REPORT INTO EFFECTS OF COVID ON SPORT:
PREMIER LEAGUE clubs are branded “deplorable” for furloughing staff during lockdown while continuing to pay millionaire players, in a damning report out today.
In a grim portrait of English football’s financial health and its ability to survive the pandemic, MPs warn that “many more clubs will follow Bury” and cease to exist because the game’s business model is “unsustainable”.
And the influential Digital, Culture, Media and Sport parliamentary committee, chaired by Tory MP Julian Knight, is scathing about the lack of black representation in boardrooms and registers its “dismay” in tackling homophobia.
The DCMS report into the effects of Covid-19 on sport says football needs to “reset” its moral compass and address the “culture of unfair pay” which blights the game.
Knight’s panel severely criticised clubs who used sport’s shutdown to invoke the Government’s coronavirus job retention scheme. Liverpool led the U-turn, with chief executive
Peter Moore (below) admitting that “we came to the wrong conclusion”. However, the DCMS report says: “We firmly believe football must use its response to the Covid-19 crisis to ‘reset’. “The Premier League was hit by controversy when a number of clubs, including Tottenham and Liverpool, decided to use the CJRS and furlough non-playing staff while continuing to pay players’ wages in full.
“The Premier League remains the highest-paying football league in the world, so it is no surprise that some clubs – particularly Liverpool, the world’s seventhrichest club – faced a fierce backlash.
“The crisis has shone a light on the culture of unfair pay in football. The decision by some Premier League clubs to furlough non-playing staff was deplorable and we welcomed its reversal.
Parachute payments must become a thing of the past and considerable work must be done on salary caps. The current football business model is not sustainable. If the Premier League does not step up to help the EFL, many more clubs will follow in Bury FC’s footsteps.” The DCMS also points out club owners and directors are almost uniformly white, saying: “Football must be more representative. The fact that no Premier League club, and virtually no English Football League club has a black owner, chair or chief executive is a fundamental inequality.
“We recommend that DCMS revises the Code for Sport Governance, adding targets for BAME representation on boards. “We also wish to add our dismay at the slow progress in kicking out homophobia. “We will pursue opportunities in this Parliament to introduce legislation outlawing homophobic chanting at matches.”
‘WE’LL BE SMILING’