Fair Game: ‘States should not by English Clubs’

STATES must be barred by law from buying English football clubs if foreign and trade policy will be a factor in who can own and run teams under the new independent regulator, a football reform group has said, writes Jamie Gardner.

Fair Game, of which Cambridge United Football Club is a member of, argues a clause in the Football Governance Bill which says the regulator should “have regard to the foreign and trade policy objectives” of the Government when making decisions on who can own and run clubs goes against the regulator’s core mission of making clubs sustainable.

A Fair Game analysis of the Bill says that, if such a clause is kept in, “the Bill must also explicitly rule out state-ownership of football clubs, which would instantly become vulnerable to the whims of the Government of the day”.

It added: “The alternative would be to remove the clause entirely.”

The clause appears on the face of it to give a stronger chance of success to a proposed buyout linked to a country which the UK has positive diplomatic and trade relations with, and when determining whether existing club owners linked to such a country are suitable to hold that position.

Fair Game’s concern, though, is understood to centre more on the impact on a club’s sustainability if relations between the UK and a state owning an English club should take a dramatic turn for the worse.

While not state-owned, the group has highlighted the financial difficulties Chelsea faced when their former owner Roman Abramovich was sanctioned over his ties to the Russian state in March 2022, amid that country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Other observers have questioned whether a truly independent regulator should have to consider Government objectives when making a decision on an individual’s suitability to run a football club.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) did not comment regarding the clause, but sources said its intention was to reduce the risk of unsuitable owners without deterring investment.

The regulator should not get involved in foreign policy issues, they said, or have a role in setting them, and should not be making a judgement itself on what countries are suitable, but should instead take account of the

Government’s position.

The Athletic reported last year that UK Government officials had expressed concern in emails in 2020 that there would be an “immediate risk” to Britain’s relations with Saudi Arabia if the takeover of Newcastle by the country’s sovereign wealth fund was not approved by the Premier League.

The deal was ultimately given the green light by the Premier League in October 2021, which said it had received “legallybinding assurances” that there would be no state involvement in the running of Newcastle.

Court documents published in the United States early last year described the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), which holds a majority stake in Newcastle, as an “instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and referred to Newcastle chairman and PIF governor Yasir Al Rumayyan as “a sitting minister of the Saudi government”.

The Premier League chief executive Richard Masters did not comment when asked by MPs in March last year whether his organisation had launched an investigation into Newcastle’s ownership following those documents coming to light.