Plans to create a football regulator in England could “destroy” the Premier League and destroy one of the country's biggest exports, a club owner has warned.
The UK government announced in April 2022 that it intended to appoint an independent body following a fan-led review of football. According to the BBC, the review was prompted by a number of “high-profile crises” in sport, including the failure of the European Super League, the collapse of Bury FC and Macclesfield Town, and the Saudi-backed takeover of Newcastle United. That's what it means.
Under the Football Governance Bill introduced in Parliament this week, the football regulator will be given three powers to improve the financial sustainability of clubs, ensure the financial resilience of the league as a whole and protect the heritage of English football. It will focus on the main purpose. It will have the power to sanction English clubs that break financial or other rules or force unscrupulous owners to sell.
apply 1 week
Escape from the echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news and analysis from multiple perspectives.
Subscribe and save
Sign up for this week's free newsletter
From our morning news briefing to our weekly Good News newsletter, get the week's best stories delivered straight to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to our weekly Good News newsletter, get the week's best stories delivered straight to your inbox.
Rishi Sunak said the regulator would be independent from government and existing football authorities and would help prevent “financial mismanagement” by “unscrupulous owners”. He called it “a historic moment for football fans.”
It was first proposed nearly five years ago and has been “touted as a potential solution to repair the game's broken financial model”, according to ITV News. It primarily protects the financial sustainability of English clubs through a licensing system that covers clubs from the National League to the Premier League, and agreements between top clubs and the rest of the clubs in the English Football League (EFL). related to finding. How Premier League funds are distributed across the game.
It comes after Premier League clubs withdrew from a £900m support scheme for the EFL earlier this month, a decision that “sparked anger and frustration within the game and across Westminster”. reported the Guardian.
Bury South MP Christian Wakeford said the “long-awaited move” was “an important step forward in addressing the systemic problems plaguing our beloved sport”. This would ensure football's “sustainability for generations to come”, he wrote in the Bury Times.
However, while the move has been welcomed by the EFL and the Football Association (FA), the Premier League, which represents England's top 20 clubs, “recognizes and accepts the need for reform”, the regulator said: “No,” he said, more passively. need”.
“We may no longer be in the top league.”
West Ham United owner David Sullivan has warned that the introduction of an independent regulator could prevent the Premier League from remaining the top league in the world.
“This is a big export,” Sullivan told BBC Sport. “If they water down our income, we will be less competitive. We may not be in the top league, they may destroy the assets we have. .”
The Premier League is “one of Britain's best-known exports”, agrees Phillip Patrick of The Spectator, adding: “The success of the Premier League is due to the relative freedom these clubs have in doing business. Because of this,” he said.
If attempts to “tame this Premier League beast” are successful, there will be “an opportunity for Premier League 2.0 (and perhaps the Middle East) to thrive, free from the burden of onerous regulators ruining the fun.”
The debate over regulation “highlights the inherently political nature of sport”, Grimsby Town chairman Jason Stockwood wrote in the Guardian. Questioning the “balance between commercialism and community'' calls into question the very nature of the existence of games and who they are truly for.
To continue reading this article…
Create a free account
Continue reading this article and get access to limited websites every month.
Do you already have an account? Sign in
Subscribe to “This Week”
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters, and more.
You can cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Digital and Print + Digital subscriptions include access to unlimited websites.
Create an account To unlock access, use the same email registered with your subscription.
