Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy had some particularly encouraging words to say about the value of culture and community when she took office – adding to the sense of optimism that this version of the Bill could be much improved.
There is some nervousness, oddly enough among some supporters as well as, more obviously, the clubs, that this means giving fans a veto on decisions such as pricing. Heaven forbid the relentless pursuit of money above all else should be checked! But let’s be clear here. Very few, if any, fans are asking for a veto on decisions about the price of tickets, for example. But there is plenty of space between veto and toothless talking shop in which to establish genuine engagement. And the Bill needs to provide fertile ground for that. At the moment, what we have are mostly toothless talking shops.
Some further consultation will be needed to iron out details, but for this to work most effectively for the sport rather than a handful of owners there needs to be some realism about the likelihood of leopards changing their spots. Negotiating away powers to a Premier League that has shown precisely zero interest in anything beyond self-interest will be pointless. Checking the worst ambitions of the powerful clubs who have done everything to stymie the process of reform is vital in stopping the drift so well identified in this piece on the game’s future by Guardian journalist Nick Ames.
I try to avoid writing specifically about the club I support, but I keep needing to focus on Tottenham Hotspur as an example of much, if not all, that is wrong with the current fan engagement process.
The Club’s Fan Advisory Board has just released its first end-of-year report – a glossy but vacuous piece of marketing. It is extremely disappointing the fan reps have signed it off when they could have refused to endorse a process that is clearly not working. During the course of the first year the club has, on at least three occasions, used the FAB as a PR shield, claiming it had consulted over a number of unpopular decisions when the best it did was inform at short notice. The current club board are experienced hands at throwing people under a bus, but rarely have the victims tumbled so keenly as they have in signing up to this report.
Apparently there is “room for improvement” and this is only year one. But the club is acting as it has done under the current board for over 20 years, a period during which it finally destroyed years of work in attempting to build a meaningful relationship by being, at best, less than forthright about its involvement in the European Super League plot. Pragmatism is one thing, delusion another. Too strong? When the report says the FAB will “continue to build strong relationships with trust and transparency on both sides” there’s little grounding in reality.
What is particularly offensive about the report is its use of work on the diversity, equality and inclusion front. The pensioners who must pay more for their tickets after being told they weren’t dying off soon enough will no doubt be particularly impressed with the apparent dedication to inclusion.
To be clear, many fans and fan groups do fantastic work on DEI, recognising football’s significance in our lives. So criticism of the way the club is using this work to attempt to obscure its wilful refusal to properly engage with supporters on other matters should not be taken as criticism of DEI work. But the club’s fine words about equality and inclusion appear to count for considerably less than we are led to believe when you look at their actions.
While this report was being finalised, the club was also finalising a deal with a crypto exchange called Kraken. Aside from the issues with promoting crypto products to football fans, and the fact Kraken has been engaged in numerous battles with regulators in the US, it also transpires that its founder, former CEO and chairman doesn’t exactly share the club’s professed dedication to DEI.
Kraken’s PR people are smart enough to use the right buzz words too, and so we hear from the announcement of the deal on the club site that “Kraken has a vision that football, like crypto, should be accessible to everyone”. Good old inclusion again. Once upon a time it meant more than equal access to everyone’s wallets. There’s the usual guff about how you can “deepen your connection to your club” by trading crypto, a line pushed by another of the club’s sponsors, Socios. Monetised fan engagement is the best kind of fan engagement, evidently.
No doubt the club board will argue that income has to come from somewhere, and so it does. The thing about Spurs is that no matter how much income comes in, it’s never enough – certainly not enough to stop the club putting up ticket prices and attacking its most long-serving fans. Those boardroom bonuses don’t fund themselves.
And let’s look at the sponsors being signed up by that boardroom talent that must be so handsomely rewarded. Kraken; Socios; BetMGM – not only a betting company but one with a terrible reputation – grocery delivery company Getir, a firm part-funded by Putin’s mates which exited the UK in disarray, leaving a trail of job losses in its wake and owing Spurs millions of pounds; Astropay, now subject to restrictions on its activities by the UK financial regulator … Perhaps if more attention had been paid to what was once the core value of sporting success, the club board wouldn’t have to scrape quite so far down the barrel for sponsors.
Fans care about reputation. We should have a say in who our clubs team up with. And clubs should not simply be allowed to serve up their supporter base as fodder for the next chancer unchallenged. This is why the Football Governance Bill is important. And why it is important fans don’t collude in diverting the direction of travel.
Everyone’s had their say on Gareth Southgate by now, so I’ll keep this short. I think he’s done a great job of ditching a lot of the baggage that existed around the England men’s national team; in building a more confident and modern idea of England and Englishness, and of making the experience of playing for and supporting England fun again. I don’t think he was the tactical klutz many seem to, but I do think that ultimately an innate conservatism and lack of that extra bit of elite tactical nous meant his teams fell short. His greatest achievement may be to enable his successor to focus on the football. But, overall, and to borrow the words of Muswell Hill’s finest, Ray Davies, thank you for the days, Gareth.
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash