21 years ago, Leeds United Chairman Paul Ridsdale famously admitted that Leeds should not have spent so much while stressing that they lived the dream regardless. The dream in question: to take one of England’s historic football clubs to the semi-finals of the then UEFA Champions League.

Two decades on from that very press conference, in which Ridsdale detailed that Leeds had suffered net losses of £49.5m, Ridsdale’s words are being cited by the UK Government justify the creation of an Independent Football Regulator. Then, on Tuesday 19 March the Government finally published the Football Governance Bill that would create the regulator. 

Perhaps the need for an independent football regulator could not be better encapsulated by the recent turn of events for two clubs in Greater Manchester: Rochdale AFC and Manchester United. As reported by The Guardian at the end of February, Rochdale faced potential liquidation with the club needing £2m. Just 18 miles south Sir Jim Ratcliffe has recently acquired a 27.4% share in Manchester United through an investment of £1.3bn. Nonetheless, Rochdale were later saved from such liquidation by a US investor.

In this regard, the proposed creation of an Independent Football Regulator should be welcomed- it represents a step in the right direction, and it is a stark contrast to the many countries that do not regulate professional sports. Moreover, the very fact that its proposed creation has upset some of football’s top-level clubs should be seen as promising; after all these are the very institutions that benefit from top-level football’s morally dubious distributional patterns. For example, West Ham United’s owner David Sullivan criticised the proposal and, poignantly, the Premier League (PL) did not release a statement welcoming the publication of the Bill. 

Nevertheless, merely putting the words ‘independent’ and ‘regulator’ does not guarantee anything- we can already see gaps in the proposed legislation. Additionally, while any regulation of football should be welcomed, perhaps top-level English football would also benefit from a grander sense of moral reckoning- a long hard look at itself, what it has become and what it encapsulates to some. 

What do we know?

As said prior, the Government finally published the Football Governance Bill on the week just gone. This comes after months of rumours regarding the Bill with the Government previously reasserting that the Bill will be introduced before any future General Election. This follows the Government committing to implementing legislation to ‘safeguard the future of football clubs for the benefit of communities and fans’ in the Kings Speech in November 2023. 

We finally have the Bill which elucidates how the regulator will take form. Moreover, numerous comments by the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lucy Frazer and leaked information from meetings between key stakeholders and the Government has provided further clarity on the Bill. 

The Bill details that the remit of the Independent Football Regulator will enact the following:

1. A licensing system, covering all clubs in the top five tiers of men’s English football;
2. A strengthened Owners’ and Directors’ test;
3. The use of targeted financial regulation;
4. A minimum standard of fan engagement and clubs must comply with protections;
5. Clubs must seek regulator approval for any sale of, or relocation from, their home ground;
6. Prevent English clubs from joining prohibited competitions, such as a European Super League;
7. Backstop powers to intervene in financial distributions if necessary and subject to certain thresholds being met, to ensure financial sustainability;
8. A ‘Football Club Corporate Governance Code’;
9. A comprehensive ‘State of Game’ report to be published periodically.

Meanwhile, numerous speeches and comments by Sunak and Frazer have reiterated the Government’s top line message about their commitment to implement a regulator to protect fans and communities. 

Speaking in a public question and answer session with the public in January 2024, Sunak stressed that the regulator would ensure the financial success of football is spread throughout the football pyramid; while he also said that the regulator would have the power to impose a financial deal on the English Football League (EFL) and the EPL should they not agree a deal. For those unaware, this deal refers to the financial distribution package that would see circa £900m of future TV revenues spread from the EPL down the football pyramid to 72 clubs below. Similarly, Frazer asserted the same lines of argument when speaking at the Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit at the end of February. 

The gaps in the substance 

These developments should be welcomed- after all the fact that the regulator would be able to impose the funding deal on the EFL and EPL may suggest that the regulator will not serve as a regulator in name only. Meanwhile, the regulator does very well to prohibit a breakaway league akin to the European Super League from 2021- nonetheless, there are gaps in the proposed legislation. 

For instance, on the owners and directors test, the Bill suggests that this test will focus on ensuring that owners and directors are suitable and responsible. A focus on sustainability and responsibility implicates that the issue of the owners and directors test is not necessarily the source of the money but how they use it. 

While of course a focus on sustainability and the responsibility of owners is welcome, this does not go far enough.  A proper Football Regulator should also have the power to interrogate the source of money in our game. I completely recognise that this is an ambitious ask as the current sitting Government consist largely of same MPs who, in former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Government, allowed the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund to complete a takeover of Newcastle United in Autumn 2021. 

The failure of the Johnson Government to act over this is even more dubious given the rumoured recent moves by Sunak’s Government to legislate against foreign ownership of newspapers and magazines to stop a UAE takeover of The Telegraph. These suspicions were later confirmed by the Government’s Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Arts and Heritage Lord Parkinson. Specifically, Parkinson noted in a debate on Sportswashing on Friday 22 March that the Regulator will have a ‘statutory duty’ to abide by the ‘Government’s foreign and trade policy objectives.’

The regulator’s remit will only likely cover the PL, Championship, League One, League Two and National League. While this is comprehensive, any regulation needs to cover at least the National League North and National League South, as noted by advocacy group Fair Game, if not even further down the pyramid. If we limit the regulator to only the top 5 divisions, we only imped the potential transformative impacts of the redistribution of finances. After all, many clubs in the National League North and National League South involve some remit of professionalism, whether that be fully professional or semi-professional. 

It’s not as if clubs that sit below the National League should not be valued and protected for the benefit of their fans or communities- with many playing a vital role in their communities. If anything, these non-league clubs require the redistributive impact of the regulator more than ever in the backdrop of a stagnant UK economy, cost of living and energy crisis. 

There are also additional questions surrounding the regulator. For instance, while Frazer and Sunak stress the importance of fans and communities in the Regulator’s remit, there is no remit for fan representation at board level- akin to Germany’s 50+1 system. Additionally, the Bill details that fans must be consulted when owners act on issues to regarding a club’s ‘heritage’- yet there is no obligation to act on fans’ wishes. 

Likewise, while the Regulator may impose a potentially the new deal on the EFL and Pl, it will not have the scope to deal with disagreements over the number of games in top-level and money spent on players in top-level English Football. These importantly have proved the issues of contention between the EFL and PL but also there are increasing moral questions around the sustainability of the number of games played and surging player transfer fees in modern football. 

Moral reckoning 

Finally, if the regulator is to be successful in its mission, we should be equally concerned about the absence of moral reckoning.

We can sit and bemoan the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United all we want; after all, you could argue it changed what was seen as justifiable in football. For instance, in January 2024 Qatari Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani only failed in his takeover of Manchester United due to not producing evidence of his sufficient funds rather than any degree of moral condemnation by football authorities- nonetheless, Newcastle’s takeover does not elucidate a new phenomenon but rather more of the same. 

While Roman Abramovich was later stripped of his UK assets and had to absolve his ownership of Chelsea Football Club in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this came nearly 20 years too late. Furthermore, Abramovich faced little moral condemnation or repudiation as he was widely perceived as a good owner in his tenure. Meanwhile, Nottingham Forest’s Greek owner Evangelos Marinakis’ links to alleged drug trafficking is hardly the heroic road to glory story that Forest fans hoped their return to the PL would encapsulate. Forest’s ownership also raises questions about the plausibility multi-club ownership with Marinakis also owning Rio Ave in Portugal and Olympiacos in Greece- this has seen Forest sign 124 players Marinakis took charge. Lastly, this is all without mentioning the very large elephant in the room: Manchester City Football Club. 

Manchester City perhaps represent the archetypal encapsulation of top-level English football’s need for a moral reckoning. Since 4 August 2008, the club has been majority owned by Sheikh Mansour- the current Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. As of May 2023, their net transfer spendstood at €1.45bn. Moreover, their pursuit of the multi-club ownership model through City Group’s acquisition of New York City FC, Melbourne City, Yokohama F. Marinos, Montevideo City Torque, Girona FC, Lommel SK and Troyes, among others, raises moral questions around competitiveness, fairness and authenticity. In this regard, is it fair for such clubs to own such a monopoly of talent and thereby competitive advantage and economic income. 

To return to the example of Rochdale AFC and Manchester United as laid out earlier, no one is asking for these clubs to be of equal income; they serve different purposes and audiences as football clubs. But perhaps when cases such as Rochdale AFC’s near liquidation and Manchester United’s takeover arise, we need to be clearer about the moral repudiation and the fact that this seems like an ever-recurring nightmare that football seems so easy to shrug off. 

In this sense, without an open and transparent moral reckoning with what football has become and what it should encapsulate, an Independent Football regulator may simply 

cement football’s tacit acceptance of morally dubious actors and distributional patterns in the name of financial sustainability and responsibility. 

Perhaps English top-level football is a victim of the wider economic system it sits in and this seems near impossible to change. To end on a positive note, if we are to properly interrogate the state of top-level football, we need to move beyond regulatory language and have an open and transparent conversation about what we want football to represent and what football ought to be. Therefore, football needs to have a moral reckoning with itself, and this should come as part and parcel of implementing an Independent Football Regulator.