Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confirmed that the UK government plans to introduce an independent regulator to the country’s most popular sport. However, the legislation will not be in this year’s Queens Speech, but will be completed in time for the next general election.
The Football
Association would prefer that regulator to sit within its walls, an idea
that has gained support at the Premier
League. Both the FA and the
Premier League risk losing control of a sport that is largely self-governing. That self-government has been seen to fail.
Advocates of the independent regulator say that football
needs a reset following a series of controversies that exposed clubs to shocks,
including sanctioned billionaire Roman
Abramovich’s forced sale of Chelsea because
of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Then there’s the pandemic, which underlined the financial
precarity of clubs, a result of overspending on buying players and funding
their lucrative wages in pursuit of winning. On top of that came the
failed European Super League,
which exposed the divide between its elite founders and the rest.
That was the catalyst for a review by Tracey Crouch, a Conservative Member
of Parliament and former sports minister, who saw an opportunity to
reset the excesses of the English game.
Following a wide-ranging review, she recommended giving
supporters a veto over key decisions and — crucially — the creation of an
independent regulator to oversee the game, which would have an array of powers,
including blocking a change of ownership of clubs.
Culture secretary Nadine Dorries’s support for the creation
of a new regulatory body makes the implementation of Crouch’s recommendations
more likely. But with legislation unlikely until next year, there is time for
the FA and Premier League to lobby against it or for a more digestible
implementation in practice. I would
expect the proposals to be watered down.
One group with an opinion is the Institute for Economic Affairs, a
pro-Brexit lobby group that backs free markets, which (predictably) argues that
regulation risks deterring investors from buying English clubs.
In my book Political
Football I set out the case for an
independent regulator, but also argue that if they are given too much to do,
they will not solve anything. The
regulator will not be a paaacea for all football’s problems. It is also important to get the right person
to do the job. Top of my list are
Tracey Crouch, if she was prepared to stand down as a MP, or football finance
guru Kieran Maguire.
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