The Football Governance Bill has fallen, long live the Football Governance Bill

The snap General Election is another delay in efforts to reform the game, but it could and should inject new life into the legislation

Just two days shy of completing the committee stage in Parliament, the Football Governance Bill fell. But the story is far from over and this latest setback may prove to be a trough before a peak.

I haven’t written about the Bill since last September, when I’d set out the case for the Bill being seen as progress, even if imperfect. That’s partly because the stage the proposed legislation had reached was where clause-by-clause examination took place, alongside lobbying and the kind of horse trading that makes people lose faith in the political process but which is a fact of life. Or, put more simply, there were a lot of moving parts and I wanted to wait until there was less movement.

Now the Bill has fallen, thanks to Rishi Sunak’s decision to cut and run to a General Election. But there is a considerable body of opinion that thinks this is a ready-made piece of legislation that could be implemented by a new government to provide an early win, and an early statement of intent to deliver something that has popular backing.

Already more the 190 supporter organisations have signed a letter written jointly by FSA chief executive Kevin Miles and Tracey Crouch MP calling on the new government to press ahead with introducing the Bill. There is cross-party support for the Bill, and there is no doubting the appetite within the game – outside the Premier League and National League – for it.

All of this should be cause for reflection at the Premier League, which spent most of its time since the Bill was first mooted in denial that it might ever become reality, and then settled on a strategy of trying to get the idea kicked into the long grass. But there will be no reflection, because the Premier League is institutionally incapable of it. Which also means the irony of the situation will be lost on it. Because there is now a chance to produce a better Bill than the one which would have been passed if the Premier League hadn’t obstructed it.

That’s because the likelihood is that Labour will have a workable majority after the election. The fear of the Premier League – and let’s remember that the organisation is controlled by the 20 owners of its member clubs, not the very many excellent people who work for it – was always that a Labour government would have a more interventionist approach than a Conservative one. Of course, the fact that one of the most economically right-wing governments in years was prepared to be more interventionist than the Premier League wanted tells its own story about how poorly football has regulated itself.

If Labour wins, delivering a long-campaigned for and much supported reform to our national game will be an easy win, an early demonstration of change and, most attractive of all, cost-free. If the Tories pull off an unlikely victory, the Bill still goes through. In either case, there will be an opportunity to reshape a few things.

I should make clear my view that it is unlikely the Bill will be substantially rewritten. The argument, made in that letter signed by the 190 fan groups, that this is “ready-made legislation”, means that unmaking and reassembling the Bill is, at best, highly unlikely. So what I’m doing here is setting out a view on what, from the current wording of the Bill, needs to be changed and has a good chance of being changed. You’ll need to refer to the wording itself to make sense of the references, so I have linked to that wording for your convenience.

The arguments I set out are based on my own assessment and on discussions I have had over the last few months with people involved with lobbying for and drawing up the Bill. Some of the most important points are set out in an excellent briefing paper produced by the FSA, which for full disclosure I should say I had some minor input into, so I’m not going to cover everything I think needs to be changed, just the points I am particularly keen to make.

It's important to consider Parliamentary process here. Amendments to drafted Bills are quite hard to achieve because acceptance concedes that the original drafting could have been better. There’s also a chance amendments don’t reflect the horse trading that may have been needed to get the original wording in the first place. Additionally, multiple amendments could be seen to substantially change the nature of a Bill that has been produced as a result of long and complex discussions and the application of that contentious word ‘pragmatism’.

So choosing what to push for has to be done carefully. However, some things can be pushed for in the knowledge that they are unlikely to be taken into the wording of the bill itself – what is known as the face of the Bill – but could, through a view expressed in Parliament by the Minister, be reasonably taken as guidance on the application of the Bill.

Good regulation requires a combination of a clear, strong framework and the ability of regulators to interpret and apply that framework in real circumstances while still sticking to the spirit of the legislation’s intention. Securing a general direction of travel from a Minister’s answer to a question or proposed amendment can also provide the necessary flexibility to deal with real life.

My first major point relates to Clause 37 of the Bill, which states that in making a decision on club ownership “the IFR must … have due regard to the foreign and trade policy objectives” of the Government. This is not only obviously huge Foreign Office overreach, but also something that could open to the Bill to a criticism falsely levelled at it by its opponents that it is state interference in football in breach of FIFA and UEFA statute. Replacing the word “must” with “may” seems to be the sensible solution here, as it also takes into account the realities of the UK’s place in the world order.

Clause 46 addresses the issue of the disposal of a club’s home ground. There is currently no requirement to consult supporters, local stakeholders or competition organisers, and clearly there should be. This seems like an oversight that can easily be rectified, although the situation is more complex in cases where grounds are in seperate ownership from clubs. Nonetheless, steps should be taken to ensure relevant views are properly considered. The same principles apply to clause 48, which addresses the issue of relocation.

Clause 55 is about the regulator’s ability to distribute revenue if other parties fail to agree, and as currently worded contains some serious flaws that need to be rectified if the Bill is to deliver what it intends. The most obvious issue here is the explicit exclusion of parachute payments from the scope the regulator has when considering revenue distribution. As the FSA says: “The exclusion of parachute payments would cement the current grotesque inequalities in revenue distributions and undermine IFR’s ability to deliver its systemic financial resilience objective”.

To be as fair as possible, I have linked to the Hansard record of the debate on this clause (scroll down to clause 55) to show what was said, but reading it reveals no sound reason for excluding parachute payments from the regulator’s remit. Remember that including them does not mean abolishing them, it just means they should be taken into consideration.

A related issue in this clause concerns the definition of relevant revenue. Current wording refers to revenue “received by the relevant competition organiser”. Literal interpretation of that wording would mean that if a model in which broadcasting income was paid directly to clubs was introduced – and this is something the bigger clubs have been pushing for – then that revenue would not be included. It should be.

The clause also doesn’t apply to income from UEFA or FIFA competitions, and again this fails to address a significant cause of financial inequality. There are obviously significant legal issues with any attempt in a UK Bill to specify where money generated from another jurisdiction goes, but it is both possible and desirable to require a regulator to consider a club’s total wealth when considering how to distribute English TV money.

Wording requiring the consideration of all money received directly by clubs would seem to be the obvious and simple solution here.

In Clause 56, a simple amendment to allow the regulator itself to trigger so-called “backstop” powers when competition organisers fail to agree would seem to be a no-brainer for anyone serious about having an effective, independent regulator. It’s a little more difficult, but equally desirable, to enable the regulator to trigger backstop powers if a settlement is agreed that compromises the systemic financial sustainability objective that underpins the regulation.

Last, but by no means least, the Bill needs to substantially beef up its fan engagement provisions. This was always where the Bill was weakest, possibly because a Conservative government – for all that it was forced to recognise the case for intervention by the appalling failure of self-regulation in the game – was never really going to back what seemed too much like giving the unions a bit more power. This seems natural ground, however, for Labour, even under the cautious leadership of Starmer’s team, to move into – delivering something that is popular, necessary, and cost-free.

There are a number of areas on the face of the Bill where specific mention of democratic Supporters Trusts and representative fan organisations would be beneficial. But expecting a line-by-line exposition of how, why and when supporter groups should be involved is clearly impractical and, arguably, not even desirable. What there does need to be is a clear requirement framework and a workable method of making qualitative judgement on fan engagement. This would enable the regulator to take a robust line in judging whether fan engagement meets the standard required.

Currently, the only qualitative framework is the Premier League Fan Engagement Standard (FES), which is a beautifully designed but largely vacuous attempt to cobble something together to keep the regulator at bay. I think many within the Premier League also share that view but, once again, we have to confront the reality that the Premier League is in fact 20 club owners, not an independent governing body. So the FES is a lowest-common-denominator product of clubs wanting solutions ranging from ‘nothing at all’ through ‘as little as possible’ to ‘as much as we have to’.

It is vital the regulator has the confidence of supporters and the wider public, and gaining that confidence will depend in large part on its ability to enforce genuine fan engagement rather than settle for the dismissive and often patronising nonsense that currently masquerades as fan engagement.

The regulator’s regular State of the Game report should include a strong focus on the delivery of genuine fan engagement, and clubs found to be falling short of the required standard should be at risk of having their licence revoked.

This issue is becoming particularly heated around ticket pricing – an area the clubs have fought fiercely to keep supporter input away from. I’m not suggesting fans should be asked to vote on the price of individual tickets, but I am saying they should be allowed genuine input on general policy such as whether or not concessions should be available, whether a genuine system of stretch pricing should be implemented, and whether match-going fans should see some financial benefit from the game’s financial health or be seen as a source of income to be squeezed harder year on year.

This will, of course, be anathema to the free-market ‘let business do what it wants’ tendency but, as I have argued many times before, football is a business like no other. In my last post, written with Nick Harris of Sporting Intelligence, I set out the real story of English football’s ticket price inflation, and the series continued on Nick’s Substack. This clearly shows what the game has done unregulated and with no meaningful input from fans on the basic issue of pricing. Requiring genuine fan engagement will stop that trend.

Introducing a Football Governance Bill is not going to be the number one priority for an incoming government. But, as this thread from the FSA explains, there are very good non-football reasons to act too. Football is a key part of our national life, and there is widespread recognition of and discontent about the problems the game faces. Whoever wins the election will be on to a good thing by introducing it.

Photo by Shreyas Sane on Unsplash