Fair Play — Time for Football’s New Manifesto?
The clamour for change to the governance of English football feels like a constant refrain over the last twenty years. Prompted by the creation of a chasm between the Premier League and the rest, it has echoed a feeling that the game is becoming ever less ‘for the people.’ The question may well be therefore why the latest initiative should be any different to previous ones.
When the Fair Game Manifesto was launched on 9th September, its timing was largely acknowledged as being driven by two recent events — clubs’ financial struggles caused by lockdown and the shockwaves caused the European Super League proposals. Whilst both are certainly relevant, the truth is that the issues being addressed by it were around long before both.
Take for instance the ‘fair and proper test’ applied to new club owners. The list of individuals and companies proving themselves neither of these things includes Becchetti at Leyton Orient, Sisu Capital at Coventry, The Venky’s at Blackburn, Hicks & Gillet Jnr at Liverpool, a seemingly endless cast at Portsmouth (including Gaydamal and Antonov) as well as Reynolds at Darlington and Ridsdale at Leeds, Barnsley and Cardiff. That’s just a few but what’s striking is that the list includes clubs of all sizes and the travails suffered by clubs range from financial mismanagement (especially building up untenable debts), asset stripping (including in some cases the training ground or even the stadium — pretty much a key asset however you look at it) and organisational incompetence. Often these calamitous off-the-field positions were combined with a hair trigger approach to player and management hiring and firing based on a misguided view that they were knew their stuff on-the-field whereas in fact their expertise there mirrored their business acumen off of it. The ‘Owners & Directors test’ introduced in 2004 did nothing to prevent any of these so it’s hardly surprising that the new Manifesto includes proposals for something with far more teeth.
The six key themes of the Manifesto will be familiar to most fans –
* Independent regulation — a new regulator would be created by legislation, appointed by Government and given enforcement powers including points docking and fines for both individuals and companies.
* Owners and Directors regulation — to fix some of the historical horror stories such as those above, new rules would address risks of criminality and transparency with specific focus on misleading or opaque information, requirements for transparent information on company structure, regular reporting and five-year business plans.
* Sustainability — clubs would be scored to create an index based on a) equality standards, b) fan engagement, c) financial stability and d) good governance. This would be managed by the new regulator.
* Financial structure — 25% of Premier League revenues would be required to be distributed beyond the Prem and 80% of that revenue would be distributed to non Prem clubs on the basis of the sustainability index above. The new regulator would ‘directly control funding to the EFL, National League and Women’s Super League’ which would be set up in a more even structure to avoid ‘cliff edges’ such as those that exist between leagues now. Parachute payments would be abolished, salary caps would apply across all levels, relegation clauses would be in all player contracts, clubs (as opposed to players) would be banned from paying agents and a new betting levy would be introduced.
* Protection of Club Heritage — changes in key areas such as club name, colours and badge would need to be made via the new regulator and would require at least 75% of a fan body’s approval.
* A commitment to reform the FA
There are a few eye-catching proposals here (the practice of agents being paid by both player and club being so obviously ripe for abuse that it’s hard to see it having any other purpose); most will likely seem like common sense to many fans.
If the core of the Manifesto is likely popular and understood then we might ask why so few clubs are behind it? Just a single Championship club (Luton) has signed up and even in League One there are only four. At National League level, apart from a corner of Kent where Tonbridge Angels, Maidstone and Ebbsfleet are all behind it, the numbers are still somewhat spartan.
Maybe there’s a sense that it’s too radical to take off and that those at the heart of the current balance of power are not going to vote (Turkey-like) against their best interests. Premier League CEO Richard Masters has already said that he doesn’t think an “independent regulator is the answer.” Despite Fair Game CEO Niall Couper speaking to three Premier League clubs, it seems unlikely that, in his words, many of them will be “brave enough to put their head above the parapet.”
That of course presupposes that Government won’t step in to make them. The ESL fiasco woke up the powers-that-be to some vote winning (or at least emotional grandstanding) opportunities that might at least suggest the possibility here.
Certainly there are other prominent people lining up behind it — Andy Burnham being one who spoke at the launch of “cross party support” and cited a very visible and local example of Bury as proof that the ‘status quo’ of football regulation has failed. Four months prior to the Manifesto being launched, an open letter calling for the creation of an independent regulator was signed by a host of notables including Gary Neville, Gary Lineker, Jamie Carragher, Henry Winter, Laura Woods, Rio Ferdinand, Micah Richards and Oliver Holt.
Maybe the relative paucity of clubs lining up behind it and the low-key media response to its launch may be about timing. Gary Neville’s open letter in May garnered attention and the Government commissioned review of the game chaired by Tracey Crouch is due to report in October (following its interim findings in July.) Sandwiched between the two, maybe the Fair Game Manifesto has yet to find its place but the fact that it mirrors much of Crouch’s July findings (based on her key tenet that “football clubs are not ordinary businesses [because] they play a critical social, civic and cultural role in their local communities. They need to be protected — sometimes from their owners who are, after all, simply the current custodians of a community asset”) suggests that we may have consensus between fans and Government.
That in itself would be a first. In 1992 Brian Lomax started the first Supporters’ Trust when the future of his club — Northampton Town — was in doubt following massive debts. His view was that fans’ involvement in the running of clubs was a necessary protection against the sort of dodgy owners of whom we have seen far too many since. Labour’s 1997 Football Task Force played a part in the creation of Supporters Direct but the broader push to fan involvement has not gained momentum. In reality little has changed.
Maybe now — via Crouch, Neville and Fair Game — change is more a matter of time.
