By Thomas Durning
On the 23rd of February 2023, the UK government announced that they will be introducing an independent regulator into English football.
The powers that the independent regulator will hold include stopping clubs joining a European Super League, giving fans more power to stop football owners changing a club’s name, badge, and traditional kit colours, and ensuring a fairer distribution of money is dripped down from the Premier League to the lower leagues of English football.
The announcement of a football regulator in English football is good news.
This includes club ownership ever since the Abu Dhabi United Group bought Manchester City in August 2008.
Since this takeover, more foreign owners have entered the Premier League and you now rarely see a Premier League club owned by someone from the UK.
Although there is nothing wrong with foreign owners taking over clubs, a major difference is that these owners are very wealthy and it has resulted in Premier League clubs spending loads of money.
In the 2023 January transfer window, statistics revealed that the total expenditure spent by Premier League clubs was £815 million, considerably more than the 2022 January transfer window when Premier League clubs only spent £295 million.
A large majority of this money was from Chelsea in the 2023 January transfer window as they spent around £288 million. This is more than the combined total of all clubs in the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1.
In 2022, Chelsea was taken over by a private equity firm called Clearlake Capital.
An argument that supports this amount of money being spent is that it makes the Premier League more exciting with clubs strengthening there squad to make their team is more competitive and also the league overall.
This is one way to look at it but there also issues that come with this.
Tim Bridge who is the lead partner in Deloitte’s Sports Business Group told the BBC that the EFL (English Football League) will be concerned about the lack of spending in there leagues and because of this, the debate about distributing more money from the Premier League could be even stronger.
The EFL chairman Rick Parry has revealed he wants a 25% share of pooled broadcast revenue with the Premier League and also wants to get rid of ‘parachute payments’ for clubs who have been relegated from the Premier League. Parachute payments is money given to relegated sides to help them get used to the lower revenues they will be getting as they have been relegated from the Premier league. As the Premier League get a large amount of revenue due to its global appeal, it means that relegated clubs are already at an advantage to other EFL clubs as they will have much more money to spend.
Going back to the demands that the EFL chairman wants, the chairman has told clubs in the EFL that he doesn’t expect to get what he is looking for.
As part of the government’s long-term plans for English football, they have announced that if an agreement is not reached in terms of distribution between the Premier League and the EFL, the independent regulator will be able to use an arbitration to find an agreement.
This is good news for English football because it means that EFL clubs will not be left if no agreement is reached as Premier League clubs will always be in a much stronger position compared to EFL clubs.
I think that the Premier League have let down the EFL over the years. Over the last few years, we have seen traditional English clubs like Bury and Macclesfield go out of business due to money concerns and the fact they cannot keep up with upcoming payments anymore and with Premier League clubs getting richer and richer every year, situations like this are not fair and something had to change.
The introduction of an independent regulator now means that they have the power to impose rules such as the Premier League sharing more money with the lower divisions which again is good news because it gives all clubs (especially EFL clubs) a chance of being sustainable and making sure they have a bright future both financially and competitively.
Strengthening owners and directors test’s is another power that the independent regulator will hold as the government have said they want to implement this to protect clubs and there fans.
This is an important step to be implemented because as previously stated, we have seen multiple Premier League clubs being taken over by people/companies from different parts of the world.
The idea of your football clubs being taken over can be somewhat exciting because they can come into the club and reveal future plans that will be exciting.
However, this has not always been the case in the Premier League as fans of Liverpool will know all about aspiring new owners coming and going.
In 2007, Liverpool was bought by two American businessmen called George Gillett and Tom Hicks. In there first few days at the club, they announced that they had bought the club with no debt and George Gillett promised that work on the new stadium will begin.
Fast forward three years and Liverpool were in a debt of £237 million and no progression on the new stadium had begun.
The most famous part of Liverpool’s ownership under Gillett and Hicks was the court cases that were very high profile and the result of it was the Americans being forced out of the club by the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Although Liverpool is now a global force in European football, at that time under Gillett and Hicks they were not and this was due to false promises that were giving from the owners and it took the football club a long time to recover from a very unsuccessful ownership.
In 2021, Newcastle United was taken over by a group called the Public Investment Fund. The Public Investment Fund is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia and among the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.
Since the takeover, Newcastle on the pitch have improved with investment in the squad making them one of the most competitive teams in the Premier League.
Although the football team has improved, there has been controversy about this takeover with the chair of the PIF (Public Investment Fund) being Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who is the son of Saudi Arabia’s king. The Saudi king’s son runs his dad’s government. The Saudi government has been accused of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was critical of the Saudi government. The UN have even made clear that they believe the Saudi government was responsible for the killing.
Not only this controversy, but Saudi Arabia also has rules in their country that include being gay as illegal. Although there are assurances the Saudi state will not be controlling the club, these kinds of issues that are now involved in English football have led to criticism from people who believe that the owner’s test are not strict enough.
Although the owners of Newcastle have been given the green light to run Newcastle, the introduction of stricter owner/director tests can been seen as a progressive step because now more than ever, football clubs are being owned with people who have a lot of power and clubs have to make sure that what they are doing is right and protects the future of both the club and fans.
As previously stated, having an independent regulator is the right move for English football because with floods of money being thrown into Premier League clubs, there has to be someone overlooking these types of issues to make sure that everything is legit and the future of English football is secure.
Comments