UK passes Football Regulation Bill, officials react

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The Football Governance Bill, a law that will support the establishment of a new regulatory body to license clubs in the top five leagues of English football, is set to be presented to Parliament on Tuesday.

Among high-profile figures speaking on the development are Kevin Miles — a British chief executive of the Football Supporters’ Association, and Lucy Frazer, UK’s Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport. Both spoke with BBC Radio 5 Live.

The following was Miles’ take on the pursuit:

‘It’s a warm welcome for us from us for the idea of independent regulation because sadly we have so many examples of failure from football to regulate and organise itself. Nobody can accuse the government of rushing into this.

‘It’s 1,066 days since the European Super League which triggered the setting up of the fan led review in the first place. That was the most comprehensive survey of opinion around football that there’s ever been with 130 hours of evidence taken.

‘It came out with a clear recommendation that something needs to change because although football is commercial in terms of the Premier League, one of the big success stories financially, the impact that those finances have had on the game has been incredibly distorting with a lot of the money collected at one end of the game, sustainability issues up and down the pyramid, £6bn worth of debt shared by Premier League and Championship clubs which is clearly not sustainable.

‘Football is far too important to communities and to people up and down the country, part of our social fabric, it’s far too important too be left to self-interested owners of football clubs who will inevitably, with the best will in the world, look after their own bottom line first and that’s why the game needs protecting.’

Frazer had something to say about how fast it would take for the goal to be scored.

‘I should say, we’ve acted at speed and we’re not waiting for the regulations to come into force, the law to come into force, before we take steps.

‘We’ve already appointed the Chief Operating Officer of the regulator, we’ll shortly be advertising for the Chair and so what we want to ensure is that the regulator will be and running as soon as the legislation comes into play.

‘We’re going to be running a shadow regulator before everything actually can come in to being so we’re acting as quickly as possible.’

Will the actualization of this goal put fans back into the centre of football? Miles had the following to say:

‘Well that’s certainly one of the stated intentions of it, it effectively gives fans a veto over things like all the important heritage issues which basically is symbolic rather than economically significant in some cases.

‘But if people want to change the badge, or the playing name, or the playing colours, they’re going to have to get fan approval and fan consent for those sort of things but also it mandates fan engagements in clubs, it mandates clubs establishing a shadow board or a fan advisory board in which the opinion of supporters are representative, democratically elected groups of supporters have to have access to information about what’s going on at their football clubs and the ability to express an opinion about that and to discuss that with club officials.

‘Now that’s not a veto over what clubs do, it doesn’t give them power to change anything but it makes sure that their voice at least is raised in every level of the game. We already have that sort of dialogue with the leagues and with the FA, we need to make sure that exists at every club and up and down the country as well to make sure that they can identify problems early on and if necessary, ring alarm bells at the early stages.’

If established, this regulator will have power to fine clubs, command them to relate with fans before making several decisions, and much more.